Detachment Focus: Realspace Raiders (Updated September 27, 2025)

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 Realspace Raiders 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.

Changelog

• Update (Latest): 2025-09-27 Updated with the release of Codex Drukhari.
• Published: 2024-01-2024

Detachment Overview

Realspace Raiders is your bread and butter Detachment, offering a rounded approach to playing Drukhari when they deploy all together. It’s had some changes from the Index version, largely for the better, but it still has that same core feel to it.

Detachment Rule: Alliance of Agony

It doesn’t get much simpler in this book: you’ll start the game with two Pain tokens for every matched pair of Leader and Battleline unit you have from the three subfactions. So if your list includes both an Archon and a unit of Kabalite Warriors, you’ll start with two tokens. Add in a Succubus and some Wyches, and you’ll start with four. Keep in mind that the Leader doesn’t need to be attached to the Battleline unit. For Succubi and Haemonculi this won’t matter, but it does mean that you can stick an Archon in a Hand of the Archon unit or some Incubi and still get the tokens as long as some Kabalite Warriors decided to join the party.

Building around this rule is dead simple: bring at least one character and Battleline unit for all three subfactions. That means you’ll start your first turn with seven Pain tokens, or eight if you land the 4+ from the Haemonculus. Beyond that, you’ll want to bring a bit of everything here: not only do the stratagems have a nice spread of effects for a wide variety of units, but the sheer number of Pain tokens you’ll be able to generate means you’ll have plenty of opportunity to use each unit’s bespoke Pain ability right when you need it.

Enhancements

There’s an enhancement for each sub-faction’s character here, plus another that can go on anyone. The big downside of these options is that there’s not really a great option for putting on a Haemonculus: the Crucible of Malediction is a weird once-per-game effect (Liam: I know this was a once-per-game weird relic thing in third edition, does it still have to be that in 10th?), and Dark Vitality doesn’t work with the Haemy’s Pain ability. That’s not a huge problem though: most of the reason you want the Haemonculus in the first place is because it has a 50/50 shot of generating another Pain token, which not only lets you Empower your units, but also feeds into two of the other enhancements for some potent effects. Save your points on the Haemy, and see how many of the other three you can fit.

• Dark Vitality (20 points) – Choose a character, and their unit is always Empowered. Use this to give an Archon’s unit reliable offense (the most likely use case), or to make a Succubus and her attendant Wyches lightning-fast all the time. Just keep in mind that, as written, this won’t trigger a Haemonculus’s Fleshcraft ability: that one only triggers when you spend the Pain token.
• Labyrinthine Cunning (30 points) – An Archon with this enhancement generates a CP at the start of your Command phase on a 4+, or, if you spend a Pain token, can just skip the roll and get right to the CP. Given the number of tokens you start with, you probably have some tokens to spare in the first two rounds to jump-start your CP generation, and there are plenty of stratagems worth using in this Detachment.
• Eye of Spite (20 points) – Improve the attacks and AP of a Succubus’s melee weapons by 1 each, or spend a Pain token in the Fight phase to improve them by 2 each instead. Without the token, it’s probably not as good of an upgrade as Morghenna’s Curse in Spectacle of Spite, but spend the token and you’re onto something.
• Crucible of Malediction (15 points) – Once upon a time, somebody wrote rules for this thing that made it a once-per-game effect, and now we are living with the consequences. The effect here is fine, I guess, allowing a Haemonculus to force a pile of Battle-shock tests that deal mortal wounds to PSYKERs who fail them, but it definitely feels a bit “gimmicky.” You’re taking a Haemonculus regardless for the token generation, but you aren’t going to take this unless your list winds up at exactly 1985 points.

Stratagems

The stratagems on offer are largely similar to the ones on offer in the Index Detachment, but they’ve been opened up in utility a bit; rather than having stratagems limited to particular types of units, most of them instead can be used on any unit, but if you use them on the specific unit they’re intended for, you get to pick two of them.

