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Use the same blue, the green competes for attention IMO...

Great looking stuff though, there is a lot of character in your scheme!

I think the tattoos want to be blue, but so far it seems too overpowering. The blue tattoos kind of take away from the detail in the rest of the model. I think the grey tattoos fly under the radar more, and instead of being the prominent feature of the model, they are more of a side note.

But I'm still being indecisive.... Maybe I won't have tattoos at all.

Hey guys! Been a while since my last post. I was preoccupied during the thanksgiving holiday, so I haven’t done any painting in the last couple weeks.

I did get two games in against my brother, who was proxying the new necrons. Both games were fun and close. Damn those tesla guns are violent!!! He was constantly getting 4 or 5 penetrating hits with his telsa destructors, sometimes even arcing and killing other units at the same time. I think I might have to squeeze in some night shields and train myself to eyeball distances as best I can…

So On Saturday I packed up the Corespur Elite in my brand new battlefoam carrying case and I brought them to my local GW. I was hoping to play two games, I only found one, but it was a really fun game. I took some pictures, so I’ll go ahead and give a quick battle report. Before I start, I'll post a fresh picture of the Corespur Elite at my local GW. Startin to look pretty brutal, eh?



2000 PTS VS GREY KNIGHTS

I ran my 2000 point list except I used a huskblade archon with 6 incubi instead of sliscus and his trueborn. He had a unique list that had castellan crowe, three squads of 10 purifiers, two squads of 5 paladins, and one squad of 10 jump grey knights. No tanks, and thankfully no rifle dreads, but a lot of power weapons, and a lot of initiative 6…


Here's my archon with his temporary incubi. You can see those beautiful incubi that I painted when I was 12 or 13. I'm in no rush to buy more new incubi yet since I like fielding these old school units, they not only show how much my involvement in the GW hobby has enhanced my painting skills, but they show how amazing the new models look next to the old ones.

Dawn of war, kill points. He had about 8 kill points while I have about 15… on about the third turn, my only chance to win would be to table him. But I did roll a 6 on combat drugs, so almost everyone had feel no pain! Which only helps against his bolters… Looking back, I would have preferred +1S or re-roll wounds or something.

He deployed crowe and two purifier squads stretched out along the center of the board. I walked everything on in my left corner, and proceeded to shoot one of the purifier squads to pieces. I brought it down to 1 model with my vehicles, and then shot the hellions that were in range to kill the last guy and grab the token, unfortunately he made three or four saves! And the pain token was wasted on a Vemon’s shots. That second pain token would have been clutch because then I would have had initiative 7 on the charge and strike before his halberds.


Middle of yy turn one. The elite are in a refused flank, awaiting the arrival of the rest of the grey knights. The 10 man purifiers squad is in the process of being shot down.

He walked on his paladins and his last squad, and shunted his jump guys close to my bubble of vehicles. There wasn’t much close to him, and since it was night fighting, he ran his paladins. The jump guys blew up a ravager and stunned the other one.


The Elite heading to finish off the purifiers before closing in on the rest of the grey knights. The archon and the incubi just ran over the jump back combat squads.

On my second turn I fried crowe with the trueborn, weaked the second purifier squad and then charged them with my hellions, and unloaded the archon and the incubi on the two jump combat squads. The hellions dropped the purifiers to two but lose combat by 1, three wounds from his cleansing flame made the difference! But they stayed, so that was good. The archon wiffed but the incubi chopped up the grey knights, and all of a sudden that squad had three pain tokens. But, on his turn, he shot them with tons of psycannons and brought them down to 1 incubi. The archon failed his first shadow field and got instant deathed!!! I’m realizing that I am very bad at shadow field saves…. In three of my last five or six games, I’ve cracked the shadow field on the first try.


Ouch!!! If only that combat had stayed until his turn...


The baron and hellions swooping down and finishing off the purifiers.

So by turn three all he had left were the paladins and two purifier combat squads. I had 1 incubi in a raider, both wych squads, a ravager, the jetbikes, the trueborn in their venom, the warriors in their venom, a ravager, some hellions and the baron. He had about 8 kill points and I had 5. So my only hope was to table him. On his turn he blew up the razorwing and one of my wych raiders. The squad got pinned, so all I got to charge into a weakened paladin squad were the other wyches and the one incubi. If it were a close game, I would have hid the incubi to save the kill points, but I needed all I could get. I even had one scourge hiding behind a building after he saw his squad get torn up, but he too jumped back into the frey when I had lost the kill point battle.

In that combat, he only got three attacks since I had a shardnet, so he knocked down the incubi, and I only did one would so the combat stayed. The hellions charged a weakened purifier combat squads and that combat stuck too, which was nice for me.

On his turn he blew up my second ravager and shot a couple of the trueborn. The baron finished off the purifiers, and the wyches continued to lock up the termies. At this point I was hoping for the combat to end either way, but it’s nice to know that wyches can pretty effectively tie down paladins.

