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Hi guys I am building a dark eldar army and after looking through the codex I just can't work out how I would have any chance of winning against a mech army such as IG EG:
Venoms full of blasterborn can be killed by anything
Haywire scourges far too expensive
Ravagers take up a valuable heavy support slot (Razorwing fighters for AA) and still have l
Paper armour
Haywire grenade wyches will get shot to pieces
Talos engines with heat lances sound nice but too slow without expensive webway haemonculus
And raider armour is made from wet tissue paper
So how would dark eldar possibly face off against IG or something similar?
Eld allies perhaps I don't know I give up?
What do the veteran Dark Eldar players think about this matter?

I've never played against IG with my DE so I have very little practical experance against them, but many of the old tricks still work.

A full squad of Reaver bikes doing bladevein attacks will wipe out a small unit a turn, and should put a fairly large dent in large blobs. They can also take heat lances and have the movement to get anywhere on the table.

Ravagers with destructors will wound IGs on 2+ and you get 9 shots per Ravager. But you mentioned flyers - The Void Raven bomber with void lances could remove a lot of tanks (and other flyers) pretty easily as they are S9 lance weapons over the course of the game. They can also take large template missiles to help with blobs.

Instead of blaster borne, look at twin darklance trueborn in minimum squads. Sit them at a distance and begin shooting from the get go instead of having to try to get into range. Important choices in target priority will have to be made.

Wyches with haywire grenades in a Raider can kill anything, Even if you loose half your guys getting there, one or two tanks will still pretty much make up their points.

Another fun thing might be a large unit of Grotesques. They should have the staying power to resist a lot and will have an easy time killing things once they get there.

Raiders with splinter racks with full squads of warriors can still rapid fire things to death. Yeah, the 4+ poison might seem like a waste against IG but your still killing 8-9 or so guys per raider... and you can bring a lot of raiders.

The problem most new DE players have is understanding that everything in your army is disposable. Our vehicles are not supposed to live a full game. They just arn't. You lost an entire unit of wyches to a single shooting phase? Well, good thing you brought another. DE thrive on redundancy.

The disadvantages you point out are not really specific to playing against IG. Like Jayden stated, you're going to lose lots of things regardless of what you bring to the table.

You have to find your strong points and play these out. Easy access to lance weaponry is really good versus the AV 13 IG can field. In a 1750+ game you're going to need at least 2 ravagers. I reserve the third slot for a razorwing that can deal with blobs and can assume the role of anti-air if needed. Razorwings are really key against IG who play blobs to be honest. There is no easier way than to put a pie plate on 30+ infantry.

You're going to have to deal with paper armour with maneuverability. The ravagers have aerial assault which means you can move 12" and fire at 36". Maneuver your ravagers and raider so they can shoot at something but would get some kind of protection, preferably LOS blocking, from threats. Low armour means you're vulnerable to even small arms fire like bolters. Grab nightshields so those pesky bolters and meltas are out of reach. Nightshields offer a very good amount of protection for 10 points. Keeping max range when shooting with vehicles means that you wouldn't get return fire from 36" shooting attacks or the target has to move.

Use the mobility of your force to take the battle to where you want. You can easily take the battle to the other side of the board with the speed you have at your disposal. Moving flat out means you get 30 inches of movement and 4+ jink saves.

Dark Eldar excel at fielding multiple small units and shooting from a far with use of extreme mobility. It's ok to lose a venom or two because you have two more to pump out shots anyways. It is also one of the better alpha striking armies. There are HQ choices like baron and Vect to help you get the alpha strike. Use this to your advantage.

I also highly recommend watching some batreps and reading tactica to see how other people use it.

I use IG as an example because of the ridiculous amount of tanks they can field at av13 cheaply but it applies to any heavily mechanised army with anything above av 12-13

Most things are very fragile with the Dark Eldar, however I have had very good experiences with Venoms and wyches, do not discount them. With Haywire Grenades they are great, and the fabled Venom Spam is pretty good.

Dark Eldar aren't meant to be survivable. They are meant to get in, get the job done and get out. Mostly you will lose first blood but get in close and its game.

