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Got a 1500 point game in with the new book on friday against my good friend Manimal. We sat and talked about the good and bad with the new dex, and were in agreement in all regards. I liked warriors for troops but it didn't take much convincing for me to switch over to liking wracks. My 1500 IG army is going through a small transition, but for the sake of testing, I just used the old list.

We rolled a 4 objective seize with pitched deployment. IG won the all too important first roll.

Here are the lists.

Dark Eldar 1500

Haemonculus with liquifier

4x trueborn with 4x blasters in a venom with extra splinter cannon
4x trueborn with 4x blasters in a venom with extra splinter cannon
4x trueborn with 4x blasters in a venom with extra splinter cannon

5x wracks with liquifier in raider
5x wracks with liquifier in raider
5x wracks with liquifier in raider
5x wracks with liquifier in raider

3x reavers with heat lance

ravager with flickerfield
ravager with flickerfield
ravager with flickerfield

IG 1500

CCS 3x melta chimera HHF

veterans 3x plasma chimera HHF
veterans 3x plasma chimera HHF
veterans 3x melta chimera HHF

vendetta
vendetta
vendetta

manticore HHF
manticore HHF
manticore HHF

I won the roll and used that advantage to pick the side with the tighter objective spread and deployed everything on the table. Manimal wisely reserved out his army.

A note on Vect. I have said that I like Vect, scratch that. I hate him now. He fights well, but the rule I liked him for was the seize the inititive on a 4+. We faked that roll to see if he would have successfully siezed, and he wouldn't have. Deploying on-table, and not getting frst turn is a pretty bad thing to happen to dark eldar. Lets just say that its very bad. Keeping the chance of that happening at 8% is the wise thing to do. So paying the massive amount of points for Vect does not seem wise to me, unless you went for some kind of resilient dark eldar list. The Baron wouldn't have helped this particular roll either. The barons rule is ok, it slightly helps going first, and his other rules makes one hellion unit 'playable'. You have to really want the hellion unit, and at 1500 points a speedy, survivable yet expensive troops choice isn't worth giving up tank hunting.

Ok, so here is how I deployed, and my first two turns of movement.




Some notes here. Ordinarily, I would have taken advantage of a scout move and two turns of moving to redeploy my vendettas. That move was taken away from me by the FRIGHTENING range from off table by trueborn. A unit of trueborn coming off-table has a 32" threat range. That kept me pinned in my back 16" until some DE arrivals happened and I can use my smoke.

On the bottom of turn 2, Manimal got some favorable reserves to turn up. Here they come....




He got 2 of 3 ravagers, 2 of 3 trueborn/venom packages, the reavers, one wrack/radier package, and the wrack/raider/haemonculous package.

He noticed that I had respected his trueborn, and so he went flat out with the two venoms, the raiders moved on 12" as did the ravagers.

Check out those reavers! That was there on table move, unbelievable! 36" turbo boost might have been difficult to quantify for some of you guys. Its sick. He is threatening all three of my vendettas next turn, and he has severely restricted the multi-lasers I can put on him with both range and LOS with that move.

Manimal matched his excellent reserves rolling with some pretty below average shooting. He went after the vendettas that had flying in very tight circles to confuse their targetting (cheesy 4+ cover) He immobilized one and shook one other along with a weapon destroyed result. He had one look at side armor on the CCS chimera and managed only to shake it.

TOP OF 3

Ok, now I've got my strategy to create. Unfortunately, although a high priority, I don't have the tools I need to take out those reavers. It was far too early for any real movement, I didn't take a picture of my shift. The manticores and their screening chimeras merely rotated to face the lances, and one troop chimera carrying meltagun vets shifted over to take a potentially lucky shot at the reavers.

I did my best with manticore shells and the one vendetta, immobilizing an already scoring raider, and weapon destoying a ravager. I also managed to weapon destroy a venom and crew stun both venoms with stationary plasma guns. And most importantly to me, I killed a reaver with a couple multi-laser shots. Did he fail his morale? No.

BOTTOM OF 3

In came the third trueborn/venom package another wrack/raider and the third ravager. The venom went flat out to join up to the other two stunned venoms, the third ravager came on in the centerish of Manimals long edge, and the wracks were allocated to the extreme objective corner, that isn't heavily pictured until later. In the regular moves, this happened...




Here come the Trueborn. They raised their blasters with lithe grace, took careful aim, and failed to wreck any chimeras! No wrecks means no tokens, and no tokens means, hot burny death awaits. His dark lances took a second consecutive turn off, and he even missed with his heat lance. Its good that his reserves went well, because the door is wide open for me to take a few steps out of the dark eldar trap. I think he managed to wreck a vendetta, and weapon destroy a chimera and stun another one.

