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Just to start, my 1500 DE list comprised of 4x10 troops of Kabalite Warriors with a DL in each squad, 5x sourges with 2x, haywire blasters, 3x standard ravagers, and a pretty standard archon with incubi in a venom. The reason I like this list is because it's fast and efficient, quite a bit of anti-armor, and the archon squad is a personal favorite of mine.

Now, my friend was playing space wolves in a list that was all over the place with several types of units that I can't really remember the name of. Note that I'm somewhat new to WH40K.

I went first and things went incredibly well. T1 I destroyed two of his tanks with all three of my ravagers and two of my troop squads in their raiders. The heavy tank was housing a few terminators and it exploded from the third ravager's last DL blast. To add insult to injury. . . three of his terminators died due to the resulting blast.

After this, he incessantly complained about how overpowered Dark Eldar are and also complained that I was using an unfun & bland list. This complaining endured throughout the entire game. . .

I won after killing his warlord on T5 with my archon's squad during a challenge, which he complained even more.

Right after that battle, if I even mention anything to do with DE he tends to go in a rage. I've tried to explain to him that I like the idea of outmaneuvering my opponents on pirate ships while lasering them to death. I should also note that my current 1500 army was created soon after I faced a necron army that totally board wiped me on T2 due to lack of AA and supersaturating points into certain units.

He also hates flyers, fortifications, necrons, flyers, and did I mention flyers? According to him, necrons pale in comparison the the overpoweredness that comprises the Dark Eldar, yet he's never played against them since 3rd Ed.

I've made a couple other lists (and lots of proxying models) just to make a weaker,but still efficient DE army for 1500, yet he still complains that the only way I can ever hope to win against him is by using the 3x any heavy support choice that's not a Chronos Parasite Engine.

Are there any other explanations I can give him that I'm trying not to be a WAAC guy, or should I just pack up see other players at my LGS instead?

Play a good list from the following codexs

Grey Knights

Necrons

New Chaos Space Marines

Chaos Daemons

Blood Angels

Imperial Guard

and Space Wolves

and solidly beat his rump in all those codexs, with emphasis on the Space Wolves, with lots of long fangs and ruin priests, then play your tame Dark Eldar lists.

Kidding, but seriously, show him how much WORSE other stuff is, and maybe help him build a better list.

I have been thinking about getting a BA army anyway. I guess this is as good as any time to show him that his lists are not really up to a "unified" army, which makes him lack any direction in a game.

He refuses to get any help on list building, yet gets livid whenever anyone else in our circle does any research on their respective armies. . .

Maybe after getting tabled by what he regards as balanced will he finally realize that he needs a better list.

So, DE are like Necron (both the new version of their respective codices and their old). The problem isn't that they're overpowered, the problem is that they are set up in such a way where balanced lists designed to fight everybody else are going to struggle.

In the case of DE it's always been that you way overload your opponent's supply of autocannons or scatter lasers. With necron it's always been that you need to have more lascannons than you would otherwise normally bring in order to be able to stop them. There are other armies out there that make things difficult by spamming, like mech armies or foot hordes, but DE and Necron are a bit moreso.

If your opponent doesn't bring enough of one class of weapon, he's probably going to be useless against you (whereas at least against a horde or a mech list, he might have had a chance), but if he DOES bring enough of the hard counter, you're screwed.

This was true in 5th, and I've now seen it in 6th already as well. I mean, I played this game against DE without any anti-DE stuff, and I narrowly lost. Then, at a tournament, I played him again in this game and it was a comprehensive slaughter. All I did was change my autocannon HS slots that are generally good to autocannon HS slots that were specifically good against fliers and skimmers, and the DE player went from victory to absolutely comprehensive defeat.

It's sort of how DE goes, really. If your opponent just wants to beat you, I can't imagine it would be difficult for them to pull this off, as there is an awful lot of shooting that SW lists can do. Once your opponent learns what heavy bolter longfangs and TL assault cannon razorbacks can do to your skimmers, that will be it.

Of course, then it becomes a moral question. If it's really easy to tailor a list to DESTROY DE, then how much should the SW player tailor?

After reading that, I'll give him one last chance with his SW and I'll make sure to tell him to tailor on the premise of me beating him almost every game since I conceived the new DE list. If that doesn't help, then I'll just have to find some new players who have better lists who are still looking for a bit of fun.

I'm usually gentle when bringing these things up with him, but it's almost to the point that he acts like I just grabbed my list from the internet and used it against him for trolling. . . . Oh well. haha

He sounds like he wouldn't be fun to play against. And I would tell him to stop. Either stop complaining or stop playing.

