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So it's time for the first tournament of the yearly series at the local shop. I was sick of bringing Dark Angels, so I thought I'd try out the Dark Eldar. My list was the following:

HQ

Archon - Reaver, Drugs, Tormentor Helm, Punisher, Shadow Field, Plasma Grenades
Dracon - Splinter Pistol, Agonizer, Combat Drugs, Plasma Grenades
5 Incubi - Plasma Grenades (with the Dracon in a Raider)

ELITES

10 Wyches - 2 blasters, wych weapons, plasma grenades, succubus w/ agonizer and terrorfex in a Raider

5 Warp Beasts

TROOPS

3x 12 Warriors w/ 2 Dark Lances each

2x 10 Raiders w/ Splinter Cannon, Shredder, sybarite w/ poisoned blades

FAST ATTACK

5 Reavers - 2 blasters, succubus w/ tormentor helm and punisher

HEAVY SUPPORT

Ravager - 3 disintegrators, Night Shields

TOTAL 1849

All the Raiders also had Night Shields. I had planned on having another Ravager, but it still hadn't showed up in the mail as of the tournament (damn eBay). So with that missing, I had to bulk out my warrior, raider, and wych squads and take a whole bunch of upgrades in order to hit the points. Oh well. On to the games!

GAME 1

Dawn of War - Annihilation

My opponent was the same Eldar player who shelacked me in the first round of the last tournament I played in. So I knew I was in for a tight game. His list was like this:

Eldrad
Avatar
Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent
Guardians in a Falcon
3 Guardian Jetbikes
2x Guardian Squads on foot
5 Dark Reapers
6 Striking Scorpions
Wraithlord

He wins the roll to go first and deploys Eldrad and the Avatar (which now that I look at it, it totally illegal. Balls). I deploy nothing. My wyches get always strike first for their drugs, and the jetbikes get +1S.

TURN 1

He brings everything in, and runs them to firing positions. Striking scorpions join Eldrad, and they go up the middle with the Avatar. He has a Guardian squad and the Dark Reapers to my right, the Wraithlord up the center, and everything else to my left behind a large region of ruins.

On my turn, my jetbikes, Dracon+Incubi, and Wyches all go flat out towards him. The jetbikes head for his Guardians/Dark Reapers on the right and the Dracon retinue and Wyches go up the middle to take advantage of some cover. Ravager and Raider Squads roll in slow to try some shooting. All 3 footslogging warrior squads move on and run into firing positions behind some trees (with just the Dark Lances sticking out). The ravager and raider try some long shots, but nothing is visible due to Night Fighting.

TURN 2

Avatar moves towards my HQ raider, Eldrad and friends move towards the Wyches, and his skimmers settle in behind some ruins. The guardians and Dark Reapers on my right open up on the jetbike squad, but the 'we're going really fast' save leaves only two dead. His falcon immobilizes the Wych raider, and his Wraithlord blows up the Dracon+incubi raider.

In my turn the jetbikes move towards his Dark Reapers and prepare to assault. The Dracon and Incubi run into some ruins to avoid getting shot up, and the Raiders continue advancing up the flank. Warp Beasts run like hell to get towards combat. I then procede to shoot 9 Dark Lances at his two skimmers and.........do absolutely nothing. The jetbikes assault his Dark Reapers, losing one in the process due to intervening difficult terrain. The archon wipes all of them off the map with just his attacks. They consolidate towards the Guardians.

TURN 3

Eldrad fortunes his own unit and dooms my jetbikes and Dracon unit. Eldrad and company move out towards my downed Dracon, the Avatar heads further up the center, and his Guardians head towards my jetbikes. In shooting, he drops 3 Incubi and 2 jetbikes (I made a pile of saves). He again shoots at the Wych raider, but fails to do anything. His avatar fires his melta at one of my Raider squads, and blows their raider to smithereens. 5 warriors die in the ensuing explosion, but manage not to run or pin (that's got to be a first for me).