TOP OF 4

Ok, the first of two armored thrusts happens right now, the manticores wheel around the stunned chimera and prepare to lay out some souffle, the mobile but flamerless chimera moves up as well, prepping an objective block move next turn. The CCS chimera shifts over to help on the reavers alongside the untouched IG chimera. The shaken vendetta takes evasive maneuvers for its cover save, and the immbolized vendetta just waits its doom.

I laid out the teardrops and killed 3 of 4 trueborn in one unit, and 2 of 4 in the other, embarked plasma was able to wreck the newly arrived venom, and the flamerless chimera killed one of the passengers. I used the CCS to kill the 4th trueborn, and two multi-lasers were able to take out the now, 4+ cover having reavers. The 2 remaining trueborns passed their morale, but the new unit of 4 failed morale and hopped back 10".

BOTTOM OF 4

Manimal was happy to see that he had two trueborns deep in my lines, albeit untokened. He knew that my mobile vendetta was priority number one, but I decided to get stupid hot on cover saves, he could only manage to stun it, which was downgraded to a shaken. He had to throw every lance to get even that, the only other shooting was the two trueborns who comically failed to pen armor 10, were yet again denied feel no pain, and destined to die on the next turn.

TOP OF 5

Go, Go, Go!





My moves were the best combination of contesting denial, ability to fire, and contesting that I could dream up. I had two, he had one, that was a turn from being overrun, but we both had enough firepower to change that score. At this point I was in 40k heaven, a tight game that is going to go down to the last turn. I tank shock past the trueborn, who pass their test and one decided to get brave, glory was not his, which just left death. Someone shot out of a firepoint to finish off his buddy, my CCS did a deadly drive-by on an empty venom that was angling to contest my center (and most important) objective. Various and sundry plasma and multi-laser wrecked another venom and immobilized two raiders. There was a loose Raider on my far right flank, which is TROUBLE. But I'm out of shooting, so we'll just have to look at the dice and see what happens.

BOTTOM OF 5

Manimal and I both knew what the deal was. He MUST kill the vendetta, then he MUST contest one of my objectives, then, well, the game has got to end.




And this time, thats exactly what happened.

I had a great fun game, I took a loss, but I'll take something close like that any day over rolling over someone.

Since the DE book is new, I'm gonna share my thought on the units.

Haemonculous - Absolutely! Not only does he actually give dark eldar the vital 'resilient troop' that they have needed since 5th ed came out, but he has other flexibility as well. In this particular game, he should have begun joined to one of the trueborn. FNP would have been worth splitting liguifiers.

trueborn - No one should be having any trouble seeing how pro this unit is. The threat of a 12" move, 2" debark and 18" blaster shot, and then having them pick up FNP if that blaster shot hits paydirt. At 1500 I insist that 3x3 would be a starting off point.

wracks - It wasn't mentioned in the batrep, but I laid out a flamer flush over 4 wracks when I did my big turn 5 push. The reason it wasn't mentioned is that it only wounded 2 wracks, and only one failed FNP. Consider this unit to be the "missing link" to tournament success with dark eldar. Giving them access to an excellent flamer solidifies their 'best troop' status IMO.

raider - well, the venom is better, unless you are short anti-tank. You can't count on a mere three ravagers, especially in larger points size games. They don't suck, and you'll end up with a few of these just to shore up anti-tank.

venom - Astute readers might notice that at no point in the short game did I ever deploy a single infantry model, Through some twisted warped probability I lost a game without a single chimera being wrecked. I didn't need to see them in action for me to know that dark eldar need some consistent LONG RANGE anti-infantry firepower. Venoms deliver. As soon as I was comfortable with my anti-tank, I'd take venoms and nothing else.

reavers - This is how good those reavers were. Manimal has already decided to drop one trueborn from each unit in order to add a second reaver unit. And I wholeheartedly agree with him. Even with them whiffing, and even with Manimal being way below odds on the two rounds of cover saves they took, I was truly intimidated by them. They had no opprotunities to use their slave snares n account of me never having an infantry unit in play, yet just as a dirt cheap and insanely speedy meltagun, they are worth it.

ravagers - Well, they didn't get more expensive, they GAINED 12" move and fire all weapons, and gained access to a flickerfield. Res Ipsa Loquitur.

