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I really like most of the advice being given here, it's all solid.

I wanted to share my opinion about wyches and their tanks busting abilitys. I like to run wyche squads with x2 blasters, simply because you can pack one more DL equivilent in to a raider than you could with warriors that way. At the same time, you are not taking a DL, which as you know limits your mobility when you want to shoot. I think wyches NEED x2 blasters, mostly because of how many troop choices are mounted these days. Since your wyches need to be in CC to actually survive, it gives me confidence to know they have as many tools as possible for popping a transport and assulting the unit previously inside. (assuming you can get the charge)

Let's face it, DE units are going to die if targeted, and they will die extra fast as MSU's. So using them effectively means not only being able to produce damage, but to avoid it as well. That's why I'm not a fan of warrior MSU's in boats. There is NO WHERE they can be that is safe for them, and while they will do damage while they are alive, they are simply a low hanging fruit for any would-be picker.

The Wyches can jump out, pop off a tansport or wound an MC, then get tied up right where they want to be. Hopefully they can survive long enough to produce damage in the next turn. That's more than I can say about MSU warrior squads on boats.

If I'm spamming DL's with warriors it's gun line supported by ravagers, with wyches and and Archon/Dracon in boats as counter chargers.

Just MHO, take it for what it's worth.

Dashofpepper wrote:I put them in transports, and have started them on the board in every game so far; I keep them together. Thus far, none of them have actually lost their transports, but that's certainly rather situational.

Oddly enough I had that same luck my first handful of games - where Wyches never seemed to lose their transports. Unfortunately it doesn't last (also I think more of my regular opponents finally twigged to the concept of shooting the Wych Raiders).

I'm happy to see you trying to glom onto the idea that once an enemy vehicle isn't shooting back (and/or not moving, depending on the vehicle in question) you can change target priority with your Lances. That's a good base lesson for DE to be aware of.

It does sound like you're still struggling with your mini snipers in Raiders. Remember, the biggest advantage to them staying in the boats is their ability to be moved midgame if you somehow lose your line of fire on needed targets. If you're always taking them out of the raiders you might become better served with a 10 man warrior squad w. 2 lances, and it will save you a few points as well. There are lots of different options with Warrior/Raider squad combos and coming off of Orks I still think you might be better served with running a few gunboats so you can still play a bit more of an aggressive short game (plus if Kwi keeps pushing you for Wych Cult running gunboats is a good bit of pre-training for that jump)

Eidolon wrote:5 man warrior squads oh god what is this I dont even.
I am of the opinion that they should be at least 10 man, as they dont get shot to hell by anything as nasty as a squad of guardsmen.

I would caution that when Guardsmen fire on DE they tend to kill us whether we are five or ten Warriors (isn't minimum Guardsmen size now like 25 or something? I swear, they're all Vets or in giant blobs now anyway, so I never feel like I fight a Guardsmen squad anymore).

The concept behind taking 5 men in a Raider squad is because you buy the Raider squad for the Raider and the special/heavy weapons. Since you get the Raider and the same number of special/heavy weapons whether you buy 10 men or five it is often considered a valuable cost cutting method to run minimized Raider squads (I know my usual Gunboat build is generally only five guys for instance). Also, since most layers run their Raider squads inside their Raiders, and usually there is a feeling that once the Raider is hit (and almost inevitably explodes) that the squad is dead anyhow, lots of players do stick to the five man concept of Raider squads (and ten for Warrior squads as opposed to twenty).

I guess its viable. I dont see the army being particularly threatening to some kinds of lists. Infantry gunline, such as my space wolves would be able to hurt it pretty badly. Wyches are ok, but thats it. The infantry have no staying power and the vehicles are made of paper. And the only fire support is 3 AV 11 vehicles. I could basically keep the ravagers at least shaken, and If i pop the wych and hq raiders the game is over.

I will certainly agree that if you are infantry based, and keep the three Ravagers shaken (or destroyed) and destroy the three assault Raiders that the list will be in trouble against you.

Many a slip twixt a cup and a lip, of course.

