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I just got done playing a game against a new Dark Eldar army. This game went quick due to some good dice on my part and bad on my opponent's. Take a look at the full report at: Gone to Ground.

Anyone else have similiar experience against the new DE? They seem awfully fragile.

DE players, did my opponent build a good list? Did he play it right? Was it really just bad dice? I would love to hear your comments.

Well, your opponent took a bad list and played it even worse. Nearly half of his AT is in his ravagers and he moves flat out first turn? When he already has a 5+? He turns around to shoot your ironclad when he can just fly away from it? He knows he's fighting reserved bikes...and he spreads his army across the board?

Why do his wracks have an acothyst? and why don't they have liquefiers? And why does he have only wracks and a single squad of incubi? Where are his blasters?

Ugh. I wouldn't judge the codex by this game.

I figured as much. I just don't have a lot to go on. I totally agree that he should have moved away from both ironclads and was surprised when he didn't.

1) Army list looks bad.

2) why did he move into range of your weapons? He should have played an outmaneuvering game, not a frontal engagement. DE can't withstand an army's retaliation when fighting head on.

Still unsure how I feel about all wrack armies ... seems like an all berserker army

I think the idea was to have first turn and blow up my dreads with 10-12 lance shots and then take me apart as I came on. When turn produced no damage, I think it rapidly went downhill.

While this may have been a bad list and my have been played poorly, I still think there are going to be some weaknesses to exploit with DE. AV10, open topped vehicles blow up easily and T3/4 models with poor armor saves die easily as well.

I've had a similar experience, dark eldar seem very fragile. They certainly need a good player behind them, and they must use their speed to their advantage and pick their fight. They won't win in a straight-up shooting match against most armies, since they can't really take much in the way of return fire.

Wracks re the best troop option in my opinion, they hold objectives well and they have a great anti-troop weapon in the liquifier, he just played awful. I like 10 wracks with the acothyst over a haemonculus because you get 2 liquifiers and the leadership bonus, I don't think wracks need the additional pain token from a Haemonculus because they have poison 4+ and furious charge seems like a wash. Also an acothyst with an agonizer or flesh gauntlet can't be targeted as he isnt an IC. I definitely think that you need to include a couple warrior squads though as they can sit on your own objectives and increase your dark lance count.

My opponent moved everything up to shoot except the ravagers who moved flatout to get cover. Everything proceeded to shoot....and either failed to hit my dreads or I passed cover.

The Ravagers moved flatout? Why not vice versa?
Wracks can only deal with Bikers, not with the Dreads.

My right most ironclad opened up on the next raider and exploded it! This killed 3 models from the unit in the raider who eventually failed morale and ran for the table edge.

No, the models would be pinned and do not run away.

This was a fun game, but I think I may have an army that really can do bad things to DE. I will have to try a few more games before I pass judgment with certainty, but their AV10 or 11 and open topped status really sucks when you bring a lot of long ranged heavy weapons to the board.

DE can have a hard time to deal with armor, when the player rolls bad.

Any thoughts? I think my opponent was unlucky for the most part. We didn't really play much of a game for him to make mistakes besides focusing too much fire on the single ironclad. What do you see?

DE needs to be played with some skill - good tactics and armylist, and practice are inevitable.

wuestenfux wrote:

My right most ironclad opened up on the next raider and exploded it! This killed 3 models from the unit in the raider who eventually failed morale and ran for the table edge.

No, the models would be pinned and do not run away.

The DE player would have to take a pinning test and a morale test, if he failed the morale test, he would flee

He passed the pinning test but failed the morale test.

i just assume your opponent startet playing dark eldar with the release of the new codex.
as pointed out by others the list had some serious flaws in it, e.g. no liquifier guns, no agonisers with the wracks, no rockets on the bomber and worst of all: vect in a non alpha strike list, in a squad of 8 incubi? total waste of points, there are at least 5 other choices that would work better with this list. furthermore whatever they assault is gonna die first round, then they'll all be shot to death. in addition there is not enough AT, which seems to be a problem with 8 out of 10 list that are posted here or in other forums.
i won't comment on the game here, since it was so short and we don't know how it might have played out. still what we saw of it wasn't very impressive, the intention behind the positioning of his troops eluding me completely.
this is just what i was hoping when the new dark eldar codex was announced - all the bandwagon hoppers getting knocked back down to earth
dark eldar require quite a bit of experiance and finesse to be able to win. luckyly this hasen't change with the new codex

so to get back to the point, DE are awfully fragile, they always were and not much has changed about it. true, possible fnp on every unit is quite nice, but then again they have amour that is crappy as hell and only paper tanks.

Wracks re the best troop option in my opinion, they hold objectives well and they have a great anti-troop weapon in the liquifier, he just played awful. I like 10 wracks with the acothyst over a haemonculus because you get 2 liquifiers and the leadership bonus, I don't think wracks need the additional pain token from a Haemonculus because they have poison 4+ and furious charge seems like a wash. Also an acothyst with an agonizer or flesh gauntlet can't be targeted as he isnt an IC. I definitely think that you need to include a couple warrior squads though as they can sit on your own objectives and increase your dark lance count.

i agree on the warriors, but i disagree on the haemonculus, with them you still can have 2 liquifiers, as they can choose them aswell. the second pain token is not that importent, but it enables them to easily get to 3 tokens giving them Fearless. furthermore if your strengh is as high or higher than the enemies toughness you're allowed to re-roll to wound in close combat, which can come in quite handy sometimes. in addition with the haemonculus and the acothyst you get two agonizers in each squad

Two Agonizers per unit isn't really cost effective. And, remember, you don't want to win combat the turn you assualt, but during your opponents turn. That way it's less likely they'll get shot to death during the enemy turn. Poisoned blades work pretty well.