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Are they any good, or do they suck terribly? Also, does anybody know where I can look at the latest DE Codex. I heard it hasn't been updated in a while, but does it have a FAQ?

They suck terribly unless you get the first turn. In which case they just suck. And the DE codex is around 8years+ old....

Ahhh, I see.

Dark eldar are currently quite strong if run as a mechanized stand-off army. What makes them competitive is fast, cheap transports with dark lances, easy access to template weapons through haemonculi, and night shields. Few armies currently have enough long range firepower to outshoot dark eldar, other than Imperial guard. If you use the search engine on this forum, you should be able to find some good relevant threads.

who ever sais that dark eldar are weak is totally not right

they do have the oldest codex and their modells may be the most disgusting and horribly misshaped of all wh40k modells,

BUT they have some very cool things , let's look at them:

just as arbalest said their transports are fast , cheap and your army can field ALOT of dark lances ( bright lances )

their archon can have this special field that gives him a 2+ invuln . that's pretty amazing , although you should still protect him because if he fails his save , then you may not use that save for the rest of the game
and he can have the agoniser , which is an energy weapon that always wounds on 4's
and combat drugs make him a monster

their standard troops are some of the best in the whole game ,
they got a godlike initative of 5 , WS 4 ( that's amazing for a 8 point unt ) and as far as i know they also got a bs of 4 making them a good shoot and then charge unit

then you have wytches with their special combat drugs that work in another way then the archon's
and they have wytch weapons , halving your opponents ws
they have a very good initative meaning they strike first
i think they are in line with banshees

and you got the best meat shield in the whole game ( better than killa kans ) : the grotesque
with his special feel no pain rule ( not the universal one ) he can only be wounded by s6 shooting attacks
a must have in any footslogging army

also you got the talon which is a pain in the a$$ with his powerful shooty weapon that eats nids ig and orks and his claws that give him d6 attacks at t7 and s7 . but really powerfull he is against vehicles . you only roll once for armour penetration

then you got scourges which get relatively cheap dark lances , 4 per squad making them better tank hunters then devestators

and you got the ravager , 3 dark lances with bs 4 for just 105 points ? yes please



but the most important thing is your special character ( don't know his name , he is a hemoncolous )
he EATS any enemy with his fire template weapon . he wounds on automatically and ignores cover saves for a sick price of just 100 points . and don't forget that he has poison blades and a stinger.
his shooty weapons have a d6 for armour penetration so it is kinda a gamble but it is powerfull
in my oppinion he is the best ic in the whole game

then you got incubi with their s5 energy weapons and 3+ save for 25 points each model. they got a dark eldar mandiblaster , the tormentor helm . just powerfull

now i am not saying that dark eldar are fine as they are now , because the surely aren't
as i said before their modells uglyness causes eye cancer and their rules are not up to date with the new 5th ed rules

but nevertheless they can be an unbelievably competetive and effective list , which is sadly not seen alot these days

Not to mention that DE were designed to eat MEQ for breakfast, which they STILL do quite well.

Thanks for all the feedback. I've been thinking about armies a lot lately and was just curious about DE. A lot complain about them, but I thought they looked pretty decent from what I read in their codex. I think I might have to check them out. What would be a good 500 point core start?

it's nice to see some one wanting to start dark eldar.

your army should look something like this:

hq
------
archon , agonizer , splinter pistol + an incubi retinue of 2 men

troops
--------------
8 warriros ,splinter cannon + raider
8 warriors + raider

heavy support
-------------------
ravager

=500 points total

it should do kinda well , you got 5 bright lances. it looks like you got only 19 models , which is true , but you will stay behind and snipe his vehicles with your lances and when he get's close , disembark , shoot , and get back in then run away . remember your standard weapons are 24" , you outrange most armies

when plaing games with more points , lets say 750 points you should take another squad of warriors in a raider with a cannon , another incubi and a squad of wytches . if you got points left give the 2nd warrior squad a cannon.
mobility is the key

For a good 800 point list, I would take the following

Archon-116
Agoniser
Tormentor Helm
Trophy Rack
Combat Drugs
Shadow Field

Elites
9 Wyches-163
Succubus
2 Blasters
Raider

Troops

10 Warriors-145
Dark Lance
Raider

10 Warriors-145
Dark Lance
Raider

Talos-100

Talos-100

You have 5 Lances, Wyches and a 2 Talos' for CC, and your Archon can ride with the Wyches as well. It's a fast list, and somewhat fragile and low on troops, but it's still great IMHO.

good luck, DE player!