I'm not sure how your proposed changes would really help his list with those ideas in mind. Even if he were running 10 man Gunboats and 10 Wych squads - if you blew up all the Wych and Incubi Raiders and prevented the Ravagers from shooting and were Space Wolves he'd still be in trouble against you. Maybe if he ran Assault Boats, but I run Assault Gunboats a lot - and I don't advocate assaulting Space Puppies with a Warrior squad built for assault, much less one with 1+ Dark Lance in it.

Probably his best answer vs. all infantry Space Wolves would be to disembark his mini snipers to use (at least some of) the Raiders as a mobile screen to help guide in his Incubi and Wyches. If he had 2nd turn they could also serve as a solid screen to protect his Ravagers via obscurement so they would have time to unload 9 plasma cannon rounds into your Long Fangs. Short of totally reworking his list into a Gunboat list or some other DE build that seems the best basic plan to me - Lance spam isn't going to be saved from losing its Wyches and Ravagers by a few extra warriors in my opinion.

It seems to me that once you sort out what to do with your opponent's vehicles, you're going to have issues with blobs-o-dudes. Like you said above, getting your lord and his buddies stuck in with the almost-fearless guardsmen means they're not doing anything for the rest of the game, yes?

So why not drop the lord and pick up some haemunculi with destructors? Buy torture amps on the raiders they go in. Use them to tank shock squads into "oh noes he's got a flamer" formation, get out and melt them. Add shredders to taste.

I'm not convinced a list like this really needs a deathstar unit like the lord + incubi, and the fact is that once your opponent wises up to how strong a "simple" S3 T3 character can be, his raider is going down first turn and then your expensive HQ has to walk. Adding in haemunculi instead both flows with DE's MSU theme and helps to solve some of your anti-infantry problems.

By running these you could also afford to drop the disintegrators on the ravagers in favor of more dark lances too.

- lord and his buddies

+ 6x haemunculi with destructor

+ torture amps on 6 raiders of your choosing

= 38 points left to play around with, and you've got better anti-infantry to show for it.

grankobot, I *have* two haemonculi - they both have destructors and scissorhands, and they go with my wych squads right now.

Oh.

Still, I stand by my suggestion, both for more badass flamer templates and the ability to tank shock. 6 is better than 2!

Yes, Dark eldar deathstar unit is an absolute joke considering how easily they get shot out of the sky and walk, and how fast they die when walking.

In that situation I would've sent in the Haemonculus to flame up the conscripts then charge with the Wyches.

Statistically, an Archon, even with an Incubi retinue isn't designed as a horde infantry killer - even with drugs, an Archon's only going to squash 2-3 conscripts, and his Incubi will be scratching 1-2.

Where Dark Eldar hq's excel is in taking down heavy infantry - like Marines, not getting bogged down in hordes that can tar pit them. Every turn you spend in assault is another turn where your shadowfield can fail you.

orchewer wrote:In that situation I would've sent in the Haemonculus to flame up the conscripts then charge with the Wyches.

Statistically, an Archon, even with an Incubi retinue isn't designed as a horde infantry killer - even with drugs, an Archon's only going to squash 2-3 conscripts, and his Incubi will be scratching 1-2.

Where Dark Eldar hq's excel is in taking down heavy infantry - like Marines, not getting bogged down in hordes that can tar pit them. Every turn you spend in assault is another turn where your shadowfield can fail you.

He's running 5 incubi - he'll kill a lot more then 2 Guardsmen (15 attacks off charge, 10 hit, 6.6 wound, power weapons so all go through = 6-7 wounds from the Incubi vs. GEQ off charge (4 on turns thereafter) 8-10 for the unit altogether)

That said - I agree with what you've said here. Incubi are for killing heavily armored infantry, not for duking it out in the trenches with hordes. Use of his Ravagers and Destructors to template them to death is a very good start. Also, with squads of the size of IG squads it can really pay off to dual assault with Incubi and Wyches, or two Wych squads, so you can overwhelm them (ignoring whatever they rolled for drugs, five wyches and an agoniser ought to account for an additional 5-6 wounds (and they'll do a little better probably because they'll have a drug dose in them), which when paired with the Incubi squad equates to around 15 dead guardsmen and this presumes you didn't shoot them with the two squads on the way in. 15 dead guardsmen with additional dead from shooting prior to the charge and if you dropped some Haemy templates on them as well does indeed put a nice sizable dent in conscript IG squads if you need to assault them.

