This isn't meant to be a complaint or anything; it's more out of curiosity. I've been having a hard time against Dark Eldar with my Tyranids (big surprise). I know this is a notoriously bad match-up for my Nids, but it also got me thinking. Do Dark Eldar have any kind of exploitable weaknesses at all?

They have all the elite killing power in the world (lances, disintegrator cannons, cheap poison weapons everywhere). Thanks to lances and blasters everywhere, they can easily deal with lots of armor, even AV 14. They can effectively deal with hordes (splinter cannons and extremely cheap BS 4 troops). They're among the best in the game at grabbing or contesting objectives (super cheap troops choices, and every vehicle is a fast skimmer). They have cheap tarpit units. They have army wide night vision, fleet, and power from pain. Again, not complaining - they just seem to be good at nearly everything.

I know their vehicles are like paper, but they're also pretty cheap and come with a 5+ invulnerable save. Likewise, their troops are easy to kill...but they're so cheap that it hardly matters. Plus, they rarely have to get out of their vehicles.

Are there any armies out there that give DE a hard time? Or any types of lists, even? Just for reference, I'm usually up against a bunch of warriors in raiders and venoms, plus a few ravagers.

DE are a hard matchup for nids' due to the number of poisoned shots the DE bring.

Normally I tell people the weakness of DE is they are a paper tiger and use sailboats instead of tanks.

DE played right are a tough build, but they're still AV10 transports with elves inside. High volume, medium strength shooting is their big weakness. The one thing that nids don't have at all, unfortunately.

Low toughness is a big weakness, if you can take out a raider full of Warriors and Wyches, the explosion is also going to kill half the squad.

Dark Eldar tend to either destroy you or get wiped off the table, their absolutely deadly against Tyranids though so you will need more than a little luck to take them on.

I feel your pain as 'Nids against Dark Eldar.

Siphen wrote:
They have all the elite killing power in the world (lances, disintegrator cannons, cheap poison weapons everywhere). Thanks to lances and blasters everywhere, they can easily deal with lots of armor, even AV 14.

This is where you're wrong. DE can deal with AV14, but they don't deal all that well with lots of armor. Think about it. 3 Ravagers: 9 S8 shots. 3 Long Fangs packs: 15 S8 shots, can split fire. 3 Psyfledreads: 12 twin-linked S8 shots, can ignore suppression. Of the three, the Ravager is by far the least durable. Imperials get meltaguns, Dark Eldar don't. It all combines to make it a little bit difficult for DE to deal wtih light mech spam. They have to rely on shaken and stunned results to keep things out of the fight.

Are there any armies out there that give DE a hard time? Or any types of lists, even? Just for reference, I'm usually up against a bunch of warriors in raiders and venoms, plus a few ravagers.

Grey Knights can ignore shaken and stunned. IG can spam AV12 and long-ranged S6/S7. So can mech Eldar. All are troublesome for Dark Eldar (mech Eldar less so, obviously).

WhiteZombie wrote:Low toughness is a big weakness, if you can take out a raider full of Warriors and Wyches, the explosion is also going to kill half the squad.

Nope. Don't forget that OT vehicles have their explosion dropped to str3, so roughly only half the squad will be wounded in the first place. Most competitive wyche combos have a Heamonculus attached from the start, so they will get 6+ and FNP.
Kabalites will suffer more but 5+ isn't exactly dreadful.

On topic; the nids have a pain catching the vehicles to begin with, before they can chomp away at the contents. Poison and Darklight tends to drop MCs pretty easily if you leave them in the wrong position, and your tides will do nothing until you get the elves off the boats.

I'm not a nid player, so take my advice with a grain of salt. I think maybe you should fight 'fire with fire': Venom cannon spam and warp lances from the Zoanthropes. Even warrior VCs have a chance to take out a DE vehicle. Because they are all open topped you don't suffer the -1 on damage result.

Dark Eldar are a very tough match for 'Nids. To summarize why:

-Poison/always wound on a 4+ kills MC's
-High speed allows us to run circles around footsloggers
-AP2 on a lot of our heavy weapons allows us to bypass FNP
-Wyches are I6, striking simul to genestealers, and before pretty much anything else.

This allows a DE player to make surgical strikes against gribblies, hat will probably kill what they aim for. As 'Nids are very reliant on pinning their enemy in place, DE's ability to redeploy to the other side of the board in a single turn, ignoring intervening models, is brutal.

DE do have weaknesses, however.
-T3
-AV 10
-Large numbers of easy KP. The above mentioned "competitive Wyche Squad" and its transport are 3 KP.

What you need:

-Quantity. When it comes to fighting DE, this trumps quality. Sure, a warplance hit wrecks the enemy vehicle on a 3+, but the DE will always get a 5+ save. You need to be able to inflict enough hits to overwhelm this. Thus, Hive guard are better.
-Speed/range. You need to either be fast, sneaky, or long-ranged to catch the DE, assuming they don't Leroy you. If they just charge in, you shouldn't have problems, but they shouldn't just be charging in. You have to catch them.

Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Thus, Hive guard are better.

lol I forgot all about the impaler cannon. Just squat your hive guard behind some cover and smack the boats around.
What I forgot to mention about the VC earlier is that they are also quite effective against the elves once they touch the ground. Even the basic version at Str6-AP4 will peel DE armour and negate FnP.

I love fighting my buddies Dark eldar, Were evenly matched now. (when he plays space wolves i dominate and end the game on turn 3 or 4 easy) So im glad he got an army to match his play style. YES dark eldar have a weakness to nids, Many in fact. once their vehicles are gone... we destroy them easy.

They are a paper tiger army.
A lot of str 8 ap2 cheap weapons with range
some good mass kill weapons like splinter cannons and the large blast templates....

aside from all of that.. they kinda get blown up....
Use better cover, go against the fluff of run in and devour use terrain stay in it, wait for them to come to you pop out and destroy.

Also im sorry to say your gonna have to make a list suited to better deal with a Dark eldar army if you come across one. They have range speed and strength on their side but 0 in terms of defense.. I push tyranofex a lot and its because i play against deldar often and its always hilarious to see me drop his big hitters on the first or second turn (also funny when tactics fail and you see your 265 point beast die due to demon dice)

Tfex- yes points costly but a beast in many regards a 48" str 10 weapon.. auto pens deldar vehicles always aim to drop his ravagers and other heavy support you have range and str superior to the deldar give him the cluster spines and either the 2+ larvae or the one with ap5 and hes good and smashing troops too.

Always field multi use models. genes are useless so are hormagaunts I love horms... but... a single purpose model doesnt work they will just die and do nothing... no use in having only hard hitting single target weapons when all or most of the vehicles are gone and you now have a brick of pissed off shipless pirates running at you?

Personally I love trygon primes, termagaunts with devs and tyranofex, I always put armor on my tyrant with parox and leech I try to fit in the Heavy venom (great vs deldar vehicles and thats about it) or the stranglethorn cannon. lash and bone for good cc option and cheap points.

Hive guard are a must even though they suffer dramatically due to night shields making their already short distance even shorter.. sometimes best to run them as a suicide squad hide them in cover till last second and have em pop out and hopefully destroy a vehicle before dying.

In the end what im saying is you need to field hard hitting troops with range and def (in deldar case... not really an option but tfex has 6 wounds so he can soak up some lances) try to get some big terrain to hide MCs in or at least provide cover (remember they need at least 50% covered to get a save, dont get saves from troops and can be picked out of groups) and remember all vehicle dropping rules, open top get a plus 1 to damage charts making them fall from the sky on a 4+ vs 5+ and if they moved flat out an immobilize drops them as well.

My experience with Hive Gaurd against Dark Eldar has been almost uniformly bad. Their saves aren't good enough and they don't have enough wounds, so they just get gunned down by all of the Venoms on Turn 1. Not needing LOS is situationally helpful, but if there isn't BLOS terrain exactly where you need it you're up the creek.

What I've found to work the best are Tyrannofexes. You have to make sure and get them a cover save (do this by putting Warriors / Hive Guard / Zoanthropes in front of them). If you do that, they can weather shooting from Venoms due to their 2+, and Ravagers aren't going to be able to put enough shots into them to take them down.

It's still an uphill battle, but at least I've still got anti-tank shooting on turn 3, when my Hive Guard would usually all be dead.

Dark eldar are primarily, incredibly good at dropping anything with a Toughness value, they excell at taking down infantry of all kinds, they actually struggle with high numbers of vehicles.

Conversly, everything is paperthin, T3 with 5+ and 6+ saves everywhere, pretty much solely relying on FnP if it has it,
AV10 on most facings, only Ravagers and Voidravens have better and even then that's only AV11 and with everything bar the aircraft opentopped you can glance them to death (wrecked on a 6), so all S4+ shooting is a threat, and anything that pens is going to be killing them on 4+.

Your problem as nids is that everything has a toughness, and most things have a low enough save that pretty much every DE weapon negates their saves.

Again, on the other side - bring as much Str 4+, AP5+ shooting as possible to take care of any DE infantry and as much Str 6-8 shooting as you can to reliably deal with the vehicles, using cover as best you can to defend against shooting.

It's one of the hardest matchups you can have, and when I've previously faced nids they've had a real struggle to cope but I'm certain it's doable.

I can only offer advice from a DE standpoint, here it is: don't bother with MCs, Venoms love those. There are actually two things DE struggle with:

- loads of AV, especially cheap values of 12 or lower. Suddenly, Dark Lances are naught but overpriced MLs.
- craptons of fast, low-T fodder.