The remaining Raider makes it up the flank and cowers in some ruins. My Wyches dismount and head towards Eldrad. Warp Beasts head towards his Avatar to keep him from hitting my juicy warrior squads. In shooting, I fire my ravager at Eldrad and land 18 hits, wounding with 15. So I figure I'm in business. But fortune results in only one dying. I then fire six lances at his skimmers, and again do nothing. A couple lance shots fire at the Wraithlord, and do a wound. The few remaining warriors from the crashed raider and the warp beasts charge his avatar. He mows down a few Warriors, and I do one wound with the Beastmaster's agonizer. Fortunately, both units pass morale. The Wyches charge Eldrad and his pals, and do one wound (Fortune is really killing me at this point). In return, I lose 2 Wyches. Ok not bad. I then fail morale, and the subsequent Initiative roll-off. So there go the Wyches. The remaining jetbikes assault his guardian squad, and again the Archon goes to town killing 5. He takes down one bike in return, but then fails morale and I hack him down in a sweeping advance.

TURN 4

He shifts the guardian jetbikes, guardian squad, and Wraithlord towards my Archon and the one remaining jetbike. His skimmers enter the ruins my Raider squad, wych raider, and Dracon are in. In shooting, he blows open my raider squad's raider and 4 die in the explosion. The archon and jetbiker fall in a hail of bullets (if it hadn't been for doom, they might have actually lived). Eldrad and amigos assault my Dracon and rip him and the remaining incubus apart (they were doomed also). In the assault with the avatar, he again kills a few more and I do one wound.

At this point, I start looking for some kill points. So the Ravager moves up and fires on his jetbikes. They fail morale and run off the board. A few lances fire at the Wraithlord but fail to drop it. Raider squad shoots at Guardians and kill one. Again, a pile of lances shoot at his transports but do nothing.

TURN 5

He dismounts the dire avengers, and they light up the remainder of my raider squad. His falcon finally manages to blow up my Wych raider (he'd had some terrible rolling with it in previous turns). In the assault with the Avatar, he cuts down the remainder of my warp beasts, but a lucky poisoned blade shot takes down the Avatar! The remaining 2 warriors head towards the center.

My ravager moves up and fires, but the combination of bad rolling on my part and fortune on his part results in no casualties. Various shooting causes a few casualties, but at this point I'm not looking too hot.

The game ends at this point with me losing 12-6 (I may have missed some specific kills above).

My dark lances were hugely disappointing, and the wyches dying after one combat was a killer. Also, fortune worked out amazingly for him.

So my question for other Dark Eldar player is: how do you win annihilation missions? Just the blowing up of my 4 cardboard transports gave him 4 immediate KP.

I'll write up the other two games as soon as I can.

Been some decent discussion on DE recently...should give you some good ideas on addressing some of the issues you raise. (here and here)

Bottom line on annihilation, you're always at a disadvantage, and you basically have to table the opponent. That, or hope it's also a mechanized army list. Even if it is (mech IG, marine, Eldar, whatever), they still won't have as many KPs as you will, but you'll have a better chance to get a few easy kill points and use your mobility to pick the remaining fights to your advantage.

As for dark lances being underwhelming...that's an issue discussed in the recent threads I alluded to above. I've found myself spamming them mercilessly, as they really only work reliably when taken in overwhelming numbers. I think your best bet is to cut some squads down from full size to afford more, smaller units. More fragile (and even more killpoints), but the only way to get the firepower you need to reliably hurt things with firepower.

I discuss the killpoints issue in my work on the DE Tactica and you can read my thoughts in general there.

In short, Grimaldi has hit the nail on the head. DE suffer in KP missions and that's just the way of it (I also personally think that Eldar are one of our toughest matchups, so that probably didn't help you). Of course DE are *very* good at objective missions, so that does mean on average we have the advantage 66% of the time.

I somewhat disagree with his opinions on Dark Lances. I field about 10-12 (with 10 blasters) and feel I do quite well popping vehicles. I think Grimaldi has discussed fielding 20+ and feeling as though they are maybe just doing their job. Perhaps I just have odd luck (I'm certainly accused of this by my opponents) but I also think I work very hard to limit access to my vehicles and control firing lanes so I can focus fire on what I need to kill - and that is a big issue for DE to be aware of.

For instance - reading your bat rep I saw that a lot of your turns included notes like - fired with DLs on the transports; result of nothing. To my mind the immediate question is - why were you firing on both of them when you hadn't done anything to the first one you fired at? Now, some of this might be the way the board was setup and other reasons that I can't see without seeing the map, but I submit that at the start of your movement phase it's important to ask yourself 'what is my biggest threat that my lances should be dealing with?' Move your lances so they can draw lines of fire to the biggest target, hopefully the secondary target, and (oh so hopefully) also in a way that helps protect them from return fire. In the shooting phase start with the lance that has the least number of viable alternate targets and just start firing on your biggest threat until you get a damage result that gives you what you need (making it so the vehicle can't fire or move is sometimes all you need, but sometimes you just need it dead of course). You shouldn't point a lance at anything else until you have to or until the goal is achieved.

