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"anecdotal" is what people say when they dopnt want to have to actually admit someone wins. It's a slap in the face and it wins no arguments.

The original poster gave THREE options... and of those options I represented all three factions in their appropriate light. Tau for competitive smashfacery, Dark eldar are quite good and Grey Knights sturggle but Celestine helps a lot. A lot.

What no one gets to do is pretend my wins did not happen. Nor do they get to suggest that they could NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS win with a list that I just won with. Thats just spitting in the face of the most relevant data you have: actual games.

This game isnt played in a vacuum. DarkEldar HAVE units that i dont use much either. But to flat out say "Dark Eldar are absolutely not competitive. " as morgoth did is simply the furthest thing from the truth that it could be.

Facts:

So when someone says "Dark Eldar are absolutely not competitive. " of COURSE I'm going to disagree because it isn't true. There were 4 Dark Eldar Generals that scored in the 400+ club (meaning total points for the 2016 season in their best five events) in the ITC. They did so using Dark Eldar specifically out of 157 who tried. That's 2.5%

28 did it as Eldar but it took them 714 Generals to do it. 3.9%.

When you REALLY look at it,. you can see that while its definitely more with Eldar, that percentage isn't so far apart that it screams "no one can do it with DarkEldar" comparatively.

Chaos Space Marines had just 3 Generals in the 400+ Club out of 370 Generals who tried. 0.81%. ouch.

The point is, when you look at competitiveness, you have to ask yourself the question: of those ATTEMPTING to compete in the ITC, who are demonstrably the best players, with a certain army, how many can reach that elite sort of 400+ club standing. Those are generally your local heroes at Warhammer. the ones you expect to win a lot of the time.

In that context, the Dark Eldar are far from the worst, and they are not populace enough to reach the critical mass of player talent they need to break through to see more 400+ players.

Cult Mechanicus only had FOUR players make it to the 400+ club out of 211 and no one is screaming about how bad War Convocatiosn are, now are they? thats 1.89%

I am OBJECTIVELY showing you results as to why I believe that Dark Eldar are not this terrible thing that Morgoth claims.

Dark Angels who won some REALLY big events this year? Just 4 made the 400+ club, out of 326 who tried. Just 1.2% could do it.

9 Tau made it...but there were 601 of them trying. Here again: 1.5%. Yet you claim that Dark Eldar aren't competitive at 2.5%?

its absurd. the BEST of every faction are in the 400+ club and its rare air. Dark Eldar did not in fact do worse than many you would consider better than them! those are real facts.

Bustin out the big guns there Jancoran!

Just sick of listening to drivel is all.

"anecdotal" is what people say when they dopnt want to have to actually admit someone wins."

No, it's not. You are completely wrong about the concept of anecdotes. Your personal victories, while impressive, are the very definition of anecdotal. I don't have a dog in this; I don't care if the DE are deemed competitive or not. But you can't take your personal experiences an apply them to all players everywhere and call that the standard. Your victories did happen; they are just statistically irrelevant to overall competitiveness, due to small sample size.

You could have just posted the stats in the first post instead of just proclaiming "false" without saying why its false. And the comparison between DE and DA is much more compelling than your personal victories.

Why bother going to this extent to show someone they are wrong unless they persist? Its wearying. But the data backs up what I "anecdotally" know.

 Jancoran wrote:
Why bother going to this extent to show someone they are wrong unless they persist? Its wearying. But the data backs up what I "anecdotally" know.

Yes, it does. In a formal way, which makes all the difference for people looking for rigorous evidence. I'm not even saying you're wrong. That was the other guy. But it matters how you show that you are right.

Uh...no. Someone does not get to demand that I spend my day "proving" them wrong. Morgoth said something absurd and instead of the forum demanding he justify his absurdity, I have to disprove his Dark Eldar aspersions? Meh. I don't think so. I did it here out of annoyance.