So,all of a sudden it was turn 5, and all he had left ware 2 paladins locked with the wyches, three paladins to their right, and 5 purifiers behind them. I had the warriors in their venom, 4 jetbikes, the baron, 2 trueborn and their venom, and a raider that picked up the pinned wyches, and the wyches locked in combat. There was no chance I could wipe him out on turn 5, so I had to hope the game went to a 6th turn.


The game on my 5th turn. My only chance was to try and wipe him out.

On the 5th turn I shot the purifiers with the jetbikes, frying two with heat lances and landing two wounds with splinter rifles. The baron charged the last purifier, and they killed each other since he already lost his shadow field. Now that I think about it, he should have gone first since he had 2 pain tokens! My fault. I need to make pain tokens, that’s close to the top of the list. Also! Now that I think about it he should have joined the baron and the jetbikes so they could charge too...

I knocked the last paladin squad down to two guys with 1 wound each, and the wyches ran from the single paladin that remained in the other squad. And guy who was watching us rolled the turn dice and it was a 2, so the game ended! He beat me by about 10 kill points to 6, but he only had three models left. I had maybe 400-500 points of stuff left. He had to leave soon but I convinced him to run the last turn just to see if his paladins could survive.

So, I managed to fry the lone paladin, and charge the formerly pinned wyches into the two paladins who each had one wound left. I think we again did one wound each, and it all came down to the combat round on his turn… and I couldn’t kill it!!! He made two or three 5 up invuls that turn, and the lone paladin held his ground against the Corespur Elite. Epic game.


The lone paladin, holding his own against the Corespur Elite.

This was the first time I’ve ever played grey knights, and they are pretty brutal. I’m scared of running into a spam of razorbacks with a few psybolt dreads… it seems like I don’t stand a change against that much S8 shooting and vehicles that ignore shaken and stunned.

Maybe a more streamlined version of my list would have won my game; one with two squads of bikes instead of scourges, or with some more hellions.

I think night shields would be very effective against grey knights, and since I also think they’re good against necrons, I think I’m gonna try to squeeze some in. Most grey knights have 24 inch range and can thus shoot at something that I place 30 inches always from them. If I reduce that range back to 24, it means if I position my raiders well, I can avoid being shot and then charge with a well maneuvered raider shimmy and a half way decent run roll. Maybe I’ll try out some night shields, I definitely want to start using grisley totems too. I tried enhanced aethersails today on my raiders and really liked them. Really increases the potential of those squads.

Thanks for stopping by! I’ll be picking up the brush again soon and I’ll post what I paint. Also, I want to get more games in too, so that means I’ll be back with more battle reports! Peace.

PAINTING

Today I finished my second squad of 8 wyches!


I've mixed the new 8 in with the old 8. The shardnet & impaler wych here is one of my favorite models so far. Really like the pose I was able to achieve with the scourge polearm.



I've never understood why everyone feels obligated to always give the Hekatrix one set of legs that aren't running. Most of the GW Hekatrixes shown have these legs. I've seen one dark eldar army where unfortunately every Hekatrix was in that weird dominatrixy pose with the wide legs and the whip. There is so much potential in the variety of agonizers that come in the dark eldar range. I love posing my agonizers behind my Hekatrixes to make it look like they've been running and are about to crack it forward. It continues the theme of motion in the dark eldar models. And on top of that, there are some unique ways to use those standing legs on regular wyches. I gave one a vambrace blade and it looks cool. I have another one with razorflails that has a pose inspired by the wych from the codex, in the large picture of the army with the orange plates and blue hair.

TACTICS

Raiders can easily manipulate the vehicle movement mechanics. I want to stress this as a reminder to myself and to other dark eldar players. We play a fragile army, but if we manage to correctly eyeball distances and intelligently place and move our vehicles, we can potentially charge a unit that is 30 inches away. And some of those extra inches shamelessly come from the famous Raider shimmy.


[/i]Problem?[i]

Simply show your opponent your broadside, then pivot your raider 90 degrees, move 12, disembark 2 inches from the front of the hull, run a D6, and charge 6. So lets say, as I talked about before, you're playing grey knights and you're taking night shields, you can place your Raider sideways and try to put it ~26 inches away from a squad of terminators. You will be safe from their fire, and unless they move backwards, you will be able to charge them on the next turn.

Next, I think I'm going to paint my archon or sliscus...

Ahhh, very nice panting and tactics

Nice looking army on the table top.

Looks great overall so far, I like the paint job and most of your conversion work.

Something I noticed though is on your Sliscus the Blast Pistol needs the hand filing away a bit more.

Thanks guys. It was nice to put it on the tabletop, I'm probably gonna go again this saturday.

I'll probably be running the same list because thats what I have models for, but I've been thinking a lot about about what my list should be, and here is my most recent iteration.