Dark Eldar may be made of wet tissue paper but they're phenomenally mobile and can put out silly amounts of firepower. Your goal is to get up in the other guy's face with insane levels of short-ranged shooting and some pretty powerful close combat units; your Fast Attack and Heavy Support selections are notable in that they aren't dependent on their transport to be effective, those slots are best put to good use. Raider-mounted Warriors have the option of hanging back out of the fight and sniping with their Dark Lances, using Night Shields and their speed to stay out of the way; Deep Strike and the Webway Portal can get transports up close fast.

Against Guard your biggest concern is probably the vehicles, once they go down volume of splinter fire and the missiles from your Razorwings will make short work of their infantry. Blasterborn in a Retrofire Venom or Heat Lance Scourges with a Fusion Pistol Solarite are reasonable suicide-anti-tank units but they're also 150-180pts, fragile, and heavily dice-dependent, loading up on Bright Lances might be a better option.

As far as Allies go sticking a posse of Wave Serpents in front of your squishy Raiders to get them close is a strategy, but at that point you're not playing Dark Eldar, you're playing Mechdar.

I played a lot of games as guard against DE. It usually turns into a 1 sided slaughter early in the game, but either side can win. A lot of the time an IG DE game is won or lost during deployment.

Guard vehicles tend to be AV10 on the side. DE can shred AV10, or be very ineffective against AV12 with a 4+ cover behind an aegis.

Depending on the list grotesques and beast packs may be really hard for the IG player to deal with.

A disordered charge is often your friend as it reduces your # of attacks and allows you to dump attacks into vehicles instead of squads. It's better to win by 1 or 2 combat res so that IG has a chance to stick rather than to running them down on your turn instead of the IG player's turn.

Yeah, the biggest problem that you're having, OP, is that you're asking what the strengths are in a big pile of weaknesses. You have to look at the strengths to see the strengths.

As for playing against guard, my footguard has always seriously struggled against dark eldar. For however flimsy raiders and venoms are, it's nothing compared to what happens when BS4 splinterborn in a 2x cannon venom cast their eyes in the direction of infantry platoons. Even with guardsmen in cover, the amount of anti-infantry firepower you can put out will grossly overpower the amount of anti-transport firepower that a guard player can. And that's before you talk about DE's excellent force concentration abilities against foot guards force concentration problems, and DE's mobility against foot guard's total lack thereof.

Against mech guard, yeah, you're going to have a problem. The thing to remember, punishers and hydras excluded, is that while the guardsmen's vehicles will be more durable than yours, you will have more killing power than theirs will. Once you break open his transports, then the guys inside die just as squishy (actually, squishier) than yours, and while chimera are AV12, you can take blasterborn in venoms and triple darklight ravagers, and (and yes, I've seen this), absurd wyche haywire multi-charges.

In this case, DE v. guard is sort of a mirror match, where you get less durability, but you get more firepower. It shouldn't be a straight lose for you if you keep the pressure on. And to keep your pressure on, you have access to some kinds of things that the guard doesn't. Plasma mechvets don't have an answer to DE jetbikes other than prayer.

Anyways, the problem that you seem to be having most is one of morale. You're convincing yourself that DE are bad, and so you're playing them wrong, and as a result, losing, which is only making it a vicious cycle.

This.

For me the purpose of DE is to throw them down your opponent's throat, hitting him hard and fast with maximum firepower just to see that slack-jawed 'WTF!' expression.

By comparison the actual RESULT of the battle hardly matters...

DE have to be played callously and aggressively, or don't play them.

Accept you will lose most of your force, so make sure your opponent loses ALL of his

My first game was against dark eldar. Lance weapons make short work of Leman russ. Bring plenty of dark light.

I have a question regarding how you deal with tau? It isn't riptides, or broadsides that would give me trouble, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that seem like a real headache.

As DE are all abou rushing forward jumping out, we'll you rush forward and get destroyed from the rear by DS suits.

 Gitsmasher wrote:
I have a question regarding how you deal with tau? It isn't riptides, or broadsides that would give me trouble, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that seem like a real headache.

As DE are all abou rushing forward jumping out, we'll you rush forward and get destroyed from the rear by DS suits.

Most of tau's weapons are 36", most of your weapons are 36". With night shields, their range drops to 30" Keep them out of range of your skimmers and drop darklight on their riptides and broadsides, as well as poison. I would recommend dropping lances on the broadsides, while lighting the riptide up with poison. Eventually he'll roll ones. Once the broadsides are taken care of, send your darklight at the riptides.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, Dark eldar aren't all about rushing forward and jumping out. They don't have a generic play style. Against some armies it might be appropriate to jump out. Against others, it's simply out range and out shoot. It really depends on the situation. Against Tau, I wouldn't try to get close. Kit your stuff with the night shields and pew pew!