For the benefit of the original poster, I expressed my opinion. He can take it or leave it. He paid exactly nothing for it. It may well be worth every penny he paid for it. I enjoy Dark Eldar. It's not my tournament army but thats just because I play so many codex's and painting sucks my soul out of me. Its not up to snuff so it kinda stays in my "gotta fix and paint that someday..." pile. Otherwise you might well see me rising in the Dark Eldar standings. I play it often though and have a game with it Friday scheduled. The models themselves are marvelous.

"Morgoth said something absurd "

You actually have to, you know, present evidence to support this claim. Which you eventually did. But just calling a position absurd or false isn't sufficient, especially when most conventional mathammer backs up his statement.

Most people I know online and in RL consider DE pretty weak. So that's probably why no one was demanding a justification.

Martel732 wrote:
"Morgoth said something absurd "

You actually have to, you know, present evidence to support this claim. Which you eventually did. But just calling a position absurd or false isn't sufficient, especially when most conventional mathammer backs up his statement.

Most people I know online and in RL consider DE pretty weak. So that's probably why no one was demanding a justification.

backwards thinking in my opinion. You've basically said here that anyone with a negative opinion is right until proven otherwise... Let that sink in. that's not a game I feel like playing. Negative people arent offering solutions, just limitations. they are selling despair and Im not buying.

Lets try a new game: If I have a positive opinion, you prove ME wrong or we all get on with it. That's the game I want to play. Becaue when you dont like something it should take little effort to figure out why and explain it to all of us in vivid and rigorous detail.

I like that game better.

I'd say go DE just because it plays AND models COMPLETELY differently than the Necron. I sold my cron army, as I found them just boring to both build and play. However, crons were my third army, so they paled in modeling opportunities compared to my chaos army. If you're playing to get some wins, go Tau. If you're looking for fun models, look to the DE or Nurgle kits.

Even if we assume for the sake of argument that DE aren't very good, at least you'd still have your necrons to fall back on if you wanted to play in an environment where the DE wouldn't cut it.

DE are considered weak by many players because it's not immediate to learn their mechanics and find lists that actually work. The have a lot of useless units like the majority of the armies, but they're not as resilient as the majority of the armies, so playing them without experience means a certain epic defeat.

How many players have faced competitive DE lists? Not many I guess.

If you say DE are not competitive you should also say only SM, eldar and tau really are. Because their cheesiest lists are superior than everything else.

Tournaments stats are not an evidence, because many players hate using armies composed by miniatures that don't like even if they're superstrong. I hate SM, daemons and tau models and I would never play them, no matter what.

And DE are not considered among the most beloved models, the majoirty of the players like power armors. This combined to the fact that they're not easy to play and you can see why they're not so common in tournaments. Orks for example, which are another underestimate army, are way more common in tournaments and it's not because they're stronger but because it's a more beloved army.

So if actually only one guy has won a tournament with DE it doesn't mean that they are not competitive.

A pure DA, SW, genestealer cults, or necron army has not the slightest chance to defeat tau, eldar and SM in a row, so if they actually win a tournament that's because the most cheesiest things were absent, not because they're competitive.

But no one would say that those armies aren't competitive.

Munga wrote:
I'd say go DE just because it plays AND models COMPLETELY differently than the Necron. I sold my cron army, as I found them just boring to both build and play. However, crons were my third army, so they paled in modeling opportunities compared to my chaos army. If you're playing to get some wins, go Tau. If you're looking for fun models, look to the DE or Nurgle kits.

yup.

I don't think power armor correlates to easy to play at all.

Personally, I feel that Dark Eldar have a ton of bad matchups, and like any army these matchups are hard to win, but with Dark Eldar, the bad matchups are certain loss unless you are an amazing Dark Eldar player.

 Blackie wrote:
DE are considered weak by many players because it's not immediate to learn their mechanics and find lists that actually work. The have a lot of useless units like the majority of the armies, but they're not as resilient as the majority of the armies, so playing them without experience means a certain epic defeat.

