Sorry about this but I though this should go into tactics despite the battle report in the middle of it as I am asking for tactical advice.

Well this Friday I went up against Dark Eldar for the first time. I was using my trusty space wolves. So anyway I was up against this guy in an annihilation dawn of war match. I started with my 5 long fangs, 2 rune priests and 10 grey hunters on the field with lots of terrain about. in reserve I had 5 wolf guard (in terminator armour, thunder hammers and storm shields) and my 15 blood claws (1 power weapon). anyway the battle was a blood bath. By my opponent's end of turn 2 (he went first) I had 3 men left, 3 MEN!!! these consisted of my rune priests (now with one on one wound) and 1 long fang with missile launcher. Luckily all my reserves turned up on my turn 2. The bloodclaws died in the next turn bringing my casualties to 29 in 3 turns whilst his casualties amounted to 2 jetbikes and 3 warriors (I failed counter-charge roll). The game ended on turn seven with me having one model left alive, a lone terminator who with his squad caused more casualties than the rest of the army combined.

So here is my question how is it possible for MEQs to beat them. I mean seriously 7 AP2 weapons. 4 of them were blasts. so yeah how do you beat that type of army?

Well if was Dawn of War deployment you couldn't have your long fangs on the board, and turn 1 is night fighting so unless he rolled 10-12's on all his night fighting checks i don't see how he could beat this so quickly.

As i'm sure you're aware of now he can throw 9 plasma cannons at you, at 3 separate squads no less. I'd like to see his list if you don't mind putting it up.

You didn't have rhinos? Sure, they might die (though to be honest DE aren't all that hot at killing mass-mech as they are at killing 2-3 heavy vehicles), but they're ablative shells around your crunchy marines.

I think it was dawn of war can't remember the right one. was basically all troops allowed (I probably got the scenario name wrong sorry) and no I didn't have rhinos they had 2 transports and a gunship thing and I didn't see a reason to pay for a transport considering they had arrived disembarked on either their turn 2 or turn 3. They had also got 3 lance things that were killing marines on 2+ so not sure how much help a rhino would have been anyway.

Dark Eldar are Super Mean, and while I agree they need a new Codex, the thought of them getting one scares me because of the trend of making transports cheaper, and the Raider Spam being such a powerful tactic already.

Transports are pretty well mandatory in the current gaming environment. Think of it this way, you go first as Space Wolves and start to run up, you move on average 9.5" each time you run and any terrain will slow you to an average of 7" a turn. When you have a Rhino you move 12" and are immune to any shooting without a strength of 5 or more to your vehicles front and sides, you also potentially have the ability to make a vehicle with multiple weapons waste shoots on overkilling a transport. What's even better is the your transports can be made very hard to kill by using the smoke launchers to give them a 4+ cover save.

Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

I'd love to see an actual full battle report on this...

I sense that there would be epic lulz from that.

They are dangerous.

However, we recently played a doubles tournament.
My buddy and me played Eldar facing two brothers with DE.
These guys rolled so bad that we wiped them out during a few rounds. Ouch!

Like many other vehicle based lists if you can down a few raiders early on you stand to win the game. I'd rather face DE than Guard, well built SM, and Eldar.

Well, DE are in trouble if they go second and the enemy has TLOS to the Raiders and Ravagers.
The enemy can eventually pop these paper-thin skimmers with ease.

When DE wasn't vehicle mounted (he was putting them together) the way I beat him was to use bikes turbo boosting and assault squad. He didn't use witches. He's changed his tactics now. I'm not sure how to win vs them now. I just know dismounted warriors with a few support unitts.

I think one of my biggest problems was that none of my heavy weapons hit and living lightning failed to do anything. And from what I have seen so far in these replies (thanks for so many but please don't make fun of me it's the first time I have ever seen Dark Eldar used) I need to use more tanks I guess.

Sorry to ask a basic question but...Were you using the terrain? You mentioned that there was lots of terrain, which should have made getting cover saves very easy, thereby negating his his ap2 weapons. Sounds like it was a smaller point level game, which is great for the DE since they can easily field good cheap units and have a very tough army at 1000ish points.

DE are very fast moving so they can hit part of your army with their entire force. But their army is flying around in cardboard armored transports so even one bad turn of incoming fire for them can be very bad indeed.

