Of all the Phoenix Lords there is one that will live in infamy. Arhra was the father of scorpions. He betrayed the Asurya and destroyed the original temple shrine where Asurman First tempered the Eldar's passions into the path of the warrior. Arhras' most gifted student took his place as the Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions. He tempered the murderous nature of Arhra with the patience and cunning of a hunter. He now fights his mentor when he shows himself, although he goes by the name Drazhar now.
Karandras is a hunter. With Mandiblaster and chain sword he cuts down his prey with precision. He also carries the deadly Scorpions Claw which cuts though vehicles and power armor with ease.
Besides the stat line and normal Phoenix Lord rules why is Karandras my favorite? He is a strait up marine killer. He is strength 8 when he uses the Scorpions Claw. He also has 7 attacks on the charge thanks to his Mandiblaster providing +2 attacks instead of the normal 1. He also does not suffer from the one thing I don't like about Striking Scorpions. He is Fleet. Granted if he is in a squad, which he should be, he losses this ability. He does however boost up the kill power of the squad by a lot. As I often do I run an Exarch in the squad despite having the Phoenix lord. In this case the Exarch will not have any powers as Karandras already has them all. So you can infiltrate or outflank and have move through cover. In addition you get stealth. This comes in handy especially when you infiltrate and are faced with high strength weapons hitting the squad. You should always start your scorpions in cover when they infiltrate anyways. The Exarch gives you a second power claw. Granted he only hits at strength 6 but you still wound toughness 4 stuff on 2's. This means you have 9 Scorpions that deal 36 attacks to thin out the ranks of the enemy squad. Basically the only things going before them would be character, Dark Eldar wychs and Genestealers. So you get 11 powered attacks to concentrate on a smaller number of models. All of these will usually be hitting on 3's. Not to shabby.
I almost always infiltrate my Striking Scorpions these days. Outflanking has not been kind and unless you are setup in table corners you get no real advantage. Karandras gives you options and a lot of punch in a unit of scorpions. He gives you the stealth and all the Exarch powers so there is no real reason to not infiltrate
Is he a deal at 215 points? Not really, but that has always been my main complaint about the Phoenix Lords. It is also y complaint on my second favorite Dark Eldar character.
So how does he stack up to Drazhar? Well Drazhar is 230 points to already more expensive. He has the same stat line and he is also an eternal warrior. Drazhar can possibly have more attacks it depends on if he is going 2 handed or double power weapons. He does strike first though and he gains the preferred enemy against IC's as well as gaining more attacks on rolls of 6.
Vogrin and I actually did the math and it comes out almost dead even and it is completely up to the dice as to how it turns out. If Drazhar fails to kill Karandras in the first go Karandras could kill Drazhar. Second round Karandras would die though unless the dice are completely against you.
Well we have one more Phoenix Lord to go and in my opinion one of the better ones. Baharoth will be our last installment of the Phoenix Court of Khaine series.
Also I have some opinions on White Dwarf I want to share. This is mostly because of the Battle report in the latest issue. Dark Eldar versus a non mechanized Imperial Guard army. Think about it for a second. The only question is.....really?
So that and some battle reports later in the week. One will be versus Vogrin on Wednesday. We will be trying out our Adepticon lists on each other and see if the Dark Eldar are as good against a Guard army with some armor. So far not so much.
Until then........
Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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