I offered some similar advice to Dashofpepper (possibly in one of those links Grimaldi provided) and he noted that the next time he played his DE the lances did seem a little more effective to him as he understood sometimes all he needed was to get a damage result that prevented them from firing on him next turn.

Just on a general note I also think you did suffer a little bit with some of your chosen battle engagements (Warp Beasts definitely don't want a piece of an Avatar if it can be helped) and, as you noted, a few of your squads aren't really optimized (Agonisers would have really helped your Raider assault squads, and you could have afforded those easily by keeping your two sniper squads at 10 men each. This would have amped your assault possibilities substantially with the Raider squads and wouldn't have changed the functionality of the sniper squads at all.

Also (and again not really seeing the board so I might be talking out of my backside here) but you need to be more cautious if you're going to run a RJB assault squad as beefy as this one (a build I myself have used and loved). The danger with them is they are terribly effective at killing stuff, and terribly vulnerable to being shot. So the trick is to get them to either assault something juicy they can fight for a few rounds, or to have them striking on the edges of the opponent's battle lines where they can butcher units but not be left open to retaliatory fire in the next turn.

Look forward to seeing your writeups for the rest of your battles and hopefully they all go better then this engagement.

Thor665 wrote:
For instance - reading your bat rep I saw that a lot of your turns included notes like - fired with DLs on the transports; result of nothing. To my mind the immediate question is - why were you firing on both of them when you hadn't done anything to the first one you fired at? Now, some of this might be the way the board was setup and other reasons that I can't see without seeing the map, but I submit that at the start of your movement phase it's important to ask yourself 'what is my biggest threat that my lances should be dealing with?'

The problem with this mission was that there was a large area of ruined buildings that was hampering line of sight for my sniper squads. That, and he very quickly destroyed and immobilized two of my raiders. So my fire arcs were quite limited with the dark lances. For the next tournament, I'm definitely planning on getting another Raider, so one of the sniper squads can get mobile. The next batrep should be coming sometime today.

For round 2, the mission was Seize Ground with 3 objectives and pitched battle deployment. My opponent was a Tau dude with the following list (I don't really know the unit names for Tau so I apologize in advance):

2x Commanders in Battlesuits. Both with 2 shield drones, and one was fully kitted out (2+ save, feel no pain, some sort of positional relay)
2x 2 Crisis Suits
3x Rail Gun Suits
6x Stealth Suits
10 Fire Wariors (on foot)
6 Pathfinders (all markerlights) in transport
2x 6 Fire Warriors in transport
Rail gun tank

He was playing what he called "ninja Tau." His commander had a piece of wargear that let him select which unit came in from reserves on a 2+, but that would be the only unit to enter that turn. So his plan was to hold everything off until turn 4 or 5, and then fly everything onto the objectives. He won the roll, and had me go first.

The board had a large building in my deployment zone, and a ruined church in his deployment zone with debris and woods scattered elsewhere. The objectives went in the building in my zone, the church in his zone, and one in the middle closer to my building.

I deployed two warrior squads in my building, one behind some trees to fire towards his objective, the wyches on one flank, HQ on the other, jetbikes up the middle, and warp beasts on my left flank. The ravager is dead center to make dead Tau. He deploys pathfinders and fire warriors on my left, 3 rail gun suits in some ruins in the center, and his commander near the church. Everything else stays in reserve.

TURN 1

I blast everything forwards flat out. Wyches make it to his objective, HQ is on another objective, jetbikes are right in his face, and warp beasts head towards the pahtfinders. Shooting knocks a gun drone off of one of his rail gun suits. My ravager kills a pile of fire warriors, but they don't flee.

In his turn he drops the wych raider, but they manage not to die or pin in the crash (amazing!). His rail gun suits fire everything they've got into the jetbikes, but only kill one (man, I love that 3+ cover save). The pathfinders marker light my warp beasts and they get shot up by fire warriors and flee. His commander with the rail gun blows up my HQ raider, I lose 3 Incubi, and they flee.

