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Feel free to skip to the bottom and just read the third mission the first two don't have pictures and are basic dark eldar strategy.

So here is the list I fielded:

2500 Pts - Dark Eldar Roster - Dark Eldar 2500, Kabal

1 Asdrubael Vect @ 277 pts ((CE, pg. 36); Independent Character; Unit Type: Vehicle (Skimmer, Fast, Open-topped); Close Combat; Dais of Destruction; Energy Field; Firepower; Dark Lance; Disintegrator x2; Splinter Pistol x3)

1 Dracon @ 307 pts (Agoniser; Splinter Pistol; Combat Drug Dispenser; Shadow Field; Webway Portal)
. . 1 Retinue
. . . . 2 Warriors (Splinter Rifle x2)
. . . . 3 Incubi (Tormentor Helm; Punisher x3)
. . . . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Wyches @ 196 pts ((CE, pg. 9); Unit Type: Infantry; Close Combat Weapon; Fleet; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Blaster x2; Combat Drugs; Dodge)
. . 1 Succubus (Agoniser; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Crucible of Malediction )
. . 1 Raider ((CE, pg. 10); Unit Type: Vehicle (Skimmer, Fast, Open-topped); Transport Capacity: 10 models; Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Wyches @ 182 pts ((CE, pg. 9); Unit Type: Infantry; Close Combat Weapon; Fleet; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Blaster x2; Combat Drugs; Dodge; Plasma Grenades)
. . 1 Succubus (Agoniser; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Plasma Grenades (Squad))
. . 1 Raider ((CE, pg. 10); Unit Type: Vehicle (Skimmer, Fast, Open-topped); Transport Capacity: 10 models; Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Wyches @ 182 pts ((CE, pg. 9); Unit Type: Infantry; Close Combat Weapon; Fleet; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Blaster x2; Combat Drugs; Dodge; Plasma Grenades)
. . 1 Succubus (Agoniser; Splinter Pistol; Wych Weapons; Plasma Grenades (Squad))
. . 1 Raider ((CE, pg. 10); Unit Type: Vehicle (Skimmer, Fast, Open-topped); Transport Capacity: 10 models; Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Raider Squad @ 115 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x3; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Raider Squad @ 115 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x3; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Raider Squad @ 115 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x3; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Raider Squad @ 115 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x3; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

5 Raider Squad @ 115 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x3; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1; Horrorfex)

4 Raider Squad @ 136 pts (Blaster; Splinter Rifle x2; Dark Lance)
. . 1 Sybarite (Close Combat Weapon; Nightmare Doll)
. . 1 Raider (Dark Lance x1)

3 Reaver Jetbike Squad @ 95 pts (Splinter Pistol; Blaster x2; Splinter Rifle x1; Combat Drugs; Reaver Jetbike)

3 Reaver Jetbike Squad @ 95 pts (Splinter Pistol; Blaster x2; Splinter Rifle x1; Combat Drugs; Reaver Jetbike)

3 Reaver Jetbike Squad @ 95 pts (Splinter Pistol; Blaster x2; Splinter Rifle x1; Combat Drugs; Reaver Jetbike)

1 Ravager @ 120 pts (Disintegrator x3)

1 Ravager @ 120 pts (Disintegrator x3)

1 Ravager @ 120 pts (Disintegrator x3)

Total Roster Cost: 2500


A mostly orthodox list with a couple meta choices thrown in for good measure.



Round 1 Vs Chaos Space Marines

Off the top of my head he ran.

2 Land raiders
2 Vindicators
4 Rhinos
5 Terms
5 Chosen terms with abadon
9 Thousand suns
9 Thousand suns
10 Zerkers
10 Zerkers


we start by placing objectives I chose to go first and so I placed my 3 as close to my corner as possible, he placed hit two just out of my deployment on the long table edge.

I then deploy two empty raiders sideways on the line, vect in between them and all of the raiders, ravagers and jetbikes behind them. 2 sniper squads sit on objectives placed on hills.

He deploys his land raider and vindicators next to each other in an alternating pattern, oXoX then places the rhinos behind them blocking LoS.




MY Turn 1: He fails to steal the initiative. I move the empty, dracon, and the wyche raiders 12" toward his long table edge, the jetbike then turbo 24" in the same direction and spread out to deny movement to the objective.

All of the other boats shift 6" or stay still.

I then blow up one raider, immobilize 1 vindicator, and stun the other land raider and vind, after that 11 plasma cannons rip through the terms that had to disembark.

