I have a couple of e-mails about Draigowing

I have a couple of e-mails about Draigowing so I will take a moment to answer them.

Dan writes:

Hi there! I thoroughly enjoy your blog, first off. Very well written and with interesting topics. Also it's nice to see someone else who appreciates insanely elite armies. The old chaos chosen Terminators were my favorite unit and now Paladins are the closest I can get to them. How ironic...

Thanks Dan, although I must say that if this blog is one thing it is not well written! Chaos Chosen were crazy in the last chaos codex. They were the most customizable unit in the game. I saw some 5-man units running around that cost over 500 points!

Anyway I had two questions for you that I hoped you could answer.

First, I run my Draigowing similarly to yours except that I put in a Vindicare in place of one of the Dreads. Why do you favor more Psyfle Dread saturation over some of the tricky benefits of the Vindicare (not to mention his AT capabilities)?

A Vindicare can be interchangeable with a dreadnaught; it is just a matter of what you are looking for. A Vindicare can be shot down by multiple strength 8 shots (like a dread), but the assassin can also be killed by small arms fire though, so you can make the argument that he is less durable. The Dread is more mobile, can start in reserve come on the board and shoot. Also dreads are better when shooting at squadrons and low armored vehicles compared to the Vindicare which is better at taking out high AV (13+). They can also assault and tie up units that struggle to kill dreads in hand-to-hand. The Dread also can do more damage with 4 shots at strength 8 to infantry. While the Vindicate cannot do that kind of damage to infantry, it can mess up one enemy model pretty good.

I think it is just a matter of play style and preference. I ran my old Demonhunters with 3 dreads, and I just like them.  

Second question, how do you deal with Darklight spam DE? I haven't faced my friend's DE with my Draigowing yet, but his list wastes my JetSeer Council list. I've only beaten his Darklight spam with my hybrid shooty Eldar. Anyway, with the amount of S8/Ap2 he has, it seems like a really uphill battle for me. Any thoughts?

Cheers man!
Dan

Well DE can be a problem. It takes a little bit of practice and know-how. All I can do is give you some pointers.

Hold the center of the board: You have a 24” range (plus a 6” move) so they can’t hide from you.

Combat Squad: You need to shot at as many targets as possible. They will be gunning you down, but you need to be knocking as many targets out of the air at the same time. You need to outlast them.

Hug cover: With Sanctuary this will slow down their damage from darklight weapons.

Take Psybolt ammo with stormbolters: This is devastating to DE. You have a ton of shooting, and strength 5 knocks their sailboats out of the air.

Target priority: You want to get the Ravagers with your Dreadnaughts because they will be in the rear, and they should be able to take out AV11 even with flicker fields and cover saves.

Target Priority #2: Depending on the situation you will either want to shoot at the Venoms with Trueborn or Warriors. If they just have a few Troop units in an objective game, take them out. Otherwise if they have a lot of Trueborn with blasters you will want to kill them.  

Know your ranges: If you stun a venom the guys inside can’t shoot either, also if they move over 6” they can’t shoot. Blasters only have a range of 18” so if they want to move 12” and shoot at you they have to disembark. So you might want to use this to maneuver were they can’t shoot everything at you.  

Know when to hold them and know when to fold them: Depending on their set up, how they deploy, who goes first, the mission, and their army make-up you might want to reserve/deep strike yourself (notice all of the caveats). This gives you first shot, and it lets you react to them. A big factor though is that it also limits the time that they get to shoot you. If you start on the board they are shooting at you for 5-7 turns, if you come in on the bottom of turn 2 they only get around 3-5 turns of shooting. This can be very dangerous with a DE army because they are fast and large. If you deep strike they can blanket the table making it hard to land without a deep strike mishap, or they can block a table edge so your reserves can’t come on. This tactic is very situational and again, be very careful.   

Karios writes:

I have a quick question on your Draigo Wing build. Why do you take a 5man Strike squad and a 10man Interceptor squad instead of Purifiers?

With Draigo, you can make the Purifiers scoring, and that would be my inclination. It also seems like you could be very vulnerable to hordes (especially Orks in vehicles) without
Purifiers, even with 10 Paladins.

I appreciate your thoughts.  

The reason for the strike squad is that I have to have a second troop choice to fill out the force organization slot before I can use Grand Strategy to make other units scoring. I have seen people take solodins (a single paladin model) but I like the strikes better. It adds a warp quake, it has 5 wounds for durability, and it adds some ranged shooting. 

The Interceptors are a fast moving unit in a slow army. They make up for a lot of weaknesses that being a slow army presents. They can get to where I need them to be to do things like getting side shots, claim/contest objectives etc.

As far as Orks goes I have never lost to them, and in fact one of the easiest armies for me to beat. Orks have one move and that is to get into assault. A block of paladins can do so many wounds to them that every unit they have in assault with explode to "No Retreat" wounds (30+ attacks hitting on 3s and wounding on 2s will kill a shed load of orks). In return they will do a couple of wounds, and kill a model or 2 with a Klaw, and then it is over.