Just because I am raving about all of the units Manimal fielded doesn't mean there isn't plenty of fail in the book. That's ok as far as I'm concerned, their seems to be ample units with which to have a fun and competitive game against. I certainly didn't have any complaints about the fun I was having as their opponent.

Thanks for reading and comment away!

Just one thing, Pain Points are only gained from killing NON-VEHICLE units. So alittle worse on that part.

It struck me that you both tooled with each others lists in mind. I'd be more interested to see how two Guard and DE all comers lists would fare against each other.

Nice batrep though.

Thanks for the reports! I'm trying to help my one friend with his dark eldar army, however I disagree on one point.

Vect's 4+ seize roll. Not because you have a better chance to get first because truth be told if I had vect in that army and you deployed the way did I would certainly just reserve regardless. The reason to take him is if you bring a true alpha strike army. An army like the one I've been thinking of (3 ravagers 3X3 true born 8 venoms vect incubi and dais) then who will honestly deploy and act like they have first turn if that army has the ability to seize on a 4+? I mean if I had guard and even if I won the roll for first against that army I would certainly seriously consider about reserving instead of taking it just in case. That kind of impact on a game is enormous.

zeekill wrote:Just one thing, Pain Points are only gained from killing NON-VEHICLE units. So alittle worse on that part.

Correct, vehicles do not give Pain Tokens.

Ketara wrote:It struck me that you both tooled with each others lists in mind. I'd be more interested to see how two Guard and DE all comers lists would fare against each other.

I don't know where you are getting that.

As I stated in the beginning, that has been my 1500 IG tourney list for over a year. The dark eldar player created his list keeping in mind the powerful lists in the current metagame. Dark lances are excellent at killing tyranid monstrous creatures, ork nobs, land raiders, and lighter armored vehicles, he had 3 venoms which had almost no purpose against IG, same with the 5 liquifiers in the list. If I wanted to tool for DE, I could just grin and take 3x2 hydras. That would have been a very short game.

We both were mechanized, and we both had a lot of anti-tank. Thats not really keying on each others lists... its just what 40k is this edition. I would not recommend a "DE all comers" list, if 'all comers' can be defined as not as much tank kill, or many expensive infantry models that don't have special weapons.

@yermom. I think you see what I'm talking about, and I get your point. If being deployed on-table and not getting first turn is devastating... then you'll want to reserve and then you lose a really cool rule that you paid a pretty penny for. But as you are pointing out, you don't always play against IG/space wolves. Sometimes its blood angels/orks/nids and going first would be worth the risk. I think we can both agree that shoehorning him into a 1500 point game is next to impossible. The 60 point haemonculous allows for much more wiggle. I should probably revise my blanket statement about Vect to that end.

Agreed at 1500 you can do much much better than vect but around 1850 or 2000 he certainly can have a place.

Sounds like if manimal had better rolls for shooting it wouldn't have been close at all. A note - you can't fly skimmers around in circles for the cover save. All in all this was definitely a very exciting and insightful batrep. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the Battle Report Shep. Only thing I gotta ask is "where is the terrain"? Were those few hills and trees it? Almost looks like a 7th ed Fantasy table...

Very nice report Shep. I like Manimals list and I think most successful 2k lists are going to be a blend of Wracks and Wyches as troops as these 2 units compliment each other amazingly well. I've been toying with the idea of 3x3 Blaster Trueborns in Venoms and so far am really liking the idea. A little more LOS blocking terrain would have made it more interesting but it's still a solid showing for the list.

I'm not sold on 3-man Reaver squads as I don't think 78pts for a st6 melta lance is a good investment but then again......I do run 5 man horror units with a single bolt so maybe.....Anyway, thanks for the awesome report. Good to see a test run of the DE

Pretty good report. I think a bit better rolling on either side would have turned the tide substantially; but thems the breaks. I would have probably suggest the IG start off the board and give DE the first go as well; that way you respond to whatever he does rather than get responded to (which is what DE is well known for!)

Thanks guys....

First a quick one on the rules. There is no stipulation in the rules for flat out movement that you ended a certain distance from where you began. On page 63 there is a note about vehicle movement as it pertains to assaults, but in true RAW fashion, that note can only apply to the section its in. In the movement section, vehicles can move, turn any number of degrees then move, then turn. Manimal is a good friend of mine and a fellow rules junkie. I made the 12" forward, 12" back moves with his blessing, and I use the move, legally as far as I'm concerned, against tourney regulars often. However, I don't foist that move onto players I haven't met before and I respect an interpretation that spread the spirit of page 63 to the rest of the book.

tl;dr - I wouldn't use that trick against you without asking for your interpretation of that rule. If it didn't align with mine, I'd respect that.