@ Omar: Nice 500 pt list, that seems like a good core block.

@ Cryonicleech: That list looks good imo. Fast Troops with 5 dark lances, pretty sick for tank busting. Are all those wargear upgrades on the Archon necessary, or could you add some Incubi for a retinue on him. Also, how is this list fragile. It may lack troops but it looks like it can does well against heavily armored enemies, and would do well against melee armies because of the speed and range of the army. Wyches are tough in CC as well as the Talos, so where are the cons in this list?

Also, I couldn't find what a Splinter Cannon does in the codex because I'm currently being rushed by my girlfriend and my band practice soon. Could anyone direct me to the page it is on or state what it does?

DE are going to be a tremendously powerful army from 500-1750 points. At 2000 you're running short of stuff to take, and at point levels above 2000 you pretty much have to fill the force org chart just to get enough guys in to meet the points requirement.

But for a 1500-1750 army, they are quite vicious and absolutely murder Marines.

sourclams is right , de are very good in low - med point games

@ s1gns
splinter cannon @ page 13 , the refference sheet

@ cryonicleech

i think your archon is fitted out too much . you don't nead that field , it costs 25 p , just like 3 warriors . if you accompany him with those 3 warriors , it is as if he would be having 3 extra wounds because of wound allocation . i also wouldn't take drugs ( lol ) in a 800 point game . the only real bonus that is good for an archon is the +1 attack , but for that price , you could take an incubi which has 2 attacks.
it would also be more effective to give up the trophy rack to upgrade 1 raider's brightlance to a disintegrator . you will nead more anti infantry than anti tank. you should also exchange a talos for a ravager , the talos will be shot up before getting into cc .
you shouldn't put lances on warriors , because then the whole squad would waste it's shots to just do 1 lance shot . what are you going to use to kill the enemy infantry ? only the wytches and the archon ? would be smarter to take 4 lances in a 5 man squad of scourges . that way you would get 10 lances total , without wasting any shots . wytches are only usefull against horde enemies but they are s*** against marines and necrons . that's why they should rather take a shredder as you would only use them against low toughness modells , so templates are better.also the succubus just has +1 attack , for that points you could get a warrior for the archon to have more survivability . when fighting marines , you should rather get 5 incubi with the archon

How will the DE fair against Eldar, Tau, Nurgle CSM, Tyranids and SoB. These armies are common amongst the friends I play with. I'm guessing DE will do well vs them all but the nids. Tau troops are pushovers, but my friend has some a lot of suits which might screw my transports. Eldar won't do too much to me until he mechanizes it. The Nurgle CSM will be annoying, but probably are still dealable. SoB will get romped imo. Nids I think are the only army that can screw me I think. How is my synopsis?

s1gns wrote:How will the DE fair against Eldar, Tau, Nurgle CSM, Tyranids and SoB. These armies are common amongst the friends I play with. I'm guessing DE will do well vs them all but the nids. Tau troops are pushovers, but my friend has some a lot of suits which might screw my transports. Eldar won't do too much to me until he mechanizes it. The Nurgle CSM will be annoying, but probably are still dealable. SoB will get romped imo. Nids I think are the only army that can screw me I think. How is my synopsis?

against eldar you WILL have a problem , they are faster . that's right . because the de codex is older than george w. bush , we do not get any upgrades that make us go faster . eldar got star engines , that means they reach us VERY fast this means the enemy will destroy you like this : serpent moves fast right next to your raider , you run 24 " . he disembarks 10 dire avengers with an exarch with bladestorm . 30 s4 shots . they CAN pen you , because you are open topped . let's do the maths :

30 shots , 20 hit
20 shot's , 3 pen

he just neads to immobelise you and you are dead . then your squad is dead.

and your lance wearing vehicles are dead , because he just deepstrikes a 10 man squad of swooping haws with an exarch and the ability that makes you hit vehicles on 4s . let's do math again :

10 haywire grenade attacks , 5 hit
4 glance , 1 pens

again he only neads to immobelise you .

