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I've been reading through the new Dark Eldar codex, and have come up with this list that I'm thinking of using at the 1850 point level.

Baron Sathonyx
1x Haemonculi with a Shattershard

5x Warriors (1 blaster) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
5x Warriors (1 blaster) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
5x Warriors (1 blaster) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
5x Warriors (1 blaster) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
5x Warriors (1 blaster) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons

4x Trueborn (4 blasters) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
4x Trueborn (4 blasters) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons
3x Trueborn (3 blasters) in a Venom with 2x Splinter Cannons

1x Beastmaster Unit of 3 Beastmasters with 4 Razorwing Flocks and 9 Khymera

1x Ravager with 3 Dark Lances and a Flickerfield
1x Ravager with 3 Dark Lances and a Flickerfield
1x Ravager with 3 Dark Lances and a Flickerfield

The Haemonculi will start with the beasts and pass on a pain token (to give them feel no pain) before getting into a trueborn venom, and the Baron will join the unit to give them +1 cover and offensive/defensive grenades - whether he will always stay attached depends on assault distances / guesses.


This isn't in the army list section because I don't want an army critique. Rather, I have this question: If you were facing me across a table with your most competitive 1850 list, what is it, and how would you anticipate beating me? Also, what other thoughts do you have on weaknesses here? Things that can exploit this army?

Assuming you're starting anything on the board, the Ravagers are going to be a priority as they're the primary form of antitank. You're going to be exposing a lot of very vulnerable vehicles to bolter range to kill armor with anything else, and bolters can actually wreck venoms and raiders...

Kill the Ravagers, avoid the Beastmaster's unit unless necessary to kill them... keep everything meched up to avoid the Splinter Cannons. The army is very fragile and anything with a fair amount of ranged firepower will hurt you badly. Once you're out of your vehicles... you don't really have much left.

I'm not sold on venom spam. To beat you, I would stay in my rides and shoot you down. Your blasters don't have a particularly good chance of doing any damage. You have 9 darklances, so the key is to spread out. Ravagers and trueborn are the priority targets, and the beasts should probably be ignored as much as possible or tarpitted.

edit: When I say the blasters, I mean the blaster troop squads. Ravagers and trueborn are definitely dangerous.

Another way of looking at it is you've given one of your worst problems (48") and extra round of shooting at you, you're forcing yourself to jump into CC Range to be effective with your shooties... unless you don't play against mech much... in which case have fun~!

It's a solid list without any glaring weaknesses. You've got Anti-Horde, Anti-Transport, Anti-Tank (AV13/14), and Mobility, which is what I would want in any army.

I can see there being difficulties against Space Wolves, as you'll have to survive Razorback spam and Long Fangs, which could account for several transports a turn. Once the warriors are on foot, they tend to die easily due to low toughness and a poor armor save.

Jump Pack Blood Angels could aslo be a problem, as they are mobile enough to chase your Venoms. I see a White Scars or Ravenwing army also causing problems, although less of one due to the AP of the Blasters and Dark Lances.

Mech IG will present a challenge, but that's true for any army.

A Horde Ork army or Kan Wall could also present a problem, due to the fact that they have Str 4 Shootas versus your AV10 Venoms. They may not kill many Venoms, but enough glances will serious disrupt your ability to use them effectively.

Slow moving armies, armies without the ability to deal with lots of light vehicles, or armies with lots of expensive vehicles (triple Land Raider Grey Knights, for example) will fare poorly.

As for mission types, you have the mobility to take objectives, and your principle weakness is the large number of KP you present.

@Dracos: thats a bit vague, would you mind going into detail on what you mean by that, what units in a list do you have that can sit in their transports and trade 48" fire? I mean its understandable for a IG player to have that kind of fire power in their transports, but marines(at least vanilla marines) will be lacking the range, unless your taking Missile Launchers in your tac squads.

@everyone else: thank you for the input!!, keep it all coming please ^^

I was thinking, the warriors squads aren't exactly that great, 1 blaster each isn't as reliable as it could be, why don't you put a blast pistol into it. Sure it is very short range, but it gives you a higher chance to get the warriors to actually kill their target.

Typhoon speeders and AC/las predators will both be pretty reliable at tagging venoms. The squadron of HF/MM speeders will also do well at exploding vehicles. I use shorter range razorbacks (TL assault cannon) but if you get in their 30" threat range they are pretty good at taking out AV10 as well. I'm guessing that a large part of your strategy involves deepstriking. Actually spreading out seems like a bad plan since I'd expose to much back armour, so castling up in the middle of the board on my edge seems like a good idea. Fan out to show as much front armour as possible and pop smoke the turn before your reserves start arriving.

