| A 1500 point Wyche Cult Army
- for an RTT on Novermber 22, 2003 Concept to reality |
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The Pittsburgh Iron Legion (PIL) has scheduled their next local Rogue Trader Tournament for Saturday, November 22, 2003. The tournament will require 1500-point, painted armies, and no special models will be required for any of the scenarios. This gives me roughly 3 months to assemble and paint a new army for the tournament.
In past PIL tournaments I have fielded Dark Eldar armies that utilized most of the different units in the army list with the exception of scourges, warp beasts, and hellions. I have also tried to vary the themes of my armies so that they were not always the all-skimmer type of army. Interestingly, my primarily ground-based dark eldar army gained me an overall second place finish in the last tournament in May 2003.
For the upcoming tournament I have decided to use a Wyche Cult army instead of my core dark eldar army. There are several considerations that influenced my decision. First, nobody has ever fielded a Wyche Cult army at a PIL tournament. Second, the WC army list is purported to be more challenging to use. Finally, the wyche-based models are the best sculpted in the dark eldar army, at least in my humble opinion.
I have heard that the scoring for November RTT will be different from previous tournaments. Army composition will not be used for scoring, and it will be replaced with Army theme and "fun factor." Presumably the "fun factor" will be determined by how enjoyable it is for your opponents to play against your army.
Since army theme will be a factor, I have decided to go with an army list that utilizes only Wyche-based units, namely, Wyches, Warpbeasts, Jetbikes, and Hellions. The army will be configured as a rapid assault force without much focus on shooting. This should make it fun to play for both me and my opponents, especially if they field an assault-oriented army which is fairly common at the RTT's.
This choice is fairly straight-forward as wyche squads are the only option that you have as troops. The one real decision is whether to place the squads in Raiders or not. I have opted to mount all of my squads in Raiders for several reasons. The army is supposed to be configured as a rapid assault force so transports are necessary to let the wyches strike when and where they will. Additionally, the raiders will provide the army with some mobile dark lances to deal with any vehicles or monstrous creatures they may face. Since firepower on wyche units is limited in both quantity and range, it is necessary to give them some means to crack armor at a distance. Finally, mounted wyche squads require fewer models than ground based squads. This is a real consideration for me because at best I will only be able to field 40 or so wyches in time for the RTT. Part of this limitation is due to the cost of the additional models, while the remainder is the time required to paint the models.
Given my limitation on the number of wyche models available for the RTT I have decided to use 4 squads of wyches. Three of the squads will be configured as assault units, while the fourth will be a specialized for an anti-vehicular role. The three assuault units will each include wyche weapons, plasma grenades, and a succubus with special weaponry. The anti-vehicle unit will include blasters and haywire grenades.
Each of the assault units is comprised of 9 models so that my HQ model can be added to any of them during army deployment. I like to have some flexiblity in placing my lone HQ model where it can do the most good early in the battle. Likewise, my HQ model will not have combat drugs while my wyche squads will. I need to take care to put my HQ with a squad that has favorable drug results. For example, I would not want to assign my HQ to a wyche squad that got a 12" assault ability from drugs. The squad would not be able to use the extra assault distance because they would lose coherency with the assigned HQ.
The total points costs for the wyche squads including upgrades is 777 points or roughly 51% of my army total. These units will feature 4 dark lances (on Raiders), 2 blasters, and 2 agonizers.
The Headquarters choices for a Wyche Cult army are limited to Dracites, Archites, and Lelith Hesperax, a special character. Since special characters are allowed in the RTT, I have decided to choose Lelith as my lone HQ unit. For 90 points, she is a bargain because she has better stats than an Archite and comes equiped with an Agonizer and Shadow Field. The only down side to taking Lelith is lack of combat drugs and customization. On the plus side I don't need to ponder what weapons and combat gear to give her.
I have considered giving Lelith a Wyche retinue as they would have the ability to choose which combat drug result they get. For the moment I will keep the Wyche squad as a separate troop choice instead so that I have more flexibility in deploying Lelith at the start of the battles. She can be attached to any of the Wyche squads that are fielded.
Total cost for HQ is 90 points! This is less than half of the points I used for my HQ in the last RTT army which was only 1250 points.
Since I am keeping with the all-Wyche theme for my army, warpbeasts are the only Elites choice available to me. I have decided to include 3 full squads of them as the ground based portion of my army. These guys are a bargain at 75 points per squad and each Beastmaster comes with a free Agonizer. I probably would take another squad of warp beasts if I had the models. You are allowed to field one squad for each Wyche squad that you have.
The costs for my warpbeast squads will be 225 points, less than 20% of my army total.
At last, I finally get to use some of the best looking models in the dark eldar army: jetbikes and hellions! I have decided to include a squad of each in my army
For the jetbike squad, I will
use six models as I did in the last tournament. This unit served
me well
by destroying or tying up high value targets in several games.
The squad will include two blasters for an anti-vehicular role as well
as a succubus with power weapon for some close combat punch. The
Succubus is a new addition to the unit from the last tournament
army. I had wanted to use the Succubus previously but did not
have enough points. 
The Hellion squad will be a
completely new unit for any of my armies. I have never used them
before, so it will be interesting to see how they fare. Several
discussion threads on the Commorragh e-group
have indicated that hellions are only effective when used in larger
squads so that they have some resilience to shooting and in close
combat. I have chosen to use a 9-member squad and take a Succubus
upgrade with agonizer and splinter pistol. The succubus should
give the unit more close combat capabilty especially against
power-armored opponents which are all too common at tournaments.Since I have a few points to spare I have given the succubus in each squad some haywire grenades for anti-vehicular work. I figure that the grenades will generally be more effective than close combat weapons against vehicles.
Total cost for the Jetbike squad is 205 points and the Hellion squad is 203 points. This equals 408 points for fast attack units.
I have not included any heavy support units in my army list as neither Scourges nor Ravagers are wyche-type units. Arguably, this omission will greatly reduce the firepower of my army but it will not make it any less fun to play. I like the all-wyche theme and plan to stick with it for this army.