105 – Baron
125 – 2 Haemonculi, shattershard and liquefier

195 – 5 Incubi, Raider with FF, NS, and AES

217 – 13 Hellions, incl helliarch with agonizer
100 – 3 Wracks, Venom with extra SC and grisley totems
205 – 8 Wyches, shardnet, hekatrix with agonizer, Raider with FF, NS, and AES
130 – 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom with extra SC and grisley totems

543 – (3x) 6 Reavers, 2 heat lances, 1 caltrop, champion with venom blade

375 – (3x) Ravager with FF and NS

1995

One haemie goes with the incubi, the other with the wyches. Baron starts with the wracks and then takes the pain token to the hellions, wracks get in their venom and give a low threat grisley totem to the hellion mob.

I think this is a lot more dangerous than my current list. More hellions, more guaranteed pain tokens, more useful vehicle upgrades, and much more potent fast attack. I gain all that and pretty much all I lose is the baron and the trueborn.

It would be so much fun to run three units of reavers, especially when they're armed well. They have to stay away from flamers, but they can redeploy in and instant, and deal some serious damage to something they fly over. If only caltrops worked on vehicles!

I have some unbuilt reavers, I'll put them together and start running more reavers with caltrops and champions to see how that goes.

To be 100% honest, Baron is under-priced, not complaining just pointing it out. I often run a mega death star squad ( baron, 20 hellions) when I go against my friend who uses more cheese then a wine house. Overall I like the list, and may modify it to use with my models, as I am a poor -- year old and can't afford Sh**, but I have one question.
Are reavers, Really worth it? I have heard some very bad things about them and have neglected to use them in favor of Scourges.

Reavers more than anything are paper thin and tend to die horribly a lot, but if you aren't running a super-competetive list they can be rather fun.

In the games I've played so far, my reavers have usually been worth their points. They can be paper thin, but hell, the whole army is. In fact, they are one of the least paper thin units, because they have T4 and can get 3+ cover saves after making their bladevane attack. Their true enemy is the flamer; keep your reavers well away from them.

When they're not turboboosting, they can die horribly quite easily. But they are eldar jetbikes, and they do have skilled rider. So, if you move it right, you could shoot your two lances (which have a better chance to wreck/blow up your target than any other weapons in this dex), then use your jump move to hop into some cover, rerolling your failed dangerous terrain tests. Scourges not only don't have the free assault move or the dangerous tests rerolls, but they also have a much harder time getting within 9 inches to use the heat lance, unless they want to deep strike, but thats pretty suicidal.

I disagree, I think they can be very competitive. They are great solutions to a lot of problems in the current meta game; longfangs, psybolt dreads, manticores, stuff that is tough to bring down and can shoot at you from very far away. Also, good luck trying to crack an eldar tank with holofields without running some heat lances...

I'm going to go play at GW tomorrow and I'll run (2x) 6 Reavers with 2 HL, caltrops, and a champion with a venom blade. I'll let you guys know how it works out! Peace.

I really like the trueborn with the stunclaw as the bayonette for the shard carbine, genius!

Suprise! I made a Haemonculus





Whaddaya think? I know the green stuff is a little sloppy, I'll fix it.

I just threw up in my mouth..... Joking of course, It looks good, can't wait to see it painted.

Ok... can't tell if that's only partially sarcastic or completely sarcastic... but I'll just assume its a compliment!

I think the archon is next in line to get painted, but I do want to start playtesting lists with haemonculi in them.

About to head into real space and go slaughter some denizens of the 40k universe! (I.E. go to GW and roll dice)

Good luck, I want a game today, but doubt friends do too...

ARCHON

After stealing the soul of a dreadknight, my archon definitely deserves a paint job.



On Saturday I went to GW and got 2 games in. The first was against grey knights, and the second was with the grey knights player against two imperial guard players. Some pretty epic stuff happened, and I learned some lessons considering the fact that I only had 4 models total left in both games combined…

2000 PTS VS GREY KNIGHTS

Right when I walked in the bunker I was approached for a game by a guy with a really cool looking grey knights army. It has a harlequin like paint scheme with some nice pastel colors. If my army was fully painted, our table would have looked pretty frickin sweet. Almost there…

He was running the list that I have been terrified to face; psybacks and psybolt dreads. He had a cool spin on the concept though, he was running corteaz with plasma cannon servitors in a chimera, 2 squads of 5 purifiers in psybacks, a ten man strike squad in a stormraven, I think three other psybacks with melta henchmen, a venerable psybolt dread, two psybolt dreads, and a dreadknight with an incinerator. So, so painful.

He convinced me to do a scenario from a tournament he knew of, and I was all for it because I’m not a huge fan of the standard three scenarios. It was sort of a blend of all three. 5 objectives were placed, one in the center, and one in each corner. We rolled to see whether our primary objective would be kill points, objectives, or table corners. Then we rolled for which was secondary. The mission was played for the primary objective, but in the case of a tie, it goes to the winner of the secondary objective, and the third if the second is a tie. Hope that makes sense haha… It’s pretty cool and it eliminates the “roll dice and tie” effect that objectives often cause…



Our primary was objectives, and secondary was kill points. I went first, and I reserved the razorwing and the hellions; didn’t want the razorwing to die before getting off its payload, and I wanted a tough troop to come on near the end. I hid behind two buildings because he was able to re-roll the seize dice, but he didn’t. I decided that my only chance was to be really aggressive and hope I get lucky with my damage table rolls, so I jetted pretty much everything at his face on the first turn.