Nids have the latter in abundance. So the best advice I could give to counter DE with Nids is to load up on 'Gaunts and Dakka Warriors, and stay away from 'Fexes.

The major weakness with Dark Eldar is killpoints. Most of this stuff has been said by others. Dark Eldar aren't that good against hordes. They excell mopping up MEQs, but a real horde army will most likely make it to the other side of the table with some good play.

Psykers as well. Sure, a hammie has a lot of awesome tricks, but SW Living Lightning tends to swat the sailboats out of the sky.

See, it's curious - so many people seem to think DE have a problem with horde - yet I've swept through hordes (specifically guard and nids) with my wracks / grotesques.

Things such as high numbers of shots, razorwings, and high attack models in general seem to do alright vs any tide of flesh.

And while 150+ gaunts will be fun, you're probably going to lose at least 20-30 of those a turn to shooting alone. I know that I made 40-50 gaunts (horm and term) dissapear in a single turn of shooting + assault.

I dont play 'nids but one thing ive noticed about DE is the are all about putting you in tough situations. If you can make them have to shoot at un-important stuff just to stay alive you can play a aggressive game, which is what nids are all about.

Ovion wrote:See, it's curious - so many people seem to think DE have a problem with horde - yet I've swept through hordes (specifically guard and nids) with my wracks / grotesques.

Things such as high numbers of shots, razorwings, and high attack models in general seem to do alright vs any tide of flesh.

And while 150+ gaunts will be fun, you're probably going to lose at least 20-30 of those a turn to shooting alone. I know that I made 40-50 gaunts (horm and term) dissapear in a single turn of shooting + assault.

I playtested Horde 'Nids (no MCs) against Venom Spam DE, and it did not go well at all. To all the 'Nid players, save yourself the trouble; it doesn't work that well.

I have found DevilGaunts in Pods quite effective. Hell sometimes your lucky and the pod destroys the boat, then the gaunts can shoot up what was inside. I do groups of 10 d-gaunts and a base pod to keep it cheap.

DE are weak vs shooting. Toss enough str 4 their way and everything dies.

Stop spamming monsterous creatures or force your opponent to split fire and use more hordes.

Adrenal glands on hormagaunts or gaunts with that weapon that shoots 3 times are your two best horde options.

Imperial Guard is a seriously bad match up for DE. AV 12 all over the place for cheap, can't fire any of their poisoned weapons until they break the humans out of those AV 12 shells, and those AV 12 transports sweat long range, med strength shots (3 str. 5, 3 str. 6, and generally 2 str 7 from the rear hatch). Rocket launchers that indirect multiple Str 10 Ordnance Blasts into skimmer formations. Heck, they've even got a tank that is actually designed to shoot down planes.

As bad as you feel when fighting DE, know that another army out there has a Rock for his Scissors, and thus your Paper won't go unavenged.

Yeah,PanzerBOY is right. I used to play IG and one of my good friends played DE. The IG are really good against DE. Any bonus gained from having poisoned weapons is worthless because of toughness 3. You also might want to consider having as many str 6 or above as possible. The only thing that is proven good against DE is getting them to chase units that are shootie. If you have hormaguants you can force the CQC units after them. then have your termiguants go after their kabalite worriors.

Simple.... high volume of fire (of anything) is the DE's weakness...

Remember... they're squishy space elves surfing on av10 paper flyers...

Drop Shooty Nids has an advantage over all other builds cause they deny mobility and have chance to stike first.

Venom Cannons seems aslo allright, cause our open-topped isnt actually helping even against AP-.

Devourer Gaunts on Spore will just mulch any of our tranport they fire to.

FnP is also your friend, cause our anti infantry is torrent in nature. I once saw FnP termagant that has gone to ground being fired by terrible amounts of venoms, most survived.

Hive Guards is premiere against DE , guess you should know it by now.

Gargoyles and Shrikes is also the way to go.

The best thing you have to dropping his vehicles is a Tyrannofex with Rupture Cannon. Its basically a guaranteed damage result per turn from basically anywhere on the table (he would have to come closer to get range which is good for you) and the 2+ save means torrenting it to death with Splinter weaponry is pretty tough, and if you sit it behind something to give it cover you can live through Dark Lance barrages.

Obviously Hive Guard are the next best, but they need FNP otherwise they melt to Splinter Cannon fire, usually before they can close to range. This usually means you need 3 Tervigons, which is a big chunk of points gone. Basically Nids struggle against DE because they don't have many options to kill vehicles from range, and they don't have any of their own vehicles to protect themselves from Poison (they are now the only completely infantry/MC based force since Necrons got vehicles).

Anyway to answer the OPs original question; Yes there are plenty of armies which give DE trouble. Anything with a decent amount of medium/long range shooting tends to have a decent chance if they have the first turn (DE really rely on alpha strikes to drop return damage) and plenty of these can happily go second as well as they have the durability/redundancy to handle being hit first. In particular DE don't like massed S6-7 shooting from mech opponents, which means Guard, Eldar and various Marine Razorspam type builds do pretty well.

Powerguy wrote:The best thing you have to dropping his vehicles is a Tyrannofex with Rupture Cannon. Its basically a guaranteed damage result per turn from basically anywhere on the table (he would have to come closer to get range which is good for you) and the 2+ save means torrenting it to death with Splinter weaponry is pretty tough, and if you sit it behind something to give it cover you can live through Dark Lance barrages.

Obviously Hive Guard are the next best, but they need FNP otherwise they melt to Splinter Cannon fire, usually before they can close to range. This usually means you need 3 Tervigons, which is a big chunk of points gone. Basically Nids struggle against DE because they don't have many options to kill vehicles from range, and they don't have any of their own vehicles to protect themselves from Poison (they are now the only completely infantry/MC based force since Necrons got vehicles).

Anyway to answer the OPs original question; Yes there are plenty of armies which give DE trouble. Anything with a decent amount of medium/long range shooting tends to have a decent chance if they have the first turn (DE really rely on alpha strikes to drop return damage) and plenty of these can happily go second as well as they have the durability/redundancy to handle being hit first. In particular DE don't like massed S6-7 shooting from mech opponents, which means Guard, Eldar and various Marine Razorspam type builds do pretty well.

I like the way Powerguy thinks, I would only add try to be aggressive as possible with the T-Fex if your going to run him. He can fire all three weapons at once, don't limit him to basically and overcosted broadside. Personally I like my T-Fex fat with Regen, and I normally run him in conjunction with Catalyst and Onslaught for the first two turns. And sucks up Tervigon love but is a fancy way to get him in the thick of things quickly to start dropping templates on some evil space elves.

Powerguy wrote:
The best thing you have to dropping his vehicles is a Tyrannofex with Rupture Cannon. Its basically a guaranteed damage result per turn from basically anywhere on the table (he would have to come closer to get range which is good for you) and the 2+ save means torrenting it to death with Splinter weaponry is pretty tough, and if you sit it behind something to give it cover you can live through Dark Lance barrages.

Obviously Hive Guard are the next best, but they need FNP otherwise they melt to Splinter Cannon fire, usually before they can close to range. This usually means you need 3 Tervigons, which is a big chunk of points gone. Basically Nids struggle against DE because they don't have many options to kill vehicles from range, and they don't have any of their own vehicles to protect themselves from Poison (they are now the only completely infantry/MC based force since Necrons got vehicles).

Anyway to answer the OPs original question; Yes there are plenty of armies which give DE trouble. Anything with a decent amount of medium/long range shooting tends to have a decent chance if they have the first turn (DE really rely on alpha strikes to drop return damage) and plenty of these can happily go second as well as they have the durability/redundancy to handle being hit first. In particular DE don't like massed S6-7 shooting from mech opponents, which means Guard, Eldar and various Marine Razorspam type builds do pretty well.

+2

Obviously it all depends on game size, mission, deployment and what your opponent has - But T-Fex all of a sudden becomes worth his weight in gold against a DE army.

I like the idea of running lots of HG and Stealers as well. Infiltrate 2 units of 20 stealers in cover towards the right and left of his army, and setup your HG with a more central spread. This will help get them in range earlier, and your stealers should attract plenty of splinter fire away from your HG. If you get first turn, this works even better - conga line your stealers back to your Tervies to give them FnP. Advance them on either flank towards the DE (keep in cover if at all possible) so that the DE have to either move towards one of your stealer units, stay where they are, or advance into your impaler cannons. If you manage to gain cover and FnP for your stealer units, none of this is a good outcome for the DE player. If you only manage to get FnP (not enough cover in the right places) then he will move in towards one stealer squad and try to wipe it out. This has the advantage of you now being able to 'herd' him into the corner.

Meanwhile, like Powerguy said your dropping a vehicle a turn with your T-Fex whilst he takes out a stealer unit and traps himself into a corner.

Not saying this is a rock solid strategy all the time, but if the DE get first turn it gives you a fighting chance, and if you get first turn it gives you a good chance.

All of course IMHO - but best thing to do is play them more often, try different things and find what works for you best!

Having looked at the nid codex today (and now want to make a 2 hive tyrant, 6 warrior, 2 carnivex, 2 tfex nid army), loading up on deathspitters?, venom, heavy venom and rupture cannons will serve you well, as each is capable of downing DE fliers.

On paper the tfex should survive a LOT of splinter fire at least.

try running all medium/small creatures. No Monsterous creatures. Add AG to most of them, and close assualt away.

i'd say that DE's big weakness is when they're played by inexperienced players. other than that they don't seem to do good against shooting.

