Hey dakka, I am in the process of writing a list for my DE, and I can't seem to know where to start. I am not 'new' to DE, but I don't play with them often, and I'm sure their meta has changed since a few years ago.

I have a bunch of kabalite, five venoms, all the HQ's except Lelith and the court. A few raiders, only a single ravager, two razorwings, and sadly no reavers as they are so freakin expensive, a talos, a bunch of grotesques (three normal models and a ton of crypt horrors from AoS).

Any help with building a list and tactics?

I am thinking msu venoms is the way to go? Since everything is gonna die to a light breeze, it might be better to try and reduce casualties?

Do I put blasters in my Kabalite units? What HQ do I take?

Anyways, I have a lot of questions as DE seems really hard to play, and I am not the best tactician

Thanks everyone!
~Mikey

MSU Venom spam with Blaster Warrior squads is a great place to start. Add your single Ravager (no more than that as they are sub-par) and the 2 Razorwings. For HQ, I personally like a single Lhamaean, but you mention you don't have the Court. You could perhaps use your Succubus model as a Lhamaean?
The next best choice is an Archon with WWP, but you really need a unit that benefits. Like some Medusa or Eldar Wratihguard.

For your Grotesques, you really need to run them in a Grotesquerie formation. This can also solve your HQ issue as they make a great body guard for a Succubus. Take 2 untis of 4, the formation Haemi joins 1 unit, your CAD Succubus joins the other. Put both units in Raiders.

1 Talos is not great, but if you got a Cronos & another Heami, you can take the Dark Artisan Formation, which is the best Warlord DE have.

I don't feel like DE covens get the love they are due. Grotesquerie and Corpsethief Claw are solid competitive choices, in my opinion. They're both rock hard and can steamroll most targets with relative ease. Dark Artisan is also nice and probably one of the most durable units in the game for the points. It suffers from extreme lack of mobility and rather weak offensive potential, though, which is a shame.

Yeah, I don't have a ton of covens stuff, I can field the Scarlet Epicureans, Grotesquerie, and scalpel squadron, but that's about it.

I would have fit a scalpel squadron in if I had enough venoms, as I think it is a very cool formation (even though not being the best).

Covens do seem strong however, I do have a bunch of grotesques, so should I run grotesquerie with two or three squads of grotesques? I am thinking two as it gets expensive quickly....

The Dark Artisan seems pretty fun, I might need to get my haemi and talos painted in prep as it seems like a really fun centerpiece. Any advice on that?

Also, how much anti armour is too much anti armour? it feels really easy to fill my list with blasters and haywire...

MilkmanAl wrote:
I don't feel like DE covens get the love they are due. Grotesquerie and Corpsethief Claw are solid competitive choices, in my opinion. They're both rock hard and can steamroll most targets with relative ease. Dark Artisan is also nice and probably one of the most durable units in the game for the points. It suffers from extreme lack of mobility and rather weak offensive potential, though, which is a shame.

They get plenty of love. It's just the competitive options are neither skiffs nor Kabalites or even Wyches, pretty much all the prettiest models. Venoms and monsters all day is good but boring. Also, I don't know anyone able to field Wracks en masse so half the book isn't an option for a lot of folks.

MilkmanAl wrote:
I don't feel like DE covens get the love they are due. Grotesquerie and Corpsethief Claw are solid competitive choices, in my opinion. They're both rock hard and can steamroll most targets with relative ease. Dark Artisan is also nice and probably one of the most durable units in the game for the points. It suffers from extreme lack of mobility and rather weak offensive potential, though, which is a shame.

I agree for the most part, however, the Dark Artisan can be a nasty surprise for an opponent if you give the Haemi a WWP (which is pretty much mandatory). Lack of mobility isn't an issue when you can drop in 1" away from the enemy. All the better if behind them, forcing them to move away and potentially closer to your Grots.

-

 gummyofallbears wrote:

Also, how much anti armour is too much anti armour? it feels really easy to fill my list with blasters and haywire...

Thats entirely dependent on your local meta, Dark Eldar struggle for anti-tank as the Dark Lance is a poor weapon for the job these days so you find yourself filling up on Haywire Scourges and heat Lances. But there are plenty of people out there who don't run any vehicles, making those choices largely useless.

The all round best choices are Grotesques, Reavers and Talos when getting into combat as they're generally useful agaisnt everything.

And with your Ravager I'd advise to run it with Disintegrator Cannons, you'll get far more out of it when shooting 9 S5, AP2 shots at elite infantry rather than trying to take down the odd Rhino.

I guess that is the good thing about Dark Lances and Blasters? They seem to be good TEQ and MC killers.

Grotesques seem to be a tarpit against dedicated CC units and a blender against troops and the such, is this a correct assumption?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I guess that is the good thing about Dark Lances and Blasters? They seem to be good TEQ and MC killers.

Grotesques seem to be a tarpit against dedicated CC units and a blender against troops and the such, is this a correct assumption?

Yeah, basically. Grots can also do good against light vehicles with all their S5 attacks.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I guess that is the good thing about Dark Lances and Blasters? They seem to be good TEQ and MC killers.

Grotesques seem to be a tarpit against dedicated CC units and a blender against troops and the such, is this a correct assumption?

Spot on on both counts there. This is why Blasterborn are still very much a thing.

I think the current thing with the Grotesquerie is to run two squads of 3 with HQ support. That way they still get majority toughness 5, but get to benefit from Rampage against pretty much any target.

Shame about the lack of Reavers as a squad of 3 as a cluster caltrop bomb is one of the more competitive units in the codex.

D6 S6 HoW attacks at the I10 step is a bit of a multipurpose tool, and one of the few things in the 'dex that can assault into cover properly. Then, H&R out and repeat

Another idea I had recently was to take two lots of the Realspace Raiders formation for 12 FA slots. Then, alongside your standard Kabs in Venoms and a Grotesquerie, fill the rest of the slots with single Beastmasters/Khymaerae at 10pts a pop and use your 12 individual units to be bl**dy annoying

Be good to eat overwatch for your Grots as well

If I did run Realspace Raiders, it'd be to max out my reavers in min squads, not only are they the coolest looking models in the codex, they are also some of the best

Although the idea of that many single models running around seems really annoying for your opponent, lol

The Dark Artisan seems pretty fun, I might need to get my haemi and talos painted in prep as it seems like a really fun centerpiece. Any advice on that?

As Galef alluded, the Dark Artisan is best at area denial. Webway it down somewhere really inconvenient for your opponent, and pick off units with it the best you can. It's no powerhouse for the points, but it's still two monstrous creatures in a unit plus whatever damage the Haemonculus can offer. You'll eventually take out anything short of heavily-armed assault specialists. It'll just take awhile.

It's pretty hard to whittle down T7 with 3+ and 3+ FNP, so most people will likely tar pit you and/or run away as they are able. In other words, your little Frankenstein unit is a pretty strong anvil for your hammer. That's a huge plus, considering how slow Coven units are. It also helps you exploit your overall mobility advantage if you have regular DE allies (I.e., venoms, readers, etc.) by forcing your opponent to move in (hopefully) an undesirable fashion.
If you really want to go full-on tank, run the Artisan behind a Corpsethief Claw for the rerolls and FNP bonus. That's going to be most of your army, but it sure will look impressive!

Wouldn't the Dark Artisan only get a 4+ FNP?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Wouldn't the Dark Artisan only get a 4+ FNP?

Yeah, but the Haemy can get a relic to boost his to 3+ FNP and he can tank, plus if he's warlord they reroll 1's

Usually yes the dark artisan has a 4+ there's a relic the haemonculus has that will allow him 3+ and shrug off his first instant death wound. The relic is pricy though.

The 4+ FnP does extend to units within 6 inches boosting a corpse thief formation. Also, if the haemonculus from the DA formation is your warlord you reroll 1's on FnP on any Talos or Cronos within 12

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Hey dakka, I am in the process of writing a list for my DE, and I can't seem to know where to start. I am not 'new' to DE, but I don't play with them often, and I'm sure their meta has changed since a few years ago.

I have a bunch of kabalite, five venoms, all the HQ's except Lelith and the court. A few raiders, only a single ravager, two razorwings, and sadly no reavers as they are so freakin expensive, a talos, a bunch of grotesques (three normal models and a ton of crypt horrors from AoS).

Any help with building a list and tactics?

I am thinking msu venoms is the way to go? Since everything is gonna die to a light breeze, it might be better to try and reduce casualties?

Do I put blasters in my Kabalite units? What HQ do I take?

Anyways, I have a lot of questions as DE seems really hard to play, and I am not the best tactician

Thanks everyone!
~Mikey

check out www.thedarkcity.net

As for getting started, the Grotresquerie Formation is as close to an auto include as I'll ever admit to. It's just too good. 2 Raiders, 8 Grotesques, a Haemonculus. Add Aethersails. Profit.

I cannot even begin to recommend them enough as a core to any force you build. It is not the only way to build a force but man are those things worth their weight in gold most of the time.

Doesn't the talos only have a max of 4+?

Sorry for the silly questions, I don't have my codex on hand.

I am familiar with the relic, the nightmare doll, correct?

Anyways, the grotesquerie is something I haven't used yet, like ever, I guess that was just because I didn't own enough grotesques, but because I have some many crypt horrors, it seems a lot like an auto include.

The Dark Artisan is something I'll build towards too, definitely seems like fun.

Thanks!

The Talos will have a max of 4+, but the Haemonculus has a 4+ and can add 1 to FNP rolls with a nightmare doll. If you have him out front to soak wounds with the majority T7, you've got a serious bullet sponge.

Oh alrighty, and he can negate force weapons and the such which is good. Thanks for the advice.

What is your opinion on the scalpel squadron, does it have an purpose besides null deployment?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Doesn't the talos only have a max of 4+?

Sorry for the silly questions, I don't have my codex on hand.

I am familiar with the relic, the nightmare doll, correct?

Anyways, the grotesquerie is something I haven't used yet, like ever, I guess that was just because I didn't own enough grotesques, but because I have some many crypt horrors, it seems a lot like an auto include.

The Dark Artisan is something I'll build towards too, definitely seems like fun.

Thanks!

proxy them in a list immediately. the Grotesquerie Formation is awesome.


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 gummyofallbears wrote:
Oh alrighty, and he can negate force weapons and the such which is good. Thanks for the advice.

What is your opinion on the scalpel squadron, does it have an purpose besides null deployment?

Love Scalpel Squadron! I did an article on that...hmm... it was a long while ago but...

http://40kunorthodoxy.blogspot.com/2014/11/haemonculus-coven-book.html

Bayam.

 Galef wrote:

I agree for the most part, however, the Dark Artisan can be a nasty surprise for an opponent if you give the Haemi a WWP (which is pretty much mandatory). Lack of mobility isn't an issue when you can drop in 1" away from the enemy. All the better if behind them, forcing them to move away and potentially closer to your Grots.

-

If you do run a haemi with WWP have you ever tried liquifiers on your grots? Dropping down and being able to fire a few flame templates seems really good, and the liquifier has a 50% chance of offering no save for MEQ units. The s3 seems pretty bad but to be honest they seem more powerful than a normal flamer because of the chance at not letting the opponent have an armor save.

You do have to drop a close combat weapon making them less effective in the attack but they already have so many attacks naturally and from rampage.

Liquifiers aren't remotely worth the 15pt asking price IMO, S3 with random AP means they're more likely to completely fail than actually achieve anything, and for an extra kick in the teeth they take away an attack from your Talos.


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 gummyofallbears wrote:
Oh alrighty, and he can negate force weapons and the such which is good. Thanks for the advice.

What is your opinion on the scalpel squadron, does it have an purpose besides null deployment?

The Nightmare Doll will negate the first Instant Death attack your Haemy receives, however it instantly stops working after that.

The Scalpel Squadron is disappointing. Sure, deep striking Venoms on turn 1 is cool but Wracks are worthless.

That isnt the point, REALLY of the Scalpel Squadron. Its so you can deploy nothing. This is of great value when going second if you have a lot of Obsec that can get places, and of course...Dark Eldar do.

Still wish Wracks were Troops though. As elites, they just dont make sense.

Wracks can be decent. In conjunction with your Cronos giving them a 4+ FNP they make a decent semi-killy tar pit and the Ossefactor is pretty solid actually. Not worth the Elites tax, but worth running in Scalpel. They are also pretty good at getting First Blood if that's your aim with them.

If your Cronos is hanging around buffing Wracks then it's out of position as it should be biffing Talos or Grotesques.

I've tried the Scalpel Squadron and whilst automatic turn 1 deep strike is nice I quickly find myself wondering "what else can it do?", with the answer invariably being nothing.

Liquefiers don't seem very good. S3 makes then pretty bad.

Maybe the scalpel squadron can bully tiny units and try to get first blood on some scouts or something? But that's very situational.

And a null deployment list doesn't seem very good. DE already have the mobility to go anywhere they need, why get additional risk? Sure you deny your opponent a turn of shooting, but the Scalpel squad might very well get beat up without an issue... it seems too risky.

aushlo wrote:
Wracks can be decent. In conjunction with your Cronos giving them a 4+ FNP they make a decent semi-killy tar pit and the Ossefactor is pretty solid actually. Not worth the Elites tax, but worth running in Scalpel. They are also pretty good at getting First Blood if that's your aim with them.

'

Ossefactor is a great weapon.


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 Imateria wrote:
If your Cronos is hanging around buffing Wracks then it's out of position as it should be biffing Talos or Grotesques.

I've tried the Scalpel Squadron and whilst automatic turn 1 deep strike is nice I quickly find myself wondering "what else can it do?", with the answer invariably being nothing.

Again... It's value is not what it does. it's what it stops the opponent from doing. Dark Eldar are glass cannons. We all know that. But what do you do ABOUT it? well the answer is you can Null deploy so that your damage dealing counts for more and so your bulk can last longer to take objectives.

the Scalpel Squadron allows you to do it. All armies have certain weaknesses. Scatter bike lists hate the burgeoning number of units that can assault from deep strike. The Tau empire will always hate fast melee units, and especially ones that can stop them from getting support fire. White Scars Battle Companies dislike servo skulls coupled with anti-tank firepower. Cabal Powered Dawgstars dislike large numbs of STR 8 blasts and of course the Culexus assassin. the list goes on.

Dark Eldar deal damage amply. Grotesqueries are out of this world, the Incubi, against their intended targets are terrors, the BeastPack is so many wounds that it's nigh unkillable when made fearless and the Court of the Archon, easily the most underrated unit in the codex deals death like crazy if you shove it up someones nose. Thr trouble always is WHEN you do these things.

Power From Pain favors the slow blade. So when you have a tool wherein you can go second and use the Scalpel Squadron, it's really ideal. When played the way that is ideal, you kind of steal the enemies thunder for two rounds and STILL bring the same pain, but with less time for the enemy to kill you after wards, by two turns no less. Dark Eldar can take up space REALLY well and they can blockade well. So if you see your army for what it is, a damage dealing porcelain hammer, and you are able to get the jump on theenemy and then weather the return engagement better because theres less time for attrition it can be a real winning combination.

Far too risky, DE lack much in the way of reserve manipulation. Relying on the Scalpel Squadron is putting yourself far too out there for an early tabling before you can get your units into the game.

Power From Pain favors the slow blade. So when you have a tool wherein you can go second and use the Scalpel Squadron, it's really ideal. When played the way that is ideal, you kind of steal the enemies thunder for two rounds and STILL bring the same pain, but with less time for the enemy to kill you after wards, by two turns no less. Dark Eldar can take up space REALLY well and they can blockade well. So if you see your army for what it is, a damage dealing porcelain hammer, and you are able to get the jump on theenemy and then weather the return engagement better because theres less time for attrition it can be a real winning combination.

i agree with the point you're trying to make, but I don't think 2 Venoms with some Wracks is the stalwart force you want staving off a swift tabling. You'd have to get funky with allies and/or a fortification for the reserve tricks you'd need to make that even sort of viable. You can't afford to have your fragile boats roll in piecemeal. Having 2/3 of your army scoot in, an average roll, might not be sufficient.

 Imateria wrote:
Far too risky, DE lack much in the way of reserve manipulation. Relying on the Scalpel Squadron is putting yourself far too out there for an early tabling before you can get your units into the game.

Well...its not too risky. But it may exceed your own appetite for risk. I'll buy that much.

I play with reserves pretty muchall the time so it doesn't bug me at all. =)


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MilkmanAl wrote:

Power From Pain favors the slow blade. So when you have a tool wherein you can go second and use the Scalpel Squadron, it's really ideal. When played the way that is ideal, you kind of steal the enemies thunder for two rounds and STILL bring the same pain, but with less time for the enemy to kill you after wards, by two turns no less. Dark Eldar can take up space REALLY well and they can blockade well. So if you see your army for what it is, a damage dealing porcelain hammer, and you are able to get the jump on theenemy and then weather the return engagement better because theres less time for attrition it can be a real winning combination.

i agree with the point you're trying to make, but I don't think 2 Venoms with some Wracks is the stalwart force you want staving off a swift tabling. You'd have to get funky with allies and/or a fortification for the reserve tricks you'd need to make that even sort of viable. You can't afford to have your fragile boats roll in piecemeal. Having 2/3 of your army scoot in, an average roll, might not be sufficient.

There is an alternative against most armies. Simply be 43" away when the game starts. This also works. Or be 55 inches away as the case may be. It works against an awful lot of enemies and since I use Aethersails like they are going out of style, it bothers me not at all. Hehehe.

I played a game today with my DE, first time in a few years... and...

I won!

Against a pretty competitive Eldar list nonetheless!

I mentioned I was playing DE for the first time in a while, and he said he was playing Eldar. Followed by a groan I begrudgingly deployed my army, he put down a wraithknight, scatbikes, warp spiders, three crimson hunters, pretty competitive. Seizing the Initiative basically won me the game however, as my grotesquiery sprinting up the board first turn exploited his offensive deployment and drew all his fire turn one and two.

My takeways, ravagers are really not good, and I think the fliers might be a bit overpriced...

Thoughts? Would a single talos work better than a ravager? Blasterborn did very well, and their blaster fire single handedly killed the wraithknight, and I had plenty of AT without it. Scourge did well, even though he only had a single wave serpent.

So I think I might switch the ravager for a talos, but I don't have anything to substitute the razorwings with. Thoughts?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I played a game today with my DE, first time in a few years... and...

I won!

Against a pretty competitive Eldar list nonetheless!

I mentioned I was playing DE for the first time in a while, and he said he was playing Eldar. Followed by a groan I begrudgingly deployed my army, he put down a wraithknight, scatbikes, warp spiders, three crimson hunters, pretty competitive. Seizing the Initiative basically won me the game however, as my grotesquiery sprinting up the board first turn exploited his offensive deployment and drew all his fire turn one and two.

My takeways, ravagers are really not good, and I think the fliers might be a bit overpriced...

Thoughts? Would a single talos work better than a ravager? Blasterborn did very well, and their blaster fire single handedly killed the wraithknight, and I had plenty of AT without it. Scourge did well, even though he only had a single wave serpent.

So I think I might switch the ravager for a talos, but I don't have anything to substitute the razorwings with. Thoughts?

Maybe replace them with scourges. Personally, they're my favorite unit in the game, with great looks, plus actual armor, decent mobility, and being able to take lots of dakka

I would love to, but I only own 5. I would like either more venoms or some reavers, but funds are low these days.

 Imateria wrote:
If your Cronos is hanging around buffing Wracks then it's out of position as it should be biffing Talos or Grotesques.

I've tried the Scalpel Squadron and whilst automatic turn 1 deep strike is nice I quickly find myself wondering "what else can it do?", with the answer invariably being nothing.

To each their own. I've gotten 2 or 3 points off their First Blood boost a couple of times, and with a WWP Artisan they aren't very difficult to boost with the Cronos. They tend to be a second or third wave assault unit for me if I use them, they can turn a lengthy tarpit battle with ATSKNF foes holding up the Artisan into a slightly quicker win in my experience. They can eat anything short of a powerfist with their FNP, which is alright in my book. That said I use them infrequently.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I played a game today with my DE, first time in a few years... and...

I won!

Against a pretty competitive Eldar list nonetheless!

I mentioned I was playing DE for the first time in a while, and he said he was playing Eldar. Followed by a groan I begrudgingly deployed my army, he put down a wraithknight, scatbikes, warp spiders, three crimson hunters, pretty competitive. Seizing the Initiative basically won me the game however, as my grotesquiery sprinting up the board first turn exploited his offensive deployment and drew all his fire turn one and two.

My takeways, ravagers are really not good, and I think the fliers might be a bit overpriced...

Thoughts? Would a single talos work better than a ravager? Blasterborn did very well, and their blaster fire single handedly killed the wraithknight, and I had plenty of AT without it. Scourge did well, even though he only had a single wave serpent.

So I think I might switch the ravager for a talos, but I don't have anything to substitute the razorwings with. Thoughts?

Nicely done! Glad to see the Grotesquerie doing work

On the Scalpel Squadron front, if you're worried about survivability why not take 2? 5 Wracks in a Venom with an Ossefactor is only 10pts more than 5 Kabs with a Blaster in a Venom. They'll do similar work against squishies, hit with Fleshbane AP2 against a GMC, and provide a half-decent tarpit if necessary. Plus, you can pretty much guarantee that 4 Venoms full of Wracks will net you that boosted First Blood.

The other purpose I see for them is to support a Grotesquerie.

There's been a conversation over on The Dark City about tactical layering. Basically, you pick one dead-killy unit to be your 'focus'. That's the unit that will mulch through the enemy scarily quickly, provided it gets to the right place. Then, you build up your forces to support that unit so that it can do its work, and because it's the focus of your opponent's attention the rest of your army benefits too. By working cohesively, your army becomes more than the sum of its parts (which is important when you're playing DE as your 'parts' aren't necessarily competitive on their own). One important thing to note is that the role of your supporting units in not to necessarily be competitive themselves, or ensure their own survival. Their primary objective is to make sure the Focus gets where it needs to go, and murders what it needs to murder.

So, to work this through:

Focus: Grotesquerie
2x 4 Grots in Aethersail Raiders with a Scissorhand/Sump Haemi and a Glaive/Haywire Succubus. Their job is to turbo-boost up the table turn 1 and wreck face turn 2.

1st Layer: Close Support
This layer needs to work very closely with the Grotesquerie, either tarpitting significant threats, distracting their fire or killing them entirely. People suggested Reavers for this job as they can keep up with the Aethersail Raiders, but my thought was why bother keeping up when you can be there to begin with? Infiltrators like a blob of Mandrakes or allied Scorpions would do a stellar job of being threatening enough to draw enemy fire and supporting the Grots. The other option for this would be a Scalpel Squadron with its guaranteed turn 1 Deep Strike, 5++ dual S/C Venoms and a scary sounding Fleshbane AP2 Calcific Spears gun (make sure you explain the rules for that one in detail).

2nd Layer: Tactical Support
This is your mid-ranged support to focus-fire on specific types of target that will ruin your Grots' day. Blasterborn, Blaster Kabs in Venoms and Haywire Scourges fit very nicely here. As would allied Eldar Rangers to snipe out hidden powerfist/klaws. Their secondary objective is to consolidate the territory you've gained through your Grotesquerie's murder rampage, zipping out to contest objectives and still staying as a threat due to their ranged firepower.

3rd Layer: Covering Fire
Long-ranged firepower to suppress the enemy after you've won your initial combat. More Venoms, Dissy Ravagers, maybe a flier. These guys look to the next step after your Grots have wrecked face where they are. They pave the way for your Grots to move onto their next target by eliminating things ahead of the curve.

What do you reckon? Haven't tried it myself, but others on The Dark City have sort of noticed that they do this a little unconsciously, and by intentionally doing it can increase the effectiveness of their army.

Grotesquerie ALWAYS does work!

I played another game today, against tau. I lost, but the only reason I lost was because I went second.

I had the grotesquerie, almost the same list as before, except I switched out the ravager for a talos, which was a good choice.

The grotesques got the +1 tougness from the table, which was insane. It took a ton of dedicated tau shooting to drop them, and they were truly scary for my opponent.

However, Immobilized one of the raiders, so there was only one in his backlines turn 1. Which lost me the game. The Talos took a ton of punishment, the IWND kept him alive.

He also seemed to know the importance of venoms in my list so he targeted them first, which was a great tactical move on his part.

It was a fun and close game either way!

Kinda unsure about disintegrator ravagers myself today. I say this because they did a rather good job vs some flyrants (possibly far above average actually considering the poisoned shots did crap). To wound isn't so hot but the fact you can move 12" and even jink and shoot snap shots anyway it can make shooting at flyers or even flying monstrous creatures halfway decent. Part of it is sheer volume of shots. You shoot 9 shots each and if you have 2 ravagers it's an average of 3 hits and 1 wound or 1/6 glance and 1/6 pen (if it's rear armor of flyer or armor 10 flyer). At ap 2 you avoid armor and add +1 to armor pen on vehicle damage. Not great by any stretch but it will cause a grounding check on a flying MC and vs a flyer they may have various damage that they take as well. Not too hot but in certain cases it can do ok.

I'm curious about something though. You guys don't like blasters on scourge and prefer them on trueborn. Why? I can understand that if you put them in a raider you can jink and they won't snap fire (considering the new FAQ). Also they can turbo-boost to an area like a gun-line and jink and next turn they get their shots regardless of the jink. However they take up elite slots which i prefer incubi or grotesques (or at least when i get the grotesques) and scourge have a 12" move with an 18" range gun. Often i can get the first turn shots off with blaster scourge. Perhaps in gun-line it's much harder but depending on deployment you should be able to get it fairly fast and fleet on em also helps should they need to move to cover to avoid getting shot up. I guess the point is scourge can't always get their in 1 turn and they're far more fragile? I suppose i could see that.

Scourge can deepstrike, and heatlances/haywire is better than a blaster.

Also, trueborn can take a venom (I like them in a venom) so that's a plus.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Scourge can deepstrike, and heatlances/haywire is better than a blaster.

Also, trueborn can take a venom (I like them in a venom) so that's a plus.