Let me address the very first point you made: that something is not IMMEDIATELY obvious does not define competitiveness. Competitiveness is defined as this: "Given you HAVE figured out how to use them well....do they win?".

The answer is yes. They do. The statistics I posted are showing people who REALLY know how to use them...using them...and specifically the success THOSE people had. There is no better barometer that exists.

You also say they aren't resilient. I think you may wish to take a second and even a third look at their codexes and supplements. They actually are pretty resilient.

Example: it's rare to see as many multi-wound models as Dark Eldar can bring. My list has 24 Multi-wound models in it and 9 pieces or armor! With cover (and Jinking), that is significant. Most of those multiwound models are T5 which is even better. Comparing that to say... a 55 model Space Marine army, that doesn't sound so bad, does it?

One of the things that makes that much high toughness really count is speed. While it may be true that an army with excellent range or rate of fire (or both) often overcome toughness with sheer volume over time, the Dark Eldar do not suffer this frailty. They allow so little time for the enemy to express its firepower advantage. One round, generally. That isn't enough for most armies, especially when deployed conventionally. To explain that further:

The Dark Eldar begin 42.1 inches away from the enemy except the beastpack which is intentionally left about 31" away. Most weapons are therefore out of range in turn one. Assuming the enemy goes first they can choose to either move up and fire as much as possible into the beastpack or stand back and wait. if they stand back and wait, they have given up the advantage of going first. In ITC missions where Maelstrom Objectives are a thing, it is quite often not advisable to stand back anyways and sending out some disparate units in the vain hope they wlll last long enough to claim the objectives is one play but being isolated like that is usually just an invitation to lose your units for no gain so movement will be genersally en masse with some units i nthe back to hold things down. So what does it all boil down to? The enemy has some reason to come forward no matter the ranges involved, or be made impotent round one.

It matters not to the Dark Eldar who lurk in wait. They've taken very little in the way of fire at this stage and the enemy is now encroaching. Scout armies will of course have already come forward to the 36" mark if they are a battle Company, but because Grav Cannons are salvo, even if they move forward again on their turn (and i dont seize) they cannot fire at anything but BeastPack which are generally wounded on 6's (Grav range is reduced to half when moving). The Pod armies are really the only armies that are upon the Dark eldar in turn one and some stray 48" range stuff. The BeastPack has provided spacing to force the pods out of melta range and all the Raiders will be jinking. naturally, this also leaves the pod units dangerous close to the beastpack which they may or may not be comfortable doing. No telling. Generals vary. Still doesn't matter.

As pods and Wolfstars are really the main concern, lets talk about them. lets say its a true pod army and 7 pods rain down turn one, each with its min/maxed unit.14 melta shots (9.33 hitting, 7.78 damage results reduced to 3.38 Hull points plus bolters doing 2) at Jinking Raiders if they ignore the Beastpack completely. Now we can never know for sure but that's essentially one Raider down. Assuming concentrated fire and no abnormally bad luck (bad luck happens on both sides so I'm ignoring it for fairness sake). Already you can start to see the difficulties, even when an enemy goes first, when its properly deployed with a beastpack around it, and even when the enemy has the perfect counter. Whatever insolent units popped us out will soon be embroiled in close combat never ending. Precisely where my army wants to be and where 5 man squads with meltaguns do not want to be.

On Dark Eldar turn one, the 7 pods and their embroiled units (most likely against my incubi and beastMasters) are going to be on one end of the board and the rest of my Dark Eldar will be on the other, using Aethersails, moving 36" into and around the enemies remaining forces on the board, while the line breaking holding action proceeds apace. This forces a fateful round 2 in which all my best and most ferocious will be upon an enemy that cannot escape.

Wolfstars and their ridiculous speed require you to be very crafty and make good use of terrain. i have learned that luring them into usingthat speed can allow you to cage the wolfstar and keep it in place long enough to be ineffective in the grand scheme since nothing can really challenge it in melee other than with blind luck. I can tell you that i have had success doing this. the over aggression of such unitsis so strong that they can get isolated and trapped in a corner so to speak.

