Detachment Focus: Covenite Coterie

In this series of articles we take a deep dive into a specific Detachment for a faction, covering the faction’s rules and upgrades and talking about how to build around that faction for competitive play. In this article, we’re covering the Covenite Coterie Detachment for Drukhari.

The True Kin are back with Codex Drukhari, and while they may be last, they certainly aren’t least: you’ll have five Detachments to choose from (six, if you count Reaper’s Wager), each of which pushes the limited options available in the army toward unique playstyles, letting you make the most of what you’re able to bring. In this series, we’ll be looking at each of the new Detachments, their rules, and how best to play them.

Before we dive in we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Codex and the new models included in this article. We have also been provided with a provisional Munitorum Field Manual for the army to use when writing the review, but please note that these points are subject to change until they are published on Warhammer Community.

Detachment Overview

Lowest of Men: The Coven represent the dark underside of Comorragh, labyrinthine dungeons and laboratories in which the Haemonculii ply their dastardly experiments. On the tabletop they are the anvil with which a Drukhari general can absorb pressure and damage before counter-attacking with their many more fragile units. The Covenite Coterie marries together these themes of mischief and durability really nicely into a Detachment that is designed to out-attrition the enemy whilst sowing fear and terror amongst their ranks. Let’s have a look at the rules!

Detachment Rule: Stitchflesh Abominations

A nice simple Detachment rule here- Haemonculus Covens units get -1 to be wounded when the attacking weapon has a higher strength. We’ve seen a few versions of this rule out and about, and it is always useful to have. It is especially nice on Talos and Cronos, where dedicated anti-monster weapons drop off massively in efficiency, but it shouldn’t be underestimated on Wracks either now the latter have two wounds apiece – it’ll take meaningful combat units to shift them now! A simple boost that gets stronger the harder you build into the Coven units – I suspect this Detachment benefits a lot from making sure as much of your forces can benefit from the -1 to wound as possible.

Enhancements

The enhancements are suitably mischievous and wicked, as is appropriate for the scheming (and often slightly insane) Haemonculii. As you may have anticipated, they are for the Haemonculii only!

• Master Regenesist (25 points): This Enhancement let’s you revive D3+3 Wracks to the bearer’s unit instead of D3+1. Nice to have, and if you are committing to a big Wrack brick with a Haemo then this makes complete sense to take along for some baiting / regrowing shenanigans on a key objective.
• Master Nemesine (5 points): The bearer gains Anti-Beast 2+ and Anti-Monster 4+ on their weapons. At 5 points, this is very easy to take along with spare change, and gives you a Haemonculus able to punch up into a Monster. It does combo quite nicely with one of the Stratagems too…
• Master Artisan (20 points): The bearer’s unit gain +1 Toughness, and the bearer gains an additional wound. -1 to wound on a T5 unit of Wracks is a very awkward break point for a lot of weapons, and I can see plenty of lists building this and the Regenesist brick in for mission play.
• Master Repugnomancer (15 points): This extends the range of the Haemonculus’s Fear Incarnate ability by 3 inches, and also enables you to farm Pain Tokens for friendly Drukhari models destroyed or battle-shocked within 9 of the bearer on a 4+. Battle-shock is pretty key to some of the tools on offer in the stratagem department, and being able to up your PT economy is also really nice.

The enhancements are very mission-play centred and give you a few additional forms of staying power. This is very much the Detachment to try triple Haemonculus / Wrack units in, and you can tool these up accordingly depending on the portion of the board you are looking to utilise them on!

Stratagems

Much like the army rule and enhancements, the theme with the stratagems is trickery and durability, with one nice damage buff alongside them (albeit with a caveat). Let’s dive in.