My group consists of necrons. Gk. And gun line guard.

All 3 considered tough. But we run dynamic lists hardly ever the same list 2 games in a row. He should maybe tailor his list a bit more to beat you.

I play DE and let me say that it's about tactics with them. If you move them the wrong way, get a raider blasted out of the air or even have to deal with something unexpected, well you're hosed.

He has an army that doesn't take much creativity to run. It's Space Marines.. hit on 3s, save on 3s, pew pew pew.

I agree with Bfdhud, he sounds like someone I would seriously never play again. I have a player in my group whom I like as a person but refuse to play because he plays a tank heavy SM list and has been caught cheating by adding more Heavy than he should OR just fast rolling.

Sometimes good friends are incompatible playmates

His problem, not yours.

One of the guys in our group runs a nasty DE list. Super venom spam with some ravagers. We have to tailor lists to beat his. I've never once said that DE is overpowered. Your friend is being a little bitch because his Space Wolves, an easy mode army, got beat.

It sounds like he needs to work on a better list. DE are nice, have lots of shots, and are paper thin. If you can get the alpha strike on them, you're going to break them. If DE get the alpha strike, with the number of shots, they are going to break you.

To be honest, I'm more amazed at him managing to lose 3 termies from a transport explosion, three, termies, died to a single S4 AP- wound each while having the amazing 2+ save... I mean, really, that's some "overpowered" unluck that he got there. And this is coming from a guy who managed to roll 1 on that single ID wound on his shadowfield in 3 different games, in a row. I'll get off my throne of unfornate dice and he can have my crown... sheesh...

Let's assume he had 5 termies, being T4, they should only take 2.5 save-able wounds from the explosion, let's round that up to 3 wounds, and now he has to roll 3 ones, that's a three-eyed-snake!!

Other than that, nothing to add, sorry... Most of what I'd say has been said by everyone else: We are glass cannon, we do high damage and we take even higher damage, pure offense, zero defense. This is more a case of him running a bad list(for anything) and you running a good list(still not WAAC list).

DE are fragile as hell.

They pack a lot of punch, but they can't take a beating as well as any other race out there.

They also got a vigorous nerfing with the 6th ed rules. They can't even play the way they were intended to when they were released (and they only just came out ).

There is a reason why Darklight/Venomspam are so common these days. It's about the only viable build left that stands a chance against most armies.

I will grant that wyches with Haywire are a lot more lethal to vehicles these days, though. My Orks don't like Haywire at all..

The guy had obscenely bad luck, and blames the enemy codex instead of the dice gods. It happens regardless of the relative power of the codexes. The guy sounds like a whiner frankly, if he insists on harping on about a midrange codex's OP-ness, rather than manning up.

Ask him how many DE vehilcles have Av 14 (let alone how many have it all round, close topped, yet count as an assault vehicle and can fire extra shots), how many DE have 2+,3++ saves and S x 2 hammers, how many melta weapons the DE can put out (Lance is ok, but it's nothing on Melta, and DE only really have the one Melta weapon)...

No SM player (except maybe DA or BT as their dexes are really old) has any reason to complain on the relative power scale, except possibly where it refers to Necrons.. DE aren't even close,

DE catch people by surprise, that's all. Once you get an idea what their list is like, it's easy enough to counter it. I ran something like this when I played them, because it was symmetric and efficient (big on symmetry, to a fault)

Archon with Electrwhip thing

x3 units of three trueborn in a venom with an extra cannon. Two guys have the carbines, the other guy has another cannon

x3 Units of ten Warriors. Splinter Cannon in each. One unit was only nine models, so the archon could ride with them. Sometimes I would switch these out for blasters, or just wyches. I can't remember. Everything was in raiders with FFs

x3 Ravagers, FFs

I had totally overwhelming firepower. Those trueborn units pumped out an amazing amount of shots, and could totally wipe out guardsmen units in a single turn of shooting. I was spread pretty thin with anti-tank, so I had the ravagers hang back around 12 inches from the main lines, and pew pew threats from a safe distance. Trueborn hugged cover while the raiders stood out in the middle of the board to attract attention.

The Trueborn were incapable of breaking open tanks, and knowing this, if you just rushed right passed them, you had won! DE are really delicate, overall. They have some hard hitting units, like incubi and beastmaster blobs, but IMO, those options disrupt the flow and are often prohibitively expensive.

I remember now! I had three haemonculi instead of the archon, each with one of those pistol things, each in one of those units of warriors, or wyches, which would have a sergeant with a electrowhip.

