Yesterday I played in a team tournament at Dragon's Layer back home in Austin with my long time gaming buddy Minus6. Minus6 played with his IG and I also used his Dark Eldar models coupled with the Exodites I've been slowly painting over the last year to make a Webway Portal list. My army included a very large Beast Master Unit with a very expensive Clawed Fiend.
The Beast Master unit is interesting because you buy 1-5 Masters (Dark Eldar on skyboards) and then buy different beasts as wargear for them. There are three different types of beasts, Khymera, Razorwing Flock, and Clawed Fiend and you can only buy one type per Master. The Clawed Fiend is by far the most expensive beast coming in at 40pts (the second most is 15pts) and you can only buy one Fiend per Beast Master so in total you spend 52pts.
The Fiend has a pretty good statline; S5 T5 W4 A4, and for every wound he takes he gets an extra attack. His T5 and the incentive to take wounds on him means that he can soak up any Power Fist attacks directed at the unit. Probably the best thing he did in my three games yesterday was get powered up to 7 attacks and killed a Chaplain.
So are the Fiends worth 52 points? The unit as a whole is terrible against vehicles and terrible against Terminators and because they are Beasts; they don't know how to climb stairs. The unit has at best Ld8 and T3, so what's the point of being able to soak wounds if as soon as you lose combat or get shot you run?
