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Woohoo!

Opportunity knocks for me. Jumped on eBay to see if there were any reasonably priced Codex Angels of Death.

Found one for £25.00 buy it now. And it’s not that melt selling coasters with the book art neither. It’s the actual, honest to goodness book.

A.T. wrote:

 aphyon wrote:
Well 20 or so jakero were good enough to deal with most armor, and a couple dozen assassins delivered via land raiders dealt with most infantry well enough. it was a surprisingly effective list.

Ah, guard heavy weapon squad equivalents but with backup heavy flamers. Probably too prone to getting mortared off the board turn 1 in 5e meta (Emperor help them against one of the old renegade guard artillery spam lists) but i'm not sure i'd want to be drop-podding into 700 points of reaction fire lascannon :p

Well especially since Inquisitor Coteaz has the "i knew you were coming" rule that inquisitors used to get from mystics in the demon hunters codex. he and his squad of jakero he joined will get to shoot you at full BS if any of your units arrive to close to him, before you get to do anything.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Woohoo!

Opportunity knocks for me. Jumped on eBay to see if there were any reasonably priced Codex Angels of Death.

Found one for £25.00 buy it now. And it’s not that melt selling coasters with the book art neither. It’s the actual, honest to goodness book.

Depends on the codex, most 3rd-5th codexes i see for about $10, but occasionally you will see the odd thing like the 4th ed black templar codex that goes for excessive amounts for some reason.

Tyranid 2nd edition codex on ebay are nuts in price right now. I think the only ones left are the £70-100 ones!

Thankfully I started collecting my 2nd Ed, erm, collection, just before the prices went mental.

Think I’ve just got Space Wolves and the Battles book to go now.

Odd question: does the demonic thing that uses the Defiler chassis have a cannon left over? I'm wanting to convert a Dogs of War cannon for my Beastmen army.

 Just Tony wrote:
Odd question: does the demonic thing that uses the Defiler chassis have a cannon left over? I'm wanting to convert a Dogs of War cannon for my Beastmen army.

The Soul Grinder?
I didn't even know they were the same box!

Same assets used for design, but so far as I’m aware, not the same parts?

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Odd question: does the demonic thing that uses the Defiler chassis have a cannon left over? I'm wanting to convert a Dogs of War cannon for my Beastmen army.

The Soul Grinder?
I didn't even know they were the same box!

They aren't the same box, but they share one sprue of parts (the legs bit).

Fantastic, so I get to source a different Chaos cannon barrel...

Codex Angels of Death arrived this afternoon.

Happiness!

Just picked up the errata edition of the third edition Dark Eldar codex along with a mint fresh copy of the Ork codex

 Just Tony wrote:
Just picked up the errata edition of the third edition Dark Eldar codex along with a mint fresh copy of the Ork codex

3e DE were short on units but not short on punch - sadly it was errated that no, you cannot assault 12" on a jetbike with combat drugs. Their strong troop units made them surprisingly effective in 5th.

They were every bit as effective in 3rd if you knew how to run them. The SECOND I saw my opponent was running Dark Lances on infantry models I knew I wasn't going to have issues fighting them.

I recall Dark Eldar early on were the skilled players glass cannon. Powerful and fragile, but had to be run a certain way and quite well to work.

It wasn't so much that they were underpowered, they just weren't built with every unit being generically good like marines can often end up being.

 Overread wrote:
I recall Dark Eldar early on were the skilled players glass cannon. Powerful and fragile, but had to be run a certain way and quite well to work.

It wasn't so much that they were underpowered, they just weren't built with every unit being generically good like marines can often end up being.

It was more that every unit wasn't as ubiquitous as Marine unit choices. Everything in the Dark Eldar army had a role, and were good at that role when utilized, but were grossly outclassed if used outside of that role. It took a developer's diary article from Gav Thorpe to really get people to use that army right. Marines were essentially on autopilot.

 Just Tony wrote:
It was more that every unit wasn't as ubiquitous as Marine unit choices. Everything in the Dark Eldar army had a role, and were good at that role when utilized, but were grossly outclassed if used outside of that role. It took a developer's diary article from Gav Thorpe to really get people to use that army right. Marines were essentially on autopilot.

Was that online, in white dwarf or chapter approved?

My limited playtime with them tended to be more hammer than finesse - dozens of dark lances and disintegrators and then adding CC hitters past a certain points level. Never found much use for warp beasts, hellions, mandrakes, scourges, or most of the named characters.

It was a Chapter Approved article that ran in White Dwarf, but I'm not sure if it was reprinted in one of the Chapter Approved volumes. As soon as I can lay hands on it again, I will provide you with the specific source issue.

And it's funny that the most successful 3rd Ed. lists I saw used all of those non-named character units you listed except for the Hellions. And Dark Lance squads had to stand still, which was the LAST thing you wanted to do with Dark Eldar.

 Just Tony wrote:
And it's funny that the most successful 3rd Ed. lists I saw used all of those non-named character units you listed except for the Hellions. And Dark Lance squads had to stand still, which was the LAST thing you wanted to do with Dark Eldar.