There's a guy in our group like that. Plays grey knights because he heard they were the best, built his army specifically because it was the unbeatable army, tactically he's worthless. He just doesn't understand deployment, target priority (he loves unloading on stealth units in cover) or objective seeking, and he's always whining that the only objective should be killing each other (he loses at those games too, ironically.)

He only wins against the resident 12 year olds and gets super cocky afterwards, and any army he loses to is loudly complained about as the most overpowered thing he's ever heard of.

A few gems:

"Howling banshees are just STUPID! How does that much AP3 only cost that many points? And I hit at I1? What is that bull?"

"Why the heck should sisters get power armor, that's crap they're not space marines! A unit of sisters should not be able to go toe to toe with grey knights and win, that's just so OP."

"Those F-ing ogryns are just unkillable, whose idea was that?More strength than a terminator in powered futuristic armor? That's just ridiculous, and three wounds with feel no pain should never be allowed."

Just because imbalance exists doesn't mean a person can't improve. In his case, he needs to understand that you can't sit back and hope a list will win a game for you. In your guys case, he needs to realize list building is as much a legitimate part of the game as tactics, and while it sucks when a person shows up with a strategically better list than you, complaining after the fact (And before and during the fact) changes zip.

He sounds like a tool.

No offense, OP, but your list isn't that great. I wouldn't bring that to a tourney. It's fine for friendly gameplay, it's similar to what I bring out when I'm playing one of the fluffernutters at my FLGS but it is by no means WAAC. Seriously though, show him this thread. If you have a laptop/smartphone/tablet, bring it in and show this to him. Especially the posts about him being a whiny little brat and how you (OP) shouldn't be playing with him anymore.

He needs to learn that this kind of behavior will cost him games. That if he keeps up this childish attitude, people aren't going to want to play with him anymore. He needs to nut up and accept the fact that he failed. Plain and simple. He screwed up, it cost him the game. How did he screw up? Poor list building, poor understanding of tactics, poor morale. It was his fault he lost, not the dice, not the advantages of your codex or the failings of his own, it is his fault. He needs to accept that responsibility and move to improve, work towards understanding the game better, learn how to build better lists, learn how to prioritize targets better, learn how to deploy to his advantage, etcetera, etcetera.

All this whiny "YOUR CODEX IS OP' crap is doing is absolving him of responsibility. He doesn't have to admit he's bad at the game, the game is just unbalanced. He doesn't have to improve, he's a great player! Your army is just OP, that's the only reason he lost. This is crap. It is not true. He is a bad player. Which is fine. I sucked terribly for a long time playing this game. I still have a long way to go when it comes to the tournament level battles. But you know what? I'm not going to bitch about autocannons killing my skimmers. I'm not going to say it's unfair that Guard list consisted of literally nothing but autocannon heavy weapons teams. I'm going to say "Well, if he can swat my skimmers out of the air so easily, maybe I should think about incorporating infantry elements to make his autocannons less useful." And I will. And I'll practice with this new list, get good at using my new toys to their full potential. Then I am going to play that game again, give it my all, and if I don't win, I'm going to look at it objectively, figure out why, and fix it. Repeat the cycle.

tl;dr: Your friend needs to admit he sucks and work to improve, if he doesn't his childish attitude is going to see him incapable of finding willing opponents.

PS: Yes, I did actually face a list of nothing but autocannon heavy weapons teams. A friend mine, a very talented guard player, had lost three games in a row to me and so the next time we played, he plopped down something like 40~ bases of autocannons and said 'Here's my army.' with a big fat cheeky grin, expecting me to decline.

I did not.

We played the game.

I won. Reaver Jetbikes and Beastpacks don't give a gak about autocannons.

Your friend sounds buttmad he didn't stomp your list and is having a good whine about it

Thanks for the replies. I've contacted a group near my campus that loves both competitive and friendly play and they would love to have me. I showed my friend this page, and forced him to read every post.

He caught some light about it and I guess he finally felt guilty after I refused to play him unless he cut the attitude.

I guess he's what some players call "That Guy." Maybe with these new people I can actually pull out some more competitive lists and use more sophisticated tactics.

My friend also finally admitted that putting the biggest, baddest tank in the middle and front of his deployment zone,
which gives me 100% LOS from 3 different ravagers and two of my raiders (13 DL's after counting troops).
Statistically speaking, I have a good chance of removing a few hull points. . . If the Dice gods deem me deserving. lol

Maybe now he'll stop and think before complaining.