Dark eldar are a very sharp army but they tend to be brittle. The first time you face them its easy to not key in on their strengths and weaknesses so think of this game as a learning experience.


Sliggoth

The best weapon you can bring against DE are Bolters, Bolters, and more Bolters. 95% of their army has a 5+ or worse save, and even bolters can pop their open topped AV 10 transports. Then all you have are Wyches (die even easier than guardsmen) or Warriors (guardians with better guns).

unfortunately 4 of the 7 AP2 weapons were blasts and I couldn't get to the cover as fast as them which caused 8 grey hunters to die on turn 1 and the remaining 2 on turn 2 after one on them passed my one and only cover save. as for the bolters I did bring a decent amount. Most of the bolters died in turn one (grey hunters) and then the rest of the grey hunters and my 2 heavy bolter long fangs went down turn 2. I have however bought some more terminators as that is what didn't die within the first few turns and got most of my kills and kill points. I was thinking 3 more hammers and one assault cannon for some heavy fire on deep strike.

As a dark eldar player I will say the following, dawn of war is our best friend. It is the single best mission type available for us as it neutralizes many of our disadvantages and greatly compliments our advantages. Also like 99% of players have don't really know what DE do. Its through no fault of your own though few people play them.


1) It pretty much garruntee's that we get alpha strike against you.
2) you guns can't hit us at range and when combined with nightshields makes it even worse.
3) the DE player can easily focus all of his fire on a small portion of your army.

To defeat them here are are some options
1) reserve everything yourself
2) Heavy bolters ruin DE's day a few attack bikes make mincemeat of raiders
3) concetrate on the ravagers
4) Deep striking
5) Meltas are worthless

Hope this helps

rowan341 wrote:unfortunately 4 of the 7 AP2 weapons were blasts and I couldn't get to the cover as fast as them which caused 8 grey hunters to die on turn 1 and the remaining 2 on turn 2 after one on them passed my one and only cover save.

Were you in or behind cover from the unit firing the small blast markers? If you were, you DO get cover saves. If you didn't start in cover, knowing he was going first, well, now you know better.

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

QFT.

How come no one runs this kind of stuff against me? :(

And I'm REALLY looking forward to all my 12/10/10 open-topped raiders. At least I'll be able to shrug off scatter lasers.

slighty OT where did you hear that raiders are gonna be 12/10/10 that would be just amazing.

dumplingman wrote:slighty OT where did you hear that raiders are gonna be 12/10/10 that would be just amazing.

*sings* I heard it through the grapevine...yea-a-ah....ohhhh, I heard it through the grapevine! Sonny sonny!"

awesome!

Nice thought, but I doubt they'll give them AV12 on anything bar Vect's Trolley o' Doom. Maybe some sort of Holofield-type nonsense, but high AV is not a Eldar of any flavour trait.

Miraclefish wrote:Nice thought, but I doubt they'll give them AV12 on anything bar Vect's Trolley o' Doom. Maybe some sort of Holofield-type nonsense, but high AV is not a Eldar of any flavour trait.

Say what? Wave serpents are 12/12/10 plus they drop weapon damage and reduce melta pen. If the DE get something along these lines along with night shields we could all be in for a world of hurt.

Barring that, leave the transports the same but give everything outflank and grant Dracytes a +1 reserve roll power. Helllllloooooooooo side armor.

rowan341 wrote:So here is my question how is it possible for MEQs to beat them. I mean seriously 7 AP2 weapons. 4 of them were blasts. so yeah how do you beat that type of army?

Only 3 lances and one Ravager? He was playing a soft list.

For Space Marines in general the best tool against DE is probably the Heavy Bolter. Affordable, good range, and multi shot. It's a great tool for ripping apart Raiders. Another solid option is the ever afordable Missile Launcher - good range, high strength. Solid. Razorbacks are another excellent option, as Marines can spam them (especially Space Pups) to a level that shames even the DE Raider spam. Razorbacks with really any of their weapon loadouts are bad news for DE in any particular number. Probably the best tool Wolves have is Long Fang packs (splitting fire to launch 2 missiles each at two different targets) and Living Lightning. The best way to negate the Ravager (the templates) is, as said, stay inside vehicles so he can't drop them on you.

