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I would stay back...make him come to you and make him pay for every step he takes across the battlefield. NS help drastically here. Use the ravagers to take out the vehicles. Immobilised is great if they are out of range. Use the Venom SCs to take out dreadknights and anybody not in a transport. Stay behind as much cover as possible. He most likely will try and charge your warriors which is where you counter charge with wyches. The only thing that scares me with GK are Death Cult.

You can't out range 4-5 psyfledreds with de, unless you hide in the opposit corner like a Sally. Even then it's really easy to get into 48" range. Please read the details about his list and set up before attempting to draw points from completely different and, in this case, unused units. Gk don't want or care to come to you, they are a shooty counter assault army. They'll sit there all day long and blast you.

@Kirjava
That list is beyond terrible. The gk you played against is nothing like the gk I played against. I can and have beaten gk terminator whatever. My specific complaint was about dakka dreds and purifier spam.

Would taking Sliscus have helped anything?

Or is a DE army that deepstrikes a dead army?

A small narrative: my buddy was tempted to pick up de and he wanted sliscus to work so badly. He played game after game testing him in many situations. In the end, due to the repeated beatings. . .errr. . . Maulings?. . .ehhh. . .savage, unrelenting, smashings he took while attempting to get deep strike to work, he stopped playing de and decided to go with gk. . .

I would almost never use sliscus for ds. However, I would use him for the drugs, seeing I have so many wyches.

Dark Eldar are not good as a pure deep strike army. There have been times where I've used Sliscus' deep strike rule when I don't have the first turn and want to protect certain parts of my army. I'll hold them in reserve, and then deep strike them to where they need to be. But that's a very situational tactic. If you take Sliscus, you do it for the combat drugs reroll, because that's the absolute best part about him. He can also take a unit of kabalites or trueborn and make them into a horrifying anti-infantry slaughter-machine, with Sliscus himself acting as something to deter casual assaults in the scenario where they get shot out of their transport.

Grim Smasha wrote:So, wtf are other DE players doing against this type of list?

I've got my butt handed to me by DE so many times when playing my bugs that this makes me smile. I'm going to relish this for a moment if you don't mind. Nothing personel.

That's what my Tyranids said when the DE codex came out. Bugs meet Dark Eldar was a sad day. Dark Eldar meet Grey Knights made it all better. The only thing better to get rid of DE is to have Necrons be immune to poison. I can only wish.

The only thing better than purifier/psy-dread spam is purifier/psy-dread spam with coteaz to make you reroll a successful seize the initiative roll.

Grim Smasha wrote:So, just played against a 1750 Purifier Razorback/Dreadnought spam army and got my f@cking teeth kicked in. The player and I discussed, after the game, what went wrong. We both agreed I didn't make any errors in deployment and tactical choices throughout the game. 2 Ven Psyfle-Dreds, 2 normal Psyfle-Dreds, 1 Vindicare, 4 Razorbacks with Psybolt ammo and Purifiers/Halberds/Hammers, and Crowe. This is my first loss, as you can see from my sig, with this list.

The first point which occurred to me when reading this post is "how can this guy tailor his list more specifically to beat Grey Knights?". The suggestion later in the thread about using fewer Venoms you initially resisted because you find that the Venoms are great all-comers units. And that's a fair point. What you need to consider though, especially when you haven't lost ANY games against other armies, is that maybe it's worth making your list a bit weaker in the other games if it helps you avoid a savage beating in this matchup.

Grim,
I'm in the same place you are, having little good luck against two really good players.

Amongst the other things not mentioned: Pretty much every round of ammo is STR6, and thus ignores FNP. Tough on Haem buffed wyches.

One GK list, run by poster Dok (he of #8 at the BAO, playing on Table #1 on the last round) has kicked my teeth in thrice. I was hampered by some awful "run" rolls for wyches, A ven dread that had nothing left (I needed to table him in Annihilation), no arms, immobilized, but I just couldn't *kill* it. Two other games, he'd just out-shoot me, bringing down the raider first and then Trublaster/Venom or Ravagers as he saw fit.

