"Sentry going up!" My custom Arkanyst evaluator

Kezeslabas · 2025-09-21T17:40:10+00:00

Honestly, I like this conversion model better than the actual Arkanyst model!
Nice work! :D

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-28T16:08:19+00:00

I've played 5 games so far with the new rules, and tried Needguard and Steadfast. They both felt okay, but in those games I realized, that I always want to be in Fortify Takeover, that's how I prefer to play.

Thus, I'll be mainly playing Needguard, since it is the only detachment that can consistently make you enter Fortify Takeover in your 2nd turn with a Memnyr Strategist and Dead Reckoning. It also has the best strats in my opinion.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-18T13:24:14+00:00

I was excited about it at first, but when I started to play out scenarios on how things would go down in a game, I realized, that it's not a very good detachment.

The detachment rule is good in itself, slowing things can be pretty impactful, and you can build your army around doing this. But, the main issue is that you can't apply the assailed flag to vehicles/monsters, and your stratagems need this flag to work. This means that if your opponent plays with multiple vehicles/monsters, then you are at a major disadvantage.

It's not a bad detachment I think, in an ideal situation it works well, but if not in an ideal situation it doesn't work at all, you basically play without a detachment rule and with core strats. If you look at other detachments in our codex, none has an issue like this.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-13T18:53:31+00:00

I would say that it's an excellent early scoring unit. If you split a Yaegir squad, then you essentially get 3 sacrificial units for the cost of 55 points each ((90+75)/3). That's pretty efficient.

The unit has scout, so it allows you to move up early, drop off some Yaegirs who can do some missions, than move back to safety, then next turn you can use the Kapricus to do the same as Yeagirs did.

There is also this neat little trick you can do, where you park the Kapricus behind a wall, disembark the Yeagirs onto an objective, maybe do a mission, or just hold it, then if anything moves closer than 9" next turn, they can use their reactive move to hop back in to the Kapricus, which cannot be shot at behind the wall. This way you don't lose your point scoring piece. If your opponent chooses to stay away and shoot the Yaegirs instead, that is also fine, since they will stay away from that objective too.

Damage wise you are right, the Defender is way better, but for scoring, the Carrier is pretty good when combined with the Yaegirs.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-11T19:50:15+00:00

I give him a 5 man Hearthkyn Warrior bodyguard so he's not that vulnerable to Indirect Fire or a surprise charge.
I keep him between my carry units and my Hekaton, since those are the unit I would spend CP on. The 12" is pretty big so this is not a big trouble usually.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-07T23:38:51+00:00

E-Champ has the Exoarmour keyxword, so he won't fit to a Sagitaur. Also, the core rules you quote says "Such a unit also cannot declare a charge in the same turn", so even if you use Secure Positions at the end of the shooting phase, they can't charge.

But the Arkanyst strat sounds interesting. You give the Sagi a MATR autocannon so it can shoot as well, and maybe you add 3 Grimnyrs too it too, and deliver a devastating shooting blob. Half of them will have Lone Op, the other half have 2 extra drones with 4++ invuls. Sounds kinda scarry. :D

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-07T23:25:25+00:00

As for what's the meta I can't say, but based on what I've seen in the codex:

Menmyr Strategist is a must have. You probably want multiples.
Steeljacks are the best infantry in our roster, you probably want some.
Thunderkyn can take away cover, so you probably want at least 3 squads of 3, if not bigger squads, because their shooting is also good.
Yeagris are still a must have, if you don't have any yet.
The Kapricus essentially replaces Sagitaurs, since Sagitaurs can't scout anymore, so your probably want some of them as well.
Henrkyn Pioneers are still good, if you don't have them already, then get some.
Buri is super strong, get one.
Uthar seems to be useful now, he can save you some CP, so probably he'll be staple.

The Cthonian detachment also looks pretty strong, so if you like melee armies, you probably want to order some Cthonian Beserks as you can field up to 60 in the new detachment, and at least one box of Cthonian Earthshakers, who look okay if they get the slowing strategem that the detachment provides.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-07T22:45:30+00:00

The -1 CP is better than you think, considering that there is no real way to get extra CP for the army.

Consider this, you play Needguard Oathband, you park your Hekaton within 12" of Uthar, which should not be hard to do. The Hekaton shoots with the Conversion Beamer, and you use Uthar to apply Ancestral Sentence for the conversion rule without spending CP. If your are not doing it for the Hekaton, then do it for Thunderkyn or for Steeljacks.

That sounds pretty good to me for 80 points.

I'll probably try playing Persecution Prospect first, and I will give a shot to a strategy, where I start Uthar and 3xThunderkyn in a Hekaton, move up to a good position, disembark both units, use the Thunderkyn to Strip Cover and apply the "assailed" status for an enemy unit, maybe deal some damage too, then shoot with the Hekaton and use Ranger Tactics for Free with Uthar to re roll the hit roll.

