How to play Drukhari

Glass-cannon raiders: blisteringly fast, lethal on the strike, and paper-thin. Snatch units off the board in transports, kill, and vanish, snowballing off victims' pain.

Army rule: Power From Pain, reworked into a token economy: bank Pain tokens (one each Command phase, one per enemy unit destroyed, one per enemy that fails Battle-shock) and spend them to Empower a unit, switching on its unique datasheet Pain ability for the phase. Front-load early trades to bank tokens, then over-charge your alpha strikes.

Strengths

Extreme speed and threat projection via Raiders and Venoms, reaching almost anywhere on turns 1 to 2
High lethality on the strike; Empowered Wych melee and Kabalite shooting delete priority targets
Self-snowballing, as every kill and Battle-shocked enemy feeds more tokens

Weaknesses

Among the most fragile armies: low Toughness, light saves, transports pop easily
The token engine can be starved if denied early kills and Battle-shock
Little resilience to a bad trade; once delivery is shot down, recovery is hard

Signature combos

Kabalite Warriors in Raiders/Venoms re-rolling wounds when Empowered
Wyches, a Succubus, or Lelith with Combat Drugs and Empowered melee
Talos/Cronos in Tools of Torment as durable Pain engines
Skysplinter Assault granting disembarking units Ignores Cover and Lance

Gameplan

Win fast on tempo and assassination. Dictate the first fights and kill efficiently to bank tokens, Empower the units that matter on the swing turn, and score via speed while staying out of return fire. Decide the game before attrition catches their fragility.

Playing against Drukhari

Screen aggressively to starve the token economy of early kills and Battle-shock, prioritize popping transports to ground them, and bring anti-infantry volume since the fragile follow-up collapses once the alpha is survived.

Next steps

Browse all Drukhari datasheets → · What to buy → · General tactics →