TURN 2

I roll for my reserves, and of course both raider squads come in. I was hoping for them to wait off a bit. They both go flat out, one onto the objective in the center and the other towards the objective in his deployment zone. Wyches head towards his commander with the spiffy wargear. Jetbikes jump behind his rail gun suits so they don't have to assault through cover. Warp beasts rally and consolidate into some ruins. HQ keeps fleeing. The ravager floats up for better firing lanes. In shooting, I completely wipe out the rest of his warriors with my ravager. Dark lances actually don't have anything to shoot at, because he's got so little on the board at this point. In assault, my jetbikes assault his 3 rail guns suits. I deal a mountain of wounds and completely wipe them out. A kitted out Archon is basically unstoppable in CC. They consolidate to his table edge to force his deployment of reserves, since there's really nothing else for them to assault. The wyches assault his commander and wipe out both shield drones. He does nothing in return, but passes morale.

Using his commander's wargear, he brings in the rail gun tank from reserves. It instantly obliterates my ravager. His pathfinders markerlight my warp beasts again for fun, since there's nothing in range to shoot at them. In the continuing assault with the Wyches, I do one wound and so does he. Tying combat will become a pattern here.

TURN 3

HQ rallies and cowers behind a hill (oh the mighty Dracon). One raider makes it to his objective and the warp beasts head towards his pathfinders. Jetbikes move towards the other combat and just wait for something to hurt. Dark lance firing stuns his tank. In assault, my warp beasts reach his pathfinders due to some good fleet of foot and difficult terrain rolls. They wipe out the pathfinders and consolidate towards the center of the board. Wyches do a wound to his commander and he does one in return, another tie. Him having a 2+ save and feel no pain is making it exceedingly difficult to deal wounds.

His commander brings in the stealth suits. They deep strike between my jetbikes and wyches. Their shooting is quite successful and kills 3 jetbikes and puts a wound on my Archon. The wych combat continues with another tie.

TURN 4

My HQ and warp beasts get into good positions to assault whatever comes on the board. Every dark lance in my army fires at his tank, and I get one penetrating hit. Wow. Well at least it was a weapon destroyed, so the rail gun is gone. I try to fire at his stealth suits, but I unfortunately can't see them due to their stealth armor. My jetbikes assault his stealth suits and kill 5. Unfortunately, I roll terribly for saves and he kills my archon and remaining jetbike. In the wych assault, we get another tie.

He opts not to use his commander's wargear, and everything but one transport enters play. The pathfinders' empty transport and one full of warriors head toward the center objective. His crisis suits and other commander all deep strike next to my objective in the building. Shooting knocks down 5 warriors on my objective. Wyches again draw combat.

TURN 5

Warp beasts and HQ head back towards the center objective for when his transport hopefully pops. My warriors shoot everything they've got into his crisis suits, but only manage to drop one. Wyches again tie combat (feel no pain is killing me).

He gets his last squad of warriors from reserves, and their transport moves to contest his objective in the church. He moves in his crisis suits and again fires at my warriors. One squad is fully wiped out and the other takes a casualty. He shoots at my HQ and knocks down another Incubus. Combined shooting blows up my raider on the objective, and 5 warriors survive the crash. The wych succubus is finally on point and kills his commander.

TURN 6

I move the other warrior squad in the building onto my objective. Wyches head towards his transport, hoping that it will pop open. My warriors shoot everything into his crisis suits, but leave one alive. Dark lances are finally worth their salt and pop his transport near my wyches. Wyches proceed to charge his exposed fire warriors and kill them all. They consolidate back towards the objective (this ends up being crucial). My HQ and warp beasts assault his transport on the center objective in a desperate bid to pop it open. It doesn't work.

He unloads his fire warriors in the center and opens up on my HQ, killing the Dracon and the last incubus. His tank moves to contest his objective in the church. Unfortunately, the way I positioned my wyches allows him to contest it by 1/4" His remaining crisis suit contests my other objective.

The game ends here due to time. He wins 1-0.

Well I blew that game for myself with my wyches' consolidation. If I had kept them 1" further out, they would have prevented him from contesting an objective leading to a draw. Other than that, the Dracon+Incubi were again disappointing and dark lances continue to upset me. Also, I figured the Wyches would kill his commander a lot quicker than they did. The succubus with the agonzier kept rolling terribly, while the rest of the squad would do a ton of wounds which were negated by his save+feel no pain. All in all, it was a very close and enjoyable game that really could have gone either way. And it was my first time playing Tau, so it was interesting to see them in action (their shooting is unbelievable!).

