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I'm just getting back into 40k after a fairly long break, and I picked up my old space marine army, treating them as space wolves as I felt I wanted a change of pace. I'm having fun with them, though I have lots of trouble against dark eldar, that I have managed to work out is down to me not knowing what his units are good at doing, and me not knowing what is effective in my army at taking down his stuff. Basically, I'm looking for what in my army is good at fighting what, and why, because I am scratching my head at working this out, and I don't play often enough to work out through trial and error currently.

For reference, I can use pretty much any unit in the army, though I tend to base my armies around a rune priest as HQ, a couple of Grey hunter squads, dreadnoughts (Because I adore dreadnoughts, no other real reason), and whatever else takes my fancy that game. I have access to long fangs if needed, a couple of rhino/razorbacks, a land raider, many, many tactical marine models that our group doesnt mind me proxying as Grey hunters or Blood claws, terminators to count as wolf guard if needed, and enough miscellaneous models to count as pretty much anything else. The only thing I cant effectively proxy is TWC, unless I borrow someones models or there is an easy way of proxying them that I am unaware of.

My opponent, from what I gather, uses a lot of models mounted in skimmers, venoms I think they are? He uses wyches, incubi I believe and the flyer with missiles. Sorry I can't give more information than that, as I said, I do not know his codex very well at all, but hopefully this can give you a general idea of what he goes for when he plays.

Thanks in advance, any advice would be wonderful.

Well the flyer is a razorwing jetfighter and youre going to want to pop that as soon as you can. As long as you stay out of CC with the wyches you should do fine cause they die very easy to gun fire. If you dont take long fangs you should cause the more raiders/venoms you can keep at range the better for you.

DE, and particularly Venom/Razowing toting DE hate vehicle spam. Take a ton of razorbacks with heavy bolters and watch his skimmers drop from the sky.

Venoms and Razorwings(the things you say he has) shred infantry. They dont care if you have a 2+ save or 30 friends, if you have a toughness value you better be inside a transport or you are going to have trouble.

Dont take landraiders, they are AV12 to just about all DE weapons.


If he is using wyches and incubi, he wants to get into CC with you. Incubi kill marines hard, very hard. Wyches cannot be killed by marines in CC, or atleast not quickly. Combined you have lots of problems. Prioritize shooting the incubi down. Wyches are good tarpits but hopefully you can gun them down or at least wittle them down a bit before they get there. If they get into cc jsut kill the rest of the army first. They arnt that killy.

I feel your pain. I'm having this exact same problem. A good buddy of mine is teaching me how to play. I don't have much in the way of transport yet, and I've yet to put together Long Fangs. That Razorwing Jet is the bane of my existence, though I did destroy it once in the first turn with a well-placed bolter round through the windshield, courtesy of my Wolf Guard. But my buddy had such good luck using his Razorwing and Venoms against my footslogging list tonight that he said he's going to buy and spam three Razorwings in the near future! Monoscythe missiles are brutal!

Have no fear brother. Eldar have a few weaknesses that you must capitalize on. He can only win by coming to assault you. They have weak Toughness and Strength and most have a 5+ or 6+ save. So your rapid firing grey hunters can massacre them easily. They rely on those flimsy AV10 skimmers, easy prey to Long Fangs and standard Pred TL Autocannons, those TL assault cannons on the Dreads are not to shabby taking the skimmers down either. So you don't really need that many powerweapons to kill them. Use a few more sprinklings of Mark of the Wulfen in the squads and make sure you have those free flamers in your wolf packs to burn those wyches. HB, HF, AC and ML are your best shooting tools. Your taking the Wolf Standards of course.

And your HQ rune priest has many powers well suited to tackling Dark Eldar. Besides from anti-pshyker powers, I don't need to tell you how well Tempest's Wrath works against said opponent. The over-looked Thunderclap power can wreak havoc on those weakling Eldar Elites and Troop mobs quite well. You can possibily wipe out an entire unit of Wyches with the large pie plate. Murderous Hurricane is great too. You should bring 2 Rune Priests to take advantage of this edge.

