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Hi,

I'm a new BA player. I play with friends, almost exclusively Eldar, Orks, Ultramarines and Dark Eldar.

I was considering building a DoA list in addition to my mech BA one, but looking at the nasty, high initiative dark eldar units I have serious doubts about beating them in assault.

What are people's experiences with this?

Why not?

A DoA army should have some Assault Marines with meltas. These squads can be combat squadded so that the 5 men squads with dual meltas can take down Raiders and Ravagers.
This will take out the sting of a DE army relying on fast transports and shooty support units. Then his cc units will need to take a walk to reach your units. Now you can play on your terms.

FNP backing 3+ armor saves is tough for armies without a lot of power weapons to deal with... Just watch out for Fire Knife Suits with their Ap 2 Guns, Burna Boyz with their mob of 12-15 power weapon Orks, and TH/SH Terminators....

BA also have fast vehicles... Vindicators, Predators and cheaper devastator squads...

wuestenfux wrote:Then his cc units will need to take a walk to reach your units. Now you can play on your terms.

Well, that's exactly my problem with an all jump army.
All his CC units have higher initiative (6+) than mine.

If I deep strike next to the raiders, I get shot, then charged.
Even if I blow up a raider and charge the dark eldar infantry they strike first, most likely killing my Sanguinary Priest immediately.

Stuff like 2 x 9 Hekatrix Bloodbrides and 3 Talos Pain Engines is not something I like to deep strike next to.

I just have the feeling in general that against dark eldar, I'd prefer to stay back and shoot, rather than get into assault.

nyenyec wrote:Hi,

I'm a new BA player. I play with friends, almost exclusively Eldar, Orks, Ultramarines and Dark Eldar.

I was considering building a DoA list in addition to my mech BA one, but looking at the nasty, high initiative dark eldar units I have serious doubts about beating them in assault.

What are people's experiences with this?

I have never faced one but generally I would advise against it. His fast skimmers are more mobile than your assault troops. Also a smart Dark Eldar player will take night shields on EVERYTHING against a DoA list. You will have to get within 6" to pistol or melta his vehicles. Eventually he will take a few Disitigrator Ravagers and then you are really screwed as even while moving 12" a turn these will wreck one of your assault squads per turn.

In a take all comers sense I think that DoA could do well against DE, the DE will have too much DL spam or might be relying on a WWP or something. But if this guy is your friend and you play him all the time, he will eventually figure it out, model up a few units that will utterly crush your work.

as a DE player if i see a large deepstrike force, or large reserve force, like DOA, i tend to reserve everything, and take 2nd turn. this gives me the last turn "hammer" and allows me to bring my units on where i want them, and out manuvere your deepstrikers. (who once landed are stuck for a turn, when my fast skimmers can move on from my edge and basically run circles around you). factor in the amount of poison or high str ranged attack and a msu DOA army turns to kibbles'n'bitz' pretty fast.

as mentioned i would focus on keeping a coherant gunline in place, and making the DE come to you on your terms. if you sseperate or try to advance on them, the DE can do the same thing, only better. stand and shoot, then when the DE charge, unleash your nasty jump assaulters for the counter.

wuestenfux wrote:Stuff like 2 x 9 Hekatrix Bloodbrides and 3 Talos Pain Engines is not something I like to deep strike next to.

The bloodbrides are easy, shoot them, they die fast. Even better, take a flamer and laugh really loud. If they are in raider you need to down those first which might be hard but otherwise bloodbrides shoudlnt scare you.

The Talos are 'ard, and the prospect of 3 of them sitting there together would be turely horrifying. I dont know what DoA would do, hide lots of power fists in expendable squads?

A DOA list against dark elves comes down to who got first turn.

If he has first turn expect everything to be on the board when your guys start arriving. Even with 4+ cover saves from turbo boosting you should be able to knock out a decent number of transports. If there are incubi in the area do whatever it takes to get the stormshield toting vanguard into them quickly. Transports in general, epically troop transports are another great target as you will kill some when you pop it and then they cannot escape. Ravangers will be hit or miss in his army as you have no tanks of your own for them to target and losing 1-2 assault marines per turn isnt that much of a sacrifice as long as you focus on killing his troops and preventing him from being able to score objectives.
Note: If you combat squad put one melta in each squad, never double up in one squad.