On terrain, I just pointed Manimal towards my terrain bin as I pulled out my IG models. It was certainly too light. My standard set includes 3 mid sized cities of death ruins along with all that you saw there. So your eyes weren't deceiving you. We were too excited to get the game rolling to notice. And coincidentally, it had no game impact really. We both either brought our own cover, had 5++ on vehicles or moved fast enough to get cover in the open. And neither of us were penalized for the open lanes of LOS. But yeah, not enough terrain, just didn't really matter in this shootout.

On the rolling....

I've got this philosophy on rolling that keeps me and my friends that subscribe to the same philosophy very Zen about dice.

If a game is decided by dice, then it was a very closely fought contest, and both sides played well enough to deserve a win. Or both sides played poorly enough to deserve a loss. Consider army construction and army selection an extension of 'playing well' and this philosophy becomes nearly impossible to refute. Next time you think the dice robbed you, and the person you were playing against was a scrub and he'd never beat you in a million years, re-evaluate your opponents skill, and maybe your own Thinking like that has made 40k a very stress free passtime.

I've always got an eye on expected results, and so I'm always aware of when events don't line up with them.

Manimal rolled notably well for his reserve rolls.
Manimal rolled poorly in round two shooting.
I rolled below average in round three shooting.
Manimal rolled poorly in round three shooting.
I rolled poorly in round four shooting.
The game ended on turn 5, favoring Manimal considerably.

It seems to me that everything was pretty evened out. I never had an exceptionally devastating turn, because I was heavily shaken and stunned, and there was a lot of movement required of me to contest objectives. He got a NASTY amount of reserves, rolled like crap, and then the game ended on the turn he needed it to.

The luck came in groupings (which it tends to do) but I didn't feel like the table was tilted one way or the other.

@Hulksmash. I'm already having conversations in PMs about wyches with other DE players. Talk to us about why you like them please. I'm just not seeing anything desirable there.

Wow, very interesting to see this so early. I am personally a little demoralised to see that someone has already had a sit down and thought about the way to play DE competitively, and it evens out to "X units (about a quarter of the available options) are clearly the best, so 3 of this HS, 3 of this elite, this HQ and as many of these troops as possibly is clearly the best army!". I'd kind of hoped that the new codex would have several different themed options roughly equal in power.

I know anyone would have guessed that the best new armies would be loads of squads with special weapons in transports (that's the MO for most other successful modern-codex armies) but, again, I'd hoped that things would be a bit different. The DE army here seems just like IG, special weapon squads all over and a few long range units (is it me or are ravagers almost exactly the same as vendettas, trading mobility and a lower profile for armour and better accuracy?). Can't say anything without reading the codex, points costs and all though.

Just keep in mind that manimal and I dissected the codex and called out the best units based on our own style of tourney play. Things need to have multi-purpose, be simpe to use to make games play quickly and be able to tackle overly mechanized 'all vehicle' lists.

There are a few units we discussed that didn't have a place in that type of army, but that we thought had potential. For example

both flyers have strengths and are in my mind appropriately costed.

Beastmaster units can be built in very techy ways, (couple guys who get better as they take wounds, couple guys with good invulnerable saves, and the rest shreddy, wound allocation tricks galore there, and the beast speed is great.

baron and a unit of hellions - stealth, skilled rider and likely fnp along with a devastating amount of poison shooting, and a troop to boot.

vect and the dais - in larger games it can be quite fantastic.

Incubi - at the right spot on the table, at the right turn, it doesn't really get more devastating than this.

The units I didn't list I feel aren't really something I'd run, but hopefully those units I just listed can expand the units to look at.

Also, plenty of people are hot on wyches right now, I'm asking around for some explanations of why they like them. It might be that they have a place alongside wracks in some army types. I just can't get on board of something so mono-purposed, I see too many vehicles, and min sized infantry units to imagine some kind of grand melee in the middle of the table springing up. But thats just the scene I'm in. YMMV of course.

Nice to see the DE in action already. A solid showing for a first game.

Nice report Shep!

I've been playing some test games at 2k points and I think I'm coming to many of the same conclusions you guys seem to be.

Haemonculi are great. I don't know that I'd take another HQ except maybe the Baron. I like Vect's rules, but he is so expensive. For me, the jury is still out on him. I'm going to give him a try soon though.