I don't have any marines on foot, so you splinter cannons would have no targets until you start destroying transports. If you hit transports first you are leaving the predators and typhoons/tornadoes to wreck the venoms. Both choices seem bad for you.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the list is weak in any way. I just don't like the strategy of relying on the 18" blasters as the majority of your anti-tank. I think that using a majority of raiders and focusing the troops as anti-infantry is better.

I normally play at 1500 (check link at bottom for my standard list from a Battle report)

@ 1850 I would run this:

HQ Librarian storm shield, terminator armor nullzone/avenger 140
Elite Assault Terminators x5 200
Dedicated Transport Landraider Crusader multi melta, extra armour 275
Troops Tactical Marine x10 missile launcher, flamer 170
Dedicated Transport Rhino 35
Troops Tactical Marine x5 combi flamer 100
Dedicated Transport Razorback TL assault cannons 75
Troops Tactical Marine x5 combi flamer 100
Dedicated Transport Razorback TL assault cannons 75
Fast Attack Landspeeder Tornado Squadron (2) 140
Fast Attack Landspeeder Typhoon 90
Fast Attack Landspeeder Typhoon 90
Heavy Predator ac/las 120
Heavy Predator ac/las 120
Heavy Predator ac/las 120

edit: I'm not saying my list would crush you or anything, but I think that since your vehicles are so much more fragile you would have a lot riding on getting turn 1 for an alpha strike. I'm not convinced the deepstrike is going to help you enough since your warriors have to get out of their rides to shoot that turn.

Garuss Acine wrote: unless your taking Missile Launchers in your tac squads.

This is what they do in my group, after all what's not tacticle about a str8/blast choice?

The 1850 list just posted is ogin to be shooting at you and outranging to with over 9 different units - that will pop your transports - to counter that you have 3 DL platforms, 3 targets a turn...
But by the same token if he does fall out of his boxes you only need to force ~15 failed saves to almost assaure a win? It's tough, but I'm not happy with the odds of you either being stuck incover with single lance shots from the squads, or, running into their face to get the 18" on the blasters, wiffing because it's one to a squad and then having him reverse and shoot and reverse and .......

Dam double post.

Putting the Baron in with the Beastmasters squad isn't going to work properly. He's jump infantry and they're beasts. The skyboard only makes beastmasters beasts, not anyone in the unit. So you're going to have a unit that can't move 12" in the movement phase, and can't move 12" in the assault phase.

If I remember the rule for the Baron correctly, it specifies that the Baron must join a unit of Hellions in order to grant them the Stealth rule. My codex is in the car, so I will check and then edit this post if I am in error after lunch.

@Hesperus: You only move during your turn, so you are limiting the Baron to 6" of movement most of the time. However, when you're ready to charge, you can detach him, move 12" while the unit moves 6", then the unit assaults 12" while he assaults 6". The end result is still an 18" assault.

Obviously that list would be a to face in an objective game against anyone but IG and SW Razorback spam... but I really don't think it's that good.

You can only engage 3 vehicles from long range, with only a moderate chance of destroying or imobilizing AV12+, taken down to extremely low with cover/smoke.

In order for your blasters to be effective, you must drive up within rapid fire range, a prospect with will see your fragile Venoms popped easily.

Yeah, it can kill infantry at range from vehicles like crazy, but how many footslogging lists are you seeing these days? I guess you'd kill 'Nids effectively...

Not a list critique, but the beast unit is illegal.

A beastmaster can only take 5 khymera. So you'd either need to add a 4th beastmaster or cut 4 khymera to make that a legal unit.

Also, only the beastmasters have the special rule 'power from pain'. I can see a RAW interpretation where the whole unit can get FNP with a pain token as per the wording in the army special rules. But I'd brace for the highly likely FAQ clarifying that only the beastmasters themselves would benefit from pain tokens.

Outside of the problems with your beastmaster plan, I think the list is very good... and I'll go ahead and answer your original question.

With my IG army, which I have already tweaked in response to the dark eldar entering the metagame, I am built with a lot more sturdiness than before. With another alpha striker entering the fray, doing it better than I can do, I built for deploying on the table, taking your first punch, then answering back. The new rulebook FAQ gave my vendettas a 4+ cover save even if I don't have first turn, so I don't have to reserve those, I'll be running a few autocannon HWS that will have to go to ground and or die to your splinter spam, but I don't see enough dark lances for you to shoot down 3 in-cover vendettas and 3 screened heavy support vehicles (combination of russes and manticores). Not to mention the chimeras who suddenly have an anti-tank weapon when facing dark eldar. Not having first turn against a sturdy bulky IG army with its firepower spread across multiple units will be unfun, but of course you have a punchers chance with some good reserves rolls. I actually don't have any criticism of your list in this case. it just is what it is. You've got baron in there to lower the chances of it happening, thats about all I'd worry about there.