Psyfilemans = Hate.

Mentioned by other posters, "the purifiers have 24 range." No, not when the rhino/razor rolls 12" and then they get out.

*If* I were to modify my 'all comers' DE list, I'd add the NightShields for a Purifier GK list.

I run 3 ravagers, 3 Venoms with 4 Trublasters each, and three raiders. 24 Lances at 1850 and it isn't enough for the 2 psyfleman, 2 razor purifier list Dok's been running (2 dreadknights, but they go down easily). The other good GK list I tangle with is 2 SRGs and purifiers. A lot less hairy, but still tough. I earned a Draw and a Loss to it so far.

That's not much experience to pull from, I admit.

jy2 wrote:Tactics-wise, go for his transports first.

This would be good advice, but two untouched psyfleman mean two dead skimmers (ravagers) at least a turn.

All this advice so far (full page) and the only concrete thing is adding NightShields against purifiers ... not helpful against the autocannons though. When you can, try to have the mission *not* be annihilation. Oy.

Brothererekose is right. Nightshields would help against the purifiers, however unless you get really lucky with the lance rolls the dreads will wear you out. The best thing I've found to deal with the dreads is to get a MC (or equivalent) into them. However for some armies that just isn't realistic.

DarthDiggler wrote:Brothererekose is right. Nightshields would help against the purifiers, however unless you get really lucky with the lance rolls the dreads will wear you out. The best thing I've found to deal with the dreads is to get a MC (or equivalent) into them. However for some armies that just isn't realistic.

Someone's batrep had a x2 WWP x2 Talos list happily eating its way through some dreads ... now that the league is over, maybe I'll "play-around" with that concept.
---------------------------------------------
Anyone care to point out another example of a more "rock beats glass, err, scissors" match-up than GK vs. DE ? (Yeah, GK vs. daemons, but *besides* that!).

From now on my wyches are heading headlong into the dreadnoughts. The rest of my army can handle the rest, of this I have no doubt. The dreds need to have their guns silenced. And, wyches are surprisingly good against dreds. Grrrrrrr. . . :p

Brothererekose wrote:Anyone care to point out another example of a more "rock beats glass, err, scissors" match-up than GK vs. DE ? (Yeah, GK vs. daemons, but *besides* that!).

DE vs. Bugs is bad for bugs. GK vs. Daemons isn't as one sided as it would appear if the Daemons can tailor their list. Blessing of the Blood God can wreck GK's en mass.

Brothererekose wrote:

jy2 wrote:Tactics-wise, go for his transports first.

This would be good advice, but two untouched psyfleman mean two dead skimmers (ravagers) at least a turn.

All this advice so far (full page) and the only concrete thing is adding NightShields against purifiers ... not helpful against the autocannons though. When you can, try to have the mission *not* be annihilation. Oy.

Trust me, I've played my GK's against Space Wolves with 15 long fangs, 2 tl-las dreads, 3 land speeder typhoons and bunch of razorbacks. I've played against Tau with 9 broadsides and 9 fireknives. I've gone against melta-immo-spam witchhunters with 12 vehicles and 20+ meltas. I've gone against IG with 13 tanks including vendettas, manticore, hydras, leman russes and meltavets (yes, all in the same list). And I've gone against 12-skimmer mechdar with 15 fire dragons, bright-lance-spam and 3 prisms. None have been able to take down more than half of my dreads.

They're just too hard to kill if played properly (that is, with cover). Don't even bother, at least, don't bother with the vens (you can try to kill the regular dreads). Instead, concentrate on the easier-to-kill transports. In annihilation, they're much easier kill points. Also, wrecking the transports gives you almost 2 easy KP's as your venoms should be able to easily wipe out 5-man GK units. In objectives-games, if you can cripple your opponent's mobility, then you're in a much better position to win.

Unfortunately, with this current DE build, there's not much you can really do against purifier-dread-spam. It'll always be an uphill battle, like bringing nidzilla against a venom-spam DE list. The grey knights are a meta-changing army. They'll wreck the current competitive meta that is MSU-mech. If you want to compete on a more even footing against them, you're going to have to change your all-comer's list.


