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Hello esteemed Dakkanoughts. Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma - I'd like to start a smallish (up to 1500 pts) 40k army but am having difficulty deciding between a few armies.

The current candidates are dark eldar and daemons. I know these aren't really 'beginner' armies but my everyone else in my club plays spehs mareens so I'm determined to go for something different.

I love the models for both, but i'm a bit concerned that their respective playstyles will be too challenging for a newbie like me. The whole concept behind the dark eldar is pretty awesome as well, but I'm getting the shakes thinking about how many skimmers I'd have to buy and paint up.

Has anyone had much experience either playing with or against these armies they'd care to share?

Cheers,

V.

Well dark eldar really aren't the easiest army to start playing 40k with.. Dark eldar are really fragile and daemons aren't easy to play competitively with since they are really underpowered for the time being.

Remember though that a large part of the hobby for most people is collecting and painting so take an army that you would like to play but would also like to collect. It's quite understandable if you don't want to buy a big heap of venoms and raiders though you will need them to play competitively (except maybe for a webway portal list)

Daemons are great fun and may get a boost in 6th if they change the Deep Strike rules to allow you to assault the turn you come in. In addition, they are relatively cheap to collect if you can convert up Heralds from lesser daemons and scrap parts. However, they suffer against really fast armies like Dark Eldar because there is no way to get close enough to their boats to do serious damage. Getting stuck with your bad wave is also no fun because it typically means you have to play for the draw at best. We are actually pretty good at Kill Points missions since we don't have metal boxes that get blown up easily for cheap points.

If you are just playing casually, Daemons aren't too hard. You may even find opponents who let you choose which wave comes down on turn one. Don't expect to put up great numbers at tournaments though. You get used to Deep Striking pretty quickly and past that there aren't too many unique tactical decisions a Daemon player has to make. In fact, cover isn't even that essential to your army because it all has a 5+ invulnerable save. This means you only have to bother with cover if it is blocking, is 4+ cover, or if you think you will be assaulted next turn and want to strike first.

I don't play Dark Eldar, but I know that they are much more expensive to start. A competitive army wants a bunch of Ravagers and a bunch of Venoms/Raiders, which add up very quickly. I think their big advantage over other armies is versatility in list building. There appear to be several strong builds for Dark Eldar, whereas Daemons only have like 1.5 strong builds.

I think daemons get a little one dimensional, so if you plan on playing every week, you might burn out a bit.

Dark Eldar look sweet, have a ton of fun characters, and really seem to be a blast to play (I've never ran either, btw).

I'd much rather play against Daemons in a tourney than DE (most of my losses are to DE... I hate them).

If you think you can get over the learning curve, I'd go DE. Eldar might be a fun option too... and they might get a new codex soon. I don't know anyone who plays Eldar and dislikes them, even if they aren't the most competitive.

DE will have a steep learning curve at first, as you have to figure out how to avoid getting wholly shot to ribbons. That said, when you do get the hang of them, they'll do much better than Daemons. It's a versatile, quick list that will let you go many directions at once.

The Dark Eldar take a bit of planning to play, but I don't think they're tremendously more difficult to play than any of the others. If you can win consistently with one army chances are you can win with any army... especially after honing your list. Once you understand the basic variables (which isn't hard) in 40k it's really easy to plan as everything boils down to luck really. In tournament play, luck and taking advantage of the small mistakes by your opponent are really the deciding factors in most games regardless of the army.

Once I read the Codex, got into the theme, painted a few miniatures (got my 'blood up' in other words) I started playing a few games solo with proxies to see if I really enjoyed the flow of the DE faction.

I do this many times before I shell out hundreds of dollars on a complete army. I have a good income, but I still do this for every list I make.

While I enjoy the miniatures I never really got into the DE as a faction and the same thing happened with the Tyranids. So they both occupy a very small space in the cabinet. I am a Marine player at heart with a soft spot for Orks.

Veralius wrote:Hello esteemed Dakkanoughts. Long time lurker, first time poster here.

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma - I'd like to start a smallish (up to 1500 pts) 40k army but am having difficulty deciding between a few armies.

The current candidates are dark eldar and daemons. I know these aren't really 'beginner' armies but my everyone else in my club plays spehs mareens so I'm determined to go for something different.

I love the models for both, but i'm a bit concerned that their respective playstyles will be too challenging for a newbie like me. The whole concept behind the dark eldar is pretty awesome as well, but I'm getting the shakes thinking about how many skimmers I'd have to buy and paint up.

Both armies have their quirks and their strengths and weaknesses. Eldar are fast, but fragile. They are not an easy army to start with, but you realy won't be any worse off than any other newbie player playing them. I think you are actually better off playing a force like DE before you get used to the hardiness and solid stats of Space Marines. It is hard to shift to DE once you are used to all that armor.