• Postmortality (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Use in any phase on one HAEMONCULUS model from your army that was just destroyed. Spend 1-3 Pain tokens and set that model up again at the end of the phase with a Wounds remaining equal to the number of Pain tokens you spent. As usual, you can’t put them back into Engagement range and have to put them back as close as possible to where they died. You must have some Pain tokens to use this, and can’t use it on the same model more than once per game. Helpful for keeping your token generation on the table, though you may want to assess whether you’re going to get more tokens back than you spend on the Stratagem.
• Symphony of Suffering (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Use in the Fight phase, just after one of your DRUKHARI units destroys an enemy unit. Each enemy unit within 9” of and visible to your unit takes a Battle-shock test, at -1 if your unit is a HAEMONCULUS COVENS unit. The wide radius and -1 makes this a bit of a better Stratagem than it otherwise would be, especially as you can proc Pain tokens from failures.
• Poisoner’s Art (Epic Deed, 1 CP): Use in the Fight phase, just after one of your HAEMONCULUS COVENS units has fought. Pick a non-VEHICLE enemy unit hit by one or more of that unit’s attacks this phase, and until the end of the game, that unit is poisoned. At the start of each Command phase, you roll a D6 for each poisoned unit on the table and on a 4+ they take d3 mortal wounds. Not bad to leave something on a unit, and the fact it stays up all game and you roll in each Command phase means that you can potentially degrade even fairly chunky units over time.
• Distillers of Fear (Strategic Ploy, 2 CP): Use in the Fight phase on one of your HAEMONCULUS COVENS units that hasn’t fought yet. Until the end of the phase, you get DEVASTATING WOUNDS for attacks that target Battle-shocked enemy units. Covens units really want to make your opponent take and fail Battle-shock, so if you do pull that off this can be a nice bonus when your Wracks are swinging with 4 attacks each. (Lowest of Men: Twin-Linked Macro-Scalpels on Talos enjoy this too!!)
• Connoisseurs of Pain (Battle Tactic, 1 CP): Use in your opponent’s Shooting phase or the Fight phase, just after an enemy unit has selected its targets. One DRUKHARI unit from your army targeted by those attacks can spend 1 Pain token, and until the end of the phase, you worsen the AP of those attacks by 1. At the end of the phase, if that unit is a HAEMONCULUS COVENS unit and still on the battlefield, you gain one Pain token. Unfortunately this does get caught by the general dataslate rule which makes all these effects work for one round of attacks instead of the whole phase, which makes the rider that they have to survive the whole phase a lot more punishing than it ought to be.
• Enfolding Nightmare (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP): Use in your opponent’s Shooting phase, just after an enemy unit has shot, and pick one HAEMONCULUS COVENS unit that was targeted by those attacks. That unit can move D6”, but must end that move as close as possible to the closest enemy unit, and can be moved in Engagement Range. It’s a Surge move. Surge moves are great. You’ll enjoy using this.

Playing This Detachment

The army that most jumped out at me as a point of comparison for this Detachment is Tyranids – stodgy monsters, Battle-shock antics, and some great mission play tricks and tools. This may be a bit of a love / hate Detachment for Drukhari players, but it gets a real song out of Talos, Wracks and Cronos. Pressuring the objectives with these, as Haemonculus drift around battle-shocking the foe and regenerating their bodyguards will be key to using the Detachment well.

The tricky part will be working out exactly how much of the Kabal and Wych Cult supporting cast to bring – I think some decent ranged support and one or two of our big damage dealers in melee (Hellions or Incubi) should compliment the rest of the list well without diluting the power of the -1 to Wound too much. It doesn’t boast the speed and reach of some of the other Detachments, but the added durability, and the weight of battle-shocks is one of those army effects you have to see applied to fully appreciate and understand – Leadership 7 and above armies will really, really struggle to play the game against this after a couple of turns.

Sky Serpent: This Detachment has the potential to be the sleeper hit of the Codex and although Covens now only have four datasheets, this Detachment presents numerous blueprints to bring Haemoxytes of old back with the real ability to swamp the board with Wracks who will be much more resilient than your opponent will expect.

A Sample List

Lowest of Men: Coven is next on my list to play, so I am firmly in speculative mode here, but let’s have at it:

Somehow, Thicc City Returned

This list goes hard on the Detachment rule, slamming in all the Pain Engines, triple Haemonculus and some Wracks to boot, complimenting these with the mission play of Mandrakes and the skirmish and shutdown potential of the Malys / Archon and Kabalites. Trailing Wracks on a point is a good way to get the party started, as is threatening a Haemonculus revive. This should bring the enemy to you, so the real units can get to work.

In a macro sense this will be a pushy / stodgy list, using Cronos and the Wrack bricks with the enhancements to force enemy commitment before counter attacking with the Talos and other character units. Once a sufficient amount of damage has been sprinkled around the battle-shocking should start to tell on the opponent and give you a primary edge.

It’s probably a bit more skewed into the Coven than I’d eventually end up at (Hellions and Scourge feel a natural next addition in future drafts), but it’s a good place to test what Coven are capable of pretty much on their own before adjusting accordingly. Am I going to resurrect every Haemonculus at least once? If I have my way you bet for damn sure I am!

Final Thoughts

Lowest of Men: The Haemonculii are the unseen underbelly of the Dark City, happy to do their work from the shadows until the culmination of their sinister schemes. I suspect the Covenite Coterie may be quite similar at release – it doesn’t have quite the same damage or speed as some of the other Detachments, and the departure of Grotesques limits the range of units you can apply it to.

That doesn’t mean we should write it off, however. The Detachment packs an awful lot of mission play sneakiness, battle-shocks and some deceptive durability in an army which is sorely lacking it elsewhere. It won’t be for the faint-hearted – push plays wedded to battle-shock are rarely good for the pulse – but there is a lot of finesse play here for a general looking to lean harder into the dark masters of the oubliettes. I’m very excited to get it on the table!

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