Eidolon wrote:Yes, Dark eldar deathstar unit is an absolute joke considering how easily they get shot out of the sky and walk, and how fast they die when walking.

Though I will note with Nightshields, cover saves, blocking Raiders and turbo boosters generally speaking the enemy only has one or maybe two shooting phases to try to destroy the Raider (depending on deployment type and who goes first) and you can usually prevent a fair amount of his army from getting even a chance to shoot at it and have the Raider with a 4+ cover save at least to help protect it.

grankobot wrote:+ torture amps on 6 raiders of your choosing

Out of curiosity, how well do you fare tank shocking with an AV 10 open topped vehicle? Are there squads you definitely do or do not tank shock with the Raiders? I find tank shocking a great tactic (especially vs. some armies) but really do prefer to do it with tougher vehicles.

I'm taking my Dark Eldar to their first tournament this Saturday.

I'm keeping the kabal theme, but am pondering a few things.

1. Are my Haemonculi really a benefit to the wych squads? It seems like they usually have to fleet into assault range, which means that the maemonculi isn't getting to shoot his destructor.

2. The idea of putting an archon onto a jetbike is interesting. I'm not comfortable with having my HQ running up the field alone though, and the reason I'm hesitant to just stick him in with my RJBs....

3. I haven't decided if I like using RJBs yet. If I took them out and added more wyches....or if I took the incubi out and added more wyches and had the archon go with wyches...or if I...well, the list goes on.

4. I need to pay much more attention to deployment. Its harder than I thought it would be to stop thinking like an Ork on the table. IE, my last game I was so focused on trying to maintain a gunline, I didn't even stop to consider what my opponent was using (IG) or that charging would have made more sense in this case. =p

1. I suppose the most honest answer is - depends on your playstyle. I think the extra templates to help threaten enemy mobs with is good. Even if the Wyches have to fleet - when they're gone that still leaves you a Raider you can operate as a dark lance platform that can fire a flamer template if it moves 6" or less. Versus Nids, Orks, and foot IG this can be a very useful tool to have. It also gives your opponent an additional threat to consider.

2. Don't have him run alone. If you're going to drop down a bike lord you need some RJBs to accompany him at least for a while.

3. To my mind, the value of minimized RJB squads in drawing fire away from Raiders is very valuable, but if they don't work for you then they don't work. If you are going to drop them to add more Wyches my advice would be to add an additional Wych squad (because what you want is more Agonisers and Blasters), which would require dropping more then just the RJBs (you could perhaps downgrade the Archon to dracon, lose the animus and snipe the warrior from the retinue to help afford this for only a moderate shift in the Incubi's effectiveness.

4. Deployment is much more important for DE then for Orks. When I play Orks I basically drop them in a pile with occasional thoughts about using BWs to block LoS and where my KFFs are - and afterwards I know the tactic is basically 'point at enemy - Waaaagh!'. DE require a lot more finesse. You need to be aware of fire lanes and of which vehicles/units your enemy has that are primary threats for Raiders. You need to pay attention to where you can use terrain to help funnel and block him while your skimmers can maneuver easily. You need to be aware if you want to shift your battle lines for a strike at either flank. You also need to be aware if you're charging or receiving the charge (something Orks never have to think about). And, of course, all of the above can shift during the course of the battle.

I think your primary things to consider are the charge/receive charge question and paying attention to the firing lanes so if you disembark your mini snipers at the beginning of the game they won't spend turns sitting around with nothing to shoot at. If you can nail down those two aspects you'll be in a much stronger place with your gunline.

Out of curiosity, how well do you fare tank shocking with an AV 10 open topped vehicle? Are there squads you definitely do or do not tank shock with the Raiders? I find tank shocking a great tactic (especially vs. some armies) but really do prefer to do it with tougher vehicles.

