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Greetings all! I'm looking to create a semi competative and mainly shooty dark eldar list mixed with a little bit of close combat pizzaz. I'm looking to mainly play at a local gamestore but I want the list to be at least semi competative. I'd just like to point out I am very new to both DE and the 40k game in general so I fully expect to spend a lot of time being beat into the ground regardless of which army I play. I just want to make sure I purchase models that are actually going to be useful to me once I start figuring things out and don't go wasting loads of money on things that won't work (reavers and mandrakes come to mind) So far as I know about my current opponents there is:
1) A tyranid player with a large amount of models at his disposal. I'm not sure exactly what he will bring on a regular basis but the one time i did play him using SW he had a large contingent of tervigons, a hive tyrant with lashwhip and hive guard, a couple tyrannofexes, and close combat gaunts and a couple nasty things of which i didn't know the name...raveners maybe?
2) a tau player. All i know is he has a large amount of converted imperial tau auxileries
3) a demon player. seems to favor demon princes and bloodletters
4) a chaos space marine player. he has A LOT of terminators (about 30 in his collection i think) he runs with a termie lord, not a demon prince and while he seems to definitely favor termies, obliterators and noise marines he doesn't have much in the way of mechanized units other than a couple of defilers.
As a rule the meta seems to have little to no mechanization around here so the DE anti mech flaw shouldn't be much of a problem here. With the lack of mechanized units and transports, much of the conventional wisdom seems to fly out the door. what should I include in a list designed to shoot my foes apart? What would would be best for ripping them apart in combat?
Any advice, especially by experienced DE players is appreciated.

Start by looking here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/325745.page

and

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/326407.page



Talk to DashofPepper, Ketara, or Buffo for advice. Each one brings a different perspective.

There are others too, but they are the ones to ask that come to mind first.

When you do get a list together, head over to the Army List forum and have others look it over for final tweaking by the community hive mind.

One question kind sir, do you and your friends play by the rules and keep army lists secret until after the game, or do you just wig out and are able to build lists before the game? Basically, do you guys care about tailoring, or do you guys just bring what you have/own, or just use an all comer's list?

The one occasion I did play it was a 3 vs 1. Chaos marines, demons and SW against the tyranids. We kept our lists secret unless specific rules about a unit came into play during the game. eg. my termagaunts have scything talons and attack with so and so many attacks. I don't think anyone ever looked at each others lists.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the reccord the daemon player did largely nothing, mainly deep striking and dying, much to my amusment his daemon prince was killed by a single unit of termagaunts while his bloodletters were anhiliated by genestealers and termagaunts. my units held their own all accross the board and my termies led by ajarc bagged the hive tyrant, a unit of termagaunts and a few ravagers before being taken out, my grey hunters held their own against genestealers and the chaos players termies managed to cut their way up the board while the rest of his units were destroyed. from my observations the tyranid player has quite a bit of experience while the daemon and chaos marine player seem to be relatively inexperience or grossly incompetent as a mere noob like myself outperformed them on every level, even though I WAS using the SW dex. I'm personally more worried about the tyranid player.

You said you want shooty with an element of assaulty.

You can just go with the tried and true mix of kabalite warriors and wyches.

This issue is this - Which do you prefer to do more? Which do you feel more comfortable doing? Shooting or assaulting?

If you favor shooting, then make your assault units look more attractive to shoot at, but if you like assaulting, make your shooting units a higher priority. Use the other half of your army as bait to keep what you really rely on alive longer.

If you prefer shooting, you can take Wyches or Bloodbrides, and use them as your bait unit. If you prefer assault, take Trueborne or Scourges as your shooting units.

If you want a balanced list, well, this is really up to you. Bloodbrides with 3x Shardnets will stop any of those armies in their tracks as a Demon Princes tries to kill a single model a turn. Trueborne with 3x or 4x blasters in a venom with 2x splinter cannons makes for a great anti-mech unit while also being a powerful anti-MC/Demon unit.

If you really want to be brave, get 20 Hellions with the Baron. This unit is a wonderful bait unit, and will take a lot of fire as they move into position, leaving your other assets alive longer.

The real skill with DE does not really come from your list, but how you use it. You need to know the best deployment to use when going first or second against an opponent and depending on the mission at hand. You need to learn to play the mission, and not your list. Just because your list may have a lot of alpha strike elements in it does not mean you want to go first against a Demon army or a Terminator based army. You want them to DS on the table, and get closer to you, so you can assault them out of your raiders easier.

Against the Nid and Tau player, go first if you can. For tau all you need to do is stun/shake their vehicles, then MOVE ONTO other targets. Do not waste 10 Darklight shots on a single hammerhead trying to blow it up. Just shake/stun it, and move on to his suits.

