The Warhammer-community team brings us some info on how Drukhari play in 9th ed 40k!
From the dark city of Commorragh, the Drukhari launch their realspace raids, causing indiscriminate slaughter to sustain their withered souls. With the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 on the way, they’ll be finding new ways to carve a brutal path through the galaxy. Fortunately, we have Matt Schuchman, a man who could teach an Archon a thing or two about tactics, on hand to show us how the Drukhari will play in the new edition.
Who Are They?
The Drukhari are fiercely intelligent piratical raiders who feed upon anguish to stave off the slow death of their souls. This is the only way that they can escape their fated doom following the Fall of the Aeldari race. They epitomise everything wanton and cruel about the ancient Aeldari from which they are descended. They are tall, lithe, and fight with supernatural grace. Above all else, the Drukhari are arrogant, completely convinced of their superiority over the lesser races of the galaxy.
How They Play in the New Edition
We’re now going to hand you over to Matt Schuchman, one of the world’s foremost Aeldari experts and winner of countless Grand Tournaments. Pray that he does take you alive, because you could learn a lot from him about Warhammer 40,000.
Matt: Drukhari are set to be a really great Faction to play in the new edition of Warhammer 40,000. The most striking improvement is to the little utilised Raiding Force rule. As a reminder, it gives your army four extra Command points if you include at least three Patrol Detachments. Combined with having your Warlord in one of these Detachments, you get the flexibility of taking up to three Patrol Detachments while still getting the maximum number of Command points.
Vehicles are also going to be very powerful in the new edition. This is great for Drukhari, as most armies will already feature vehicles heavily. Aircraft will no longer run into issues with having their movements blocked off by ground units and will be able to move back onto the board if you do choose to have them leave. Another huge improvement is that many Drukhari weapons are around the 36-inch range band, and with a smaller board size you will have an easy time keeping your guns in range.
As with all Factions, Drukhari forces will need a few tweaks due to the increases in points values. However, Drukhari are in a unique place whereby many of the popular army builds in the current edition will translate into powerful armies in the new edition. Just keep in mind that the Drukhari excel at lightning-fast early-game pressure – continue with those kinds of strategies and I think you’ll do well in the new edition.
Key Units
With so many ways to build your Drukhari army, from Kabals to Wych Cults to Haemonculus Covens, there are a lot of potential units to select from. Let’s see what Matt recommends.
Reavers
Matt: With the smaller board sizes, the superior speed and large amount of mid-range firepower they can put out will really help Drukhari forces to claim victory. Utilising a mixed force, such as a Wych Cult and a Kabal, will allow you to combine quick-moving close combat units like Reavers, who can quickly engage enemies, whilst your Kabal vehicles sit back in the mid-board laying down suppressing fire.
Wyches
Matt: With changes to how terrain works, using things like a vehicle-heavy Kabal of the Flayed Skull Detachment, who naturally ignore the saving throw benefits of cover, will be really powerful. Another tactic to keep in mind is that, with the addition of the Desperate Breakout Stratagem, units like Wyches with their No Escape rule to prevent units from falling back will be even more important if you need to lock things up in combat.
Thanks, Matt! We’ve also got a recommendation of our own to share.
Razorwing Jetfighter
Take advantage of the new Aircraft rules with the deadly Razorwing Jetfighter. It can easily keep up with your lightning-fast realspace raids and will see you dominate the airspace over any battlefield.
That’s just a taste of the terror that the Drukhari will be bringing to the new edition. Make sure that you also join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using #New40K to let us know how you’ll be playing your Drukhari army in the new edition.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
Interesting. So a tripple patrol list now let’s you field all three at no actual cp cost. This will certainly change up my lists.
So we now know patrol attachments cost 2 CP. This does change how DE will play and feels flavorful to boot. Good job GW! Do we know if we are limited to 3 detachments still?
Yep, in one of the early articles they previewed the board size, they mention detachments for each size game. 1 for 500 pts, 2 for 1000 pts, 3 for 2000, and 4 for 3000. This drip feed is confusing, because I thought we already saw the patrol benefits, but I guess they only showed battalion.
We knew that patrols, battalions, and brigades all refund CP when your warlord is from them, but not the actual CP cost of patrol/brigade before this.
These detachment rules are a huge advantage I believe. Actually gives us the ability to play our book the way we need to and how it was meant to.
I think the “Key Units” being Wyches and Reavers is just a ploy and not actually the truth. Those to units have never been key units and I don’t see how they will be yet in this edition.
I’m still not happy about Fly, but I’ll stay hopeful and see what Fly actually gets besides what it takes away.
It’s good to see the raiding party actually be useful to the army.
However, the unit descriptions are a bit deceptive here. Wyches are fragile and need a delivery method, which is not covered. Reavers are currently fast and only that, “large amount of mid-range firepower” is a bit of an exaggeration.
“Utilising a mixed force, such as a Wych Cult and a Kabal” suggest mixing them in a detachment without detachment bonuses, which you should absolutely not do. Maybe it meant to specify having multiple detachments.
Overall it reads a bit along the lines of “these units are cool and therefore good”, misrepresenting how the army might actually play on the table. I would love wyches to be both cool and good, we’ll have to wait and see…
The Aircraft however, are looking great. The raiding party gives us 6 aircraft slots for free, something other factions may not have such easy access too.
I also really like that using 3 Patrol Detachments is a benefit for the Drukhari. It would be cool to see other factions like Dark Angels for example, get something like this with Deathwing, Ravenwing and normal DA (total wishlisting here, not pulling out a crystal ball or anything).
Well, more importantly Ynnari.
They literally have Strats that require (!) you to have all three types of Eldar and are no longer allowed to do their most iconic thing and combine Eldar-types in a Detachments, which was essentially their identity and selling point when I got into the hobby.
We’ll have to wait and see what they do with Ynnari, one would assume they FAQ a lot of the stuff that seems like it would be an odd duck at this stage.
Personally, I’d much prefer that an already anaemic book not be split into 3 micro-factions in the first place. Let alone micro-factions which aren’t allowed in the same detachment, can’t share buffs, and have basically no units to choose from because anything remotely fun or interesting was long since stripped out of the codex.
Well, to each their own I suppose. I like what they did with Drukhari, it’s unique and fun and flavorful. Perhaps also having a blended detachment would have been fun but as is I think they’re quite cool FWIW.
Yeah, I do wish that there was more synergy between the three factions. Although the new detachment system does make running a trio of patrols a lot more viable as an actual option, as opposed to before.
I also like the current Drukhari split.
That said, things like Psychic awakening could’ve been a place to add some cross-mini-faction stratagems (similar to the Ynnari-version … just more useful).
E.g. something that gives Kabalites a bonus near Wyches, because they feed off even more “pain” near the Gladiator-elves doing their thing. Or non-Coven getting some resilience bonus near Coven units/characters because they get “treatments”, etc.., etc.. something along those lines.
Having some of the new-fangled pre-game unit-upgrade strats we’ve seen for Nids or Orks, etc.. for Wyches or Hellions or whatever requiring you to have Covens in the army list to actually do “the upgrade” would also make some sense, IMO.
Isn’t it a very limited benefit though, if it can only be used in games of 2000 points?
Do you know play 2k points?
Often, but not exclusively.