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:
I have a question regarding how you deal with tau? It isn't riptides, or broadsides that would give me trouble, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that seem like a real headache.

As DE are all abou rushing forward jumping out, we'll you rush forward and get destroyed from the rear by DS suits.

Most of tau's weapons are 36", most of your weapons are 36". With night shields, their range drops to 30" Keep them out of range of your skimmers and drop darklight on their riptides and broadsides, as well as poison. I would recommend dropping lances on the broadsides, while lighting the riptide up with poison. Eventually he'll roll ones. Once the broadsides are taken care of, send your darklight at the riptides.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, Dark eldar aren't all about rushing forward and jumping out. They don't have a generic play style. Against some armies it might be appropriate to jump out. Against others, it's simply out range and out shoot. It really depends on the situation. Against Tau, I wouldn't try to get close. Kit your stuff with the night shields and pew pew!

A
Thanks for the advice, dont mean to be rude but you kinda missed what I was saying. I addressed that broadsides and riptides would be no problem, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that would be trouble some.

 Gitsmasher wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:

 Gitsmasher wrote:
I have a question regarding how you deal with tau? It isn't riptides, or broadsides that would give me trouble, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that seem like a real headache.

As DE are all abou rushing forward jumping out, we'll you rush forward and get destroyed from the rear by DS suits.

Most of tau's weapons are 36", most of your weapons are 36". With night shields, their range drops to 30" Keep them out of range of your skimmers and drop darklight on their riptides and broadsides, as well as poison. I would recommend dropping lances on the broadsides, while lighting the riptide up with poison. Eventually he'll roll ones. Once the broadsides are taken care of, send your darklight at the riptides.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, Dark eldar aren't all about rushing forward and jumping out. They don't have a generic play style. Against some armies it might be appropriate to jump out. Against others, it's simply out range and out shoot. It really depends on the situation. Against Tau, I wouldn't try to get close. Kit your stuff with the night shields and pew pew!

A
Thanks for the advice, dont mean to be rude but you kinda missed what I was saying. I addressed that broadsides and riptides would be no problem, its multiple squads of deep striking crisis suits with dual fusion/burst cannons that would be trouble some.

Apologies, I was still waking up when I replied... Tau players in my meta really haven't run that tactic. I'd be interesting to hear how others would deal with this as well.

To be fair, a tau player can only have up to what, 4 squads of crisis suits? Odds are good that you have more transports than they have squads of crisis suits. With DE mobility, that shouldn't be much of a problem.

Plus, crisis suits all have short-range weapons. If they've DSed close enough to you to shoot at you with plasma and melta (especially if you have night shields), then they're close enough to get counter-charged by wyches or wracks, or whatever. And that's to say nothing about more conventional options like just shooting them.

I envision this as a situation where some of the crisis suits arrive before others, and are likely scattered around with short-range weapons and are bad in close combat. Sounds like more of a gift to a DE player than a curse.

If you go against IG with dark eldar, pray they brought 9 russes. Since every single DE AT weapon has either haywire or lance, Av13-14 always comes at a price, and is wasted points in regards to your AT options.

A parking lot can be difficult, as your darklight needs to munch through a bunch of chimeras before you poison can pick on the soft, squishy insides. The S6 multilaser also threatens your army.

Gunline guard is less of an issue, as the blob may overkill a single paper plane a turn, but your AI fire will shred them. A single razorwing will quickly end a blob squad, cover or not.

Against any army, you are going to take losses, but each punch you deliver will be devastating. Blasterborn, haywitches, and other venoms saturate the board. Field redundancy, and tough targets. Heavy support is made for ravagers, usually 2+flier, or 1+2 fliers. Take nightshields on every non-flier, and flickerfields on your fliers. They are small investments that have major impacts on your survival.

Against IG, one of your advantages is how much overkill their AT guns are, so mass lascannons/autocannons/melta guns will either outright trash your skimmers, or whiff. They also don't have S4 sidearms, which is huge when most of your armor is Av10. Use mobility and concentrate your force as Ailaros said. Some others brought up tau, which are also great matchups for DE. Crisis suits are prime targets for darklight weapons, while mass poison will eat through riptides. Combine that with assault, speed, and night shields a strong DE player can overcome most tau armies.

