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MikeMcSomething:

Nightshields are worthwhile on splinter rack equipped raiders filled with kabalite warriors and ravagers meant for tank hunting. They help the ravager attain the alpha strike it desperately needs (by sparing it a turn of long range fire or neutering the range of things like assault cannons) and they give the raider with warriors a much needed advantage against a gunline equipped with basic weaponry that might otherwise kill it. Sure the enemy could move six inches closer, but that is assuming they are on foot, do not have to contend with difficult terrain, and do not need to move down the floors of a ruin.

That said; Nightshields should NOT be used on raiders and venoms that plan on being aggressive or on blasterborn venoms (blasters have too short a range to make effective use of it against basic small arms). Nightshields are also not so great against flyers that can get close without worry of effective retaliation by its target.

Makutsu:

The voidraven might be overkill. Its void-lances are wasted on wave-serpents due to their special fields and the missiles seem like needless costly additions against a mechanized force. It will cost you far less and be just as effective to use a stock razorwing.

Could we also ask what other units you have available to use? Your true-born in venoms should be a bit more specialized. The blaster tempts when they should be shooting cannons instead (the way you have them built). Against a mechanized force you need to up your lance count, be that by switching for blasterborn or reavers with blasters for quick flank assaults.

CWE = Craft World Eldar

Actually I am not surprised that you killed most of the pathfinders since they have to set up within their range at the beginning of the battle or move at their 6" and fire snap shots. They are often get shot up but take a lot of firepower to kill.

The terrain seems okay then so was there any particular reason that the raider and venom were in LoS first turn to get shot up?

The FD exarch on a quad gun is probably one of the best sub AV 12 killers in the game. Anything sub AV12 he shoots will probably die so the secret to dealing with him is staying out of range/LoS and killing the gun before he has a chance to open up.

AV12 and T3 really is the worst spots for DE as it removes two of their big advantages (dark lance spam and poison). This leaves the advantage of night vision in the above scenario and a slight mobility advantage. Capitalizing on these is key in such a battle. You can do this by playing the local force concentration on the board so you always outnumber him in the 36" bubble that is nighfighting gun ranges and keeping his "good" targets to a minimum of what you are okay with loosing (ie your most of your splinter weapons in this fight)

@MikeMcSomething
I am not a mod and never even indicated I was. Are you expecting a mod to call you down?
I simply gave you advice which I see you are not going to follow, it was and is foolish of me for wasting my time. Feel free to correct my grammar for me in a quote. I do not mind and will not take it as an insult it is after all posts on a forum.
As a further service, and so it will be two tries and a pattern, I will give you another piece of advice. You should strive to be less rude and condescending in a forum dedicated to people who paint and play with little toy soldiers. That tends to reduce the impact of your words rather than increase them. This sort of attitude reduces the overall experience for people.
and really that is why we can't have nice things.

Nightwolf829 wrote:
MikeMcSomething:

Nightshields are worthwhile on splinter rack equipped raiders filled with kabalite warriors and ravagers meant for tank hunting. They help the ravager attain the alpha strike it desperately needs (by sparing it a turn of long range fire or neutering the range of things like assault cannons) and they give the raider with warriors a much needed advantage against a gunline equipped with basic weaponry that might otherwise kill it. Sure the enemy could move six inches closer, but that is assuming they are on foot, do not have to contend with difficult terrain, and do not need to move down the floors of a ruin.

That said; Nightshields should NOT be used on raiders and venoms that plan on being aggressive or on blasterborn venoms (blasters have too short a range to make effective use of it against basic small arms). Nightshields are also not so great against flyers that can get close without worry of effective retaliation by its target.

Makutsu:

The voidraven might be overkill. Its void-lances are wasted on wave-serpents due to their special fields and the missiles seem like needless costly additions against a mechanized force. It will cost you far less and be just as effective to use a stock razorwing.

Could we also ask what other units you have available to use? Your true-born in venoms should be a bit more specialized. The blaster tempts when they should be shooting cannons instead (the way you have them built). Against a mechanized force you need to up your lance count, be that by switching for blasterborn or reavers with blasters for quick flank assaults.