Heat lances are better against vehicles and ok against other units. Haywire is only really good vs vehicles and practically useless vs everything else (see my thread on this). Considering the lack of vehicles in higher tier armies which we have a hard enough time with i just prefer heat lance to them as heat lance can do something in all games whereas haywire does nothing vs non-vehicles armies (nids, tau, often eldar and few vehicles in some other lists)

Blasters scourge are something i dunno if i want to deepstrike. I could see it but considering the turn 2-4 wait time to see if they come in, the fact that your army is without them that long (esp. during turn 4 reserves on a bad day) and the fact that tau interceptor can shoot them off like a big freaking joke (and they stupidly can get that on everything) i'd say i'm better keeping them on table without deepstrike. For blasterborn i could maybe see a deepstrike in a raider or venom as the armor might keep them alive a bit longer. I generally go by the rule that you want as little in DS as possible (usually it's my heat lances with an archon with webway attached and little else if anything). I have been screwed too hard by turn 4 reserves to want to try this. Dark eldar are fragile as is but with only half or even 3/4 of our army in points on table it's a massive expense.

Yeah, I agree on the heatlance bit, but that's just from personal experience.

I don't like blasterborn in general, they are way too expensive for what they do. If you deepstrike them, its easy to be screwed by scatter/reserves and the venom has nice range so it can hold back and put off fire until its needed in the midfield.

I don't like the idea of the raider because it doesn't achieve a specific goal on its own considering its price. It is very easy to kill and I don't want my super expensive fragile blasterborn unit in my enemies frontline so that takes away the mobillity the raider has over the venom. It's also tougher but its not tough enough to justify its cost or lack of a role. I like raiders for grotesques because the raiders role is to go fast and get the grotesques as close as possible to disrupt and draw fire, but for blasterborn I don't think that mobility really benefits them much, but they need to be close for the blasters.

Just my $0.02

Yeah I think it's definitely the Venoms that make Blasterborn more viable than Scourges. Scourges are relatively fragile so best to keep them as cheap as possible. Venoms give them a modicum more survivability.

I've heard good things about running Blasterborn with 3 Blasters rather than 4. Similar damage potential, but a fair chunk cheaper.

The other thing was running 3-man Reaver squads with Caltrops and a Blaster. Gives them a massive range of things they can kill, all in a fast, JSJ, Moves Through Cover, improved jinking platform.

Scourge are our best anti tank unit at range, but only with a Haywire Blaster or Heat Lance, you can Deep Strike in close to the enemy vehicle and destroy it quickly, Darklight weapons just aren't as good in that role. Of course, the downside here is that Scourges are then so specialised that you need to know what kind of army you're facing before hand and there are too man people who think list tayloring is solely for TFG's and don't understand that for some armies it's the only way to get a decent game in without the same old mono build every time.

With Blasterborne they're 5ppm cheaper than Scourge with Blasters, which means the Venom you will be taking only adds an extra 25pts, which given it's own mobility, increased survivability and duel splinter cannons that can be fired at a separate target to that of the Trueborn inside makes for an excellent us eof the points and has a lot more utility.

The problem with Raiders is not so much with them but with our army, at present there is no point at all in running any 10 man squads, we're far better off going MSU, which means Raiders only ever have a use when transporting Grotesques.

For Reavers, I find running 6 man squads to be far more usefull than 3 man squads and just don't bother with the guns on them because you'll be jinking so much of the time anyway. The only time I'd consider running 3 man squads is if I went double Realspace Raiders Detachment for 12 Fast Attack slots.

Yeah Raiders are pretty much Grot boats, although they do have some situational use with Shock Prows and removing models from play using Tank Shock after the latest FAQ.

As for Reavers, it was 6 man squads I got it wrong. It was from this thread on The Dark City where Lawrence from Tabletop Tactics won the No Retreat tournament with DE: http://www.thedarkcity.net/t14453-tabletop-tactics-lawrence-wins-no-retreat-iii-tournament-with-dark-eldar-rsr

Shock Prows are useless, I would say taking Splinter Racks and using it as a gun boat, especially if running the Purge Cotorie formation where the Arhcon gives out Preferred Enemy, is a much better choice.

I think any Dark Eldar player should follow Tabletop Tactics, Lawrence is definitely the best DE player out there and it gives one hell of a schooling with him explaining his tactics and reasons for taking specific units and loadouts, especially in regards to competitive play.

Scalpel squadron is the best DE formation, but the way people play makes it bad.

By the RAW there are no limits on formation repeating, so RAW you could take 2 or 3 of this formation. The way people organize play limits this by the player base to the benefit of honestly imperial armies who don't need, and can't repeat many formations within the 1850 points most people play.

Eh, I don't like the idea of the scalpel squadron simply because the wracks aren't that good. They are a solid tarpit at best, but not against much that matters. They will tie up marine squads and the such, but what wont? I'll experiment with it but I don't have high hopes.

TT are probably my favorite BR channel out there, and Lawrence is a great guy and an even better DE player.

SkaredCast is also a great All-dar channel, a bit more optimistic and less competitive, but an awesome player that helped me get into DE easily.

 Imateria wrote:
Shock Prows are useless, I would say taking Splinter Racks and using it as a gun boat, especially if running the Purge Cotorie formation where the Arhcon gives out Preferred Enemy, is a much better choice.

I think any Dark Eldar player should follow Tabletop Tactics, Lawrence is definitely the best DE player out there and it gives one hell of a schooling with him explaining his tactics and reasons for taking specific units and loadouts, especially in regards to competitive play.

They're not completely useless since the FAQ, simply because of this: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/709084.page#9036437. Could also situationally Tank Shock units out of cover so they can be assaulted, but I'll agree that Splinter Racks definitely do more work (although removing an Invisible Librarian from play would be cause for celebration).

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Eh, I don't like the idea of the scalpel squadron simply because the wracks aren't that good. They are a solid tarpit at best, but not against much that matters. They will tie up marine squads and the such, but what wont? I'll experiment with it but I don't have high hopes.

TT are probably my favorite BR channel out there, and Lawrence is a great guy and an even better DE player.

SkaredCast is also a great All-dar channel, a bit more optimistic and less competitive, but an awesome player that helped me get into DE easily.

I'll second the praise for Lawrence and Skared. Both great players

Agreed on the Wrack front I think. If they could take 2 Ossefactors for every 5 bodies that would be kickass do they have utility against MCs? Poisoned weapons would help.

As a frequent opponent of Dark Eldar, Covens is a pretty nice add for DE.
Grotesquerie, Dark Artisan, Corpsethief Claw, Razorwing, Scourges, Medusae, WWP Archon (get the 2++ item) and Kabalites+Venoms are all trouble! DE can easily complete objectives like Domination and Supremacy, if you let those pesky Venoms alive (and sometimes the guy fields EIGHT of them!)... but then you won't be dealing with the hulking Talos coming your way!

Realmspace Raiders is quite weak, don't use that.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


I'll second the praise for Lawrence and Skared. Both great players

Agreed on the Wrack front I think. If they could take 2 Ossefactors for every 5 bodies that would be kickass do they have utility against MCs? Poisoned weapons would help.

Skari's another good one, I'd like to see how his type of list works in bigger tournements, particualrly with the way he favours reserve manipulation.

Wrack Tools are Poisoned and the Hexrifle that the Acothyst can take is Sniper but it's a real shame you can only take one in the sqaud. Interestingly the Acothyst is one of only two characters that can take the Venom Blade, the other being the Scourge Solarite for some bizzare reason, but it's 10pts unfortunately.

 Vector Strike wrote:
As a frequent opponent of Dark Eldar, Covens is a pretty nice add for DE.
Grotesquerie, Dark Artisan, Corpsethief Claw, Razorwing, Scourges, Medusae, WWP Archon (get the 2++ item) and Kabalites+Venoms are all trouble! DE can easily complete objectives like Domination and Supremacy, if you let those pesky Venoms alive (and sometimes the guy fields EIGHT of them!)... but then you won't be dealing with the hulking Talos coming your way!

Realmspace Raiders is quite weak, don't use that.

RSR has its uses, but most of the time CAD is better
If you need to load as many FA choices as possible, like going Reaverspam, then RSR is better, as you require less HQ and Troops to do so. In most cases though, DE isn't really going to need that many FA slots. Maybe some Scourges or a couple Reavers

I think FA is one of our best slots. Reavers and scourge are all good, I can see myself bring tons of MSU reavers, so RSR has some purpose.

Any thoughts on the Voidraven bomber? Does it really do much? I see it a lot but it just seems expensive.

The Voidraven Bomber does serious work.

I don't doubt it, but is said work worth the points? I kinda really want one, and with christmas around the corner... I can splurge a little bit...

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I don't doubt it, but is said work worth the points? I kinda really want one, and with christmas around the corner... I can splurge a little bit...

Well I can tell you the list I use it in:

225pts Court of the Archon (2 Medusae, 1 Ur-Ghul, 1 Lhamaian, 6 Sslyth)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aethersails)

40pts 5 Kabalite Warriors
65pts Venom (Dual Splinter Cannon)

40pts 5 Kabalite Warriors
65pts Venom (Dual Splinter Cannon)

Fast Attack:
265pts Beast Masters (4 Clawed Fiends, 4 Razorwing Flocks, 3 Khymera, 1 Beast Master w/ Agonizer)

Elites:
165pts 7 Incubi (Klaivex w/ Demi-Klaives)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aetherails)

70pts Haemonculus

165pts 4 Grotesques (Abberation W/Agonizer)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aetherails)

165pts 4 Grotesques (Abberation w/ Agonizer)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aethersails)

Ravager

Ravager

Bomber (implosion Missiles)

This is the list I use it in. My list is ULTRA highly aggressive. It couldn't play more like orks if it tried. The Bomber is left to do its grisly work round after sumptuous round, blasting away with abandon. Love it. Why does it work? Because the enemy simply is mired in bad news by the time it shows up and can do little about it.

The key to a unit like that is to make sure that the enemy doesnt just HAVE a bunch of free units that can fire at the Bomber freely (and obviously you have to fly intelligently with it).

It is even better thanks to the new FAQ which is official from GW about the placement of the Bomber. You can no longer "maneuver to kill" planes like you could before (an absurd tactic but one I freely used until this recent FAQ came out).

 Jancoran wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I don't doubt it, but is said work worth the points? I kinda really want one, and with christmas around the corner... I can splurge a little bit...

Well I can tell you the list I use it in:

225pts Court of the Archon (2 Medusae, 1 Ur-Ghul, 1 Lhamaian, 6 Sslyth)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aethersails)

40pts 5 Kabalite Warriors
65pts Venom (Dual Splinter Cannon)

40pts 5 Kabalite Warriors
65pts Venom (Dual Splinter Cannon)

Fast Attack:
265pts Beast Masters (4 Clawed Fiends, 4 Razorwing Flocks, 3 Khymera, 1 Beast Master w/ Agonizer)

Elites:
165pts 7 Incubi (Klaivex w/ Demi-Klaives)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aetherails)

70pts Haemonculus

165pts 4 Grotesques (Abberation W/Agonizer)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aetherails)

165pts 4 Grotesques (Abberation w/ Agonizer)
60pts Raider (Enhanced Aethersails)

Ravager

Ravager

Bomber (implosion Missiles)

This is the list I use it in. My list is ULTRA highly aggressive. It couldn't play more like orks if it tried. The Bomber is left to do its grisly work round after sumptuous round, blasting away with abandon. Love it. Why does it work? Because the enemy simply is mired in bad news by the time it shows up and can do little about it.

The key to a unit like that is to make sure that the enemy doesnt just HAVE a bunch of free units that can fire at the Bomber freely (and obviously you have to fly intelligently with it).

It is even better thanks to the new FAQ which is official from GW about the placement of the Bomber. You can no longer "maneuver to kill" planes like you could before (an absurd tactic but one I freely used until this recent FAQ came out).

Ha, I've made a more aggressive DE list than that!
Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer, hwg 130
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer 125
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Grotesquerie
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
Haemonculous 70 points

Everything runs face first into the enemy and tries to eat them

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:

Ha, I've made a more aggressive DE list than that!
Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer, hwg 130
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer 125
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Grotesquerie
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
Haemonculous 70 points

Everything runs face first into the enemy and tries to eat them

Aggression approved!

I used to bring three Blasterborn units in Venoms to the party and do a simialr thing. whe nit comes to Dark Eldar, aggression and more aggression is the coolness.

Though you must admit, yours is shooty agressive with some melee support. Mines wants to bash some skulls in and OH BY THE WAY, perhaps shoot you once in a while.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I think FA is one of our best slots. Reavers and scourge are all good, I can see myself bring tons of MSU reavers, so RSR has some purpose.

Any thoughts on the Voidraven bomber? Does it really do much? I see it a lot but it just seems expensive.

Usually no our flyers suck. I'd say the void raven is sadly in a bad spot. The bomb would be nice if we got more than one or if it was like a deathstrike missile in size (i mean we only get one freaking bomb and it scatters). Odd how something insanely powerful in the description is only str 9 ap 2 large blast, lance, bomb. You'd think it'd be like at least the lower end of apocalyptic template or str D or even ap 1. I haven't tried the razorwing jetfighter but i can't imagine it's in a much better spot.

The main issue with our flyers is that they're already fragile and against armies without dedicated aa it's not too bad or if you can kill the aa before it takes out the flyers you should be in a decent spot. Seems silly you can hurt it with boltgun fire though.

The biggest issue with the void raven bomber is that it's a unit that doesn't do enough damage for its points (or perhaps i gave it the wrong load-out or wrong targets. Once you drop the bomb and fire all 4 missiles it's just a 2 shot weapon. Perhaps i should've gone for dark scythes on mine rather than void lances as then i'd get str 8 ap 2 small blast and against targets that are large it'd probably hit it more frequently anyway as well as give me some insta-kill potential on units of things with t 4 and fnp but i'm unsure as it is only a small blast and small blast can often suck.

I will say this though the void raven is a beautiful model so if you have 85 USD to burn and you don't mind the price or have a lot of money then go for it. Just don't expect it to swing battles your way. It's definitely not hellion level of bad.

------

My current list is downstairs but the things i want out of dark eldar that i have yet to get are mostly grotesques with either a haemonculus leading each or maybe even a succubus leading in some cases. Use the raider to transport them up as fast as possibly with aethersails and night shields. Weapons on the transports would be a waste most. If possibly just give them the upgrade for re-roll leadership but i'm mixed on that as by the time your raiders get there a couple will die so perhaps some can use their RR LD ability to improve checks so your guys don't freak out and get pinned. Not sure if it'd be a waste of points since you're working on a 9 or 8 LD but a pinned grot unit is not something you'd ever want.

So far what i can field and wish to field with what i have is:

Scourge x5
-blasters x4
=140 pts

Scourge x5
-blasters x4
=140 pts

Scourge x5
-heat lance x4
=120 pts

Reavers x6
-caltrops x2
-heat lance x2
-champ.
=156 pts

Reavers x6
-caltrops x2
-heat lance x2
-champ.
=156 pts

Ravager (basically load-out)
-night shields
125 pts

Ravager (basically load-out)
-night shields
125 pts

Void Raven
-shatterfield missiles x 4
-void lance x2
-night shields
=215 pts

incubi x5
-champ.
*Raider
-enh. sails
-night shields
=185 pts

Archon
-webway
-power sword
-blast pistol (you get an extra attack as well as a good gun you can place close enough after you pop up from webway)
-shadow field
-soul trap (i don't wanna insta-gib an enemy hero if it only counts one wound going through to boost his strength +1)
=180 pts

Warriors x5
*Venom
-splinter cannon
=145

Warriors x5
*Venom
-splinter cannon
=145

Dunno if i changed the list any but that's pretty much my last 1750 pts list. I'll use more incubi and grotesques when i can use them and knock out the ravagers maybe. It really depends. I think the void raven is least needed right now though but we'll see.

-----

I'd actually debate Elite slots are more important than fast attack in some ways. You get all the nasty combat units like incubi and grotesques in there and they do a good job and even trueborn sound like a good cheap unit for blasters. The potential of turbo-boosting some raiders with them into area terrain or forests on the map and having a good turn of covered shooting is nice. Considering the FAQ we'll even be able to jink without passengers firing snap shots. Also heard a friend talk about using them with dark lances but either would be nice.

 Imateria wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


I'll second the praise for Lawrence and Skared. Both great players

Agreed on the Wrack front I think. If they could take 2 Ossefactors for every 5 bodies that would be kickass do they have utility against MCs? Poisoned weapons would help.

Skari's another good one, I'd like to see how his type of list works in bigger tournements, particualrly with the way he favours reserve manipulation.

Wrack Tools are Poisoned and the Hexrifle that the Acothyst can take is Sniper but it's a real shame you can only take one in the sqaud. Interestingly the Acothyst is one of only two characters that can take the Venom Blade, the other being the Scourge Solarite for some bizzare reason, but it's 10pts unfortunately.

Absolutely

Yeah the Venom Blade thing is odd. I think Dark Eldar suffered the most from the Chapterhouse lawsuit as their codex was released directly after it. Big panic about IP and all the options were cut that didn't have models to represent them (Scourges and Wracks are the only ones with Venom Blades in their kits), which frankly is just moronic. Why sell someone Kabalites when you can sell them Kabalites and nudge them towards getting Scourges too so your Sybarite can have a Venom Blade?

Counter-intuitive knee-jerk reaction from lawyers and accountants.

 Jancoran wrote:
The Voidraven Bomber does serious work.

What's the formation that gives the Voidraven's bombs S?

The Voidraven is sadly just bad, not enough fire power to remotely justify 160pts.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Eh, I don't like the idea of the scalpel squadron simply because the wracks aren't that good. They are a solid tarpit at best, but not against much that matters. They will tie up marine squads and the such, but what wont? I'll experiment with it but I don't have high hopes.

TT are probably my favorite BR channel out there, and Lawrence is a great guy and an even better DE player.

SkaredCast is also a great All-dar channel, a bit more optimistic and less competitive, but an awesome player that helped me get into DE easily.

My point was that if you take 2-3 scalpel squadrons they become very good as you have a useful almost guaranteed safe null deploy and they can accomplish things. Due to the artificial limitations many tournament/players put on detachment s and formation s who favor certain armies this just doesn't happen.

Wracks aren't great, but they also don't cost much. When their are artificial limitations on army building it makes scalpel squadron less viable.

Is there a reason to take blasterborn in a venom rather than a raider? If the blaster born is going up against tanks the added dark light shot would be better than poison shots that do nothing. Against most things disintegration would be better. It is only against light infantry that the poison shots are better but then you are losing the effect of having such powerful weapons. I think the venoms are better for regular warriors but unless I am missing something shouldn't raiders be the go to for blasterborn?

Also how do you guys compare venoms to starweavers (harlequin transport)? The starweaver seems better if you can take it but venoms can get objective secure which may be negligible on a flimsy craft.

 lambsandlions wrote:
Is there a reason to take blasterborn in a venom rather than a raider? If the blaster born is going up against tanks the added dark light shot would be better than poison shots that do nothing. Against most things disintegration would be better. It is only against light infantry that the poison shots are better but then you are losing the effect of having such powerful weapons. I think the venoms are better for regular warriors but unless I am missing something shouldn't raiders be the go to for blasterborn?

I believe that the Venoms can shoot at a different target than the Blasterborn, so the added firepower of the Venoms is better than a single dissy or lance

Also how do you guys compare venoms to starweavers (harlequin transport)? The starweaver seems better if you can take it but venoms can get objective secure which may be negligible on a flimsy craft.

I prefer the Venom due to longer range, but the starweaver is good for getting harlies near the enemy

 Imateria wrote:
The Voidraven is sadly just bad, not enough fire power to remotely justify 160pts.

I love it. I don't understand that at all.

It reserves for a round or so. It drops four shots including a massive bomb that almost never scatters when it shows up, 4 more deadly blasts the next round and then three the next. it's a gun boat. And if its around for a fourth turn still fires two good shots.

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:

 lambsandlions wrote:
Is there a reason to take blasterborn in a venom rather than a raider? If the blaster born is going up against tanks the added dark light shot would be better than poison shots that do nothing. Against most things disintegration would be better. It is only against light infantry that the poison shots are better but then you are losing the effect of having such powerful weapons. I think the venoms are better for regular warriors but unless I am missing something shouldn't raiders be the go to for blasterborn?

I believe that the Venoms can shoot at a different target than the Blasterborn, so the added firepower of the Venoms is better than a single dissy or lance

Yeah the Venom and the Trueborn can shoot at different targets, giving you a very versatile gun platform.

 Jancoran wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
The Voidraven is sadly just bad, not enough fire power to remotely justify 160pts.

I love it. I don't understand that at all.

It reserves for a round or so. It drops four shots including a massive bomb that almost never scatters when it shows up, 4 more deadly blasts the next round and then three the next. it's a gun boat. And if its around for a fourth turn still fires two good shots.

It has two single shot guns in an edition where high strength, single shot guns are largely useless. There alternative is even worse because they're small blast, so if you jink (and with armour 10 you will be jinking at some point) they can't be fired and being small blast mean your likely to miss anyway. The missiles can be good, but now we're talking a minimum 200pt unit but now we have a mish mash of weapons that aren't certain whether they want to be anti-tank or anti- infantry. And the complete lack of Vector Dancer means keeping it on the table for 3 turns straight and still have targets is not at all easy.

Both of our flyers suffer from being overcosted for their abilities and confused on what they should be doing.

you dont jink them, you shield them and take your chances. thats what I do. oh and uh...as I mentioned, the VoidRaven works very well in my list because I have very angry pasty skinned evil in your face so fast that by the time the VoidRaven shows up, there isnt much "extra firepower" to spare for trying to down a bird on a 6. Doesi t happen? sure. Does it make me cry into my wee pillah at night on the infrequent times they do? It does not.

The VoidRaven Bomber takes advantage of my ability to corral the enemy, or catches them after charges or when they file through narrow spaces and so on.

Every list is different so if you are attempting to shoot people off the board as a general motif, then the VoidRavne bomber might have less of a role. But if you are melee oriented as I am in my Dark Eldar, then the VoidRaven comes to life. Its impressive firepower expresses itself very well when you overload the enemy with threats early and often, and i do.

 Jancoran wrote:
you dont jink them, you shield them and take your chances. thats what I do. oh and uh...as I mentioned, the VoidRaven works very well in my list because I have very angry pasty skinned evil in your face so fast that by the time the VoidRaven shows up, there isnt much "extra firepower" to spare for trying to down a bird on a 6. Doesi t happen? sure. Does it make me cry into my wee pillah at night on the infrequent times they do? It does not.

The VoidRaven Bomber takes advantage of my ability to corral the enemy, or catches them after charges or when they file through narrow spaces and so on.

Every list is different so if you are attempting to shoot people off the board as a general motif, then the VoidRavne bomber might have less of a role. But if you are melee oriented as I am in my Dark Eldar, then the VoidRaven comes to life. Its impressive firepower expresses itself very well when you overload the enemy with threats early and often, and i do.

I play against White Scars, Eldar, DA's, Fast Daemons and Fast Tau. A melee focus list wont hold enough to stop them from getting away and all these armies have fliers... much better fliers than DE. So no matter what in my Meta you either have Amazing fliers or you ignore them. 160pts+ for a 1 turn 2-3 shot vehicles is wasted.

Ive read that you guess dont have Vehicle heavy armies. BA, basic SM, Tau, Admech, Necrons etc.. all play with a nice amount of vehicles, heck even CSM, KDK play with 4-6+ vehicles. So for my Meta Scourges with HWB are better.

It also depends on the meta you are in, my meta is heavy focus on mobility, WS getting in and out of Rhinos, many Jump and Jet units, Fast skimmers and chariots every where. Then there is Necrons.... stupid Necron vehicles.... So survivable due to lack of speed (but hte players have Wraths and Bikes for mobility and DSing).

Ravaers are terrible for same cost you can get a Talos.... If you where to take one I would use a 3x Dis Cannon one just for killing 2+ and hard to kill 3+ units. It is also cheaper too.

Gonna have to agree with the Ravagers, they are just not worth it, at least in my experience.

I played a game against cult mech and the talos was the MVP, so I'd rather have more of them.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
you dont jink them, you shield them and take your chances. thats what I do. oh and uh...as I mentioned, the VoidRaven works very well in my list because I have very angry pasty skinned evil in your face so fast that by the time the VoidRaven shows up, there isnt much "extra firepower" to spare for trying to down a bird on a 6. Doesi t happen? sure. Does it make me cry into my wee pillah at night on the infrequent times they do? It does not.

The VoidRaven Bomber takes advantage of my ability to corral the enemy, or catches them after charges or when they file through narrow spaces and so on.

Every list is different so if you are attempting to shoot people off the board as a general motif, then the VoidRavne bomber might have less of a role. But if you are melee oriented as I am in my Dark Eldar, then the VoidRaven comes to life. Its impressive firepower expresses itself very well when you overload the enemy with threats early and often, and i do.

I play against White Scars, Eldar, DA's, Fast Daemons and Fast Tau. A melee focus list wont hold enough to stop them from getting away and all these armies have fliers... much better fliers than DE. So no matter what in my Meta you either have Amazing fliers or you ignore them. 160pts+ for a 1 turn 2-3 shot vehicles is wasted.

Ive read that you guess dont have Vehicle heavy armies. BA, basic SM, Tau, Admech, Necrons etc.. all play with a nice amount of vehicles, heck even CSM, KDK play with 4-6+ vehicles. So for my Meta Scourges with HWB are better.

It also depends on the meta you are in, my meta is heavy focus on mobility, WS getting in and out of Rhinos, many Jump and Jet units, Fast skimmers and chariots every where. Then there is Necrons.... stupid Necron vehicles.... So survivable due to lack of speed (but hte players have Wraths and Bikes for mobility and DSing).

Ravaers are terrible for same cost you can get a Talos.... If you where to take one I would use a 3x Dis Cannon one just for killing 2+ and hard to kill 3+ units. It is also cheaper too.

Hmm... Not sure I followed this train of thought. I definitely see White Scar Battle Companies with unfortunate frequency, Fast Daemons and Tau, eldar etc... I don't understand why those armies would be inhibiting me. Most of the Grav stuff does nothing to my main melee units. Tau absolutely hate my army. Lol. It doesnt matter if they have "better" fliers" because you're not playing THEIR army. Right? So if they have better fliers, cool. Can't change it. But that doesn';t have anything to do with the VoidRaven Bombers abilities. Just means when they DO get the drop on you, your Bomber might be toast after it unloads on something. Might. Not before it does a number on something and if they don't kill it, which definitely can happen...