Your worst plans vs. DE are as follows; being outside vehicles, expensive special/heavy weapons (plasma, melta, overkill and more then you need and usually single shot), being outside of vehicles, Terminators (just slow and vulnerable to far too many DE tricks), being outside of vehicles, believing the Space Marine Codex has anything that can outfight DE assault options, being outside of vehicles, believing that Space Wolves are better in h2h then the DE, oh, and probably being outside of vehicles.

The DE are faster then you, and a smart general will mostly be able to pick the fights he wants to pick. Your primary job is to deny him his vehicles (which are where a lot of his speed comes from) and basically try to prevent him from setting the pace of the battle. You do not want to play a reactionary fight versus DE.

Wow this thread really has had a lot of attention (for my standards). Ok so thank you for your help everyone.
@ Thor665: As I mentioned This was my first time having seen DE used and as such didn't know their close combat ability and thus found out the hard way (15 bloodclaws gone in a turn(also I am used to eating eldar for breakfast in close combat and so wasn't sure how dark eldar would respond to me trying). I found that my wolf guard with hammers and shields were the only unit in my army that managed to do anything (they got me all the 3 killpoints I ended with). As for thelongfangs and living lightning both my runepriests had living lightning but both failed to do anything using it and a similar thing happened with my long fangs killing 3 out of 8 or 10 (can't remember which) bikers and failing to touch anything else.
@ don_mondo: I had about half the hunters in cover and the templates scattered from the ones outside cover (not sure how that effects cover so I didn't take saves)
@ dumplingman: unfortunately due to the ammount of terrain on the board I never got a shot at the ravager he had using my long fangs or rune priests as it managed to stay hidden behind a tall building blocking line of sight entirely.
@ Sliggoth: The terrain was almost exclusively games workshop buildings (there were also some useless hulls and sone oversized and pointless trees that didn't really do anything to line of sight. The problem with the terrain was that I couldn't get to the bulk of it as fast as him so he just moved past it and there was no way I'd have got there in time.

Listen to the Dark Eldar god; he types among us....

sorry if I seemed rude there Thor, but I felt like I was being accused of having done something that I had no way of knowing not to do. You have my humble apologies. Thank you for the advice and I will be trying to get my hands on a large number of missile launchers I think as I do not have the money for more tanks at the moment. Another question that springs to mind is who should I put in my only rhino as I have not bothered with them in the past seeing them as mobile cover for my troops if I need it. Another question that springs to mind is who should I put in my only rhino as I have not bothered with them in the past seeing them as mobile cover for my troops if I need it.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

QFT.

How come no one runs this kind of stuff against me? :(

And I'm REALLY looking forward to all my 12/10/10 open-topped raiders. At least I'll be able to shrug off scatter lasers.

You forgot about Scout USR on all raiders.... I am going to love me some first turn assaults and outflanking!

rowan341 wrote:sorry if I seemed rude there Thor, but I felt like I was being accused of having done something that I had no way of knowing not to do.

No worries, I actually never thought you were rude so no apology is needed. I also don't think you'd ever claimed before my post that you'd tried engaging the DE in h2h so my advice was simply meant to educate you about what you should and should not be trying.

Another question that springs to mind is who should I put in my only rhino as I have not bothered with them in the past seeing them as mobile cover for my troops if I need it.

I think you need to post your list before this question can be seriously answered. With Wolves I usually use Rhinos much as I do with Vanilla, and that's as pillboxes for my Troop selections. A Grey Hunter Pack can camp in it (reasonably) safely and fire a little bit as they wait to snag objectives.

Clthomps wrote:You forgot about Scout USR on all raiders.... I am going to love me some first turn assaults and outflanking!

Wait, DE, the space raider/pirate/ambush guys, with the actual ability to Outflank? I don't see that as likely to happen.

Dark Eldar are an army I have played for and against, and they are either brutally effective or just break depending on particular list match up and a little luck.
Everything you need to know has basically been covered here, bolters, cheap Razorbacks, They really don't like drop pod armies if they end up going first, as even a bolt pistol can shred a raider. So the only points I never saw covered by the wise dakkaites that came before me.

1) Assualt Warriors, shoot Wych Cult. Warriors are the same as guardians with different weapons loadouts. Wyches however are about the only assualt troop that can go toe to toe with genestealers if used right.

2) I have had a tremendous amount of luck with Land Speeders, fast to get close and pack weapons that will shred the raiders, even without upgrades. If you get the D Eldar out of the raiders, they wiether very quickly after a turn or two of basic fire.