• Insensible to Pain (Battle Tactic, 2 CP) – Reduce the damage of attacks against a HAEMONCULUS COVENS unit by 1 for a phase. Expensive at 2CP, but Labyrinthine Cunning definitely takes the edge off of that. Nifty when someone’s trying to kill a Talos on a key objective, or if you just want a unit of newly-2-wound Wracks to tank a bunch of heavy bolter shots or something.
• Fighting Shadows (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – A non-HAEMONCULUS COVENS unit is -1 to be hit for a phase. Good to have in your back pocket.
• Instinctive Spite (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Your choice of two DRUKHARI BATTLELINE units or one other DRUKHARI unit gains +1 to hit an enemy below half strength. As a kicker, you can spend a Pain token to give them +1 to wound as well. If you’re desperate to finish off a hard target, this might just do the trick, though the limitation to below half-strength units makes it situational.
• Dark Harvest (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – Choose up to two units of Wracks, or one other unit, and give it [Lethal Hits] in the Fight phase. This is better on Wracks than it would have been a month ago now that they’re AP-1, and you can still slam it on some Incubi or Wyches to benefit from their higher AP or absurd number of attacks, respectively.
• Eager for the Kill (Battle Tactic, 1 CP) – Up to two units of Wyches or one other unit get an automatic +6 on their next advance roll instead of rolling. Great on Wyches here, since they can spend one of your myriad tokens to charge after their 14” advance, and useful elsewhere if you just need a unit to get somewhere this turn. Just remember that it doesn’t stack with Reavers’ Pain ability.
• Raid and Fade (Strategic Ploy, 1 CP) – A pair of Kabalite Warriors or one other unit of your choice can make a Normal move of up to 6” at the end of your shooting phase. You can’t use it on Scourges (since they already have their own shoot-and-scoot) or Aircraft (because reasons, I guess), but there are any number of situations where this could come in handy. You can’t charge with units targeted by this stratagem, but the only restriction on who you can choose is that they can’t be in engagement range of any enemies, and there’s nothing stopping your target(s) from piling into a Raider or Venom if there’s one nearby.

Playing This Detachment

While the Detachment has definitely gotten a glow-up from its Index incarnation, the types of lists you’re going to run aren’t going to change that much. The biggest difference you’re likely to see here is that the new Character datasheets mean that it’s actually worth bringing one of each of them, even though that means bringing a generic Haemonculus instead of the now-MIA Urien Rakarth. The sheer number of tokens you’ll start with here combine with consistent ways to generate more without having to kill anything to really open up your options in a way that other Detachments just can’t compete with.

The rules in this Detachment reward you for bringing a bit of everything and leaning on the various parts of their army to bring together a combined force that’s greater than the sum of its parts. If you want a good mix of Kabal shooting power, Wych Cult melee punch, and Haemonculus Coven staying power, this Detachment supports all three while giving you plenty of Pain tokens to get the most out of every unit’s rules. You’re not going to be quite as good at any of those things as a more dedicated Detachment would be, but with some smart play and savvy positioning, you can flex the wide variety of rules available to you in a way that opponents may find difficult to match.

Sky Serpent: This Detachment offers a great way of testing the new Drukhari and the Smorgasbord of Pain abilities due to your early access to Pain Tokens and encouragement to use all of the subfactions. While it may be great for Newkhari, the suite of useful Stratagems and Enhancements means there is plenty of depth for the veteran Archon.

A Sample List

Skari: Here’s a list that I cooked up to make the most of the Detachment rule, has some great hitting power elements and flexibility to use all the new rules and stratagems the Detachment has to offer.

The list - Click to expand

This list takes full advantage of the Detachment rule to start the game with a healthy number of pain tokens. This gives us the flexibility of using pain abilities early in the game more aggressively. Advancing the Reaver Jetbikes up the table with a pain token early on to generate board control, the threat of an advance and charge from the wyches and Lelith early in the game, or the ability to move venoms a lot further up the table to unload a cheap kabalite or wych squad in no mans land to score up some points or deny the enemy their objectives. The rest of the force splits up into multiple waves with lots of trash units that can play the game, and intelligent use of the hand of the archon, and Lady Malys mid to late game can really seal the score in multiple matches.

I played this list against Richard Siegler and found that it gave me a lot of flexibility with the units, however I will say I found that I had way more pain tokens then I knew what to do with… so let me know if you find a way to use them all!

Final Thoughts

This is an all-rounder Detachment which will serve you well in a generalist Drukhari army taking a bit of everything. It has a lot of tools, and is the best way to ensure you have a healthy supply of Pain tokens to fuel all your shiny new datasheet abilities.

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