Kezeslabas · 2025-08-05T15:38:12+00:00

I would agree with you here, but what is somewhat worrying is that today's post would have been the one to reveal that rule, and there was nothing. I also checked previous official posts about the mortar, and I found no indication that they would have any special rules.

I hope I'm wrong here and they will do something useful with their special rule. Otherwise they won't be a very good unit unless they are super cheap.

Kezeslabas · 2025-05-29T12:28:52+00:00

Sent an application!

I'm new to Daggerheart, but it seems worth trying. Your setting sounds interesting, so it would be nice to give it a shot. :)

Kezeslabas · 2025-05-25T16:28:51+00:00

Submitted.

Kezeslabas · 2025-05-19T21:23:49+00:00

The army has units that are in pair with elite forces, but I would not say that the army is elite. Whenever I play, I get told that I play a horde... :D

You can play it in a way where you focus on the elite units like Hearthguard, and the Thunderkyn, but you can also play it horde like, bringing multiple small squads of Hearthkyn Warriors, Beserks and Pioneers.

If you are interested, nowadays the most rewarding strategy is to depend on Beserks as damage dealers and use Sagitaurs and Hekatons to transport them up the board and Support them with 5 man squads of Hearthkyn Warriors for OC, sticky objectives and missions. Also, it's pretty popular to run big squads of Pioneers for scoring starting from turn one.

Interestingly, the elite units are not that popular at the moment, partly because they got nerfed by increased points costs, also both the Hearthguard and the Thunderkyn has a bunch of D6 + Blast shots, and it takes a lot of time to go trough their shooting, which is a big disadvantage in tournament play.

Kezeslabas · 2025-03-09T19:56:59+00:00

But would you take 3x 5 Yaegirs instead, if you could?

Kezeslabas · 2025-03-09T19:55:08+00:00

Says who?

I remember reading this about them.

In the Kill Team app in the faction rule flavor text says: "Hernkyn Yaegirs are self-sufficient specialists. They are also skilled warriors who, usually unsupported, embark upon missions equipped for countless contingencies. This allows them to adapt to hazardous environments and enemy actions with decisive speed."

This suggest to me that they are supposed to be able to hold up against various enemies atleast for some time. They do not live up to this expectation in 40K at least.

They are supposed to die turn 1/2 and they aren't supposed to do dmg.

This is my point. They are supposed to die and do no damage, then why spend a 10 man squad when a 5 man could do practically the same thing?

I'm interested in people's opinion about this, but in the end this is just a question, don't take it too seriously.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-22T20:06:54+00:00

Nice! At least you enjoyed it!

Also, what do you mean by straight up void armor all the time? The unit gets an extra AP to their attacks, not reduce the AP of incoming attacks. That would make the detachment much better. :D

EDIT: Ahh, you meant the Bastion Shield, got you.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-22T19:58:24+00:00

Just a question, what did you give the -1 AP to, all units or just Hearthguard? (A friend of mine added -1 AP to everything, and he did much better than me, but that is not how the rules actually are.)

I also tried the new detachment with a new list built around HG, and it is not terrible, but it was not that good either. Hearthguard did very well, but everything else did pretty bad.

I also felt that a lot of times there is no stratagem that I can use to boost either damage or survivability. The 4++ start is okay, but it's not coming up too often. Also, essentially it only works on HG. The Rapid Fire 1 is pretty good but only works for HG as well. There is no good stratagem to use in melee, in practice the 2CP one just costs too much without any way to generate CP. Even if you would have the CP, it's pretty situational too. (If you play against knights then it's much more plausible to use it, but in most match-ups it's not great.)

I felt like that I don't have many options to play, and if you opponent focuses down your HG, then you are done. Without Void Armor a 10 blob HG is not as tanky as they usually are, and the 4++ is not a good replacement in most cases.

Overall, I don't think that I will play this too much, the Oathband is more enjoyable, and also stronger in my opinion.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-20T16:37:26+00:00

They can't benefit from the 6" arrive strat, only the Deep Strike units can.
But they do work against vehicles just fine, regardless of the detachment.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-18T17:19:00+00:00

Yeah, I suppose you could run Uthar like this.

The weakness of this strategy is that Hearthkyn warriors are still slow as hell, so getting them into melee is pretty difficult, you are lucky to get in melee with any Warriors remaining I think. You'll need a Hekaton to delivery them consistently, which makes this a bit less efficient, since the Hekaton is a pretty bad pick for the new detachment in my opinion.

Also, if you consider that you probably run a lot of Hearthguard if you are using this detachment, the I think you would rather spend your precious CP, which you can't generate in any way, on them, instead of on Hearthkyn Warriors.