Currently The is what I have

HQ:
lord in terminator armour, with storm bolter and frost blade/power weapon
lord or guard with runic armour, wolf claw and storm bolter
a rune priest

possible but not certain about the following
some orrigional space hulk termies including 2 librarians that I could probably use as runic but they aren't big enough for termie armour. the standard termies probably not going to be used as anything
I also have a few power weapon troops that I could probably use as extra priests.

I am also trying to decide on a pair of legs from the space wolf termie set to use for a Logan conversion. I lso have a forge world ven dred in construction for use as Bjorn. I will be armed with cc and a plasma cannon

Elites:
I have 5 termies with hammers and shields, 3 with lightning claw and shield and one with assault cannon and shield.
I have 12 marines armed with power weapons/plasma pistols or both I can use as a cheap wolf guard squad
I also have a dreadnought from the standard kit with interchangable arms.
And last I have a squad of 5 scouts with 1 Heavy Bolter and 3 bolters (sergent has pistol and sword)

Troops
28 blood claws including 2 power weapons and I appear to have 2 built torsos where the backpacks, arms and heads seem to have disappeared
23 grey hunters with 1 plasma and 2 flamers

Fast Attack
5 sky claws one with power fist

Heavy support
1 predator with twin-linked las and 2 heavy bolters
1 vindicator with dozer
5 long fangs with 2 heavy bolters and 3 missiles and a squad with any choice from his upgrade list due to excess power weapons and plasma pistols.

Transport
1 rhino

Super Heavy
1 Baneblade

I think that is every model I have for my wolves listed now.

You know you might have just had some bad luck. A fast moving, glass cannon army is a huge pain in the hiney if they steal the initiative. I’ve only played DE twice (and the first time was an eye opener!) so I can’t help much, but I do know if you focus on their transport s it’ll help keep you alive a bit longer. Also anything you can do to split up their forces is good times. I have a friend that plays DE, he always seem to focus fire his entire army at the most threatening units.

As an Eldar player, I haven't had many issues against Dark Eldar. Not sure if Dash plays against MEQ exclusively, but DE aren't that scary with a good number of high volume-of-fire weapons.

IG, Eldar, Tau...if played well shouldn't have a problem beating DE...no matter how good the player is(or in some cases, how good they say they are with their fake W-L records).

Number of units that can soak any kind of fire = 2. Dark Eldar can make a HQ choice that can soak some fire, and the speeding raiders are problematic for some lists. But, as I said before, massed fire deals with the raiders, and the HQ choice just needs some low-AP to remove the 3+ retinue, then lots of wounds to get around the 2+ shield if the HQ has it.

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If you're talking Dash's win/loss record - he has batreps up on this site chronicling his successes at some quite sizable events against a bunch of the players who post here regularly and have verified his winnings at those events.

IG, Eldar, and Tau are all pretty well setup to battle DE, with probably IG as the most efficient depending which IG build it is.

Also, your DE 'soaking' fire point is fairly moot since DE 'soak' fire via MSUs not via being hard to hurt.

best way to beat DE is shoot the crap out of thier vehicles asap. if you make them walk they die fast, and 90% of their scary weapons are vehicle mounted. (disentegrators) dark lances are foundin troops, but are usually only purchased in groups of 2, and come atached to squishy t:3 5+ armor warriors. otherwise, the talos has no invun, so can be lazcannoned/missled to death, the wyches die to shooting if in the open, and warriors generally die to anything they cant outright kill in cc or at range.

that said, if you allow the DE to out manuvere you, and shoot you with thier ravagers then your looking at potentially 9 plasma cannons a round, (and with new blast weapon rules makes them even more scary). add in dark lances from raiders and youve got problems.

so stay in cover, and shoot the vehicles. (A:10 open toped) just keep in mind night fields reduce your weapons range by 6" so get up close nice and personal, dont stay at range and snipe.

Thanks Darth that was realy useful you explained that well

They are dangerous, what a question.
They just don't kill you, but first take you to Camorragh and then they tortore you before they cut you into pieces.

So what would you guys suggest as the anti vehicle weapons for more distant targets? would missiles be my best bet or would it be something else?

Thor665 wrote:
IG, Eldar, and Tau are all pretty well setup to battle DE, with probably IG as the most efficient depending which IG build it is.

