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so i am thinking about dark eldar and am trying to figure out how to....well win

paticularly against space marines and their dam termies with storm sheilds

so far the only possible tactic is to run a bunch of the Dark Eldar Warriors aka shooty guys, up in their raiders and just unload with them still in the raider, raiders would have the ammo thing so that the warriors gt to re roll to hit.

that and drive a venom up with an archon, posin lady, and 2 sslyths up to finish them off.

that and maybe two units of scourges that jump forward and pop any landraider they could be in.

that and then continue this strategy to take out the rest of the army.

any thoughts suggestions ideas

i dont know the point value of the game but an idea for a list would be


2 units of scourges with their melta thing and champ with some sort of power weapon
2 raiders with warriors in them the raiders have the ammo thing that lets you re-roll to hit
an archon with posin chick and 2 sslyths in a venom
maybe some wythcs in a raider to hep add some cc clout?

then all the vehicles would have that annoying dark eldar tech that makes your vehicles so annoying to kill

no clue on the point cost for this but it seems like a good tatic

any suggestions?

any ideas?

this is all just theory so i would love any and all constructive criticism

This is coming from someone who doesn't play DE, but I do know one or two things about the army.

I would drop the power weapon on the scourges. They're not assault; they're shooty and giving them a Special CCW would be a waste of points IMO.
The rerolls to hit in the Raiders is a brilliant idea, especially if you give the warriors Splinter Cannons.
The laemaen is only useful to the archon if he has poisoned attacks, so give him an agonizer or something. But yeah, venom as a transport is a good choice.
And yeah, wyches are pretty nasty. They also come in the BF.

sweet any other ideas

this is looking like there wont be anyone left to enslave if the dark eldar are this good!!!

so any more suggestions?

feel free to comment even if you dont know the codex very well
or you know just suggest a build that really beat you up and how to make it even better

pleases comment

Venom spam destroys assault terminators. Shoot enough splinter cannons and they will start failing saves.

duely noted

so basically a lot of shooting aka a lot of dakka?

it simple:

your hq of choise, i prefer sliscuss

Blasterborn in venoms
0-1 unit of Incubi in Raider or venom

Whyches in raiders
or warriors in venoms

Beast packs
Scourges with lances

ravagers
0-1 Razorwing

all vehicles with flickerfields and nightshields

and last but not least, the golden tip:

DICTATE THE GAME, as long as you do that you glass cannon will punch holes, when you start reacting to your opponent its getting tricky

Firstly, that was the hardest post to try to read....ever...

Secondly, agonizers aren't poison weapons, so poison mistress does nothing for him.

Thirdly, a semi-balanced DE army has no problem dealing with assault termies with just venom shots.

LRs die to DLs and vehicles that move 12"-24" a turn really dont give a crap about slogging termies. Just mass fire DL at the LR until immobilized/dead (statisically it takes about 9). Then just focus on the other scary parts of the army that can deal with your vehicles. DE's biggest advantage is their speed and ability to reposition. It honestly depends on what you have access to though. If you can only run like 4 DLs then you might have a problem, but even then it will take two turns on average to stop it from moving. Also if it comes down to it, shove 10 witches with 2 nets down their throats (K charge, K minus 2 attacks on 3 models, k 5 attacks total, K 1 wound, K save)

okay....123birds could you say that again except slower... what are DL? but the wytch sound like a good idea with the nets

Dark Eldars' main strength lies with their speed, offensive capabilities, and ability to zip vehicles around to manipulate movements, ram, and unload weapons. These three things come at the expense of Armor, Survivability, and flying cardboard. When playing Dark Eldar responding to the opponents movements will get you a loss. Dark Eldar must be played like a surgeon slowly extracting key items from a foundation until it collapses in on itself. You have to force the opponent to counter your movements, and when they try to close in for a kill you simply zip away, or look at your opponent and say, "Well there goes 100 points for that squad". T

The way you achieve this is to make everything mobile, make everything a threat to EVERYTHING (Mech and infantry, cannot stress this enough (Ravagers are an exception)), and make everything as cheap as possible. You suggested running warriors in a raider with racks. While this can deal with infantry it costs a LOT. Compared to just having a squad of 5 with a blaster in a venom, you more effective anti-infantry at longer range (dual Venom Cannons) and up to 2 anti-tank weapons (Blaster and Ramming Skimmer) both with effective 24" threat range (Turbo-boost to ram/move 12", disembark, fire blaster, dare the opponent to kill your 60 point unit.)