The voidraven I do admit being a bit overkill, but I only had like 5 mins before I had to go out and wanted to try something different, I was definetly thinking of switching the Splinter Cannons of the Trueborn to Dark Lances, and it was meant to be a TAC list for my meta, and I knew that my opponent could be bringing some Tyranids as well and hence too much anti-tank would probably be not as good of an idea as it seems.

I didn't really have more mobility vs Eldar since they could move 12" and shoot 2 weapons as well due to them being fast skimmers, I think Night Fight was on, but he went first and blew up 1 of my Ravangers that had a 2+ cover save, since he ignored it and I forgot that the Exarch can do that.

Everything else was out of LoS and range, but then it's my turn shot all my Dark Lances, hit like 4 times and glanced twice I believe and 1 was saved and the other went through. Then 2 Fire Prisms, and the quad gun just shot me to bits.

I will never put trueborns in Venoms again since it greatly reduces their survivability and effectiveness once they are in a Venom, since you now can only move 6" and shoot properly, and Heavy weapons still count as moving so snap fire only.
The better weapons on the Trueborn Splinter Cannons and Dark Lances are now significantly less effective.

I have almost every unit in the codex, and I find that only beasts packs and Warriors Trueborn are the only things that are really worth taking...
At least personally that's the conclusion I've come to.
I've ran 5 Man wyches in Venoms and they tend to die really quickly especially after an explosion.
10 Man Wyches are more powerful, but they can't really do anything in CC because their numbers get wittled down quite a bit by the explosion or shooting, and when they are perfectly fine without getting intercepted they are only "ok".

Wracks, not really a combat unit.

Incubi good but very costly and uses are limited.

Reavers, I just don't know what to do with them sometimes...turbo-boost? get into enemy lines and do some damage? but for their cost they're not really putting a lot of wounds on, in CC they're only ok...

Hellions, good but with even some focus fire they'll die pretty quickly, and landing in terrain of a big blob normally means 1-2 will die and that's not really good...

Beastpack, very good tough and damage dealing.

Mandrakes, I think we can skip them.

Scourges, again overpriced and can't move and shoot means that most of the special weapons are pretty useless, either that or get close enough and get killed.

Talos, I like them a lot and they are a good choice for being bullet magnets, but they compete for the Heavy Support slot which is meh.

Chronos, no need to talk about him...

Razorwing, pretty standard to field for some Air-defense

'Scourges, again overpriced and can't move and shoot means that most of the special weapons are pretty useless, either that or get close enough and get killed. '

Scourges can move and shoot just fine with most of their weapons.

Dark Lances are an exception, as they are Heavy - you'll be hitting on 6's if you move.

Blasters, Haywire Blasters, Heat Lances, Splinter Cannon and Shredders can all be fired on the move as they are all assault weapons. Shardcarbines ditto.

They are spendy, but deepstriking a unit of them behind someone's prized tank and cutting loose is deeply theraputic. They'll likely die shortly after, unfortunately, but they can still swing a game for you

I run my reavers as 3-6 man MC/Tank/Lone HQ assassins, using their 3+ Jink to protect them as they turbo-zoom up the board to express-deliver some blaster/heat lance love to a vehicle, IC or MC. Don't forget that as Eldar jetbikes they can move, shoot then zoom behind cover in the assault phase. 4+ jink when not turbo-boosting is still pretty fun. I try to avoid cc with them, as they aren't that good at it. Bladevane runs across lightly armoured enemies (Orks, Krooot etc) can also be fun

If you don't think Wracks are a combat unit, you've never seen 10 of them dismember a full 3-fex brood in CC
They work best on high T, low armour enemies though. A pair of liquifiers in the unit can really soften a unit before a charge too

Another use for wracks is to run them as a 3 man unit, to unlock a transport cheaply. Works for me, and you'd be surprised how hard to shift 3 wracks in heavy cover can be in some circumstances.

Just my two cents, but I think turbo boosting reavers with blasters (I prefer using squads of 9-10 w/ 3 blasters) bladevaning whatever I can, making use if the 3+ cover save they get, plus it gets them up the field quite quickly, and effectively, you also have enough redundant bikes to keep the 3 blasters out of fire until they reach a target worth shooting, wracks, as has been said, should either be used for unlocking vehicles and being a cheap scoring upgrade for said vehicles, or full bore dual liquifier up field objective deniers. Ravagers should be, IMO, taking both the flicker field and night shields, and the rest of the raiders just flicker fields. Optimise you vehicles to do the opposite if the infantry in them, that is why blaster born on dual splinter cannon venoms work so well, as do splinter rifle kabalites and dark lance raiders, but I think splinter racks suck, just because I haven't had much success with them. That's just what is think.

