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After purchasing some necrons and realizing that I'm not a fan Ive decided to get my second army option the Dark eldar as my army. But its been a number of years since Ive played a game and people ive asked say Dark eldar can be a difficult army to collect and that you will fail often? I was wondering what advice people have for a starting dark eldar player, basically starting back from square 1 in collecting warhammer terms.

Well, i am far from a DE expert, but they are supposed to be a "finesse" army and more difficult to play with. They lack the survivability of other armies and if not used well, they die easily.
Overall, i belive they are very potent in the right hands.

Before 6th ed. they were a force to be recond with. After 6th, it is all I can do to make it thru a game without being tabled. It is a beautiful army and I enjoy painting them but my play style was ruined from the new rules. There are alot of other players that know how to use the other parts of the army to win and draw but it requires me to change what I want to use. I'm a fluff/theme player and not really interested in playing my army any other way. They're a few good players on this site and some others, The Dark City, that I have consulted with in the past and they know there stuff. Hopefully one of them will see your post here and respond.

Yeah the codex was written as average when it was released, and time hasn't been too gentle to it.

If you want to play, and win, you have quite limited options.

At 2k, you're locked into at least 4 squads of warriors + 2 wracks or possibly wyches all in venoms or raiders.
Elites consist of 2-3 squads of 3-4 blaster trueborn in a venom or raider. The only other possible option is 1 squad of 5-7 Incubi.
Heavy you have the option of ravagers or razorwing fighters, don't take pain engines as they're not very good.
Fast attack Reavers are actually a great choice. Run 3 or 6 with 1/2 heatlances or blasters. Scourges can be made to work with haywire blasters, or splinter cannons.
HQ is a good spot as we actually have a decent # of things that can work. Duke, Baron, a haemonculus, Archon, or even Malys can work.

I don't personally advise starting such a limited army if you want to have fun, but if you do play within these restrictions, you'll still have pretty strong success.

Dark Eldar do a lot of damage, but can't take a punch. I prefer to run Warrior squads in Raiders as Troops since they can either hang back and snipe with Dark Lances or rush and riddle the enemy with splinter fire; I take Scourges because I love the models more than any gameplay advantage. Tinsil's suggestions are worthwhile if you're going to try to play in tournaments; casually pretty much everything in the Dark Eldar Codex is useful in some situation, don't feel tied to Blasterborn/Reavers/Warriors if you want to use other units.

Dark Eldar die a lot. Run away and shoot where possible.

Take some raiders with shock prows and a million venoms with haywire wyches. Maybe ravagers too. Everything has night shields.

Fly around like an idiot and measure everything all the time.

If someone moves on an objective, destroy them with splinter cannons.

If someone brings riflemen, ram them with raiders.

Yeah only look at my first suggestions if you want to win and your area is very competitive even outside of tournaments, or if you want to play in tournaments.

Otherwise, pretty much everything in the codex is usable and you can have success with it with the right list. The ONLY exception to this is mandrakes. Buy them if you love the model, but they're terrible.

The best solution is to not get hit. Also dont bother with flickerfields now, you get a jink anyway

They are very fast and fragile, you need lots of raiders, filled with as much firepower/combat as you can. Get up close kill then run away. rinse and repeat.

Jink is nice but then they can only snap fire their next turn, to me still worth the 10 pts for invul. But that's just me.

Isnt that just for fliers?

Your new bible my friend:

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/6th_Edition_Tactics/Dark_Eldar

 spears wrote:
Isnt that just for fliers?

Nope for skimmers, flyers and bikes/jetbikes.
OMG you are correct. I thought you were talking about jink. Yes flyers are the only ones that suffer after they jink.