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I play ultramarines tactics primarily. Games are typically at 1850 to 2000.

I typically run something like

Tigurius
Chapter master
Bike, artificer, th, shield eternal

3x
10 tac
Special weapon
Rhino

Sternguard
Combi melta/flamer mix
Drop pod

Dev centurions
Grav/ML

Mix and match the rest, but that's the core. How does this stand up to dark Eldar?
What can I change up, or take/delete to give those crackheads a good run.

Dark Eldar list is typically something like heavy venom spam.

If it were me?

I'd stay in the Rhinos until after the units get out of the Venoms (by choice or by force ). I'd try and keep the Centurions hidden from the Venoms (maybe even in Reserve?) until they get a chance to jump in and hammer the vehicles.

If your Sternguard are fully loaded, I would combat squad them, and use one squad to melta a transport, and the other to flamer the crap out of the guys inside.

I would also combat squad the guys in the Rhinos. If you can get close enough to the Venoms, you can tag team the transports if you have to. Don't forget those krak grenades! It should be easy to shoot it down, so your marines can shoot the guys inside without the benefit of cover.

Dark eldar hate flame weapons, and laugh at grav/melta guns. DE armor is Av10-11 tops, so even bolters will wreck a venom. As jimsolo said, throw those krak grenades! Since your digging out against a 5++ on most DE armor, force mass saves and just wreck it.

I second keeping in the metal boxes, where poison can't hurt you. Take out any sources of darklight weapons, and stay boxed as long as possible. A venom will deal 4 wounds a turn on any squad, so that means 1-2 marines dead, and .67 wounds on a 2+ save. A good DE player stacks their shots and takes out units one at a time, so either feed them units, or make all units hard to get.

Av13-14 is a waste, since all DE AT is either lance, haywire or melta(sometimes more than one!). Mass armor is easily wasted by darklight, but the corralary is that darklight is wasted on low AV.

It's going to be tough, dark lances and blasters are going to rip your armor to shreds and venoms go en masse to clean up troops with massive wounds. Be wary of that.

Honestly, if its a good DE list with a good player, you're list falls solidly under the "prey of choice" category for DE.

If they are running night shields you're pretty much in for a gauntlet of splinter and lance fire for 2 turns before you even get into range.

When you drop your sternguard in, combat squad and try to destroy 2 of the venoms carrying his trueborn. This will give you the best chance of reducing the firepower coming your way. I would start everyone in their rhinos and walk the centurians behind the rhinos.

Its a real uphill battle, and one where a LOT has to go your way to win.

That looks like easy prey to my DE to be honest. 5-6 Venoms, ravagers, reavers, trueborn (with blasters and cannon), wracks, maybe a voidraven. You have 3 Rhinos, I can pop them turn 1 or 2, before you can take out the things that can kill them. Sternguard will land, kill a unit, then die. I'd prioritise killing your scoring and shoot the centurions as a target of opportunity, but mostly stay out of their range whilst killing other stuff. Will be an uphill struggle for you.

Things I really hate to see?

Flamer Landspeeders, Typhoon Landspeeders, Thunderfire Cannons, Stalker Tanks

Things that can be a pain?

Outflanking bikes, Stormtalon

Everything else is pretty easy meat. If I wanted a specifically anti DE marine lists I'd try something like this at 1850:

Captain, Bike

Full Bike Squad, 2 Flamers, Heavy bolter attack bike(x3)

10 Sternguard, 2 Heavy Flamer, 4x Combi Melta, Drop pod

3 Land Speeder Typhoon

Stormtalon, Skyhammers x2

Stalker Tank x2

Thunderfire Cannon

Honestly, bring a couple of storm ravens and that will go a looong way in helping you deal with DE. I hate armor 12 flyers.....ESPECIALLY ones with PotMS

Never found stormravens too bad, they are reasonably easy to outmanoeuvre and/or shoot down with crimson hunters/voidravens

Drager wrote:
Never found stormravens too bad, they are reasonably easy to outmanoeuvre and/or shoot down with crimson hunters/voidravens

I was thinking the exact same thing!

Yeah, my list typically include two storm talons with missles.

I just acquired a thunderfire cannon.

I was thinking something like assault cannon razorback spam would be entertaining to match up against them.

Sadly I only have one land speeder. But bikers, plenty ofthose.

Assault cannon razorspam is not so hot, as typically you will be effectively 18" range due to nightshields, thus be in a slower vehicle outranged by 2x.

Main problem is the stuff and loadouts that are good against DE are a bit pants against everyone else and vice versa.

What's the most ideal things to take against dark eldar? I've never played a single game against them and have almost no knowledge of their abilities and whatnot.

I find 48" weapons work well.