Greetings! A few notes for you:

1. Thor665 is actually a Dark Eldar god, manifested into electronic bytes and presented here on dakkadakka to bring pain and destruction to all lesser races. Read his tactica, read his forums posts, and when he deigns to critique or advise you directly, bookmark it and pay attention. In all seriousness though, he's my choice when I'm mulling over my Dark Eldar and want input from somewhere.

2. I am a whiz at mechanized orks. I am new at Dark Eldar. Therefore, don't take the following thoughts on your game and strategy as godly advice and mandates - only Thor665 gets that status.

3. You said that you beefed up your raiders with night shields, and then noted you had to bulk out squads to hit the points level. I hope that means that you're going to unbulk them and remove nightshields when you have more models? I'd rather have a bunch of extra dark lances than almost doubling the cost of my vehicles to make people need an extra 6" to shoot at them.

4. I've found Dark Lances to be........odd is perhaps the word I need. In my friendly games at home, they've performed terribly. In their first tournament (and only been one so far), I exploded a land raider with my first lance shot. They're strange.

5. I've definitely come to grips with settling for shaken/stunned. I need to neutralize as much of the enemy firepower as possible every turn. If I can get a shaken/stunned with a lance shot, its out of the game until the next turn and I can focus the rest of my firepower elsewhere to try minimizing threats.

6. When you're playing in ruined cityscape, or with plenty of ruins about....I'm a big fan of dropping my mini-sniper squads into cover or in a building so that they can dark lance at will while their empty transports zoom around dropping more dark lances.

7. Having run into Eldrad and his warlock host, I'm *very* wary of assaulting this unit because of all the re-rollable invulnerable saves. I found success in volume of firepower here.

8. I might be reading it wrong, but I find it interesting that you had night-shields across your vehicles but didn't stay at range to snipe?

To answer your question about winning annihilation missions: My 1850 list has 26 killpoints. I think you win annihilation missions by castrating your opponent's ability to do damage to you. In every game I play, I want to know where my opponent's missile launchers, lascannons, railguns, multi-meltas, meltas, fusion blasters....hell, even Autocannons are. I want to know how many there are, and where they are. Then I spend the first couple of turns trying to kill that stuff. I actually do the same with my mechanized orks since the vehicles are so weak. Even in an objective based game, I don't care what troops choices my opponent has, or how fearsome his HQ is off the bat, I want to know where the anti-tank is so that I can neutralize it.

Against that army list, I would have done the 36" shuffle - ravager dumping templates into the 48" reapers since those (especially with an Exarch) are a real threat. Presuming the wraith lord has missile launcher / scatter laser or something, I'd throw my reaver jetbikes at him with blasters. I took a lesson from Thor665 or Clthomps here and I use squads of 3 RJBs only, with two blasters per squad of three. The first couple of turns would have been a long distance attempt to neutralize lances on his falcon/serpent if he has them and his dark reapers.

Dashofpepper wrote:Thor665 is actually a Dark Eldar god, manifested into electronic bytes and presented here on dakkadakka to bring pain and destruction to all lesser races. Read his tactica, read his forums posts, and when he deigns to critique or advise you directly, bookmark it and pay attention.

I am so going to sig this.

Looking forward to reading the last segment of the report. Tough luck in that game vs. Tau. Looks like you had it sewn up and then he was able to contest.

- Blackbone

Dashofpepper wrote:
3. You said that you beefed up your raiders with night shields, and then noted you had to bulk out squads to hit the points level. I hope that means that you're going to unbulk them and remove nightshields when you have more models? I'd rather have a bunch of extra dark lances than almost doubling the cost of my vehicles to make people need an extra 6" to shoot at them.

Definitely. Once the ravager arrives, the raider and wych squads go down to 8 bodies and the sniper squads go down to 10.

Dashofpepper wrote:
4. I've found Dark Lances to be........odd is perhaps the word I need. In my friendly games at home, they've performed terribly. In their first tournament (and only been one so far), I exploded a land raider with my first lance shot. They're strange.

It was the exact opposite for me. In friendly games, they slay. Here, they were worthless.

Dashofpepper wrote:
6. When you're playing in ruined cityscape, or with plenty of ruins about....I'm a big fan of dropping my mini-sniper squads into cover or in a building so that they can dark lance at will while their empty transports zoom around dropping more dark lances.

