Lelith Hesperax: Sweet Mercy!

[MaltonNecromancer]

I just played a rather mad game of 40K. Dark Eldar won; however, what made it remarkable was how Lelith Hesperax won it for them almost single-handedly. Over a three turn tarpit of an assault, she took out four Grey Knight Terminators, seven Grey Knight Purifiers, a Brotherhood Champion, a Squad of Sanguinary Guard, and Commander Dante. It literally took a Nemesis Dreadknight with sword to get her in the end. I kid you not, it was brutal, and no player was rolling particularly badly.

I don't care what anyone says about her, strength 3 or not, she is a frakking beast in assault and I now know a Grey Knight player and Blood Angel player who agree with me.

[eldargal]

Yup, every time I've seen her and the once I've taken her in an Apocalypse game she outperformed all expectations.

[LordGrise]

I have a buddy who fields her sometimes - I play Tau. She recieves full faith and credence of anything and everything I can bring to bear until she goes down - area effect stuff first to get around the rest of her unit. IMHO, Lilith is a true 'Arclight special' - she goes down quickly or you lose, I don't care what you're playing.

[Uncle Nutsy]

hmm, sounds like I should give her a try in the next game of Hero Hammer. What's hero hammer, you say? I'll tell you later, once the group has all the rules fleshed out (and WRITTEN DOWN!).

I wonder how brutal and broken it would be when Lelith and Drazhar are working together.

[Emerald Rose Widow]

Just read the stats on her and all the rules for Lileth, and holy frelling hell is she insane.

[Mystery.Shadow]

She makes Hive Tyrants cry....

It's been a sad year to be a Tyranid.

[Wolf Brother Hellstrom]

i have the model but never fielded her. i shall give her a shot next time

[Wolfshade]

She makes Hive Tyrants cry....

It's been a sad year to be a Tyranid.

But wouldn't she need 6s to wound? and that's assuming that she isn't suffereing Paroxysm. Or am I missing something

[AbusePuppy]

Lelith's main weakness is her Strength of 3, which is a rather low number for an assault specialist; unless she is facing other Space Elfs or has gotten Furious Charge, she will have some trouble wounding most enemy models. However, he generally-absurd number of attacks and the fact that she pretty much always hits on 3s let her do pretty decent damage, and her 3++ along with being hit on 5s by virtually everything make her pretty reasonable defensively. She isn't amazing for her points, but she's better than many people give her credit for.

Other than S3, her other notable issue is that she doesn't do anything but punch enemies to death; most all of the other DE HQs can bring some kind of utility to the field, or at the very least have some useful tricks up their sleeve. Lelith is a combat machine, nothing more, and for that she suffers a bit, just like any such HQ unit. For her price you could instead buy yourself about seven Incubi, who will deal out far more damage and be similar or better survivability. In 5th Edition, HQs that just kill stuff generally aren't worth their price, at least from a competitive standpoint.

[MaltonNecromancer]

Her strength is mitigated when she gets Furious Charge.

For her price you could instead buy yourself about seven Incubi, who will deal out far more damage and be similar or better survivability

Believe me when I say that she's way better than seven Incubi.

They have no invulnerable 3++. She does. She strikes at I9. Other than Greater Daemons and a few Psykers, that's pretty much first. If she's got the Furious Charge, she's wounding on 4+ a lot of the time. Seriously, if she charges a Special Character, she's a tarpit, but if she charges any infantry squad, she's a one-woman massacre. I was totally expecting the Sanguinary Guard to destroy her, but she killed them all without blinking. Horrifying stuff.

As far as I can see, her real weakness is that she takes up an HQ slot without providing any whole-army benefit. Other than that, I genuinely do not believe there is a better point-for-point assault specialist in game. Yeah, there are things that'll beat her, that's not what I'm saying. What I mean is that nothing kills standard infantry harder, faster, or more reliably in assault than she does.