DE are one of the trickiest things to plan against. You really have to rethink the SM strategy book.
36" Guns like HB are good vs their infantry, but don't bring 24" or 36" AT, because night shields are evil. So for AT you're basically looking at ML and LC, or drops. Once you get those sneaky buggers out of their transports, they die very nicely, so having things like HB or flamers, especially heavy flamers, and even just plain old bolter fire will be fine once you get them out. Trick is getting them out.

DE basically have two kinds of guns, poison and lance. poison makes SM, especially bikes very sad indeed, and the lance weapons make bringing 2+ units pretty much a waste, you cannot hide, they will find you, they have skimmers and jetbikes.
Armour 11-12-13 saturation I think could work versus a regular DE venom spam list. Theres gonna be vemons with double splinter cannons, and true born inside, most likely also with splinter cannons, they'll have razorwing, Ravager, and possibly bikes for AT, unless they go for wyches but that's less common from what i've seen. The reason i say low AV saturation could work (and feel free to disagree) is that if you bring things like Predator Annihilators (48"), TFC (60") and guys in rhinos with ML/LC, or Razorback with LC, you have a shot at crippling the DE Anti-tank in relatively short order, with weapons their night shields cannot negate.

The thing I've mostly seen from my buddy who plays DE, as well as the DE forums and bat reps, is that their venoms and infantry are great at killing other infantry, and their heavies are great at killing heavies, there is relatively little overlap in jobs, so if you can kill all/most of their dedicated AT, they won't have enough high strength/lance firepower to get you out of you Metal Bawkses to use all that evil poison power.

The combat squad sternguard option was one i have never tried, and would be interested to see how well it does.

Yeah, I'm thinking lascannon devastator squads behind an adl, predator annihilators, tfc, and maybe lascannon/ml centurions with tigurius, but probably not the latter.

Conventional wisdom tells me that a lot of armor saturation between rhinos and razorbacks will be good. Make it difficult to get a handle on knocking them all down. I can run 5 marines in a TL LC razorback 6 times. That feels effective.

Running a squad of stern guard with combi melta drop podding in seems good too, especially if combat squadding to maximize firepower on multiple targets.

Storm talons and ravens seem good too. Bring a lot of firepower against cardboard box transports and they will fold. I'm thinking a second TFC perhaps for cleanup duty once the transports are popped open.

When playing against DE you are taking a walk through the looking glass.

Weapons that are usualy good vs vehicles are over kill, and your units that usualy are quite though are suddenly vunerable Poisen and lance makes shure of this.

Weapons that are usualy mediover are suddenly very good, and mediocer units dies just as fast as good units. If you have a mixed army of units both of these balances out. If you are running a bike only or landraider only list you AV14 and T5 suddenly means nothing.

Also, while dark eldar fold when you look at them ugly they do have reach and speed. Make shure you have one of those things as well or they will dictate everything until you can ground their mobilaty.

I figure a combination of drop pods, long range weapons like LC/ML and speed through outflanking bikes, a few fliers, and some land speeders should be able to contain a lot of the speed.

I mean, I run the math in my head, and lets say ... 12 lance shots. At BS4.

That's 9 hits.
AV 11 needs 3s to glance, 4s to pen.
That's 6 that are either glance/pen.
With no AP bonus, it's a 16.7% explosion rate
So, 6 hull points lost on average there. 2 rhinos gone.
Factor in a 5+ cover, it's only 4 glance/pens. 1 1/3 rhinos.

I'm not sure of the quantity of firepower DE has, but it looks survivable.

Lances are ap2 and thus have +1 on pen chart. Also a competent general will ignore a stunned/weap destroyed vehicle and shoot a new one. The list I took to my last tourney had 20 darklight weapons at 1500.

The defence line is almost useless as well - quad guns die very easily to poison and the ++ save is meaningless for the same reason

Lets not forget the Beastpack you will find in most competetive lists. Usually something like 3 Beastmasters, 4-5 Khymarae, and 4 razorwing flocks. That unit makes a mess of vehicles and infantry alike and ignoring it is not an option. Its what breaks most shooting stand offs in the DE player's favor.

I saw somewhere that there was a recommendation to DE players to try to have roughly 1 Dark Lance per hundred points in their lists, so at 1500 you might expect 15 shots, BS 4 is hitting 2/3 of the time so 10 hits, and then on AV 11, thats 6.67 HP, but 5 pens, which, with +1 to vehicle damage means you're looking at one thing exploded, one thing immobilized, one thing weapon destroyed, and a couple stun/shaken
Mind you its not as bad as all that, the chances of the first lance shot that hits a rhino blowing it up are not huge, more likely it'll take a glance/shake/stun, then explode, or then get immobilized, etc, but I would say its fair to say you should expect at 1500 to have at least 2-3 AV11 vehicles knocked out first turn if you go second.
If you go first you have be able to knock out a ravager (kill these jerks) or two and/ or some raiders, reducing the amount of firepower coming back at you in the bottom of turn one, but don't kid yourself, your stuff's gonna get blown the heck up.