P.S. - Ironically, the lists that did the best against my dreads were Orks and another Grey Knight army. The orks only brought 2 squads of 7-8 lootas while the GK's had no ranged AT (just a total of 8 psycannons in their army). Both killed my dreads in assault (well, 1 did die to loota shooting).

i would disagree with all the venom hate here. venoms and guys inside with cannons and such will mulch GK. the problem your encountering is the anti armor. to that end, i would suggest: 3x ravager with 3 lances each + 3 units of 4TB w/ 4 blasters on venoms. that gives you 7 units firing 21 lances a turn. on armor 11 razorbacks, you should be popping them no problem. (at which point your venoms spray havoc into the troops). focus on one aspect of your army, and go from there. trying to do assault and shooting vrs GK will get you killed as you cant compete vrs their shooting, and their combat will kill you.

to that end i would suggest everything stays shooty. load everything into venoms, you dont need extra upgrades like sybarites or anything other then a splinter cannon or blaster on warriors. the idea is to max out advantages you already have.
1. GK have strong, but few units. this gives you lots of units. target saturation is kinda the key. (plus if you loose a few, they are dirt cheap and have 3 more of the same someplace else)

2. GK are high toughness compared to DE and in CC your wounding on 5, while they wound on 2. dont let them use that advantage and just shoot the ever loving hell out of them. (poison weapons pretty much negate high GK toughness) - works on DK as well.

3. his army is slow. relying on transports or expensive jump infantry to see them acomplish any mobility. your darklights en masse should be able to knock those down without much problem. once those are down, your superior speed can run rings around them

4. to get any long range support he must use slow moving dreads. at best he will have 6 of them, but thats a HUGE chunk of his points, leaving not much for his troops or other units. disabling them can be tough (especially on the venerables) but the way around that is to focus on and elimate his other units, then focus on 1 dread at a time. (kind of requires keeping an eye on them and staying as much as possible out of LOS)

just my 2 bits. ive played my DE using a this list vrs GK and have yet to loose to them. dosent hurt that i have a GK list and play that on occasion as well.

DarthSpader wrote:i would disagree with all the venom hate here. venoms and guys inside with cannons and such will mulch GK. the problem your encountering is the anti armor. to that end, i would suggest: 3x ravager with 3 lances each + 3 units of 4TB w/ 4 blasters on venoms. that gives you 7 units firing 21 lances a turn. on armor 11 razorbacks, you should be popping them no problem. (at which point your venoms spray havoc into the troops). focus on one aspect of your army, and go from there. trying to do assault and shooting vrs GK will get you killed as you cant compete vrs their shooting, and their combat will kill you.
to that end i would suggest everything stays shooty. load everything into venoms, you dont need extra upgrades like sybarites or anything other then a splinter cannon or blaster on warriors. the idea is to max out advantages you already have.
1. GK have strong, but few units. this gives you lots of units. target saturation is kinda the key. (plus if you loose a few, they are dirt cheap and have 3 more of the same someplace else)
2. GK are high toughness compared to DE and in CC your wounding on 5, while they wound on 2. dont let them use that advantage and just shoot the ever loving hell out of them. (poison weapons pretty much negate high GK toughness) - works on DK as well.
3. his army is slow. relying on transports or expensive jump infantry to see them acomplish any mobility. your darklights en masse should be able to knock those down without much problem. once those are down, your superior speed can run rings around them
4. to get any long range support he must use slow moving dreads. at best he will have 6 of them, but thats a HUGE chunk of his points, leaving not much for his troops or other units. disabling them can be tough (especially on the venerables) but the way around that is to focus on and elimate his other units, then focus on 1 dread at a time. (kind of requires keeping an eye on them and staying as much as possible out of LOS)
just my 2 bits. ive played my DE using a this list vrs GK and have yet to loose to them. dosent hurt that i have a GK list and play that on occasion as well.