Daemons can be devastating when the dice go our way, but easy to kill otherwise. So you play them with that in mind. The biggest strength of daemon armies is the entire army being able to deep strike. Though you need have plenty of nurgle daemons mixed in to your army so that they can deep strike, get shot at a lot, and then still have enough forces to assault on the next turn. The biggest weakness of the daemons is the same as their strength: All deep striking units. If you deep strike too close your forces will be wiped out before they can do anything back. Also, if your reserve rolls go poorly for you, your army arrives piecemeal and gets cut up that way. Daemons are lacking in transports of any kind so you have to be really careful where they come on to the table, as once on the table they need to foot slog to enemies that are further away.

Both armies are interesting to play and play very differently from each other. DE have nice mix of ranged and CC abilities, whereas Daemons are predominantly CC with limited ranged abilities. The DE will allow you to alter your focus a little bit better on the table, and their speedy vehicles and such will allow you to adapt to any changes in conditions on the battlefield more quickly than daemons can sometimes. It also helps that your DE army starts the game fully on the table, though a daemon army against a heavily shooty opponent when the opponent gets the first turn can be amusing since they will have zero daemon targets to shoot out for that first round.

Skriker

Even though I play daemons I would say go Dark eldar.
They are an easier army to pick up as they tend to follow the same format most 40k armies have. Daemons due to their deployment are a bit unorthodox. Dark Eldar are also in a better position balance wise right now.

Daemons only have one nice thing going for them right now. in a tournament setting you know you will be fighting Grey knights. So you can tool your list and play a nasty khornite list that is actually the best list at fighting GK. GK on the other hand are definitely not expecting your list. So while if they knew you were coming they could tailor their list to where you might as well not put down your models, since they have to take their all comers list that won't happen.

And then there is a chaos codex possibly coming in June in shortly after 6th edition hits. You might want to wait on starting Daemons to see what that codex allows. Even if it doesn't replace the daemons codex (it probably won't) you can see what daemons you can field in both armies and start your daemons list using those models. Essentially letting you do a 2 for 1 kind of deal. (or 3 for 1 if you do what I did and bought movement trays that let you put your circle bases in them. Letting you use 40k based models in fantasy!)

Daemons are fun, dark eldar are better.

I just started Dark Eldar and 40k itself not too long ago, and while I made sure I had a decent grasp of the rules before I began playing, it doesn't seem to be a hard army to pick up on and play to a decent level like everyone says. It's pretty obvious after playing a game or two you have to try to utilize cover and position things properly.. Sure you'll make mistakes that might cost you a little more than if you were playing space marines, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal.

I play both, though my Daemons are mostly a modelling/painting project at the present.

DE are a little rough to learn, especially if you've got used to the near invulnerability of SM armour and vehicles 3+ armour is a rare thing in the DE codex, and noone has a 2+,3++ (though you can get a 4+,2++ (until you fail it)

Expect to lose vehicles like flies of you aren't careful. You'll likely lose them all by the end of the game anyway.

With DE you HAVE to have done enough damage to your target (be it ranged or in CC) to have a hope of weathering the retaliation. DE are very very fragile ambush predators. If you let them hit back in any strength you lose, so you have to cripple them before they can. It is a fun force to run though I love my DE.

Daemons are a bit more hit and miss. I love the fluff and the units, but the random 1/2 force deployment, and everything DS'ing in in nice tight Vindicator-fodder sized clumps is annoying. Doubly so when most daemons only have a 5+ save. Granted it's a 5++ , but it's still only 5 or better..

One extra comment on daemons: They are VERY hard to play in smaller games, especially if the reserve dice go against you. In larger games you get more units so more chances for something to come in on each turn that you are rolling for the units. In a smaller battle if you roll poorly you could end up with *1* unit on the table for multple turns which you won't be able to do much with while you wait for support to arrive from the warp.

Skriker

This thread is right up my street! You and me are in the same position. I already have 10 Seeker and 10 Daemonettes to paint up, but the more I read on CD and DE being hard to play for beginners, as well as familiarising myself with the general rules, the more kinda daunting it feels..

I think I'll put have my Chaos Daemons as a painting and lore project primarily (I LOVE the fluff of these guys!), and work on my DE for gaming first.

I wouldn't be too off put by the claims of DE being difficult to play. I don't play them personally, but I have a friend who plays them.

The first reason why I don't think they are that difficult is that they have ABSURD fire power. If you go first (which they have ways of helping you do) you can often cripple or destroy many of the major threats of the opponents army before they can act.

The second reason is that its not that difficult to ensure you have both enough anti infantry and enough anti tank. DE warriors have a gun that is proficient at killing basically any infantry threat from terminators to orks. This is because they have huge volumes of fire at good BS and poison. It is also not difficult to get a lot of dark lances/blasters to deal with tanks.

Probably the toughest thing to learn which can help a lot is to be able position your skimmers so only a few enemy unit can see them, and then kill those units. This allows you great offense but denies them retaliation. Though this is also dependent on how much/what kind of terrain and tables are used in your area.

Though I am an Eldar player who might be a little bitter that DE can get the same guns as me at better BS for cheaper points.

Edit: As for demons, they have some really mean things (some of their characters/blood crushers/ect.) They are just so random with how they hit the table that sometimes no matter what you do strategy wise, the dice might shut you down.

T5, feel no pain, 5+ invuln plague bearers are all kinds of tough no matter what you are facing.