We are talking in context though right? i mean we are assuming you WANT to play Dark Eldar in this discussion. So pointing out that someone else might have a "better" unit in your estimation isn't really moving forward. People gotta' get over the fact that there might be a boogeyman waiting out there for them and just look at the Voidraven bomber for what it is: a massive amount of destructive power on the turn it comes in and possibly a massive amount over time that rivals any of its competing choices in the codex Im assuming you want to play? There's really not anything else in the Dark Eldar codex that hits harder in a shooting phase. Grav is going to eat Tau but it wont eat BeastPacks. It will wreck my transport with enough opportunities but it will barely scratch grotesques. and so on. Eldar are an issue for everyone so meh. Nothing I can do to stop that from being true. There again, if Im not playing Eldar and have chosen to play Dark kin, well... then i probably need more VoidRaven in my life (assuming my army list, which again is very heavily melee oriented).

i think the VoidRaven Bomber is what it is: another glass hammer that happens to hammer a lot harder than pretty much anything in the codex. Nothing else fires four weapons in a round. No other unit has a blast that will scatter at most, 2". None are 6's to be hit other than its fellow flyer buddy. None of the others have the AP and str that the Bomber will boast all at one time, nor the ability to split its fire in the turn it arrives. None will FORCE the enemy to deal with it like a Bomber will. It's good.

So from that perspective I really like it. If they throw a flyer at me and miss... or my shield eats it etc... they are kinda committed. All these things can happen.

I've always scattered bombs the full d6. Is that incorrect? For firing 4 weapons, the razorwing jetfighter does that as well and it also only gets hit on 6's while being significantly cheaper. I find the razorwing much preferable in general and that it is far more likely to get its points back.

I used the bomber in my last dark eldar game against iron hands actually. It killed 2 bikers the entire game... He shot at it occasionally with twin linked bolters from bikers when there was nothing else near them and almost brought it down without trying to. It was by far the worst investment of points in my army.

You honestly dont understand? Mass S5-7 shooting in every unit with rapid fire Botlers all over the table almost everything is reroll 1's to shoot or TL.

Yes a 160pts flier will be shot down in 1 turn where Im at.

Again In my area it would be shot down instantly without even trying, I would have to always place it in bad positions for it to even stay on the table, then at the point its pointless.

And if someone takes fliers its Eldar/Necrons fliers or Storm Ravens.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I've always scattered bombs the full d6. Is that incorrect? For firing 4 weapons, the razorwing jetfighter does that as well and it also only gets hit on 6's while being significantly cheaper. I find the razorwing much preferable in general and that it is far more likely to get its points back.

I used the bomber in my last dark eldar game against iron hands actually. It killed 2 bikers the entire game... He shot at it occasionally with twin linked bolters from bikers when there was nothing else near them and almost brought it down without trying to. It was by far the worst investment of points in my army.

Its D6 - BS


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
You honestly dont understand? Mass S5-7 shooting in every unit with rapid fire Botlers all over the table almost everything is reroll 1's to shoot or TL.

Yes a 160pts flier will be shot down in 1 turn where Im at.

Again In my area it would be shot down instantly without even trying, I would have to always place it in bad positions for it to even stay on the table, then at the point its pointless.

And if someone takes fliers its Eldar/Necrons fliers or Storm Ravens.

Um. Okay?.

@Jancoran I was just telling you sense you didnt understand.

If it works for you fine, but when someone else just shows its harder to play in their area you dont have to be rude about it.

I never said you played it bad or it doesnt work for you, simply that it wont work in my area (Trust me I would love to play it, its a wonderful model).

If you cant see why it doesnt work in my area then I dont think I can continue to talk about it.



@lessthanjeff I agree with you, the few games I tried it in it did very little to almost nothing.

My fliers/ravagers never really seem to make the impact I wish they would have. I mainly use them to try and coax a jink out of the enemy more than put the fear that something hard is coming their way. But maybe they should be looked at as a support gun vs a pure anti anything weapon. Scourges/blaster born have the better chance of blowing up the world, the long range fire power is there to strip off a last hull point. I like to use my bomber because I think it's the only large template option we have beside missiles? I wish it was s10 though, that would help a lot with some instant death.

Scalpel squads get random results for me. At 1000 points I was able to kill my friend's super librarian on a bike with my Acothyst on turn 1 and made his huge 20 man bike squad run off the table edge. And other times they were a great distraction but not much else. It helps with turn 1 deep striking to take care of a bad news elite unit (like lootas or Ork artillery that my friend brings en masse) I think another squad would be great to get first blood, but that's a lot of points for Wracks and outside of that one example, I haven't had too much luck with them. Maybe I'm not quite sure how to use them. Same with my scourges. They always seem to die before they can haywire things.

So i had a game vs orks today and i slaughtered em hardcore. I may have renewed love for the void raven bomber. The main reason being the shatterfield missiles hit his ork boyz about 36 times and wounded every time. He saved no more than 6 of those (probably 3) with his 6+ t-shirt saves if that even and he didn't even have 30 boyz left in that squad. Then the next turn the mega-nobs with pain boy were around and the void mine (bomb) dropped on em and killed everybody but ghazghkull which took a wound. Granted part of this is because his luck was garbage (he couldn't wound against my void raven even the one time he hit and i wiped out his lootaz and morkanaught before they could really damage the thing which in reality the lootaz were the only thing that could hurt em well enough.

The reavers also did some decent work wiping out his ork bikers with hammer of wrath and similar. The incubi did ok. The ravagers and venoms wiped out his lootaz before he even attacked and i managed to kill a morkanaught (i think that was the one) with one scourge squad with 4 blaster shots on turn 1. It was such a lucky shot he nearly thought he lost our 1750 pts game when it blew up turn one. I admit it was an insane roll. When only one pen'd i thought it was gonna suck but then i rolled a 6 for vehicle damage with the ap 2 blaster and blew it up. Then it blows up 5" and kills a bunch of ork boyz. I felt pretty dirty.

I also used my nearly dead raider as a means to force his ork boyz to go the long way around and hit something else instead of a unit i didn't want to die.

Anyway i basically tabled this guy after the end of my turn 4 (i had first turn). It wasn't as brutal as he thought it'd be but it was still a brutal game which was a total reverse of our last game where he destroyed me pretty well.

--------

Still fairly convinced i don't want haywire because there's too much chance any higher tier army won't take many vehicles or any that does much damage.

That said i'm finding a new love for void ravens. Enough in fact that i'm curious about taking a 2nd or at least switching out 2 void lances (str 9 ap 2 lance) for 2 dark scythes (str 8 ap small blast lance). The reason for this is in case if i fight enemies with heavy armor that the void mine or the dark scythes could kill. That said they are expensive and it might suffer from too many reserves and costing too many points for a unit that probably doesn't pull enough weight. I do find void lances to generally suck however which is a shame and having dark scythes would give me perhaps a couple high armored units to instant death.

 Jancoran wrote:

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I've always scattered bombs the full d6. Is that incorrect? For firing 4 weapons, the razorwing jetfighter does that as well and it also only gets hit on 6's while being significantly cheaper. I find the razorwing much preferable in general and that it is far more likely to get its points back.

I used the bomber in my last dark eldar game against iron hands actually. It killed 2 bikers the entire game... He shot at it occasionally with twin linked bolters from bikers when there was nothing else near them and almost brought it down without trying to. It was by far the worst investment of points in my army.

Its D6 - BS

Your playing it wrong. Bombing Run says you scatter D6 and makes no mention at all of applying BS to it.

 Gamerely wrote:
My fliers/ravagers never really seem to make the impact I wish they would have

I don't like flyers either but i think ravagers can be quite useful. Not the mvp of the game but if played correctly they can do quite well. They tend to perform with a list with many vehicles so they're not dead turn one, for example i play a 1850 list with 10 vechicles: 5 venoms, two raiders (grotesquerie) and three ravagers. Those 9 lances are useful and quite cheap, a blasterborn unit costs 175 points, a ravager is 140 with night shields. Always take night shields, you don't want your ravagers to jink unless they're certainly dead if you don't. They should be placed in cover all game so with shields they always have a 3+/4+ cover save without jinking. I'm aware they're not the best in the world but still think they're the best anti tank we have. Scourges with haywire blasters are excellent against vehicles but useless against everything else and the same unit with different wargear isn't great, i'd avoid scourges with lances or blasters because ravagers and trueborn do their job much better.

Dark Eldar perform quite well alongside Harlequins. Harlequin formations/detachments are expensive, Dark Eldar ones aren't (HQ for a pittance and no core tax due to venoms being useful). Harlequins have no ranged AT to deal with high AV, Haywire Scourges are arguably one of the better units in the game at this. Harlequin jetbikes are expensive and hitty, Reavers are cheap and hitty. Harlequin troops want to be in your face, Kabalite Venoms want to be 24 inches away or more.

I think they both add a lot to each other and I've enjoyed playing them together, and I'd argue Dark Eldar supplement Harlequins better than Eldar in terms of supporting the Harlequins play style rather than imposing an Eldar one.

 Imateria wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I've always scattered bombs the full d6. Is that incorrect? For firing 4 weapons, the razorwing jetfighter does that as well and it also only gets hit on 6's while being significantly cheaper. I find the razorwing much preferable in general and that it is far more likely to get its points back.

I used the bomber in my last dark eldar game against iron hands actually. It killed 2 bikers the entire game... He shot at it occasionally with twin linked bolters from bikers when there was nothing else near them and almost brought it down without trying to. It was by far the worst investment of points in my army.

Its D6 - BS

Your playing it wrong. Bombing Run says you scatter D6 and makes no mention at all of applying BS to it.

All blasts have the same rule. You are incorrect. Page 12 clearly tells you that scatter can be less than 2d6. Page 158 clearly tells you to reduce scatter by the bs. So as I said, it is d6 -BS.

 Blackie wrote:

 Gamerely wrote:
My fliers/ravagers never really seem to make the impact I wish they would have

I don't like flyers either but i think ravagers can be quite useful. Not the mvp of the game but if played correctly they can do quite well. They tend to perform with a list with many vehicles so they're not dead turn one, for example i play a 1850 list with 10 vechicles: 5 venoms, two raiders (grotesquerie) and three ravagers. Those 9 lances are useful and quite cheap, a blasterborn unit costs 175 points, a ravager is 140 with night shields. Always take night shields, you don't want your ravagers to jink unless they're certainly dead if you don't. They should be placed in cover all game so with shields they always have a 3+/4+ cover save without jinking. I'm aware they're not the best in the world but still think they're the best anti tank we have. Scourges with haywire blasters are excellent against vehicles but useless against everything else and the same unit with different wargear isn't great, i'd avoid scourges with lances or blasters because ravagers and trueborn do their job much better.

One game I got really lucky with a immobile result. I had rolled into ruins and got it stuck, but with nightshields I never had to jink. It was the best. Just sat there and stripped hull points all day.

 Blackie wrote:

 Gamerely wrote:
My fliers/ravagers never really seem to make the impact I wish they would have

I don't like flyers either but i think ravagers can be quite useful. Not the mvp of the game but if played correctly they can do quite well. They tend to perform with a list with many vehicles so they're not dead turn one, for example i play a 1850 list with 10 vechicles: 5 venoms, two raiders (grotesquerie) and three ravagers. Those 9 lances are useful and quite cheap, a blasterborn unit costs 175 points, a ravager is 140 with night shields. Always take night shields, you don't want your ravagers to jink unless they're certainly dead if you don't. They should be placed in cover all game so with shields they always have a 3+/4+ cover save without jinking. I'm aware they're not the best in the world but still think they're the best anti tank we have. Scourges with haywire blasters are excellent against vehicles but useless against everything else and the same unit with different wargear isn't great, i'd avoid scourges with lances or blasters because ravagers and trueborn do their job much better.

I can vouch for putting our ravagers into cover. You get to shoot without the jink. As far as ravager firepower goes i'm unsure about them. I only use the disintegrator ones and i'm not sure that's the best way to run em. I tend to hear people use dark lances for instant death and crappy more desperate AT.

I've also used empty raiders to bottle in enemy melee units on the ground when they're coming through a narrow pass. It can save a more valuable unit a turn of getting hit in melee provided your melee opponent doesn't have that much ranged firepower to just murder it and move over it which will still force it to be moving through cover and will still slow them down. Also even if the enemy does shoot at the raider you can jink and get your 3+ cover save with the night shields and they'll be wasting shots at that rather than something much more valuable.

I'm unsure about doing trueborn. You only get 3 elite slots and incubi and grotesques seem like they'd be a pretty good fit in either of them. At least with grotesque you can take them as allied covens so it may give your trueborn some room. Scourge on the other hand take up fast attack which gets a massive 6 slots and usually the best uses of those slots are scourge and reavers. You can take empty venoms in fast attack slots too but cover tends to be rather annoying to handle unless you take our melee units which is almost completely the best response dark eldar have to units with high cover saves.

As i said i'm unsure about void ravens now. I scatter the bomb the full d6" shown otherwise that'd be a massively accurate bomb and i'd absolutely love it. It should still be reasonably accurate but only having one means a bad roll can do you in. Void ravens bug me more for their cost (what is it 240 pts for 4 shatterfield missiles). That said the instant death possibilities and tough units that absolutely need to die (because of FnP and multiple wounds) tend to get owned by the void mine and possibly by the dark scythes. I've never used dark scythes but i'm curious if they do better than the void lances. I'm starting to think they would and considering i usually miss with one void lance completely the ability to instant death multiple units is more enticing to me.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


@lessthanjeff I agree with you, the few games I tried it in it did very little to almost nothing.

Not gonna lie i too disliked the void raven merely for cost but my last game it did really well. You just have to make sure the enemy aa is silenced properly and it often depends who you face. The missiles (shatterfield) are great vs hordes and i killed a whole horde of boyz with them without needing to use anything else (probably 20+ boyz and i did like 36 hits which also all wounded due to shred and then 33 unsaved wounds which vaporized the unit) and after that i dropped a void mine on ghazghkull, a pain boy, a weird boy and 3 mega-nobz and killed all of them instantly except for ghazghkull who was wounded.

Honestly i think it depends what you face. It was probably a really great situation that sort of just happened at the right time (hordes and high armor, multi-wound t4 units with FnP). I don't think anything would be more effective against wulfen than the void raven and considering all their storm shields the shatterfield weapons are also good here. I'm more curious if i should take 2 honestly. That said i'll wait on that idea as it's an expensive model both in money and in points. I'd like to see more damage done first but i do think i'm gonna take out the void lances and run dark scythes due to lacking much good str 8 ap 2 blast (both small and large) or better in the dark eldar army.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Gamerely wrote:
My fliers/ravagers never really seem to make the impact I wish they would have

I don't like flyers either but i think ravagers can be quite useful. Not the mvp of the game but if played correctly they can do quite well. They tend to perform with a list with many vehicles so they're not dead turn one, for example i play a 1850 list with 10 vechicles: 5 venoms, two raiders (grotesquerie) and three ravagers. Those 9 lances are useful and quite cheap, a blasterborn unit costs 175 points, a ravager is 140 with night shields. Always take night shields, you don't want your ravagers to jink unless they're certainly dead if you don't. They should be placed in cover all game so with shields they always have a 3+/4+ cover save without jinking. I'm aware they're not the best in the world but still think they're the best anti tank we have. Scourges with haywire blasters are excellent against vehicles but useless against everything else and the same unit with different wargear isn't great, i'd avoid scourges with lances or blasters because ravagers and trueborn do their job much better.

I can vouch for putting our ravagers into cover. You get to shoot without the jink. As far as ravager firepower goes i'm unsure about them. I only use the disintegrator ones and i'm not sure that's the best way to run em. I tend to hear people use dark lances for instant death and crappy more desperate AT.

I've also used empty raiders to bottle in enemy melee units on the ground when they're coming through a narrow pass. It can save a more valuable unit a turn of getting hit in melee provided your melee opponent doesn't have that much ranged firepower to just murder it and move over it which will still force it to be moving through cover and will still slow them down. Also even if the enemy does shoot at the raider you can jink and get your 3+ cover save with the night shields and they'll be wasting shots at that rather than something much more valuable.

I'm unsure about doing trueborn. You only get 3 elite slots and incubi and grotesques seem like they'd be a pretty good fit in either of them. At least with grotesque you can take them as allied covens so it may give your trueborn some room. Scourge on the other hand take up fast attack which gets a massive 6 slots and usually the best uses of those slots are scourge and reavers. You can take empty venoms in fast attack slots too but cover tends to be rather annoying to handle unless you take our melee units which is almost completely the best response dark eldar have to units with high cover saves.

As i said i'm unsure about void ravens now. I scatter the bomb the full d6" shown otherwise that'd be a massively accurate bomb and i'd absolutely love it. It should still be reasonably accurate but only having one means a bad roll can do you in. Void ravens bug me more for their cost (what is it 240 pts for 4 shatterfield missiles). That said the instant death possibilities and tough units that absolutely need to die (because of FnP and multiple wounds) tend to get owned by the void mine and possibly by the dark scythes. I've never used dark scythes but i'm curious if they do better than the void lances. I'm starting to think they would and considering i usually miss with one void lance completely the ability to instant death multiple units is more enticing to me.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


@lessthanjeff I agree with you, the few games I tried it in it did very little to almost nothing.

Not gonna lie i too disliked the void raven merely for cost but my last game it did really well. You just have to make sure the enemy aa is silenced properly and it often depends who you face. The missiles (shatterfield) are great vs hordes and i killed a whole horde of boyz with them without needing to use anything else (probably 20+ boyz and i did like 36 hits which also all wounded due to shred and then 33 unsaved wounds which vaporized the unit) and after that i dropped a void mine on ghazghkull, a pain boy, a weird boy and 3 mega-nobz and killed all of them instantly except for ghazghkull who was wounded.

Honestly i think it depends what you face. It was probably a really great situation that sort of just happened at the right time (hordes and high armor, multi-wound t4 units with FnP). I don't think anything would be more effective against wulfen than the void raven and considering all their storm shields the shatterfield weapons are also good here. I'm more curious if i should take 2 honestly. That said i'll wait on that idea as it's an expensive model both in money and in points. I'd like to see more damage done first but i do think i'm gonna take out the void lances and run dark scythes due to lacking much good str 8 ap 2 blast (both small and large) or better in the dark eldar army.

But for 200pts with missiles DE doesnt need AI.... we have some of the most AI in the game other than IG, I'd rather just just take 3 venoms. or 2 Dis Cannons Ravagers, or even 1 Razorwing and a venom.

If they work for you in your area thats great keep using it, its a wonderful model, but for me in my area even without fliers it wouldnt last past 1 turn on the table.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

I'm unsure about doing trueborn. You only get 3 elite slots and incubi and grotesques seem like they'd be a pretty good fit in either of them.

Incubi aren't viable nowadays, they're my favourite dark eldar unit aesthetically speaking but they have just a few attacks with S4 (also being one wound with T3) to justify their inclusion in a list. Grotesques are tipically taken as part of the grotesquerie formation so these elite slots are always available. Maybe in some games you can take just a single unit of grotesques but you'll alway have 1-2 free slots for other elites, so trueborn can easily be included. Problem is they tend to under perform as other units can do the same job with lesser points and maybe being more resilient too. Ravagers and reavers with cultrops are the best anti tank for dark eldar that are not strictly limited in stripping HP to vehicles. Trueborn seem to be fragile and expensive for what they do, maybe taking two units can be an interesting choice but i prefer other units.

Trueborns are costly....... I mean I'd rather have fire dragons 110pts and they all have melta guns, 3+ armor, +1 against vehicles, Melta bombs and.....battlefocus I mean really wtf

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Trueborns are costly....... I mean I'd rather have fire dragons 110pts and they all have melta guns, 3+ armor, +1 against vehicles, Melta bombs and.....battlefocus I mean really wtf

The sad thing is that firedragonsaren't even good enough to see play very often because eldar has more powerful things.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


But for 200pts with missiles DE doesnt need AI.... we have some of the most AI in the game other than IG, I'd rather just just take 3 venoms. or 2 Dis Cannons Ravagers, or even 1 Razorwing and a venom.

If they work for you in your area thats great keep using it, its a wonderful model, but for me in my area even without fliers it wouldnt last past 1 turn on the table.

The missiles themselves are anti-infantry but the void mine and the dark scythes should be what you really want. The only strength 8 weapons we have with ap 2 are blasters and dark lances. Where do we go for blasts with str 8 ap 2 or above. There's not one area with it besides the void raven and you need it to instant death high armor targets with toughness 4. I mean i suppose you could spam poisoned shots at things like wulfen but then they get their 3+ followed by a FnP save and they still get those saves when going against dissie ravagers. It's more that they're really hard to take down and not only that but the only other instant death we have is in melee which is suicide vs wulfen even if you take grotesques for that job.

Perhaps i'm just letting a good game with the void raven control my perspective too much. I mean again tau there's a good chance it wouldn't be so hot. However it tends to destroy terminators and lots of other things (stuff that might end in mutual destruction for both an enemy unit and incubi).

I've actually mostly stopped relying on poison. It's ok but not great. If i have to kill infantry some grotesques, reavers or incubi do that job much better and all 3 tend to supplement all the melee situations well (and they all handle enemies in cover better than our other options). However against some super melee units (storm shield enemies, heavily armored FnP t4 units and wulfen) we can't use melee as a good answer to those infantry. Against storm shields i normally use poison but for the fairly tough, heavily armored infantry with multiple wounds and FnP that's where the void raven and blasters come around.

Far as the rest of the game goes most of the really tough factions don't even take vehicles anymore (except super heavies and knights from time to time). It's happened so frequently i stopped taking haywire for the mere possibility that i wasted all those points for nothing and it's usually against an army that is an uphill battle for dark eldar without the wasted points in haywire.

So for the most part not a lot of vehicles to face, lots of cover, lots of super heavies and monstrous creatures. Generally a good situation for melee, blasters with small focus on heat lance and the void raven with void mine and some dark scythes.

That said i probably am not that great of a dark eldar player but it's what i've seen.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Trueborns are costly....... I mean I'd rather have fire dragons 110pts and they all have melta guns, 3+ armor, +1 against vehicles, Melta bombs and.....battlefocus I mean really wtf

The people i play against at the store don't take that many vehicles but when they take them it's usually the super tough super-heavies. That's really about it (so basically most vehicle damage is crap so you may as well strip wounds). I suppose that's where haywire would be good but against some enemies like tau i had a really bad experience where it was just 240 pts of 2 haywire scourge units that were just free kill points or better yet didn't need him bothering with em at all.

I don't use trueborn yet and i'll admit have scourge for that role which is probably awful (12" move and shoot is nice but if focused down they'd die). Normally the scariest enemies with vehicles are guard. I will admit it's not easy to kill all those tanks and they often stay in gun-line with a shield wall meaning a 3+ cover save with camo netting and 2+ if they get night fight (though vs dark eldar we have night vision). That alone insults me being dark eldar that their whole force can come with deployable cover giving their multiple av 14 front armor tanks a 2+ cover on turn 1 if they get night fight. So yeah heat lance scourge with archon and webway portal with some heat lance reavers would help sorta.

I imagine if you take blaster trueborn scooting a raider with em into cover (if you were facing a gun-line) would help tremendously (night shields). The 18" range should mean you can at least manage a sort of 3+ cover save frequently with em even on turn 1.

Anyway i dunno. I suppose in some cases haywire could be good but half the time enemies don't even take vehicles. I've just been burned too badly for taking haywire against some of our hardest match-ups (space wolves, tau, etc.).
-----------

Honestly what Dark Eldar should get is the ability to switch units around the battlefield or be able to somewhat cater their forces. I make lists before hand but you're telling me the ambush faction that plots out each of their attacks before it happens won't understand what factions they will be fighting. Also we should almost always have the element of surprise so a turn 1 steal should be pretty much allowed. I mean crap even possibly an 'ambushed' scenario where the dark eldar player gets to place some of his enemy's units (D3 of certain types of units or something) to represent nobody was expecting them would be nice.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:


But for 200pts with missiles DE doesnt need AI.... we have some of the most AI in the game other than IG, I'd rather just just take 3 venoms. or 2 Dis Cannons Ravagers, or even 1 Razorwing and a venom.

If they work for you in your area thats great keep using it, its a wonderful model, but for me in my area even without fliers it wouldnt last past 1 turn on the table.

The missiles themselves are anti-infantry but the void mine and the dark scythes should be what you really want. The only strength 8 weapons we have with ap 2 are blasters and dark lances. Where do we go for blasts with str 8 ap 2 or above. There's not one area with it besides the void raven and you need it to instant death high armor targets with toughness 4. I mean i suppose you could spam poisoned shots at things like wulfen but then they get their 3+ followed by a FnP save and they still get those saves when going against dissie ravagers. It's more that they're really hard to take down and not only that but the only other instant death we have is in melee which is suicide vs wulfen even if you take grotesques for that job.

Perhaps i'm just letting a good game with the void raven control my perspective too much. I mean again tau there's a good chance it wouldn't be so hot. However it tends to destroy terminators and lots of other things (stuff that might end in mutual destruction for both an enemy unit and incubi).

I've actually mostly stopped relying on poison. It's ok but not great. If i have to kill infantry some grotesques, reavers or incubi do that job much better and all 3 tend to supplement all the melee situations well (and they all handle enemies in cover better than our other options). However against some super melee units (storm shield enemies, heavily armored FnP t4 units and wulfen) we can't use melee as a good answer to those infantry. Against storm shields i normally use poison but for the fairly tough, heavily armored infantry with multiple wounds and FnP that's where the void raven and blasters come around.

Far as the rest of the game goes most of the really tough factions don't even take vehicles anymore (except super heavies and knights from time to time). It's happened so frequently i stopped taking haywire for the mere possibility that i wasted all those points for nothing and it's usually against an army that is an uphill battle for dark eldar without the wasted points in haywire.

So for the most part not a lot of vehicles to face, lots of cover, lots of super heavies and monstrous creatures. Generally a good situation for melee, blasters with small focus on heat lance and the void raven with void mine and some dark scythes.

That said i probably am not that great of a dark eldar player but it's what i've seen.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Trueborns are costly....... I mean I'd rather have fire dragons 110pts and they all have melta guns, 3+ armor, +1 against vehicles, Melta bombs and.....battlefocus I mean really wtf

The people i play against at the store don't take that many vehicles but when they take them it's usually the super tough super-heavies. That's really about it (so basically most vehicle damage is crap so you may as well strip wounds). I suppose that's where haywire would be good but against some enemies like tau i had a really bad experience where it was just 240 pts of 2 haywire scourge units that were just free kill points or better yet didn't need him bothering with em at all.

I don't use trueborn yet and i'll admit have scourge for that role which is probably awful (12" move and shoot is nice but if focused down they'd die). Normally the scariest enemies with vehicles are guard. I will admit it's not easy to kill all those tanks and they often stay in gun-line with a shield wall meaning a 3+ cover save with camo netting and 2+ if they get night fight (though vs dark eldar we have night vision). That alone insults me being dark eldar that their whole force can come with deployable cover giving their multiple av 14 front armor tanks a 2+ cover on turn 1 if they get night fight. So yeah heat lance scourge with archon and webway portal with some heat lance reavers would help sorta.