I'll have to consider this. As it was, any downed transport essentially gave the opponent 2 KP (1 for the transport and 1 for the squad that would presumably blow up with it).

Dashofpepper wrote:
7. Having run into Eldrad and his warlock host, I'm *very* wary of assaulting this unit because of all the re-rollable invulnerable saves. I found success in volume of firepower here.

I hit them with 18 disintegrator wounds, and 27 attacks in CC, and only killed 2 of them. Eldrad is nuts.

Dashofpepper wrote:
8. I might be reading it wrong, but I find it interesting that you had night-shields across your vehicles but didn't stay at range to snipe?

Unfortunately, I was outranged in both of the first two games. Eldar weapons and Tau rail guns were both out-gunning me.

Dashofpepper wrote:
To answer your question about winning annihilation missions: My 1850 list has 26 killpoints. I think you win annihilation missions by castrating your opponent's ability to do damage to you. In every game I play, I want to know where my opponent's missile launchers, lascannons, railguns, multi-meltas, meltas, fusion blasters....hell, even Autocannons are. I want to know how many there are, and where they are. Then I spend the first couple of turns trying to kill that stuff. I actually do the same with my mechanized orks since the vehicles are so weak. Even in an objective based game, I don't care what troops choices my opponent has, or how fearsome his HQ is off the bat, I want to know where the anti-tank is so that I can neutralize it.

Good perspective. I tend to ignore anti-tank since raiders are so weak to begin, and just run after troops. In KP games, I've definitely got to focus on anti-tank first, then mop up troops at the end.

Dashofpepper wrote:
I took a lesson from Thor665 or Clthomps here and I use squads of 3 RJBs only, with two blasters per squad of three. The first couple of turns would have been a long distance attempt to neutralize lances on his falcon/serpent if he has them and his dark reapers.

I think I'll drop back to 3 bikes. Having 5 with the succubus is just so expensive, and the archon is doing most of the damage anyway. Maybe I'll try running the archon up with 3 bikes, then break off to assault while the squad shoots blasters.

Thanks to both of you for the advice!

afireinside13t wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:
3. You said that you beefed up your raiders with night shields, and then noted you had to bulk out squads to hit the points level. I hope that means that you're going to unbulk them and remove nightshields when you have more models? I'd rather have a bunch of extra dark lances than almost doubling the cost of my vehicles to make people need an extra 6" to shoot at them.

Definitely. Once the ravager arrives, the raider and wych squads go down to 8 bodies and the sniper squads go down to 10.

As far as this goes I would say you really have to ask what the purpose of the Raider squads are. If you want them to just be gun platforms then why do you feel 8 is better then 5-6? Five is all you need to get the S.Cannon and blaster/shredder which is really what the squad uses to kill things, and statistically 6 is the most useful to help minimize the danger of preventing rallying the unit. Eight is just 2-3 additional lasrifles (whoop-de-doo) at a cost of over 20 points. 20 points can buy you a lot. On the flip side, since you had Sybarites with poisoned blades in the squads there appears to be a certain assault element you're hoping to exploit with the Raider squads (and they can be surprisingly decent at assault). However, if you want to assault it really does help in my opinion to have the extra bodies to absorb damage from exploding transports and to serve as ablative wounds to help protect your Sybarite who is the real damage inflicting tool.

Also, in considering your list and potential places to save/apply points (which, by the way, when I totaled it up came to 1833 - which is possibly just some random wargear you forgot to note) you could really be helped in dropping the nightshields to afford the Ravager as you discussed and, I think you could really be served (if you have the models) by adding a second Wych Raider. Just drop the one squad to 8 and when you trim down the bikes and drop their Succubus all you'd need to do is drop the Warp Beasts to afford another Raider with a 8 Wych squad inside of it - which will give you more battlefield options then Warp Beasts and also provide you an additional lance. The addition of another h2h threat Raider will also alleviate some of the fire focus you are receiving on your Dracon's Raider and keeps you from having all your Wyches in a single basket as well. Remember, the true goal is to swamp your opponent with a surplus of targets he wishes to have removed - 2 Wych Raiders, an Incubi Raider, and an Archon led RJB squad is a lot of high priority targets that your opponent knows will either need to be dealt with on Turn 1 or he is pretty much getting assaulted turn 2.