As has been thoroughly mentioned, their main weakness is the fact that literally everything is open-topped, and practically everything is AV10. That and, unless they're specially tooled, they're usually pretty terrible in close combat.

Put another way, DE are strong because it's hard to put damage on them, but when you can, they fold like superman on laundry day.

This is one of those times when high volumes of mid-strength firepower and a bit of long-range firepower really does a lot. In the case of imperium units, this means taking autocannons. As such, do whatever the equivalent for tyranid is (dakkafexes?)

I have to agree with lots of shooting. I play ultra marines. Missle launchers are a good trick to use. They are cheap, they can do pretty well vs their ships and you can switch them to templates and kill troops. Also have used attack bikes vs them with good results. Pretty cheap, fast and can pound. Don't get into assault tho. It's a win for them. Shoot them down like the paper they are otherwise. Auto cannons, assault cannons, even heavy bolters are good too.

Ailaros wrote:As has been thoroughly mentioned, their main weakness is the fact that literally everything is open-topped, and practically everything is AV10. That and, unless they're specially tooled, they're usually pretty terrible in close combat.

Put another way, DE are strong because it's hard to put damage on them, but when you can, they fold like superman on laundry day.

This is one of those times when high volumes of mid-strength firepower and a bit of long-range firepower really does a lot. In the case of imperium units, this means taking autocannons. As such, do whatever the equivalent for tyranid is (dakkafexes?)

I agree with most of that, but usually pretty terrible in CC? I guess that's probably accurate in the way most people play them, but I would say wyches, mandrakes, and wracks are all quite capable in CC, and Grotesques and Incubi and pretty much all the special characters are plain nasty in CC. Vect, Lilith and Drazhar are all just nasty in CC.

I don't agree that they are terrible in cc either. Gross understatement. De are scary cc. High initiative, poisonous attacks and high we doesnt cry terrible cc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ws not we sorry.

ShadarLogoth wrote: usually pretty terrible in CC? I guess that's probably accurate in the way most people play them, but I would say wyches, mandrakes, and wracks are all quite capable in CC, and Grotesques and Incubi and pretty much all the special characters are plain nasty in CC.

Devil Dog wrote:I don't agree that they are terrible in cc either. Gross understatement. De are scary cc.

Go back and read what I actually wrote. DE CAN be scary in close combat, but only if they tool their army to be scary in close combat. If they're spending their time on venom and ravager spam (like most DE), they're not spending the points to bring good CC units. Wyches are good, but if they're in an army that only contains a single squad of them and the rest is shooting-based, well, it's not hard to focus on the wyche's raider and isolate them from the action.

Plus, DE may have high initiative, but they still have low toughness and terrible armor saves.

Add to that, only squad leaders carry poisoned weapons, except for wracks.
imo, MC vs DE are toast. Horde armies may have chance of getting close, cause of ther sheer mass of models.
for weakness: cc for the shooters, range for the cc, transport spam, ignoring armor saves and fnp, you have to plan a lot to get it done.
The best successors are IG and SM.
IG: a lot of cheap squads that have a chance to crack open the transports, a few shots for the heavy slot, and outgunning the foe.
SM: good saves, basically good for both cc and shooting, specialised unites have the same problem as DE, just not in that great a volume. Your devastator has a slight chance to survive a wytch assault, but a kabalite vs an assault squad...well i like all space elves, but in that case, i wouldnt bet on them. Wytches vs assault marines: the marines need to be thinned first, like with eldar tacs, but DE love to stay in that combat until the end of your assault phase.
As i have written in a few other topics, my main build is no cc but tons of focused shots. Vs that, a lot of good dice. And 2+3+ unites.

a nother weaknes for DE is 750+. In low armies, those 4+ aoutowounds are a killer, but above that, vehicles start to come in - exc. for Mec'dar w 3 transports and 2 walkers for 750, but thats a nother topic ^^. Against these, DE have to get shock prows, and be willing to sac the transports in order to crack open the enemy - espechially if the transports have WD already!

to summ it all up: Yes, they have a fair amount of weaknesses, but back it up /w modility and pure evil

For Tyranids, utilize range bands and FNP. Hive Guard, then Tervigons, then Tyrannofexes.

Space them appropriately so that, if they want to take out the T-fexes, they have to get into range of the Hive Guard, and if they want to take out the Hive Guard, they have to get by the FNP/cover from units.

I can make anti-DE lists for most armies...nids...I don't know where I would start. You can't run nidzilla or swarms. I'd say lots of outflanking genestealers and try to bait the DE to a table edge with some big target of course cover helps a lot.

DE really tend to struggle against armies like tau and mech IG the most. Basically the less engineered for war you are the better shot against DE you have. SM can rifleman dread spam and take a lot of razorbacks with assault cannons. Tzeentch daemons w/ BoC and plenty of plasma plagues for CSM. Craftworld eldar just need to S 6 spam. War walkers are nasty. Basically you need more targets than the de player has shots. Play the percentages game, not every DL shot will hit and only 1/3 FF will be passed.

Another good tactic is to treat them like a Glass Hammer. If you can survive the inital impact then the hammer should break. DE can't stand a shoot out. The figurative hammer will break.

Focus on S6+ in bulk and you won't go far from wrong against the paper plane using glass soldiers.

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.

Basically you need more targets than the de player has shots.

Thats not really possible, DE play MSU better and cheaper then every other army. They are number 1 of all armies with number of targets they can shoot per turn.

DE CAN be scary in close combat, but only if they tool their army to be scary in close combat. If they're spending their time on venom and ravager spam (like most DE), they're not spending the points to bring good CC units.

But that is not actually advantage for Tyranids and anyone. If its standart MSU venom spam everything that enemy CC touch will die , but in doing so it will be fully exposed to Splinter Cannons next turn.
If DE player choses to have any dedicated melee squads Tyranids will not win against them. It doesnt take special tooling or otherwise to have 15 helions on board or have raider full of wracks with 2 flamers and hell of a lot poison atacks.

Tyranids in horde aspect have a lot of gakky saves, low toughness, low initiative. Even with FnP torrent based DE CC atacks will just cleave its way throu the horde, triggering Fearless saves or Sweepeng Advance.
Monsters just die to Splinter and Lance fire, even worse then hoardes, those at least can have cover and FnP.

Certain units are plain nightmare for Nids. In our comunity it is popular to take large gang of helions with Baron, provide them with 2 pain tokens from haemy and wracks and saw hell amongst enemy.
You are looking at Fleet Jump Infanry with 3+ FnP saves against shooting , 45 S5 atacks at i7 and 30 poisoned shots and Hit and Run. I cant imagine a single unit of Nids that can survive the charge of the gang.

So my thought about it - nids have little chance in open contest , they must strike from Spores , Dakka Gaunts , Hive Guards , Zoans etc..just get the advantage of first atack and deny enemy mobility.

I wish I could help more with nid approach to defeating them. It's a tough army to beat for anyone, but not impossible. So many gosh darn transports.

Devil Dog wrote:I wish I could help more with nid approach to defeating them. It's a tough army to beat for anyone, but not impossible. So many gosh darn transports.

A tough army to beat... oh, the irony

DE have matchups that greatly favor them (Daemons, Nids) and matchups that often go downhill very fast (Mech IG, Grey Knight Dreadnought/Razorspam). That puts them somewhere highup in the middle bracket if you look at them competitively. They are hardly tough to beat for anyone, they are just tough to beat for specific armies. Any army that can put out a large number of medium strength shots can wipe them off the board pretty fast.

I wouldn't be so quick to say GK...any marine army kitted out to deal with DE yes. Mainly Tau and IG are the worst to play DE against. Orks, horde IG, and nids are tough to play against DE. Outflank and try to get that first blow. If you can tank out the venoms your army has a much better chance. So like I said try to lure the DE over to a board edge to assault with genestealers. Yamgaryl poping up and assualting could be mean to the ravagers.

Beckett wrote:

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.

I think that as an isolated example, yes - the T-Fex doesn't seem worth it. But when you put it in context of the whole army, I think it becomes a lot more viable.

If you have for example, your T-Fex is getting a cover save (not hard with two Tervies and 6 Hive Guard to hide behind), then it will take three ravagers rolling averagely 2-3 turns of solid shooting to take him down (assuming your T-Fex and HG aren't taking any down in return).

If you have 35-40 FnP Stealers in cover, infiltrating towards the DE lines, then little to no splinter fire will be supporting these ravagers as they try to take down as many stealers as possible.

By the time the DE have dealt with your stealers and Fex, they'll have 6 HG in range, and 2 Tervies with loads of gants bearing down on them. Still a very hard game and an uphill battle (and yes, I know all this sounds very good in theory and different armies/people operate differently etc etc) but you get the general idea.

And yes - you can do a Tfex, 6 Hive Guard, 2 Tervies, 35 stealers and 10 gants in a 1,500 pnt list.

Having said all this, I agree with you that Spods are prob the best way to go against DE, but I think it's harder to make an all-comers list like this...where as the list I wrote above performs reliably and well against most builds (IMHO/Experience).

Dark Eldar are super weak to armor value 12 spam.
Armor value 12 is where you want your armor, since having higher doesn't help against dark eldar. Most armor value 12 vehicles have a large number of strength 6-8 shots. Those shots have no trouble destroying raiders and popping through feel no pain on toughness 3.

If you're playing an army that isn't mech..like tyranids...your best best is to get as much medium strength (5-7) shooting as you can. If you have no shots, the dark eldar will just use their speed, range, and firepower to kill you without taking any losses. You don't necesseraily need a lot of range, but your shooting help to create "zones" that limit dark eldar movement and give you a chance to get into hth.

