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Greetings Dakkites,

I've recently taken an interest in Dark Eldar, I'm thinking about starting an army, but I'm a very competitive person and I wanted to make sure before I started spending that they're still a strong(ish) force. When I say I'm competitive... I mean I like to win, but I'm not TFG. I can lose graciously, I just prefer not to!

My main opponents will be Tyranids and Orks, we generally don't play about 1000pts. Could any kind soul point me in the direction of where to start? I recently had my pants pulled down at a doubles tournament in which a friend and I were playing Tyranids. We found our MCs got shot to s**t instantly by Dark Lances, so I'm looking for some of those, other than that I'm open minded!

As a secondary note... I'll be converting the army heavily. Whilst the vehicles look fine, I can't believe how disgustingly terrible the rest of the DE range is. I mean, it's utterly abominable!

Thanks all!

Well, I haven't seen too many webway lists out there or groundpounding lists. I would say highly, disgustingly mechanized is what you want.
At 750-1kish Something like a Ravager and a few raider squads with dark lances would be a good start. HQ's are something that everyone differs on.
At your point cost, I wouldn't take loads of incubi and an Archon though. Probably haemonculi with destructors or a drachon with 1-2 incubi and a few warriors
would be as 'extravagant' as you could go without sacrificing more numbers and raiders. Wyches are good from what I am told, but I never played them
when I had DE so can't speak to that.

mad matty has a dark eldar army , tempt his from him. ps there naff last time played matty 1500 points and won by 1500 victory points

I'll have to have a proper look through the codex and try and work something out. I like the sound of highly, disgustingly mechanised though... sounds fun!

I think I may need to do some Vassal experimentation.

Phil: I'd plunder Matty's Dark Eldar, but all I'd want are the vehicles, the rest of the range look horrendous!

DE warriors and even the wyches to some degree are really in need of an update. Raiders could use one but they aren't terrible as a chassis.
Those helmets if scaled to life size would be.... just wrong.

I couldn't agree more! I think I'd be using the Eldar Storm Guardians for the majority of the foot sloggers... but I've been looking at the Warhammer Dark Elves and they've got some beautiful figures now, really really nice stuff. I'd probably use Storm Guardians, but with the fantasy Dark Elf Warrior helmeted heads. None of that elongated nonsense!

I bet you could really sex up an army by converting the Warhammer Corsair figures, plus there's some nice figures to use for Archons, with modification of course.

The only thing I'd need to do is try not to get carried away and have Cold One jetbikes, hahah!

Greetings,

The first thing I usually do for new potential DE players is direct them towards the DE Tactica here on Dakka (the link is in my sig). It will give you an excellent overview of DE units and basic tactics and how they work together (or horribly don't).

I fully understand your desire to win concept as I am very much the same way (yeah, the game's fun, but it's always more fun when you're the one horribly murdering your foe). You'll be in good hands with the DE because though they are not a top tier list they are certainly, at very least, in the top of the mid tier lists and can perform very well in competitive tourney play. With the goal of being competitive in mind you should probably angle towards a Kabal build and go mechanized as that will give you the DE's most competitive build in 5th edition.

Ahh great stuff, cheers Thor! I'll giving this tactica a thorough read - exactly what I was after!

I've got the codex now too, so that'll help, just a damn shame it's so... well... old.

at 1k points here is a decent list that i win consistently with:

however you could take off the night shields off those raider squads and the blasters and add in a 2 squads of 3 RJB's with blasters. very potent anti tank


H.Q. 265

Dracon 265
Mounted in a raider
Incubi retinue(5)
Tormentor helm
Punisher
Shadow field

Elites

N/A

Troops 375

Raider squad (5) 125
1 dark lance
Night Shields
1 blaster

Raider squad (5) 125
1 dark lance
Night shields
1 blaster

Raider squad (5) 125
1 dark lance
Night shields
1 blaster

Fast Attack

N/A

Heavy Support 360

Ravager 120
Disintegrators x3

Ravager 120
Disintegrators x3

Ravager 120
Disintegrators x3