Also, one of the schticks for guard is spam. Everything is crappy, so you can field a lot of them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like a raider with a 10x warrior squad with blaster and dark lance is basically the same price as a squad of plasma vets. Everything else in the DE codex is pretty cheap as well, right? There's no reason that guard need have an advantage over you with taking lots of crappy units.

Except yours hit harder.

Mech guard is rough, but not as bad as eldar mech so meh~. I've been having moderate success with:
HQ Heamonculous venom blade, liquifier 65
Elite Trueborn x4 4x blaster, venom 2nd splinter cannon 173
Troops Wychsx10 haywire, raider, ns, enhanced aethersails 195
Troops Warriors x10 Raider, nightshield, splinter cannon 170
Troops Wyches x5 haywire grenades, venom, 2nd splinter cannon 125
Troops Wyches x5 haywire grenades, venom, 2nd splinter cannon 125
Troops Warriors x5 blaster, venom, 2nd splinter cannon 125
Troops Warriors x5 blaster, venom, 2nd splinter cannon 125
Heavy Support Razorwing Jetfighter Ff, ns 165
Heavy Support Ravager ns 115
Heavy Support Ravager ns 115

1498

Plenty of mobile firepower, haywire and darklight.

edit: The key is your mobility. Remember to concentrate your forces and hit a vulnerable area, or control the map (objectives) if the opponent's position is unassailable. Don't be afraid to wait for your chance to strike. Play on the edge of your range with firepower until you are ready to close. Remember there is nothing forcing you to close in - the threat of doing so will restrict your opponent's options. I find often games are won by shooting and maneuvering around for a few rounds before closing later game.

My preference tends to be for razorwings due to the large blast high strength missiles, I haven't used ravagers yet so i'm weighing up the benefits of each.

I find De to be nigh-unplayable unless you have a very laid back, casual group.

Having weapons with Poisoned 4+ means that against Tau, Guard, Eldar and nid gants you are causing less wounds than any s4 shoota.

Being limited to 36 inches means you will be in range of every autocannon, loota, lascannon, cover-ignoring tau weapon from turn 1. If you ever fire, they will be within range even with their multilasers and heavy bolters, not to mention troops that got out of moving transports.

In a game that is focused about holding objectives with durable/numerous troops, DE have neither. In Kill points, they fare even worse, as you have no tough face to present to the enemy to keep him from serially popping your Venoms and small squads.

Unless Splinter weapons get a 4+ poison AND s4 in the next book, combined with some Serpent Shield thing that turns vehicle pens into glances, they exist mostly to be Eldar allies to grant cheap stealth to warlock bikes.

I don't know about that they do need a new codex and a bit more of a hand but I don't think they're unplayable at all


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rerollable poisoned shots from raiders can be nasty especially with duke sliscus in that raider

 FURIOSO wrote:
I don't know about that they do need a new codex and a bit more of a hand but I don't think they're unplayable at all


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rerollable poisoned shots from raiders can be nasty especially with duke sliscus in that raider

They are not unplayable. maybe against SPAM and those types of gakky lists, but DE are quite capable of handling a variation of enemies.

Definitely considering adding eldar allies just to fill in some of the anti tank gaps, what av are fire prisms?

As an avid Dark Eldar player, I thought id chime in here:

So! Lets begin. Mechanized IG are one of the toughest match ups for DE... reason being, every single heavy weapon they have will blow up a tank of yours... while they will be able to mitigate most of the damage by having av12...

So a few things to remember:

The game starts before the game starts... in a friendly match, you each place terrain, so MAKE sure you have some good LOS blockers and dont be shy! Take this battle report for an example of what you can do depending on your collection, force your opponent out of their comfort zone:




Then it comes to army list, make sure you have things that can get into the IG's face really fast! And put some pressure on them in their backfield wyches with haywire grenades are great at this. Something to keep in mind is that you WILL loose a lot of models... play to the mission... and rush em.

As for the heavy support, tri-lance ravagers are IMO the way to go... against a mechanized IG, regardless of if they have AIR support you need those lances on the ground from turn 1 so you can shoot his stuff! if you rely on the fliers they might not arrive until its too late and then you are 300pts that are not on the table shooting at his tanks while you try to gain an advantage on him turn 1-2.

