#sliscus

Modelage de la cape fini, place à la peinture. Je voulais donner un effet écaille de serpent à la cape, raté, ça donne plus un effet écailles de dragon je trouve.. Tant pis, je m'en contenterai..

Premier "gros projet" de conversion que je poste ici (en même temps, j'en suis à cinq posts…), voici venir la version féminine du Duc Sliscus. Pourquoi une femme ?

Tout lutin que je suis, je suis un mâle

J'ai déjà UN voïvode dans ma liste Eldar noir, donc autant lui associer une femelle

La figurine n'existe pas, donc quitte à convertir, autant le faire juqu'au bout

Je me suis basé sur un corps de succube. OK le duc a une sauvegarde 4+, donc vraisemblablement plus habillé qu'une succube, mais il a une armure d'ombre doublée d'une cuirasse fantome.. Ca ne sonne pas particulièrement habillé à mes oreilles (de mâle). Pour la tête, et bien… je ne sais pas encore… Les bras seront fait à partir de bras de Blood Vestal de la gamme Raging Heroes, quand ils voudront bien me les faire parvenir. @&%$@*# !! J'ai entrepris de sculter tant bien que mal une cape en pate verte, et j'ai bouché la fourrure dans le dos (toujours en pate verte). Résultat intermédiaire :

Everyone knows them as the backbone of Dark Eldar shooting.

Thanks to having the widest array of weapon options in our codex, they also have the capacity to be our most adaptable unit.

Finding the right role for them is tricky however, because it's easy to give them options that compete against one another or even prevent them from being fully utilised.

Figuring out the ideal loadout is an iterative process whereby deployment and loadout get tried, tweaked and adjusted over time. Moreso than most armies where you can more easily pick certain units without too much concern for synergy, Trueborn will also change to fit the ever-evolving needs of a changing playstyle.

So rather than tell you how to run them every time, regardless of your army list, what I'll cover are the various loadouts and deployments and loadouts I've used since playing with Dark Eldar, their strengths, their weaknesses and their preferred uses.

First attempt (The Kitchen Sink Squad)

5 Trueborn

2 Dark Lances

3 Blasters

1 Venom with Splinter cannon

Deployed in pairs

The idea with this loadout was merely to max out special weapons, regardless of how they worked together. The Venom would stay back as long as possible, shooting exposed infantry while the Lances tried to pop vehicles. The 3 Blasters were there to provide extra stopping power to counter Drop pods, should they be dropped in my lines. 

Sadly, because the Lances are Heavy weapons, using them meant that the Venom and the squad could never use its full movement in order to maximise the torrent of fire. Also, due to the amount of weapons in that one squad, they were quite often singled out early on.

On the upside, whenever terminators or dreadnoughts would drop in a pod close to them, few models ever survived the barrage.

Second attempt (The Scalpel and the Snipers)

4 Trueborn with Haywire grenades

4 Blasters

1 Venom with Splinter cannon

3 Trueborn

2 Dark Lances

On foot

Deployed in pairs

In order to reclaim some mobility, maintain the firing potential of the whole squad, and give more choices to the enemy for target priority, the two squads were now deployed as 3. The Dark Sniper squads would be put in cover somewhere, making use of fire lanes and covering the approaches while the Venom Scalpel was the rapid reaction squad.

Due its small size, the Dark Snipers will rarely be targeted by your opponent if there are other, closer, threats nearby. This means that you could possibly have both squads lasting till fairly late in the game, unless you take down too many prized vehicles. Be prepared to lose them as soon as that happens because let's face it, you're a Toughness 3 model with a 5+ cover save...

This deployment works more effectively because it separates the guns into mobile and static elements rather than mixing them together. The 4 Blasterborn were particularly nasty to dreadnoughts and vehicles as they could move with the Venom, disembark, shoot and charge in with haywires to finish the job.

Expensive? Yes. Unexpected? Definitely. Effective? Absolutely.

This squad and weapon loadout worked for a while but against Marines I invariably was confronted with a sad truth, torrent of fire still fails 66% of the time against Marines. The fact that many Marine players also tend to not use cover because it's  not worth the reduced movement speed just makes this even more frustrating.

Current State of the Trueborn | Gunboats

6 Trueborn

2 Splinter Cannons

4 Blasters

1 Raider with Disentegrator and Flicker field

Deployed in pairs

What the 4-man Trueborn squads did fairly well was mix anti-vehicle with anti-infantry. With the increased popularity of Terminators, Blasters were being pressed quite often to an anti-infantry role but they also lacked the ability to torrent down larger squads.

The main use of this squad is not to go forward and hunt, it's to react and apply overwhelming counter-offensive power in a given point. The Flicker fields means you never have to worry about snap firing because you jinked to avoid nasty shooting.

At full range you have 15 anti-infantry shots to weaken anyone as they try to get close.

At 24 inch range, you have 17 to contend with threats. 

At 18 or less, you're pumping 19 shots into the foolish foe which works out to 4.9 dead Marines per gunboat if they're not in cover or 3.1 dead Marines if they are. Not too shabby.

Dealing with the stragglers can easily be taken care of by any number of solutions in your army, such as:

5 Wracks with a Liquifier charging from a Venom.

5 Warriors with 1 Blaster, double-tapping from a Venom.

Cronos pieplate.

etc.

For an extra bit of fun, you could easily run of these gunboats with Sliscus for a boost to your Splinter Cannons, although personnally I prefer to run Sliscus with the following entourage:

Duchess Sliscus

4 Trueborne

2 Splinter cannons

2 Shard carbines

Venom

So there you have it, 5 ways to deploy the Trueborne, including one that people expect as much "Suicidal EMP Pathfinders", the HaywireBorn.