I managed to kill the venerable dread and one razorback, and then he took down every vehicle except a ravager and a venom. At least I was getting lucky that my vehicles were wrecking instead of exploding… He shot up my reavers, a few incubi, and a few scourges also.



None of my reserves came in, and I was really hoping for my hellions to come in because the purifiers that were in the razorback were positioned about 4 inches into my table half, and I had rolled 3d6 run for my drugs, so I would have lost a few hellions to cleansing flame, but I would have gotten a pain token off the bat. But, they didn’t…

I charged his strike squad with a wych squad and made him run away and soon off the board, a wasted pain token… My archon and incubi charged the purifiers. I was going to bring my archon to help the wyches until he told me about corteaz’s power that causes people charging to be in difficult and dangerous terrain… then it was obvious that the incubi needed his PGL, they would have been chopped up otherwise.

Well for the rest of the game he continued to pick me apart. His dreadknight came in and flamed my warriors, but on my turn the archon went beast mode and charged him solo, killing him not on my turn’s combat, but his turn’s combat! So epic. But his strength 6 was a little too late… if I could have been slicing up razorbacks earlier, this game would have been different.


Huskblade archon beastmode!

All I had left at the end of the game was the baron, and he had about 750 points and was claiming 2 objectives. Really fun game, and I would love to see if I would do better with a more competitive version of my list.


Just the baron remains

3000 PTS VS IMPERIAL GUARD

Two imperial guard players approached us near the end of our game and wanted to paly 2v2 with 1500 pts each. I never like playing multiplayer 40k, but again I got suckered into one. It was fun though, but it did drag on a bit.

We played capture and control, and guess what; we ended up tying! Shocker. But some pretty epic stuff did happen.

First highlight were the psybolt dreads deployed in a building, check it out! The GW employee said it was legal haha!


Problem?

I put the archon with some wyches because I really wanted to run him again but couldn’t afford the incubi. Their raider got shot down after jetting right up to the huge mob of guard. After all his shooting, the archon remained with three wyches. I just had to pass a LD test on a 10 and start chopping up guardsmen. BUT I ROLLED BOXCARS!!! And since there were 4 models in a unit that started with 9, they proceeded to run off the table… Epic fail.


Archon was in beastmode in the first game, but was a big wuss in this game

All I had left at the end were three warriors, but they were comfy on our objective with some henchmen. We shoved the razorwing and the stormraven up to contest their objective, but they shot them down and claimed it back, so we tied.

LESSONS

I need to beef up my hellion mob by at least 5. That’s probably the next thing I’ll buy. And I definitely need to start putting grisley totems on my venoms. I need to be able to prevent people running away, dark eldar have such mediocre leadership. And when I fail an archon’s check and miss out on having him mow through a mob of guardsmen, I think it’s a sign that its time to adorn some grisly totems.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sorry for your losses man. The first game sounds like the first game I played in a tournament at my LGS with my Tau. I had so many bad rolls with my Tau and the only left was a Rail Cannon-lees Hammerhead that managed to tank shock a squad of Grey Knights off an objective and into the arms of awaiting Kroot, being eaten alive as they feld the Hammerhead.
How many Helions were you running or planning to run per squad because I'm currently working and slowly but surely building a DEldar army list that uses the Baron.

Hello!

Been a while since my last post, but its cause I didn't do much painting or modeling over the last few months. But, after using a GW gift card I got for Xmas to buy some Dark Eldar reinforcements, I felt motivated to build some more models and paint some more, so let me show you what I've done!

SLISCUS

I painted my Duke Sliscus conversion!



The picture is not to flattering, but I really like how he turned out. The green really emphasizes his specialty poison. Sliscus was my favorite DE HQ choice when the codex came out, but I've now realized he's not as competitve has haemonculi, archons, and the baron, so I don't think I'll be using Sliscus in my eventual 2000 point lists. But still, I'm glad I have models for him and his trueborn, and I'm sure I'll want to put them on the table when the squad is done.

DRACON

Even though this model is a terrible waste of points, I wanted to give Sliscus's trueborn a dracon with an agonizer and a PGL. He's about 60 points for a 1 wound 5+ save model, but since this is sort of a fluffy unit anyways and won't be that competitive, I wanted it to have a dracon, sort of a second in command for Sliscus, and I'm really happy with the model I made. Classic DE pose, a sinister looking splinter pistol, and some shifty eyes; here's my dracon!



He can also be used as an Archon in case I ever want to run one with an agonizer and a PGL

HAEMONCULI

I'm not too happy with the shadowseer haemonculi that I modeled above, so after I bought a box of wracks, I made another one out of all my dark eldar bitz. And I really like how this one turned out. I used the GW haemonculi torsoe, but gave him arms, a head, and a back-spine-thingie from the wracks set.