I've been really impressed with the Trueborn + Venom package as well. I've been running 2 units of 4 Trueborn with Blasters and Venoms because I really like the Incubi. They just give DE that extra punch in combat and really if they hit the right spot at the right time can break an opposing army's back. They're an expensive unit though, and since they're sometimes tricky to use (They're not a unit you just want to roll up and get stuck in) I've been considering swapping them for another unit of Trueborn.

I've also been very impressed with Reavers. Heat Lances seem great, and once the enemy is forced from their transports their drive-by attacks can come in handy. They're silly fast and come really cheap on points, which also gives them good flexibility. Great unit.

I haven't given the Wracks a try yet, but I definitely see the merit in them. I've been playing Warriors/Blasters/Raiders as my troops so far and the poison weapons have been pretty good. Liquifiers are fantastic though, I will give them a shot in my next game.

I liked the fliers but I just can't see them ever really replacing the incredibly points-efficient Ravagers. The first things I seem to be putting in all of my DE lists are 2 units of trueborn and 3 Ravagers. Moving 12" and firing all 3 Dark Lances is REALLY good, and can be super helpful at nipping into the side armor of things like Chimeras/Battlewagons/Predators.

Also, plenty of people are hot on wyches right now, I'm asking around for some explanations of why they like them. It might be that they have a place alongside wracks in some army types. I just can't get on board of something so mono-purposed, I see too many vehicles, and min sized infantry units to imagine some kind of grand melee in the middle of the table springing up. But thats just the scene I'm in. YMMV of course.

I'd venture a guess that its the decent HTH ability coupled with the cheap option for haywire grenades. Those things can be pretty handy -- 10 wyches multi assault a parking lot and have a good chance of at least shaking 2-3 tanks. That's not trivial for a unit that's 120 points + the raider you'll be taking anyway.

They are also no joke against the various 3++ and a fist units that are the rage. The single TWCs or lone wolves would rape a wrack unit but get taken down pretty handily by wyches.

Pretty much what my PM to Shep covered Winterman. I totally agree. At 2k I think Wrack/Wyche combos are the way to go with troops.

I agree with the comment above that DE can be played a lot like mech IG, albeit they are much faster and much more fragile, but if their insane potential for shooting works out then I don't think the paper airplane aspect of the army is that bad.

Has anyone considered running small squads of Warriors in Venoms as opposed to the Trueborn? Sure they cannot generate as much long range shooting but they cost a bit less and you keep your Elite slots free for other good units you'll need to flesh out the army. I am kind of liking the elite version of Wyches since they can pack more special weapons and you can field nine so there is room for another character like Lelith if you want to get more choppy and stick them all in a raider. You only really need one unit of Wyches to tarpit

both armies looked good. Great report

Nice battle me thinks
how can you have so manticores

death-2-curtains wrote:Nice battle me thinks
how can you have so manticores

Manitocres are Heavy Support...

So 3...

Nice Battle Report by the way. Love seeing Dark Eldar.

the only game i ever played against dark eldar with my blood pact traitor guard, lelith hesperex killed 2 infantry squads and a platoon commander before straken nailed her. that bitch took me from winning 6-2 on kill points to eventually losing 8-7. If i ever start de im certainly going to start a wych cult

The DE Codex looks like it is going to be nasty and give the Xenos a little something something to combat the marine armies! Beautiful Battle Report it really did have a storytellers edge to it!

Nice report.
Even the new DE have trouble taking down armour with their dark matter.
This is no surprise since cover saves can be almost everywhere and the new armor penetration table requires meltas to take down heavy tanks.

Ironic-- despite all the talk about the importance of going first, it looks like the DE won this largely on the basis of going second.

Fetterkey wrote:Ironic-- despite all the talk about the importance of going first, it looks like the DE won this largely on the basis of going second.

A VERY astute observation.

Going second isn't 100% bad. Unless you are on the table when it happens.

Full reserving has its own potential consequences. Like not rolling well on them showing up. But it is great to see that its quite easy for dark eldar to make lemonade out of not winning the roll to go first.

in my opinion going 2nd is always better because it means that the last moves in the game will be yours, allowing for last minute objective grabbing, picking off weak units, contesting etc

Nice report Shep and Manimal, this partially confirms my thoughts on DE: in good hands they will be a terror, in inexperienced hands they will be terrible....pretty much like the last time around! I like that though, makes for a nice change of pace.

Hmm Shep this is the one list of yours I don't like I think the wracks can be replaced by warriors, and one unit of trueborn dropped for something else. Then I'm sure you can win with any list you please.