Perhaps an edition thing. In 5e having two lances and bodies in cover on/near an objective was ideal, similarly without 4 editions glancing-only skimmers rule there was no reason to keep throwing the small raider units around the board.

Warp beasts had an agoniser but zero durability and no frags, Mandrakes had no teeth at all, and Scourge can't justify their weapon costs making them a very dubious use of a heavy weapon slot IMO.

A.T. wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
And it's funny that the most successful 3rd Ed. lists I saw used all of those non-named character units you listed except for the Hellions. And Dark Lance squads had to stand still, which was the LAST thing you wanted to do with Dark Eldar.

Perhaps an edition thing. In 5e having two lances and bodies in cover on/near an objective was ideal, similarly without 4 editions glancing-only skimmers rule there was no reason to keep throwing the small raider units around the board.

Warp beasts had an agoniser but zero durability and no frags, Mandrakes had no teeth at all, and Scourge can't justify their weapon costs making them a very dubious use of a heavy weapon slot IMO.

Showcasing exactly why, when given the chance to go retro instead of staying current, I went to third instead of fifth.

 Just Tony wrote:
Showcasing exactly why, when given the chance to go retro instead of staying current, I went to third instead of fifth.

'Glancing hits only' is something of a mixed bag.

Considering that the only meaningful difference between Eldar in 4e and Eldar in 5e was that one rule and it changed their codex from top shelf to one of the weakest overnight. Fortunately it's not as much of a crutch for DE who benefitted less and did perfectly well without it.


3e rules or not warp beasts still had no durability, mandrakes still had no teeth, and scourge were still paying 36 points per model for a pair of stormbolters in a heavy support slot :p

Dark Eldar were a really odd fish in 3rd Ed.

Fragile, but pretty nippy. But that nippiness also prevented your main anti-tank from firing. Because screw you, I guess.

Wyches without their Invulnerable saves just felt utterly pointless. Even against a 4+, they struggled to get their many attacks to actually do anything, outside of dreadful save rolls for your opponent. And in return you went splat to a stiff breeze and harsh language.

They were very good against Wraithlord spam though, as massed Splinter Rifle fire soon dropped those T8 lumps of boredom.

Mandrakes had that really cool rule. But once they popped up? Just….couldnt do anything. Pathetic shooting, pretty weedy in close combat. And again stiff breeze and harsh language would see them off.

Grotesques were interesting too. But the models were bloody awful, and again other than “surprisingly tough. Against shooting” they just didn’t really do anything, as once in HTH I was able to wound them normally. And they were crap in HTH.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wyches without their Invulnerable saves just felt utterly pointless. Even against a 4+, they struggled to get their many attacks to actually do anything, outside of dreadful save rolls for your opponent. And in return you went splat to a stiff breeze and harsh language.

All the durability was reliant on getting into melee - hit first, kicked down to WS2, losing bonus attacks and facing a 4++. So many DE units felt like agoniser / character delivery platforms.

And the wyches were packing blasters for chump change, which was nice.

When they first came out, they didn’t have the 4+ Invulnerable in combat. Can’t remember exactly when they gained that though.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
When they first came out, they didn’t have the 4+ Invulnerable in combat. Can’t remember exactly when they gained that though.

Chapter approved 2003, it was one of the changes for the updated 3.5 codex along with the new wych weapons that crippled the unit they were fighting - at the cost of making the wyches more expensive and no better protected against shooting.

A.T. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
When they first came out, they didn’t have the 4+ Invulnerable in combat. Can’t remember exactly when they gained that though.

Chapter approved 2003, it was one of the changes for the updated 3.5 codex along with the new wych weapons that crippled the unit they were fighting - at the cost of making the wyches more expensive and no better protected against shooting.

That's what Raiders or Webways were for. Also, there's a lot of talk about how ineffective strength 3 units were in combat. I argue that they were only really at a disadvantage against Marines or Marines equivalents and absolutely decimated armies like Guard, Eldar, or Tau. Tyranids and Orks were an exception to this as their swarm nature kind of played havoc on your low numbers as a Dark Eldar player. More often than not, you wound up playing avoidance against these armies.

I think I’m gonna do a separate thread for why I loathe 3rd Ed so much, as I think I need to go on a rampage about it, and don’t want to derail.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think I’m gonna do a separate thread for why I loathe 3rd Ed so much, as I think I need to go on a rampage about it, and don’t want to derail.

LOL
well it had it's problems, but as you played through the editions you could see the gradual improvements the design team made through 4th and 5th.

removing guess range weapons and being able to fire and move with ordinance weapons was a huge improvement for example post 3rd.

When were sonic weapons introduced? There's no mention of them in the Emperor's Children list in Slaves to Darkness and the little army booklet you got with the 2nd edition box mentions that if you don't have the rules for sonic weapons you just treat your noise marines as if they had storm bolters.

So they seem to have been introduced somewhere at the tail end of RT or at the very beginning of 2nd ed, but where and how? WD? Citadel Journal?

I know for a fact they were a thing in 3rd ed for noise marines/slaneesh marked chaos marines, can't say as far as 2nd is concerned.

WD 144