His Turn 1: since he cannot move through the immobile and stunned units he is forced to waste movement driving around with his four rhinos, they pop smoke as well as the stunned land raider.

His vindicator blows up two raiders and warriors spill out killing a few.

My turn 2: a unit of wyches disembarks while the other boats continue to make a wall blocking off all the objectives. Shooting whiffs terribly and I end up with a immobile result on the vind and not much else, the wyches assault abadon and draw combat.

His turn 2: he moves this rhinos some more and disembarks the thousand sons, they let lose and kill a raider each, the wyches die in combat freeing abadon who runs for cover.

My turn 3, Last turn due to time: I further fortify my wall of raiders with the jetbikes, cripple the remaining land raider, and one vind, wipe out both thousand sun units with plasma cannons, and pass the turn knowing its impossible to get through the wall of raiders.

His turn 3: He assaults the bikes since they are the first line in the wall, I remove them without rolling for time sake, he shoots up some raiders to get VPs for the last round, and the game ends.


Result of round 1: Major Victory +1 bonus point












Round 2:

My opponent was playing:
4 drop podsm
2 Ironclad
2 10 X Tac meltas
2 razorback, TL las
2 Land raiders
2 10 x tac, lascannon, melta
5 terms, 3xSS hammer, 2 x lighting claws
5 terms, 3xSS hammer, 2 x lighting claws



Setup, He wins so he deploys the land raiders and razorbacks, he combat squads so the lascannons take up the best terrain and the meltas ride in the backs.

I do the same deployment as 1 except I spread my bikes out to fill all the space behind my raiders making it risky to drop his pods there.


His Turn 1: He drops the ironclads infront of my raider wall one scatters back a bit the other is a hit, he then moves the land raiders and the razorbacks.

His shooting is really good. he flamers and meltas the empty raider killing it and 2 raiders behind it, 1 warror squad and 1 wyche squad take a few casualties. he then meltas another boat with the other ironclad, and cripples a few more with the rest of the tanks. All but one warrior squad makes their pinning tests!

My turn 1: So I move 2 squads of bikes 12" to the side of the land raider, the other squad moves close the Iron clads, the rest of the raiders shuffle a bit or stay still.

Here's were it gets painful, since he dropped so close all of my blasters have range. So I unleash roughly 30 Lances. The Ironclads eat it first, 1 land raider goes boom, as does a the tracks and a weapon off the other, 1 pod is destroyed the other lost a weapon, and one razor back gets stunned.

After that I unleash 11 plasma cannons on the 5 man terms, and one lascannon squad.... they get vaporized.

His turn 2: He gets one pod from reserve, and lands it behind my boats, rapid fire and melta take out two more raiders, vulkan and his terms get out of the other land raider and split to kill 2 units of bikes. His razorback immobilizes another raider.

My turn 2: I shuffle around a bit with the little that can move, I kill all but two marines from the drop pod with plasma cannons, kill all but one marine that is left in the bunker then assault him with the 12" wyches that have no boat, assault vulkan with my dracon, and the terms with my wyches (after blastering them down to 3 guys).

His turn 3 Last turn: his drop pod arrives in the table corner ocupied by one warrior raider boat and he unloads in combat squads, shoots the raider with the melta and it explodes killing 1 warrior. He then rapid fires and I go to ground leaving one warrior standing (huzzah!), his multi metla immobilizes vect, and the rest of the shooting leaves me with one mobile raider. Vulkan dies and the wyches flee from a single wound!

My turn 3: I move the mobile ravagers in sight of the drop pod squads, I load the one mobile raider with warriors and jet 12" into his table corner, I then run and fleet another sqaud into his table corner too giving us both 2 troops, 6 plasma cannons finish off the drop pod troops leaving me in control of that corner with a single warrior! I then unload into the terms, pods, and razorbacks for more VPs.



Round 2 Results: Major victory with +3 bonus points!














NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT!!!!


Round 3: I am # 3 in battle points so I get sent table two, lucky I get paired against the nicest player ever, His name is Giovanni, and he is always a blast to play!

He is playing nids and not doing to shabby, I don't remember the list since it really didn't matter, all I remember is he had around 18 KP and I had 60+ KP.

He chooses sides and holds everything in reserve, pods, outflankers and what not, I then tell him that I am holding the dracon in reserve and all of the other units are held for the Web way portal.