My main opponent every saturday is Tyranids. I must say the games were originally 80%/20% wins to me but now they are about 50/50.

Basically what we figured out was...

-Outflank with nearly everything
-A null-deployment army and deep-strike everything in thanks to hive-commander ability works wonders
-Mawloc str9 ap 1 hit large blast is insane.
-Devo gaunts cannot destroy a DE vehicle but it can overload its defenses and cripple it with stuns.
-The small blast weapon that warriors get can destroy our vehicles (I think its str 6 AP 4)
-Lashwhip
-No seriously screw lashwhip, I hate that thing, we hit an bottom initiative and the hive tyrant can insta-death us in return. THAN he goes and toxic miasma's too.
-Lastly do not under-estimate rending. The AP 2 hit negates feel-no-pain, Genestealers can guarantee at least about 4-5 get through.
-Toxin sacks re-roll wounds on us due to our low str


Thats all I can remember so far, but yeah our Agonisers and poison do help with us take down tyranids, but its not so lop-sided once you eventually work us out.

Mawloc str9 ap 1 hit large blast is insane.

Wait...isn't it a 6/2...admittedly it's been awhile since I checked the mawlock entry.

Beckett wrote:

Tyrranofex is a terrible idea against DE.

For it cost - it will go down really fast to Lance Fire, backed by Splinter fire. I mean really fast.
All those 3 Ravagers that is in every list suddenly becoming extremely cost effective against Tyranids. 3+ to Hit 2+ to wound, no save.



I think that as an isolated example, yes - the T-Fex doesn't seem worth it. But when you put it in context of the whole army, I think it becomes a lot more viable.

I'm going to have to agree with slice'n'dice there, even with just venomthropes CS it's going to take at least 2 turns of shooting, and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn. Also...splinter fire, really? With FNP it takes three full venom volleys juts to cause 1 wound, PLEASE shoot your venoms at my T-Fex.

and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn

How did you come to this conclusion? 2 shots at bs 3. Pretty big chances to miss, pretty big chances to fail at 4/5+ cover.

DE afraid high-rate of fire guns for a reason, thats because medium strenght penetrate just as good as high strenght, but there are lot of them.
Rupture cannon are 2 shots at gakky balistic and high strenght. I cant see them shoothing target each turn.

And again there is no need for Splinter Fire - all Lance Fire there is will be targeted at those 250+ points hulks.

3 venoms=3*12 shots, thats 36 shots at bs 4
36*4/6(to hit)*4/6(to wound)=thats 16 wounds. even if w armor and fnp you save 3/4 of them, thats still 4 wounds. ok, can be alocated, but then you wont roll w the fex for it.
in other cases, after you alocated the wounds, you get blasted by blasterborn s8 ap2 that ignores armor and fnp. im willing to sacc 133pt for a 250 fex

When DE tool for close combate they are as deadly as anything in the game. I recently learned how deadly, the high inititve and 4+ invunerable in CC was murder, especialy since he got the combat drug that let him re-role fail to wounds in CC. With that said their weakness is low toughness, bad armour and other than lances have no real anti tank. If you can destroy their lances you can sit in your vehicles and kill them really well with just bolter shots.

Beckett wrote:

and the rupture cannon by itself will be popping a ravager every other turn

How did you come to this conclusion? 2 shots at bs 3. Pretty big chances to miss, pretty big chances to fail at 4/5+ cover.

DE afraid high-rate of fire guns for a reason, thats because medium strenght penetrate just as good as high strenght, but there are lot of them.
Rupture cannon are 2 shots at gakky balistic and high strenght. I cant see them shoothing target each turn.

And again there is no need for Splinter Fire - all Lance Fire there is will be targeted at those 250+ points hulks.

Pretty big chance to miss? Actually...no, one shot, on average, will hit with every volley. I didn't factor in cover saves, so that would drop it to one in every three turns for FF and one in 4ish for obscured. Still, that's just one gun.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

enfernux wrote:3 venoms=3*12 shots, thats 36 shots at bs 4
36*4/6(to hit)*4/6(to wound)=thats 16 wounds. even if w armor and fnp you save 3/4 of them, thats still 4 wounds. ok, can be alocated, but then you wont roll w the fex for it.
in other cases, after you alocated the wounds, you get blasted by blasterborn s8 ap2 that ignores armor and fnp. im willing to sacc 133pt for a 250 fex

The T-Fex has a 2+ save, and the splinter cannon wounds half the time, not 2/3rds So, of your 16 er 12 wounds, (1/6) will get through the save and half of those will get through FNP... So you end up with 36(2/3)(1/2)(1/6)(1/2)=1 wound.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and the blasterborn need to get there first. They would be first target before the ravagers. 1 Rupture Cannon = .44 popped or immobilised venoms per turn.

I know we're doing this all in a vacuum, and of course both the nids and DE would have other things going on, but in practice your really need to just be able to stun 3 ravagers and pop/immobilise 3 blasterborn venoms in one turn to make venomspam lists very beatable. Even with an army that suffers on ranged anti-tank, that's not entirely difficult to accomplish. (The big problem is most nid generals don't bring any ranged anti tank out side of the 30" threat range HG...and this why they fail).

Really stopping 3 ravagers (with 5+ invuls and decent deployment) and 3 blasterborn venoms (again with same things as above) isn't difficult? Maybe not for IG, Tau, or some Eldar lists but otherwise stopping all of these will tough for most armies. Then you still have to consider the other warrior squads, the wyches, beasts, scourges, reavers...etc.

I have no clue where you are getting .44 popped/imobilised venoms per turn, but then again I don't know the nid book that well. The biggst thing is deployment and deployment styles. I can get in range easily on turn one with a standard 12" deployment. 12" in + 12" move + 3" (2+base size) for disembarking + 18" range. Thats 45" so unless you are butts up to the board edge (at which point I wouldn't suicide against you) then I will get there turn 1. I can even use another venom to block LOS which would reduce me to what 40-42" and with no LOS you can't shoot my venom.

See theoryhammer like this doesn't work because you would have other threats on the board. There is no way to do any of this without just sitting down and playing a game.

Akroma06 wrote:
I have no clue where you are getting .44 popped/imobilised venoms per turn, but then again I don't know the nid book that well. .

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44, and it's actually .66 shaken or better, which against the Blasterborn is plenty sufficient.

BTW, suicide with 4 blasterborn against a T-Fex with at least a 5+ cover: 4(2÷3)(5÷6)(2÷3) = 1.48

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down. That's 16 of your lance shots for one MC.

I certainly agree with your last take though, I'm just extrapolating the math to illustrate the fallacy in thinking blasterboprn+ravagers=all TMCs dead. If properly supported, the nids will keep plugin along long enough to take out the big shooters in the DE list and convert them from impossible scary to at least manageable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and Akroma06, you are the supreme LOS master if you can 100% obscure one venom with another venom (nids move and shoot, although I guess you could place your 5 troop venoms in a boxish formation around the blasterborn, but even then, there seems to always be an angle somewhere.)

Yeah ok anything S10 makes short work of DE skimmers.

Wish my camera was working. The venoms can be banked with those new skimmer stands we have and thus make more or less a pure wall that can block LOS. Also consider that the army I run has a couple of raiders and 3 ravagers which can hide things quite easily.

I'm also not saying nids can't beat DE but it is deffinently an uphill battle.

WhiteZombie wrote:Low toughness is a big weakness, if you can take out a raider full of Warriors and Wyches, the explosion is also going to kill half the squad.

Dark Eldar tend to either destroy you or get wiped off the table, their absolutely deadly against Tyranids though so you will need more than a little luck to take them on.

Not much more than this here.

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44

You just dont know math. You cant have any meaningfull average from 2 shots, you need more dice to have any usable average restults.

Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games.

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down

??? DE have effective 48 lance range, 3 Ravagers and some Raiders is more then enough to kill T-Fex per Turn.
For example Rupture Cannon is far more likely to not do any damage at all then say Impaler Cannon.
Its spread of probablities of results that is usefull, not average.

If you dont care about those things, better just stick to experience, your brain will sort this out for you.

Pony_law wrote:When DE tool for close combate they are as deadly as anything in the game. I recently learned how deadly, the high inititve and 4+ invunerable in CC was murder, especialy since he got the combat drug that let him re-role fail to wounds in CC. With that said their weakness is low toughness, bad armour and other than lances have no real anti tank. If you can destroy their lances you can sit in your vehicles and kill them really well with just bolter shots.

DE for CC can be a very fun army to run but they are much less powerful than their MSU shooty spam.

DE weaknesses are half their anti tank comes from their HS choices and the other half come from their elite section preventing you from taking most of the really fun units. They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC and while they can surpress enemy vehicles they cant really kill them efficiently. against shooting most of their units are very weak. Now it is hard for nids to take advantage of most of those weaknesses.


reroll to wound is probably the best combat drug. better than anything but +1 attack almost always. I HATE it when they get pain tokens, as with haemi's they usually start out with them and most are more than capable of getting more on their own. I wouldnt take too much away from how awesome they are 1/6 of the time.

Exergy wrote:They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC

The Talos would like a word with you about that.
Str7, T7 Monstrous Creature with D6+1 attacks of goodness, can happily go toe to toe with just about anything.
Load it up with a TL Haywire Blaster or TL Heatlance and it's brilliantly effective at both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle. I like to throw in a TL Liquifier Gun for the giggles too.