If you get stuck going first then nothing will be there and your in for an interesting game. The couple times I have faced this I have dropped everything in the center of the table (cant start on the table or he will do the same and your stuck running across the board into his teeth). Then the army spreads out by running and attempts to claim as much of the table as possible while leaving every unit with something supporting it. Yes the raiders move and shoot but you can move up to 18 in with running. Try to box units into the corners of the table if possible trailing your units around so that if he turboboosts past you he is still in assault range. A strung out squad of assault marines can cover a lot of area with their 18in charge range/24in shooting range.

In general the only unit you really have to fear is incubi as they will carve through something. If you cannot get units free to kill them with a counter charge then you are doomed but if you can they will kill one unit and die. Bloodbrides hit hard but you are tougher 3+/4+ and hit almost as hard. The one thing I really fear is masses of venoms just pumping out lots of wounds. Eventually things will die. Not sure what to say about your priests dying. Thats one of the bigger challenges in a blood angel army, keep em alive.

I6 is not a problem because it takes 6 normal wounds to kill a FNP assault marine which will take 12 hits at S4 or 18 hits at S3. The only unit FNP assault marines need to worry about being I6 is Incubi because of power weapons. No power weapons=no problem with I6 DE.

Talos pain engines are slow, and assault marines are fast. Melta guns wound them on a 3+, and FC power fists wound them on a 2+. They are even less of a problem than wraithlords which DOA can handle.

The #1 problem DOA will have when facing DE is the speed of a DE army.

The #1 problem a DE will have when facing DOA is the speed of a DOA army.

Both armies are fast and are used to easily being able to outmaneuver an opponent. It's all going to come down to who plays better.

cypher wrote: Ravangers will be hit or miss in his army as you have no tanks of your own for them to target and losing 1-2 assault marines per turn isnt that much of a sacrifice as long as you focus on killing his troops and preventing him from being able to score objectives.

I guess you have never seen a Ravager(sic) with disintrigrators. 9 Str5 Ap2 shots shreds marines. They dont show up in all comers lists but they do show up when the DE player knows what he is going to face.

cypher wrote:
A strung out squad of assault marines can cover a lot of area with their 18in charge range/24in shooting range.

Again, a smart DE player will take Nightshields on all his vehicles making getting into range much more difficult. Assaulting a skimmer moving fast is unlikely to do much as you need 6s to hit and then another 6 to glance. If its a Ravager only a fist will even glance.

For those who dont know. Nightshield is a 10 point upgrade that makes the vehicle count 6" further away from a shooter than it actually is. So pistols and meltas become 6" range and melta-guns are never in half range. Rapid fire becomes 18"/6". Even if you drop practically right on top of a raider a bad scatter could put you out of range of shooting them. The upgrade is usually just a fun add on but DoA has such range limitations on its shooting it gets difficult. Take Land speeders.

schadenfreude wrote:
If you cannot get units free to kill them with a counter charge then you are doomed but if you can they will kill one unit and die. Bloodbrides hit hard but you are tougher 3+/4+ and hit almost as hard.

Ordinary trooper you are right but even ordinary wyches have a 4++/4+ after getting a pain token. The bid difference is the sarg with agonizer. That will ignore both BA saves where as a power weapon will only get one of the wyches saves. Not many DE take combat squads without a sarg and some sort of PW weapon.

Incubi are indeed nasty but I can imagine not taking too many against DoA. They dont even have I6 unless they get 2 pain tokens and charge. More squads would be better. Lots of 5 man wych squads with a sarg with agonizer in a venom with nightshield which can score, shoot well and be annoying in CC for a turn or two.

Saving your priest will indeed be tough. Archons are great at character assassination.

actually cypher said that last quote...My opinion is blood brides hit like WS4 S3 girls.

Bloodbrides and Wytches are the least of a BA's problems. They don't hit hard at all, and if they don't have a pain token they die easy. MSU of wytches are even less of a problem as they are almost certain not to have a pain token, and will not even act as a speedbump against a full assault squad with priest's bonuses.

