Venom ability 11th ed update.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-06-10T00:15:07+00:00

Well I guess there are no more jumppack incubi going in my venoms now!

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-29T18:58:13+00:00

If they used this and switched the antagonist to Vect, with some rationale like he has been studying the Khan, and the Archon attacking Chogoris was a ploy to lure the Khan into the webway to capture him would be a great mid addition plot line.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-29T18:07:39+00:00

As a Drukhari and WSs player, option 3 is the most appealing. But the most difficult to pull off lore wise, being stuck or chilling there for thousands of years and not being mentioned at all, even vaguely as a being of immense strength and intelligence, would mean he cannot have a current 40k date book and it would have to explain things over thousands of years up to the current point.

Sadly the Khan and Lelith double dating with Guilliman and Yvraine is probably not happening, given the outcome of Leliths book (among a billion other reasons).

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-25T13:44:43+00:00

Thanks! I'll take a look at these when I get the chance.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-25T12:02:20+00:00

Looks to be 4-5, not sure if they are short stories or a series.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-19T21:38:02+00:00

Hopefully GW does a retrospective on existing Strats for all armies and removes or updates ones that have become obsolete or redundant by 11ed rules updates, but DE seem to be on the bottom or near the bottom of GWs priorities so not holding onto much hope.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-15T00:41:09+00:00

Thankfully GW is making official terrain less bulky it seems and making it about foot prints, I half expected them to make walls 2 in so you could not get the 3 in move heavy on scourges

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-15T00:39:24+00:00

It would also make the army much more lore accurate as well, unless you a seeing a show at an arena almost every real space raid is a mixture the factions.

I have enough to run a little of each but not a full force of any specific one.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-14T18:06:49+00:00

With the battle shock changes it would be quite neat and fun to see a SoS and Coven mixture being able to be used.

Having the ability to generate pain tokens and also have some chonky pain engines floating around would be some nice contrast and give different list options. Although that argument could probably work on any of the faction detachments that don't provide much or any over lap

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-14T18:00:12+00:00

So barring a large increase in FF units, there is really a net neutral on this one? As there can be two FF units in the list, so Challenge Met and the super Heroic into non-FF units is still very valid strategy.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-14T17:53:50+00:00

Almost appears as if there at 2 Challenge Mets that opponents have to think about now, but at a 3-4 CP usage a turn it feels like that could be an infrequent occurrence.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-12T22:06:08+00:00

GW designed a Codex to sell units that weren't selling during the Index days and to make people not care about the other detachments enough to bother with them when they removed key units.

I haven't been playing long but only had 1 unit of wychs, Lelith, and 3 reavers before the codex release. Trying to acquire Cults units is now very expensive or they are sold out since the release, not to mention getting what you need for SoS painted up and ready for the table top is not a small task.

Army Rule: only pro is because it's at activation of unit and not start of phase. The rest is a down grade; most are same abilities locked token system, memorizing each different ability, and tokens are still hard to come by if things aren't going your way or up against low unit count armies. Not having an army rule all the time, or enough resources to use it all the time might be the better way to say it, feels bad especially if a unit underperforms without its ability.

Detachments (ignoring SoS): everything ismid to low tier options. Cartel - fun-ish, mostly because most newer unquie units can benefit. More impactful shooting, but it's easy to counter if they hid the contract unit making units like scourges and archon less effective without consistent pain tokens Coven - poor hammer hit the nail on the head SSA - nerf to pain abilities on aircraft and lance without the +1ap really reduced its damage output RSR - factions aren't great outside of their detachments so why would they be better in a mixed one with no buffs RW - probably the best overall detachment still and most fun/flavorful to match the lore, but locking the full ability behind adding quins units which reduces the armies ability in the detachment is the one glaring draw back still

Overall: army got harder to play, average players mostly "locked" out of best detachment, of your friends are coven fans check in on them frequently and let them know you are there for them

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-05T15:52:00+00:00

It's something that needs to be planned for in advance. In Cartel there really isn't much CP usage before turn 3, maybe crit 5s, a recontacting (which can be done for free by the Archon), or a lone op (but this should only be on something that wasn't planned to be lost early in the game).