If I was running disintegrators on ravagers I would definitely put torture amps on the raiders. The raider is used to push a squad close together (and in this case, you don't particularly need the dude on board to drop his template so you can go as fast as you want) and since DE vehicles have such a weird shape you can angle yourself so that you have a low chance of scattering onto your own vehicle pretty easily.

Ravagers dispense plasma-death as necessary. Next turn you have a haemunculus up close and personal to finish off what's left and your raider at least has a chance to survive with a moving fast save.

This is also worth doing with the lord's boat if you keep him since even if it does get popped, he'll be in your opponent's face and hopefully still alive.

Thor, do you think I should stick with my army list and just learn to play it before trying to restructure it?

Just from my way of playing I normally try to get around 6 games in (including a tourney) before I start to tweak a list. Yes if something is horribly broken in it I will change things but when I think i've found a solid build I'll play it for a little bit then start to make tiny tweaks. This is because you can't really judge the value of a unit based on a single performance or two. So i'd say play it for a while to learn the style better and how you want to play that style. Just my thoughts.

Fair enough; I think I'll do that.

Welcome back by the way - heard you were MIA.

So you have a tourney in a few days?

Here are a few things that I have taken from playing DE:

- 5 man raider squads are a no, no. For me. I usually take 8-10 with a sybarite and agonizer, SC and Blaster. I take at least 4 squads at 1850.
- Wyches are awesome. I run 2 units of 6 at 1850 with one armed with agon, one armed with punisher, and a goblet mixed in there.
- I have recently been running a unit of a dracon and 7 incubi... and I must say, I love them they hit like a tonne of bricks.
- Love my 3 ravagers, I run 2 with tripple dissy and 1 with triple lance.
- I dont spend the points on night shields... although fun, when you are running 10+ raiders the cost ads up to another squad and raider, and I prefer the extra manpower.

I used to run heamonculus with the destructors religiously, but I found that they became easy killpoints.
During the development of my DE army I went from 24 KP when I was min maxing, to about 17-18 KP by beefing up my squads, and dropping the heamies. The destructors are usefull against hordes, but so are dissintegrators.

On your note about RJB. I have run a few units of them recently (and have dropped them in favour of the incubi) Every time I played them they took a boutload of lead and then died, or ran off the table, taking my archon with them *grrr*. The reason I have always wanted to use the jetbikes tho, is that they break up the monotony of raider raider raider raider....

Well, best of luck!. You can always visit my DE blog, I have pics and stuff up there, as well as tactics and batreps.

Cheers!

For better or for worse, I'm going to stick with the same list - there's merit to the idea of learning your list before trying to tweak it.

Maybe this has already been said (if so please excuse my ignorance) but what of the blademaster guy? Is he worth taking? (Im new to Dark Eldar as well)

DaPlaugedOrk wrote:Maybe this has already been said (if so please excuse my ignorance) but what of the blademaster guy? Is he worth taking? (Im new to Dark Eldar as well)

Drahzar? Well, the short answer is - sometimes.

For a generalized DE question like that I will reference you to the DE Tactica (link is in my sig below) where you can find a lot of generic base advice on him and lots of other units, wargear options, and base army builds.

Dash, I think you're making a good choice in sticking with this build a little longer. As Hulksmash put it, you really need time to work out some kinks and get a feel for what you're doing before you make any large changes. That way you'll know what is and is not working for you, and hopefully why.

I agree. Stick with the build, learn it, then tweak to your playstyle.

DoP - I'm interested in hearing your tournament summary.

I run a DE biker gang list. That means minimum of 7, usually 9 or 10 bikes on the table, coming out of portals, or deploying from reserve. It's not an optimal build and I wouldn't recommend it (though I think it is cool) BUT I do have to say that my lord has been a rockstar since they changed the FAQ to allow her to add the bike, punisher and drugs together. The 5th edition rulebook assault phase move clarification helps too. I still role too many 1s on her shadowfield, but, really, she should be able to take on just about anything in the game.

Here's my battle report - just finished it.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/272211.page#1224953

I will check it out Thor, gracias