The best thing you can do tactically even before you take out their turbo boosting skimmers is to use the "Alamo" tactic. Make sure you deploy in cover- duh I know. But your Rhinos and Razorbacks need dozer blades to get all your disembarked Grey Hunters into difficult terrain. This sets up the Dark Eldar player to make difficult terrain tests, plus not all of his infantry have assualt grenades. This is vital because if he does not have them and assaults you in cover his INIT 1. Adding your Wolf Standard effects during his assault makes you out to be a sure victor.

womprat49 wrote:Have no fear brother. Eldar have a few weaknesses that you must capitalize on. He can only win by coming to assault you. They have weak Toughness and Strength and most have a 5+ or 6+ save. So your rapid firing grey hunters can massacre them easily. They rely on those flimsy AV10 skimmers, easy prey to Long Fangs and standard Pred TL Autocannons, those TL assault cannons on the Dreads are not to shabby taking the skimmers down either. So you don't really need that many powerweapons to kill them. Use a few more sprinklings of Mark of the Wulfen in the squads and make sure you have those free flamers in your wolf packs to burn those wyches. HB, HF, AC and ML are your best shooting tools. Your taking the Wolf Standards of course.

And your HQ rune priest has many powers well suited to tackling Dark Eldar. Besides from anti-pshyker powers, I don't need to tell you how well Tempest's Wrath works against said opponent. The over-looked Thunderclap power can wreak havoc on those weakling Eldar Elites and Troop mobs quite well. You can possibily wipe out an entire unit of Wyches with the large pie plate. Murderous Hurricane is great too. You should bring 2 Rune Priests to take advantage of this edge.

The best thing you can do tactically even before you take out their turbo boosting skimmers is to use the "Alamo" tactic. Make sure you deploy in cover- duh I know. But your Rhinos and Razorbacks need dozer blades to get all your disembarked Grey Hunters into difficult terrain. This sets up the Dark Eldar player to make difficult terrain tests, plus not all of his infantry have assualt grenades. This is vital because if he does not have them and assaults you in cover his INIT 1. Adding your Wolf Standard effects during his assault makes you out to be a sure victor.

I disagree about the assault part. Many Dark Eldar lists focus on shooting rather than assault, often in the form of Venom spam. On the one hand, Long Fangs work great against these, because you can split fire and take them down pretty easily. On the other hand, Long Fangs die fairly fast against these as well, because any infantry dies easily to Venoms due to volume of fire. Deployment of your Long Fangs will determine the flow of the game in this matchup. Pray you don't get Dawn of War.

Mass transport lists are definitely the bane of many Dark Eldar lists. Dark Lances are not that effective at actually destroying vehicles. And even though you have less mobility, you'll usually outrange them as well.

Exergy wrote:DE, and particularly Venom/Razowing toting DE hate vehicle spam. Take a ton of razorbacks with heavy bolters and watch his skimmers drop from the sky.

Venoms and Razorwings(the things you say he has) shred infantry. They dont care if you have a 2+ save or 30 friends, if you have a toughness value you better be inside a transport or you are going to have trouble.

Dont take landraiders, they are AV12 to just about all DE weapons.


If he is using wyches and incubi, he wants to get into CC with you. Incubi kill marines hard, very hard. Wyches cannot be killed by marines in CC, or atleast not quickly. Combined you have lots of problems. Prioritize shooting the incubi down. Wyches are good tarpits but hopefully you can gun them down or at least wittle them down a bit before they get there. If they get into cc jsut kill the rest of the army first. They arnt that killy.

No we hate vehicle spam w/ S 6 weapons attached. Against a razorback spam list I will just sit back and focus on one part of your army with ravagers/razorwings/raiders. Once that flank is open you start focusing the venoms there. Razorbacks are rather easy to pop open.

The annoying thing with DE is anything of S6+ it igonres our FNP and can threaten our vehicles. I would run 3 x 5 man squads of longfangs w/ 4 ML and a CML wolf guard in two of them. With the split fire that should be 4 dead vehicles per turn. Then wolf scouts outflanking can wreck even wyches in CC w/ 2 PW and a wolfguard w/ PW or Frost Blade (I think they can take them).
Now things like TWC you can forget since they won't do well.

Add a bare bones wolf guard termie to long fang squads. Venoms will be dumping a lot of ap5 wounds on them so a 2+ armor save should save a few ml. Always split fire with the long fangs.

Living lightning is bad for av11 vehicles,

Wyches without pain tokens are very vulnerable to massed bolter fire from grey hunters. Whyches with pain tokens are a tarpit unit.

I have a game against DE on monday (i'm playing necrons). Got to be honest, i am worried.

I'm hoping i can pop his transport early and then just get in cover and blast them as they footslog towards me.