I imagine if you take blaster trueborn scooting a raider with em into cover (if you were facing a gun-line) would help tremendously (night shields). The 18" range should mean you can at least manage a sort of 3+ cover save frequently with em even on turn 1.

Anyway i dunno. I suppose in some cases haywire could be good but half the time enemies don't even take vehicles. I've just been burned too badly for taking haywire against some of our hardest match-ups (space wolves, tau, etc.).
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Honestly what Dark Eldar should get is the ability to switch units around the battlefield or be able to somewhat cater their forces. I make lists before hand but you're telling me the ambush faction that plots out each of their attacks before it happens won't understand what factions they will be fighting. Also we should almost always have the element of surprise so a turn 1 steal should be pretty much allowed. I mean crap even possibly an 'ambushed' scenario where the dark eldar player gets to place some of his enemy's units (D3 of certain types of units or something) to represent nobody was expecting them would be nice.

A couple S8 shots to me isnt good AT, Haywire and melta are, Lances are for me to force jinks and maybe to get a extra HP off.

The big difference is my meta is vehicle heavy, its not uncommon to see 6 rhinos/ravorbacks with 3-4 skimmers and 2 fliers in a SM armor, or a Necron player with 4 Ghost arks, a couple fliers a couple Annihilation Barge and a couple Doomsdat Arks. BA with 3 Stormravens and 2 Dreadknoughts 5 Drop pods (2 are empty just for more units on the table lol), Admech with 5 Walkers (a mix of shooting ones and melee ones), we have 3 CSM players (I mean like vanilla ones that dont use Daemons, they use the new books still) and they will take again like 7+ vehicles (some rhinos, walkers, fliers etc...) we even have one that takes the Dread Claw and Brass Scorpion, we have many players with Knights too.....

DE in my meta cant have anytype of lance as reliable AT, it just takes to much fire power. If my math is correct, it takes 36 Lances to kill 1 Knight, not counting the 6 Rhinos. 3 DL shots is only a 40% chance to kill a AV10 vehicle, Hitting a rhino at AV11 would take an average of 5 DL shots to remove 3 HP's without cover.

So this is my meta, for me I need the extra shots or HWB [(I like Haywire a LOT I take them on my CTC 2 units of Scourges and my 4 Troops I take a Sybarite with HWG (after playing Harlequins i've grown to like HWG on sargents)].

Edit: I also hate DL b.c they cost the same of a Lascannon with less range and 90% the time a Lascannon is better.... vs AV10-12 they are better, so same cost, longer range, more likely to break vehicles. DL make me salty....

I'd steer clear of the Dark Scythes, small blasts on a BS4 unit are going to miss more often than not and an AV10 flyer is going to need to jink on a fairly regular basis, which means you wont be able to us eany of the Voidravens weapons.

As another player here said dark lances and blasters aren't for anti-tank. They are for instant death against heavily armored toughness 4 units with multiple wounds and possible FnP as well as to hurt monsters. They are secondary vehicle killers if nothing else is a good target (imperial guard is probably a good example where vehicles are the only target you might want it for).

In my meta there is a tau player that never brings vehicles and is super hard, a previous eldar player that i think took no vehicles, a necron player (not sure what he brings yet), some guard players from time to time, a chaos player that doesn't take a whole lot of vehicles and a person that plays a different faction every few months (sells the current army and gets a new one) and his last army was death watch that only came in drop pods and he had one flyer which wasn't the massive threat in his army. Far as i know at most half of them bring vehicles but it's almost never a lulz spam of vehicles.

Granted when i faced the imperial guard guy he had vehicles all over the board in a gun-line mostly but that's what guard normally does. Also against a 3+ cover save it's gonna be hard regardless of what you do. You'd probably have an easier time with reaver jetbikes that have cluster caltrops and heat lances tackling those things because in melee vehicles won't get cover. Also considering hammer of wrath auto-hits you won't have to roll to hit with that and the fact they are rending attacks with cluster caltrop attacks being str 6 as well it could be ok if you hit the right side of the tank.

Anyway i don't use haywire as i've had too many games against powerful factions that just annihilate dark eldar. If i truly need something to handle tanks i take heat lance and even then you might be better off putting it on the reavers so you can move pretty far, get out of LoS, go in cover without worry of DT and take some short range pot shots at them (provided other ranged firepower is silenced first of course).

And thats a hugely different meta than me, its funny how that works, 1 area (mine) full of vehicles everywhere and yours with very little.

If I didnt take my 20 haywire, 4 units of reavers and the 18ish Dark Weapons mixed with 1 grotesquerie IDK if I could even kill something other than some Drones/suit and SM bikes or Necron Wraiths lol.

Well as i said i have fought at least one knight and one of the guys takes one vehicle in his traitor guard list but it's a super heavy baneblade-esque tank. Haywire might be good there as you don't do vehicle damage (unless you keep rolling explodes results on the super heavy which heat lance is best at). That said in my last game vs orks it didn't matter, vs death watch it might not have mattered and against tau it only serves to hurt me (240 pts completely wasted that even a void raven would do more in and costs just as much). I mean vs guard it might be ok but even then probably not.

I am thinking of doing a grotesquerie myself btw. I think going melee heavy with reavers, incubi and grotesques with blasters and heat lance and void raven should work well. Unsure if i should even use ravagers. They usually aren't worth it no matter what i'm facing and they under-perform at their task. Perhaps if i took those out and replaced them with venom i'd be in a better situation. Well i suppose i mildly take that back. The volume of shots on dissie ravagers can potentially do damage to weak flyers but really that's nothing a void raven can't do better. Yeah perhaps dropping all ravagers is a better option.

Tournament play sees lots of Battle Companies. Eldar rarely have vehicles and Tau Empire can make good use of them but in ITC tournaments they arent copious. Necrons usually have Ghost Arks in Decurions.

But regardless of all that, high str weapons have a place in EVERY list so I'm not sure it matters whether or not the meta has tons of vehicles. Coming unprepared to face that possibility is not wise at tournaments. In casual play you can somewhat control your opponent pool but in real tournaments, be prepared.

I am taking high strength weapons (would be more blasters). I'd just probably take fewer dissie ravagers if any (they are nice in cover and slightly better armor is nicer but if they jink they shoot like crap). My issue is the shots the ravagers take may be freed up to shoot at something else and i'm not sure it'll be able to take as many hits as the ravager. Of course people often attack what's in their face first not just because of range but because if it's a ranged army and it's a melee unit it could tear them up and if it's a melee unit it's about getting into a fight so you can't be shot at or so you get something nice to kill.

As i said my issue with haywire is it's only really good half the time and the other half it is worse than useless because it takes up points and a possible force organization slot for something that could do anything more useful than nothing.

Without reading all of this wonderful discussion, I wanted to cut into the discussion about trueborn.

I use two units in venoms and I love them. My opponent always has a grotesquerie in their face so they have other things to focus on. But 8 blaster shots and two venoms are not worth the set up required, but they usually do their job, and look good doing it, but they'll be phased out by reavers once I get more.

How many reavers is too many? I really like the way they look, and used two units of three to great effect in a smaller game today, very versatile and survivable.

Reavers are a hard sell in my opinion. So much better as blockers and harrassers than they are at damage dealing for the cost. They can do it but they dont do it economically enough for me to put my faith in their offense. Speed is their true value but Id say True born are more likely to get their jobs done than are the Reavers on offense.

Reavers are amazing, I always have 4 units of them, I'd say 6 units is fine too but wouldnt go to much higher.

You want to play them like an annoying fly for your opponent.

I use mine as back up AT but I try to hit key units that are weak in melee, maybe with stealth in cover sitting on points. (I take a lot of haywire so I dont need them for AT per say).

I remeber one game my opponent had scouts on 2 objectives in back corners (it was Big guns and only 3 objectives on table) so I sent 2 units on either side, took me 2 turns to get into position. The third turn I annihilated them.

Some other games I played was dbl Demi-Comb so i used them just as easy fast AT.

They are so small, cheap and effective, they can fill a couple roles if you need them too, but... they die if they are focus fire to much, so if you take 12 units of them, lol they will just be focused.

 Jancoran wrote:
Reavers are a hard sell in my opinion. So much better as blockers and harrassers than they are at damage dealing for the cost. They can do it but they dont do it economically enough for me to put my faith in their offense. Speed is their true value but Id say True born are more likely to get their jobs done than are the Reavers on offense.

I used to doubt them but they really annoy weaker melee units and the heat lances combined with cluster caltrop can even do some nice damage vs vehicles. It's a bit tricky to use em. It's best to attack enemies in cover with them (probably one of our best counters to cover). You have to move fairly close to your enemy to do this effectively and keep your cluster caltrops away from being shot at. Keep in mind a horde trying to get through cover means they tend to move super slow d6" in move and then 2d6"-2 for charge. Things like guardsmen and other gun-line armies have a hard time hurting reavers even when they charge and often they don't understand our bikes fall like chumps when charged. I'd say put your reavers 12" away from the enemy or a bit more so you can have a healthy charge next turn. You don't know how infuriating it is when clusters fail the charge. It's only worse when they roll low on the cluster caltrops d6 results. Anyway best way i've heard to run them is in a unit of 6 but spammed small units are supposedly good too. I only have 2 units of 6 (for a total of 12) reavers. They can do their job but in some cases i wonder if it wouldn't be better to have both on the same side of the board in case i need more hammer of wrath dealing with a tougher unit. It really depends on what you are facing.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Reavers are a hard sell in my opinion. So much better as blockers and harrassers than they are at damage dealing for the cost. They can do it but they dont do it economically enough for me to put my faith in their offense. Speed is their true value but Id say True born are more likely to get their jobs done than are the Reavers on offense.

I used to doubt them but they really annoy weaker melee units and the heat lances combined with cluster caltrop can even do some nice damage vs vehicles. It's a bit tricky to use em. It's best to attack enemies in cover with them (probably one of our best counters to cover). You have to move fairly close to your enemy to do this effectively and keep your cluster caltrops away from being shot at. Keep in mind a horde trying to get through cover means they tend to move super slow d6" in move and then 2d6"-2 for charge. Things like guardsmen and other gun-line armies have a hard time hurting reavers even when they charge and often they don't understand our bikes fall like chumps when charged. I'd say put your reavers 12" away from the enemy or a bit more so you can have a healthy charge next turn. You don't know how infuriating it is when clusters fail the charge. It's only worse when they roll low on the cluster caltrops d6 results. Anyway best way i've heard to run them is in a unit of 6 but spammed small units are supposedly good too. I only have 2 units of 6 (for a total of 12) reavers. They can do their job but in some cases i wonder if it wouldn't be better to have both on the same side of the board in case i need more hammer of wrath dealing with a tougher unit. It really depends on what you are facing.

I normally take 2 units of 3 and keep 6 on each side of the board running in pairs close to each other. I love them for Anti cover and back up AT light vehicles, mostly skimmers in the back.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Reavers are a hard sell in my opinion. So much better as blockers and harrassers than they are at damage dealing for the cost. They can do it but they dont do it economically enough for me to put my faith in their offense. Speed is their true value but Id say True born are more likely to get their jobs done than are the Reavers on offense.

I used to doubt them but they really annoy weaker melee units and the heat lances combined with cluster caltrop can even do some nice damage vs vehicles. It's a bit tricky to use em. It's best to attack enemies in cover with them (probably one of our best counters to cover). You have to move fairly close to your enemy to do this effectively and keep your cluster caltrops away from being shot at. Keep in mind a horde trying to get through cover means they tend to move super slow d6" in move and then 2d6"-2 for charge. Things like guardsmen and other gun-line armies have a hard time hurting reavers even when they charge and often they don't understand our bikes fall like chumps when charged. I'd say put your reavers 12" away from the enemy or a bit more so you can have a healthy charge next turn. You don't know how infuriating it is when clusters fail the charge. It's only worse when they roll low on the cluster caltrops d6 results. Anyway best way i've heard to run them is in a unit of 6 but spammed small units are supposedly good too. I only have 2 units of 6 (for a total of 12) reavers. They can do their job but in some cases i wonder if it wouldn't be better to have both on the same side of the board in case i need more hammer of wrath dealing with a tougher unit. It really depends on what you are facing.

I own a whole bunch of them. I like their tricks (liked them better yet i nthe old codex which is why I won that many). I fount that melee was my weapon of choice though for Dark Eldar.

Played a game against a White Scars Gladius.

Whenever I play on fridays I seem to play against the competitive lists, but they are very fun to play against, and theres always a lot to learn from.

I asked the guy to play a casual game, and he pulls out a white scars gladius, he was a very kind and patient guy (I am quite a klutz and get nervous quite a bit, so I drop a lot of dice and models and the such).

He ended up winning by a single point, on Turn 7, but now I know how I could have won better next time.

Instead of hunkering down and putting all my objectives in the middle of the board and making him come to my with all the outflank, I spread out like a doofus to try and split his forces. It didn't work out.

I wasn't sure how gladius' played, I assumed they liked killing and lots of MSU shots, but it was very different, the obsec on all his units hurt a lot, especially against my RSR.

Reavers were MVPs, they could be basically wherever they needed to be at any time, and were small and insignificant enough to be ignored, but still kill a rhino or the such a turn.

My two razorwings sucked, as usual, I think I'll replace them with more venoms and reavers honestly, I just need the funds and time to invest in some newer models.

I think this goes to show how a good understanding of the meta game and the builds your opponent might bring will really enhance your game.

yup. When it comes to experience, accept no substitute.

Also, a White Scars Gladius is more or less the furthest thing from friendly he could have fielded if it was a Battle Company.

 gummyofallbears wrote:


My two razorwings sucked, as usual, I think I'll replace them with more venoms and reavers honestly, I just need the funds and time to invest in some newer models.

Not a fan of those flyers either, they can be useful only if you face some nasty flyers that must go down (or at least forced to jink) or if you face blobs of infantries as blasts are way more efficient than a lot of poisoned shots. I consider those razorwings crucial only if you face tyranids or astra militarum as both armies have many infantry models and flyers, or maybe some SM lists with a stormraven and two stormtalons. Against other armies razorwings are usually not satisfying.

The white scars gladius was not too friendly, but hey, who am I to tell him what to play? It was a fun little challenge.

The razorwings are so eh, I just cant think of too much to fill those points, maybe a few incubi

 gummyofallbears wrote:
The white scars gladius was not too friendly, but hey, who am I to tell him what to play? It was a fun little challenge.

The razorwings are so eh, I just cant think of too much to fill those points, maybe a few incubi

I use the Voidraven.

You did well so that is very much to your credit. God help a Battle Company in Kill Points. TYPICALLY not their strong suit. Gives anyone a chance against them in that mission. Objective missions present quite a bit more difficult challenge. Having to kill an extra 400 points worth of ablative armor that shoots is just unfair on a lot of levels. Not sure what they were thinking there.

My Dark Eldar only do well against them because I can multicharge the crap out of their armor and they are afraid of it so they dont tend to roll up on my like normal. Grav Cannons do jack to most of my units because of our poor armor. Jinking does wonders especially when its night fighting so always shoot for Strategic Warlord Traits. Always!

If they wanna scout to the fore, I'm game! Makes my life so much easier.

I actually like razorwing jetfighters pretty well because they give a couple lance shots for hitting armor values and 4 missiles into an infantry unit rarely leaves it standing. It's one of the few multipurpose units I'll actually field since it doesn't cost much. I don't do other upgrades like night shields or splinter cannons because I prefer to keep them cheap. If the voidraven cost a lot less I'd be more inclined to use it.

Faced necron decurion on saturday and did surprisingly well. Had to leave by the end of turn 3 but i had most of my stuff left in 2,000 pts.

He had 2 units of necrons warriors, 3 units of destroyers (5-6 models each per unit), a unit of necron jetbikes (5-6 models), a bunch of immortals (probably 8-10) and a bunch of lych guard with shields and his leader.

I had 2 venoms with butt naked 5 man warrior squads in each, 2 ravagers with dissies, a void raven (w/ void lance and shatterfield missiles), 2 reaver jetbike units (6 bikes each), 2 units of blaster scourge (4 blasters but 5 models total), 1 unit of heat lance scourge w/ webway archon (4 heat lance and 5 models), 1 unit of basic shardcarbine scourge (10 models basic weapons) and a unit of incubi in a raider.

Keep in mind my list wasn't built the best because i had no units left to add in so i added wargear mostly. About 100 pts more of wargear that would've been better in units.

Anyway he gets first turn but i roll +1 toughness for combat drugs and the warlord trait that let's me get re-rolls for reserves and night fight. I did get night fight and some of my rolls were ok.

Far as deployment goes (and this probably saved me big time) after he deployed i deployed in a corner of my deployment and then moved up quickly so that i faced 1/2 to 1/3 of his force for the most part and what he had shooting at me could only shoot the least worthwhile stuff (venoms). My ravagers were deployed in cover so they had 3+ cover due to night shields without needing to jink. I also advanced my reavers carefully and through cover. I'd have to say my shooting did next to no damage but my melee did fairly decently when both reaver jetbike units went at the same target. Even the incubi did ok.

Gonna just skip to end results. He had about 6 points to my 2. I killed his jetbike unit and his necron warrior unit. I was about to kill his 1 destroyer unit as well and his immortals were only at about 4 guys left. Sadly my 2 reaver units probably would've died hard in melee vs the lych guard unit (which i'm guessing were about to charge them). He only killed my 2 venom units and the guys inside as well as my 10 man scourge squad with shardcarbines and got first blood. He also took off one hull point from a ravager, mostly killed one blaster scourge squad, killed 2 incubi (from overwatch) and a reaver jetbike biker. Thank god he failed morale for the warrior squad or else they wouldn't have gotten run down by my reavers.

I honestly think if the full game played out i'd have lost regardless (might have even been tabled before turn 6) but i gave him a good fight. It was definitely a better fight than facing tau or space wolves (maybe my force is better and i'm getting better though). I'm guessing that's part of how to deal with certain enemies. You engage a part of the enemy force at a time and then engage another to prevent everybody getting hurt. It seems to work.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I actually like razorwing jetfighters pretty well because they give a couple lance shots for hitting armor values and 4 missiles into an infantry unit rarely leaves it standing. It's one of the few multipurpose units I'll actually field since it doesn't cost much. I don't do other upgrades like night shields or splinter cannons because I prefer to keep them cheap. If the voidraven cost a lot less I'd be more inclined to use it.

A couple Lances do crap for AT and Venoms/warriors are already all over the board for AI. The problem is that it is multi rolled. We have a bomber now, the Razorwing NEEDS to have "non-Blast" missile options and Haywire options.... so stupid its 4 AI missiles.

Oh I know it's not great anti-tank, but I usually run a pair so 4 lance shots usually means a couple dead tanks over the course of the game. I felt happy enough switching to them from the ravagers that I used to use which cost almost the same and didn't have as much durability or mobility to get where they were needed.

We have plenty of poison shots which are great for high toughness targets but aren't as great for dealing with swarms of weaker targets. When I'm facing large blobs of daemons, scarabs, or even a battle company it's the missiles that keep me in the game by causing a large number of hullpoints and wounds to units so I can finish off stragglers with poison shots.

Got in a 3000 point game yesterday so I could field a full Carnival of Pain.

In case you were looking for confirmation, no, it's not competitive. (A hell of a lot of fun, though.)

I'm still of the opinion that generally the best thing poison is for is against ogryn sized creatures and bikers. They tend not to have such ridiculous saves (maxing out at 3+ and can't get any better because jink is 3+ to 4+ usually). Against monster sized infantry blaster and other lance weapons can still do a good number on them but against bikes the jink really sinks it. Also when the enemy has artillery emplacement with toughness 7 on everybody they are highly vulnerable to poison as silly as it is. They still might get some nasty cover saves though.

I am starting to see the crappiness of scourge as fun as they were before. Problem being they often have the most heavy or special weaons for any units and it's a decent amount of firepower per squad.

I'd like to drop ravagers at some point but it might lower ranged killing power against some ranged units that absolutely would shred the rest of my force (esp. the melee units coming in).

I may get a 2nd void raven or just switch out the void lances for dark scythes which i'm almost absolutely sure is the better choice given we lack a lot of toughness 4 ap 2 instant death outside of melee. Given dark scythes are only small blast it's kinda meh but there are 2 per void raven and it's not single use unlike the bomb.

Agreed that the razorwing needs more jet fighter options. Just make each missile roll 2d6 for armor penetration or something at base strength 6-8. Most flyers don't have massive armor so even at strength 6-8 it should do a lot of damage to most.

I just think it's too bad jet packs, jump jets and jetbikes can't possibly engage flyers. Is it because flyers go higher than the other models can or is it because they haven't figured rules for it. I think being able to melee flyers with certain units would be pretty cool for some armies.

In fact you know what'd be seriously cool? You know how rockets get a flak option for certain ones? What if dark eldar had an option for haywire or shredders that combined it into a sort of net mesh (shot from a rocket) that surrounded an aircraft in the lore and basically shut down the plane's systems causing them to freefall. Either that or a haemonculus virus (shot via haemonculus weapon like a sniper rifle) that injects into the ship and turns them to the shooter's side. I mean for god's sake we get these things in the lore of enemies of dark eldar losing control of their bodies due to some virus. You can't tell me we shouldn't have something like this in-game even if it is specialty once per game one item on any character type of gear.

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I do very much like the going back and forth of our discussions of games and tactics. I have already learned a lot (both in game and here) and feel our constant back and forth feedback is helping a lot of us. I very much support when getting 2nd turn to deploy on one side of the map to prevent the enemy dealing with your whole force at once. In some cases this might not work (tau). However i find our speed is one of the greater weapons we have and something the enemy can't adapt to very well. In my game vs necron decurion the game may have been 2 to 6 in his favor (he also got first blood in that) but the units i lost weren't very valuable while the ones he was losing were much more valuable. Probably lost 360 pts or more in fully dead units in a 2k points game with a bit from various other units and that was after turn 3 ended for both of us.

My point being if an enemy stays on one side of the board (hard unless they're an elite shooty army) then dark eldar can just quickly get there without much issue and do so in cover. Our enemies can't re-deploy so quickly.

The problem with your suggestion of Armourbane for our missiles is that they're all blast weapons, so it doesn't matter as they can't be fired at other flyers. Personally though, I'd like to see Shatterfield Missiles changed to being just Heavy 1, Shred, Tank Hunter, One Use Only.

I still don't think Dark Scythes are worth it, I've watched Steve on Mini War Gaming use them most times he runs a Voidraven and misses more often than he hits, simply because it's BS4 on a small blast template.

Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Number one problem with the Razorwing is that its not a Voidraven. Hehehe. Sorry. couldnt resist. Well i could have but i chose not to.

I'm really curious what kinds of units you've been able to kill with the bomber to make it worthwhile. Last time I used it I only killed one space marine biker and it was almost brought down by sporadic bolter fire from nearby bikes.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I'm really curious what kinds of units you've been able to kill with the bomber to make it worthwhile. Last time I used it I only killed one space marine biker and it was almost brought down by sporadic bolter fire from nearby bikes.

Linking back to my post.

"Not gonna lie i too disliked the void raven merely for cost but my last game it did really well. You just have to make sure the enemy aa is silenced properly and it often depends who you face. The missiles (shatterfield) are great vs hordes and i killed a whole horde of boyz with them without needing to use anything else (probably 20+ boyz and i did like 36 hits which also all wounded due to shred and then 33 unsaved wounds which vaporized the unit) and after that i dropped a void mine on ghazghkull, a pain boy, a weird boy and 3 mega-nobz and killed all of them instantly except for ghazghkull who was wounded.

Honestly i think it depends what you face. It was probably a really great situation that sort of just happened at the right time (hordes and high armor, multi-wound t4 units with FnP). I don't think anything would be more effective against wulfen than the void raven and considering all their storm shields the shatterfield weapons are also good here. I'm more curious if i should take 2 honestly. That said i'll wait on that idea as it's an expensive model both in money and in points. I'd like to see more damage done first but i do think i'm gonna take out the void lances and run dark scythes due to lacking much good str 8 ap 2 blast (both small and large) or better in the dark eldar army."

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I'm really curious what kinds of units you've been able to kill with the bomber to make it worthwhile. Last time I used it I only killed one space marine biker and it was almost brought down by sporadic bolter fire from nearby bikes.

What I hear you saying is that durability is your issue with it. I would point out if that is the case that the Fighter shares this in common. if you're willing to use one, use the other.

That aside, the reason i am successful with it is because I am charging a LOT by turn two. So while the THEORY of bolters being trained on it its cool, it seems more likely that anything able to kill it is either quite busy at the moment OOOOOR is my primary target. Make sense?

The one answer to durability is making it not matter any more. The firepower of a Voidraven is immense. I take the Blasts personally to maximize damage. I like Implosion missiles also

The bomb itself as i said is very accurate and drop armies are common (Blood Angels, Ravenguard, now Chaos Marines and Space Wolves all excel at this in some form or fashion as does any Battle Company that wants to) , speedy grav bike armies are common, and the list goes on. none of these armies is particularly shy about advancing and by turn two should have some juicy units to bombinate.

Bomber gets behind the tank character which is something people kind of forget when looking at the piece of paper the list is written on. it floats right past and blows a whole bunch of unhappy people up.

I think what happens is that people try to use it in a shooting army instead of an assault army and that makes it a far easier target. a lot of armies own anti-air in some minimal fashion if not a lot and can absolutely afford the shot at no real disadvantage. Making it jink is as good as killing it and then they can move onto better targets right? So never Jink. But it is true that armies posess the ability to take it out and so you have to be able to answer that threat if you want to take one. I answered that threat and I took one. Also consider the bunching up that happens after combats. It can be very good for the Bombers chances to matter whereas if you do not go melee oriented, not so much. People are moving and contorting to avoid it and if you focus on shooting they have no reason not to. Circular deployingets and movement mitigate things quite a bit. Not entirely but a lot. Not so easy to do when the attackers are at your door step and suddenly "optimally moving" isnt a possibility anymore because the new goal is distance from the threat and resetting your lines.

The Bomber will not always be a superstar. That just depends o nthe game, as with every unit it the game. But the main takeaway is that in a melee oriented army, it works great.

That is a pretty good point.

Ignoring the tank character seems like a big deal.

For example, the RavenGuard list I am playing with includes Shrike and a bunch of assault marines, just because its cool and fluffy, but a single missile will tear that unit apart, and probably double its points doing so.