Thor665 wrote:
As far as this goes I would say you really have to ask what the purpose of the Raider squads are. If you want them to just be gun platforms then why do you feel 8 is better then 5-6? Five is all you need to get the S.Cannon and blaster/shredder which is really what the squad uses to kill things, and statistically 6 is the most useful to help minimize the danger of preventing rallying the unit. Eight is just 2-3 additional lasrifles (whoop-de-doo) at a cost of over 20 points. 20 points can buy you a lot. On the flip side, since you had Sybarites with poisoned blades in the squads there appears to be a certain assault element you're hoping to exploit with the Raider squads (and they can be surprisingly decent at assault). However, if you want to assault it really does help in my opinion to have the extra bodies to absorb damage from exploding transports and to serve as ablative wounds to help protect your Sybarite who is the real damage inflicting tool.

I like the extra bodies in the Raider squads for when their ride crashes. Having more than 5 gives them at least a little bit of survivability. Also, as you mentioned I like having a bit of assault ability with the gunboats. It's been helpful for when they end up on foot and don't want to be stuck in the open. I've found with their I5 that they can land a good number of wounds before the opponent strikes (especially against other troop units). I'll have to play around with this though.

Thor665 wrote:
Also, in considering your list and potential places to save/apply points (which, by the way, when I totaled it up came to 1833 - which is possibly just some random wargear you forgot to note) you could really be helped in dropping the nightshields to afford the Ravager as you discussed and, I think you could really be served (if you have the models) by adding a second Wych Raider. Just drop the one squad to 8 and when you trim down the bikes and drop their Succubus all you'd need to do is drop the Warp Beasts to afford another Raider with a 8 Wych squad inside of it - which will give you more battlefield options then Warp Beasts and also provide you an additional lance. The addition of another h2h threat Raider will also alleviate some of the fire focus you are receiving on your Dracon's Raider and keeps you from having all your Wyches in a single basket as well. Remember, the true goal is to swamp your opponent with a surplus of targets he wishes to have removed - 2 Wych Raiders, an Incubi Raider, and an Archon led RJB squad is a lot of high priority targets that your opponent knows will either need to be dealt with on Turn 1 or he is pretty much getting assaulted turn 2.

Yeah there was some random wargear kicking around to get it to 1850. I would love to have another wych raider, but I can't afford it right at the moment. I've painted pretty much the entire army in the past month, and I still have 2 ravagers and 24 warriors to do. If I get another squad with a trasnport, I think my girlfriend would kill me

Once again, thanks for all the advice.

I always just tell any potential girlfriends, "woman, daddy needs his plastic crack!" I then scream 'Waaagh' until she stops arguing.

On an unrelated note; I haven't had a lot of second dates recently now that I think about it.

Thor665 wrote:I always just tell any potential girlfriends, "woman, daddy needs his plastic crack!" I then scream 'Waaagh' until she stops arguing.

On an unrelated note; I haven't had a lot of second dates recently now that I think about it.

Then you should definitely save discussions about plastic crack for the second date. Also, why are you screaming Waaaugh! Mr. Dark Eldar?

You can either tell her that your "assets" are short, stubby, only good on the first thrust (orks) or....that you have a permanent 36" range with a very agile "raider"

Dashofpepper wrote:Then you should definitely save discussions about plastic crack for the second date. Also, why are you screaming Waaaugh! Mr. Dark Eldar?

I would think that's obvious; because when I try to scream "Fear not the darkness, fear that which it hides!" I have to take enough breaths that they can start interjecting easier.

Well anyhow, here's game 3!

The mission was seize ground with 5 objectives and spearhead deployment. My opponent was a dude with Necrons. Here's his list:

Lord w/ Res Orb
Lord w/ Res Orb, Destroyer Body, and 5 Scarabs
3x 10 Warriors
10 Immortals
5 Pariahs
10 Flayed Ones
Destroyer
Monolith

Coming in, we were both fairly discouraged. I had just lost because of a tactical blunder, and he had been phased out. So we both made a few mistakes.

The board consisted of a building in each deployment zone, with large rock formations elsewhere on the board. These made for some nice line of sight blockers. We decided to place the first objective dead center on the board, which happened to put it next to a large rock. Each of us then put an objective in our buildings, and the other two went around a rock structure near the edge of his deployment zone.

I finally won a roll and went first. I deployed two warrior squads in my building, one warrior squad on the flank towards him, and kept my raider squads in reserve. The wyches, Dracon+Incubi, and jetbikes all deployed as far forward as they could. Warp beasts and ravager also went as far to my flank as they could.