Ovion wrote:

Exergy wrote:They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC

The Talos would like a word with you about that.
Str7, T7 Monstrous Creature with D6+1 attacks of goodness, can happily go toe to toe with just about anything.
Load it up with a TL Haywire Blaster or TL Heatlance and it's brilliantly effective at both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle. I like to throw in a TL Liquifier Gun for the giggles too.

few DE players are going to sacrifice a ravager for a slow Talos.

I love the idea that Talos can run though. Gets me every time.

You said we don't have a good way to kill walkers.

I personally run 2 Talos and they've served me briliantly.
And most Coven players use them.
People see them as big scary death machines, and so throw most everything they can at the Str7 monster. They invaribly survive the walk, putting out HB shots along the way (having drawn fire enough my Razorwing is still standing, along with most of my raiders and venoms) and then slam into something killign it, usually making their hundred points back with ease.

no killing walkers and or tanks?
a squad of 10 wytches w haywire grenades usually leave a tank in ruins. The klaivex with demiklaves also has a neat chance of popping a walker. A few haem weapons can do the trick to.
Or just shoot a squad of walkers with a squad of blasterborn. What about reavers? 36" across the field in to cover, HnS through a line of enemy infantry than heatlance next turn.
What about our missiles? Or bombs? DE have a neat combination to pop vehicles - even walkers - you just have to read everything meny times. My only problem is they dont have an HQ that allows reavers to be taken as troops :(

Beckett wrote:

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44

You just dont know math. You cant have any meaningfull average from 2 shots, you need more dice to have any usable average restults.

Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games.

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down

??? DE have effective 48 lance range, 3 Ravagers and some Raiders is more then enough to kill T-Fex per Turn.
For example Rupture Cannon is far more likely to not do any damage at all then say Impaler Cannon.
Its spread of probablities of results that is usefull, not average.

If you dont care about those things, better just stick to experience, your brain will sort this out for you.

Wow, there is so much irony in this post it tickles me. I clearly demonstrated, with my knowledge of math, that you need at least 16 lance shots to reliably take down a T-Fex in one turn. You continue to ignore this fact and your rebuttal is I need to lay off the math and let experience sort things out for me there chief?

I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated that understand the math quite well. You've clearly demonstrated that you think a 25% chance occurrence is "Pretty big chances to miss" and that you don't understand probabilities in aggregate with statements like "Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games."

So, um, grats, I guess.

Ovion wrote:

Exergy wrote:They dont have a good way to kill walkers in CC

The Talos would like a word with you about that.
Str7, T7 Monstrous Creature with D6+1 attacks of goodness, can happily go toe to toe with just about anything.
Load it up with a TL Haywire Blaster or TL Heatlance and it's brilliantly effective at both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle. I like to throw in a TL Liquifier Gun for the giggles too.

This ^^^^ plus chainflails let us reroll that D6 to avoid a 1 or 2. So 5 S7 attacks on average if you charge us. With S and T 7 with 2d6 armor pen? Yeah bye bye. In my coven list I have two.

Also 9 wyches with 1 shardnet and haywires will do the same thing. You get one attack that we should be safe from. and then 9 haywires back. All it takes is one imobilised to have serrious problems from the walker.

about that math
2 shots bs 3 s10 vs:
- 4+ cover: 2*3/6*1*1/2=is actualy 0.5
- 5+ invul: 2*3/6*1*2/3=is a.66

so all in all, with a Tfex shot, you pop .58 DE transports a turn - well, at least get a shaken ^^, the actual popping is only .29, exc if you shoot it to immo when it takes the cover save, in that case, you have a .386 chance to glue it to the ground.
but in reality, dice are more like crazy people playing bowling in a golf park with baseball bats. Well they are, unless you appease the dice god(s)/godess(').

ShadarLogoth wrote:

Beckett wrote:

Rupture Cannon is a BS 3 2 shot 10/4, so... 2[shots](1/2)[BS3](2/3)[FF](2/3)[imo+] = .44

You just dont know math. You cant have any meaningfull average from 2 shots, you need more dice to have any usable average restults.

Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games.

So you would in reality need to sacrifice all 3 groups plus a minimum of 4 more lance shots to statistically bring the T-Fex down

??? DE have effective 48 lance range, 3 Ravagers and some Raiders is more then enough to kill T-Fex per Turn.
For example Rupture Cannon is far more likely to not do any damage at all then say Impaler Cannon.
Its spread of probablities of results that is usefull, not average.

If you dont care about those things, better just stick to experience, your brain will sort this out for you.

Wow, there is so much irony in this post it tickles me. I clearly demonstrated, with my knowledge of math, that you need at least 16 lance shots to reliably take down a T-Fex in one turn. You continue to ignore this fact and your rebuttal is I need to lay off the math and let experience sort things out for me there chief?

I think I've pretty clearly demonstrated that understand the math quite well. You've clearly demonstrated that you think a 25% chance occurrence is "Pretty big chances to miss" and that you don't understand probabilities in aggregate with statements like "Knowledge of Rupture Fex killing 0.44 Venoms Per turn if it fired for 20 turns doesnt matter if you fire 3 turns in 2 games."

So, um, grats, I guess.

So what else would those DL be firing at? Genestealers? In a 2K game I can down 1 and a half T-Fexes a turn and have plenty left for the small guys.
16 lance shots is rather easy to aquire. 9 from ravagers, 2 from my raiders (I don't make a list for my opponent's army) and then 2 squads of trueborn actually takes me to 19. Then you still have 5 blasters and 7 venoms that haven't fired yet.

So what else would those DL be firing at? Genestealers? In a 2K game I can down 1 and a half T-Fexes a turn and have plenty left for the small guys.
16 lance shots is rather easy to aquire. 9 from ravagers, 2 from my raiders (I don't make a list for my opponent's army) and then 2 squads of trueborn actually takes me to 19. Then you still have 5 blasters and 7 venoms that haven't fired yet.

Lance also shares target priority with the many many multi wound T4 models in the nid codex, so the more targets you can saturate for that weapon the better. Also, any blaster has to get 18" away, which generally means assault range for the nids.

NeutronPoison wrote:I feel your pain as 'Nids against Dark Eldar.

Siphen wrote:
They have all the elite killing power in the world (lances, disintegrator cannons, cheap poison weapons everywhere). Thanks to lances and blasters everywhere, they can easily deal with lots of armor, even AV 14.

This is where you're wrong. DE can deal with AV14, but they don't deal all that well with lots of armor. Think about it. 3 Ravagers: 9 S8 shots. 3 Long Fangs packs: 15 S8 shots, can split fire. 3 Psyfledreads: 12 twin-linked S8 shots, can ignore suppression. Of the three, the Ravager is by far the least durable. Imperials get meltaguns, Dark Eldar don't. It all combines to make it a little bit difficult for DE to deal wtih light mech spam. They have to rely on shaken and stunned results to keep things out of the fight.

Umm, Dark eldar have the three ravagers, and 3-5 vehicles with dark lances on them, with occupants who will most likely have 1-4 dark lance blasters (which dont lose effectiveness the further away from the target you are) and then 2-3 vehicles with assaulty as bowls occupants and moar dark lance. So no, only venom spam lists have a problem with alot of armor. My deldar lists have NO problem with high amounts of armor or hordes

One: Large number of srt 4 or higher shots
Two: Taking out their transports. Take away their mobility and they are sitting ducks.
Three: Maintain control of the battle field. Dark Eldar's main strategy is to make the opponent play into their trap. Keep your army mas mobile as possible and strike when you get opportune moments.

Im not sure that a lot of the people posting possible nid suggestions VS DE have seen what a competent DE list and player can do to ANY nid build. First off, it only takes about about 9-11 lances to kill a tyrranofex, 6-7 hits, 5-6 wounds, that’s it. Regarding FNP, if you give your gaunts FNP, the tervigons die to splinter fire, if you give the tervigons FNP, they die to lance fire and then the remaining gaunts get splinter cannoned into oblivion. Venomthropes typically die first turn to massed lance fire (priority target even over tyrannofexs and hiveguard). And all this is leaving out the fact that if the DE player is fully kitted out with night shields, nothing outside of a heavy venom cannon or Rupture cannon is going to get a chance to shoot. Regarding no CC, I don’t know many high end DE lists that don’t incorporate at least 1 beastpack/wyche/wrack squad, all of which do exceedingly well vs nids in CC.

As for what keeps DE players up at night, Psyflemen dread spam, more than 3 of those buggers and I’m scrambling. Anything else can be dealt with. AV 12 spam is tough, but with proper deployment, you can eventually wear the opponent down by constantly shaking/stunning/destroying almost every vehicle in range before hitting it with a anti-vehicle CC threat like a beastpack or haywire wyches. The big exception to that is hydra and vendetta spam…that’s just mean….

I have found that drop pod nids against DE work best. My list had some carnifexes in pods, a bunch of warrior units with s5 shooting in pods and so on. I've tried various options and drop pods have always been the closest of my games, otherwise I just get shot up and cry because I can't make a 4+ cover/armor save =(.

well...dropin in on DE has its advantages, except when the DE list is also dropping in on the adversary. Im haemoning meny meny ideas in to my grotesque - not the model, the idea - list, molding the tortured flesh in to an exoskeleton harder than that of the blessed landraiders of the black templar.

to be honest against nid: target everything with 4+saves or worse w splinter weapons, and hack the rest in to anything better than that. Or, if you plan on useing poison to bring down the tfex, you can alwayse use disintegrator to take out everything else. Against hordes, id advise blasterborn and swap all lances to those nice s5ap2 gunz.
oppinion only, but works against hordes. and if im 18" from a tfex w m blasterborn, that means everything else is dead around it.

back to topic: we are seeing the weaknesses posted over and over, and we see the solutions to those problems. Cant we just make a nother topic on backing out DE weaknesses?? ^^

The main problem I found with DE is that to much hangs on who goes first.
DE can put out so many DL's they have a high chance to cripple (or get lucky and destroy) the enemies transports or any other high priority targets even at round one since they are fast veichles and the damn DL have 36" range. Also the fact that even their Raider can kill a Landraider makes no veichle go safe.
But if the enemy goes first then DE will most likely lose alot of veichles and in return firepower/transport since their paperthin armor and open topped make them almost to easy kill and since its round one they havent gotten the chanse to turbo boost or "hide".

deployment is the answer to your problem deploy in cover, dont give los to enemies, hide as meny of your vehicles as you can, and on your turn start popping tanks that are left to be crippled, and mind your movement to keep los blockade from the non crippled - minimum shaken or better - vehicles.