The real potential problem with Wytches is large squads can be a real tarpit once they get a pain token. The solution is simple: Don't get into a fair fight. A fair fight between an even number of BA and an even number of Wytches with a pain token will result in both sides being tarpitted, and the priest getting sucked into CC which can potentially put him close enough to the agonizer to die in round 2. BA need to avoid fair fights, and in situations like that hit the 10 wytches/bloodbrides with 15 to 20 assault marines. The result will be the wytches/bloodbrides loose too much combat resolution and break. They will almost certainly get away, but BA have the speed to have a combat squad run them off the board/gun them down as they run into the open. If they get >6" from BA by the start of their next turn they can't regroup, so it will be a real race to see if they get gunned down by bolt pistols before they hit the board edge.

schadenfreude wrote:10 wytches/bloodbrides with 15 to 20 assault marines.

What do assault marines cost now 18 points a model(I dont have a current BA codex in front of me)? 10 wyches are 100 points. 20 Assault marines are 360? Bringing 3.5:1 will win you most battles, even if you are assaulting terminators with guardsmen. But if you commit 360 points to killing a squad like that then your men will either get ignored while the opponent runs off to assault other things or is going to get shot and assaulted to death.

Obviously both sides rely on taking advantage of unfair fights but I think that 2x 9wych squads against a 10man Assault marrines looks pretty good to me. And that is points even if assault marrines are 18points

schadenfreude wrote:My opinion is blood brides hit like WS4 S3 girls.

Wyches and blood brides almost never hit like WS4 S3 girls. They always get their combat drugs. 16% of the time they get to run fast, which sucks. the other 83% of the time they get either +1WS, +1S, Reroll to wound(better than +1S against marines), +1 attack(punching BBs up to 4, 5 when charging), or a starting pain token. You can't count on them having S4 to glance the back of a rhino, you cant count on them having tons of attacks, but 83% of the time you get something that helps a lot in CC making them substantially better than their base stats might appear.

Exergy wrote:

schadenfreude wrote:10 wytches/bloodbrides with 15 to 20 assault marines.

What do assault marines cost now 18 points a model(I dont have a current BA codex in front of me)? 10 wyches are 100 points. 20 Assault marines are 360? Bringing 3.5:1 will win you most battles, even if you are assaulting terminators with guardsmen. But if you commit 360 points to killing a squad like that then your men will either get ignored while the opponent runs off to assault other things or is going to get shot and assaulted to death.

Obviously both sides rely on taking advantage of unfair fights but I think that 2x 9wych squads against a 10man Assault marrines looks pretty good to me. And that is points even if assault marrines are 18points

schadenfreude wrote:My opinion is blood brides hit like WS4 S3 girls.

Wyches and blood brides almost never hit like WS4 S3 girls. They always get their combat drugs. 16% of the time they get to run fast, which sucks. the other 83% of the time they get either +1WS, +1S, Reroll to wound(better than +1S against marines), +1 attack(punching BBs up to 4, 5 when charging), or a starting pain token. You can't count on them having S4 to glance the back of a rhino, you cant count on them having tons of attacks, but 83% of the time you get something that helps a lot in CC making them substantially better than their base stats might appear.

If they get the pain token they hit like girls, if they don't get a pain token they die just as easy as regular eldar.

No pain token=2 wounds to kill 1 wytch so 5/24 fc attacks kill a wytch or 4/24 regular, assault marines have 25 attacks on the charge. De are still unlikely to kill more than 2 fnp meq on I6, and the meq volley of bp + melta will likely cause a minimum of 2 casualties with de in cover.

Pain token=36 attacks to drop 1 fnp meq

Wytches without a pain token only need about 15 assault marines to reliably wreck in 1 round of combat. 10 would probably do the trick, but de might pass their ld test so 15 is safer.

I'll use 300 points to destroy 100 points all day long, rince , repeat, and if its done table wide that=someone getting tabled in 3 turns. Its all about speed and picking unfair fights, and the only problem is de speed. De v ba is an even match up. Its all about who plays better.

Exergy wrote:Saving your priest will indeed be tough. Archons are great at character assassination.

I'm not a BA player, but don't the honor guard squads have a non-independent medic? If I'm right, can you take one or two of these with some special weapons to back up groups of your jump packers?