So I have a question, do you know what he can field before hand? Do you make lists that you play all the time, is this in a tournament setting and are your choices limited my model selection?

DE are still a viable army especially if you get first turn. We hurt against serpent spam but then every army has a hard counter, we devastate a Wraith list and love facing multiple riptides with DE. We can glance the hell out of anything, have deadly light aircraft vs infantry or vehicles, we care less about any armor the opponent is wearing with the mass amount of AP 2 weapons we have. Mech spam is really the only thing we have a very hard time against. Tyrannids and wraiths, yes please, may I have another?

My basic core force not counting HQ is a Blaster Born squad, a Splinterborn squad and two warrior squads, all in Venoms with an extra Splintercannon and Night shield(mine and most everyone I know ofs basic venom set up). That's 48 we don't care about your toughness shots, that can shoot while moving 12" just from the vehicles. Not much else can put out that firepower, then add in another 12 splinter cannon shots and 6 blasters and hopefully something will go boom or die. Not bad for being just over 500 points.

Also, I'd note that because everything is a fast, open-topped skimmer, you are all but guaranteed to have every single unit (whose transport survived) in close combat turn 2. If you get top of turn 1, that's exactly one turn of shooting before his whole parking lot gets multi-charged by haywire grenades/shot to pieces with mass in-melta-range blasters/heat lances.

The anti-tau take nightshields and blast them from just out of range thing isn't going to work as guardsmen's weapons all have longer reach. Meanwhile, as much as people talk about warriors being bad in close combat, the worst CC unit in your book is still much better than anything that guard are fielding shy of ogryn.

Against tau that are static +deep striking suits, the suits can be a problem because if they come down successfully they will hurt your stuff.

Honestly I fear flamer/fusion blaster suits more than fusion/burst suits but lets go on...

Dark Eldar are fragile, and very killy. That means your most important phase will always be movement. No killing happens then, but the setup for the kill does.

You will either position yourself to inflict maximum damage and try and take as little in return, or you will just move up as far as you can and shoot things. One is usually better than the other..

I like the duke. You may or may not, that is fine. Against tau I like to hold 2 venoms with blaster warriors in reserve, and 1 ravager. If i play against tau that are doing something other than castling in a corner, and have some mobile or deep strike elements I usually try to go first and close the distance to them as fast as possible.

Most tau suits that deepstrike do not have long range, and your opponent will have to place them not to far away. If you are thoughtful of terrain and are close to your enemy on their 2nd turn. If you got the first turn, you will have 2 turns to get as close as possible, your goal is to cripple their models on board and make it so if they deepstrike near you, they have an increased chance to mishap if they scatter due to terrain or landing on their own models or yours. Likely out of your 3 reserved units (2 venoms with warriors, 1 ravager) they didnt all come on. If you got first turn and some have to come on before your opponent rolls for reserves move them up a flank away from your forces, your opponent now must decide to let your main force continue attacking him and use his support on your lone flank units, or to support his main force against yours. As you are Dark Eldar, chances are your flank units can join the fight in 1 turn due to speed+range if they are left alone anyways.

If your opponents reserves arrived before you, you can now drop your deep striking venoms+ravagers off. Either use them to try and clear his deep strikers, or drop them on his backfield to surround their main castled force. Remember to disembark your warriors, because if your venoms blow up they are going to kill some of your warriors anyways so you might as well give your opponent a target selection so some units will go unscathed.

I think that thinking a few turns ahead with dark eldar is very important, remember how we mentioned that the movement phase is the most important? It is in the future turns as well, if you have 3 units in reserves and you know you are deep striking them down, try and engage or remove models with interceptor the turn before, a unit locked in assault is not getting interceptor shots.

I intend on keeping a huge blob of hellions on the board to discourage any massive deepstriking counterattacks or massed charge, eah hellionsare fragile but they will be with the baron and a decent amount of overwatch shots to discourage any massive charges and block any particularly crippling shots at my transports, also considering having a ahemonculus escorted by grotesques with a webway moving up behind in a raider and 2 dirty great talos pain engines with liquifiers and heat lances hitting hard close to their lines. So basically hellion wall and talos heavy hitters while venoms and raiders fire off punishing amounts f poisoned shots.