This does not win every game. i think it should be said that this is a strategic explanation, not a guarantee of any success. However, there are not many units that engender fear into the units i have. They are very well equipped to annihilate most conventional enemies and their multiple wounds help them stay combat effective much longer.

I have lost with my Dark Eldar as surely as people have lost with Riptide Wings and War Convocations and Battle Companies. There is never going to be a perfect plan, perfect army, perfect solution. WraithKnights are a serious concern for anyone in any army because T8 is silly good so you must focus it dowen early if thats what you're up against. Things with Rear armors of 12 are a serious issue (as are Dreadnoughts). Your generalship gets tested when those things are on the field and you need to make sure that your Ravagers and in my case, Voidraven Bomber are on point in striking those targets first. The enemy may even opt to go after the Ravagers instead of the Transports to make sure that doesn't happen. Legitimate countermeasures to attempt if they can even reach them with their weapons in round one. I actually only took Ravagers specifically to handle Voidshield Generators, but they work just as handily for sniping the one or two things i cannot handle with my conventional ground forces.

The essential way the army works and the resilience of that particular build that i use is a testament to how tough the army really can get if you build it that way. many people do not and perhaps that leads those playing against "squishier" versions to only evaluate that one possibility. Could be. It's not the only possibility though.

I completely agree with you, but you also have to consider that someone that starts a dark eldar army wouldn't probably buy/convert grotesques and talos, if he plays at 1000 point he won't probably include them.

A typical DE army has reavers, venoms and kabalite spam. Maybe a unit of scourges. Some of our best units are very expensive or need to be converted, that makes a lot of players out.

You may also face a lot of ignores covers, and when it happens you're going to expect bad losses. Grav can evaporate talos quite easily, not to mention that being slow many units can tarpit them, and grots only rely on their T5 and 4-5 FNP as they have got no armor. A warboss in MA with da lucky stikk can easily wipe out 4-5 grots in a single round of combat.

I love DE, they're my second army, and I would never play them without the grotesquerie or the corpsethief claw, so I know they can be tough, but honestly they require way more experience than playing necrons, tau, SM or eldar.

I think they're an average army, definitely one the most underrated ones, but they require some skills, it's not an army for everyone.

I wasnt referring to Talos. But yes, Talos are susceptible to Grav. Also: Even at 1K, you want the Grotesquerie in my opinion.

 Jancoran wrote:
"anecdotal" is what people say when they dopnt want to have to actually admit someone wins. It's a slap in the face and it wins no arguments.

The original poster gave THREE options... and of those options I represented all three factions in their appropriate light. Tau for competitive smashfacery, Dark eldar are quite good and Grey Knights sturggle but Celestine helps a lot. A lot.

What no one gets to do is pretend my wins did not happen. Nor do they get to suggest that they could NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS win with a list that I just won with. Thats just spitting in the face of the most relevant data you have: actual games.

This game isnt played in a vacuum. DarkEldar HAVE units that i dont use much either. But to flat out say "Dark Eldar are absolutely not competitive. " as morgoth did is simply the furthest thing from the truth that it could be.

Facts:

So when someone says "Dark Eldar are absolutely not competitive. " of COURSE I'm going to disagree because it isn't true. There were 4 Dark Eldar Generals that scored in the 400+ club (meaning total points for the 2016 season in their best five events) in the ITC. They did so using Dark Eldar specifically out of 157 who tried. That's 2.5%

28 did it as Eldar but it took them 714 Generals to do it. 3.9%.

When you REALLY look at it,. you can see that while its definitely more with Eldar, that percentage isn't so far apart that it screams "no one can do it with DarkEldar" comparatively.

Chaos Space Marines had just 3 Generals in the 400+ Club out of 370 Generals who tried. 0.81%. ouch.

