Darkwynn’s Corner: Incubi vs BloodBrides
Lets look at two of the nasty units in the Dark Eldar Elites slots. Today I want to get into the nitty-gritty of both Incubi and Blood Brides. You may be surprised by my findings.
On Incubi
Both Incubi and BloodBrides are really great hand to hand units but most people immediately go for the Incubi because let’s face it – why not? They are great with a 3+ save, strength 4 and a power weapon plus with a WS:5 and Initiative:5 they are just downright mean on pure offense compared to the other units in the book. Incubi do have a slight downside as they don’t have grenades so you will have to worry about charging in cover against some units. But in general, you run a 7 man squad of these dudes and you have a 75% chance to kill 5-9 Marines -OUCH!
Blood Brides Basics
So we’ve established Incubi are great but every unit has their use. Blood Brides can supplement your assaults quite nicely. They have 4 attacks on the charge at Initiative 6 (compared to the Incubi’s 5) and they are Strength 3 (compared to 4) not taking any combat drugs into effect. I have been running Blood Brides as a 9 model unit with three Hydra Gauntlets and an Agonizer. Going against Marines it won’t perform like the Incubi only killing 2-5 Marines but they still hold their own.
Cutting Through the Crowd
Where the Blood Brides shine and really shore up one of the weaknesses in the Dark Eldar Codex is facing down Horde unit types or units which are generally not Marine Equivalents such as Orks or Hormagaunts. With Incubi you charge a Hormagaunt unit and you’re only going to kill 9 which isn’t far off the Marine equivalents but they are going to get their attacks back and your going to face added risk to your unit. With Bloodbrides you’re going to kill on the average a whopping 13+ enemies with a higher chance of doing more wounds not taking combat drugs into account. Plus you’re going to take very little damage in return because you have a higher initiative. To boot they also have grenades so you will be able to charge through cover without having to spend extra points on an Archon with a Phantasm Grenade Launcher.
Of Equipment and Mathhamer
While we are talking about Bloodbrides lets have a discussion about special weapons and throw in some good old fashioned mathhammer. On paper Razorflails are great and can outperform Hydra Gauntlets by a little edge (with no combat drugs taken into account). However I think Hydra Gauntlets are a better buy because of the lethality potential when you look at the bell curve of results and the chance they give you of hitting at the higher end. If you look at a bell curve for Razorflails it will tend to give more reliable results towards the center of the curve at the 40-60% results range due to their rules. If you go with Hydra Gauntlets you do have a chance of hitting higher up on the bell curve or going lower but with combat drugs factored (in particular reroll wounds) you can easily begin to see a roughly 33-50% increase in dead badguys compared to the Razorflails. So if you are taking the unit to deal with hordes in the first place, now you know what you should be equipping them with to meet your unit design goals.
Conclusions
Yes, Incubi look great on paper,and do hack MEQs into bloody confetti, but running Incubi-only can severely hamper your list and leave you hamstrung against horde style opponents. So don’t spam them, or at least supplement them with another type of assault element such as Blood Brides who can hack down the masses and give you another tool in your Archon’s toolbox to deal with whatever realspace throws your way.
Now get your Kabals out there and get raiding! What are you guys seeing results-wise out of your Elites slots and how are you tuning your lists? -Darkwynn