Against the Nid player, I am sorry to say, but you shouldn't have any problem with nids. The only time you should face palm yourself is if you took an exclusively shooty list with all anti-MECh, only to face a sea of gargoyles, Gaunts and stealers.

Try this as a base -

3x Ravagers w/ 3x Darklances. A staple of any basic DE list.

Trueborn w/ Blasters in a Venom w/ 2x splinter cannons
Bloodbrides w/triple Shardnets, Syren w/ P.G.L. in a Raider with Flicker Field

Kabalite Warriors w/Blaster and Splinter Cannon in a Raider
Wyches w/ Haywire Grenades, Hekatrix w/ P.G.L. in a venom w/ 2x splinter cannons

10 Scourges with 4x splinter cannons

Headquarters can be anything really. Depends on what kin of support you want.

it is hard to give advice with DE because you could easily run packs of beasts and achieve the same thing against those armies you listed. I personally love fielding a Heamonculi Cult with Grotesques, Wracks and Taloi whenever possible.

When it comes down to it, your list won't matter much. You will just need to put your nose in the dirt, and run it dirty for months until you become a master at deployment, movement and anticipation. After a while, certain units will "click" with you, and you will swear by those units.

Alrighty, what are your opinions on archons, incubi and wracks? Is there any place for them in a competitive/ semi competitive list? I really like the models and the idea of lightning fast close combat killing machines but i don't see many lists featuring them

Um, this can get tricky.

You tournaments, 99.9% of the time you have to play by a house rule that forces you to tell your opponent which transport holds which units, unlike regular play. If you take a unit of Incubi, your opponent will know which Raider they are in and shoot them down.

What this means is that it is usually best to spam units to so that it doesn't matter who gets shot down. You don't care if a raider with wyches gets shot down if you have 5 other raider with wyches in them anyway.

You can do a few things to alleviate this;

1) Spam your army units as mentioned above. Don't deviate. If you have 5 troops, make them all wyches, warriors or wracks. Or if you have an even number of troops, split them in half. 2 wyches and 2 warriors.

2) Take small units of Incubi. Instead of one unit, take three units of 5 each, spamming them for survival.

3) Go with Phil Kelly's intent for Dark Eldar and make a build that attempts to make you go first with an alpha strike. Take both Vect and Baron so that you have roughly a 84ish% chance of going first. This way, you can zip your one unit of Incubi over in relative safety.

As for Wracks, just take them in an army designed for Heamonculi. Meaning, only take them as troops, and when you do, you don't need Wyches. Wracks are generally better in close quarter fighting, only because they can spray out two Liquefier shots before combat, weakening the enemy greatly.

Archons are in the book for one reason; take a huskblade an mash in the poop of enemy HQs and multi-wound units. But remember that in doing so, the raider he is in will be the target of enemy fire unless you can alpha strike him closer or bring him out of a WWP on foot. heck, Archons make wonderful WWP carriers. Turn 1 you rotate your raider, move, disembark and deploy the wwp preferably behind LOSB terrain, and hopefully get a nice charge off the enemy if they deployed up against their deployment boundary or just came on board from Dawn of War.

For me, my army either has Wracks OR Wyches for CC ability. Wyches can poop fist terminators and other elite units, while wracks can melt any enemy infantry with dual liquifier sprays.

Incubi are only really taken in multiple units of 5.

Archones are taken only with a Huskblade build, and usually with the Duke to help the archon's huskblade kill more efficiently.

If the archon and a haemonculi rides with the bloodbrides is it best to run him with shadowfield and give the brides hydra gauntlets/ razorflails or give the archon ghostplate and a clonefield while the wyches run shardnets?

Both will work fine, but with that unit most people will go for the Clonefield as thats probably the best way to maximise its effectiveness. You also need to factor in what you are using the Bloodbrides for though, in some cases you may need the extra damage output in your list more than an escort for the Archon.

The Shadowfield works better if you want you Archon to be flexible and not tied so tightly to a single unit, the 2+ means he can happily run off and tackle small units by himself (avoid S6+ if you can but its not a massive issue as long as there is only a few attacks coming back) and still not a worry if he wipes the unit and can get shot the following turn because he still gets his save. Under the right circumstances the Clonefield is even more effective than the Shadowfield in combat, but requires you to have a unit with you at all times to avoid being shot to death or being mobbed by too many attacks and killed.

This should help significantly, Thor knows his stuff:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Dark_Eldar_Tactica

Definitely send a PM to Thor665. I apologize that you're not getting a lot of different viewpoints here, but to perfectly frank, disagreeing with BuFFo in a thread is never worth the headache that results - which is why a certain few people aren't responding here.

