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Hello Dakka members, I am looking to purchase a new army and have narrowed my decision down to three armies. These armies I consider the best looking armies ( my personal opinion ), I also realise from my knowledge that the armies are not shall we say top tier but would like to be very competitive if I can be.

The armies

. Tau
. Necrons
. Dark Eldar

I really like the look and feel of all the models that these produce, I also want a shooting heavy focused army that can blow away any enemy I come across ( please do not suggest ig, I personally dont find the models interesting)

so out of the three which would you suggest for a fully pledged shooting heavy army and just some pros/cons or advice on each of the army would be great.

Thank you.

. Tau
-Great shooting
-Weak CC
-Battlesuits
-Mildly challenging to play

. Necrons
-Good shooting
-Decent melee
-Excellent vehicles/flyers
-Pretty easy to play

. Dark Eldar
-Decent shooting
-Strong melee
-Fast, delicate units
-Difficult to play

You wont get a straight answer here you will have fanatics from each faction screaming get their faction so Imperial Guard ehh no but i would advise taking DE just because their aren't many out their and the models are amazing

Space wolves, hard drinking womanizing space marines that train by going out fishing what more could you ever want?

failing that i like necrons just avoid all flyer lists or you'll lose all your friends.

Dark eldar my friend has and they work well for him, havent played tau in 6th.

Yh the models for all three armies I really think are amazing, naturally like most forum posts, you can never really get a full answer but it will help me by giving me information on the armies and what people have had experience wise with them, so keep it coming guys/gals

hobojebus wrote:
i like necrons just avoid all flyer lists if you wan't to cater to whiny babies that can't handle losing.

Fixed that for you.

Flyers rock, OP. Use as many as you like.

I'd go necrons out of the 3 listed. Useful,versatile, good starting army.

Dark Eldar have a stiff learning curve.

Tau are just in need of a new codex.

Orks.

No wait, they're not there.
Tau. Just to add variety I think. Necron and Dark Eldar armies are 1000% more common now than they were a few years back. Here's a way to feel special.

I must say out of the models overall I like the dark eldar feel, for dark eldar I would want to be as competitive with them as I could, list wise what is the main build going for them ( I hear its some form of venom spam), however have no idea what this type of list would contain or do.

What kinda unit do you like from dark eldar? Depending on what you like, you may not be able to build a proper venomspam list. Spam list is as you can tell from its name, you try and fill your entire army with them, and only them.

Dark eldar is still a very solid codex, so while venomspam is indeed the best they could go with competitively speaking, this doesn't mean their other lists will auto-lose with no chance of winning. But as said, I think even if you go proper venomspam, DE would probably still be a very difficult army to play, they're all offense and zero defense, as one poster put it(in another thread): they're either tabled, or they table the opponent, they don't do middleground.

Necrons is the best codex out of the three you chose, solid units all around, which mean you have some flexibility in the type of list you can run, but playing necrons does mean that you'll be hated by silly people who just hate necron players for playing an army that they like.

Tau is... hmm... I won't say much, don't want to draw the ire of tau players, but I'd just say they suffer the Outdated Codex Syndrome(OCS), they have a lot of outdated rules or design in their codex, making the army quite hard to play, with a lot of their units being overcost for what they can bring, though, when they receive the inevitable eventual update, they may become the next hated codex*!

*Other 2 codex are too new to receive an update anytime soon.

Tbh I like all of the models, Im the type of player that likes a challenge, and ive lost more games than I have won, so losing does not bother me so much. I liked the idea of the venomspam playstyle as it seemed effective and also allows for mass firepower and speed. But I have no idea of the exact structure of the list, hq, troops, etc. I plan to play at 1500 points level so a example venomspam list would be great.

An example, note: I don't play venomspam myself, so this is probably a very amateur attempt at it...

Archon with blaster and SF
3x Blasterborns(4 trueborns all with blaster) on venom w/ 2x SC
4x HWG wyches(5 wyches all with HWG) on venom w/ 2x SC
2x DL ravager
1x Voidraven w/ flickerfield

Should just be a bit under 1500. giving you 7x 12 36" poisoned(4+) shooting, 4 units of HWG, 6 DLs, 13 blasters and 2 voidlances.

I'd avoid tau unless you don't mind waiting for the next codex and models.

Dark Eldar are fun, so are necrons. I personally prefer sadistic elves to mechanical zombies, but that's just me.

In four years of relatively active play, I have never once seen a Tau player.

Ever.

So I can't speak to their effectiveness or playstyle, other than what I've learned from reading online and hearsay. They're shooty, they're fragile, and they're Japanese space communists.

