40K: The Awesome Side of Unbound!
Hi folks! NoName1 from Warhammering here to talk about the big, controversial, elephant in the room: Unbound List Building
Now, before you start throwing rotten fruit, let’s think about this –
It seems clear the rules were written, not for competitive play, but to give players across the globe the tools to make some skyscraper-scale cinematic moments. Want to have a massive dogfight between Ork Dakkajets and Space Marine Stormtalons? Who wouldn’t! And now, you can. No one is going to win Objectives in that example, but you get where I’m going with this.
That said, it doesn’t seem to be really meant for Tournaments. And you know what? That’s ok!
So, with that out of the way, let’s have fun with this!
I, am a devout Eldar player. I see my Eldar as the “Good” guys, who are out to survive as a race and take down the evil Ruinous Powers (sorry guys, I’m sure all you CSM/Daemons players out there are perfectly nice people).
As such, there’s that dark shadow out there that makes my plastic dudesmen look not so nice: The Dark Eldar. OooOOOooooh!
When Allies came out and Eldar/Dark Eldar were best bros, I was grumpy. And I’m still grumpy about that, because I can’t see the two sharing a drink at the local bar (although that image is fun…)
That said, I’ve always had that guilty inclination to look over my dark cousins’ rules, to check out their models, and, like a smoker trying to quit, occasionally even almost – almost – written an Allies list with DE in it.
But, I just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it, every bit of the DE fluff makes my skin crawl, I wanted nothing to do with their fiendish little minds.
…But now. Now, we have 7th Edition. A great boon of fascinating rules and gameplay options that we’ve never had before!
With Unbound, you can throw the FoC out the window, and use “anything in your collection” (so long as you follow the Allies Rubric, of course). So, you can take Dedicated Transports without any Troops in them (please resist the urge to take an all Wave-Serpent army, no one will play you) and the new Battle Brothers rules state that your units can Embark in Allied Transports.
So now I’m making Unbound lists. And here are the things I want to try:
1.) I run an on-foot Seer Council (crazy, right?) because it’s cheaper, and I love Eldrad. Love him to tears, and the salty old bugger can’t take a Jetbike, because he’s just too cool for that. So what do you do?
Put him and a small Warlock unit in a DE Venom.
Why? Because it’s a Transport (which speeds the unit up), it’s small and cool looking (easy to hide behind Terrain), it’s much cheaper than a Wave Serpent – BUT! The icing on the cake: it’s Open-Topped. Now you’ve got Eldrad and some Warlocks on a zippy party-Jetbike running all over the board and casting powers as if they were walking. Sure, it’s made of paper, but throw Flicker Fields and Fortune on it (and that handy dandy Conceal from the Warlocks) and you’re in decent shape.
This is somewhat weakened by the changes to Jink, meaning any Witchfire powers from the unit are likely to be snap-shots (sorry, Warlocks, no Destructor for you) but Blessings and Maledictions are all fair game. Also, if I’m not mistaken on the rules, Renewer would allow the Warlocks to restore Hull Points on their Venom throughout the battle.
2.) I want to stick Wraithblades in a DE Raider. This one has a quicker explanation, since the Raider is also Open-Topped, now for the first time in the history of Wraithblades, you’ve got yourself Wraithblades in an Assault Vehicle.
Cue the celebratory music!
Both of these jump out at me as a lot of fun to use, potentially competitive but certainly not overpowered, and they allow me to take those fancy-pants vehicles without sullying myself with any Dark Eldar infantry.
It’s also worth pointing out that I have run this by my local gaming buddies before going ahead with it – it’s a gentleman’s game after all – and all of them have (with much eye-rolling) decided it’s not game-breaking.
What do you think? Any cUnbound ombinations you want to try to tinker with your current lists?
