Detachment Focus: Realspace Raiders

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 in Index: Drukhari.

The Drukhari are an oddball faction in 40k – the army represents less a coherent fighting force like a Space Marine Chapter or Astra Militarum Regiment and more a rag-tag group of different, smaller factions in the form of the Kabals, Wych Cults, and Haemonculus Covens, which are often at odds with each other as much as they are with the wider galaxy. How much this matters has differed as the game’s rules have changed and evolved across the editions – sometimes the goal has been to treat them as more or less the same thing, while at other times there have been very specific restrictions in place such that a set of rules only applies to Wych Cults units or Kabal units or whatever else. In 10th edition, the Realspace Raid detachment does a bit of both – there’s some very stark divisions in what units can be affected by what rule, but at its core the detachment is meant to represent the generalist ‘all the Drukhari at once’ approach.

Detachment Overview

In the lore, a Realspace Raid represents all the different sub-sections of Drukhari society getting together for a really big attack – this isn’t a single Kabal with a few hired hangers-on, or a lone Haemonculus going off on their own looking for new captives, it’s the full military might of Drukhari society getting together and, at least on a temporary basis, all agreeing to work towards a common objective. In trying to represent this but also offer a bit of flavour to each of the three sections of the army the detachment seeks to serve two masters – giving you a set of tools that lets you use the full diversity of what you have available, but still encouraging you to think of it as one combined force rather than being specialised in any particular direction. As you’ll see below, it is not particularly successful in either of these endeavours.

Detachment Rule: Realspace Raiders

The detachment rule feeds into this generalist approach, granting you an additional Pain token for having one or more Archons, one or more Succubi, and one or more Haemonculi (to be clear, you get +1 for each for a maximum of +3 – it’s not all or nothing). As detachment rules go it’s hard to get excited about – you get more of the limited resource from your army rule, but it doesn’t fundamentally change how your army plays. It doesn’t spark a lot of joy.

Stratagems

The Stratagems available to the detachment are:

• Alliance of Agony – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Use at the start of any phase, targeting one Archon, one Succubus, and one Haemonculus from your army. Discard one Pain token and Empower all three of those models’ units. In theory this is a nifty way to use your Pain tokens more efficiently, but it has one significant restriction – you have to be able to target all three of the above. Succubus dead? No strat. Didn’t pick a Haemonculus? No strat. One of your required targets in a transport instead of on the table? No strat. I get what they’re going for here, but this would be wildly more effective if it was “up to” one of each so that it still worked even if a single character was dead or in their boat.
• Quicksilver Reactions – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Use in your opponent’s Shooting phase or the Fight phase after an enemy unit selects its targets. One Drukhari unit (but not a Haemonculus Covens one) is -1 to Hit for that phase. The classic Aeldari Stratagem, in the same form as it was in 8th and 9th for the Drukhari. Straightforwardly useful.
• Insensible to Pain – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Use in your opponent’s Shooting phase or the Fight phase after an enemy unit selects its targets. You can only target a Haemonculus Covens unit, making them -1 to Wound – effectively a dark mirror of Quicksilver Reactions. Very useful for preserving your Talos or Cronos, particularly as they’re in the kind of ‘light monster’ category where an opponent might expect to take them down with volume of low-quality attacks, which you’ll often then be able to push to 6s to wound.
• Prey on the Weak – Battle Tactic, 1CP: Use in your Shooting phase. One Kabal unit from your army can re-roll Wound rolls against an enemy unit that is Below Half-Strength. This would be fantastic for finishing off tough targets except that the transports are no longer KABAL, your ‘Blades for Hire’ units like Scourges and Incubi aren’t KABAL, and the Court of the Archon can already get re-roll Wounds from the Archon’s own ability – so really you’re looking at either Kabalite Warriors on foot or Ravagers to utilise this on. That latter use case isn’t a bad one, particularly for taking down things like a wounded Land Raider where your probability of finishing it off shoots way up if you’re turning those 4+ to Wound rolls into 4+ re-rolling, but it can be quite a narrow one.
• Strike and Fade – Epic Deed, 2CP: Use at the end of your Shooting phase. One non-AIRCRAFT unit can immediately make a Normal move, but cannot declare a charge or embark in a Transport at the end of that move. A fantastically useful Stratagem for mission play, especially effective on fast units like Reaver Jetbikes or Scourges which can cover a huge amount of the board in a single turn and catch out an unwary opponent who thought a distant and weakly-held objective was safe.
• Acrobatic Display – Epic Deed, 1CP: Use in your Charge phase. Pick one Wych Cult unit from your army; that unit can declare a charge even if it Fell Back or Advanced this turn. Straightforwardly useful and can give a Wych Cult unit a massive threat range coming out of a Raider (or just zipping along on their skyboards or jetbikes), but also a good reminder of how far Drukhari have fallen for this to be a 1CP Stratagem for Wych Cult units rather than an army-wide ability. Yes, I can hear you all getting out the world’s tiniest violins.

As Stratagem sets go there’s some good stuff in here – many factions would kill for Strike and Fade, and Quicksilver Reactions and Insensible to Pain are good defensive tools to have. The practical non-existence of Alliance of Agony means you’re effectively working one tool down though, and Prey on the Weak is in the weird spot where it’s going to look very powerful in the odd instance where a Ravager blows away a wounded C’tan or something, but is also a bit of a win-more and relies on precise conditions – you got your target down to 8 Wounds instead of 7? Sorry, it’s now harder to kill them, so your Stratagem to make your shooting more effective doesn’t work.