My response to your bulletpoints are (I do not play DE but have played against DE a few times and here's what I see as counterpoints):
1. 3-6 double twinlinked krakcannons means you can saturate all you want. You're basically throwing killpoints at him. If he has 6 dreadnoughts, he'll be able to blow up 6 vehicles a turn. Yes I'm quite pessimistic about AV10 against 4 twinlinked S8 shots at BS4.

2. If you can shoot him, he can shoot you. And you won't be getting cover. There'll be 3 bubbles of rape with increasing power as you get closer. Even those silly -6" range things wont save you. Range chart:
0-24" = S4 or S5 bolters
0-36" = S6 Heavy bolters
0-48" = S8 autocannons.
The closer you get, the more you lose. Everything here is capable of penetrating AV10 and none of them are in short quantity. Against a list built around bolter/cannon spam, you're running into a wall of ballistic skill 4 strength puck you shots.

3. If those X things are in range, then so are those S8 krakcannons. Also, psybacks have 42" max range so if you misjudge range, you're going to get S6 shots all over.

4. 6 Dreadnoughts are expensive together but cheap, apart. Also note that wardmonnically possessed razorbacks are dirt cheap as well. Yes you can say that a wardknight player taking 6 psyflemen dreads will have less points to spend on other things but each dread is basically a hard counter unit against DE. They're GOING to kill something.

Nightshields would be nice except that your dark lances are only 36 while the range of his autos are 48. Upgrading everyone with this makes it effectively a 36" vs 42" battlle if you chose to try to do a ranged battle. Don't forget that if you can fire a dark lance, he can fire his razorbacks and dreads.

I agree with the ravager spam part. If he wants to spam razorbacks at you, spame ravagers back at him
I can see how spader's idea would work though. You'd basically be turboboosting as many dark lances and blasters at the opponent and hope for some major damage on T2-T3 shooting. The problem would be that you'll be relying on target saturation and cover saves. So, how good with cover saves are you? Heh, not all players are equal [with dice]. Also, I can already see how unforgiving this tactic is. If you get a bad turn of shooting the moment everyone is within range on T2 or T3, your army will be gurgling slugs and bolters the next turn.

Now, this is all theoretical and are all a "on paper" analysis but that doesn't mean its unreasonable or unsound. Don't get me wrong, I feel you man, wardknights are a hard counter against DE on paper. When you have to rely on lucky saves or favorable terrain to even the score, you're at a huge disadvantage. If you don't get big blocky non-porous opaque terrain, he'll just mow you down which I assume is what happened for OP. It also doesn't help that a single purifier, just one model left, with everyone else dead to darklight weapons, can wipe out half a squad in CC before swinging his weapons.

But here's another thing, lets say you're a DE player who's had good success against GK players. You should ask yourself, did he take a decent list? Did you get lucky? Did the GK player get unlucky? If he's running dragowing or taking random predators, rhinos or land raiders, perhaps it may be an isolated case for you.

In conclusion, you're at a bigger disadvantage against GKs than even demons are. On the other hand, you gain a bragging right proportional to your handicap

DarthSpader wrote:

2. If you can shoot him, he can shoot you. And you won't be getting cover. There'll be 3 bubbles of rape with increasing power as you get closer. Even those silly -6" range things wont save you. Range chart:
0-24" = S4 or S5 bolters
0-36" = S6 Heavy bolters
0-48" = S8 autocannons.
The closer you get, the more you lose. Everything here is capable of penetrating AV10 and none of them are in short quantity. Against a list built around bolter/cannon spam, you're running into a wall of ballistic skill 4 strength puck you shots.

With our silly -6" thing, that makes his effective range 18", 30", and 48"... and ours 36". I'm cool with that, as I'd much rather be facing the fire only from the autocannons than everything combined.

His razorbacks can move 6" and fire the bolters. Same goes for all of his vehicles and infantry. At that point if he's in range of your heavy guns then he has nothing to lose by closing the gap.
This response is all assuming that he's a well versed veteran 40k player and will realize this in time. If he's a greenhorn he'll move back, fearing your assault and forcing himself out of range.

terranarc wrote:His razorbacks can move 6" and fire the bolters. Same goes for all of his vehicles and infantry. At that point if he's in range of your heavy guns then he has nothing to lose by closing the gap.
This response is all assuming that he's a well versed veteran 40k player and will realize this in time. If he's a greenhorn he'll move back, fearing your assault and forcing himself out of range.