Dark Eldar I've seen a whole lot of since their 5e update. Like everyone else has said, they tend to play incredibly aggressively, and their models are beautiful (in a horrifying, macabre kind of way). That said, I've seen them break themselves on enemies with a good deal of frequency. I know a guy who runs venomspam backed by Voidraven bombers, and he got shattered most times he went up against terminator-based marine armies. Just couldn't dent them before his transports got glanced to death.

Necrons are far from lacking in personality. I find them hilarious, personally, and their army choices can range from abusive and competitive (NIGHT SCYTHES, SO MANY NIGHT SCYTHES) to troll-tacular and surprisingly effective (Trazyn the Infinite in a Command Barge comes to mind). Also, they're easy to paint, which is a big plus for some people. That added simplicity also means it's really easy to make your necrons look unique, as far as paint jobs go.

Just my experience with the armies. Thought I'd give a different perspective.

They're all pretty shooty. If your only criteria are models that look cool and are shooty, then you're not going to get any narrower of focus here without providing us with more input.

I think im more leaning towards dark eldar, as the models look incredible, so now I guess the next stage of input is how best to run them, to be as competitive as possible.

Venom spam is probably the best but seeing how i have never one against it

Yeah. Venoms with small haywire witch and blaster trueborn squads followed up by several cheap raider warrior squads, followed up by a couple of ravagers. A flier is optional.

The last DE player I played against brought an 1850 list that looked like:

Haemonculus - liquefier, hexrifle
Haemonculus - liquefier, hexrifle

3x trueborn - 2x dark lances, Venom- night shields, 2x splinter cannons
3x trueborn - 2x dark lances, Venom- night shields, 2x splinter cannons

5x warriors- blaster, Venom- night shields, 2x splinter cannons
5x warriors- blaster, Venom- night shields, 2x splinter cannons
5x wracks- liquefier, hexrifle, Raider - night shields, prow ram, torment
5x wracks- liquefier, hexrifle, Raider - night shields, prow ram, torment
7x wyches- VB, 1x hydra, HWG, Raider - night shields, prow ram, torment
7x wyches- VB, 1x hydra, HWG, Raider - night shields, prow ram, torment

Ravager - 3x dark lances, night shields, prow ram
Ravager - 3x dark lances, night shields, prow ram

Razorwing - splinter cannon, FF


Now, I'm under the impression from other DE players that the wracks are unusual, as are the haemonculi, but the basic premise of taking a TON of skimmers and filling them with tiny squads is more or less the way that DE operate.

Tau
-Great shooting
-Weak CC
-Battlesuits
-Mildly challenging to play

. Necrons
-Good shooting
-Decent melee
-Excellent vehicles/flyers
-Pretty easy to play

. Dark Eldar
-Decent shooting
-Strong melee
-Fast, delicate units
-Difficult to play

After playing with and as against I'll add some to the above post too.

Tau - essentially no CC instead of weak CC.
Shooty feel - run and shoot, run away some more and shoot. If you enjoy playing keep away, this is your army but really need to think several moves ahead. Feels very chess like during play.

Necrons -
they have some of the better CC units in the game now, no joke as they are generally fast with jump packs and alot of stuff to cheap combat like MSS.
One of the most survivable units on the table. If you don't like your units dying, necrons are for you. Relatively slow moving gunline if at all. Extremely easy strats that are quite hard to counter point for point by any other codex. Feels good to win and generally a point and click feel.

DE -
very fragile and you tend to trade units to wipe out the other side more than the 2 above. Can build very heavy melee but then suffer from some weaker shooting as a side effect so you tend to specialize a bit more. When playing it, it feels like you are in a race. Burn down the enemy with rapid fire before they mow you down.

 TurtleFlop wrote:
In four years of relatively active play, I have never once seen a Tau player.

Ever.

So I can't speak to their effectiveness or playstyle, other than what I've learned from reading online and hearsay. They're shooty, they're fragile, and they're Japanese space communists.

Dark Eldar I've seen a whole lot of since their 5e update. Like everyone else has said, they tend to play incredibly aggressively, and their models are beautiful (in a horrifying, macabre kind of way). That said, I've seen them break themselves on enemies with a good deal of frequency. I know a guy who runs venomspam backed by Voidraven bombers, and he got shattered most times he went up against terminator-based marine armies. Just couldn't dent them before his transports got glanced to death.

Necrons are far from lacking in personality. I find them hilarious, personally, and their army choices can range from abusive and competitive (NIGHT SCYTHES, SO MANY NIGHT SCYTHES) to troll-tacular and surprisingly effective (Trazyn the Infinite in a Command Barge comes to mind). Also, they're easy to paint, which is a big plus for some people. That added simplicity also means it's really easy to make your necrons look unique, as far as paint jobs go.

Just my experience with the armies. Thought I'd give a different perspective.

There are 4 Tau players in my area, including me. Yet I have never seen Dark Eldar once.