I don't know where all the negativity came from in this thread so quickly. Sounds like you just got hit hard turn 1 and couldn't come back at all. You have pretty much the same range on your AT and the same jink saves as Eldar, so deploy further away next game and play cat and mouse. DE can play in your face shoory or cat and mouse shooty.

I like the reaver suggestions and a small unit of Scourges deepstriking. They'll give him something to be concerned about and possibly deploy a little more defensively. Another tip is to use a large part of your army to pick on smaller parts of his.

@MikeMcsomething: I like nightshields and Raiders, to each their own. Everyone plays in different metas with different armies and different personalities so what may work for your games may not work with others and vice versa. Splinter racks and nightshields work very nicely together using a gunboat strategy. Sure some things counter it, but it'll turn a horde into mince meat.

 Wingeds wrote:
I don't know where all the negativity came from in this thread so quickly. Sounds like you just got hit hard turn 1 and couldn't come back at all. You have pretty much the same range on your AT and the same jink saves as Eldar, so deploy further away next game and play cat and mouse. DE can play in your face shoory or cat and mouse shooty.

I like the reaver suggestions and a small unit of Scourges deepstriking. They'll give him something to be concerned about and possibly deploy a little more defensively. Another tip is to use a large part of your army to pick on smaller parts of his.

@MikeMcsomething: I like nightshields and Raiders, to each their own. Everyone plays in different metas with different armies and different personalities so what may work for your games may not work with others and vice versa. Splinter racks and nightshields work very nicely together using a gunboat strategy. Sure some things counter it, but it'll turn a horde into mince meat.

You are forgetting that we have AV10 vs their AV12, their shots has a higher chance of blowing up ours than we have to blowing up theirs, a lot of their weapons are twin-linked too + psychic powers which makes it even more scarier than normal.

I did deploy super defensively the only thing I lost first turn was my Ravanger due to the ADL shooting ignoring cover saves shots by the Exarch.
I threw the rest of my Dark Lances into 1 Wave Serpant and only a glance went through, then most of my stuff were essentially in range of something.
Also, as someone mentioned the T3 didn't help poison at all too.

Your title is extremely misleading and this thread has gone through several different "topics".

"Dark Eldar dealing with super long range stuff" one would assume you got blown away turn 1 from your earlier posts. I know a lot of people don't like flickerfields, but I do, the 5+ invuln is nice if you don't have first turn or are against ignores cover and psychich powers.

Splinter rifles are balanced being poisoned for the ability to assault after shooting and getting 2 shots. They're in no way bad. Splinter racks are worth taking in this case.

We can spam AV 10. They can't spam armor, and mechdar has been severly nerfed with the last FAQ.

I feel like you just had a bad game. It happens

Well it started out with how to deal with Fire Prisms and ADL for Dark Eldar with a wall of stuff in front of you.

It still is the same problem, we just don't have enough reliable ways to take down AV12 fast.

If you looked at my opponent's list he had 6 AV12 vehicles which was a lot. And his Psychic powers allowed the reroll making it really hard to puncture through his shields.

I am going to update my List with more Dark Lances and drop some of the stuff possibly and see how that goes, but there's just no reliable way to remove long range hard hitters like Fire Prisms for us since we can't really get to them especially on Hammer and Anvil.

You had miserable luck to not kill a wave serpent with that much fire.

The way to deal with long range AV12 that I have seen is to kill the war walkers/quad gun which are ideal targets for your darklances which should eliminate them quickly. Wipe the dragons with splinter fire. The secret to killing something you are bad against is to kill the support units that you are good at and then deal with the rest.

If you didn't have the big threats in the enemy deployment zone you could either turbo boost some blasters or wyches into the enemy deployment zone where you will kill the AV12 vehicles at short range or alternatively you could just throw so many dark lance shots that you kill the vehicle eventually. The turbo boosting in close has the benefit of making his blast weapons dangerous to himself but is dangerous as shuriken catapults on dire avengers will kill some of the venoms. The cover saves will help though.