Very correct. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, your best against DE is to outshoot them. The key is lots of long-ranged, mid-to-high strength fire power, resiliency to his return firepower and a contingency to deal with 1 or 2 units that get to assault range.

IG are obviously brutal, as they easily have all the pieces needed: tons of lascannons/autocannons/multilasers spread across multiple unit, often with decent armor (chimeras). Blob infantry with commissars can stall assault units, or a counter-assault unit with flamers can wipe out anything that does successfully assault something. Or everything can stay in vehicles, as DE assault against vehicles is pretty weak.

Eldar trade some of IG's resiliency and firepower for mobility. Everything in the Tau list has at least a decent chance of downing a raider or wounding troops on a 2+ (not kroot, but ALMOST everything). They're usually a little easier to beat, as their best AT weapons (crisis, broadsides) are usually limited in number, so you can focus all of your fire for the first turn or two and quickly whittle them down.

The one army that isn't listed, and probably should be, is one of the Marine leafblower/maximum overdrive styles. Tons of ranged firepower, many units to ensure resiliency to DE fire, flamers for counter assault and vehicles to sit troops in to avoid assault.

Yeah 19 ML's that can hit 7 different units is a lot for most armies to handle let alone armies that fly around in paper airplanes

My advice would be to get a few long fang packs w/5 ML's each and down the ravagers first turn. If the ravagers aren't shooting you win everytime as MEQ since he doesn't have enough shots to kill anything else.

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rowan341 wrote:

So here is my question how is it possible for MEQs to beat them. I mean seriously 7 AP2 weapons. 4 of them were blasts. so yeah how do you beat that type of army?

Heavy Flamers

Flamers

Land Raider Redeemers

Vulcan Hestan

I think you get the point.

"Vulcan Hestan" who?

DE can bring lots of dark lances and blasters to bear.
All units are dispensible up to the Archon.
She's a monster in cc.

Would the Archon be the lord type thing with 3 wounds that charged my terminators on a jet bike, killed nobody and died from one hit from a thunder hammer?

Well yes it would but he was either way unlucky or you were way lucky or he didn't equip him right but in my opinion a skyboard is so cool.

Thunderhammer and storm shield, because in the future we still use feudal technology.

rowan341 wrote:Thunderhammer and storm shield, because in the future we still use feudal technology.

Because in the future, hitting things with a hammer is better than shooting them with a bullet.

Must be a soviet Russian future because technology like that is completely backwards. No offence intended to any Russians.

Not Soviet- much worse.
It's Imperium technology.

Heh yeah, well some credit must go to them for not loosing all reputation by not going final fantasy style.

My general tactic versus DE is based upon some of the old western movies where pioneers would circle their wagons and shoot their rifles at the native Americans. Basically you want to castle your army and bring lots of firepower to bear down upon the skimmers. Dark eldar primarily thrive on the divide & conquer tactic. If you spread your army out the xenos are highly mobile and will focus fire on a segment of your army with a majority of theirs. The last thing any DE player wants to see is rank upon rank of Space Marines all supporting each other with many many guns trained upon their skimmers. Wyches die in the droves to any shooting as their invulnerable save only works in close combat. Templates will really hurt them once you have popped their transports. Terminators are great against wyches since their 2A is built in and cannot be halved. So basically start off in a castle and first shoot down all their skimmers. Next move out in your transports and take objectives. Lastly dark lances are a bit overrated...

3+ to hit (versus armor 12+)
4+ to glance
5+ to penetrate
5+ to wreck or destroy

So overall the odds of popping a landraider with one shot is 7 percent, so it would take an average of over 10 shots to stop one landraider.

G

While that is correct it only takes one or two shots to stun it, a good DE player will spread out hit lances to stun or kill as many transports as possible, usually every one on the board.


If you want to beat DE play games over 1500 pts and take things that help get you the first turn, i.e emp tarot.

Yeah but Imperial landraiders have PotMS. It makes a difference too.

G

But aren't land raiders quite heavy in terms of points as well as armour?

Not as much for Blood Angels & CSM. The new BA assault squad can lose their jump packs & subtract 35 points from the cost of the dedicated transport, so they can take a really cheap redeemer, although I prefer the standard landraider since the twin linked lascannons compliment the assault squad. CSM can take the landraider for 220 points and give it daemonic possession so that it ignores shaken & stunned results on the armor penetration table. I am currently gearing up for hte Ard Boyz so three to four landraiders is quite possible without sinking all your points into these tanks. Sure there are plenty of armies that can load up on melta so you have to be smart about it.