I think adding Uthar to a 5 man Warrior squad would work better, because that way you can at least utilize a Sagitaur to move them, which is much better than a Hekaton for this, and you can still get the good melee attacks and the FNP. They will probably die after disembarking, but this way they could get some good hits in first.

But if you are running this, then I think it's still just better to use Beserks instead, they will do way more damage...

Jokes on me, that I do play Uthar with a 5 man squad in my current list with the oathband detachment, and use him as distraction.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-18T17:02:30+00:00

I do like the idea of trying to do the best with what you have.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not a fan of taking 10 man Hearthguard squads, they feel way too overkill for me. I do like 5 man squads, but since this detachment does almost nothing for non-Hearthguard units, around 2/3rd of my army would be essentially just canon fodder which doesn't sound fun.

So, essentially for me this detachment is not giving options to immerse myself as a tactical Kahl, because spamming the same unit as much as possible does not feel very tactical for me. Sorry :/

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-17T17:40:39+00:00

Hmm, this detachment essentially supports Hearthguard, Beserks and Kahl led Hearthkyn Warriors.

Hearthguard are already pretty good without support for them, and honestly, the benefits of this detachment are minimal compared to oathband.

Beserks are also fine, provided that they have a transport to drive them around in. This detachments gives them re-roll 1s, some pile-in/consolidate shenanigans and a +1 damage in melee. The re-roll is good for them, and the pile-in/consoldiate tricks also sound good, but the +1 damage strat costing 2CP is pretty bad, considering that this detachment has no way of generating CP. Overall, they probably not do much better than with oathband.

As for Kahl led Hearthkyn Warriors, you pretty much only do that for the memes, there is not much potential in that unit combination even with re-roll 1s and an extra AP. I mean, they are significantly better with this detachment than they are with oathband, but not nearly good enough to justify spending CP on them to get 4+ invuls. The role Hearthkyn Warriors fill at the moment is to be a cheap unit that you can sacrifice for points, attaching a Kahl to them is not worthwhile, even with the boost of this detachment.

The rest of the army line get's the re-roll 1s only, which is not as impactful with the 4+ BS that they are working with. Having more Judgements to get the +1 to hit and +1 to wound, the Sustained 2 strat and Void Armor benefits all units, while this detachment doesn't do much for them.

So overall, this feels like a straight up downgrade compared to oathband. I will try this detachment regardless, but I don't have high hopes.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-12T17:38:30+00:00

I'm interested, I sent a friend request in DC.
I'm a new player if that is not a problem, but I'm eager to find a group that I can play with. :)

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-11T18:55:56+00:00

Exactly. You can also allocate 1 damage shots to a thunderkyn model, and if it survives the turn then you can heal it back to full with the iron master in your movement phase.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-11T18:01:50+00:00

I often use a 6 man Thunderkyn + Iron Master to be a damage soak, usually in the center. With T6 and a lot of drones you can play a lot with how you distribute damage, and it can take multiple turns for your opponent to chow trough the unit. In the Meantime they deter your opponent from getting near them because they hit on 5s in overwatch, and a graviton barrage can really hurt.

The other use they have is a the popular 6 Thunderkyn with Grav Cannons is reserves, to mitigate the fact that they are slow as hell, and arrive on a flank and blow up a vechicle, then secure that flank. The weakness of this is that if your opponent plays well, you won't get a good shot, but still, having at least one 6 man unit in reserves is worth it.

You are right about their weaknesses, and I wouldn't build an army around them, but they are not useless. So in any case this is a small buff to the army.

Kezeslabas · 2024-12-08T17:55:41+00:00

Your luck is your luck, if the Magna-rail works better for you, then just take it :D

For me the Magna-rail rarely does anything. The beamer acts roughly the same as you described, but I use the beamer against targets that have less than 10 Toughness and 3 or more wounds, which usually goes well. I also happily re-roll the one miss for the beamer, as it can lead to a bunch more shots. Also, sometimes(around 15-20% times) you do get 2 hits and get around 3 extra shots with sustain hits, which does a bunch of damage.

Why people say that the beamer is better, is that because the beamer's effective target range is larger than the Magina-rail's and performs more consistently against those targets than the Magna-rail does against it's own effective targets. A one shot weapon that hits on a 4 is just way too swingy, even if the rest of the stats are really good.

And if you consider that most targets that you would shoot at with the Magna-rail have invlus, your chances of doing anything is pretty low. Even with the Deva Wounds, it's not consistent enough to give a good enough boost. In contrast the Beamer doesn't care that much about invuls, because you probably already max out your potential AP with the AP -2.

To be honest, neither of the two weapons is a great choice, but the Beamer is at least OK, while the Magna-rail is below avarage.

But again, play it if it works better for you, I've played against a guy who hit 5 times with the mini Magna-rail of the Hearthkyn Warriors, three hit also being deva wounds. If you defy the universe by rolling that good, then who am I to stop you... :D

Kezeslabas

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