I'm hesitating to paint him because I'm not quite sure how I want to. If I paint his coat flesh colored like most haemonculi, I'm not if it will fit in visually with whatever unit I put it with. I'll figure something out.

2ND RAVAGER

Since I bought my 3rd Ravager, I figured it was time to paint my 2nd Ravager, so, voila!



I thought that the tattoo on my 1st ravager was too crowded, so I went for a more simplistic one on this ravager, and I think it looks much better. I used an eye patter similar to what I used on my helliarch. The skull in the middle looks like an eyeball, and it since it sticks out a little, it moves around when you look from different angles, and sort of appears to move around!

Yes, I did give the ravager captain a blaster pistol. Never know when he might have to personally pop a close tank

Thanks for stopping by! I'm desperately thinking of ways to take more professional photos of my army, I might even buy a little photo studio. When I do get better pictures, I'll probably restart my plog.

Peace & Love! (Here in the 3rd Millenium, that is )

Paint the coat whatever colour you want.

I recently got an Urien, and I'm going to do his fleshcoat in the same Shadow Grey + Blue Wash I've done the rest of my haem converts clothes in so he matches.

I think I'll paint the wracks first and then see if that gives me inspiration.

I wanted to share my newest thoughts on a 2000pt list also; here's my most recent iteration

105 - Baron
120 - (2x) Haemonculi with liquifier

239 - 7 Incubi, Raider w/ FF, NS and AES

249 - 14 Hellions, incl Helliarch w/ agonizer
195 - 8 Wyches, shardnet, incl Hekatrix w/ agonizer, Raider w/ FF and AES
260 - (2x) 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom w/ GT and extra SC
100 - 3 Wracks, Venom w/ GT and extra SC

342 - (2x) 6 Reavers, 2 heat lances, incl Arena Champion w/ venom blade

375 - (3x) Ravager w/ FF and NS

1985

Haemies go with incubi and wyches. Baron steals the wracks PT on the first turn.

Got 15 points left, not quite sure where to throw them. I know what you're all probably thinking; drop all the night shields, drop the arena champions, and drop one or two incubi, and you can afford yourself a whole nother small unit, like another warrior venom. But I think I'd rather equip my units the way I want to, than run them bare bones so I can afford one more venom to spam with. The night shields and the arena champions, which will stand out as unnecessary expenditures to most who see this list, are there to increase the potential of my tank killing units. Night sheilds are invaluable against armies that rely on 24 inch range guns or less, like grey knights and necrons. The champions improve the jetbikes pesky 8 leadership, plus having 4 attacks that wound on 2+ is nothing to scoff at, and especially if I have a decent combat drugs roll, these squads have a whole new dimension to their capabilities.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to try this list out at my local store. I'll need to proxy one reaver; I need to buy another box of bikes to run (2x) 6 squads, since I used one bike to build my baron. I'll try and remember to take some pictures so I can do a quick battle report. Cheers!

With 15pts, I'd upgrade one of the wracks to an acothyst and give it a venom blade.


That said without fnp that'spossibly a bad plan - I'm unsure on why you have the advanced aethersails, even more unsure about the trophies. If you drop one or the other set, you could give the wracks an acothyst with a hex rifle, at which point they can hang back and snipe and/or sit on an objective for you, either way they're a great harrasment unit / mc killer.

I think AES is a great 5 point upgrade, especially for the Incubi Raider. And I will explain why, with mathematics!

Lets say you have your favorite raider in the front and middle of your deployment zone, and you want to move it flat out and forward on the first turn. Meaning, it has to go between 12 and 24 inches, and land somewhere in the semicircle infront of it. That means that the area of potential landing spots is (pi*24^2) - (pi*12^2) = 432*pi square inches. If you add AES, and roll the average 7 inches, your maximum movement is now 31 and the area of potential landing spots is (pi*31^2) - (pi*12^2) = 817*pi. So for 5 points you are, on average, nearly doubling the area of spots that you can land in. This simply means you have a much higher chance to put the raider exactly where you want it to be. The only thing that my raiders sacrifice in order to do this is the ability for the haemonculi to use their liquifiers next turn, which could be a big deal, but situationally, could very well be less important than putting the raider in the spot that will give it the best chance to effectively unload the incubi in turn 2. This is why I think AES are worth the 5 points, especially for the Incubi.

As for the grisley totems, I am very scared of leadership tests as a Dark Eldar player. I've played a few games where either my hellions or a wych squad with an archon in it fail a leadership test while below 50% and proceed to run right off the table. It is always tragic, because it happens at the end of my opponents turn, which means had they made that leadership test, they would be able to move, run, and charge on my turn. 5 points is well worth the insurance during those crucial morale or pinning checks; sometimes 9 leadership feels quite low... The unit that I am most concerned about failing a check is the hellions, because they are a large unit, and odds are they will be taking multiple leadership checks over the course of the game. So that being said, I can see myself dropping the GT on the warrior venoms, and keeping them on the wrack venom. The wrack venom is the lowest priority target in my army, and odds are it will not be shot at early, so it can hang beside the hellions and make sure they dont wuss out.