His turn 1: Pass
My turn1: Pass
His turn 2: 80% of his units show up and he scatters them around the board
my turn 2: Reserve failed, Pass
His turn 3: The rest of his units show up and spread out in terrain.
My turn 3: Reserve failed! (now I am getting worried)
His turn 4: H moves his zoans towards the middle with the flying tyrant and swarm lord ready to eat anything that comes his way.
My turn 4: Now if I roll a 1 I lose the game! I am sweating it out and toss a die high in the air.... It falls on the ground... So much for showmanship! I roll normally and get a 3! WooT!! I then choose a far corner to hide in with my raider.
His turn 5: His zoans open fire on my raider wrecking it! Spilling the creamy center onto the board behind the flaming hulk. Everything else loses LoS and cries a bit.
My turn 5: I deploy the webway!


Sorry I only had my cell, because honestly I didn't think it was going to work!

His turn 6: He blast the crap out the the retinue, leaving 1 incubi alive, but can't crack my 2+ invuln.

My turn 6: 2200+ points of dark eldar burst forth from the portal surrounding everything within 12 inches, In a flash of light all bugs withing 48 inches of the portal disappear!

Results: My 7 KP to his 3. Total Game Time: 15minutes including setup!! I think that has to be close to a record for a 2500pt game with 6 complete rounds

Major Victory with +4 bonus points!






So in the end I take second place and secure my place in the semi-finals! (now I just hope they make better scenarios... I am pretty sure that trick is only going to work once )

Did you get a photo of all that DE on the table at once or just the pre-portal shot?

Good work and good luck at semis.

Wow,and good luck.

That was definitely a very interesting way to deal with the perils of Scenario 3. I'm glad it worked out for you. Good way to drop the Raider to deny LoS too - the wrecked result was a godsend I suspect.

I did only get a shot of the portal, we finished so quickly people were not done setting up, so I played Geo a few lower point games since that game really was not much fun.


If you want to see the army just check out my gallery, I pretty much played everything on the table except the talos and the 200 warriors (only used 30).



@ Thor, I was really lucky on that, had that not happened I would have had to go to ground in the crater and hope my 3+ cover and 2+ invuln saved me..

I think the real luck was missing reserves for 2 rounds and making the 4th round one.

It was also lucky I was playing tyranids, if I got paired against a mech army I would have gotten rolled.

Holy sh*t! You mean to tell me on mission three, none of your 12+ units came in until turn 4 (and only 1 at that)?!? You failed that many reserve rolls?!?

No Dark Eldar designated to the web way can only come on through it, so until the lord dropped the portal on turn 5 I didn't have to roll for the 15 units still left in reserve.

If the model with the portal dies before he can drop it all unit in the portal die. So it was a really ballsy move.


I did however fail the Dracons reserve roll twice, which worked out rather well.

You need to play another army if you are only getting to turn #3 in 2.5 hours

My turn 6: 2200+ points of dark eldar burst forth from the portal surrounding everything within 12 inches, In a flash of light all bugs withing 48 inches of the portal disappear!

hahaha Made me giggle.

Lol, brilliant tactic in game 3. Of course, you had extreme luck with the turn 4 entry, but it was still a very innovative move

Hahaha. Nice. Portal turn 5.
Lol

I also won the last mission with my DE. 18 to 9. I played orks. I wiped his army in about 4 turns.

Im glad you did well!

This will sound like sharpshooting, but I'm genuinely interested as I rarely play against Dark Eldar.

If you sat your Raider down on flat when it was wrecked rather than pitting it on its side, does it still totally block LOS?

Clthomps:

You have a webway portal in there, but a mechanized list and no...hordes of foot-sloggers to take real advantage of it that I can see. I'm curious what your plans are/were for it when you built the list and how you wanted it to play into your tactics. Thanks!


*EDIT* I saw the portal vs. the tyranids - in a flash of light you mean shooting? And can raiders come out of a portal? I've never used one. =p Did you bring the portal specifically to do this for game3? The webway portal says that you may place it instead of moving or shooting that turn....so how did you move and then place it? Just general confusion; clarify for me.

*EDIT* Confusing myself here; I read your turns wrong. Moved on turn4, deployed webway turn5.....turn6 moved onto the board and killed stuff. Got it.

Dashofpepper wrote:And can raiders come out of a portal? I've never used one. =p Did you bring the portal specifically to do this for game3? The webway portal says that you may place it instead of moving or shooting that turn....so how did you move and then place it? Just general confusion; clarify for me.