The key to you destroying these terminators is to destroy the key supporting units for them. Let's face it, a LR and Terminators is a HUGE investment (400-500) for something that is only effective when close to you and against infantry. This means that the rest of the army will probably be targets to distract from the LR, many ways to kill tanks, and less ways to kill infantry (that's what the LR/Termy combo is for).

In order for his terminators to be effective they have to both make it to your end of the board, and kill enough things to make the investment worth it. You can counter this by doing one of two things. Killing the LR, or moving away from it. If the opponent gives you the choice between shooting multiple lascannon/HB/any str 5+ weapon razorbacks or the LR, you would shoot at the razorbacks. Why? because they can be shaken, have less armor, and will be more effective overall at killing your tanks which must be killed in order for his terminators to be effective. If your entire army is in vehicles, and you have elminated every major threat to the vehicles, how will terminators be able to be effective? Charge a skimmer and hit on 6s? If you spent the entire game shooting at the LR and the terminators he would still have his entire anti-mech fire base, and most likely some if not all of the termintors (God bless Cover and Storm Shields...). This "target priority" is something you will have to learn well to be effective with Dark Eldar.

Also:
DL=dark lance

Also:
I'm tired so apologies if this does not make sense.

Well...just as an opening idea I would suggest you check out the link in my sig, it contains a DE tactica I wrote and has a lot of general thoughts on how to win with them.

In a more specific sense, the answer is; depends on your list.

I actually like wileythenord's answer best, because he understands in a general way that a well built DE list has relatively little to fear from Landraiders - they're really not that scary to us.

"Hey, good job, Mr. Marine, your 500 point deathstar just killed my 130 point unit. All you have to do is do that about three more times before the game ends and you'll have earned your equivalent points back. Don't mind me as I kill the entire rest of your army and fly away from you - have fun with that!"

Space Marines have lots of things that are scary for us - Assault Termies in a LR is not one of them. Here's a very quick breakdown (123birds already functionally did this, but I like to talk and feel self-important, also, I think my method is slightly different than his.

First things first - what type of list are you? Generally speaking competitive DE fall in one of two general categories, I'll give the plan for each.

Wych Cult

This is an easy one - your first goal is to get those weedy Termies out of their Landraider. Generally a Wych Cult has some good tools for this via lances and Haywire grenades. HGs work great because you can roll up and smack them on the Landraider, short it out, and make the Termies have to get out and be peeved at you for wrecking their ride.

Get the Termies to assault Wyches/assault them with Wyches.

Check back in about 2-3 rounds when your Wyches might actually be starting to fade. Ask him how much he paid for the Termies. Smile. If he's running some Claws in the mix he might saw through them faster - but Termies have slow going getting past Wyches using only hammers.

Kabal

Even easier. You should have lances and blasters. The Landraider probably isn't even the biggest threat to you (I tend to sweat Landspeeders and Razorbacks more than Landraiders, usually, because they're just as bad when it comes to killing us, but are much easier to kill). In any case, shoot dark matter at the Landraider. When it is destroyed just keep flying away from the Termies. If you have nothing better to shoot, then feel free to have three Venoms or so pour 36 poison shots into him and see how many of them are still twitching afterwards.

The core answer

If you're having a problem specifically with them having Storm Shields then you're probably not trying to kill them the right way. Termies with Storm Shields die just as easy as regular Termies against poison shooting. And raw volume of Dakka is the best way to kill Termies if you don't have Dissies in the list - because you will inflict a lot of wounds, and every '1' he rolls is like a stab to the chest.

If you're going to be in assault with them, make it Wyches, because Wyches lock them down - Assault Termies hate being locked down.

Above all, understand how much of a threat they are, and aren't. In the final analysis - without their Landraider they're a bunch of footslogging punks without fleet who are trying to catch vehicles capable of moving 12" and still shooting. They'll manage to get 1-2 things even so, but besides that you can almost ignore them as long as the rest of your army is doing what is needed taking apart the rest of his.

+1 to 123birds' comment.

It all comes down to target priority. A landraider carrying terminators is not that high on the priority list. All you need is a "crew stunned" result on that. This means that the landraider now is only able to shoot one weapon at you and can't move any closer to you.

Once you do that, Razorbacks and Devastator/Long Fangs are next. These require two separate tools. The Razorbacks will require Dark Lances or Heat Lances and the Devastator squads/Long Fangs will require splinter weapons.

These reasons are why so many net lists have the same elements. Use ravagers to shake/immobilize the landraider so the Termies have to footslog, then ignore them until everything else is dead. Then use the blaster you have in every squad of warriors to kill/stun/shake razorbacks and rhinos. Then use all of the splinter cannons on your venoms to dakka down everyone else.

Don't forget that bolters and storm bolters will (eventually) take down your vehicles.