G

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And as Dark Eldar, I don't fear IG, Eldar, or Tau. I have a *very* healthy respect for mechanized IG and for space wolves....to some extent Eldar as well, but they're third on my list of threats. But fear? No. And Tau...I started as a Tau player, and still have some 7,000 points worth of Tau. Put together a Tau army, and we'll play. Play me. Put your money where your smack-talking is. Battleforce box from thewarstore?

I used to fear mech IG; I was going to put them aside for my competitive gaming at GTs until Hulksmash helped me reformulate my list....to where they have a fighting chance against Mech IG. Most of my tournament prep in the weeks before the Slaughter in Space was against mech IG - more than half the games I played were against full mech IG lists; 6-7 chimeras, a manticore, maybe a couple hydras and a few vendettas.

But yeah - all I can really say here is that if you think you're awesome enough to show up on a random internet forum and trash-talk a stranger....back it up or disappear somewhere with your tail between your legs.

Dashofpepper wrote: Battleforce box from thewarstore?

THIS warstore:



But seriously, at the very least listen to others. Dash only jumps in when the person has already shoved their head too far up their butt to see the light or at least the other side of a reasonable argument.

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Back to the OP topic:

Once you have the ravagers downed next priority I would suggest (if fielded) the raider with the archon and incubi retinue. A geared archon and a maxed out retinue of 9 in a raider can be hard to handle in H2H. 27 Power Weapon Attacks on WS 5 STR 4 INIT 5 plus the archon and combat drug attacks. You also want to down the HQ unit and prevent the possible use of a Webway portal to deploy Talos and foot sloggin Wyches.

Wyches would be next in H2H they do well especially in miring your heavy H2H units. They die VERY easily to ranged weapons.

Basically down the heavy support then stop the H2H coming up the board. If there are any raider squads left they should be easy pickings.

So priority order ?

ravagers>raiders>archon and friends>wyches>what is left that right? or what needs changing/adding?

Thats about right, jet bikes might be a threat in games larger than 1500.

How many jet bikes should be considered a threat?

Footslogging marines = Asking for it.

Not quite sure what you mean there. If you mean I don't have enough transports that's because I have always considered rhinos (now only against some armies) to be thin paper shells that upon explosion can cause harm to those inside.

Those 'paper shells' make you immune to bolter fire and force moderate strength weapons to crack them. They also allow for faster movement and can contest objectives once their squad piles out.

rowan341 wrote:Not quite sure what you mean there. If you mean I don't have enough transports that's because I have always considered rhinos (now only against some armies) to be thin paper shells that upon explosion can cause harm to those inside.

Well, you have thought wrong my friend. Rhinos/razorbacks are practically necessary for your squads.

Main reason I don't like them for claws is I can potentially loose half my squad size. Also what squad should go in the one I have?

rowan341 wrote:Main reason I don't like them for claws is I can potentially loose half my squad size. Also what squad should go in the one I have?

Look, buddy. An explosion is a bunch of strength 4, AP- hits. Basically, it's a bolter shot to your marines. It takes roughly 10 bolter shots to kill a marine. It's not gonna kill that many, sheesh.


And you should probably get more.

Jetbikes should always be fielded in groups of 3. 2 will have blasters and one will be a meat shield. They basically fill the same role as melta speeders.

Ok I encountered a group of 7 with Archon bringing it up to 8. Didn't really see the effectiveness though because they finished off the 2 grey hunters after a thorough pounding from blasts then the next time I saw then they got shredded by my termies.

rowan341 wrote:Would the Archon be the lord type thing with 3 wounds that charged my terminators on a jet bike, killed nobody and died from one hit from a thunder hammer?

Nevertheless, the Archon is a one-man wrecking machine.
He should better (if on his own) charge Devastators, Havocs, 5 men combat-sqaudded Tactical units, but not cc oriented squads.

Yeah but seeing as I use wolves I am quite close combat orientated at least as far as close combat troops in front of heavy weapons that is. And for some reason my heavy weapons always fail to hit.

rowan341 wrote: And for some reason my heavy weapons always fail to hit.