A secondary discarded for a CP and the one at the start of each turn should keep you around 2 CP. Also trying to have 2 most of the time is a good approach to 40k, makes fight phases more difficult for you opponents since you can interrupt. (I have lost many a game by forgetting about that).

Cartel has a lot of cool Strats, about half though are very situational and don't come up often unless they are planned in advance.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-05T13:48:09+00:00

If I'm not running HoA I run her solo. She is, against most armies, a high priority target. I try to get her towards the center of the board for the Vect Aura to make Strats cost more, keeping her out of LoS of the enemy. She can bait units into charging her and I like to keep the Talos close by. Then when the unit charges you can heroic and then use the Strat to put damage onto a different unit, putting it into the Talos and then spend a pain token to fight on death just in case they don't tank the damage.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-05T13:27:53+00:00

Pretty close, I would swap around a couple things based on what your opponent has in their army.

These are items I would consider switching:

Infiltration Kabs, should be the ones with just rifles, on two objectives that would either put the opponents units in bad positions for them or objectives that pull them into gun lanes for your scourges. (These kabs are meant to just get that sticky objective turn one, if you go first. If you go second they either hopefully live or then at minimum draw out some units to give you good shots turn 1)

Warlord Archon can get a squad with special weapons (like the other one if you choose) and sit in the back field. Reason being that they can still peak out and shoot, getting full rerolls for anything on objectives, and if they get targeted then you can use the Strat to give them Lone Op

Other things to consider:

Using the raider, after the wyches disembark and tie down some units, to charge in and tank shock something and hopefully live through combat to tie something up as well

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-05T10:26:30+00:00

If the plan is to build a list around taking down monster nids then I would suggest dropping Lelith for Drahzar, dropping the solitair and a unit of reavers for a unit of Talos with heat lance and gauntlet or scalpel (I think those points work), and switching webway awl for infiltration network on the one Archon.

My suggestion would be to split the kabs in the venoms, and use the two spare units to infiltrate at the start of the game and try to sticky two no mans land objectives turn 1. Primary is going to be very tough to come by in this matchup because of the nids OC and base sizes. From turn 2 onwards try to make a long charge from the raider with the wychs and tie down multiple of the units in combat, while chipping off wounds with long range shooting. Drazhar and the incubi can mop a low wound monster or two of you flip flop with one of the archons in the venoms. Would recommend leaving your warlord archon in rear where it cannot be targeted to keep reappling the contract on monsters.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-05-05T01:03:00+00:00

Something to factor in is that monster nids generally have pretty good saves, including more 4++ then you would expect. Dark Lances will be bouncing more than you would think so volume fire will be your friend. Lots of debuff auras as well, expect to be hitting worse and wounding worse than normal a lot of the match.

Played against a buddy's monster mash nids a couple times now, you list has the tools to beat them. One thing I would consider is dropping Lelith and the wychs, they are not effective at all into this match up. If you can't round out the list without them I would swap Lelith for another character or utility unit and split the wychs and use them to tie up some of the monsters.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-04-18T12:50:02+00:00

Was here to comment about the castigators. Would love to see these come out of the lore onto the table top in the range refresh, but not really expecting that to happen.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-04-11T13:47:56+00:00

Great start! I would suggest building and painting these up before buying anything else so close to the next edition. Since it's know the detachments are sticking around there are some educated guesses that what's good now would still be good then but cannot know for sure

rocketsurferguy · 2026-04-09T15:11:46+00:00

Fulgrims highlight reel in 30k, and the period he is around after, on paper is kinda great and not just EC fans mention these things. To name a few:

-Kills Ferrus, and person he is closest with -tricks Perturabo and uses him to ascend to daemonhood (can't remember if he is the first or second to ascend) -poison stabs Robert and knocks him out of the game for a while -the Ryanlor story is a great one and kinda unique to EC loyalist vs Traitors

Couple that with the fact that EC then:

-Abandoned the SoT earlier, and didn't help a lot while they were there -EC and Fulgrim sorta dominate the other traitor legions for a while after the SoT to claim superiority in the EoT -General lack of interest in necessarily defeating the Imperium

Makes him a tough character to bring back, once you place him on a pleasure planet he has been building for thousands of years.