So yeah. In general, I think Dark Eldar have some of the best vehicle upgrades in the game, and I want to make good use of them.

Been painting the rest of my Trueborn, almost done, will have pics up soon!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Well I just found out that my local GW has a 1500pt tournament on march 17th, so instead of concentrating on a 2000pt list, I'm gonna start putting together the 1500pt list that I'm going to bring to the tournament. Something like this;

105 - Baron
120 - (2x) Haemonculi with liquifier

180 - 5 Incubi, Raider with FF

201 - 11 Hellions, incl Helliarch with agonizer
190 - 8 Wyches, shardnet, incl Hekatrix with agonizer, Raider with FF
125 - 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom with extra SC
100 - 3 Wracks, Venom with extra SC and GT

156 - 6 Reavers, 2 heat lances

345 - (3x) Ravager with FF

1522

Since its only 1500 points, I ignored what I said above about the vehicle upgrades, I need every point I can get. Still needs a little trimming. I could drop the Incubi to 4 in a Venom. Or I could drop the 2nd haemie and the wyches, and pick up another warrior venom, maybe getting a few more Hellions with the extra points. Any thoughts?

New pictures! I know the olive color of the shelf they live on is not ideal, I'll find a better way to photograph them eventually. I went on a paint spree a couple weeks ago before a 1500 pt tournament, painting 2 venoms, 5 hellions, and 10 warriors in a day. The tournament was a ton of fun and I'm definitely trying to go to more soon, I'll give a quick recap. I brought the baron, 1 haemonculus, 4 baster trueborn in a venom, 11 hellions, 8 wyches in a raider, (2x) 5 warriors in a venom, 3 wracks in a raider, 2 ravagers, and a razorwing.

In round 1 I played a necron army that had the storm lord, 2 large squads of immortals, a small warrior squad, a squad of wraiths, a stalker-walker thing, a command barge with a lord, and a small squad of scarabs, I might be forgetting something. His list was kind of decoherent and he wasn't using it very well, so I took advantage of what I could, and tabled him by the last turn.

Game 2 I was placed against a ~14 year old kid who brought a green tide list; just a big mek with a KFF, and 6 squads of 30 choppa boyz. It was intimidating, especially considering the fact that he must have won his first game to be against me. But, I ended up tabling him by turn 3, while only losing about 5 of my models. It was dawn of war, he started 2 squads of boyz on the table with the mek, and I started the baron and the hellions. I was able to pick apart his first two squads on turn 1 as his last 4 came on the table, and then knock out remaining 2 by 2. If it wasn't a tournament setting I definitely would have gone easy on the kid, but I did what I had to do. That being said, it was quite fun to make an opponent pick up 180 models over the course of 45 minutes.

So after winning my first 2 games by wide margins, I found myself at the #1 table, playing for the best overall score award. My opponent brought a khorne list with a land raider, 2 vindicators, 3 squads of berserers, 2 of them in rhinos and 1 in the raider with kharn. I saw his list and I knew that I could beat him, but I ended up beating myself. I should have just sat back and used my range and my speed, destroying his land first to knock out his long range, and then just picking him apart while he tried to approach me. But I got cocky and wanted to bring the fight to him. I figured I could alpha strike him and cripple as much as I could on the first turn, but my dice completely failed me and the game devolved. It was close down to the end, but he ended up having about 200 more victory points than me, which is what we were fighting for.

Lesson completely learned. Dark Eldar cannot afford to make mistakes and they need to capitalize on their opponents weaknesses. I won my first two games because I saw the flaws in my opponents lists and exploited them correctly, and I lost the third game because I did not.

I haven't been officially counting, but those 3 games were probably only my 15th-17th games using the dark eldar codex. I'm still have a lot to learn on the battlefield, and I'm glad that I got some competitive experience in. I'm really looking forward to playing in more tournaments and improving my game.

So thanks for following my progress in both painting and gaming! Enjoy the new pics!

THE CORESPUR ELITE



ARCHON



BARON SATHONYX



DUKE SLISCUS



HAEMONCULUS



SHARDNET & IMPALER



RAVAGER



HELLIARCH

Wow lookin good bro! Your special characters are frickin bad-ass. I really like you you use the running wych legs for your hekatrixes instead of the standing ones

I've gotten about 20 games under my belt with my Dark Eldar army, I've learned a lot about how the army works, but I also know that there is so much more for me to learn. Dark Eldar seems like it is the most difficult codex to master; it has obvious shortcomings, it is completely unforgiving to the mistakes you make, and it has a couple rock v. scizzors mach ups to deal with. Here are a few key things that I've learned.

-Unfortunately, a lot of the game as a Dark Eldar players rests on how lucky you are with your vehicle damage chart rolls. Also, some games can be decided by whether your shadowfield cracks on the first wound or of the fifteenth wound (it always seems to be one or the other...) Make sure you bring some dice that you have confidence in.