Then you aren't using enough.

rowan341 wrote:
And for some reason my heavy weapons always fail to hit.

Then you aren't using enough.

what, so your saying that 2 missiles and 2 HBs getting a total of 2 hits is normal?

rowan341 wrote:

rowan341 wrote:
And for some reason my heavy weapons always fail to hit.

Then you aren't using enough.

what, so your saying that 2 missiles and 2 HBs getting a total of 2 hits is normal?

My point stands.....

To clarify Iron_Chaos_Brute's point; if your dice with heavy weapons are indeed "bad" and you always roll less hits then normal...then take more heavy weapons then is normal so that your amount of hits will be better.

Yeah I guess so. just starts to shoot up in points cost fast and they aren't the easiest things to get without spending loads :/


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess an easy fix is to take more missiles and memorise the blast rules.

Well given this:

rowan341 wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess an easy fix is to take more missiles and memorise the blast rules.

the first thing to do is become really familiar with the rules. Playing a game well starts and ends with a solid understanding of the rules.

Something else that might be helpful would be posting your list here for critique.

2 priests, 15 claws, 9 hunters, 5 long fangs( 2HB, 2Missile), 5 wolf guard in terminator armour with thunder hammers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
edit: Priests had lightning and 1 other each( tempest and world wolf)

I've not added anything to this thread yet, but with all the DE talk flying around I thought I'd chime in.

In the right hands DE are an amazing army and easily the most dangerous. With the amount of high strength ap 2 weapons they have on cheap transports and light vehicles, they can destroy one of the current metas deadliest archetypes - Mechanised Infantry.
They have only one major weakness and that is their fragility. On the offence, very little can stand against the DE. In defence though, DE will fall apart.
They suit an aggressive playing style, but with this aggression must come temperance and tactics.

IMO any opponent to Dark Eldar should have the following target priority:

Ravagers.
Lords Raider or Reaver unit he is with.
All other Raiders.
Foot Sloggers.

There's no point trying to avoid Dark Lance casualties (transports) as it will happen, but better losing the transports than the squishy bits inside that DE can just pick apart at will.

Slightly off topic...

Is the only way to win with DE in objective grabbing scenarios to table your opponent???

radiohazard wrote:Is the only way to win with DE in objective grabbing scenarios to table your opponent???

Good gravy no. DE are stronger in objective scenarios then in Annihilation. They win the same way Mechdar does - via last turn contesting and claiming. DE are very good at taking objectives, they can just be weak at holding them so they don't play a game of early objective claiming like Marines do.

Ahhhh got ya, TY.
I take it the only reason that DE aren't as good in annihilation is due to their fragility???

Well, fragility paired with the fact that most of their competitive lists involve meching up everything and consequently fielding 19+ killpoints in order to be any good at all.

ok... only just noticed this

rowan341 wrote:
Main reason I don't like them for claws is I can potentially loose half my squad size. Also what squad should go in the one I have?

Look, buddy. An explosion is a bunch of strength 4, AP- hits. Basically, it's a bolter shot to your marines. It takes roughly 10 bolter shots to kill a marine. It's not gonna kill that many, sheesh.


And you should probably get more.

I was referring to the fact that claws can be squads of 15 not that I would expect them to all die horribly if a rhino went down with them inside

Thor665 wrote:Well, fragility paired with the fact that most of their competitive lists involve meching up everything and consequently fielding 19+ killpoints in order to be any good at all.

So few? I typically end up with about 24 at 2k.

Wow that is a lot of kill points. Does that mean that if you can kill all the transports in a dark eldar army in annihilation they almost certainly have already lost?

rowan341 wrote:Wow that is a lot of kill points. Does that mean that if you can kill all the transports in a dark eldar army in annihilation they almost certainly have already lost?

Unless they table you, possibly.

By table do you mean wipe you out 100%?

yeah, the typical goal of a good DE general is a table... And it's a lot easier to achieve with DE than most people are aware of.

Also, webway gates, FTW.

I was expecting them to be a lot more like the eldar, not like some sort of killing machine which (in table top terms, not fluff terms) delights in the swift death of many enemies.

If anyone wants to post anything they can I don't mind necromancy on my threads.

Removed, not worth the effort. :-)

Modquisition on.
This thread has been edited to remove some flamebaiting. Lets stick to the topic people.