Raiders can come out of the portal - all a WWP does is give you a 'board edge' for units held in portal reserve. All reserve rules work normally for it after that.
He came in from reserve in turn 4 and deployed the portal in turn 5 - he couldn't have done both in the same turn.

Sarigar wrote:If you sat your Raider down on flat when it was wrecked rather than pitting it on its side, does it still totally block LOS?

I can't speak for Clthomps Raiders for certain without seeing how their tops are currently modeled, but in general the answer would be no, if a Raider was set bottom flat then they would not totally block LOS. There is arguably a rule violation here depending how you want to go with page 62 of the rulebook - but then again a Raider also cannot be placed upside down so if one doesn't have cotton I'm not sure what the rulebook intends for you to do.

Blackmoor wrote:You need to play another army if you are only getting to turn #3 in 2.5 hours

The first round was only 2 hours and my wall made my opponent stop and think a lot(since I don't think he ever played against DE).

In the second, the opponent was playing slow due to being on loads Vicodin (he just had a hernia operation the day before), he was a bit out of it and even forgot to fire his entire drop pod squad on the second turn. (I caught at the end of the assault phase and let him fire it before his turn ended)


@ Dash,
I made a DE 'ard boyz tactic thread 4-5 days ago, I explained what I was planning to do there.


@ Sarigar,
If you look at the terrain you can see the two trees in a row with a gap in between, I placed the end (the tallest part) of the raider in the gap so that it created solid wall from 90% of the board.

@ Thor, I clipped off all the tails on my raider to accommodate the sails, so upside down is the same hight as right side up. The only real difference in LoS is the seat the driver sits in.

Clthomps wrote:@ Thor, I clipped off all the tails on my raider to accommodate the sails, so upside down is the same hight as right side up. The only real difference in LoS is the seat the driver sits in.

You need to get your army pics updated - we need a 2nd DE army in Army Profiles anyway.

As per right side or upside down, I understand both of those are relatively identical. The question I was answering was about being on your side.

Thor665 wrote:

Clthomps wrote:@ Thor, I clipped off all the tails on my raider to accommodate the sails, so upside down is the same hight as right side up. The only real difference in LoS is the seat the driver sits in.

You need to get your army pics updated - we need a 2nd DE army in Army Profiles anyway.

As per right side or upside down, I understand both of those are relatively identical. The question I was answering was about being on your side.

Army profiles, what? I have a DE army, well painted and everything.

*EDIT* There doesn't seem to even be a slot for Dark Eldar in the army profiles. :(

Dashofpepper wrote:
*EDIT* There doesn't seem to even be a slot for Dark Eldar in the army profiles. :(

So make one. It's wiki code, very easy to make a slot.

In fact, if you promise to add your army, I'll make the slot for you and all.

I was actually going to make one when I uploaded mine - it just felt silly to do for a single army.

Damn that was such insane luck not coming in till turn 4 and the nid guy not being very agresive. I won round 3 masacring a deffwagon speed freak army 30 to 15 with his army having 37kp to my 60kp (didnt get a single roll of 1 on drug effects that game with 7 squads of wyches ).

Yes it was lucky, but if he played really aggressive, and I came in sooner I would have just boosted 24" over him and out of range of all his anti-tank.


As I mentioned in my other thread, I only was going to use this tactic vs nids, green tide, and maybe foot IG.

oh oh I'll take pics of mine when I head back to NYC and get my hands on it again.

You would have LOVED my 3rd round opponent...

Black templars, 4 land raiders, with no blessed hull

22 terminators

2 drop pods

5 marines with meltas

5 marines with meltas

5 marines with meltas

Anyway, very innovative way to deal with scenario 3! If I had 2,500 of my DE, I would have just held everything in reserve, and prayed for good rolls.

Clthomps wrote:No Dark Eldar designated to the web way can only come on through it, so until the lord dropped the portal on turn 5 I didn't have to roll for the 15 units still left in reserve.

If the model with the portal dies before he can drop it all unit in the portal die. So it was a really ballsy move.


I did however fail the Dracons reserve roll twice, which worked out rather well.

I've always played it that you did make the roll, but that the unit could not come in until the movement phase after the shooting phase in which the portal was opened. There are certain advantages to doing it this way, as it actually increases the odds that a large percentage of your army will come out when the portal is available.

I believe this is a carry over from previous editions which state that reserve units must be rolled for combined with the restriction that they cannot come on until the portal is actually open.