Or destroying meganobz, really anything with a 2+ armour.

yeah 2+ armor gets absolutely shredded by the bomber. Tank characters stop working and now you have to play the "hang back and wait game if you want to avoid the bomber...which works fine by me since Im going to Aethersail the living crap outta ya!

Or so the battle plan goes. I might have it turned upside down...hmm...

could you take a voidraven escorted by two razorwings in the Death From the Skies thing that lets them take up a single fast attack slot (flyer wing?)

I don't actually own the book, but it seems like fun to spam the amazing looking Dark Eldar flyers.

On another note, what is the overall opinion on Archon courts? I think they are very cool and fun, but will rarely see play do to having quite a high entry cost. Opinions? (besides a single lahmian or Urhh Gurl in a venom)

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Blasts are the only reason to take dark eldar flyers as we already have a lot of poisoned shots and anti tank. The razorwing and the bomber are not particularly good against other flyers but still our only anti-air available. However their blasts could be invaluable if you face hordes or a lot of heavy infantry as poisoned shots can't really cripple those kind of units. Against tyranids and astra militarum dark eldar flyers can be your MVP as those armies have a lot of bodies and also flyers, especially the bugs.

 Blackie wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Blasts are the only reason to take dark eldar flyers as we already have a lot of poisoned shots and anti tank. The razorwing and the bomber are not particularly good against other flyers but still our only anti-air available. However their blasts could be invaluable if you face hordes or a lot of heavy infantry as poisoned shots can't really cripple those kind of units. Against tyranids and astra militarum dark eldar flyers can be your MVP as those armies have a lot of bodies and also flyers, especially the bugs.

The issue that I find is that all the Tyranids and Guard I see are all big boy fests, lots of tanks and MC's, very few actual blobs of infantry.

So my flyers kinda run around maybe shooting a missile or two at some zoanthropes or a tactical squad if Im lucky. They don't shine in my meta as much as I'd like because all the bunched up big units have tank characters and the such.

 gummyofallbears wrote:


On another note, what is the overall opinion on Archon courts? I think they are very cool and fun, but will rarely see play do to having quite a high entry cost. Opinions? (besides a single lahmian or Urhh Gurl in a venom)

They're not worth it because they don't have a decent fire power nor they're particularly good in close combat. Every dark eldar HQ is not great, that's why a single lhamaean is so common. I'd only take the archon with blasters, WWP and blasterborn with him in a raider, but it's a very expensive combo, other HQs that i take are a single succubus or haemonculus when i include the grotesquerie and i need a babysitter for one of the grots unit. I think the only way to field a performing dark eldar HQ is to stick it with the grotesques, even without the formation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Blasts are the only reason to take dark eldar flyers as we already have a lot of poisoned shots and anti tank. The razorwing and the bomber are not particularly good against other flyers but still our only anti-air available. However their blasts could be invaluable if you face hordes or a lot of heavy infantry as poisoned shots can't really cripple those kind of units. Against tyranids and astra militarum dark eldar flyers can be your MVP as those armies have a lot of bodies and also flyers, especially the bugs.

The issue that I find is that all the Tyranids and Guard I see are all big boy fests, lots of tanks and MC's, very few actual blobs of infantry.

So my flyers kinda run around maybe shooting a missile or two at some zoanthropes or a tactical squad if Im lucky. They don't shine in my meta as much as I'd like because all the bunched up big units have tank characters and the such.

Dark eldar flyers in my opinion are not among our best units, i agree, in fact i never take them. They're situational and can find a room only against some specific armies, most of the times they not repay you.

 Jancoran wrote:

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I'm really curious what kinds of units you've been able to kill with the bomber to make it worthwhile. Last time I used it I only killed one space marine biker and it was almost brought down by sporadic bolter fire from nearby bikes.

What I hear you saying is that durability is your issue with it. I would point out if that is the case that the Fighter shares this in common. if you're willing to use one, use the other.

That aside, the reason i am successful with it is because I am charging a LOT by turn two. So while the THEORY of bolters being trained on it its cool, it seems more likely that anything able to kill it is either quite busy at the moment OOOOOR is my primary target. Make sense?

The one answer to durability is making it not matter any more. The firepower of a Voidraven is immense. I take the Blasts personally to maximize damage. I like Implosion missiles also

The bomb itself as i said is very accurate and drop armies are common (Blood Angels, Ravenguard, now Chaos Marines and Space Wolves all excel at this in some form or fashion as does any Battle Company that wants to) , speedy grav bike armies are common, and the list goes on. none of these armies is particularly shy about advancing and by turn two should have some juicy units to bombinate.

Bomber gets behind the tank character which is something people kind of forget when looking at the piece of paper the list is written on. it floats right past and blows a whole bunch of unhappy people up.

I think what happens is that people try to use it in a shooting army instead of an assault army and that makes it a far easier target. a lot of armies own anti-air in some minimal fashion if not a lot and can absolutely afford the shot at no real disadvantage. Making it jink is as good as killing it and then they can move onto better targets right? So never Jink. But it is true that armies posess the ability to take it out and so you have to be able to answer that threat if you want to take one. I answered that threat and I took one. Also consider the bunching up that happens after combats. It can be very good for the Bombers chances to matter whereas if you do not go melee oriented, not so much. People are moving and contorting to avoid it and if you focus on shooting they have no reason not to. Circular deployingets and movement mitigate things quite a bit. Not entirely but a lot. Not so easy to do when the attackers are at your door step and suddenly "optimally moving" isnt a possibility anymore because the new goal is distance from the threat and resetting your lines.

The Bomber will not always be a superstar. That just depends o nthe game, as with every unit it the game. But the main takeaway is that in a melee oriented army, it works great.

The bigger issue I had was with its output actually. It only killed a single biker when I used it which for its cost meant quite a bit of lost points.

With the fighters, I'm able to fit two into my army while I couldn't do so with the bomber so I found better durability and output from the pair of razorwings. My opponent had 5 or 6 units of bikers so they were all over the board and the twin linked shots meant he was getting more than a few hits against my single flyer without even really trying to. It was kind of just accidental in the "well, the jets in rapid fire range so I guess I'll shoot at it" sense and he almost brought it down after a couple volleys.

I do play melee heavy armies with my dark eldar about half the time and that game was me actually using a corpsethief claw, grotesquerie, and couple units of reaver jetbikes, so it wasn't that I was playing a shooty army.

I was scattering the bomb the full d6, but I don't think it would have made much difference had I not done so. I hit his iron hands biker death star but he had a 3++ or could have just jinked it anyways followed by a 3+ fnp. The tough units I want to hit typically have solid invuls/cover saves and what I would have rather had getting through it were twice as many missiles on target because the saves and fnp wouldn't have changed from one jet to the other.

Groups of Sslyth have decent output in close combat and they have Shardcarbines for decent shooting. It's just that Grotesques do the same job better in combat and Scourge are better at the shooting.

A couple of Medusae can be pretty good as well, S4 AP3 templates scare the hell out of marines.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
could you take a voidraven escorted by two razorwings in the Death From the Skies thing that lets them take up a single fast attack slot (flyer wing?)

I don't actually own the book, but it seems like fun to spam the amazing looking Dark Eldar flyers.

On another note, what is the overall opinion on Archon courts? I think they are very cool and fun, but will rarely see play do to having quite a high entry cost. Opinions? (besides a single lahmian or Urhh Gurl in a venom)

I use the following Court of the Archon all the time in my list:

1 Ur Ghul
6 Sslyth
2 Medusae
1 Lhamaean

I originally started using it because Formations werent NEARLY as big a deal as they becamse after the Codex dropped and many tournaments at the time only allowed two Detachments (later this became three and the ITC JUST reconfirmed that it will stay at three in their tournaments).

So because the Grotesuqes were an elite and I was already utilizing two elites slots for Blasterborn (at the time) yet wanted more melee in my force I looked around and realized the HQ slot could provide it if i didn't want another beastPack 9and no one wants Wych's).

What i learned then and continued to appreciate later as the Coven book came out was that the Court of the Archon shoots a LOT and assaults a LOT. It is a very good unit with a ton of firepower, fortitude and melee ability. It's got most everything you would want in a unit.

18 Poison shots and 2 Medusae will reduce most units to slag on their own but tougher units who need additional persuasion to join the ranks of the enslaved can find it in the ensuing assault the Sslyth promise to bring. STR 5 and a ton of attacks will get the job done and that's no lie. Two wounds apiece means they are taking it like a champ. Honestly, the unit hasn't left my army since that long ago list I tried to find more melee for.

The unit isn't super cheap (nor expensive) buy kind of in the middle for cost the way I have it set up but from an efficacy standpoint? Fantastic. What perhaps makes it an even bigger performed for me is that the enemy has incubi, and a Grotesquerie with a 32 wound beastPack headed their way and so its understandable if they maybe want to commit more to the Grotesqueries destructin than to that of the Court. The Grotesquerie is obviously our best baseline, and the enemy isn't wrong to feel that way. but that meansthe Court of the Archon with its lack of power weapons nor instant death weapons will get a lesser share of the attention.

In the end analysis i don't particularly care WHICH of the five melee units barrelling down on them they decide is more important. Casualties are inevitable for me. i accept that as part and parcel to the way my list functions.

@Jancoran I get the Sslyth and Medusae have pretty good offensive ability, but even with fleet, that's a 225 point unit that's being ignored for two turns while your opponent shoots at everything else. On top of that, in the two turns it takes to get there, a Warrior/Raider gunboat can put out what, 26 twinlinked poison shots with a 3+ jink? I can see 150 points of Sslyhth as a nice distraction Dakkafex, as that's 12 wounds to eat through, but still. Ask Tyranids how their footslogging fleet is working out for them.'

Also, why the Ur-Ghoul and Lhamean?

 Imateria wrote:
Groups of Sslyth have decent output in close combat and they have Shardcarbines for decent shooting. It's just that Grotesques do the same job better in combat and Scourge are better at the shooting.

A couple of Medusae can be pretty good as well, S4 AP3 templates scare the hell out of marines.

I'm more worried about how our flame template units work though. Liquifiers seem to suck and the eyeburst from the medusae (while decent) needs to be escorted around. It's 6" movement to be able to shoot that template again meaning if you're on foot you might not get there so easily. If you're in a transport it's prone to blow up and if you move more than 6" in that transport your guys can't shoot and the transports tend to be so vulnerable you might jink them anyway.

This kind of leads to the reason why i understood dark eldar wants to be in melee with enemies that are in cover. Incubi, grotesques and reavers all handle this issue and do it well. The incubi and reavers also work well in conjunction as i'd imagine grotesques would with them as well.

I'll admit i don't use archon courts but i'm wondering if i even should. It's nice they don't take up a force organization slot but you can only have one per HQ and it's still generally a rough take for me (even with sslyth and medusae). I'd imagine dark eldar flame template units are better in overwatch. At least the sslyth/medusae combo might make some sense then....maybe. The medusae would need to be in a unit that the enemy wants to charge though.

 Chippen wrote:
@Jancoran I get the Sslyth and Medusae have pretty good offensive ability, but even with fleet, that's a 225 point unit that's being ignored for two turns while your opponent shoots at everything else. On top of that, in the two turns it takes to get there, a Warrior/Raider gunboat can put out what, 26 twinlinked poison shots with a 3+ jink? I can see 150 points of Sslyhth as a nice distraction Dakkafex, as that's 12 wounds to eat through, but still. Ask Tyranids how their footslogging fleet is working out for them.'

Also, why the Ur-Ghoul and Lhamean?

225 is neither cheap nor expensive in my opinion. it wipes entire units off the board at one go however which i think...is worth 225? Consider the death that a Deathwatch unit causes and the associated cost. many enemy units are in the 200 point range, especially the elites. i cannot impose my sense of value on anyone but in my opinion, there is 225 points worth of value in the Court of the Archon, assuredly.

I don't understand your tactical comments. Please explain further what you mean. The enemy will effectively fire at me just once before I assault. Not twice.

On your last question: I want to cause Fear, and i want better leadership so i took the Ur-ghul and the Lhamaean. As it turns out, leadership is still a concern for the unit AND its enemies, as I have learned through many battles worth of hard fought experience!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Liquifiers seem to suck and the eyeburst from the medusae (while decent) needs to be escorted around. It's 6" movement to be able to shoot that template again meaning if you're on foot you might not get there so easily. If you're in a transport it's prone to blow up and if you move more than 6" in that transport your guys can't shoot and the transports tend to be so vulnerable you might jink them anyway.

This kind of leads to the reason why i understood dark eldar wants to be in melee with enemies that are in cover. Incubi, grotesques and reavers all handle this issue and do it well. The incubi and reavers also work well in conjunction as i'd imagine grotesques would with them as well.

I'll admit i don't use archon courts but i'm wondering if i even should. It's nice they don't take up a force organization slot but you can only have one per HQ and it's still generally a rough take for me (even with sslyth and medusae). I'd imagine dark eldar flame template units are better in overwatch. At least the sslyth/medusae combo might make some sense then....maybe. The medusae would need to be in a unit that the enemy wants to charge though.

No one would consider walking the Medusae. Perish the thought of it.

You cannot look at a piece of paper, read from its flacid surface and come away with the knowledge of HOW to use a thing. That can't really happen in a vacuum. The Medusae you centered your comment on is not going in alone in this case but with Sslyth as you say. He will be in a transport and it is HIGHLY unlikely that he will be dismounted in a situation it minds being dismounted.

Being in melee plays to Dark Eldar strength. What shooting they do commit to keeping in the army is fairly effective, but fragile. A melee bent force protects them exceedingly well, better than any shielding.

Dark Eldar are 100% capable of absolutely positively controlling target priority. Only a fool ignores the presence of 5 very serious multi-charge threats to fire over yonder. They might not LIKE the Ravagers and VoidRaven that are coming, but they cannot ignore what is right in front of their noes to deal with it. Not wisely anyways. So the net result of course is that your offensive pieces, like those, become very very productive over the course of the game, free to corral the various threats that may present themselves; or to help with the popping of cans enemy units might be inside of. Nothing is going to save those cans from being popped. So at that point, you start focusing on the immediate.

This philosophy is only as good as your commitment to it. Go half way on it and it just won't work. Forget to deploy the way I have described in other threads on this and you're sunk from turn one. Dark Eldar are not a halfway army. They are an army of extremes (in my opinion) and they are a finesse army that just does not allow for many mistakes or miscalculations. You have to get it right. When you do, it's a party!

 Jancoran wrote:

225 is neither cheap nor expensive in my opinion. it wipes entire units off the board at one go however which i think...is worth 225? Consider the death that a Deathwatch unit causes and the associated cost. many enemy units are in the 200 point range, especially the elites. i cannot impose my sense of value on anyone but in my opinion, there is 225 points worth of value in the Court of the Archon, assuredly.

I don't understand your tactical comments. Please explain further what you mean. The enemy will effectively fire at me just once before I assault. Not twice.

On your last question: I want to cause Fear, and i want better leadership so i took the Ur-ghul and the Lhamaean. As it turns out, leadership is still a concern for the unit AND its enemies, as I have learned through many battles worth of hard fought experience!

In an 1850 pt game, 225 points is 12% ish. That's a lot for a unit that won't assault until turn 3 at best. That gives the enemy 2 rounds of shooting (3 if you don't go first) plus Overwatch if you charge, which you obviously will(try), otherwise there's no point in talking about Sslyth in the first place as we know that for shooting there are objectively better options. Dark Eldar simply are not an army that can wait until turn 3 to be useful.

Your 225 of Court is not the same as a Deathwatch unit. You don't have all the survivability, nor do you have the power they do. It's not the same at all.

In the age of ATSKNF and Fearless units being everywhere (especially in assaulty units), I don't see the Fear being worth it, but this is a minor point. If you want the better Leadership value, you may as well stick the court with an Archon or Haemy with WWP and go full deathstar and deep strike into the back, and be useful much earlier.

My tactical points comments were:
A Warrior/Raider Gunboat (which is 10 warriors, one with a splinter cannon, in a Raider with Nightshields and Splinter Racks) puts out way more shooting from your first turn, so is instantly more effective than your Fleet footslogging Court. Plus that Raider with the warriors can jink every time it's shot at due to the FAQ freeing us from snapshots on a 3+ jink transport.
I was saying, however, that a few Sslyth can be a decent Distraction Carnifex (I said Dakkafex because their shooting is decent ish) with a bunch of wounds for 150 pts.
And if you think footslogging assault can work, even with target overload, why don't you see successful Tyranid footslogging lists?

I would get the value of a Court with an Archon or Haemy with Agonizer and Webway Portal, because then you're actually effective without running across the board, but the way you described it? Any decent opponent will ignore it for 2-3 turns while moving away from it.

And please, don't try to argue that assault is the Dark Eldar strength. Our units are fragile as hell, and while some have good hitting power, if hey don't knock out 3/4 of whatever they're fighting on the charge, they'll get put down pretty easily. The only armies we can reliably fight and survive with most of our units are Tau and IG, which will be blasting the gak out of us before we get to assault range anyway, and THEN will Overwatch the living bejeesus out of us.

 Blackie wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Blasts are the only reason to take dark eldar flyers as we already have a lot of poisoned shots and anti tank. The razorwing and the bomber are not particularly good against other flyers but still our only anti-air available. However their blasts could be invaluable if you face hordes or a lot of heavy infantry as poisoned shots can't really cripple those kind of units. Against tyranids and astra militarum dark eldar flyers can be your MVP as those armies have a lot of bodies and also flyers, especially the bugs.

1) I dont need AI
2) Blast do nothing if Jink or against other fliers
3) I dont need more poison I have to much already
4) ALL nids and IG dont have units that our Fliers are even good against. WTF meta are you playing in, friendly play bad units meta?

I agree with Chippen, After play Harlequins for a bit now, fear is almost pointless........

No offense, but where do you get Turn 3 and 2/3 rounds of shooting from? Maybe if you go second but I already find that it is incredibly important to go first, so I'll always try for that.

But if you have a raider, turn two charges baby!

The dude didn't mention transports and didn't include them in his cost when he mentioned the point value, so I assumed he was footslogging them.

Enemy gets turn 1, turn 2, and turn 3 if they went first to shoot. Plus Overwatch.

Adding a Raider obviously helps, but makes it even more costly, and it's already hella expensive.

Ah yes, I assumed that they were in a raider.

Sorry that was just miscommunication on my part.

 Jancoran wrote:

 Chippen wrote:
@Jancoran I get the Sslyth and Medusae have pretty good offensive ability, but even with fleet, that's a 225 point unit that's being ignored for two turns while your opponent shoots at everything else. On top of that, in the two turns it takes to get there, a Warrior/Raider gunboat can put out what, 26 twinlinked poison shots with a 3+ jink? I can see 150 points of Sslyhth as a nice distraction Dakkafex, as that's 12 wounds to eat through, but still. Ask Tyranids how their footslogging fleet is working out for them.'

Also, why the Ur-Ghoul and Lhamean?

225 is neither cheap nor expensive in my opinion. it wipes entire units off the board at one go however which i think...is worth 225? Consider the death that a Deathwatch unit causes and the associated cost. many enemy units are in the 200 point range, especially the elites. i cannot impose my sense of value on anyone but in my opinion, there is 225 points worth of value in the Court of the Archon, assuredly.

I don't understand your tactical comments. Please explain further what you mean. The enemy will effectively fire at me just once before I assault. Not twice.

On your last question: I want to cause Fear, and i want better leadership so i took the Ur-ghul and the Lhamaean. As it turns out, leadership is still a concern for the unit AND its enemies, as I have learned through many battles worth of hard fought experience!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Liquifiers seem to suck and the eyeburst from the medusae (while decent) needs to be escorted around. It's 6" movement to be able to shoot that template again meaning if you're on foot you might not get there so easily. If you're in a transport it's prone to blow up and if you move more than 6" in that transport your guys can't shoot and the transports tend to be so vulnerable you might jink them anyway.

This kind of leads to the reason why i understood dark eldar wants to be in melee with enemies that are in cover. Incubi, grotesques and reavers all handle this issue and do it well. The incubi and reavers also work well in conjunction as i'd imagine grotesques would with them as well.

I'll admit i don't use archon courts but i'm wondering if i even should. It's nice they don't take up a force organization slot but you can only have one per HQ and it's still generally a rough take for me (even with sslyth and medusae). I'd imagine dark eldar flame template units are better in overwatch. At least the sslyth/medusae combo might make some sense then....maybe. The medusae would need to be in a unit that the enemy wants to charge though.

No one would consider walking the Medusae. Perish the thought of it.

You cannot look at a piece of paper, read from its flacid surface and come away with the knowledge of HOW to use a thing. That can't really happen in a vacuum. The Medusae you centered your comment on is not going in alone in this case but with Sslyth as you say. He will be in a transport and it is HIGHLY unlikely that he will be dismounted in a situation it minds being dismounted.

Being in melee plays to Dark Eldar strength. What shooting they do commit to keeping in the army is fairly effective, but fragile. A melee bent force protects them exceedingly well, better than any shielding.

Dark Eldar are 100% capable of absolutely positively controlling target priority. Only a fool ignores the presence of 5 very serious multi-charge threats to fire over yonder. They might not LIKE the Ravagers and VoidRaven that are coming, but they cannot ignore what is right in front of their noes to deal with it. Not wisely anyways. So the net result of course is that your offensive pieces, like those, become very very productive over the course of the game, free to corral the various threats that may present themselves; or to help with the popping of cans enemy units might be inside of. Nothing is going to save those cans from being popped. So at that point, you start focusing on the immediate.

This philosophy is only as good as your commitment to it. Go half way on it and it just won't work. Forget to deploy the way I have described in other threads on this and you're sunk from turn one. Dark Eldar are not a halfway army. They are an army of extremes (in my opinion) and they are a finesse army that just does not allow for many mistakes or miscalculations. You have to get it right. When you do, it's a party!

I already know most of the deal on melee and such.

However i'm curious about something i just now thought about (somewhat). Would medusae work in a raider even jinked if you put it in front of units an enemy was going to charge regardless? My point being you could potentially have a scary hidden unit with lots of templates killing guys during overwatch as they charge at a raider they're all inside. This could work in more than one way. Perhaps if you have a bunch of reavers closing in on an area and you don't want your reavers to be charged then you can place a raider or two of medusae to shield them from counter chargers. That way your final charge with the reavers will do work (if a unit of non-snap shooting medusae won't just burn a whole unit to death anyway).

Wow honestly that may have convinced me on medusae alone. Basically a firewall that your opponent won't want to charge to get to your reavers that your skimmers and bikes can just move over. I mean expensive or not think about a unit of like 10 medusae or so in a raider protecting against space marines assaulting some units only to get 10 unsaved wounds on their non FnP guys without armor or cover allowed all during one overwatch. It would absolutely destroy a squad of marines close combat oriented or not (stormshields and multi-wound may be a probably however).

Anyway i think i might try a unit of medusae all on their own now in a group. Could be fun.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Yeah, I would love if Shatterfield missiles were heavy one, it'd give quite a specialized edge for out flyers.

Small blast seems awesome, but you'll only at best hit 1 or 2 guys, and I'd much prefer S9 lance over S8 lance that you can't fire after jinking.

IMO the number 1 problem with the Razorwing is ALL THE MISSILES ARE BLASTS... like wtf?

Blasts are the only reason to take dark eldar flyers as we already have a lot of poisoned shots and anti tank. The razorwing and the bomber are not particularly good against other flyers but still our only anti-air available. However their blasts could be invaluable if you face hordes or a lot of heavy infantry as poisoned shots can't really cripple those kind of units. Against tyranids and astra militarum dark eldar flyers can be your MVP as those armies have a lot of bodies and also flyers, especially the bugs.

1) I dont need AI
2) Blast do nothing if Jink or against other fliers
3) I dont need more poison I have to much already
4) ALL nids and IG dont have units that our Fliers are even good against. WTF meta are you playing in, friendly play bad units meta?

I agree with Chippen, After play Harlequins for a bit now, fear is almost pointless........

Well honestly i hate dark eldar flyers and i've never bought them, considering some games that i've played i only thought those flyers could have been useful in some occasions. I stay of out tournaments because you would face the same 5 lists every event, so only friendlies and some players know that blobs can be a problem for dark eldars as poisoned shots are not enough to stop them. Blasts of course wouldn't be fired against jinking units but against infantry models. Tyranids and IG flyers can be an issue and some ravagers, trueborn, scourges won't even force them to jink, three hive tyrants means three dark eldar vehicles wrecked every turn so it may be important if you force them to jink, that's why against some lists our flyers can find a room. But i never wanted to buy those models so i basically agree with you, i don't want to include in my lists some anti-air either.

 Chippen wrote:


1 In an 1850 pt game, 225 points is 12% ish. That's a lot for a unit that won't assault until turn 3 at best.

No. it will assault turn two.


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 Chippen wrote:

Your 225 of Court is not the same as a Deathwatch unit. You don't have all the survivability, nor do you have the power they do. It's not the same at all.

I dont think I said it was the same. I compared its cost.



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 Chippen wrote:


In the age of ATSKNF and Fearless units being everywhere (especially in assaulty units), I don't see the Fear being worth it, but this is a minor point. If you want the better Leadership value, you may as well stick the court with an Archon or Haemy with WWP and go full deathstar and deep strike into the back, and be useful much earlier.
.

And yet...the most feared armies are not fearless. So.

As for throwing an Archon and/or Haemonculous and leaving my arrival date up to the fates...I thought about it. I decided against it. I'd rather charge turn 2.


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 Chippen wrote:

My tactical points comments were:

I was saying, however, that a few Sslyth can be a decent Distraction Carnifex (I said Dakkafex because their shooting is decent ish) with a bunch of wounds for 150 pts.
And if you think footslogging assault can work, even with target overload, why don't you see successful Tyranid footslogging lists?
.

I made clear they would not be foot slogging.


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 Chippen wrote:

Any decent opponent will ignore it for 2-3 turns while moving away from it.
.

I have defeated many "decent opponents". They have all remarked on the same phenomenon: The board is not unlimited in size. They were right to point it out to me.


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 Chippen wrote:


And please, don't try to argue that assault is the Dark Eldar strength. Our units are fragile as hell, and while some have good hitting power, if hey don't knock out 3/4 of whatever they're fighting on the charge, they'll get put down pretty easily. The only armies we can reliably fight and survive with most of our units are Tau and IG, which will be blasting the gak out of us before we get to assault range anyway, and THEN will Overwatch the living bejeesus out of us.

I see. You'd rather outshoot Eldar or Tau Empire?