It's sort of surprising how often I see people retreat. It's hard to outrun DE, though, and charging is almost always better than being charged.

With DE you need to play unfairly. Now I don't mean break the rules, I mean you smash single units until they're transformed into tiny pieces of flesh and power armour. Losing the first turn makes things a lot harder, but with DE it always does. From the first turn roll on though you need to select the most dangerous enemy units and destroy them. Against GK I can imagine this would be rather difficult, as they out range you with many weapons. Taking a few raiders to replace venoms could work - especially with night shields (although all your vehicles should have these) - as could venom/raider mounter trueborn squads with dark lances.

jy2 wrote:They're just too hard to kill if played properly (that is, with cover). Don't even bother, at least, don't bother with the vens (you can try to kill the regular dreads). Instead, concentrate on the easier-to-kill transports. In annihilation, they're much easier kill points. Also, wrecking the transports gives you almost 2 easy KP's as your venoms should be able to easily wipe out 5-man GK units. In objectives-games, if you can cripple your opponent's mobility, then you're in a much better position to win.

It'll always be an uphill battle, like bringing nidzilla against a venom-spam DE list. The grey knights are a meta-changing army.

I agree, jy2. All valid points.

The dreads are just too damned hard to shoot down ... or even to give any amount of shooting consideration while there are razorbacks or SRGs to shoot. Stun or Shake? Pff, Fortitude, and DE have not anti-Psy to stop that.

I think Grim's last post has a decent idea: Tie up the psyfilemen with wyches ASAP (and tough to do, if they're deployed deeply), but I'll add Shardnets. It'd minimize that amount of smack that the dread deals out on the wyches, silence its guns and (mostly) keep the wyches from tangling with Purifiers, where they are over matched anyway.

Grim Smasha wrote:And, wyches are surprisingly good against dreds.

Grim, I don't know about *surprisingly good*, but they'll do better against the walker than purifiers.

A psyfleman will average less than 1/2 of a dead wych per turn. An immobolized one is as good as dead.

IMHO night fields are useless fail of xtra points. As for target saturation.... A unit if 5 warriors with a cannkn on a dual sc venom is 110 points. 6 of them for 660. 4trueborn with blasters on same come in at 175 I believe. ( quick head math no dex avail ATM). That's 9 vehicles so far. (each with a 5++ and thats proven VERY effective in alot of games) add in 3 ravagers, at 115 each, and you still have room for scourges, beasts etc. whereas GK are spending over or very close to 200 for a Ben dread and 150ish (again guessing) for normal. And that hasn't filled his mandatory slots. It's not leaving much room for troops. So unit wise, you should almost double his numbers. And you don't rush his GK army head on. You isolate units and strike from a side. Use your whole army to gank a small part of his and continue. And btw- at 24" DE can do BAD things to MEQ, since the sheer number of bs4 shots can overwhelm a small unit of power armor marines. Hell even termies drop to mass splinter fire. Also keep in mind - his own units provide you cover. Make him shoot through his own men and take full advantage. His razorbacks unless exploded block LOS or at least provide cover. Use that. Combined with the speed available the game is at least even. And if you stick to shooting you negate the GK CC abilities which is half of their fight.

DarthSpader wrote: You isolate units and strike from a side. Use your whole army to gank a small part of his and continue.

A little hard to do, when there are only two rhino/razors, and a combo of 2 SRGs or 2 psyfleman dreads. How does a player "isolate" something in such a compact group? Part of DE's problem with GK lists, especially in Annihilation, is that we have near triple the KPs at 1850. Mine has 21. Most GK lists seem to be 8 or so KPs.

If it is a non-SRG army, then it is concentrated and in less than a square foot on the table. If it has SRGs, then he's isolating parts of the DE army.