Yeah, DE is fast enough to redeploy at will, by rights you should be deploying always expecting to go second, and deploy in cover + where no one can see you.

As a DE general you really need to be accounting for everything, If you've gone first, assume they're going to steal initiative, if you go second, assume you won't sieze, unless it's obvious they won't, behave as if they'll be in combat turn 1 and / or can and will pop every boat you own (generally they can).

Whether it'll happen or not isn't the point - denying them the oppurtunity to is.

If you do this regardless of what happens you'll have likely denied the enemy of their first turn of shooting, and probably forced them into nice little shooting galleries for you, and in your turn you can take full advantage of that.

That's why null deployment armies, a force with as much speed or generally doesn't move can be an issue for us, because 1: we don't know where you'll be coming from. 2: you can redeploy as well as us. 3: We have to come to you regardless.

enfernux wrote:no killing walkers and or tanks?
a squad of 10 wytches w haywire grenades usually leave a tank in ruins. The klaivex with demiklaves also has a neat chance of popping a walker. A few haem weapons can do the trick to.
Or just shoot a squad of walkers with a squad of blasterborn. What about reavers? 36" across the field in to cover, HnS through a line of enemy infantry than heatlance next turn.
What about our missiles? Or bombs? DE have a neat combination to pop vehicles - even walkers - you just have to read everything meny times. My only problem is they dont have an HQ that allows reavers to be taken as troops :(

squad of 10 wyches attack, score 5 hits which are 1 pen and 3 glances. Chance of destruction is low, chance of suppressing it for a turn is very high.

DE missiles, mostly Str 6, not exactly tank busting gold

Klaivex have str 3, boosted to str 5 with the demiklaves. That isnt going to scratch a dread. With FC it might get a glance but thats not gonna win it for you.

Blasters and DL are great, but they are much more likely to stun/immobilize/weapon destroy then they are to kill something. If you really need to kill something your only option is to fire many many many units at it.

Heat lances do indeed kill things.

Use as many heavy and splatter weapons you can get your hands on. Your only choice is to kill as many as you can at once.

And Talos are a VERY reliable way of vehicle killing.

For example, earlier today a Talos strolled through and immobilised 1 dread, and killed 3 more, before finally going down to the 4th dread.

on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

enfernux wrote:on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

You don't fight rear armor against walkers.

enfernux wrote:on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

Wrong on all counts

You cannot hit rear armor on a dread unless it is immobilized. So incubi will hit its AV12 unless its immobilized then all hits go on the AV10

Fighting with grenades against an unimobilized dread requires 6s to hit. Once immobilized you can hit with WS as normal

Thus the BEST thing that you can get on a dread short of wrecked is immobilized, it makes them soooo much easier to take out.

dreads are Str 6 base without a DCCW, still enough to ignore FNP on wyches.

Page 73, Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook wrote:
Walkers and Assaults
Models hitting a walker in close combat always roll for penetration against its front armour.

The only bonus to immobilising it is it loses 1 attack (to a min of 1) and grenades hit on straight WS instead of 6.

ShadarLogoth wrote:

enfernux wrote:on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

You don't fight rear armor against walkers.

Correct. You hit vehicles rear armor. The brb has a nice paragraph on why walkers aren't hit on the rear armor and are always hit in cc on the front armor. Incubi can't hurt Dreads, except a Klaivex w/ demiklaives using it as +2S with furious charge, and can still only glance due to AV12 front armor. Incubi would get slaughtered by a dread. Wyches w/ haywires can tarpit dreads, and possibly kill them if the dread isn't immobilised before assaulting, and stands a very good chance of killing one if it's immobilised before assaulting. A Talos is about the only thing in our codex that can effectively kill a dreadnought in cc. It's the best thing in our codex for killing vehicles in fact. The problem is that it's slow and needs a wwp to get there.

Exergy wrote:

enfernux wrote:on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

Wrong on all counts

You cannot hit rear armor on a dread unless it is immobilized. So incubi will hit its AV12 unless its immobilized then all hits go on the AV10

Fighting with grenades against an unimobilized dread requires 6s to hit. Once immobilized you can hit with WS as normal

Thus the BEST thing that you can get on a dread short of wrecked is immobilized, it makes them soooo much easier to take out.

dreads are Str 6 base without a DCCW, still enough to ignore FNP on wyches.

You always hit walkers against WS. Always.

ShadarLogoth wrote:

Exergy wrote:

enfernux wrote:on the subject of dreadnought: in cc, you fight its rear armor, that is 10. with s5, multi hits and with s4 incubi, thats gona hurt, even if most of them are glances.
8 incu on the charge is 24 attacks
1 klaivex is 4.
24*1/2*1/6 that is 2 glances
4*1/2*1/3 is still a 0.67 to do anything.
slim, but can happen.
btw on the wytches: if the dread is immo, got shaken/stunn is enough for me to take it out next turn. A WD for the DCC is better, so it only has an s5 in hitting my little ladies. but on the thought of numbers:
has a ws value, so hitting is 50%. 5 hits, yeah. 5*1/6 0.83 to get a pen, 5*5/6= is a 4.16 for a glance. Rolling to glance *4/6 2 things will definetly occur. if it is at least a stunn or a wd, im happy if both, well im replacing the laughing god of the eldar

Wrong on all counts

You cannot hit rear armor on a dread unless it is immobilized. So incubi will hit its AV12 unless its immobilized then all hits go on the AV10

Fighting with grenades against an unimobilized dread requires 6s to hit. Once immobilized you can hit with WS as normal

Thus the BEST thing that you can get on a dread short of wrecked is immobilized, it makes them soooo much easier to take out.

dreads are Str 6 base without a DCCW, still enough to ignore FNP on wyches.

You always hit walkers against WS. Always.

UNLESS you're using grenades THEN you need 6's to hit unless they are immobilized then, and only then, do you use WS.

No, you require 6's to hit walkers with grenades, You only hit on standard WS for grenades once it is immobilised.
Standard attacks hit against standard WS though.

Go read page 73 of your rulebook, I can't be bothered to type the rest of it out here.

Standard Grotesques are great for tarpitting a dread too.
A squad of 3-4 Grotesques has a reasonable chance of immobilising it, or more importantly - taking out it's DCCW(s) on the charge. If you've managed to drop its DCCW it can only do manage 1 wound a turn if it's lucky, and so it's stuck there until something like my talos appears to smack it in the face.

Uriens Grots can kill them, but they're a bit pricey in general.

I actually find DE easy to fight with my nids. In a tournament your kinda screwed because you need a very specific list to beat them, but if you have that list it's not bad. Here are a few tips.

Use hormagaunts, they are fast and have 5 initiative, also pack a few groups of 30 because unlike the DE you can get bigger troops.

Use adrenal glands to get that needed bonus in initiative you will find hormagaunts will match those pesky wyches. Also the bonus in strength will mean wounding on 3+ and 2+ for genestealers.

Take the broodlord, his hypnotic gaze is fantastic for nullifying the special units in melee.

Gargoyles with adrenal glands and toxin, once again fast with a some shooty and can glance those skimmers. Also bring them in hordes to keep them from running circles around you. 2 groups of 20 is only 320

Possibly the only use for warriors, the venom cannon is much stronger against open topped vehicles and that 4+ poison will mean much less to a warrior than a monstrous creature.

Hive guard, tough as nails, in close combat they will be hard fore them to hurt and offer good shots.

And finally and possibly most important. the VENOMTHROPE he is everything you will need, 5+ cover save for everyone and arms your units with defensive grenades with dangerous terrain for the enemy if they want to assault. It then becomes dangerous for them to assault you.

with this set You can match initiative and deal out easy wounds on the charge and the gargoyles will funnel their movements.

Autocannons

Trance_Phoenix wrote:I actually find DE easy to fight with my nids. In a tournament your kinda screwed because you need a very specific list to beat them, but if you have that list it's not bad. Here are a few tips.

Use hormagaunts, they are fast and have 5 initiative, also pack a few groups of 30 because unlike the DE you can get bigger troops.

Use adrenal glands to get that needed bonus in initiative you will find hormagaunts will match those pesky wyches. Also the bonus in strength will mean wounding on 3+ and 2+ for genestealers.

Take the broodlord, his hypnotic gaze is fantastic for nullifying the special units in melee.

Gargoyles with adrenal glands and toxin, once again fast with a some shooty and can glance those skimmers. Also bring them in hordes to keep them from running circles around you. 2 groups of 20 is only 320

Possibly the only use for warriors, the venom cannon is much stronger against open topped vehicles and that 4+ poison will mean much less to a warrior than a monstrous creature.

Hive guard, tough as nails, in close combat they will be hard fore them to hurt and offer good shots.