You mention IG. Here is a fun battle report you might like. It was done by a guy who played me. Hes the number two Deathwatch player in the ITC currently (last I checked which wasnt long ago).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWj2vzwhpE

In any event it does illustrate the point. This used a different but equally melee oriented list.




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 gummyofallbears wrote:
No offense, but where do you get Turn 3 and 2/3 rounds of shooting from? Maybe if you go second but I already find that it is incredibly important to go first, so I'll always try for that.

But if you have a raider, turn two charges baby!

Correct. Also this battle report shows me in Hammer and anvil deployment, the worst it can be for an assault army, against the IG Chippen referred to.


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 Chippen wrote:
The dude didn't mention transports and didn't include them in his cost when he mentioned the point value, so I assumed he was footslogging them.

Enemy gets turn 1, turn 2, and turn 3 if they went first to shoot. Plus Overwatch.

Adding a Raider obviously helps, but makes it even more costly, and it's already hella expensive.

Transports aren't the unit. Why would I add them when they are not? You're telling me to add an Archon plus a WWP...and you feel this is less expensive than my solution? No. it isn't.

Jesus Christ dude you're near impossible to reply to with all your broken up quotes and points...

Yeah you never mentioned putting your Court in a Raider. That gives you assault turn 2, so I can live with that. But since you hadn't mentioned it, I had to assume you were footslogging it.

I never claimed the Archon + WWP option was cheaper, but it does add a lot more effectiveness if you're gonna shove an assaulty unit down your opponent's throat anyway.

You're missing the point of the Deathwatch point cost thing. You're arguing that it's a good thing to do simply because Deathwatch does it. I was saying that there's a big difference in effectiveness for the points between the two. Dark Eldar are not a Deathstar army (save for Dark Artisan I guess).

The whole point of this was the points vs effectiveness of your Court build. For 225 points, plus the what, 65 for a Raider(don't remember off the top of my head), that's a lot of points to accomplish something that other, cheaper things in our Codex do better.

 Chippen wrote:
Jesus Christ dude you're near impossible to reply to with all your broken up quotes and points..

Just trying to respond to all of yours so you know i heard you.


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 Chippen wrote:

Yeah you never mentioned putting your Court in a Raider. That gives you assault turn 2, so I can live with that. But since you hadn't mentioned it, I had to assume you were footslogging it.

I mentioned it twice to be fair. you probably just missed it. First i said "I would be aethersailing your face off' and then i said "perish the thought" of the Medusae being on foot. It's fine if you didnt see it.


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 Chippen wrote:


I never claimed the Archon + WWP option was cheaper, but it does add a lot more effectiveness if you're gonna shove an assaulty unit down your opponent's throat anyway.

I wanted the Turn 2 charge so the WWP isn't better, in my opinion. if I were bringing wraithguard sure.


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 Chippen wrote:



You're missing the point of the Deathwatch point cost thing. You're arguing that it's a good thing to do simply because Deathwatch does it.

But I never said that?


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 Chippen wrote:


The whole point of this was the points vs effectiveness of your Court build. For 225 points, plus the what, 65 for a Raider(don't remember off the top of my head), that's a lot of points to accomplish something that other, cheaper things in our Codex do better.

Except they don't. Two medusae are terrifying to almost anything they hit, the poison shots are unwelcome by any monster you want to shoot at, the toughness fo Sslyth cannot be underestimated and the number of attacks for the unit is quite good. So I don't know EXACTLY what you think would be a better investment than them. However, they are very good on Overwatch, they are very good in melee and they are very good in shooting. They lack nothing really. So I cannot truly appreciate what you think is better unless you tell me what you would take instead of them? The Grotesques are the only melee unit I would prefer but they don't shoot anywhere near as much and since I haven't invested in Warriors, this element is valuable.

 Jancoran wrote:
yup. When it comes to experience, accept no substitute.

Also, a White Scars Gladius is more or less the furthest thing from friendly he could have fielded if it was a Battle Company.

I disagree. It's not tabling people, at least.

Personally, I dream of facing off with DE assault lists. But if you are going for a meta choice, DE probably tear up shooty gunlines made up Tau. If they live that long.

Martel732 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
yup. When it comes to experience, accept no substitute.

Also, a White Scars Gladius is more or less the furthest thing from friendly he could have fielded if it was a Battle Company.

I disagree. It's not tabling people, at least.

Personally, I dream of facing off with DE assault lists. But if you are going for a meta choice, DE probably tear up shooty gunlines made up Tau. If they live that long.

Wait...it has to table people to be a not-friendly list? We disagree i suppose.

Play me and i can make that dream of yours come true though. Hehehe. Dark Eldar dukes in the air as far and wide as the eye can see, with a little shooting in their just to soften the landing pad up a bit.

Good times.

I just have lower standards than most. If I have a BA left on the table around turn 4, it's a friendly list to me.

Sorry, but you're not scaring me with DE assault while the Wraithknight is a legal model.

Martel732 wrote:
I just have lower standards than most. If I have a BA left on the table around turn 4, it's a friendly list to me.

Sorry, but you're not scaring me with DE assault while the Wraithknight is a legal model.

Shoot. and i was really hoping that you'd be scared. Oh well.

On the plus side that means you'll have more fun playing against it than something you DO consider beardy. So there's a win for you.

DE are a list where heavy flamers mean something. It would be totally novel for me.

I can understand the argument where DE need to assault to take advantage of what they do have (open topped), I just don't think they're that good at it. At least compared to TWC and Wulfen.

Maybe BA are a bad matchup for DE.

@Jancoran

Then why did you bring up the cost relative to Deathwatch units in the first place?

What units are better and cheaper than the Court build? Alright.

To set the standard, your Court costs 225 + Raider with Nightshields and Aethersails, with total coming to 300 pts. 18 shots from the Sslyth, 2 flame templates from the Medusae.

For 300 points, I can take:

10 Warriors, one with Splinter Cannon, in a Raider with Nightshields and Splinter Racks. comes to 180 total. That alone is what, up to 15 Twinlinked poison shots?

For another 120 I have a couple choices. I can do 5 Scourge with either Haywire Blasters or Heat Lances. That gives me the 15 Twinlinked poison shots from above with 3 more poison shots from the Shardcarbine, and then either 4 Haywire or Heat Lance shots.

Alternatively, I can get a 5xWarrior with one Blaster Venom crew, that means 4 more Splinter rifles are going, plus the Venom's Splinter cannon, plus the blaster that can also endanger vehicles.

Since you have a hardon for close combat, how about some Reavers? 83 points gets me 3x Reavers, one an Arena Champion, one with a Heat Lance, and one with Cluster Caltrops for D6 Hammer of Wrath. I can take two of those units, plus a unit of either Scourge or the Venom crew, and have points to spare.

On top of all that, your eggs are all in one basket - forget the rest of the list, if your opponent wants to remove 300 points from the table, all he has to do is knock down the Raider ASAP. That leaves your court stranded, and even though Sslyth have decent shooting, half the reason you love them so much is the assault capability, which they just lost. It completely loses the MSU principle, which DE rely on HEAVILY due to the fragile nature of our units. I will grant you that with smart deployment and movement, you can increase the chances of the Raider getting the units there, but it's a 300 point gamble.

I know which raider my Sicaran will aim at....

Martel732 wrote:


DE are a list where heavy flamers mean something. It would be totally novel for me.

I can understand the argument where DE need to assault to take advantage of what they do have (open topped), I just don't think they're that good at it. At least compared to TWC and Wulfen.

Maybe BA are a bad matchup for DE.

Heavy flamers are good. really good. I take four in my Retributor Squads, plus a Combi-flamer just because: absolution.

TWC are good at attacking from open topped Raiders? I assume you mean Wulfen are better at coming down in pods and getting shot up, and then assaulted, but winning the assault because TH/SS Wulfen are ridiculous; and that TWC are uber fast and on you turn two. I won't disagree that they are exceedingly good at both. I have had occasion to play Chancy Rickey a fair number of times with his Wolves (currently ranked Way up there at 46th in the ITC) and with Dark Eldar most recently. I did defeat him with the list i typically use. i used his aggression against him.

He came at me and I let him. turn two he had crossed the board pretty much entirely and was eating my unit. I then trapped him each round with Raiders, his own pods, and terrain. He stayed over there munching on Raiders or whatever i put there like a caged tiger. The Court of the Archon shot two of his Wulfen dead and then charged bottom left quadrant. They trapped them for a while (I eventually won that close combat after a couple rounds but with almost nothing left of my Court). The Incubi and the Grotesques did the same kind of thing with Venom support in the top and bottom right quadrants. I went and took the objectives with my Obsec and held on for a round. it was a good game, especially the end where i was trying to figure out the smartest order to fire in etc... That part took a while unfortunately but i got it done.

The VoidRaven bomber nuked his entire missile squad turn 2, which was sitting on his objective and about to score six points if i didnt kill it (special mission objective), terrorized anything that got free of combat. It killed the Devastators, it walloped two TWC's, it smashed three TH/SS Wulfen, which allowed me to charge them to death with Grotesques and survive... it was great. Incubi got eaten of course but they were kind of a sacrifical lamb in this scenario as was anything big enough to step in front of and block the TWC.

I kind of wish i could have shown you that game because it really was a fun one, and a much more creative use of the vehicles than i typically have the chance or even the need to execute. My solution was sort of saying 'well i cant do much about his superiority but i can cage him so he only kills a little bit at a time and cant score". Mission accomplished.










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 Chippen wrote:
@Jancoran

Then why did you bring up the cost relative to Deathwatch units in the first place?
.

if you read what I said, it was to point out that it is an elite that is quite expensive geared out but also quite good. So you cannot look at a points total and say "Thats too much" if it works. And when Deathwatch show up, they DO WORK. they are devastating on the drop in my experience. They also die like most Marines in the end. So you go in understanding there is a cost to be paid but a value to their presence in the list. that was the purpose.


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 Chippen wrote:


@Jancoran

Then why did you bring up the cost relative to Deathwatch units in the first place?

What units are better and cheaper than the Court build? Alright.

To set the standard, your Court costs 225 + Raider with Nightshields and Aethersails, with total coming to 300 pts. .

No. My unit costs 225 and thats it. The transport is not "part" of the unit and i dont really acccept this inclusion into its cost. just compare the unit, if you would please.

"Heavy flamers are good. really good"

Only against lists that don't matter in the current meta. I have access to a ton of these and they don't help in the least bit.

Evidently BA have nothing good to cage up SW with like DE. I still think SW are far superior to DE at assault.

 Chippen wrote:

10 Warriors, one with Splinter Cannon, in a Raider with Nightshields and Splinter Racks. comes to 180 total. That alone is what, up to 15 Twinlinked poison shots?

Sure. But its also 10 wounds. My unit is not. it wont win a fight with true assault troops. Mine will. i will fire AND be able to assault. They will not. this is a very significant level of difference in capability. it also does something the Warriors dont do: stops the enemy from continuing to fire. it also doesnt allow them to affect a vehicle in the least outside of their Raider itself having a Dark Lance perhaps? This comparison probably isn;t a good one..


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 Chippen wrote:


For another 120 I have a couple choices. I can do 5 Scourge with either Haywire Blasters or Heat Lances. That gives me the 15 Twinlinked poison shots from above with 3 more poison shots from the Shardcarbine, and then either 4 Haywire or Heat Lance shots.

Are you just adding five Scourges to the list, with the idea you will... total 300 points or something? Look if you are taking Scourges you are hunting tanks with it. I think its a fine idea. but you need a single unit that is better tyhan the 225 i spent on this one.

in your scenario here you're not comparing one unit with another. you're getting into entire army building. Lol.

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 Chippen wrote:

Since you have a hardon for close combat, how about some Reavers? 83 points gets me 3x Reavers, one an Arena Champion, one with a Heat Lance, and one with Cluster Caltrops for D6 Hammer of Wrath. I can take two of those units, plus a unit of either Scourge or the Venom crew, and have points to spare.

A legitimate suggestion. I own Reavers and could do what you are saying. Reavers on their own are okay. they replace the Raider hull points with their own girth, essentially and then try to mess things up and that is a way more relevant suggestion than these others. However I would point out to you that they lack a good leadership, they dont cause fear, they are not STR 5 and in the end that really really matters. hammer of Wrath is only as good as the number of times you land it of course. i dont hate that suggestion but i am also not sure its actually better. its not terrible though.

How many times are you going to change your mind on the Raider? My original comment that started this whole discussion was the absence of the Raider for your footslogging 225 pt Court. Then you told me they always had a Raider, which is fine, and what I based my comparison on. Now you want to take it out of the comparison again because you think it helps you by giving me fewer points to work with :lol:

Also if you were going to give the court a Raider, why would it not be a dedicated transport? You really want to take up a Fast Attack slot for that?

But you know what? feth it, I'll keep kicking at your shifting goalposts.

For 225 points now? Alright.

Same as before - Choose either Scourge with Heat Lances, or the Venom Crew. 120.

With the last 95, take some Reavers. 89 points of that will get you a Arena Champion and 3 additional Reavers, one with a Cluster Caltrop. Or come in under the points by cutting one Reaver and giving the other a Heat Lance or Blaster.

But now compared to your footslogging Court, my choices are actually doing something before turn 3.

 Chippen wrote:

On top of all that, your eggs are all in one basket - forget the rest of the list, if your opponent wants to remove 300 points from the table, all he has to do is knock down the Raider ASAP. That leaves your court stranded, and even though Sslyth have decent shooting, half the reason you love them so much is the assault capability, which they just lost. It completely loses the MSU principle, which DE rely on HEAVILY due to the fragile nature of our units. I will grant you that with smart deployment and movement, you can increase the chances of the Raider getting the units there, but it's a 300 point gamble.

So its your opinion that i would... Not be able to distance my Raider properly? the same likelihood of this is the likelihood that the Raider with Warriors gets popped so i dont see a real distinct difference other than how well the General premeasures.

I cant worry about what will or wont die. The enemy paid points for their army and they are no dummy. they are going to do everything they can to kill me and I'm not sure I would put a lot of angst on that point.


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 Chippen wrote:
How many times are you going to change your mind on the Raider?.

I havent. You have inextricably linked them in your mind as the same expenditure butthey are not. That was my point.

This is a rather interesting thread. I have to confess that I'm really surprised there's so much debate regarding the Voidraven. That's a unit that got relegated to the trash heap almost immediately after the codex's release for good reason. Making your Ravager fly for 40pts is not exactly a bargain.

I've always like the Court of the Archon. It has some really nice units in it to play with. If you set it up like Jancoran apparently does, you're in great shape to deal with a variety of threats. I agree that you are definitely putting a lot of faith in your Raider, though. A unit that expensive had better damn well be able to get where it needs to be reliably, and that simply isn't the case when you're rolling in a 10/10/10 vehicle. You may be able to flat-out somewhere near your opponent, but you can depend on your Court's Raider being the first to go down. Its fragile contents likely won't be far behind.I'd probably chop it in half and run 2 separate HQs in Raiders so you don't get hosed when your ride pops - threat saturation and all. (Actually, I'd scrap the whole idea and run Coven Grotesques, but whatever.)

 Chippen wrote:

Same as before - Choose either Scourge with Heat Lances, or the Venom Crew. 120.

With the last 95, take some Reavers. 89 points of that will get you a Arena Champion and 3 additional Reavers, one with a Cluster Caltrop. Or come in under the points by cutting one Reaver and giving the other a Heat Lance or Blaster.

But now compared to your footslogging Court, my choices are actually doing something before turn 3.

I'm not taking a foot slogging court as we have said on multiple occasions now. The enemy gets a menu in every game. They are given the choice to either kill a Grotesque Raider or two, an incubi Raider, a Court of the Archon Raider, or perhaps some Obsec Venoms with scoring units in them or perhaps the Ravagers, Beastmasters or (later) Voidraven Bomber. Their choice.

Unfortunately... if i go first, i will be within 6-12" of them when they make this choice. Not much of a choice. At this point I dont actuially care what they shoot at. Pretty much literally doesnt matter. It's all bad for them.

If I go second, I will be 42.1 inches away in all likelihood (for obvious reasons) if they have 36" weapons (plus movement).

in the latter case where i go second, they will have their 48" range guns to use. Lets face it, there are some. That's all they get. Perhaps not even those, since i will know they are there going second and will arrange myself accordingly. Terrain is too hard to imagine but you and I can take it as read that I know how to premeasure and obscure things. So in any event, I am getting very little fire if I go second and i can afford to lay back that far because Im jetting 36" on my turn over the top of the bubblewrap, when I choose.. Take it a little further. Lets assume they are an aggressive in my face army, and they enjoy mixing it up also. Pods everywhere or Chaos Raptor Talons etc... in that case, have I not chosen my units wisely? Surely I have, since they brought melee and lo and behold i am more than capable of handling that problem with shooting to soften them, overwatch to repel them and then melee to finish them So what is going to happen is they will take their shots if they jump me, i will jink and it will take them a couple units to get one down and the others have new choices: more transports or try and end a unit. The unit is now behind cover which is cool. FnP perhaps. Or they could pay attention to the 32 wound unit of BeastMasters that is bubble wrapping me... Dont forget them. They are kind of relevant don't you agree?

The point here is I'm well prepared if they come for me, and Im not taking a rain of death in turn one regardless. my most exposed unit is the Beastmasters and it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to target that as it is closer.

Going back to going turn one, My plan is supremely basic: Dont screw up on deployment and then hit the pedal to the metal. I know right? Sounds like anyone can do it. they can. in round two when the bomber we hope arrives, it can join in with the Ravagers and such to blow up stuff and anyone that got a little too close. as close line defense its hard to beat for all the previously aforementioned reasons.

Now i cannot promise that no Raider dies and that no bad things will happen. This is war. I can just say that i dont share your LEVEL of concern over it.

Martel has a point.

I play SW and Deldar, and my grey hunters (not a 'meta' unit) have done a hell of a lot more than some of the half melee units (wyches, wracks. Not good units, but you get my point).

TWC and Wulfen are absolutely insane, and have completely killed crazy amounts of stuff (2 wulfen with claws killed draigo in the first round of attack, destroying some really hardcore stuff). If I could take Wulfen as DE, they'd replace my grotesquerie. However, the melee units we have are some of our comparatively best units (grots, arguable incubi, reavers)

On the topic, there seems to be a few units that are good when played correctly, and with good threat saturation.

two questions to change the topic from this moot (and frankly, somewhat petty) arguing (absolutely no offense intended. But I just try to avoid when threads degenerate into arguments)

How does everybody play against heavy ignores cover armies? (tau, and EC come to mind). I am thinking pray for turn one and get to your enemy's face turn 1, then they get basically one turn of shooting before they are tied up or preoccupied with some more important things.

How do you equip beastpacks? I am thinking a few Kyhmeara (however you spell it) to tank with Daemon, and then enough Clawed Fiends for T7 and a few razorwings to taste. Thoughs?

MilkmanAl wrote:
This is a rather interesting thread. I have to confess that I'm really surprised there's so much debate regarding the Voidraven. That's a unit that got relegated to the trash heap almost immediately after the codex's release for good reason. Making your Ravager fly for 40pts is not exactly a bargain.

I've always like the Court of the Archon. It has some really nice units in it to play with. If you set it up like Jancoran apparently does, you're in great shape to deal with a variety of threats. I agree that you are definitely putting a lot of faith in your Raider, though. A unit that expensive had better damn well be able to get where it needs to be reliably, and that simply isn't the case when you're rolling in a 10/10/10 vehicle. You may be able to flat-out somewhere near your opponent, but you can depend on your Court's Raider being the first to go down. Its fragile contents likely won't be far behind.I'd probably chop it in half and run 2 separate HQs in Raiders so you don't get hosed when your ride pops - threat saturation and all. (Actually, I'd scrap the whole idea and run Coven Grotesques, but whatever.)

Part of the plan is to lose some Raiders. it's going to happen. The wasted fire they will ablate and the jinks help but whose kidding anyone here? They are more annoying to kill than the internet generally allows for BUT how many battles have you really fought and lost nothing? The end result is the thing. Once you get over that and stop sphinctering up like its the end of the world, you look at it more objectively and say "position is the game I am playing and no other"

I have shooting but its there just to ease me into the underbelly of the enemy. Kill the rhinos or what have you to the extent necessary kill the anti-air if its there and get in there and cause some problems.

Eldar and Tau fight me all the time and lose nothing. Just sayin'.

The Voidraven is part of his saturation scheme. Is it Wraithknight good? No. It does what he needs it to. I personally think reserves are the devil, but being a marine player, my dice are trained to roll 1-2. I've actually scored a lot of victories against opponents who reserved when they didn't have to and failed to have their units arrive in time to contribute.

But there is no way I'm giving the archon court the same respect as TWC or Wulfen. No way. A unit of TWC can legitimately table my entire list in the right conditions.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Martel has a point.

I play SW and Deldar, and my grey hunters (not a 'meta' unit) have done a hell of a lot more than some of the half melee units (wyches, wracks. Not good units, but you get my point).

TWC and Wulfen are absolutely insane, and have completely killed crazy amounts of stuff (2 wulfen with claws killed draigo in the first round of attack, destroying some really hardcore stuff). If I could take Wulfen as DE, they'd replace my grotesquerie. However, the melee units we have are some of our comparatively best units (grots, arguable incubi, reavers)

On the topic, there seems to be a few units that are good when played correctly, and with good threat saturation.

two questions to change the topic from this moot (and frankly, somewhat petty) arguing (absolutely no offense intended. But I just try to avoid when threads degenerate into arguments)

How does everybody play against heavy ignores cover armies? (tau, and EC come to mind). I am thinking pray for turn one and get to your enemy's face turn 1, then they get basically one turn of shooting before they are tied up or preoccupied with some more important things.

How do you equip beastpacks? I am thinking a few Kyhmeara (however you spell it) to tank with Daemon, and then enough Clawed Fiends for T7 and a few razorwings to taste. Thoughs?

Well obviously the same tactics apply to fighting Tau here.

My Beastpack is 4 Clawed Fiends, 4 Razorwing Flocks, 3 Dawgs of doom and a BeastMaster which I actually put an Agonizer on.

I have fought with myself over this last choice because it is not a cheap upgrade and its going on a guy with 2 attacks on the charge. The problem is, the BeastPack is not strong on Leadership at all and one extra wound can really make a difference, especially when you tangle with the tougher stuff (T5 Raptors or Bikers and so on). Theres a lot of Rending and such but its still STR 3 birdies so against T5 thats pretty much all you're doing with the birdies. I absolutely understand if someone did not take that upgrade and you wouldn't have to go on very long about it for me to agree with you. I've gotten beaten by 1 wound a few times though and missed that Ld check enough times that I just feel like i need the added assurance for the unit. When I looked around my list for what I might OTHERWISE spend 25 points on, there were some minor tweaks I could make but none that meant anything to my tactics. I could add some artifacts to the Haemonculous but he is not often meaningful in combat when hes joined to the monsters he is and then you're kind of leaving your beastpack without the assurance. So at some point you kind of waffle a bit on doing more with the haemonculous, but he would be the choice for more upgrades. Of course they would yield more for him than the Agonizer, but not in the global sense of wanting to keep this particular unit fighting. No argument. But getting 1-2 more kills with it (usually one) is a nice bit of security on subsequent rounds. Combats get that close when you face real assault units and in particular the T5 or better ones are the real concern. Clawed Fiends do compensate but armor is armor. FnP isn't uncommon. So its a hedge.

The REAL answer of course is an autarch or Farseer with the Shard of Anaris. But that opens an entirely different can of worms as such things go. At that point you're embracing serious changes to the list.


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Martel732 wrote:
Eldar and Tau fight me all the time and lose nothing. Just sayin'.

The Voidraven is part of his saturation scheme. Is it Wraithknight good? No. It does what he needs it to. I personally think reserves are the devil, but being a marine player, my dice are trained to roll 1-2. I've actually scored a lot of victories against opponents who reserved when they didn't have to and failed to have their units arrive in time to contribute.

But there is no way I'm giving the archon court the same respect as TWC or Wulfen. No way. A unit of TWC can legitimately table my entire list in the right conditions.

I dont think you need to rerspect the Court of the Archon as much. TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. Lol. You better shoot them as your plan A, B and C because assaulting them is kinda whatcha do when you dont have a choice. But i have killed them with the Court. its just a ginsu fest and I have little left afterwards if at all. TH/SS Wulfen are pretty awesome.

" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Martel732 wrote:
" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Wulfen are an issue. 3+ invuls all day long, 2 wounds each. Sure wish we had some STR 8 AP 2 we could drop on them... My answer was to spread out and let him come to me and then skidoodle or trap him. it worked. And armies like that are real points intensive and elite so they kill what they want when they want but attrition hurts them and position OFTEN hurts them (TWC being the obvious exception).

But knowing that, you can always just do the old "Feed and run" thing. Dark Eldar are so fast they can get there and do it. Pretty cool.

So why do you think this fails for BA? BA are very comparable to DE in many ways. I guess my stuff costs more.

@Jancoran Are there two people using your account, are you schizophrenic, or just trolling me? You do not get to include a dedicated transport as part of a unit to claim they're not footslogging, then in the next post claim the transport is not part of the unit's cost and not part of the unit itself, therefore arguing I should ignore the points value when comparing it to other things. The Raider is a dedicated transport for your Court, you use it to get them across the board to do their thing. If you're not gonna do that, they're gonna hoof it.

Also, my whole point was that for the points you spend on the Court, you can get other units, plural, that are more effective. I never claimed a single unit (although I'd argue a Dark Artisan for a few points more is better still) would be compared, nor should I have - the whole idea of the point system is that it allows you to make such comparisons instead of being stuck unit to unit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:

How does everybody play against heavy ignores cover armies? (tau, and EC come to mind). I am thinking pray for turn one and get to your enemy's face turn 1, then they get basically one turn of shooting before they are tied up or preoccupied with some more important things.

How do you equip beastpacks? I am thinking a few Kyhmeara (however you spell it) to tank with Daemon, and then enough Clawed Fiends for T7 and a few razorwings to taste. Thoughs?

Take out the things that let them ignore cover. Don't fight fair, take your entire army and fight 1/3 to 1/2 of the opponent's army. It can be done through clever deployment and the repositioning that our vehicles are capable of.

As for Beastpacks, I'm of the opinion that it depends on your list - you can have a big "can handle anything" type of unit, but it gets expensive quick, so I always prefer to specialize. Each of the Beasts are good for different things, so go with a smaller unit of one type for a specific purpose.