There's a link in my bio to a good discussion about Dark Eldar worth reading. Ketara has also written a couple of excellent DE articles worth reading (linked in by WarOne I think), but generally won't engage in public discussion about DE:

Ketara wrote:

Because to be perfectly frank, there aren't many competent DE generals out there, and their advice is so drowned out by the waves of mediocre or terrible advice, we just don't bother trying anymore.

Pre-new codex, there was only me and a few others (Clthomps, Thor666, Dash, etc), who actually knew how to play DE well on a competitive level. But that was fine, because requests for that advice were few and far between, and between us, we had pretty much all the different styles of play with the army list down pat.

These days, ever since the new codex came out, any request for help with a DE list is immediately mobbed by a dozen posters, of which probably half of which don't even play the army, three of the remaining six make nonsensical suggestions, and the last three know enough to make a mediocre/vaguely decent contribution, but aren't familiar enough with the playstyle, or listbuilding to be in a position to be attending tournaments, or writing tacticas.

The result being that under such a morass of crud, most of us don't even bother anymore. Thor is barely seen, Dash can't be arsed to compete for the attention, clthomps disappeared as of last year, and I simply can't work up the energy anymore.

I did an initial writeup when the codex first came out, which whilst I now consider it to be wrong on many, many accounts, of decent enough quality in and of itself(which I still get PM's for DE advice and help from). But now I've gained the knowledge with which to go back and write a decent series of tactics articles on the new list, I simply cannot work up the motivation.

In other words, the reason for the lack of decent DE tactics and strategy is simply because pretty much all the quality DE players cannot be bothered to try and shout through the throng of terrible and mediocre players that started playing in the last four months giving their opinions.

Having said that, I've noticed one or two of the newer players beginning to grope their way to the beach of competency out of the pool of general mediocrity, but ultimately what they're lacking is general experience with the playstyle. Give it a year, and I reckon those players will have flourished enough, and the general hubbub over the relatively new codex will have died down enough for the conversation on the codex to become interesting once again though.[/quote

In short: Send some PMs!

I like BuFFo's insight to dark eldar. He does some things differently in comparison to some of the other de vets here but it's always a good to read different philosophies how to build a list and how to run them. I think Thor665 does indeed have some tactical articles that are definitely worth reading if you're new to dark eldar.

depends on how many points yourplaying really... i will say this: dark eldar can do well vrs the armies youve mentioned, but if you simply throw them forward they will get diced. i wont argue army list details to you, since your the one who has to decide but some things that work for me are:

as many dark lance ravagers as possible. id honestly suggest these are the first thing you get. try to run 3. at only 115 each with the flicker field its very much worth it.

trueborn can be a great hammer unit for either infantry or tank hunting. i run usually a group of 4-5 kitted with 4 blasters or 2 carbines and 2 splinter cannons. sometimes ill attach the duke to the carbine kit unit. i suggest not mixing them up, so dont take both blasters and splinter cannon in same unit, and since they will be moving alot, dark lances are probally not a good idea. venoms are a good transport for these guys. as for your HQ and other eliete/troops...

try to get pain tokens as quick as possible. starting with them is good. (achieved via drugs or attached haemonculus). keep in mind that the only unit you have that can really *crush* the enemy in CC are your archon/incubi. wychs and bloodbrides are good at holding and tarpitting an enemy, but at str 3 they will have trouble inflicting damage. even incubi at str 4 arent the best, but they can do a bit more damage. 4-5 with an archon is a good mix. ive run 3 incubi with an archon and haemonculus (to get the pain token) on a venom as my HQ and they do alright.

try to keep your army all the same speed. if you have some on foot, or others using wwp, and more on raiders.... youll get seperated and picked off. keeping the same speed is i think, almost critical. try to attack a small portion of your opponents army with as much of yours as possible. use speed to avoid his return fire by staying out of LOS. remember you get a 4++ from moving flat out.

finally dont let anyone tell you "you must take xx + yy" to be competetive. i am a huge proponent of playing to your style, and adapting to your local meta. the best way to do this, is play a game with your list. at the end wich units did good? wich failed? keep notes of this. next game try them again with maybe a diffrent tac, and re evealuate. if units are not performing how you like, then ditch them. other untis that do well, take more of. look at how those units succeeded. (shooting, CC etc). try to find something that can supplement them. IE: if your wychs fail for whatever reason 5 games in a row, maybe loose them for a bit and try more warriors instead.. or if those wychs kick serious butt, then maybe think of adding some bloodbrides to help them, or a succubus HQ. in the end its your army, and your models so play them how you want to. not how some random internet personality tells you. (i realise that also probaloly nullifies the previous advise creating something of a paradox, but take it at face value for the intent, not the legal circle turning mumbo jumbo psychobabble)

also just for fun... i like to "roll for prisoners". no effect on game or victory condidtions.... but for every model my DE kill i dice it. 4+ and they be prisoners! mua ha ha ha ha!!