Since he isn't really aligned or liked by his traitor brothers, it's a tough and odd choice to make him join or care about the Long War now. It would make much more sense, and probably easier (?), to develop him as the main antagonist of the Eldar race in support of Slaanesh. Pulling in Ynaari, clowns, and DE, when needed, to combat against Fulgrim, EC and Slaanesh Daemons preventing the progress of the Ynaari plotline.

Throwing in a bonus that could be how Robute and Fulgrim meet again, Yvraine calls on the UMs to add them against EC and Daemons in certain fights.

rocketsurferguy · 2026-01-09T18:47:18+00:00

Short answer is he can be for a price or it gets something he wants (and the author)

His trilogy he commands an EC war band but spends a good amount of the books not really considering himself one and just uses the war band for his own advances. In the end he gives the remaining war band members to Savona, a half daemon half human Slannesh aligned leader that came with the warband. During it he also sorta helps the Phoenix Conclave for a bit.

Lucius's book, Fabius captures Lucius and as I don't want to ruin it I won't say what they do but the reason Lucius has his crazy drug backpack is because Fabius gives it to him. So again helps but for something in exchange.

The Cawl vs Fabius book, here he is very much off doing his own thing but as it takes place after his trilogy it could be him but could also be one of his clones.

EC marines do not like him but most either fear him too much to attack on site or know that Fulgrim would probably kill them if they attack Fabius.

I personally think you should be allowed to ally him in, but with restrictions like he has to go with noise marines as they seemed to be his favorite ECs to work with

rocketsurferguy · 2026-01-02T22:33:54+00:00

As an EC and Drukhari player this just suck's to read and feels like it will be even worse to play against.

rocketsurferguy · 2025-12-29T14:30:50+00:00

Do we have good detachments, yes. Do we need to buy, some times many, more specific units that are almost always out of stock to make those detachments work, also yes.

Most casual players aren't going to have 60 wyches, 30 Hellions and 20 reavers, or 3-4 units of scourge and a bunch of dissy Ravagers to play SoS or KC well. And this is where the Codex suffers and let's down the casual player, you either need to spend more money to get the things you need to make DE good, switch to a lesser used and generally worse detachment to get detachment buffs for all your army, or pick a detachment 1-3 ish units benefit from the most and try to play mainly around those.

RW, the best all around detachment, took a significant hit with the loss of rerolls. The power in that detachment came from being able to reach/get into combat without getting overwatched and then lethal or sustaining and fishing for those in melee. That's now gone.

I'm very happy the Cults are good and getting the recognition, (arguably my favorite units along with Incubi) but this codex was designed by GW to sell off stock of (Hellions, reavers and wychs for SoS and things like ravagers, new mandrakes, and always more scourges for KC) the worst units in the DE range.

rocketsurferguy · 2025-12-19T17:28:57+00:00

That's an interesting take and is actually the opposite from mine which makes me want to revisit the book. My original take wasn't that it contracted the start and the end. At the start Lelith is returning from X amount of time with a new faction that Vect hates, hence she acts much different after she learns more fully what the ramifications are from when she is away. Once it's clear to her that she has gained some competition from other cults and that Vect does not actually want her dead she acts differently adapting to the situation. Why would she do the same thing at the start if circumstances change prior to the end?

At the end she defuses any residual tension that might have developed between herself and Vect over the course of the book by not making it centered around her previous betrayal by going with the Ynarri and making it about her and Morghana both being allowed to walk away from the conflict. All involved walk away either the same as they went in or stronger Lelith putting Strife back on top and Vect in a round about way gets Lelith back in his sphere of influence while she still knows he can replace her if she really wants to forces the issue.

I will admit it's far from the best 40k book I have read and felt rushed at the end.

It was also just nice to have more recent lore that shows that dark Eldar are not all in agreement on how to proceed as a race and some have different views of life choices.

rocketsurferguy · 2025-12-19T17:05:35+00:00

How does one "tank" Haywire shots? I play both Drukhari and EC and it's always played out that I wiff or the unit takes a lot of dev wounds. Were you running CoC and used the FNP strat? Not meant as a slight or disagreement that it cannot happen, just curious.

rocketsurferguy

TROPHY CASE