 Chippen wrote:
@Jancoran Are there two people using your account, are you schizophrenic, or just trolling me? You do not get to include a dedicated transport as part of a unit to claim they're not footslogging, then in the next post claim the transport is not part of the unit's cost and not part of the unit itself, therefore arguing I should ignore the points value when comparing it to other things. The Raider is a dedicated transport for your Court, you use it to get them across the board to do their thing. If you're not gonna do that, they're gonna hoof it.

Also, my whole point was that for the points you spend on the Court, you can get other units, plural, that are more effective. I never claimed a single unit (although I'd argue a Dark Artisan for a few points more is better still) would be compared, nor should I have - the whole idea of the point system is that it allows you to make such comparisons instead of being stuck unit to unit.
.

I have answered your every point. Point by point, to make sure you're clear that I am. Impugning me is not going to help you. Suggesting I am trolling you also isnt helping you.

You are for whatever reason of the opinion that the Transport isn't a second unit. I'm sorry you feel that way. We don't agree. As you know they can and are taken as their own Fast Attacks for example, and they can act independentlyand often do. Dedicated transport is simply a function of whether you bought it separately or you didn't. They probably only play a part in the units succes for one round but may be there for six, killing vehicles on their own!

The unit at 225 delivers. That I often want to deliver it quickly to the front via the Raider is true. But if the enemy comes to me I don't need to. Suggesting that I must use the transport as some sort of extension of me simply isn't the case other than one round in the game. Its got a Dark Lance so it is hardly a waste of space and it can blockade as well.

This is a minor quibble that you are having, and I don't want it to derail what is otherwise productive tactical discussion by continuing to explain this so i am explaiing it now. We don't agree that you "add" the cost of the Raider to the unit because it may not even use it or uses it sparingly. The Raider, as in my game against the Space Wolves can be put to better use at times simply as an empty blocker that saved more expensive units lives.

YOUR examples included Warriors with a raider. Well... the Raider being equal we're REALLY talking about Warriors vs the Court. As an example. So lets not skew things, and lets talk about the unit YOU have a strong opinion about. The Raider would be more important to your Warriors than it is to mine for longer as an example of how difficult it is to sit here and include it in the equation of the unit itself.

Here is a question: do you own these models and have you used them as I described? It sounds definitively like you have not. So instead of trying to prove someone wrong who has already succeeded using it (which seems an odd thing to do), why don't you just try it and see how your mind wraps itself around the possibilities. Why not? You're hearing from me that it works, I think I am pretty good at the game and it's just possible I'm actually giving you usable advice. Don't make winning an internet tiff be a reason not to explore new things.

Wins and losses wont be exclusively because you did or didnt use the Court of the Archon.

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Wulfen are an issue. 3+ invuls all day long, 2 wounds each. Sure wish we had some STR 8 AP 2 we could drop on them... My answer was to spread out and let him come to me and then skidoodle or trap him. it worked. And armies like that are real points intensive and elite so they kill what they want when they want but attrition hurts them and position OFTEN hurts them (TWC being the obvious exception).

But knowing that, you can always just do the old "Feed and run" thing. Dark Eldar are so fast they can get there and do it. Pretty cool.

Honestly this is why i want to use the void raven with possibly dark scythes vs wulfen. There aren't many answers to wulfen and while i'm forcing myself down a narrow path just to deal with wulfen there are other units it can hurt a lot too (mega nobz, termies and multi wound toughness 4 FnP units). It's also making me consider getting a 2nd void raven bomber but they are expensive in points and in cash and sometimes the one by itself doesn't net enough kills to make it worth it. It really depends as sometimes it's good (like against the orks) and many times it just doesn't kill enough for its points even if it tends to survive because enemies must snap shoot it.

Also as far as reserves go i will vouch for not having many reserves. I don't even think more than 2-3 reserves is a good choice. In fact 3 might be too many. This is coming from me having the heat lance scourge with an archon with a webway portal and a void raven coming in.

---------

In other news i'm thinking in ways perhaps taking scourge was a mistake at least to an extent. Sure they can move 12" and still use blasters and they have what i consider baby terminator armor (4+ 6++) but they still fail DT sometimes and most of their specialty weapons aren't so hot anymore. Blasters are alright, haywire usually sucks if you don't face a lot of vehicles, heat lance is good sometimes (though i remember at least a couple critical fails when they should've penn'd no problem and didn't), shredder is garbage (though if it was a template or large blast it'd be great or good), splinter cannons are best done on venoms anyway which can move 12" can still fire and take up less slots, dark lances might be ok but would probably do better on a vehicle that can move and still shoot just fine and shardcarbines though fun take up a fast attack choice that might be better used for AT (also shardcarbines though assault weapons are only 18"). It's rather a shame too as scourge can take up to 4 heavy weapons per squad without needing more squad members so if they could stay in cover with say dark lances it might actually be alright.

I'm considering trueborn more and more. I just want to get that transport option for my grotesques already and then i may focus on that next (if the new dark eldar specialist game doesn't steal my interest).

I also might want another void raven but i'm unsure i should drop the 80 USD to get something that may prove too many points for what i need it for. I have been considering dropping the ravagers entirely however so that might free up points for such an endeavor esp. considering they take up the heavy support slots but without void lances and dissie ravagers my anti-air would suffer (should i even fight it and worry which i usually won't). That said Coven heavy support units may do what i need better in that slot.

Finally grabbing some more reaver jetbikes sounds good. Bikes with heat lances can deal with armor somewhat and can jink if things don't work out so hot. If an enemy tries to have 3+ cover save leman russ tanks then i can just assault the bikes into them and hit their rear armor with cluster caltrops until they go down (provided they don't get lit up by those stupid wyverns). I don't think i'd see much armor aside from that unless it's a super heavy in which case i might be in trouble but it should take up enough points that it would be a sizable chunk of the enemy army.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Wulfen are an issue. 3+ invuls all day long, 2 wounds each. Sure wish we had some STR 8 AP 2 we could drop on them... My answer was to spread out and let him come to me and then skidoodle or trap him. it worked. And armies like that are real points intensive and elite so they kill what they want when they want but attrition hurts them and position OFTEN hurts them (TWC being the obvious exception).

But knowing that, you can always just do the old "Feed and run" thing. Dark Eldar are so fast they can get there and do it. Pretty cool.

Honestly this is why i want to use the void raven with possibly dark scythes vs wulfen. There aren't many answers to wulfen and while i'm forcing myself down a narrow path just to deal with wulfen there are other units it can hurt a lot too (mega nobz, termies and multi wound toughness 4 FnP units). It's also making me consider getting a 2nd void raven bomber but they are expensive in points and in cash and sometimes the one by itself doesn't net enough kills to make it worth it. It really depends as sometimes it's good (like against the orks) and many times it just doesn't kill enough for its points even if it tends to survive because enemies must snap shoot it.

Like all units, its not to be considered in a vacuum. I might hesitate to take two of them but a list could be made for it. I made the Eldar Air Force work. THAT is a fun list to play.

I suppose if i'm facing a marine army the void ravens could legitimately do some nice damage to them. As long as two bombs don't scatter too badly it could even help vs chaos termie drops and similar. I suppose my biggest issue is i don't want to drop 80 USD on a unit and then find out i don't even want to use it. That said it's not too different to buying 2 boxes of reavers or a box of incubi with a raider box. I'm just sorry i had to waste like 50 USD per ravager. They look cool but that wasn't money well spent.

On the plus side AA is usually rare en masse (except with tau maybe) so i could even jink one being shot at while the other just does its job. Of course i'd probably silence the AA before this even happens but without certain units this might be a little hard. In the cases of a knight or tau unit with AA it may be very difficult to silence so i may have to go back to the option of just jinking one while the other attacks. They could be smart however and just keep shooting at the same one to prevent it using its missiles or bomb if i do this of course.

As someone that has a highly competitive friend that plays SW... they are damn good.

Honestly My Harlequins and DE dont stand a chance at all, I need to play Corsairs to have a good far game against him. And honestly SW vs Corsairs was some of the best games Ive ever played in the 10yrs playing.

He allies a unit of Deathwatch too, they are soooooo good.


@Jancoran
Also YES the transport is part of the cost...... you are paying to transport them to do what you want, it is part of the unit. 225+ Vehicle. If the vehicle was out doing something else turn 1-2 and your unit was not in it.... sure dont say they are together.
Your unit is what 290pts then? Not saying it doesnt work for your meta. But not in mine.


So I played DE today (normally play Corsairs or Harlequins now days) I was helping a newer player so I played DE.

I took a Bomber and a Razorwing with a Melee style army (still have 4x3 bikes and 2 Gunboats) But I had some Grots with Melee Characters and some Talos too.

The Bomber and Razorwing did like always. Razorwing had terrible targets, the bomber killed some SM's and Cultist (He played the new Khorne turn 1-2 charging army and the other army was GK's) Even in a "friendly" game the fliers killed some SM's or trash models. My SUCCUBUS did better.
The best the Bomber did was made Cultist run away from nothing and killed some SM's Like always the Grots was my MVP lol.

Edit: Spelling

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Wulfen are an issue. 3+ invuls all day long, 2 wounds each. Sure wish we had some STR 8 AP 2 we could drop on them... My answer was to spread out and let him come to me and then skidoodle or trap him. it worked. And armies like that are real points intensive and elite so they kill what they want when they want but attrition hurts them and position OFTEN hurts them (TWC being the obvious exception).

But knowing that, you can always just do the old "Feed and run" thing. Dark Eldar are so fast they can get there and do it. Pretty cool.

I play both armies and Wulfen and Thunderwolves are my favourite models in the entire 40k. A typical SW list has 6 thunderwolves and 2x5 wulfen, with 3 storm shield and a thanderhammer for the cavalry and 2x (2 storm shields & thunder hammer, 2 axes, a leader and grenades) and these three units cost only 770 points. Againts them you can't go for the assault, you need to shoot the wulfen with everything you can, ignoring the rest of the army, in close combat engage the troops that arrive in drop pods. There are some lists with 2 units of thunderwolves and even 3x5 wulfen. Those werewolves have a lot of attacks at s6-10 ap1-2 and they get to unleash all their attacks once again if the die in close combat, even if they have already fought that turn. Nothing, including the corpsethief claw is going to survive in melee against them, and we're talking about 230 points for unit, wulfen are very cheap for what they're capable of.

Weeeeell aware of the Wulfen and TWC for sure. They are good.

But as Dark Eldar the question isnt whether they are, its how to fight them. That is what is worth discussing.

 Blackie wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
" TH/SS TWC are beastly to kill and Wulfen are straight broken. "

Well, we 100% agree on that. BA shooting can't handle either, really. DE have poison, but Wulfen are rocking layered saves. The poison is better vs the TWC, but they'll likely have a 2+ IC tank in the front.

Wulfen are an issue. 3+ invuls all day long, 2 wounds each. Sure wish we had some STR 8 AP 2 we could drop on them... My answer was to spread out and let him come to me and then skidoodle or trap him. it worked. And armies like that are real points intensive and elite so they kill what they want when they want but attrition hurts them and position OFTEN hurts them (TWC being the obvious exception).

But knowing that, you can always just do the old "Feed and run" thing. Dark Eldar are so fast they can get there and do it. Pretty cool.

I play both armies and Wulfen and Thunderwolves are my favourite models in the entire 40k. A typical SW list has 6 thunderwolves and 2x5 wulfen, with 3 storm shield and a thanderhammer for the cavalry and 2x (2 storm shields & thunder hammer, 2 axes, a leader and grenades) and these three units cost only 770 points. Againts them you can't go for the assault, you need to shoot the wulfen with everything you can, ignoring the rest of the army, in close combat engage the troops that arrive in drop pods. There are some lists with 2 units of thunderwolves and even 3x5 wulfen. Those werewolves have a lot of attacks at s6-10 ap1-2 and they get to unleash all their attacks once again if the die in close combat, even if they have already fought that turn. Nothing, including the corpsethief claw is going to survive in melee against them, and we're talking about 230 points for unit, wulfen are very cheap for what they're capable of.

Honestly Psychic works best against that..... and DE doesnt have that :/

Of which psychic do you speak specifically?

I beat 2 wolfstars at Warzone Atlanta this year using my Dark Eldar army. Played a very MSU list and focused on objectives. Sacrificed lots of venoms and warrior units here and there to move block. Killing wasn't an option as it was full strength for rerollable saves and invis.

I'd also like to respond to the statement of not wanting to reserve much. In many of my games I end up reserving all but 1 or 2 units when they have the first turn and I can't set up "safely".

I don't frequently play alpha strike lists, so null (ish) deploy means virtually nothing to me. Only that you're not killing many BA on turn 1.

On the flip side, if I go heavy reserves, I just present myself piecemeal and get chopped up a bit at a time.

Yes, if I'm able to set up out of range or LOS of enemy guns and they don't have anything coming in during turn 1 then I usually deploy normally. On dawn of war or vanguard strike it can be nice having that long board edge to set everything up on one side far away from opponents and buy more time though.

We get tougher as the game goes on so I prefer having a short turn 1 and 2 in tournaments to get to turn 5 or 6 instead of having the game end at turn 4 or 5.

 lessthanjeff wrote:
I beat 2 wolfstars at Warzone Atlanta this year using my Dark Eldar army. Played a very MSU list and focused on objectives. Sacrificed lots of venoms and warrior units here and there to move block. Killing wasn't an option as it was full strength for rerollable saves and invis.

I'd also like to respond to the statement of not wanting to reserve much. In many of my games I end up reserving all but 1 or 2 units when they have the first turn and I can't set up "safely".

Awesome.

Also, I reserve QUITE liberally as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
I don't frequently play alpha strike lists, so null (ish) deploy means virtually nothing to me. Only that you're not killing many BA on turn 1.

On the flip side, if I go heavy reserves, I just present myself piecemeal and get chopped up a bit at a time.

this is a planning issue not so much a tactical one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 lessthanjeff wrote:
Yes, if I'm able to set up out of range or LOS of enemy guns and they don't have anything coming in during turn 1 then I usually deploy normally. On dawn of war or vanguard strike it can be nice having that long board edge to set everything up on one side far away from opponents and buy more time though.

We get tougher as the game goes on so I prefer having a short turn 1 and 2 in tournaments to get to turn 5 or 6 instead of having the game end at turn 4 or 5.

Precisely.

So let's say you reserve 1000 pts out of an 1850 list. Turn 1 you are short 1000 pts. Turn 2 you are short 333 pts approximately. And reserved units can't assault until turn 3 at the soonest. I quit trying to use Stormravens because too many battles were over before I could even assault. How are you getting around this? BA and DE both are hilariously outgunned by good lists.

Martel732 wrote:
So let's say you reserve 1000 pts out of an 1850 list. Turn 1 you are short 1000 pts. Turn 2 you are short 333 pts approximately. And reserved units can't assault until turn 3 at the soonest. I quit trying to use Stormravens because too many battles were over before I could even assault. How are you getting around this? BA and DE both are hilariously outgunned by good lists.

I agree on the dark eldar part at least. I haven't seen how blood angels are now and don't play them. If i don't get first turn as somebody put it i just deploy all on one flank and then move up very quickly. Most enemies can't keep up with dark eldar and unless they are factions like the cheesy *** tau they can't shoot you at every part of the board whether you have cover or are out of line of sight. Smart missile systems truly are one of the banes of the dark eldar and that's in a faction made to counter them. The other counter tau have is being able to shoot at reserves coming in and getting the ability to have skyfire on all units. Tau would seriously be more balanced against dark eldar without riptides and stormsurge and those special suit sub-systems don't help either. I mean ghostkeel are stupid good for what they are but their range seems limited and they aren't that hot. Riptides and Stormsurge just make the game super hard to win.

BA have less firepower than DE. Every list for the most part out-shoots BA. Even Nids with flyrants.

Martel732 wrote:
So let's say you reserve 1000 pts out of an 1850 list. Turn 1 you are short 1000 pts. Turn 2 you are short 333 pts approximately. And reserved units can't assault until turn 3 at the soonest. I quit trying to use Stormravens because too many battles were over before I could even assault. How are you getting around this? BA and DE both are hilariously outgunned by good lists.

Usually it's more like I have 100 points on the table turn 1 and neither of us are shooting each other because I'm out of LOS so I don't care how balanced it is. It makes it more like turn 2 is the first turn of the game.

I don't do that with grotesquerie's and corpsethief claws, but it's very valuable when you're running lots of venoms, warriors, and razorwing jetfighters.

Most big events I've played at you only get through 4 or 5 turns as is. I'd rather the fighting be turns 2-5 than 1-4 because I'll have more benefits for my army.

Not saying you should always do it but it shuts down a lot of armies that rely on getting the drop on you. Most commonly I do this against Space Marines, Genestealer Cults, Eldar, Corsairs, and even other Dark Eldar.

But on turn 2 you've only got 1166 pts approx on the table. Are you running reserve manipulation?

Martel732 wrote:
BA and DE both are hilariously outgunned by good lists.

When you are, you dont compound the issue by setting up like bowling pibs. Thats when reserves are best.

I still don't get this. You reserve, and they can do minimal damage on turn 1. I get that But then you get some stuff on turn 2, don't do much damage because you've only got part of a mediocre army, and then the full enemy blasts your partial army on turn 2. And then they blast what turns up turn 3. And then blast what turns up turn 4. And then you're out of stuff.

Played a game against imperial fists today.

I cut some fat from my list and ran Lelith, just for the lolz. She actually preformed pretty well, she's a beast, killed a captain and a group of grav centurions, but sadly her raider was destroyed turn one so she was hoofin it for most of the game.

I really want to swap out the razorwing jetfighters for a beastpack or two, they seem like a lot of fun and the razorwings rarely accomplish anything. (OT: any ideas for stand in Kyhmeara and clawed fiends?)

My opponent was quite smart, and one of the nicest guys I've played against in quite a while. I think the loss mainly came down to poor dice rolls, failing 3 2+ cover saves on my raider turn one, leaving lelith to walk really hurt. I hate to be the guy who blames his loss on crappy dice, but I can't think of much to learn from the game.

Probably the first game I've played in a while where I actively wanted Wyches to tarpit all the shooty squads he had, and mutilate the tiny scout squads. And thinking about it, I would like to incorporate some into my list (even though they are trash), any thoughts?

I'm still a fan of beastpacks and will run them especially if I've got slower assault threats in my list, such as a corpsethief or even individual talos.

I've ran them in various configurations, either 7+ clawed fiends with characters, 10 khymera with a master as light tank and infantry hunters, or even just 3 strong dogs to be annoyance.

I've used vampire counts dire wolves and crypt horrors for khymera and fiends (or grotesques) respectively. Never had anyone with a problem with it and they look suitably dark / daemonesque.

Which characters do you run with the clawed fiends?

Khymera sound appealing, but I would like a little bit of expansion on that.

Thanks!

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Played a game against imperial fists today.

I cut some fat from my list and ran Lelith, just for the lolz. She actually preformed pretty well, she's a beast, killed a captain and a group of grav centurions, but sadly her raider was destroyed turn one so she was hoofin it for most of the game.

I really want to swap out the razorwing jetfighters for a beastpack or two, they seem like a lot of fun and the razorwings rarely accomplish anything. (OT: any ideas for stand in Kyhmeara and clawed fiends?)

My opponent was quite smart, and one of the nicest guys I've played against in quite a while. I think the loss mainly came down to poor dice rolls, failing 3 2+ cover saves on my raider turn one, leaving lelith to walk really hurt. I hate to be the guy who blames his loss on crappy dice, but I can't think of much to learn from the game.

Probably the first game I've played in a while where I actively wanted Wyches to tarpit all the shooty squads he had, and mutilate the tiny scout squads. And thinking about it, I would like to incorporate some into my list (even though they are trash), any thoughts?

How the **** did you get 2+ cover saves on your raiders? I'm pretty sure night shields and night fight don't stack (i think it's stealth for both). So unless you somehow managed to get that raider into 3+ cover and then get stealth off it shouldn't have worked. Then again i suppose that is a possibility due to vehicle facings (somebody can only shoot one side of your vehicle even though they're in the wrong arc). Sounds like it'd be hard to do though most of the time even while facing a force that's fairly static in regards to movement.

I like the idea of the beast packs but i've never tried them. Khymerae sound cheap enough. 10 pts for a t4 beast unit with 5+ inv save. I'd give em a shot if they weren't so expensive and there weren't other units i needed so much more in my army (blasterborn, maybe another void raven and some raiders for my elite melee squads).

Honestly starting to think about using a force that has more raiders. I realize they may not live to drop out all their guys near the enemy lines but if i can combo that up with perhaps making a moving barricade that my reavers can hide behind then it could be really nice. The point being it would prevent my reavers from getting charged before they got to do their charge. I'm not sure i'd need that many raiders with melee units out to helping them unless i had the bikes assault one part and the incubi or grotesques assault another. It definitely has potential i think and sounds like a really great tactic for keeping my reavers alive and hitting harder.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Played a game against imperial fists today.

I cut some fat from my list and ran Lelith, just for the lolz. She actually preformed pretty well, she's a beast, killed a captain and a group of grav centurions, but sadly her raider was destroyed turn one so she was hoofin it for most of the game.

I really want to swap out the razorwing jetfighters for a beastpack or two, they seem like a lot of fun and the razorwings rarely accomplish anything. (OT: any ideas for stand in Kyhmeara and clawed fiends?)

My opponent was quite smart, and one of the nicest guys I've played against in quite a while. I think the loss mainly came down to poor dice rolls, failing 3 2+ cover saves on my raider turn one, leaving lelith to walk really hurt. I hate to be the guy who blames his loss on crappy dice, but I can't think of much to learn from the game.

Probably the first game I've played in a while where I actively wanted Wyches to tarpit all the shooty squads he had, and mutilate the tiny scout squads. And thinking about it, I would like to incorporate some into my list (even though they are trash), any thoughts?

How the **** did you get 2+ cover saves on your raiders? I'm pretty sure night shields and night fight don't stack (i think it's stealth for both). So unless you somehow managed to get that raider into 3+ cover and then get stealth off it shouldn't have worked. Then again i suppose that is a possibility due to vehicle facings (somebody can only shoot one side of your vehicle even though they're in the wrong arc). Sounds like it'd be hard to do though most of the time even while facing a force that's fairly static in regards to movement.

I like the idea of the beast packs but i've never tried them. Khymerae sound cheap enough. 10 pts for a t4 beast unit with 5+ inv save. I'd give em a shot if they weren't so expensive and there weren't other units i needed so much more in my army (blasterborn, maybe another void raven and some raiders for my elite melee squads).

Honestly starting to think about using a force that has more raiders. I realize they may not live to drop out all their guys near the enemy lines but if i can combo that up with perhaps making a moving barricade that my reavers can hide behind then it could be really nice. The point being it would prevent my reavers from getting charged before they got to do their charge. I'm not sure i'd need that many raiders with melee units out to helping them unless i had the bikes assault one part and the incubi or grotesques assault another. It definitely has potential i think and sounds like a really great tactic for keeping my reavers alive and hitting harder.

I had nightshields for +1 cover, a 4+ for being 25% covered, and another +1 for having my entire arc that was being shot at covered (my opponent informed me of that, so it might be wrong but thats how I played it)

I've found that my reavers are super hard hitting, they usually dont kill thing except metal bawkes, they mostly run around securing objectives and bubble wrapping.

I think I want more threat saturation to ensure that the raiders get where they need to be. For example, if I do take a beastpack, my opponent can either shoot at my raiders, and let my beast pack(s) get close, or let my raiders get close. I might even drop my succubus for a lahmian just to open up some extra points, not sure yet.

 Jancoran wrote:
Weeeeell aware of the Wulfen and TWC for sure. They are good.

But as Dark Eldar the question isnt whether they are, its how to fight them. That is what is worth discussing.

Well it's very simple, you have to shoot at them with everything you can. Since nothing in the dark eldar codex can even tarpit in close combat a unit of wulfen (and typically there are 2x5 on the battlefield) you're only chance to deal efficiently with them is to reduce their number by shooting them and then to force them to assault expendable units like small squads of kabalites or empty vehicles that blocks their way. SW are tough for dark eldar as they're much better in close combat and can deep strike melta shots in drop pods that easily destroy vehicles, so the tactics against them is to shoot their dedicated close combat units and assault their troops with your best melee units.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:

I really want to swap out the razorwing jetfighters for a beastpack or two, they seem like a lot of fun and the razorwings rarely accomplish anything. (OT: any ideas for stand in Kyhmeara and clawed fiends?)

They're not that good IMHO, if you plan to drop the flyers i'd suggest to take as many min units of reavers as you can, they're probably our best fast attack choice available. Scourges are good too, but situational, the only valuable set up they can have is with 4 haywire blasters, but they become useless if the opponent has no vehicles on the board.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Played a game against imperial fists today.

I cut some fat from my list and ran Lelith, just for the lolz. She actually preformed pretty well, she's a beast, killed a captain and a group of grav centurions, but sadly her raider was destroyed turn one so she was hoofin it for most of the game.

I really want to swap out the razorwing jetfighters for a beastpack or two, they seem like a lot of fun and the razorwings rarely accomplish anything. (OT: any ideas for stand in Kyhmeara and clawed fiends?)

My opponent was quite smart, and one of the nicest guys I've played against in quite a while. I think the loss mainly came down to poor dice rolls, failing 3 2+ cover saves on my raider turn one, leaving lelith to walk really hurt. I hate to be the guy who blames his loss on crappy dice, but I can't think of much to learn from the game.

Probably the first game I've played in a while where I actively wanted Wyches to tarpit all the shooty squads he had, and mutilate the tiny scout squads. And thinking about it, I would like to incorporate some into my list (even though they are trash), any thoughts?

Yeah, Lelith is really fun. Her flaw is she costs so much for such a squishy character, but she can kill a lot if she can get into melee

I was considering picking up her model, but now I think I will just because of how fun bringing her was, lets see if I can snag a cheap ebay deal

@blackie - What is your main issue with Beastpacks? Too expensive? I am genuinely curious as they seem like a good unit on paper, I might be slightly inexperienced though.

I would like some fun, off the cuff unexpected FA units, tons of min reaver spam sounds effective but kinda boring IMHO.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I was considering picking up her model, but now I think I will just because of how fun bringing her was, lets see if I can snag a cheap ebay deal

@blackie - What is your main issue with Beastpacks? Too expensive? I am genuinely curious as they seem like a good unit on paper, I might be slightly inexperienced though.