The point is, when you look at competitiveness, you have to ask yourself the question: of those ATTEMPTING to compete in the ITC, who are demonstrably the best players, with a certain army, how many can reach that elite sort of 400+ club standing. Those are generally your local heroes at Warhammer. the ones you expect to win a lot of the time.

You could've said from the start that you weren't playing regular 40K but ITC where the rankings and the game are very different.

Also with the allied multi detachment nature of the game now how much of those lists are Dark Eldar?

 gummyofallbears wrote:
Personally, I feel that Dark Eldar have a ton of bad matchups, and like any army these matchups are hard to win, but with Dark Eldar, the bad matchups are certain loss unless you are an amazing Dark Eldar player.

And massively lucky or playing against someone who is bad.

I've done it too, but honestly, you can't hope to win more than 35% of the time against a decent army played by someone of your level.

Of course, that means there's still a chance.

Maybe Jancoran's stats are affected by that as well (beyond not playing actual 40K but ITC), in the sense that the only players who play DE are generally people in for a challenge and not attempting an easy win, like the FOTM players can be.

morgoth wrote:

You could've said from the start that you weren't playing regular 40K but ITC where the rankings and the game are very different.

Of COURSE there are rankings. No one "hid" that I play in the ITC (and I play outside of it for that matter as well). The ITC is 40K. Don't even try.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eldarain wrote:
Also with the allied multi detachment nature of the game now how much of those lists are Dark Eldar?

The majority of the list has to be Dark Eldar for it to be a Dark Eldar player...and since the same exact rule is applied to all the forces, its a more true indicator than say...not having a rule for it at all.

I mean in theory you can call your force an INquisitiorial force with just a 25 point Inquisitot in 40K if you just make up a story about it. The ITC actually requires you to play a majority of your list as that faction to call it that faction.

Outside of that, there is no way to keep order on the subject. 40K is a Pandoras box and has been since 6th dropped. Bemoaning that "other things" make their way into lists is pointless at this late stage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:

And massively lucky or playing against someone who is bad.

I've done it too, but honestly, you can't hope to win more than 35% of the time against a decent army played by someone of your level.

Of course, that means there's still a chance.

Maybe Jancoran's stats are affected by that as well (beyond not playing actual 40K but ITC), in the sense that the only players who play DE are generally people in for a challenge and not attempting an easy win, like the FOTM players can be.

The last bastion of the losing side: attack opponent strength. Hilarious.

Clearly you cannot learn to win with them, according to you, so stop giving advice about them? I mean seriously? What can you add to a discussion with a claim that 35% is the best you can do? It's absurd, honestly.

Just to contribute -

I played against a really nasty eldar list, actually my first game on with Dark Eldar in a while and I won, almost tabled the guy actually. I had some pretty bad rolls, but nobody at the shop was expecting Dark Eldar, they just didn't know what they could do.

He underestimated the Grotesquerie as it wiped his jetseer warlord turn 2, and once he changed his focus with scatpacks and warpspiders onto the grots, my venoms did work.

And I feel that's dark eldars strength.

I went on a huge winstreak after that game, and then I started losing.

People understood Dark Eldar's weaknesses and exploited them, they knew that my armies backbone was the grotesquerie and they knew that venoms are useless if they are snapshotting, so wahlah!

Dark Eldar are countered by so many armies, and most of those armies are super prevalent in the 7th meta.

yeah theres never going to be a perfect answer so you have to bring more than just a reliance on the grotesquerie. Its the keystone but you can do a lot with it.

 Jancoran wrote:

morgoth wrote:

You could've said from the start that you weren't playing regular 40K but ITC where the rankings and the game are very different.

Of COURSE there are rankings. No one "hid" that I play in the ITC (and I play outside of it for that matter as well). The ITC is 40K. Don't even try.

The ITC is absolutely not regular 40K, and that's why it has very different rankings than regular 40K.
That's it.

 Jancoran wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

morgoth wrote:

And massively lucky or playing against someone who is bad.