how to counter this ? FOOTSLOGGING !
he can't take your mobility if you ain't got any .
as i said before , use grotesques to screen your troops , and get into cc . you don't nead agonizers against eldar , they got t3
eldar power is finesse , take it from them !! just use alot fo wytches , eldar don't got THAT good armor .
when fighting a mech list , deepstrike a squad of scourges with lances behind his vehicles to kill them . you just nead to immobelise his vehicls too to kill them WOHOOO!!!!
use talons to kill banshees , s3 is not enough to even have a chance to wound t7 and because of d6 attacks + 1 you should do pretty well. your enemy won't be using fire dragons if he has got a brain , because 80% of your vehicles got av10 , enough to be killed by a standard shuriken weapon . that's why you don't want to use vehicles against eldar AT ALL .
just get a bunch of shredders to mow him down . the only unit you are going to fear are striking scorpions because of their good 3+ armour save and because of their 3 s4 attacks . that hurts.

Hmm, what about the other races I might play against?

Only race I have seen do damage to DE are Slaanesh/Tzeench daemons.

They are fast and can carve through your armor like knife through butter.

Then again, everyone who does daemons goes generic or crusher heavy which you just outrun

Why do Slaanesh/Tzeentch so strong vs DE. (I leveled your demon Nenya)

Because tzeench has screamers which are jetbiking meltabombs you almost can't outrun. Even the horrors are throwing a ton of S4 Ap4 shots at your dudes once the transport blows up

Slaanesh is the fast close combat element that can corner you then go in for the kill.

I played daemons against a very experienced DE player and noticed that he could deal with everything but the screamers and mass daemonettes/fiends because they matched his speed

[Thanks for the lvl]

screamers can be shot down easely , and what's the range of the horrors ?

against tau , you are outranged . what to do ?
DEEPSTRIKE. your raiders can get a relatively cheap upgrade that allows them to ds , and when they do that , they count as having moved 6" . after deeptriking , get into cc . tau suck BADLY in cc . this is where you shine .
you should use some scourges with disintegrators . those are basically plasma cannons that can't get hot . you will nead templates.
tau weaponry wounds you on 2 and denys your save , that's why you should block LOS with your raider when you disembark .
it will probably die , but that's just fine .
you shouldn't take ANY talos , he will probably die on turn 2 before reaching cc.
you should take some heamoncolous with destructor , theres a 50% chance that your flamers will have ap4 . in a group of 3 , that kills
if he tries to kill you with many tanks , you can buy a squad of 10 footslogging warriors with 2(!) lances.


against nid's , you won't really have a problem , you outrange most of their weapons .
if he uses a lot of hordes , take 3 haemoncolous with destructor .
you CAN defeat them in cc , you just nead to make sure that their squad is not at full strengh . shoot them , then charge , there should be not a lot left of them . snipe his synapse and his troops will run very quickly.

if he makes a 'nidzilla list , he will have about 6 mc's in a 1500 p game. easy to counter.
take 2 squads of scourges with dark lances and concentrate fire .
let's do the maths :
8 shots , 5 hit
5 hits , 3-4 wound .
that's a good chance to kill a fex in just one round . now you just nead a ravager and 2 10 man squads of warriors with lances , NOT mounted . do not give your archon a retinue , he won't be seeing combat . instead of an archon , take 3 haemoncolous with destructors against his meatshields . remember 'nidzilla lists don't have a lot of synapse

Those matchups seem do-able. How would DE fair against Nurgle CSM and SoB?

well , against sisters , this could get pretty hard because they just cost 11 p and have a 3+ save
but sisters power comes from low range weaponry ( flamer , melta )
first off they only have meltas for anti vehicle . so just stand 24" away from their multi meltas and you won't get shot down .
take alot of disintegrators , as they can shoot 3 s4 ap3 shots at 24" .
sisters got REALLY gay vehicles , all got a rhinos armor . that means that you MAY NOT ( i mean it ! ) take dark lances , their bonus get's negated as they got no vehicle with a better armor than 12 . take disintegrators . not only do they kill the vehicles , but they also brutalise any sister squad . you shouldn't play a mech list against sisters . you should rather take 10 men footslogging squads of warriors with 2 blasters and 2 splinter cannonc . first you shoot them then you assault them . their 10 (wo)man squads won't stand a chance. also this is the only army where i wouldn't take any scourges , you should rather take 2 ravagers with disintegrators .
basic tactic is to stay in cover with your squads and use your disintegrators to kill their vehicles . then use your disintegrators to shoot away at their squads . math'S time !!!
18 shots , 12 hit
12 hits , 8 wound and kill

that owns sister squads

against this army , your archon will actually see combat . you won't nead agonizers , as you will wound them on 4's anyway . just get energy weapons for him .
don't take wyches . that would be just be stupid . on the charge they would kill 3 on average . not worth it .
talos would be a pretty good idea. you just nead to get it into cc and it kills them all .