DarthSpader wrote: And if you stick to shooting you negate the GK CC abilities which is half of their fight.

I'd say less than half. DarthS, GKs can *outshoot* DE:

1. Psy-ammo makes DE boats susceptible to *every* GK model.
2. Range: As mentioned, the psyfleman out range us. And the GKs, with their rhinos rolling 12 and the GKs getting out, match our range. SRGs? Razors? They match DE reach.
3. Fortitude. Rhinos and SRGs and Dreads have to be *killed*, not just Stunned. That's a biggy. Their transports hold up beyond belief. Meaning, getting to shoot up those softly power armored infantry is difficult at best, because by the time we *do* have the chance, the enemy got them out on his own terms and is shooting you up some more, or most of our boats are stunned or smoke and fire.

The kid I've tabled, twice, didn't use Shrouding, nor Fortitude and got his GKs out prematurely and one rhino had the lucky Explodes! result.

-- BTW, Why doesn't that result come against the tourney-level player? Instead it comes up against the kid. Stupid dice/luck/Murphy's Law (or subsection of it).
End brief rant.

Biggest issue you'll have against GK is the fact that Shaken or Stunned isn't enough; which DE relies heavily on silencing guns to get into position. That being said; focus fire til their guns are blown off or the vehicles wrecked. Target the razors first (easier to kill) then move to the dreads; everything on the fields a threat, might as well deal with the easiest ones first.

As fopr deployment; I probably woulda reserved and came in on a corner, hiding until I had enough forces or he was close enough for me to strike... but thats a personal choice lol

I find that one of the best tactics for dealing with dreads you can't readily shoot down is to stop them by engaging them in close combat with your Haywire wyches. This does a couple of things to your opponent: he now has to either hope for lucky rolls vs. the wyches, or pull out embarked troops to kill them off (and thus exposing them to fire from your venoms, as well as making them unable to shoot anybody for a turn). A full squad of 10 wyches is going to lose at most 1-2 models per turn vs. a dread and return at least one glancing or penetrating hit, especially if they are carrying Shardnets. You can realistically tie down a Dread for the entire game, assuming you don't kill it first. I've held off multiple Death Company and Furioso dreads like this before, it can definitely work against shooting dreads like Rifleman patterns, even with the Fortitude roll.

Also, I ALWAYS pick Nightshields over Flickerfields if I don't have the points for both. Midrange shooting armies like GKs have a hard time dealing with units that can permanently outrange most of their firepower. The best save in the game is the one you never have to make. His autocannons may have range over you, but better those than his entire army, given that they can all crack you open.

Have you considered running voidravens or Reavers? They can be better at reliably killing heavy armor than units with mere darklances.

people you shouldn't complain.

I have a simmilar list but all warriors

for my 6 troops choice I have 4 venom and 2 raider.

3 trueborn 3 raverger

I slaughtered a paladin/DCA GK army with all my shooting I took out 7 paladins including an apothercary and libby.

I systematiclly shot his army to pieces.

Basicly think of your warriors as suicide squads because they will only be 60 points and if you can pop an rhino then what comes out will be dead by your venoms.

I think Dash laid out some very solid anti-Grey Knights thoughts, and I'll +1 that.

I'm also of the camp of DE players who, though I understand the threat of GK, do not see the OMGLOLWTFBBQ of the codex - yeah, GK suxx0rs, but they don't particularly suxx0r more than some of our other problem lists. They're just new and a little different. Here's some thoughts focused on this particular battle;

Your list has a lot of anti-tank, what your list lacks is anti-tank with 48" range (most of your anti-tank has a 24" range because it's blasters in transports - only the Ravagers and Raiders are really doing that for you). My solution in lists is indeed to run more Raiders than some players do - I find the range a huge advantage in maximizing my alpha strike capability.

I'll now third Dash's thoughts on the Baron, he's totally sold me on him and what he does to maximize alpha strike lists which DE mech spam very much are.

If, even with moving flat out and shooting at him, you lacked enough firepower to prevent a wipe in his Turn 2, than clearly what you need is more shooting, and probably more long range shooting.