He deployed his monolith right up the center with the destroyer lord next to it. Everything else hid behind the monolith. He kept a squad of warriors, the immortals, and the flayed ones in reserve.

TURN 1

Warrior squads move to get into good firing positions. Wyches, HQ, and jetbikes all go blasting forward towards the rocks with two objectives in them. Warp beasts run like hell to try to outflank him. Ravager floats up 6" and toasts 5 warriors.

His warriors inevitably stand back up and he proceeds to shoot about the entire army at my jetbikes. Between the cover save and the archon's shadow field, I only lose three (not bad all considered). I really should have kept these guys more in cover, but at this point I was thirsty for blood. He then assaults my remaining jetbikes with his destroyer lord and 5 scarabs. In the assault he kills 2 more bikes and I take out two bases of scarabs.

TURN 2

Wych and HQ raiders pop over the rock formation and land next to his pile of Necrons, and everyone dismounts. Warp beasts continue to run like crazy people. Ravager fires at more warriors and flattens another five or so. I assault a squad of warriors with my wyches, and pariahs with my HQ (in retrospect, I should have done this the other way around). The Dracon, by himself, wipes out the whole squad of Pariahs and I consolidate towards his warrior squads. The wyches kill 4 Warriors and lose none in return, but he manages to hold on.

His reserved warrior squad enters through the monolith. He moves the warrior squad with the lord onto the objective in the building. His monolith moves up to completely block my ravager's line of sight. In shooting, he immobilizes my ravager, leaving it stuck behind his monolith. Great. He then blows up an empty raider with his destroyer. The rest of his army then shoots at my Dracon + Incubi, and kills all but one Incubus (I have got to be more careful with these guys). In the CC between my archon and his destroyer lord, I again kill two bases of scarabs and he does a wound to my archon. The wyches continue to hack down warriors, but they keep standing back up.

TURN 3

Both of my raider squads show up. I float them up 6" on my right flank to try to get some shooting in on his warrior squads. My wych raider hops over the rocks again and shoots at his destroyer, killing it. The ravager can't see anything and so just hangs out. Various shooting kills some warriors. My last remaining Incubus and the warp beasts (a couple have died from shooting) assault his warrior squad with the lord. I do a few wounds, and lose a warp beast in return. Wyches continue to stomp on warrriors, and take down a few more. My archon kills another base and a half of scarabs, but takes a wound in return (the shadow field fails).

His immortals and flayed ones show up. Immortals walk in near my wyches, and the flayed ones outflank on the side with his objective. He pulls the warriors out of the combat with my wyches, and the immortals then vaporize all of them. His flayed ones run towards combat. Shooting stuns one of my raider squads. My incubus knocks down a couple more warriors, and I lose two more warp beasts in return. His destroyer lord finally kills my shadow field-less archon and consolidates towards the pile.

TURN 4

The mobile raider squad flies to the center objective, and a footslogging squad of warriors runs up to help. My ravager can see his destroyer lord and scarabs, and kills a few scarabs. Lance shots take down a few immortals. In combat, it's another draw with the incubi and warp beasts.

His flayed ones move towards combat, and the immortals move forwards to see more. His monolith fires a ton, but fails to hurt any of my vehicles (I really should have kept them out of range). It does manage to kill a few warriors though. His flayed ones charge in, and make short work of my remaining incubus and warp beasts.

TURN 5

At this point, I have two full warrior squads on one objective and a raider and warrior squad on another, while he only holds one objective. So I fly my empty wych raider to contest his objective, and my raider squads float around to try to stay out of harm's way. Everything else shoots at warriors, and I drop a couple.

He boosts his destroyer lord towards my objective, and everything else shoots at the wych raider. It goes kaboom.

I roll for end of game, and we stop here.

So I ended up winning 2-1.

I made some mistakes with my assaults, and was foolish about keeping my vehicles too close to his monolith (the immobilized ravager couldn't see anything for most of the game).

So I finished the tournament with 1 win and 2 losses (I really should have drawn the second game). With painting, comp, and sportmanship factored in I ended up 12th out of 20. Not bad for my first tourney with Dark Eldar. Next time around, I'll have another ravager and hopefully another raider for one of squads of footsloggers. So that should really help. And everything should be painted by then, so I won't lose points there (2 ravagers and 24 warriors to go!).