Ahh, out of curiosity why shouldn't I take Dark Lances. How many squads of Warriors should I take for the footslogging list?

you shouldn't take dark lances because , what is the thing that makes them good against tanks ? it is the lance special rule . but because sisters only got av12 on 90% of their vehicles , it wouldn't make sense taking lances when you could take disintegrators which do the same job and also eat infantry.

your footslogging squads should be 10 man , as you want as many special weapons as possible . take as many as you can with 2 ravagers with desintigretors and an archon . should do the trick in 500 point games , in bigger games , just take more troops , a talos
and make the retinue of the archon bigger


now , against deathguard , use exactly the same tactic as against sisters . just avoid combat AT ALL COSTS .
deathguard cost more points than sisters , meaning that you will not fight as many models , which is good

My friend usually fields a cannonness and retinue, with 2 squads of sisters. As for vehicles, he fields an exorcist (AV13 @ front) and an immolator (11/11/10).

The 750 point list I might use would be:

HQ
-----
Archon (Agonizer, Splinter Pistol, Incubi retinue of 4 men)

Troops
-----------
10 Warriors (2 Blasters, 2 Splinter Cannons)
10 Warriors (2 Blasters, 2 Splinter Cannons)
10 Warriors (2 Blasters, 1 Splinter Cannons)

Heavy Support
--------------------
Ravager (3 Disintegrators)
Ravager (3 Disintegrators)

Total: 741

What do you think?

good list , you should be able to kill him . remember you got 2 ravagers , you can outmanouver his exorcist to hit it on the side .
2 squads of sisters would'nt make ANY problem . you should kill them easily . and your archon + retinue OWNS his commander
don't give your archon an agonizer , you wound t3 models ( sisters ) on 4's anyway . give him a power weapon .

when are you fighting him/her ?

I don't have any DE quite yet, I was just getting general overviews on DE match-ups. I think when I assemble a DE army, I'll do rather well vs my friends. We usually do 2v2, 1000 points between the two teams. When my friend gets more Eldar models, we'll progress to 750 pt armies, and then 1000 pt armies a piece. What would be the strongest army combo with DE out of the listed armies? (Sob, Tau, Eldar, SM which is my 2nd army (Soon to be Blood Angels), Nurgle CSM, Tyranids) When I actually start my DE army depends on how fast I can get my Blood Angels army assembled and painted. In a perfect world, a month or two. Hopefully much sooner though because I'm PUMPED about making a DE army. I've liked them ever since I bought DoW:SS for the PC. Gotta love t1 Jetbikes and Hellions with Mandrake support.

The Dark Eldar are a blast to play. Just remember the magic word - SPEED-. Just dance around your opponent the entire game (if you can - depends on table size), and shoot at him at your leisure. Keep the raiders near your foot troops, so you can just pack up and fly away to a better vantage point to shoot at his troops on the next turn.

If (at any time) you feel your tactics are cheap or unfair, you are playing the Dark Eldar correctly.

Sweet deal

Slaanesh will enjoy your beautiful souls!

But seriously, I think the only real threat to DE is a fast Daemon army which no one ever plays because they read the hellblade profile and they're like...

OMG@@#%!@!!!! power weapons woooooo~

Which you will slaughter because they are only basic footsloggers.

While a properly (IMHO) played daemon army has no problem catching your vehicles with fiends, then hit and running after you assault them through the wreckage then horrors open up on your exposed squads [range is 18" btw]

Anyways, I'd say watch out for the daemon, Slaanesh is meant to kill Eldar, dark or bright [lances, lol] so watch out

alright , slanesh kills you in cc , but seriously nobody plays deamons . it's just stupid , deamons in a sci fi game ?