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| Kheradruakh Codex art, doesn't he look awesome... all rights belong to Games Workshop, I do not own this picture. |
To explain why he is so very bad this is kind of going to turn into a unit review but thats alright, the lament of The Decapitator must be heard. First off his stat line.
WS BS S T W I A Ld Sv
6 5 5 3 3 6 4 9 -
This straight away should tell you, he is not worth 140 Points, his Strength, Weapons Skill and Attacks profiles are all pretty good but Toughness 3 and no save is concerning. Then we look at his sole piece of wargear, his sword, the Decapitator which is a Power Sword that inflicts Instant Death on a 6, useless now because most characters have 2+ Armour saves or pretty good Invul. saves.
Kheradruakh has a save though, a 5+ Invul. save which with a Toughness of 3 means he is just going to get murdered by Laspistol fire, which for the ultimate stealthy assassin in the Universe that is a living shadow, sucks. His special rules aren't very special, he has Fearless, Stealth, Move Through Cover, Fleet, Baleblast, Power from Pain, Night Vision and then his exclusive rules Shade Stalker, Hunter of Heads and Altered Physique. First rule, Shade Stalker, mean he has to start the game in reserve and can be placed anywhere on the board when he comes in and can do everything normal except assault, which is were a Quad Gun will be waiting. Hunter of Heads is dumb, choose an enemy Independent Character, The Decapitator has Preferred Enemy against him, great that'll help me when my face is being punched in by Abaddon. Altered Physique just gives him a Pain Token which gives him Feel no Pain. Also you'll notice he is a Special Character without the Independent Character rule, I though the was reserved only for the super tough like Mephiston.
Don't worry, Kheradruakh isn't the only Dark Eldar unit that suck, queue Mandrakes, ah yes, the mini Kheradruakhs that took a bat to the face when 6th ed came along, mainly due to the 'no assaulting after coming in from reserve' and 'Independent Characters without Infiltrate can't join a unit of Infiltrator even if said unit isn't Infiltrating' and this made the already hugely unpopular Mandrakes completely unusable which is a shame because the models are really good.
The final nail in the Mandrakes and Kheradruakh's coffin came from the Grey Knights FAQ, where it says they count as Daemons. Now when I read this, I was enraged by the fact that one, Mandrake are not Daemons and two, Mandrakes don't have the Daemon special rule and so they don't benefit from rules like Fear.
But that is just the way things go and I doubt we will see Kheradruakh make an appearance any time soon.
10 comments:
let me put this pyrovore down right here.
Hi Mathhammer, so very true hahaha.
It's not 6th edition that's to blame; Mandrakes were just as useless in 5th. If only they could infiltrate an IC that would have been great, had the WWP not been nerfed by the fact you can no longer charge out of it.
Hi Ben, I'm not blaming 6th Edition just stating that when it came around they became unusable, they were horrible in 5th too like you said.
I'd say Old One Eye is worse; simply because he costs almost twice as much as The Decapitator, doesn't fill an essential HQ slot and basically does nothing a normal carnifex couldn't do better and for 100pts cheaper.
However, The Decapitator is a sad example of GW learning nothing for past mistakes. Lictors are abysmal because they're fragile assault units that can deploy anywhere... but can't assault in the same turn. So, let's give The Decapitator (a fragile assault unit) identical rules - because they worked sooo well with lictors...
Hi Vipoid, exactly on mark there, Lictors and Deathleaper are horrendous and of course no one play Old One Eye because he has no unique rules. You are very right about that, I think they need to fix it by just FAQing and giving these units Shrouded as well as Stealth, it will at least give them a fighting chance even if its slim :)
to everyone reading, I know that there are units worse off then Kheradruakh, this article was just to stating a terrible unit that is in my favourite Codex. :)
Obviously, the GK needed to have them labeled as demons because otherwise, the Mandrakes would just be killing GK right and left. Clearly that needed correction in the FAQ.
Hi Dan, I don't think so, Mandrakes have nothing but CC weapons and are all round terrible, that they couldn't possibly kill a single Grey Knight. Unless you were being sarcastic in which case I totally agree with you :)
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