And finally and possibly most important. the VENOMTHROPE he is everything you will need, 5+ cover save for everyone and arms your units with defensive grenades with dangerous terrain for the enemy if they want to assault. It then becomes dangerous for them to assault you.

with this set You can match initiative and deal out easy wounds on the charge and the gargoyles will funnel their movements.

Not alot of good suggestions here. Venomthropes die first turn to lance fire. Followed quickly by warriors. And without FNP or a cover save you will lose a 30 man squad of guants a turn. Gargoyles have to get within 6" to hit DE vehicles with nightshields and at that range they are splinter rifle and wrack/beastpack food.

Since jumping on board the Venom train I have yet to fail to table a tyranid player. Whether its stealershock, drop nids, tervigon spam, etc. Its not the nid players fault, its just not a fair matchup.

ok, i missed that and i usually have to fight eldar walkers 10 all around. Sry on that.
getting wytches there....hmm...24" assault range enough? in average a DE does that. 12" vehicle 2.99" for the further side of your model base, average roll of 3" for run, thats 17.99" +6" for the assault, and then getting on the grenades. a squad of blasterborn or two can give a high possibility that the dread will be immo-d.

But if i stay with my original shooty DE, that dreds gona have a lot of lance hits.

on the walkers, yes, im beaten, but i'm more afraid of an IG vendetta spam, than a lone dreadnought.

Venomthropes behind troops gain a 4+ cover, in open a 5+ A lance can kill them on the first turn but I've kept them alive for awhile with the 5+ cover, it also means that gun isn't targeting other units. Warriors can be ID but still better than having a trygon go down and easier to keep safe or in cover meaning the bonus of having a powerful lance doesn't hurt you as much.

Also 2 groups of 2 venoms is surprisingly durable.

Gargoyles can move 12" and assault 6" giving them 18" to catch and glance 10 Armour. You use their guns to shoot troops.

A tervigon can be a good HQ with feel no pain, but I find the warriors a little more useful.

However this is just the army I use and it seems to work really well. I don't loose often from them anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also the parasite in a group of gargoyles is good against DE, their low toughness means more rippers to be spawned and used to tar pit their stuff. Not to mention strength 6 means a good chance to hurt vehicles.

Trance_Phoenix wrote:Venomthropes behind troops gain a 4+ cover, in open a 5+ A lance can kill them on the first turn but I've kept them alive for awhile with the 5+ cover, it also means that gun isn't targeting other units. Warriors can be ID but still better than having a trygon go down and easier to keep safe or in cover meaning the bonus of having a powerful lance doesn't hurt you as much.

Also 2 groups of 2 venoms is surprisingly durable.

Gargoyles can move 12" and assault 6" giving them 18" to catch and glance 10 Armour. You use their guns to shoot troops.

A tervigon can be a good HQ with feel no pain, but I find the warriors a little more useful.

However this is just the army I use and it seems to work really well. I don't loose often from them anymore.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also the parasite in a group of gargoyles is good against DE, their low toughness means more rippers to be spawned and used to tar pit their stuff. Not to mention strength 6 means a good chance to hurt vehicles.

3 Ravagers with lances will kill 3 venomthropes with 4+ cover on average per turn. Then venoms followup and murder whatever troops no longer have cover. And all this is happening while the entire army moves 12" towards whichever flank is the most vunerable/weakest. It is a dance of death that a footslogging nid list has no real way of surviving.

The parasite? He MAY get one chance to make ripper swarms provided a vehicle is destroyed and he gets to the troops inside.

The best chance 'Nids have is full reserve outflank/deepstrike list as it gives the DE player fewer chances to shoot and gets you in closer.

Regarding earlier comments that a DE player has to go first to win, unless my opponent has overwhelming firepower (longfangs/razorbacks, or hydras/vendettas) I usually prefer to go 2nd as that allows me to counter deploy. I have won alot of games in the deployment phase.

I'm just giving a suggestion that works for nids beating DE, and more times than not that lists wins. Hormagaunts average about 10" a turn so they aren't that slow. Backed up by 12" moving gargoyles you pretty much have a fast attack army. Venoms can also be kept our of line of sight and give cover.

And with a troop flooded army those vehicles don't get to move very far.

Flank a group of genestealers and game set.

Parasite with gargoyles, that is roughly 20 wounds to get to before he gets hit, he generally lives for awhile.

I don't mean to be rude, but this is tried tested, and has worked many times.

DE are heavy hitting, but if you take away the impact of their hit you have a better chance. 4+ poison isn't so good when your used to 3+ wounds on your gaunts.

Also the parasite in a group of gargoyles is good against DE, their low toughness means more rippers to be spawned and used to tar pit their stuff. Not to mention strength 6 means a good chance to hurt vehicles.


3 Ravagers with lances will kill 3 venomthropes with 4+ cover on average per turn. Then venoms followup and murder whatever troops no longer have cover. And all this is happening while the entire army moves 12" towards whichever flank is the most vunerable/weakest. It is a dance of death that a footslogging nid list has no real way of surviving.

The parasite? He MAY get one chance to make ripper swarms provided a vehicle is destroyed and he gets to the troops inside.

The best chance 'Nids have is full reserve outflank/deepstrike list as it gives the DE player fewer chances to shoot and gets you in closer.

Regarding earlier comments that a DE player has to go first to win, unless my opponent has overwhelming firepower (longfangs/razorbacks, or hydras/vendettas) I usually prefer to go 2nd as that allows me to counter deploy. I have won alot of games in the deployment phase.
If your going 2nd, how are your Ravagers all alive to shoot? Also, why aren't the Venomthropes hidden behind the MC's they are protecting.

Venom/Lance spam is naturally a tough list for Nids, don't get me wrong, but me has a feeling your meta is making things extra easy for you if you can afford to go 2nd with paper air planes and not suffer from dead paper air planes.

Back to the original question, I don't think Dark Eldar have a glaring weakness, but they do have vulnerabilities that make them a balanced codex. They are one of the better armies in the game without being broken, hence why Kelly should write more codexes than Ward (even though I'm happy with the Blood Angels rules).

A good DE list in the hands of a capable player has a strong chance in any matchup...except maybe when matched up against 3-6 Psyfleman Dreads with Shrouding...

I have no doubt that you've had success against less the optimized DE builds. DE are odd like that, you tend to have people that know what they are doing who build scary as hell lists and then those who are starting out and build pretty weak or moderate builds. Against the former, nids just don't have a chance. Those hormagaunts, how well will they stand up to a charge from a beast pack without FNP or venomthrope backup because all that support is gone? Not very well. A good DE list essentially gets to pick what parts of your army die and when they die and you can't do much about it. Ask any 'Nid player what army they dread more than any other at higher end events, they'll say DE, just like any DE player cringes at the site of 3+ psyflemen dreads across the table......

At 1850 my list puts out 10 DL shots, 11 blaster shots, and 84 splinter cannon shots a round. It also has FNP wyches, 5 wracks with a liquifier, and a beastpack with baron. DE win the long, medium, short and CC game.

Like I said before, its not the nid players fault, its just unfair.

@shadar longtooth: ravagers stay alive with a combination deployment/cover/nightshields. You would be suprised on how often I can get out of 42" range of my opponents lascannons, or better yet, out of line of sight. Also, Venomthropes are always behind the MCs, but I can move 12" and fire all my lances, good look denying me LOS. Not alot of armies can throw out that much AT at 48", if they can, I try and go first, but if they can't I go 2nd.

I think we just need to play a match lol cause I find DE beatable.

They are difficult to beat but I've done it, and against similar armies.

The other thing that determines victor is who assaults who. Hence venoms hidden to give that amazing dangerous terrain buff.

A tervigon is good HQ as you can take feel no pain, it's the tervigon or parasite. I only run the parasite in fun home matches..just cause it's neat.

And this won't work in a tournament because you'll be weak to other armies that have better than 10 armor.

But if you were to optimize an army this is the way, drop nids don't work so well because they get shot to often, with this strategy you can gain the charge take the advantage.

Trance_Phoenix wrote:I think we just need to play a match lol cause I find DE beatable.

I agree here, I would actually pay money to find a 'Nid list that I can even hold its ground against my DE as I have several friends who love their 'nids and are quit dispondent over that particular matchup....

*any chance you're going to be at Adepticon?

gardeth wrote:I agree here, I would actually pay money to find a 'Nid list that I can even hold its ground against my DE as I have several friends who love their 'nids and are quit dispondent over that particular matchup....

Careful... I think you're approaching that line where honesty and arrogance meet.

Marshal_Gus wrote:

gardeth wrote:I agree here, I would actually pay money to find a 'Nid list that I can even hold its ground against my DE as I have several friends who love their 'nids and are quit dispondent over that particular matchup....

Careful... I think you're approaching that line where honesty and arrogance meet.

If so, sorry, but I geniunely want to know if it is possible, I just dont think it is. Same reason I shelved my SM biker army, it has no chance against a solid DE build :( .

Unfortunately I won't be at AdeptiCon. A bit to far out of the way for me. I'm hoping to snag the next one and make a road trip out of it.

Friend me though and when I do make it to a tourny we can have a match and post a battle report.

There's always Vassal if you want to test off.

Ovion wrote:There's always Vassal if you want to test off.

That is true, though Vassal tends to make me feel stupid for my inability to get it to run properly. May have to take another run at it though, 40k with out model setup or cleanup sounds very appealing.

Yeah, I need to figure it out myself...