With the way Fortitude works it's actually more beneficial to shoot Razorbacks - not just (as correctly noted earlier) to pop out Troops for your Venoms, but also because those are targeting opportunities of your opponent you can actually remove from the board. Quite frankly I find 1 twin-linked Str 8 autocannon wipes out a skimmer just fine, having two of them just helps the GK player feel like a stallion in bed with his wife. Assess the threats, understand what you need to take them down, and limit his ability to totally tank your air force by removing his ability to target your whole air force.

Also, I don't know the lay of the land for the map, but if he did indeed just barely ease onto the map, than there probably should have been a few blind spots for you to ease onto, so that you could deny him much alpha shooting unless he advanced, and also allow yourself a better ability to shoot back without night fight in effect.

I'll admit I run a fairly shooting heavy army when I play nowadays, but thus far I've been able to outshoot the GKs fairly effectively - I still think it's optimum strategy vs. them.

I've gone through dozens of experimental lists in the last couple of days, just trying to see what I can fit into a list that makes me happy. The more and more I play with the points I notice that wyches just aren't as affordable as I would like them to be. They're not really survivable without a hammy imo. Before I started to run hammys with them I used to lose >50% of the units when their ride got blown up. Making the unit essentially useless. After a game that I ran into yesterday I find wyches are almost a liability without something to run into, and when your dice arent willing to give you those tasty explosion or wreck results, your wyches are generally boned, out in the open, ready to get rocked by fire. Then you lose an expensive unit with almost or absolutely zero return for it. Sadly, power to points, solid kabalite is the best way to go, from where Im sitting. Throw in a solid counter attack unit, for the speed bump we need, and the Baron for first turn aid and guess what. . .My list looks nearly identical to Dashs. . .*sigh* And yours, Thor. There's nothing wrong with that, but I want some individuality.

There's pretty much no way around looking like another list. A fully mechanized Purifier list is pretty one-dimensional in its target profile and there's only so much in any codex that will be cost-efficiently effective against it. But the DE definitely have the tools.

In my experience, wyches seem too fragile to be able to reliably make it into CC with purifiers, but maybe that's because my usual DE opponent likes to run a melee Archon with his, and I take every opportunity I get to dump him out of his raider. However, using them to tie up a psifleman in melee is a decent idea, if he advances the transports up while Dreads hang back. A common danger in the particular list you're having issues with is that Crowe could be hanging out near the Dreads to Cleanse any attempt at tarpitting. It's what I do with him usually.

Grim Smasha wrote:Throw in a solid counter attack unit, for the speed bump we need, and the Baron for first turn aid and guess what. . .My list looks nearly identical to Dashs. . .*sigh* And yours, Thor. There's nothing wrong with that, but I want some individuality.

As meta evolves it is a theoretical likelihood that each codex will build towards an optimal setup. It's why I now run around with Beastmasters and why Dash now runs around with Kabal. The longer a codex exists the more clarified the "optimal" builds become. To be truly different *and* competitive you have to somehow take the list and foresee a way it redefines the meta.

That is, needless to say, the really hard part, but it's always super exciting when it happens.

Do I think the sorts of lists Dash, myself, and others play are the be all and end all of the Dex? No - I believe there's probably some tweak in there we haven't seen yet. Certainly as more codices are released and the nature of the game's meta shifts it will cause new shifts in the army lists. But, at the moment, I'm not seeing anything that really eats face as much as Kabal shooting with a touch of Wyches for DE. Wych Cult is pretty solid, but I feel measurably inferior. Everything else is...playing something that might do okay, but will run into problems the more polished lists might not.

I'll also note that, thankfully, while we can build a list to deal with Psyrifleman spam that is good against lots of other lists - Psyrifleman spam actually has some issues versus other lists that are also TAC lists. It's why I'm still waiting to see how the flak shakes out for GKs yet - they're still in their teething period and I don't think we've seen yet if they're going to redefine things or be redefined by them (I sorta predict the latter...but wouldn't mind if the Riflemen shook up the IG meta a fair shake)