I would like some fun, off the cuff unexpected FA units, tons of min reaver spam sounds effective but kinda boring IMHO.

yeah too expensive, there are other units that serve the same role more efficiently... a court of the archon or grotesques with an HQ and a raider are better in close combat, reavers are better too. Also they're expensive models so unless you already have them or plan to convert them i suggest to try something else. If you go with a CAD you can only dispose of three fast attack slots so 3x3 reavers are the best option and fit every type of list. I don't think they're boring to play, they're just 3 units, not 10, and only 189 points with the standard wargear. If you take tha dark eldar detachment you have 5 fast attacks available but i don't see any other reason not to take any other jetbikes, unless you really need a flyer or an anti-vehicle (haywires). Dark eldars are weak, nothing is really resilient with the exception of talos/cronos so no matter how much you upgrade a unit, it would never be resilient and effective. Beastpacks are fast and decent (but not excellent) in close combat but very weak to shooting like any other DE unit, also cost a lot of points. Dark eldar work better with MSU because almost everything can be wiped out very easily so increase the number of targets is the key.

So curious about haywire again but unsure if it's a big deal. You see in most lists i don't care about haywire because nobody takes many vehicles esp. in most powerful lists. However the issue is if the enemy takes super-heavies as vehicle damage tends not to be a thing with super heavies (either 1 hull point of damage or d3 if it'd normally explode). This is where haywire shines for once.

Normally i'd crap on haywire as it deserves it whether in a game with vehicles (people grabbing cover saves with guard for a 3+ cover save due to camo netting and cover) or the fact they just don't take vehicles or any worthwhile vehicles at all (usually because they have gargantuans or just use drop pods which have no point beyond the turn they come in). In most cases reavers with heat lances just do better as they can shoot, jink and use cluster caltrops with rending going vs rear armor and through enemy cover with skilled rider to maximum effect. This is yet another reason why i love these guys.

However vs super-heavies that probably have no cover or next to no cover but possibly a slight invulnerable save (knights anger me) i can't think of a more useful weapon than haywire. Not to mention even the rear armor of super heavies should be scary so even cluster caltrop attacks that rend might not do much and i don't know if it's really a good idea to go after a super-heavy in melee anyway.

Personally I've gotten far more out of my Scourges with Heat Lances than with Haywire. I think I've only once taken out a vehicle with Haywire in a single round of shooting whilst the Heat Lances do it quite often, and it's extremely important that they are able to kill something in one go as Scourge aren't likely to last too much longer than 1 shooting phase.

I've tried running Lelith in the past as well, usually with Incubi as they're just straight up better than Wyches, and it can be fun to have a single model with WS9 throwing 9 dice on the attack, but S3 really gimps her and she has no access to things like Archite Glaives or combat drugs to boost that strength before turn 4. I tend to stick to a Succubus with the Archite Glaive and the Armour of Misery joined to either Incubi or Grotesques.

 Imateria wrote:
Personally I've gotten far more out of my Scourges with Heat Lances than with Haywire. I think I've only once taken out a vehicle with Haywire in a single round of shooting whilst the Heat Lances do it quite often, and it's extremely important that they are able to kill something in one go as Scourge aren't likely to last too much longer than 1 shooting phase.

I've tried running Lelith in the past as well, usually with Incubi as they're just straight up better than Wyches, and it can be fun to have a single model with WS9 throwing 9 dice on the attack, but S3 really gimps her and she has no access to things like Archite Glaives or combat drugs to boost that strength before turn 4. I tend to stick to a Succubus with the Archite Glaive and the Armour of Misery joined to either Incubi or Grotesques.

Haywire blasters are situational, if you don't face the appropriate targets they're completely useless. But i won't run scourges with other weapons as lances are only s6 so not that good against av13-14 and they need to get way too closer to the enemy to be effective. If you really need to take down vehicles go for scourges with haywire blasters, otherwise don't take scourges at all, as ravagers, trueborn and even reavers with a blaster/lance are better for that role. A succubus with glaive and armour of misery that joins grotesques is by far my favourite dark eldar HQ, i take her everytime unless i want to run the corpsethief claw as a cheap lhamaean fits better because i need to save the points for other units.

 Blackie wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Personally I've gotten far more out of my Scourges with Heat Lances than with Haywire. I think I've only once taken out a vehicle with Haywire in a single round of shooting whilst the Heat Lances do it quite often, and it's extremely important that they are able to kill something in one go as Scourge aren't likely to last too much longer than 1 shooting phase.

I've tried running Lelith in the past as well, usually with Incubi as they're just straight up better than Wyches, and it can be fun to have a single model with WS9 throwing 9 dice on the attack, but S3 really gimps her and she has no access to things like Archite Glaives or combat drugs to boost that strength before turn 4. I tend to stick to a Succubus with the Archite Glaive and the Armour of Misery joined to either Incubi or Grotesques.

Haywire blasters are situational, if you don't face the appropriate targets they're completely useless. But i won't run scourges with other weapons as lances are only s6 so not that good against av13-14 and they need to get way too closer to the enemy to be effective. If you really need to take down vehicles go for scourges with haywire blasters, otherwise don't take scourges at all, as ravagers, trueborn and even reavers with a blaster/lance are better for that role. A succubus with glaive and armour of misery that joins grotesques is by far my favourite dark eldar HQ, i take her everytime unless i want to run the corpsethief claw as a cheap lhamaean fits better because i need to save the points for other units.

Interestingly enough i wanted to run 4 grotesques with a succubus in a raider. I may have to make due with other hq choices in the mean time unfortunately.

My real issue is what i will do if i face super-heavies. In most normal games haywire is absolute garbage and i don't take it. However it certain games i'll face a person that takes a knight or other super heavy in a game smaller than 2,000 points and haywire would work best in this sort of fight.

Btw can you guys believe some people out there are actually talking about nerfing haywire? Most people see reason thankfully but this OP doesn't. If this guy's suggestions went through i would never take haywire ever. There would be no point.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/714072.page

Martel732 wrote:
I still don't get this. You reserve, and they can do minimal damage on turn 1. I get that But then you get some stuff on turn 2, don't do much damage because you've only got part of a mediocre army, and then the full enemy blasts your partial army on turn 2. And then they blast what turns up turn 3. And then blast what turns up turn 4. And then you're out of stuff.

Take the example against space marines, for example. They drop pod in near where a couple of the small units I left on the table are or near some objectives to score points or whatever the case may be. I often have 8 or 9 venoms, so I'm averaging about 6 with warriors inside coming in on turn 2. I pick an area to deploy where there are only a few units that will actually be able to hit me back the next turn and I focus fire everything I have into them. Typically, everything in the enemy army does not have the speed and range to hit you anywhere on the table so most units will be unable to retaliate if you deal with the few nearby threats. Depending on rapid fire and such, my 102-132 poison shots is enough to kill the units that could have actually hit me back the next turn and that's just with 630 points of my army. I still have other units that I vary a lot from razorwing jetfighters to scourges, scatbikes, or corsairs that are also coming in and hitting armor values or whatever I need.

Again, I'm not saying it's to be used against all armies or against all deployment, but the armies I listed are usually nullified by doing it. All those drop pod marines, for example, come in and shoot next to nothing then move too slow and have too little range to hit me for several more turns. It usually means I don't take any substantial firepower for several turns. Sacrificing one or two warriors squads to create a safe bubble for your reserves is also a good option when you're coming in against some kind of fast-moving assault units..

I found Lelith quite fun, I just realized she doesn't benefit from Combat Drugs, which really hurts, makes the impaler even more of an auto take. I might run her just because she is by far my favorite DE character, but she takes up so many points for such silly rules (3+ invuln is awesome, but paying for the extra WS and I are useless unless you're in combat with something you don't want to be in with). Good thing is that I don't have to feel guilty about taking her as she isn't too many points more than a succubus, and its not hard to switch the two out modularly.

I like haywire scourge, there are plenty of vehicles in my meta, sadly most are rhinos and the such, so I can never get a good gauge against the 'tough' stuff (LRs, IKs, etc etc), but scourge are a nice unit to have generally, I like the utility, and I keep them just incase of a knight or something of the sort.

I have never taken special weapons on reavers because I assume they'd always jink if shot at, so I feel it might be counter productive.

Thoughts on archons? (I had a crazy idea on a plane ride today for a scourge themed archon so like wings and a cape and the such, kinda like celestine except a purekin and not a filthy human.) I am moreso looking for some crazy nutball tactics that work, not the typic incubi/grotesques/whatever + shadowfield + sword/whip = profit(?). Generally I feel Sucubi are a lot better for anything choppy.

Thoughts on any use whatsoever for hellions? They are laughably bad but I see them used somewhat often which is baffling.

Dude, that extra point of Ws is one of the best things about her! The difference between Ws 8 and Ws 9 is the biggest difference in the game, being that Ws 4 (the most common Ws in the game) opponents now hit her on 5's.

With that in mind I'd still rather take 2 Succubi with Archite Glaives for a paultry 20pts more. But she's not terrible. They get combat drugs and make better use of Power From Pain, with furious charge these gals chop down MEQ units on their own.

The Archon on the other hand is. AP 3 hurts the huskblade soo bad. Shadowfield is good, but if you throw him in a unit of Grotesques it matters less. Succubus gets my vote.

Haywire Scourges all the way, it's soo easy to get 4 hits and 4 glances with these.

 Blackie wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Personally I've gotten far more out of my Scourges with Heat Lances than with Haywire. I think I've only once taken out a vehicle with Haywire in a single round of shooting whilst the Heat Lances do it quite often, and it's extremely important that they are able to kill something in one go as Scourge aren't likely to last too much longer than 1 shooting phase.

I've tried running Lelith in the past as well, usually with Incubi as they're just straight up better than Wyches, and it can be fun to have a single model with WS9 throwing 9 dice on the attack, but S3 really gimps her and she has no access to things like Archite Glaives or combat drugs to boost that strength before turn 4. I tend to stick to a Succubus with the Archite Glaive and the Armour of Misery joined to either Incubi or Grotesques.

Haywire blasters are situational, if you don't face the appropriate targets they're completely useless. But i won't run scourges with other weapons as lances are only s6 so not that good against av13-14 and they need to get way too closer to the enemy to be effective. If you really need to take down vehicles go for scourges with haywire blasters, otherwise don't take scourges at all, as ravagers, trueborn and even reavers with a blaster/lance are better for that role. A succubus with glaive and armour of misery that joins grotesques is by far my favourite dark eldar HQ, i take her everytime unless i want to run the corpsethief claw as a cheap lhamaean fits better because i need to save the points for other units.

Haywire never works well for me, unlike Alex above I don't seem to be able to get 4 hits and 4 glances ever. Heat Lances are as effective against high armour targets as normal melta's are because of Lance, so the most you'll need on 2D6 for a glance is a 6, when the average roll is a 7. As for getting close, thats what Deep Strike is for and I tend to either get in close or mishap, then come in the next turn and get them. Usually I score 2 pens which thanks to AP1 gives me a very good chance of blowing up my target on a 5+ with 2 dice. Ceramite Armour is a problem but thats a lot less common in 40K than it is in 30K. Personally, the more I run Haywire Scourge, the more I'm finding them to be a waste of points, whilst Heat Lance Scourge are my most effective anti-tank. Special weapons on Reavers are a waste as they'll be jinking most of the time, Ravagers have proven a lot more effective for me with triple Disintegrators and hunting elite infantry and MC's. As for Trueborn, I've only just got enough models with Blasters to run them recently and their first two games have seen only 1 vehicle involved that wasn't mine, but they have killed a Terminator Librarian, Deathwing Knights and some Ravenwing so they're doing well so far.

I get the feeling that a Succubus with Glaive is highly underrated, whatever unit I join her with she tends to do work for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Imateria wrote:
Personally I've gotten far more out of my Scourges with Heat Lances than with Haywire. I think I've only once taken out a vehicle with Haywire in a single round of shooting whilst the Heat Lances do it quite often, and it's extremely important that they are able to kill something in one go as Scourge aren't likely to last too much longer than 1 shooting phase.

I've tried running Lelith in the past as well, usually with Incubi as they're just straight up better than Wyches, and it can be fun to have a single model with WS9 throwing 9 dice on the attack, but S3 really gimps her and she has no access to things like Archite Glaives or combat drugs to boost that strength before turn 4. I tend to stick to a Succubus with the Archite Glaive and the Armour of Misery joined to either Incubi or Grotesques.

Haywire blasters are situational, if you don't face the appropriate targets they're completely useless. But i won't run scourges with other weapons as lances are only s6 so not that good against av13-14 and they need to get way too closer to the enemy to be effective. If you really need to take down vehicles go for scourges with haywire blasters, otherwise don't take scourges at all, as ravagers, trueborn and even reavers with a blaster/lance are better for that role. A succubus with glaive and armour of misery that joins grotesques is by far my favourite dark eldar HQ, i take her everytime unless i want to run the corpsethief claw as a cheap lhamaean fits better because i need to save the points for other units.

Interestingly enough i wanted to run 4 grotesques with a succubus in a raider. I may have to make due with other hq choices in the mean time unfortunately.

My real issue is what i will do if i face super-heavies. In most normal games haywire is absolute garbage and i don't take it. However it certain games i'll face a person that takes a knight or other super heavy in a game smaller than 2,000 points and haywire would work best in this sort of fight.

Btw can you guys believe some people out there are actually talking about nerfing haywire? Most people see reason thankfully but this OP doesn't. If this guy's suggestions went through i would never take haywire ever. There would be no point.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/714072.page

Honestly I've found we're either best off ignoring Knights and the like or hitting them with every anti-tank weapon we can field and try to down them in one go, sadly it's a definite weak point for DE. And yes, that suggestion was a bit stupid.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gummyofallbears wrote:
I found Lelith quite fun, I just realized she doesn't benefit from Combat Drugs, which really hurts, makes the impaler even more of an auto take. I might run her just because she is by far my favorite DE character, but she takes up so many points for such silly rules (3+ invuln is awesome, but paying for the extra WS and I are useless unless you're in combat with something you don't want to be in with). Good thing is that I don't have to feel guilty about taking her as she isn't too many points more than a succubus, and its not hard to switch the two out modularly.

I like haywire scourge, there are plenty of vehicles in my meta, sadly most are rhinos and the such, so I can never get a good gauge against the 'tough' stuff (LRs, IKs, etc etc), but scourge are a nice unit to have generally, I like the utility, and I keep them just incase of a knight or something of the sort.

I have never taken special weapons on reavers because I assume they'd always jink if shot at, so I feel it might be counter productive.

Thoughts on archons? (I had a crazy idea on a plane ride today for a scourge themed archon so like wings and a cape and the such, kinda like celestine except a purekin and not a filthy human.) I am moreso looking for some crazy nutball tactics that work, not the typic incubi/grotesques/whatever + shadowfield + sword/whip = profit(?). Generally I feel Sucubi are a lot better for anything choppy.

Thoughts on any use whatsoever for hellions? They are laughably bad but I see them used somewhat often which is baffling.

Archons with Scourge wings you say? Something like this then?



I tend to get the most out of Archons with a Blaster, Shadowfield and joined to a Court with plenty of Sslyth, they make for a good mop up unit but generally the Archon is seriously underwhelming thanks to the complete lack of AP2 or any real way to buff the rest of the army.

I just can't find it in me to like heat lances. 21'' threat range isn't actually that much in the scale of things, and it's not like Dark Eldar have a deficit of AP 2 shots. Indeed mass AP 2 fire power is the only redeeming quality of the ravager, give it nightfields and find it some cover and pump out 9 Str 5 AP 2 shots per turn.

Although something to note is that possibly unlike you I don't *want* explosions to happen. I usually run my Dark Eldar alongside Harlequins and I use my Haywire Scourges to reliably can-open transports for the Harlequins to dice the inside, so big explosions are decidedly not something I want to happen,

Am I the only one that deep strikes Scourge? Their total range doesn't matter and I certainly don't start them on the board, Scourge die really easily no matter how I run them so I use them as a suicide squad, they get one turn of shooting and thats usually it before they're dead. With that one turn of shooting I find Heat Lances have a much better chance of killing their target than Haywire Blasters do.

As for explosions, yeah I wouldn't want them going up next to a squad of Harlequins either, but Talos, Grotesques, Sslyth and Incubi are much better at surviving that.

 Imateria wrote:
Am I the only one that deep strikes Scourge? Their total range doesn't matter and I certainly don't start them on the board, Scourge die really easily no matter how I run them so I use them as a suicide squad, they get one turn of shooting and thats usually it before they're dead. With that one turn of shooting I find Heat Lances have a much better chance of killing their target than Haywire Blasters do.

As for explosions, yeah I wouldn't want them going up next to a squad of Harlequins either, but Talos, Grotesques, Sslyth and Incubi are much better at surviving that.

I deepstrike them too. Barring haywire they need to be pretty close, though sometimes I don't deepstrike blaster scourges

Thats a seriously cool looking kabalite warrior, is that your own creation, Imateria?

I deepstrike them, I like a bit of defensive deepstrikes (insert DoW2 joke here), usually the unaware opponent won't really care about them considering a grotesquerie (and soon to be 2 beastpacks, as I have the models so Ill replace my razorwings and try them out) in his face. Hopefully they can run around Hay-wiring stuff to death. I don't like the idea of heatlances because 21' threat range isn't terrible, but it really cuts down on the options available, especially when you deepstrike them. But hey, I'll give it a shot probably in the next game I play.

 Imateria wrote:
Am I the only one that deep strikes Scourge? Their total range doesn't matter and I certainly don't start them on the board, Scourge die really easily no matter how I run them so I use them as a suicide squad, they get one turn of shooting and thats usually it before they're dead. With that one turn of shooting I find Heat Lances have a much better chance of killing their target than Haywire Blasters do.

As for explosions, yeah I wouldn't want them going up next to a squad of Harlequins either, but Talos, Grotesques, Sslyth and Incubi are much better at surviving that.

I only deep strike one unit of heat lance scourge (they come in with an archon with webway portal). I might even keep a 2nd unit of heat lance scourge on the table because even though a 21" threat range is not so hot for some things coming at you it's not too shabby. That said i'd imagine the scariest vehicles at this point just hang back. I remember hearing many people say they don't take landraiders. In the case of some large ork walkers it could have potential provided they're melee walkers (which they honestly should be).

I don't think there other ways to play scourges efficiently without deep striking them, but they don't want to come too close to the enemy as they're very vulnerable and every shot they fire after the turn they arrive can be invaluable. A single volley of scourges hits can be good, but two of them can be excellent. About super heavies i agree on ignoring them, unless you're quite sure they would be part of the opponent's list, i won't bother with haywire blasters scourges. All dark eldars anti tanks units have issues, we don't have a very reliable anti tank so every choice is meta dependent actually. I take ravagers with lances all the time, with shields and always in cover so they get a 3/4+ without jinking. About weapons on reavers i'm not sure, they cost just 10 points and as i run only min units of them, typically with 5 venoms, 2 raiders and 3 ravagers, they don't become a priority target every turn so they're not jinking all the time.

I disagree mostly. The only scourge you should deep strike and only in certain circumstances are heat lance scourge. Haywire scourge generally have the range and blaster scourge probably will too. Of course blasterborn are probably a better setup in a vehicle.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I disagree mostly. The only scourge you should deep strike and only in certain circumstances are heat lance scourge. Haywire scourge generally have the range and blaster scourge probably will too. Of course blasterborn are probably a better setup in a vehicle.

Scourges benefit from deep striking not only because they would arrive wherever they need to be but also because they'd have a chance to shoot with the full unit for one turn at least. If you place them during deployment and go second they may be wiped out quite easily as they're only 5 dark eldars with armor 4+. Yes you can hide them but in many scenarios they can be killed turn 1 regardless of the terrain, and you'll lose both your best anti tank and first blood. I don't like using reserves in general but scourges are an excpetion, if you take them they must have the chance to strike so they can't be killed/crippled in the previous turn or out of range/LOS in your turn because the opponent's vehicles are too far away or hidden behind a huge piece of terrain.

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Thats a seriously cool looking kabalite warrior, is that your own creation, Imateria?

Yes, I finished it up just at the start of the week actually, those two parts that stick out on the back of Kabalite Warriors makes for a good base to glue Scourge Wings onto. Too bad there are no official rules for her to use them.

 Blackie wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I disagree mostly. The only scourge you should deep strike and only in certain circumstances are heat lance scourge. Haywire scourge generally have the range and blaster scourge probably will too. Of course blasterborn are probably a better setup in a vehicle.

Scourges benefit from deep striking not only because they would arrive wherever they need to be but also because they'd have a chance to shoot with the full unit for one turn at least. If you place them during deployment and go second they may be wiped out quite easily as they're only 5 dark eldars with armor 4+. Yes you can hide them but in many scenarios they can be killed turn 1 regardless of the terrain, and you'll lose both your best anti tank and first blood. I don't like using reserves in general but scourges are an excpetion, if you take them they must have the chance to strike so they can't be killed/crippled in the previous turn or out of range/LOS in your turn because the opponent's vehicles are too far away or hidden behind a huge piece of terrain.

Unless the enemy is tau and they shoot at reserves as they come in. In which case you are feeding them to the enemy guns.

Also having more of your force on the board often makes you live longer and do more. I honestly don't understand the idea of splitting your force up. Depending on the enemy most of their guns have range to you and will shoot off what little you have.

If i place my scourge second as well as my army 2nd (because i lost the chance to go first) i actually don't think it's as ****ing as most people make it out to be. When i fought a necron decurion most of his stuff had average range and i just deployed on 1/2 or 1/3 of my board mostly with the ravagers hugging cover. Most of his stuff couldn't engage most of my force and some units had to engage certain things which didn't matter and didn't do much. You have to understand dark eldar can move faster than other factions. If an opponent tried similar vs dark eldar we could get to where we need to be to engage the enemy rather quickly. Most factions can't do that or at least not as fast. Admittedly the static armies are more gunline based and will usually have range regardless but unless they're smart missiles or mortars hitting it's usually not easy to hit the scourge and if you have a bunch of scourge anti-tank squads they can only hit maybe a couple. This isn't even considering if you can neuter some of those mortars or similar early. You just have to understand what you have to hit and when. Sure scourge die easily but if you kill or badly damage the things that can hit them while out of line of sight then their chance to survive goes up.

My other issue with deep strike with scourge is you basically place them in the jaws of the enemy in which case they will get shot up after the turn they come in. Starting them deployed i can keep them in cover and move up. Also i don't have to worry about a possible turn 4 delayed reserves thing happening which in the case of both myself and a GSC with tyranids player we saw firsthand just how bad reserve rolls can be (or for him the special ambush) and just how badly they can screw a game for you.

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All this said i am a little nervous about something. If the enemy really does choose gunline and they take wyverns for instance then how best should i handle this? Normally i dislike the idea of most str 8 ap 2 lance weapons but without turn 1 neutering of wyverns i may see myself in a lot of pain. I hear taken in 3's they can be pretty stupid good and they can usually annihilate a squad a piece (possibly even scourge out of line of sight).

I suppose what i'm trying to say is as much as people would probably fight the idea i might actually need to use dark lances or at least haywire scourge to handle those wyverns. I just seriously can't think of another way to kill em off on turn 1 and i may need to esp. if i go second.

Considering guard are a very specific enemy i probably won't face 3 wyverns or at least not frequently (i only know of one game where i faced just one). However i think my current list can't handle that issue very well. This isn't to say my list is optimal even to my own specifications and far less to competitive people i'm sure. However it would cause me a lot of trouble to deal with and those mortars that avoid cover light up my reavers as well.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Unless the enemy is tau and they shoot at reserves as they come in. In which case you are feeding them to the enemy guns.

Against tau haywire blasters are completely useless


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Also having more of your force on the board often makes you live longer and do more. I honestly don't understand the idea of splitting your force up

We're talking about just 120 points in reserve...

I don't like using reserves too, and not a real fan of scourges either, but i think they would be really effective only with haywire blasters, coming by deep strike and only against specific lists. I won't take them a tournament.

Thats an interesting theory considering they are usually considered one of the best units we have.

However, every game I pay i find myself to agree on their mostly situational use.

 Blackie wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Unless the enemy is tau and they shoot at reserves as they come in. In which case you are feeding them to the enemy guns.

Against tau haywire blasters are completely useless


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Also having more of your force on the board often makes you live longer and do more. I honestly don't understand the idea of splitting your force up

We're talking about just 120 points in reserve...

I don't like using reserves too, and not a real fan of scourges either, but i think they would be really effective only with haywire blasters, coming by deep strike and only against specific lists. I won't take them a tournament.

HWB are S4 AP4, thats perfect to kill there troops. But if you are playing tau and know its tau just dont take them.

If you are playing all comers I would still take them, evens some tau players takes some vehicles time to time anyways.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Unless the enemy is tau and they shoot at reserves as they come in. In which case you are feeding them to the enemy guns.

Against tau haywire blasters are completely useless


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

Also having more of your force on the board often makes you live longer and do more. I honestly don't understand the idea of splitting your force up

We're talking about just 120 points in reserve...

I don't like using reserves too, and not a real fan of scourges either, but i think they would be really effective only with haywire blasters, coming by deep strike and only against specific lists. I won't take them a tournament.

HWB are S4 AP4, thats perfect to kill there troops. But if you are playing tau and know its tau just dont take them.

If you are playing all comers I would still take them, evens some tau players takes some vehicles time to time anyways.

Not the tau player at my store who supposedly cheats, plays OP lists and seems rather smug about his OP faction and army.

Considering our worst match-ups don't often take vehicles or at least not that many i think you're shooting yourself in both feet. I think in the last 5 games or so i haven't fought vehicles that i couldn't handle (with or without haywire though i will admit in my game today it'd have killed that one vehicle faster but that's not something the heat lance didn't achieve as well with just one squad) and in many cases i'd imagine cluster caltrops can wreck leman russ tanks in cover with camo netting for a 3+ cover save much better than haywire can. They hit instantly, glance on 5's (admittedly not so hot) and pen and rend on 6's. Honestly in many cases i can't help but think more reavers would solve more situations better. It has more versatility. I can have a couple squads go after one thing or another and i can jink them. I can also do JSJ with the reavers which with certain weapons can be kind of nice.

A Str 4 ap 4 shot per haywire blaster guy is absolute trash if there are no vehicles. You just paid 120 pts to do that.

As i've said before the only time i can think of wanting to use haywire is against super-heavies.

Sadly it's considered poor sportsmanship to prepare a list when you know who the opponent is so i prepare a list ahead of time. I realize this doesn't benefit dark eldar in the slightest but in many cases it's what the gamers at the local GW do. We have different points amounts per list set up. It's usually divided up into 250 points apart per setting except the oddly standardized 1850 pts lists.