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Now that the Dark Eldar codex is released what armies do you think will be the weakest & strongest against them and why?
I believe the two weakest armies will be orks & nids. Nids because of the poisoned weapons they have and the orks because they have nothing to deal with them and due to codex creep seem to be one of the weakest armies in 5th edition now.
I think that vanilla marines will be the strongest against the Dark Eldar because of their resilience and their ability to be customized.

Armies will have a difficult time versus Dark Eldar because DE can field alot of kill points and everything has some level of versatility that is dangerous.

First off the bat is mobility. Raiders simply outclass most other transports in terms of speed. Fragile as hell for the most part, but a DE player going first should be just as feared as an IG player going first.

Dark lances effectively mean armies that rely upon AV14 and pay a premium cost for it will suffer greatly.

Most of the HQs and the Troop slots feature new abilities that enhance their CC prowess, especially with Pain Tokens and improved rules for Wyches. Any number of Pain Tokens will also make a relatively fragile very dangerous the further the game drags out as that unit becomes harder to kill.

Army redundancy- A DE army at roughly the 2000 point level can effectively field an army redundant in versatile units that can be destroyed without making the army lose that razor edge or advantage other armies fear losing (i.e. losing the anti-infantry or anti-armor portion of a list).

Certainly a good DE build will mean other builds must be focused and willing to lose bits of the army in order to be effective.

Orks are not a bottom wrung army at all in terms of competition, but it does have bad matchups against IG and DE to begin with. A new DE codex does not change that.

I agree that 'Nids will be hampered, but it is not an impossible task. Their MCs and HQs will need to be better protected, but a smart 'Nid list will already factor in redundancy and protection for their MCs and HQs.

I think that the current armies seen as top tier- IG and SW- will definately be able to match up with DE fairly well. All armies can field impressive amounts of kill points and are dangerous to face if they go first.

Agreed with WarOne's statements.

One thing that might be interesting in the DE v. Nids matchup that I thought of however, is the mass amounts of S6 firepower they can put out through Brainleech Devourers and the like.

Since the S6 is ID to the DE, it will negate their FNP making the Dark Eldar that much more fragile. Obviously not a huge difference, but it's a factor that doesn't exist in a lot of armies.

IG with some Hydras will be laughing

One thing I think people are overestimating is the DE ability to take on parking lots like IG or mechspam SW or BA. A darklance isn't actually that great as they have low rate of fire. On the other side, IG and new SM varients have vehicles that can put out lots of mid-power shots, making the raider both less resilient and less offensive then the vehicles of the new MEQ.

I think DE will not pose a significant threat to our IG/SW/BA mech overlords.

Dracos wrote:I think DE will not pose a significant threat to our IG/SW/BA mech overlords.

Bummer!

Would a typical Kan Wall Ork list put up a good fight against the new Dark Eldar? What kind of tools should they include to help fight the dark eldar?

kaiservonhugal wrote:Would a typical Kan Wall Ork list put up a good fight against the new Dark Eldar? What kind of tools should they include to help fight the dark eldar?

Or the old fashion greenhorde?

kaiservonhugal wrote:Would a typical Kan Wall Ork list put up a good fight against the new Dark Eldar? What kind of tools should they include to help fight the dark eldar?

I use to not run Lootas in my Kan wall list - After playing Dark eldar a few times in a row and getting killed - i bought a few boxes of lootas.

I only run a couple 5 man squads in my 1500 point list. However - Thats enough for a Raider a turn. No doubt.

thunderingjove wrote:

kaiservonhugal wrote:Would a typical Kan Wall Ork list put up a good fight against the new Dark Eldar? What kind of tools should they include to help fight the dark eldar?

Or the old fashion greenhorde?

Hmm...what would be the average number of Dark Lances you would expect in a 1500-2000 point list? That would be a telling number for an ork player, since if you take 9 kans, 2 deffdreads and for giggles take a whole mess of rokkit buggies (9) supplemented with several boy squads and a handful of min. squaded Lootas and maybe Snikrot

If a DE player can spam about 15-18 Dark Lances in a list of that point range, assume about half your kans and vehicles are dead by turn 1.

Second turn, the remainder get eliminated, leaving your orks exposed. By turn 2, if your rokkit buggies, Lootas, and killa kans with rokkits have done their job, you have blown off the field about half of their transports/ vehicles. Probably more depending who went first.

Turn 3- everything the DE player has charges you in a Wych cult army. Unfortunately, the orks getting charged are going to get skewered versus the Wyches as they have good CC defenses and higher I than Orks with solid attacks and weaponry.

In a DE warrior spam list, the DE player can simply hang back and dark lance the army to death, and probably charge when the time is right.

In either event, the key to victory for an ork Kan Wall is as followed:

1. GO FIRST.

2. Kill as many of their transports and dark lances as possible. If you take 9 killa kans with rokkits, 3 Loota squads, at least a deffkopta with twin-linked rokkits and buzzsaw in three separate fast attack slots, and give your ork mobs some big shootas, you now have the potential to fire at anywhere from 11-14 different targets the opponent has if you have good LOS. Assuming the target is raiders, all of these units can pop a raider with anywhere from a poor chance (big shootas) to a good chance (deffkoptas) of killing it.

Every vehicle that goes down is one dark lance less for you to worry about. Wiping out their mobility is key. Then the horde slowly devours them.