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Sorry about this but I though this should go into tactics despite the battle report in the middle of it as I am asking for tactical advice.

Well this Friday I went up against Dark Eldar for the first time. I was using my trusty space wolves. So anyway I was up against this guy in an annihilation dawn of war match. I started with my 5 long fangs, 2 rune priests and 10 grey hunters on the field with lots of terrain about. in reserve I had 5 wolf guard (in terminator armour, thunder hammers and storm shields) and my 15 blood claws (1 power weapon). anyway the battle was a blood bath. By my opponent's end of turn 2 (he went first) I had 3 men left, 3 MEN!!! these consisted of my rune priests (now with one on one wound) and 1 long fang with missile launcher. Luckily all my reserves turned up on my turn 2. The bloodclaws died in the next turn bringing my casualties to 29 in 3 turns whilst his casualties amounted to 2 jetbikes and 3 warriors (I failed counter-charge roll). The game ended on turn seven with me having one model left alive, a lone terminator who with his squad caused more casualties than the rest of the army combined.

So here is my question how is it possible for MEQs to beat them. I mean seriously 7 AP2 weapons. 4 of them were blasts. so yeah how do you beat that type of army?

Well if was Dawn of War deployment you couldn't have your long fangs on the board, and turn 1 is night fighting so unless he rolled 10-12's on all his night fighting checks i don't see how he could beat this so quickly.

As i'm sure you're aware of now he can throw 9 plasma cannons at you, at 3 separate squads no less. I'd like to see his list if you don't mind putting it up.

You didn't have rhinos? Sure, they might die (though to be honest DE aren't all that hot at killing mass-mech as they are at killing 2-3 heavy vehicles), but they're ablative shells around your crunchy marines.

I think it was dawn of war can't remember the right one. was basically all troops allowed (I probably got the scenario name wrong sorry) and no I didn't have rhinos they had 2 transports and a gunship thing and I didn't see a reason to pay for a transport considering they had arrived disembarked on either their turn 2 or turn 3. They had also got 3 lance things that were killing marines on 2+ so not sure how much help a rhino would have been anyway.

Dark Eldar are Super Mean, and while I agree they need a new Codex, the thought of them getting one scares me because of the trend of making transports cheaper, and the Raider Spam being such a powerful tactic already.

Transports are pretty well mandatory in the current gaming environment. Think of it this way, you go first as Space Wolves and start to run up, you move on average 9.5" each time you run and any terrain will slow you to an average of 7" a turn. When you have a Rhino you move 12" and are immune to any shooting without a strength of 5 or more to your vehicles front and sides, you also potentially have the ability to make a vehicle with multiple weapons waste shoots on overkilling a transport. What's even better is the your transports can be made very hard to kill by using the smoke launchers to give them a 4+ cover save.

Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

I'd love to see an actual full battle report on this...

I sense that there would be epic lulz from that.

They are dangerous.

However, we recently played a doubles tournament.
My buddy and me played Eldar facing two brothers with DE.
These guys rolled so bad that we wiped them out during a few rounds. Ouch!

Like many other vehicle based lists if you can down a few raiders early on you stand to win the game. I'd rather face DE than Guard, well built SM, and Eldar.

Well, DE are in trouble if they go second and the enemy has TLOS to the Raiders and Ravagers.
The enemy can eventually pop these paper-thin skimmers with ease.

When DE wasn't vehicle mounted (he was putting them together) the way I beat him was to use bikes turbo boosting and assault squad. He didn't use witches. He's changed his tactics now. I'm not sure how to win vs them now. I just know dismounted warriors with a few support unitts.

I think one of my biggest problems was that none of my heavy weapons hit and living lightning failed to do anything. And from what I have seen so far in these replies (thanks for so many but please don't make fun of me it's the first time I have ever seen Dark Eldar used) I need to use more tanks I guess.

Sorry to ask a basic question but...Were you using the terrain? You mentioned that there was lots of terrain, which should have made getting cover saves very easy, thereby negating his his ap2 weapons. Sounds like it was a smaller point level game, which is great for the DE since they can easily field good cheap units and have a very tough army at 1000ish points.

DE are very fast moving so they can hit part of your army with their entire force. But their army is flying around in cardboard armored transports so even one bad turn of incoming fire for them can be very bad indeed.

Dark eldar are a very sharp army but they tend to be brittle. The first time you face them its easy to not key in on their strengths and weaknesses so think of this game as a learning experience.


Sliggoth

The best weapon you can bring against DE are Bolters, Bolters, and more Bolters. 95% of their army has a 5+ or worse save, and even bolters can pop their open topped AV 10 transports. Then all you have are Wyches (die even easier than guardsmen) or Warriors (guardians with better guns).

unfortunately 4 of the 7 AP2 weapons were blasts and I couldn't get to the cover as fast as them which caused 8 grey hunters to die on turn 1 and the remaining 2 on turn 2 after one on them passed my one and only cover save. as for the bolters I did bring a decent amount. Most of the bolters died in turn one (grey hunters) and then the rest of the grey hunters and my 2 heavy bolter long fangs went down turn 2. I have however bought some more terminators as that is what didn't die within the first few turns and got most of my kills and kill points. I was thinking 3 more hammers and one assault cannon for some heavy fire on deep strike.

As a dark eldar player I will say the following, dawn of war is our best friend. It is the single best mission type available for us as it neutralizes many of our disadvantages and greatly compliments our advantages. Also like 99% of players have don't really know what DE do. Its through no fault of your own though few people play them.


1) It pretty much garruntee's that we get alpha strike against you.
2) you guns can't hit us at range and when combined with nightshields makes it even worse.
3) the DE player can easily focus all of his fire on a small portion of your army.