Edit:
And...ninja'd by one of the masters of the DE. Listen to Thor665.

Just hope you are not fighting BT with Sacred Hull lol

Jackster wrote:Just hope you are not fighting BT with Sacred Hull lol

Its where I have wyches and haywire blasters for them and monoliths.

I agree with Thor's comments.

1) start off an army with 3 ravagers and go from there. Until 6th ed comes and flyer rules change, stick with ravagers.

2) speed is your armor. keep out of range of most 12-24 inch weapons if possible. This is the army where you can refuse flank (setup outside of their range) and then get in range thanks to mobility.

3) play dirty and play unfair. I dont mean cheat or do WAAC, I mean gang up and hit your opponent's weak spots, take out weapons that can hurt you badly.

4) Warriors with blasters, wyches with haywires. I am still debating between venom blade and agonizer on my hekatrix since they seem to do just about the same amount of damage based on theoryhammer.

5) Prepare to go 2nd. An alpha strike can hurt or cripple a DE army. Prepare against the seize just in case and learn to set up with going 2nd in mind. Flicker fields on all vehicles a must.

Thor has spoken...need we say more?

thank you all of you you guys have honelsty taught me a lot

i really apreciate it

you guys are awesome

Jackster wrote:Just hope you are not fighting BT with Sacred Hull lol

uh why?? wyches with haywires will clean that nicely, that will mean more darklight to the rest of the army, if Dark Eldar do one thing good, that is ignoring what you play...

Valek wrote:

Jackster wrote:Just hope you are not fighting BT with Sacred Hull lol

uh why?? wyches with haywires will clean that nicely, that will mean more darklight to the rest of the army, if Dark Eldar do one thing good, that is ignoring what you play...

Assuming you actually brought Wychs...
At the ardboyz prelim I went to this year, a BT player took like 3 LRs with Sacred hull, the first round he was fighting an all dark light builds.
Not saying it's really a problem for DE, but it was quite hilarious.

thehod wrote:I am still debating between venom blade and agonizer on my hekatrix since they seem to do just about the same amount of damage based on theoryhammer.

Not really. They allow you to attrition down different targets. I'd prefer my ladies to be able to attrition down even termies, so they get an agonizer. Many people claim them to be tarpits only, but I disagree. I run 2 wychs and a bloodbrides, and they eat through scores of enemy units. Last game they ate all the orks my buddy could throw at them.

123birds wrote:
The way you achieve this is to make everything mobile, make everything a threat to EVERYTHING (Mech and infantry, cannot stress this enough (Ravagers are an exception)), and make everything as cheap as possible. You suggested running warriors in a raider with racks. While this can deal with infantry it costs a LOT. Compared to just having a squad of 5 with a blaster in a venom, you more effective anti-infantry at longer range (dual Venom Cannons) and up to 2 anti-tank weapons (Blaster and Ramming Skimmer) both with effective 24" threat range (Turbo-boost to ram/move 12", disembark, fire blaster, dare the opponent to kill your 60 point unit.)

Just a note - venoms can't tank shock or ram, because they're not tanks. Neither can raiders, unless you buy the Shock Prow upgrade. Which you absolutely should. Along with Enhanced Aethersails and Flickerfield. The minute you drop off your wyches, pick one enemy tank between 25 and 31 inches away and give it an auto-hitting S10 hit on its side armor.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:The rerolls to hit in the Raiders is a brilliant idea, especially if you give the warriors Splinter Cannons.

Just want to make it clear, the rerolls to hit do NOT apply to Splinter Cannons, only Pistols and Rifles. However, it is still work it, even without the splinter cannon. Those weapons simply make a mockery of most other units.

Kamsm8 wrote:

CthuluIsSpy wrote:The rerolls to hit in the Raiders is a brilliant idea, especially if you give the warriors Splinter Cannons.

Just want to make it clear, the rerolls to hit do NOT apply to Splinter Cannons, only Pistols and Rifles. However, it is still work it, even without the splinter cannon. Those weapons simply make a mockery of most other units.

Really? I thought it applied to all splinter weapons. Oh well, still a pretty nasty loadout.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Really? I thought it applied to all splinter weapons. Oh well, still a pretty nasty loadout.

P.62: "... Models with splinter rifles or splinter pistols that fire when embarked upon the vehicle..."

However, yes, if you're taking Warriors in a Raider, it's worth it giving them the Splinter Racks. I've had them mop up Assault Squads with Chaplains, Terminators, Dreadknights, Paladins - you name it. They're a great clean-up unit or great at weakening a unit to be mopped up by Wyches, Wracks or Beastmasters.