With you getting first turn, in a pitched battle, I'd deploy far enough away that you'll have to get out of your raiders and venoms if you wanted to shoot my vehicles with blasters on turn 1, and then I'd kill your troops. If you were smart, and just got out with the trueborn and used your ravagers, I thin we'd have a nice interesting close game.

With my nids, I'll REALLY be looking for first turn. If I get first turn, and you really know what you are doing with that beastmaster unit, I'm still going to have a hard time. If we get a short game, and I can bully you off of objectives for long enough, I can make it really hard to win a seize ground. Dawn of war would be helpful for me too. I've already beaten what is essentially this exact list (gross number of splinter cannons/darklight) with first turn. Getting boxed in by big genestealer units, who pick up FNP before you get to splinter them to death, and having your legs swept out by hive guard is bad news. I don't think you can really full reserve against a nid army, by the time you show up, you won't have any space left to set down those big ravagers and raiders... But again, you've got the Baron there to stack the deck.

If you do get first turn, which is likely with the baron, then I've got to outflank/deep strike full reserve. Now I'm hoping for a REALLY short game, and some really nice reserve rolls. My nids are not very happy in either case, but without first turn, my chances of winning are tied tightly to a few vital dice rolls. I don't want to say "i need to get lucky" But I'll just say "I can't even be just a little bit unlucky" and still have a chance at a draw/win.

I really like the respect you've shown to infantry with all those splinter cannons. I like to beat up on the guys that think this is still mechhammer 40k with my nids, and clearly you are not going to let me do that. 16 splinter cannons is that magic number that just crumples my nid list, and i think it would do fantastic job shredding even a FNP-having blood angel assault marine. And long fangs will just disappear in a pink mist to that kind of anti-infantry shooting.

My Orks would hope to weather the blasterfire with the KFF save, although weathering the storm of splinter cannons with my Lootas and deffkoptas seems a remote chance at best. I think that a *different* ork theme would give you issues - 9x killa kans with rokkits, 9x warbuggies with twin-linked rokkits, and mobs of boyz with big shootas with Loota support - I see that causing trouble.

Seems like you're quite short on long range anti-tank, but I don't really know what to offer for an improvement. Heavy support is already full of anti-tank, and blasters work or they don't at the 18" range......I can't think of any other long range anti-tank options.

Honestly its a good list, I dont think it is strong as the previous editions gunboat lists and I will tell you why.

Blasters are not dark lances.

Your list is basically a blaster list, most of your AT comes from blasters, and yes blasters did go up in range to 18" from 12" but they are not 36".

The strength of the previous editions gunboat list was MSU with good range darklance shots from the raider and usually from the squad inside if the raider didnt move or the squad deployed outside first turn.

I think your list is interesting but its not an alpha strike list, its a list that will only really hit home the 2nd round its on table since thats when the most of your blasters will be in range.

I would consider dropping the warriors venoms for raiders and I think your list will go up in effectiveness greatly.

and honestly I am not sure what the beastermaster unit is for. Tarpit? as mentioned its got too many beasts for the number of beastmasters.

I play IG. Autocannons and Multi-lasers across my board make this list a bit of an easy target to dismantle.

Single shots do not seem enough to reliably kill tanks for each blaster shot. That was the point of the lance spam is that from turn 1, you are able to threaten your opponent's side of the board.

Venoms are just as easily taken care of as raiders, which I will give you, as a cheaper alternative.

The downside really is that raiders are a bit pricier but the question that I think will never be answered is going to be: is the longer range worth the cost?

As Nenya's standard DE opponent, I can verify that lance/blaster spam isn't the way to go to beat heavy mech. Last edition I could cram about 29 lances and 4 blasters into my 1750 list and it was still an uphill battle against his shooty mech guard.

This edition, flickfields make the vehicles a little more durable, but the amount of dark lances available is heavily diminished. Blasters are a poor substitute.

This is really my big concern overall with DE...handling heavy mech spam, and I don't think this list can take it.

And don't make the assumption that this is just a mech guard problem either. There are many armies now that are cramming out just as many, if not more vehicles in their competitive lists.

It is going to be interesting, come 'ard boyz, to see what people end up taking.

Grimaldi wrote:As Nenya's standard DE opponent, I can verify that lance/blaster spam isn't the way to go to beat heavy mech. Last edition I could cram about 29 lances and 4 blasters into my 1750 list and it was still an uphill battle against his shooty mech guard.

This edition, flickfields make the vehicles a little more durable, but the amount of dark lances available is heavily diminished. Blasters are a poor substitute.

This is really my big concern overall with DE...handling heavy mech spam, and I don't think this list can take it.

Out of curiosity, how would you tailor a list to beat Mech IG?