-We have a lot of brutal HQ choices, but I've found that the best option is to minimize your expenditure on HQ so you can fill up other force org slots. Choices like vect, lillith, and huskblade-archon are fun, but they are very expensive, and they pretty much do the same thing that the rest of your army does, but can die to one fated multi-laser shot. Baron is the best by far, and haemonculi are great.

-Any competitive list >= 1750 should have at least 5 troops, if you only have 4 you better have a damn good reason.

-5 Warriors with a blaster in a Venom with 2 splinter cannons is one of the best options in this codex. Its only 125 pts, its versitile, and its scoring. What more can you ask for really?

-I initially frowned upon the blaster trueborn (3-4 trueborn with blasters in a venom), but I have learned to love them. The key to using them is to make sure they get an alpha strike; drop them in cover midfield and make sure they have something juicy to shoot at. If you really want to blast your opponent as hard as you can on turn 1, do this with your 5 man warrior squads too.

-Scourges suck.

-Reavers are not that great either, but I still want to try them out and find a good way to use them.

-I haven't yet tried beasts, but I think I should soon, as they seem to be quite popular, and there must be a reason for that.

-Everyone says that 3 ravagers are mandatory, but I've found that 2 ravagers and a razorwing is a really good option. I run a razorwing with monscythe missiles, disentigrator cannons, and a splinter cannon. You have to find other place to take lances to pick up the third ravagers slack, but the razorwing adds a whole level of awesome to your list, and it is great at mopping up things like longfangs, lootas, and combined guard squads with autocannons, which would otherwise have to either be taken down by venom spam, or you'd have to live with until you can assault.

-Dark Eldar vehicle upgrades are amazing and are way overlooked. Flickerfields are obviously a must, but I think that having 1-2 grisley totems in your list is necessary, especially if you are running hellions or beasts. Enhanced aether-sails are a pretty nice 5 point upgrade to give to your incubi or wych raiders, since unless they have a haemonculi with a liquifier, they won't be shooting the following turn anyways. Night shields are amazing, but pricey; I would love to squeeze them onto my heavy support choices, but often don't have the points. Torment grenade launchers (like grisley totems) is a vehicle upgrade that other codexes should be made jealous of, and I really want to find a way to use them effectively. Shock prows are another 5 point upgrade that can definitely be worth it (Plus, anyone else see their interesting little synergy with TGLs?)

So yeah, there are a few of the lessons that I've learned so far, hope you learned somethere here too!

Love the conversions thoughout the army, some really great ideas! The Archon in particular is great...consider that idea nicked!

Great free hand patterns too...mine never seem to come out nearly as good.

Consider me subscribed fellow dark-kin

On Saturday I went out to my friendly local battle bunker and got a couple games in with the Corespur Elite. Lost them both unfortunately, but learned some lessons!

I brought a new list to try some things out.

-Webway Portal. I’ve never used one before, but I’ve been wanting to try it. Not in a full on webway list, but in a modified webway list, where only a couple units come out of it. I had the aethersurfer and his hellions, plus two small squads of reavers coming out of the portal, and it was a nice addition to my normal list.

-Nightshields. Because of the predominance of grey knights and necrons, who operate primarily at 24 inch range, I’ve been thinking recently that nightshields are a good competitive option. When I saw that the Colonial GT winner ran modified venom spam with nightshields on everything, my thoughts were confirmed.

-Leadership Shennanigans. Here’s a tactic I thought up myself, and I can’t wait till it works. I brought the necessary accoutrements on Saturday but didn’t get a chance to pull it off.
-Step 1: Take 1-2 raiders and arm them with shock prows and torment grenade launchers.
-Step 2: Take 1-2 squads of reavers, ideally with cluster caltrops, maybe even grav-talons.
-Step 3: Do a bladevane attack on some threatening enemy unit, and hopefully inflict 25% casualties
-Step 4: Tank shock the unit with your raider, being careful to avoid anything that could death or glory
-Outcome: When the unit gets tanked shock, they have to take a leadership test, and it will be at -1 with the TGLs. If they pass that, they will have to take the moral check from the 25% casualties, again at -1 leadership. If they pass that too, you can pepper them with venom shots and make them take another check in the shooting phase. So, pretty much, you can pick a unit that you don’t like, and make them take up to 3 leadership checks at -1 leadership, giving you a pretty good chance to make them run away. Pretty nasty, eh? Grav-talons potentially make it 4 checks, but I think caltrops are better cause they make it easier to do 25% casualties in the movement phase.

2000 PTS VS IMPERIAL GUARD

My first game was against an I-guard player who had 4 chimeras, a plasma russ, 3 basalisks, 3 vendettas, and 5 veteran squads (in the vendettas and the chimeras.) We played kill points and spearhead.

I went first, so I deployed everything near the center. He stuck the basalisks in the corner, wrapped his chimeras around them, and flanked his vendettas with their scout moves.