I have even seen Sisters once, and Eldar twice. Its mostly 'Nids, 'Crons, and some flavor of Marines, mostly Knights and Wolves. There is one die hard Ork player, that is my good friend.

Dark Eldar are an agressive force. You cannot sit back with them, you have to engage as soon as possible as you cannot stand up to a protracted fire fight. As an army, you'll have to rely upon your speed and dirty tricks, rather than fight fair.

I've been playing Tau for the past year.
I really enjoy the army because its very tactical and you can decimate the enemy with concentrated fire.
However I accept the negatives of 1) Very old codex, 2) Lack of CC (UGH! So frustrating at times. Not even a single power weapon?), and 3) Lack of choice for units.
I would recommend Tau only if you are really interested in the army (either fluff-wise or tactics-wise). If you don't really like the army to start with, you're going to quickly get bored of it and move on.

Tau = Good firepower but terrible CC. Decent survivability.

DE = Great firepower but no survivability.

Necrons = Decent firepower good survivability.. Limited option but decent CC capability with some unites.

Overall DE or Necron. I would lean to Necrons because they offer the most flexibility in force building... You can buy a good Necron force but when you get tired of the play, you can buy a few different units and have an army that plays differently.

DE are fun - don't get me wrong - I just find that DE always play the same. Hit them hard and keep hitting them. I find with DE you pretty well know who is going to win by the end of turn 2. DE are lethal but susceptible to small arms fire taking down vehicles.

Having played against all three, I'd say go with DE. My friend that runs them runs Venomspam with some Raiders in as Heavy Support. It's a nasty list.

The DE do definitely have a TON of shots and if they get the alpha strike in a game, it can be a rough game for your opponent. I think the models look the best of the three armies that you listed and have been fun to play against.

Well if you want a shooting army that just shoots and doesn't touch melee, and consider yourself a good general/strategist, pick tau.

Used properly, the mop the floor with anything except flyer spam right now.

Tau focus on working together as an army, and applying overwhelming firepower, then pulling back to safety for another round later. Mobile battlesuits with markerlights hitting hard targets, then fire warriors popping out of the woodwork to unleash hell, all the while rail guns peppering the field. Then the battlesuits jump back to safety.

Thank you all for the replies, it was very informative in my decision, today I purchased my self a full dark eldar army, not sure how many points but was pay day and I went a little ott!. Decided with dark eldar as I just love the models and feel of the army, also the challenge it will give me.

Here is what I bought

Dark Eldar Codex

Archon HQ
Lilith HQ ( love the model)
6x venoms
30x Dark eldar warriors
30x Dark eldar wyches
5x incubi
5x scourges ( models look incredible)
1x razerwing fighter
2x ravagers.

Cant wait to build them together and play with them!.

 Freytag93 wrote:
I've been playing Tau for the past year.
I really enjoy the army because its very tactical and you can decimate the enemy with concentrated fire.
However I accept the negatives of 1) Very old codex, 2) Lack of CC (UGH! So frustrating at times. Not even a single power weapon?), and 3) Lack of choice for units.
I would recommend Tau only if you are really interested in the army (either fluff-wise or tactics-wise). If you don't really like the army to start with, you're going to quickly get bored of it and move on.

I agree with Freytags assessment. Having played tau for almost 11 years now (God do I feel old) I can tell you that they do take some getting used to. They're challenging to play, but if you can get used to their unique style they're a lot of fun. They can be pretty potent gameplay wise if you don't mind using one or three Forge World goodies ( in my case Tetras and a XV9 Hazard).

Imo the nicest thing about tau is the high quality long/mid range firepower paired with great accuracy provided by their markerlights. Compared to other armies they play "backwards" as in that they don't have much trouble taking down most high value targets, but can struggle against very one sided builds (flyer spam, extremely numerous horde armies). If your local meta consists of "normal" balanced armies though you will have a good set of tools to work with!

One thing that's often forgotten is that as a "niche" army a lot of people won't have much experience against tau outside of common trueisms like "they don't like CC" and "railguns are dangerous, which is a nice little bonus.


Edit: Ack, too late Well, good luck with your new army, DE aren't as "hardcore mode" 40k as tau but they're still a challenging army to play and it looks like you have a nicely varied bunch of units to start out with.

Thank you.

 Freytag93 wrote:
I've been playing Tau for the past year.
I really enjoy the army because its very tactical and you can decimate the enemy with concentrated fire.
However I accept the negatives of 1) Very old codex, 2) Lack of CC (UGH! So frustrating at times. Not even a single power weapon?), and 3) Lack of choice for units.
I would recommend Tau only if you are really interested in the army (either fluff-wise or tactics-wise). If you don't really like the army to start with, you're going to quickly get bored of it and move on.

Farsight's got a power weapon

Farsight is useless. Don't get me wrong, I love his fluff. Its why I play a "farisght" army. But the actually SC is awful.