The Drukhari Codex is coming!!!!!

I am so excited for this! It’s really all that I’ve been waiting for since 8th Edition dropped last summer – I know I have my Necrons on the go, but I’ve been wanting the Drukhari codex for so long, I can’t begin to say. They’re definitely the army I’ve had the most fun playing so far in 8th, and as other factions have had their books, I’ve found myself thinking in odd moments of what tricks and treats we’ll be in store for the Dark Kin.

Well, in a little under two weeks’ time, we’ll all know!

So, let’s talk about the previews!

On Sunday, we had the first tease, showing off nothing particularly unexpected from the book, but we are getting a new Start Collecting box, which goes heavily into the Wych Cults.

My first reaction, like many others’, was that I’m quite unimpressed. Sure, Wyches are nice models and all, and I do love me a Venom, but I think the current box, with an Archon heading up ten Kabalite Warriors, a Raider, and three Reavers, was nigh-on perfect, and I’ve actually bought four of them so far in building my force. Warriors are also a really fantastic basis for a Drukhari army, and do all of the things that you can expect from the Dark Kin. Wyches, while they’re nice, just don’t quite feel the same for me.

But then, I was thinking – I’m partially allowing the way these models play in the Index to colour my thinking. The preview does tell us that these models have been greatly improved, so maybe we’ll see something completely different for the Cults. Only time will tell, I guess!

On Monday, we saw the peculiar ways in which you can build a Drukhari army, which takes account of the fact that we’ve got several, very distinct sub-factions within it. It’s almost more uncommon to see an army devoted entirely to Covens, Cults or Kabals, as mainly armies of the Dark Kin tend to blend all three (and more, of course!) As such, it can be difficult to thematically build, say, a Battalion Detachment if you want to use Warriors as the troops, but Hellions as Fast Attack. Well, with the Raiding Force special rule, if you have at least three Patrol Detachments with the DRUKHARI keyword, that gets you +4 Command Points. Nice! If you have six Patrol Detachments, you get +8 Command Points. Even nicer! Of course, with tournament limits on the number of detachments you can take, this has caused almost no end of gnashing of teeth on the many forums of which I’m a member, but I guess we’ll see how it works in practice once the book is actually out.

Another nice touch that I really like is the fact that, if you use an Archon as your Warlord, but also have a Haemonculus or Succubus within your army (or, indeed, both), then you can also generate Warlord Traits for them for just 1 Command Point. Additional bonus awesome for the fact this stratagem is called “Alliance of Agony”!

It’s certainly giving me thoughts as to how I’m going to be fielding my Dark Eldar once I have the Codex in hand!!

Tuesday brought us the first look at the Kabal rules, or Obsessions, which are basically Chapter Tactics. Four Kabals are given specific rules here, including the Kabal of the Obsidian Rose! The Kabal that I’ve spent just over a year building and painting! Fantastic! But let’s take a look at each…

Kabal of the Black Heart can treat the round number as one higher for anyone that benefits from Power from Pain, something that was a thing in 7th edition, so is nice to see it come back. It’s also really nice to see Power from Pain confirmed as still being a thing. They also have the now-standard Warlord Trait that allows you to re-gain Command Points when you or your opponent spend them. Fairly standard stuff, but good to have in the force all the same.

Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue allows you to re-roll wound rolls of 1 for both melee and Poison weapons, which is handy for someone like me, who likes to have a lot of Warriors with splinter weaponry and Wracks brandishing haemonculus tools. However, the most exciting part of this part of the preview is the return of splinter racks!

I’m very excited! Poisoned Tongue also have access to an extremely exciting relic splinter pistol that adds 2 to wound rolls, and allows you to target characters even if they aren’t the closest enemy model. I’m quite tempted to switch my allegiance, even if the paint scheme is completely different to my own!

Kabal of the Flayed Skull has a lot going on from the off. First of all, you can add 3″ to the maximum distance of flyers. Any flyers (or models embarked on flyers) deny cover to the enemy, and any models embarked on flyers that are shooting rapid-fire weapons (ie, splinter weapons!) can re-roll hit rolls of 1. If that wasn’t enough, they also have a stratagem that allows you to add 1 to the hit rolls for all flyers, for just 1 Command Point. Whoa!

Finally, Kabal of the Obsidian Rose! We’re in, boys and girls! And we’re famous! I haven’t been this excited since I discovered the transfer sheet has a transfer for them!

This is nice. I mean, it’s the same sort of thing that I gravitated towards when choosing a T’au sept recently, and given my experience of playing Dark Eldar so far, I think having the additional range will be really helpful. What’s more, they have a stratagem that allows you to shoot or fight with models before they run away as the result of a failed morale test – though if they kill anything when doing so, they don’t flee! Sure, you don’t want to be failing morale tests to begin with, but I guess it’s nice to have in the back pocket there!

Furthermore, the Obsidian Rose has the Armour of Misery relic all to themselves, which is kinda cool. It’s a classic Dark Eldar relic of course, and is nice to have it under the banner like this.

While I might be feeling a bit like the Poisoned Tongue fits my play style a lot more, I’m nevertheless looking forward to seeing how my kabal gets along once the book comes along!

So that’s the previews up to now, but I’m hoping to get blogs written up with my thoughts after each of them coming out this week, so stay tuned!