Also worth noting here is that four of your Stratagems are Battle Tactics, and Drukhari have no Rites of Battle-equivalent ability, which is pure downside – your opponent can make them cost you more, but you don’t get to make them free. On the plus side, your only 2CP Stratagem is an Epic Deed, so at least it can’t be made more expensive.

Enhancements

Your choices for Enhancements are:

• Crucible of Malediction – Haemonculus only. Use once per battle at the start of any Shooting phase; every enemy unit within 12″ of the bearer takes a Battle-shock test, at -1 if the bearer’s unit is Empowered. Additionally, if a Psyker unit fails this test, it takes d3 mortal wounds. It’s very cheap, so you might take it if you have 10pts spare, but it’s such a marginal effect that you might just not bother.
• Labyrinthine Cunning – Archon only. Each time you select the bearer’s unit as the target of a Stratagem, you get a CP back on a 4+, or automatically if the Stratagem is Alliance of Agony. Fine, but expensive, and see above for the likelihood of using Alliance of Agony.
• Blood Dancer – Succubus only. The bearer’s melee weapons improve their Attacks and AP by 1, or by 2 if bearer is Empowered. Pretty good, but you’re much better off running Lelith for your first unit of Wyches, and then you probably don’t want a second.
• The Art of Pain – In your Command phase, you get an extra Pain token if the bearer is on the battlefield. Uninspiring, but at least it does something you want.

It speaks volumes of these enhancements that in looking for top 4 placing lists to feature in this article, the only enhancement I saw in use was The Art of Pain, and all the recent lists eschewed taking any of them. A really poor selection, none of which you’d build around or even really be bothered about including at all if you could find a way to run another unit instead.

Playing This Detachment

If you got into Drukhari for the thrill of efficiently trading your lightning-fast, hard-hitting, but fragile melee units with your opponent, doing the majority of your damage in the Fight phase, then you’re probably not going to enjoy playing this detachment very much.

The basic playstyle which has emerged in 10th edition is to play Drukhari as a shooting army, maximising the number of lances and splinter cannons on the table and trying to blast opponents away in a hail of fire. To that end, 2-3 Ravagers show up in basically every list, doing what you’d expect them to do, supported by Scourges armed with either more dark lances or in some cases haywire blasters (which are less good into anything except VEHICLE targets, but are incredibly useful for taking down the toughest vehicles like Land Raiders since they bypass the high Toughness and 2+ armour save and all the attendant effects like cover and Armour of Contempt). Alongside them you’ll want Kabalite Warriors with all their special and heavy weapons, either running as a block of 10 in a Raider, or using the Venom’s ability to split them up – putting all the good guns into the Venom, and then running the leftover splinter rifle guys around on foot or in Strategic Reserves as objective grabbers and mission pieces.

Supporting this plan are 2-3 single-model units of Cronos, which don’t do a lot by themselves but do help you recycle Pain tokens – your goal is to spread these through your army keeping them near as many of your key Pain token users as possible, so that you can have the maximum chance of recycling them. On the mission play front, Mandrakes are incredibly useful, with their Fade Away allowing them to jump around the table, deploying a homer here, engaging a front there, all the things that make for successful mission play in 10th edition.

Beyond that, it’s a bit of a season to taste situation. The one melee unit which does offer some potent threat is Lelith Hesperax and a squad of Wyches hanging out in a Raider – with Acrobatic Display they can stage safely in the mid-board, relying on their huge threat range to terrify any infantry units into staying away from them. The Court of the Archon offers at least some melee punch, and with LETHAL HITS on offer from the Lhamean it can be worthwhile to join up one of the half-squads of Kabalites with the good guns with an Archon and his weird mates and have them dare to leave their transport, both for shooting and also for getting into melee. Finally, there’s Talos, which offer a strong all-around package, being able to pack a couple of different strong guns in the form of haywire blasters or heat lances, reasonable melee punch, and a level of on-table Toughess you only otherwise get from your vehicles.

To conclude, let’s take a look at one of the more successful lists from this dataslate’s life.

Rhys Cunningham’s Realspace Raiders – Ratcon 2023 (September 2023) – 1st Place

++ Rhys' List - Click Here to Expand ++

Rhys’ list exemplifies many of the principles expounded above – indeed it’s about as heavy as one can go on dark lances, skipping Venoms to put all the Kabalites into Raiders, running triple quad-dark lance Scourge units, and three Ravagers as well. The game plan here is a simple one – blast the living hell out of whatever comes into line of sight, while using the Scourges and Mandrakes to zip around scoring points. The Talos play an interesting role here, as they offer some more anti-vehicle fire alongside some melee threat to keep opponents honest, while also carrying twin liquifiers to provide some potent Overwatch as well.

Final Thoughts

10th edition hasn’t been kind to the Dark Kin so far, and the Realspace Raid detachment is a big part of why. It lacks the tools to help many of what should be your key units perform, and despite its generalist theme many of the things it does give you are oddly narrow in their application, even the good ones. On top of that, it has effectively zero useful Enhancements and a Stratagem that you’ll probably never be able to use even if you wanted to. It’s not a total loss – there’s enough power just in Strike and Fade and the defensive Stratagems that you’ll always have something to spend CP on – but it often feels like you’re working against its limitations rather than being supported by its strengths.

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