To defeat them here are are some options
1) reserve everything yourself
2) Heavy bolters ruin DE's day a few attack bikes make mincemeat of raiders
3) concetrate on the ravagers
4) Deep striking
5) Meltas are worthless

Hope this helps

rowan341 wrote:unfortunately 4 of the 7 AP2 weapons were blasts and I couldn't get to the cover as fast as them which caused 8 grey hunters to die on turn 1 and the remaining 2 on turn 2 after one on them passed my one and only cover save.

Were you in or behind cover from the unit firing the small blast markers? If you were, you DO get cover saves. If you didn't start in cover, knowing he was going first, well, now you know better.

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

QFT.

How come no one runs this kind of stuff against me? :(

And I'm REALLY looking forward to all my 12/10/10 open-topped raiders. At least I'll be able to shrug off scatter lasers.

slighty OT where did you hear that raiders are gonna be 12/10/10 that would be just amazing.

dumplingman wrote:slighty OT where did you hear that raiders are gonna be 12/10/10 that would be just amazing.

*sings* I heard it through the grapevine...yea-a-ah....ohhhh, I heard it through the grapevine! Sonny sonny!"

awesome!

Nice thought, but I doubt they'll give them AV12 on anything bar Vect's Trolley o' Doom. Maybe some sort of Holofield-type nonsense, but high AV is not a Eldar of any flavour trait.

Miraclefish wrote:Nice thought, but I doubt they'll give them AV12 on anything bar Vect's Trolley o' Doom. Maybe some sort of Holofield-type nonsense, but high AV is not a Eldar of any flavour trait.

Say what? Wave serpents are 12/12/10 plus they drop weapon damage and reduce melta pen. If the DE get something along these lines along with night shields we could all be in for a world of hurt.

Barring that, leave the transports the same but give everything outflank and grant Dracytes a +1 reserve roll power. Helllllloooooooooo side armor.

rowan341 wrote:So here is my question how is it possible for MEQs to beat them. I mean seriously 7 AP2 weapons. 4 of them were blasts. so yeah how do you beat that type of army?

Only 3 lances and one Ravager? He was playing a soft list.

For Space Marines in general the best tool against DE is probably the Heavy Bolter. Affordable, good range, and multi shot. It's a great tool for ripping apart Raiders. Another solid option is the ever afordable Missile Launcher - good range, high strength. Solid. Razorbacks are another excellent option, as Marines can spam them (especially Space Pups) to a level that shames even the DE Raider spam. Razorbacks with really any of their weapon loadouts are bad news for DE in any particular number. Probably the best tool Wolves have is Long Fang packs (splitting fire to launch 2 missiles each at two different targets) and Living Lightning. The best way to negate the Ravager (the templates) is, as said, stay inside vehicles so he can't drop them on you.

Your worst plans vs. DE are as follows; being outside vehicles, expensive special/heavy weapons (plasma, melta, overkill and more then you need and usually single shot), being outside of vehicles, Terminators (just slow and vulnerable to far too many DE tricks), being outside of vehicles, believing the Space Marine Codex has anything that can outfight DE assault options, being outside of vehicles, believing that Space Wolves are better in h2h then the DE, oh, and probably being outside of vehicles.

The DE are faster then you, and a smart general will mostly be able to pick the fights he wants to pick. Your primary job is to deny him his vehicles (which are where a lot of his speed comes from) and basically try to prevent him from setting the pace of the battle. You do not want to play a reactionary fight versus DE.

Wow this thread really has had a lot of attention (for my standards). Ok so thank you for your help everyone.
@ Thor665: As I mentioned This was my first time having seen DE used and as such didn't know their close combat ability and thus found out the hard way (15 bloodclaws gone in a turn(also I am used to eating eldar for breakfast in close combat and so wasn't sure how dark eldar would respond to me trying). I found that my wolf guard with hammers and shields were the only unit in my army that managed to do anything (they got me all the 3 killpoints I ended with). As for thelongfangs and living lightning both my runepriests had living lightning but both failed to do anything using it and a similar thing happened with my long fangs killing 3 out of 8 or 10 (can't remember which) bikers and failing to touch anything else.
@ don_mondo: I had about half the hunters in cover and the templates scattered from the ones outside cover (not sure how that effects cover so I didn't take saves)
@ dumplingman: unfortunately due to the ammount of terrain on the board I never got a shot at the ravager he had using my long fangs or rune priests as it managed to stay hidden behind a tall building blocking line of sight entirely.
@ Sliggoth: The terrain was almost exclusively games workshop buildings (there were also some useless hulls and sone oversized and pointless trees that didn't really do anything to line of sight. The problem with the terrain was that I couldn't get to the bulk of it as fast as him so he just moved past it and there was no way I'd have got there in time.

Listen to the Dark Eldar god; he types among us....

sorry if I seemed rude there Thor, but I felt like I was being accused of having done something that I had no way of knowing not to do. You have my humble apologies. Thank you for the advice and I will be trying to get my hands on a large number of missile launchers I think as I do not have the money for more tanks at the moment. Another question that springs to mind is who should I put in my only rhino as I have not bothered with them in the past seeing them as mobile cover for my troops if I need it. Another question that springs to mind is who should I put in my only rhino as I have not bothered with them in the past seeing them as mobile cover for my troops if I need it.

Dashofpepper wrote:

Iron_Chaos_Brute wrote:Dismounted MEQs vs. DE is auto-lose.

QFT.

How come no one runs this kind of stuff against me? :(

And I'm REALLY looking forward to all my 12/10/10 open-topped raiders. At least I'll be able to shrug off scatter lasers.

You forgot about Scout USR on all raiders.... I am going to love me some first turn assaults and outflanking!