Drukhari Dominate

Glasshammer GT – Vik Vijay – 1st Place

Hey guys, Vik here, just wanted to do a quick rundown of the 32-Player Glasshammer GT #2, an amazing event (as always) run by the Glasshammer Gaming team in the Midlands. I was lucky enough to take 1st place with Drukhari and happy to have this platform to share some of my insights from the weekend. Hopefully you find it interesting/useful and thank you for reading!

The List

Kabal of the Obsidian Rose

Court of the Archon – 4x Sslyth

Archon – Splintered Genius, Power Sword, Ancient Evil, Animus Vitae

10 Trueborn – Dark Lance, 2x Blasters

5 Kabalites – Shredder

5 Kabalites - Shredder

5 Incubi

5 Incubi

5 Scourges – 4x Shredders

5 Hellions - +1A, [Cult of Strife]

Ravager – 3x Dark Lance

Raider – Dark Lance, Splinter Racks

Raider – Dark Lance

Raider – Dark Lance

Raider – Dark Lance

Cult of Strife

Succubus – Razorflails, Dark Lotus Toxin, Precision Blows, +2” Move

10 Wyches – Shardnet & Impaler, +1S

5 Hellions - +1A

5 Hellions - +1A

Dark Technomancers

Succubus – [Cult of Strife], Triptych Whip, Blood Dancer, +2” Move

5 Wyches - +2” Move

3 Cronos – 3x Spirit Vortex

Rationale

With some help from my teammates in Dice Down, I put together this list with Ad Mech in mind. Post-FAQ, Drukhari have some challenges dealing with the Serberys Raiders that Ad Mech bring for their forward board presence. With a lack of efficient damage 2 shooting, and the inability to easily engage Serberys Raiders in melee, the only viable option I could find was the Dark Technomancer Cronos who have a high volume of damage 2 shooting.

I teched heavily into playing the secondary missions, so I made some sacrifices on pure offensive output for the sake of going wider on MSU infantry units. An example of this is the small Court of the Archon with the 4 Sslyth, rather than the conventional 4 Sslyth and 4 Ur-Ghul. The Sslyth allow for an Archon to be bodyguarded on an objective which is in the open but within 3” of a piece of LOS-blocking terrain, something which Ad Mech can struggle to deal with efficiently.

However, my list tweaking to help handle Ad Mech was pointless as there was only 1 Ad Mech player in attendance and we didn’t get to play each other!

Games

Round 1: vs Gaz Jones’ Drukhari – (89-50)

Round 2: vs Tom Merrick’s Drukhari – (77-41)

Round 3: vs Ed Paszek’s Sororitas (92-64)

Round 4: vs Simon Miller’s Drukhari (83-77)

Round 5: vs Maciek’s Drukhari – (79-54) (Stream available on Glasshammer Gaming on Youtube & Twitch)

4/5 Drukhari vs Drukhari games!

Secondaries

Every game I picked:

While We Stand (Cronos, Ravager, Trueborn)

Engage on all Fronts (I usually would go herd the prey, but I prefer engage against Drukhari),

Retrieve Octarius Data

For Sweep and Clear / Priority Targets, I would pick Direct Assault / Priority Target respectively instead of Retrieve Octarius Data.

MVP’s

Rather than go through all my games I just wanted to share some insight into what I feel worked well in the list and how I feel it sits within the wider meta.

The list has the ability to play extremely defensively, I have the reach with the Ravager and the Trueborn to have some level of shooting output from range even when playing passively. I went all-in on the MSU infantry so was very effectively able to play for my secondary points and throw units away to keep my opponent’s primary scoring down.

Every game I spent 2CP to put the Cronos and both 5-man Kabalite squads in reserve. The Kabalites allow me to very efficiently do Retrieve Octarius data & Engage on All Fronts at the same time. The Cronos have a brilliant amount of shooting output and are deceptively tough to chew through, especially when you use the Pain Syphon stratagem to give them a 5++/5+++ after they kill an enemy unit.

The 5-man Hellion units are absolute all-stars! At an extremely low cost of 85pts, they punch well above their weight and allow me to trade up efficiently. I played against 3x10 Hellions (round 4) and 10,5,5 Hellions (round 5) and I feel in both cases by having smaller units of Hellions I was able to have both a list-building advantage with the higher number of units in my list, but I was also able to trade up aggressively with my smaller Hellion units (e.g., in round 4, my 5-man Hellion squad killed 9/10 of my opponent’s Hellions).

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Drukhari are still incredibly strong following their FAQ/Nerf, and I think they comfortably sit at the top of the power level of 40K factions.

However, Ad Mech were already one of the hardest games for Drukhari and I think that’s only more-so following their new codex. The extreme range, high volume and quality shooting output and durability of Skitarii-heavy Ad Mech lists is anathema to the way Drukhari want to play the game. I think it’s going to take a very skilful Drukhari general with a carefully tuned list to have a chance against a good Ad Mech player.

I wanted to test it out this weekend, but somehow just ended up playing 4 other Drukhari players, so we’ll have to wait and see how the meta dust settles.

Thanks for reading!

Vik Vijay