Friday, April 1, 2011

"YOU'RE THE DUKE! YOU'RE THE DUKE! A NUMBER ONE!"

A great Escape from New York quote (delivered by the late/ great Donald Pleasence)there to start the next Dark Eldar unique HQ review, Duke Sliscus.

The Duke of New York is one take on Duke Sliscus






I see him more like Sol from Doomsday
He commands the Sky Serpents. He is the true pirate of the Dark Eldar army. He deals in contraband, fast ships, slave raids and the loot it brings. He is famous for unpredictable behavior. He is known to be both charming and bloodthirsty. He is bit of an eccentric; never wearing the same clothes twice, dines on poisoned food, and is known to carve poetry into the flesh of his foes (great imagery there). He also has luminous alabaster skin that is hand scrubbed after each real space raid. It seems he cannot fathom the air of the lesser races on his skin. So yeah, he seems a bit weird, except when you have power it is eccentric.

He boasts a WS 6, BS 6, strength and toughness 3, 2 wounds, 3 attacks, leadership of 9 and a 4+/ 6++ armor save. He is armed with a blast pistol, plasma grenades, ghostplate armor, combat drugs, shadowfield (so a 2++ until that fails then a 6++ ghostplate save) and the serpents bite. He has all the regular Dark Eldar rules, fleet, night vision, power through pain, and is an independent character. He also has Serpent’s Venom, Serpent’s Bite, Low Orbit Raid and Contraband. All this runs him up to $1.50 which is pretty reasonable, in my mind for a HQ choice.

Serpents Venom any Warrior or Trueborn squad the Duke deploys with, at the start of the game, gets their splinter weapons a buff, wounding on 3+. A nice little buff if you build a big ol’ squad of warriors with dual splinter cannons and the Duke. Just an ugly thing if their target is non-vehicular.

Serpent’s Bite these are twin blades the Duke wields in close combat. They wound on 2+ and if you roll a 5 or 6 when wounding they count as if caused by a power weapon. I like these you can put out 5 attacks on the charge, hit on 3+, and wound on 2+. Then if you roll really well to wound, you get power weapon wounds to boot.

Low Orbit Raid Ravagers, Venoms and Raiders in the Duke’s army have the deep strike ability. Now this is great since you get the benefit with out the added cost per vehicle. Want vehicles falling from the sky and don’t want to pay the points? Then just take the Duke.

Contraband allows you to roll two times on the combat drug chart and choose which roll you want. This is stellar if run a lot of units with combat drugs along with the Duke. You have a great chance to get the result you want, or at least a better result than you initially rolled; just watch those double one’s. That roll will make any Dark Eldar player cry.

He is no slouch in combat. Having a blast pistol is nice, especially with WS 6. He can also tear it up in close combat with his attacks, initiative, plasma grenades, drugs, shadowfield/ ghost plate armor (his is one of the better armored Dark Eldar in the book) and Serpent’s Bite.

He fails as do the rest of the army in strength and toughness. So once again look for him to get better with drugs and pain tokens, just like the rest of this army. Man do I sound like a broken record when it comes to this.

After the Baron, the Duke is my second favorite unique HQ. He brings a lot to a force with his rules and fairly low cost. If you want vehicles raining from the skies, grab the Duke. If you want a fire base of warriors/ trueborn with 3+ poisoned splinter rifles/cannons, start the Duke with them. If you like a ton of Wyches and want the “good” combat drugs just add the Duke to the list.


2 comments:

  1. I run the duke with...

    Hellions, Wracks, Haemonculus, trueborns with carbines/splintercannons.

    It's just gross.

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  2. He is a fantastic army buff character. A shame they haven't made a sweet model for him.

    Love the trueborn with all that splinter stuff. Most overlook that and just throw multiple blasters on them. Do you run them in a Venom with dual splinter cannons as well? A giant amount of poison shots there.

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