I also want to create some custom images so my army on here could match my TT force (craploads of custom / counts as / etc etuff)

I've actually never heard of Vessal

Ovion wrote:No, you require 6's to hit walkers with grenades, You only hit on standard WS for grenades once it is immobilised.
Standard attacks hit against standard WS though.

Go read page 73 of your rulebook, I can't be bothered to type the rest of it out here.

Standard Grotesques are great for tarpitting a dread too.
A squad of 3-4 Grotesques has a reasonable chance of immobilising it, or more importantly - taking out it's DCCW(s) on the charge. If you've managed to drop its DCCW it can only do manage 1 wound a turn if it's lucky, and so it's stuck there until something like my talos appears to smack it in the face.

Uriens Grots can kill them, but they're a bit pricey in general.

grots are horrible at tarpitting a dread because if the dread has a DCCW it will over kill the grots.

Exergy wrote:

Ovion wrote:No, you require 6's to hit walkers with grenades, You only hit on standard WS for grenades once it is immobilised.
Standard attacks hit against standard WS though.

Go read page 73 of your rulebook, I can't be bothered to type the rest of it out here.

Standard Grotesques are great for tarpitting a dread too.
A squad of 3-4 Grotesques has a reasonable chance of immobilising it, or more importantly - taking out it's DCCW(s) on the charge. If you've managed to drop its DCCW it can only do manage 1 wound a turn if it's lucky, and so it's stuck there until something like my talos appears to smack it in the face.

Uriens Grots can kill them, but they're a bit pricey in general.

grots are horrible at tarpitting a dread because if the dread has a DCCW it will over kill the grots.

True, but all you gotta do is knock off a DCCW and your GTG. Basically this means on the charge glances of 5 and 6 and pens of 3 or better are golden.

Not a big fan of grotesques or Talos' (gorgous model though) as they are too slow and too vunerable. Not to mention Grots put a ton of points in one place thats not that hard for your opponent to get rid of.

gardeth wrote:Not a big fan of grotesques or Talos' (gorgous model though) as they are too slow and too vunerable. Not to mention Grots put a ton of points in one place thats not that hard for your opponent to get rid of.

Their both much better in a WWP list, I use Grots as a delivery system, and of course Talos coming out of the WWP to crack some heads.

Exergy wrote:

Ovion wrote:No, you require 6's to hit walkers with grenades, You only hit on standard WS for grenades once it is immobilised.
Standard attacks hit against standard WS though.

Go read page 73 of your rulebook, I can't be bothered to type the rest of it out here.

Standard Grotesques are great for tarpitting a dread too.
A squad of 3-4 Grotesques has a reasonable chance of immobilising it, or more importantly - taking out it's DCCW(s) on the charge. If you've managed to drop its DCCW it can only do manage 1 wound a turn if it's lucky, and so it's stuck there until something like my talos appears to smack it in the face.

Uriens Grots can kill them, but they're a bit pricey in general.

grots are horrible at tarpitting a dread because if the dread has a DCCW it will over kill the grots.

I generally run 2-3 squads of 3-4, depending on game size.
I've regularly successfully tarpitted Dreads with them, all you need is to glance, then get a 5+ and you're golden, if not, chances are they'll only last 2-3 turns, but that'll be long enough for my Talos to get in range, or for me to set up something to take it down once it's done.

gardeth wrote:Not a big fan of grotesques or Talos' (gorgous model though) as they are too slow and too vunerable. Not to mention Grots put a ton of points in one place thats not that hard for your opponent to get rid of.

TBH, I run mine in squads of 3-4 in raiders. The squad of 3, with a haem, 2 liquifiers, aberation and 2 venom blades, with a raider toting ff / ns comes to 275, and so far they've almost always made their points back, and generally at least half survive the game. 11 wounds accross 4 models, each with different gear, needing to cause 8 wounds before I lose the first model (outside of Str10) with fnp is really rather survivable, when the majority of things you're facing will need 4 to hit and 5-6 to wound in combat, where you'll be staying a majority of the time.

Siphen wrote:
Are there any armies out there that give DE a hard time? Or any types of lists, even? Just for reference, I'm usually up against a bunch of warriors in raiders and venoms, plus a few ravagers.

It is nearly impossible for DE to win against a well-built Grey Knights army. Spamming Psycannons, Psybacks, and Psyflemen Dreadnoughts is too much for DE to ever handle because AV10 Open Topped just melts completely when shot by S6 or more.

Not to mention that DE rely on shaking enemy vehicles in order to not take return fire. Grey Knights are immune to this.

When going against Dark Eldar, I usually take out ALL of their vehicles before or on turn 2, and usually table them by turn 5. Often I dont even need to go for objectives until turn 5-6 because they only ever have a few models left during about turn 4.

Its honestly just sad how unbalanced the matchup is. I often feel bad when deploying my army against a DE player...

zeekill wrote:

Siphen wrote:
Are there any armies out there that give DE a hard time? Or any types of lists, even? Just for reference, I'm usually up against a bunch of warriors in raiders and venoms, plus a few ravagers.

It is nearly impossible for DE to win against a well-built Grey Knights army. Spamming Psycannons, Psybacks, and Psyflemen Dreadnoughts is too much for DE to ever handle because AV10 Open Topped just melts completely when shot by S6 or more.

Not to mention that DE rely on shaking enemy vehicles in order to not take return fire. Grey Knights are immune to this.

When going against Dark Eldar, I usually take out ALL of their vehicles before or on turn 2, and usually table them by turn 5. Often I dont even need to go for objectives until turn 5-6 because they only ever have a few models left during about turn 4.

Its honestly just sad how unbalanced the matchup is. I often feel bad when deploying my army against a DE player...

Damn fortitude, no seriously...sigh..

A grey knight list with 3+ Psy-dreads is a nightmare list, any GK list without them tends to be a cakewalk! Go nightshields!

gardeth wrote:

Damn fortitude, no seriously...sigh..

A grey knight list with 3+ Psy-dreads is a nightmare list, any GK list without them tends to be a cakewalk! Go nightshields!

To be honest, while the Psyflemen Dreads pretty much each take out a raider per turn, and that is strong, its the Heavy bolter Razorbacks that really do it (probably because i run 8 of them...). Three shots at S6 that are nearly guaranteed to hit (BS4 with Twin-Linked) only need a 5 to pen. Each Razorback averages 1 pen and 1 glance against a raider, at a 36" range (so 30" with a nightshield).

Usually after my turn 1 DE are left with 3-4 vehicles that are all stunned or shaken, left without weapons, or immobilized.

Again, i feel bad even during deployment.

gardeth wrote:
Damn fortitude, no seriously...sigh..

A grey knight list with 3+ Psy-dreads is a nightmare list, any GK list without them tends to be a cakewalk! Go nightshields!

yeah fortitude really bring to light DE weakness with destroying vehicles. THey are so much better at stunning them. Talos can get it done but not at range.
1-2 Psy Rifles is ok, 3+ is impossible
Psyrazorbacks are annoying but not half as bad as the dreads.

so the weakness of DE is an op 'dex? Never would've thought of that.
Why dont we leave the GK out of it, since they are either psyfle-dread or 75%+ to lose armies - at least in my exp.

Yes, loseing a vehicle a turn is bad for DE, loseing more is a nightmare. Or just haveing anything to prevent them from moveing and/or shooting is the day an archon stabs himself in the stomack w his shadowshield deactivated.

still it is an op 'dex's right to do so, so im not concearned on playing w gk lists. The reason: i know im gona lose, except if the dice godess of my mad reality wills it the other way - rare.

enfernux wrote:so the weakness of DE is an op 'dex? Never would've thought of that.
Why dont we leave the GK out of it, since they are either psyfle-dread or 75%+ to lose armies - at least in my exp.

Yes, loseing a vehicle a turn is bad for DE, loseing more is a nightmare. Or just haveing anything to prevent them from moveing and/or shooting is the day an archon stabs himself in the stomack w his shadowshield deactivated.

still it is an op 'dex's right to do so, so im not concearned on playing w gk lists. The reason: i know im gona lose, except if the dice godess of my mad reality wills it the other way - rare.

The weakness of DE is vehicle spam. Dark Eldar have very few proper AV weapons. Any army that can field a large number of medium armoured vehicles and can put out a reasonable number of mid strength shots will table a Dark Eldar list pretty easily. GK and IG capitalize on this and are therefore a direct counter to most DE armies. It just so "happens" that these army lists win Fifth in general.

Mand wrote:
The weakness of DE is vehicle spam. Dark Eldar have very few proper AV weapons. Any army that can field a large number of medium armoured vehicles and can put out a reasonable number of mid strength shots will table a Dark Eldar list pretty easily. GK and IG capitalize on this and are therefore a direct counter to most DE armies. It just so "happens" that these army lists win Fifth in general.

Mechanical eldar can also be tough. Tons of fast AV 12

Exergy wrote:

Mand wrote:
The weakness of DE is vehicle spam. Dark Eldar have very few proper AV weapons. Any army that can field a large number of medium armoured vehicles and can put out a reasonable number of mid strength shots will table a Dark Eldar list pretty easily. GK and IG capitalize on this and are therefore a direct counter to most DE armies. It just so "happens" that these army lists win Fifth in general.

Mechanical eldar can also be tough. Tons of fast AV 12

Dude, I cannot beat Mech Eldar without getting very lucky. Especially with an ass load of upgrades on their vehicles.

So far their largest weakness is the fragility of the models. They snap and break so easy that if you flip the table over mid-game or after the game then you probably won't be playing against DE ever again.

They are a tough, tough army. But they are incredibly squishy all around.