On my first turn I moved to the left to target one vendetta and avoid the other two. I shot it up with lances but failed to kill it, which was unfortunate because then my razorwing had nothing to shoot at, and it got shot down on his turn, before it got to blow its load.



Note how he positioned his chimeras on his turn 1; he made it impossible for me to flat out my transports towards his basilisks. Very sneaky. It took me 3 turns to get to them, but in retrospect, I should have concentrated on the vendettas more than the basilisks.

The hellions came out of the webway on turn two, but unfortunately their best option was to fly over and chop up the veteran squad that came out of the vendetta I tried to kill.





I finally broke his line, killed a couple chimeras, liquefied some veterans, and charged my wyches into the stationary basalisks. But by this time, he already had about 5 more kill points than me, and I was scraping for everything I could get.

My wyches stuck their haywires, killing one basilisk and blowing off one of the others’ weapon. But on his turn, the basalisks drove up and tank shocked the wyches, and they ran away!!! That pretty much sealed the deal.



LESSONS LEARNED

Needless to say, I cannot afford to forget to shoot units! In one turn, I forgot to shoot both raiders and the blaster inside. In another turn, I forgot to shoot my trueborn’s blasters. Stupid stupid stupid.

Also, when imperial guard don’t have hydras, the vendettas need to be my #1 priority. I ended up ignoring a couple of them, and they did a ton of damage.

On my first turn, I didn’t move anything flat out, because I wanted to shoot. But, my shooting did jack gak. I should have just shoved everything flat out towards him on turn 1.

2000 PTS VS BLOOD ANGELS AND ELDAR

I played my second game against two guys together; about 1200 pts of blood angels, and 800 points of elder, sharing 1 force org chart. The blood angels had 2 assault squads in lascannon razorbacks, a reclusiarch, a couple sanguinary priests, and a stormraven with 5 assault terminators and a librarian dread. The elder had a wraithlord, scatter laser warwalkers, and two full squads of warp spiders.

It was dawn of war and kill points again. They went first, so I started the webway venom behind a building. They brought everything on along their edge, so I brought everything on flat out in a refused flank. I shot the webway venom at the wraithlord, did 5 wounds, and it failed 3 saves. So awesome.




On their 2nd turn they repositioned a little, and did some shooting, blowing up one raider. My hellions didn’t come in, so I held back and moved up a little, killing all but the exarch of one spider squad with the razorwing, and immobilizing a razorback with ravager shots.



They had another turn with fairly ineffective shooting, and on my turn 3 the hellions arrived, so I went all out. I brought them right up to the two razorbacks, and positioned all my lances, including my trueborn, so I could pop them both and charge the guys inside. BUT! Lances are notoriously unreliable, and I failed to kill either of them with ~12 lance shots. The hellions were forced to charge the razorbacks, and killed both of them, but then took a countercharge from both assault squads and the terminators and got owned. The baron lived but ran away.



Needless to say, gak went south, and I again found myself clawing for kill points. But as I clawed, they continued to tear up my paper planes, and I found myself down 5 kill points on turn 5 and conceded.



LESSONS LEARNED

The storm raven should have been my #1 priority, I don’t know why it wasn’t. It didn’t really do anything first two turns, but when it unloaded the termies and the dread, it wreaked havoc. The elder war walkers should have also been a high priority. I initially ignored them because they were out of range of everything, and then went I got closer, I had to pop the transports. But ignoring them took its toll, as they wracked up 4-5 kill points throughout the game. Brutal.

With my nightshields, I outranged everything except for the three twin linked lascannons, so I should have just played the range game.

TOURNAMENT ON SATURDAY

On Saturday I’m going to another tournament at the battle bunker. 2500pts this time, which is ridiculous, but should be fun. I decided that I wouldn’t take a super competitive list because I don’t have enough venoms or blaster trueborn for 2500, so I’m bringing a list that’s a combination of fun and competitive;

105 – Baron
150 – Duke

183 – 4 Trueborn, blasters, Venom with extra SC and NS
283 – 9 Trueborn, 6 carbines, 2 cannons, dracon with agonizer and PGL, Raider with FF and NS
110 – 3 Wracks, Venom with extra SC, NS, and GT

313 – 18 Hellions, helliarch with agonizer
432 – (2x) 8 Wyches, shardnet, grenades, hekatrix with agonizer, Raider with FF and NS
280 – (2x) 5 Warriors, blaster, Venom with extra SC, NS, and GT

312 – (2x) 6 Reavers, 2 heat lances

375 – (3x) Ravager with FF and NS

2543

Still have to trim some points. Obvious choice is to drop the dracon, but I love the dracon! I’ll figure something out. If I don’t buy a 4th box of hellions before Saturday, I’ll just drop some hellions. Thankfully, painting is not required, though I’m gonna try to do a lot of painting this week anyways. Lookin forward to putting my sliscus squad on the table!

Later folks!

Cool pics, can't wait to actually get my DE on the table and fight a battle

Good luck on Saturday

Very nice, like the pics.