I've done it too, but honestly, you can't hope to win more than 35% of the time against a decent army played by someone of your level.

Of course, that means there's still a chance.

Maybe Jancoran's stats are affected by that as well (beyond not playing actual 40K but ITC), in the sense that the only players who play DE are generally people in for a challenge and not attempting an easy win, like the FOTM players can be.

The last bastion of the losing side: attack opponent strength. Hilarious.

Clearly you cannot learn to win with them, according to you, so stop giving advice about them? I mean seriously? What can you add to a discussion with a claim that 35% is the best you can do? It's absurd, honestly.

Dude... I told you it's possible, just an uphill struggle, and you keep on saying they're good and stuff.
Like you did for CSM.
And for both, you still haven't shown a single element of proof that Dark Eldar - or CSM is capable of going toe to toe (not toe to heel) with tier 1 codexes and builds.
I think you may be trying too hard to share your opinion that barely playable competitively is more than good enough.

It's fine if you like it, you don't need to run around pretending that bottom tier codexes are "good".

He thinks general trumps codex strength, which I think is empirically very questionable across a large number of games. At least, that's what I get out of his posts.

Morgoth, good luck to you. You dont play competitive 40K and thats fine. Keep doing what youre doing.

Martel, the entire GAME requires that you be a good general. It isnt as if the lists arent important and ive never said that. But this 35% crap is just stinking thinking. If YOU are any good at all, then this kind of thinking is foolish. Its probably why I win: people like Morgoth thinking that wins happen on forums and in your head. Lol.

There is a 100% chance that a grav spam battle company, a war convocation and a Rehati Formation w Magnus, or a Decurion will show up to these events, and of Riptide Wings too. you will have to play harder than they have to in order to win. What I cannot fathom is why Morgoth cannot see the way to build lists that handle it. Dark Eldar CAN handle them. No you wont just glide to easy victory. Of course not. But prognosticating nothing but failure doesnt in any way reflect on the ARMY. Just saying.

 Jancoran wrote:
Morgoth, good luck to you. You dont play competitive 40K and thats fine. Keep doing what youre doing.

Martel, the entire GAME requires that you be a good general. It isnt as if the lists arent important and ive never said that. But this 35% crap is just stinking thinking. If YOU are any good at all, then this kind of thinking is foolish. Its probably why I win: people like Morgoth thinking that wins happen on forums and in your head. Lol.

There is a 100% chance that a grav spam battle company, a war convocation and a Rehati Formation w Magnus, or a Decurion will show up to these events, and of Riptide Wings too. you will have to play harder than they have to in order to win. What I cannot fathom is why Morgoth cannot see the way to build lists that handle it. Dark Eldar CAN handle them. No you wont just glide to easy victory. Of course not. But prognosticating nothing but failure doesnt in any way reflect on the ARMY. Just saying.

There's a big difference with failing more often than you succeed, and "nothing but failure".

I think that deep down, we agree.

But on the surface, you're selling DE as 49% win and I'm selling it as 35% win, all other things being equal (including playing hard, being lucky, being skilled and whatnot).

I'm fairly sure I'm a lot closer to reality than you are, but you're welcome to prove me wrong.

We dont agree that 35% is "more often than you succeed".

Also: i won most of my games w Dard Eldar so I honestly dont get your point. My last game was a tabling of an Aeldari force. I took out half the rhinos in a white scars grav spam list on round one with melee because it had to scout and come to me to get in range (12" range when you move is a pain sometimes! Proper deployment distances are a thing). Killed all but two scout squads in his backfield by games end. Grav doesnt do crap to 6+ armor (and some 5+). Last two games I played. Dont have any idea why you think I agree w you. The Rehati formation is a bad matchup. The crucible is critical there as a way to ground some of them. Still tough even then. But overall I dont see the struggle you think is there. Losses happen. Cant win em all.

Heading to a tournament. D3cided to do Dark Eldar. Should be interesting.