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Hey everyone, I play da's (insert random boo's from crowd here). I'm trying to make gaming friends in my local community and that's been going well. Unfortunately so far all I've run across have been tau and d. Eldar. For now play will be limited to low points games (south of 999). Can someone offer me pointers on how to utilize my assets to be effective.

I'd like to stick to ravenwing and Greenwing forces As a feel deathwing are pretty useless at this point.

Dark Eldar are absolutely ace at lower levels, and Tau are strong at every level.

What sort of things are you coming up against? Share some of the units you are playing against.

Deathwing are pretty useless, good call on that one !

Having played either yet, these are more of general tips good for any situation.

Dont know much about dark eldar as theyre uber rare and generally not even played right so they die faster than my orks, but as for Tau - KILL MARKERLIGHTS - not even joking lol. Be surprised how quickly our army gets weak when you neuter our ML support. My friends started getting wise to this and would even ignore firing at my crisis suits that just deepstriked if they got a good shot at a ML unit, so i had to start buying random marker lights for my FW and misc suit squads so they cant pick them off so easy lol. It still hurts when they nail my main unit(s) but it doesnt totally shut me down anymore.

Especially if theyre Pathfinders. Drones are a little harder to deal with barring a bad JSJ movement, but pathfinders are so easy to clear off the board its sickening. Clear them first, then any tanks if you can hurt AV13 reliably. Some say go for the broadsides, i say leave that for last unless you know you can put some hurt because a smart player will have a lot of ablative wounds making it hard for you to clear them up in 1 turn.

Pick up vehicles. Then kill the anti-armor first. Dark Eldar can't handle armor-heavy lists very well. Bike armies are much easier for them. If you're using bikes, use your greater mobility to try and deny their cover saves. Against the Tau, try getting into assault. Even a single combat squad of marines can kill a Riptide in assault. And as has been mentioned--kill the Marker Lights!

Hope that helps.

I like ravenwing and black knights for fighting vs tau, and anything is good VS Deldar, with enough S4 you can glance anything to death, and with 90% of their army having 5+ or worse save lots of TL bolters are good.

Another tip is if your going second consider placing key units in reserve vs Deldar, as he needs to be within 24" to shoot with most of his guns, and you move 12" and can rapid fire him up.

As for tau other then ML (which has been stated) CC will be hard for you so focus on small units you can delete, and spread out against blast templates.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Pick up vehicles. Then kill the anti-armor first. Dark Eldar can't handle armor-heavy lists very well. Bike armies are much easier for them. If you're using bikes, use your greater mobility to try and deny their cover saves.

Hope that helps.

At low points DE can get sick, with their sleek 36" range skimmers that can move fully and still shoot. You need long range firepower and lots of it.

Think ML devistators with a HB Razorback(I know, crazy). You need 48" on things that cant move and shoot and 36" range on things that can. Otherwise they will just kite you around until you are dead. Dont think your bolters are ever going to get into range. Bikes might seem like they would work, but they die far to fast to long range splinter fire. Do DA get whirlwinds?

So basically, mass cheap armor and LONG range weapons.

You won;t see it mentioned much, but I would recommend a Whirlwind in low points games against both units. An area competitive RW player uses 2 to handled troop blobs to keep pressure off his bikes.

Whirlwind's S5 Ap4 large blast works well against DE as well, and for cheap is a good option in an TAC list.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Dark Eldar can't handle armor-heavy lists very well.

We can't what in the where now?

Especially at lower point games I *welcome* your attempt to field more armor than I can destroy easily. We have lances, blasters, haywire wyches, et al. We're quite proficient at killing mech.

 Arbiter wrote:
Another tip is if your going second consider placing key units in reserve vs Deldar, as he needs to be within 24" to shoot with most of his guns, and you move 12" and can rapid fire him up.

That would work well, except that most of our primary anti-infantry weaponry is actually 36" range via splinter cannons. The same for the lances.

 Exergy wrote:
You need long range firepower and lots of it.

Think ML devistators with a HB Razorback(I know, crazy). You need 48" on things that cant move and shoot and 36" range on things that can. Otherwise they will just kite you around until you are dead. Dont think your bolters are ever going to get into range. Bikes might seem like they would work, but they die far to fast to long range splinter fire. Do DA get whirlwinds?

So basically, mass cheap armor and LONG range weapons.

This is the closest thing in the thread to a player who seems to understand what it takes to handle DE.

DE can shoot, we can shoot quite a bit, and we're also fast, we're really about the fastest army in the game still, and if not *the* fastest we're number 2.

The strength of the DE army comes in the ability to quickly advance into a mid-range gunline, and then to manuver to keep the opponent at the mid-range gunline range. We also ignore toughness and Armor values better than 12. So lots of things that are "tough" versus other armies are "meh" versus us. We kill Riptides with about the same ease as we kill a squad of Tactical Marines. Just think about that one. It makes us very annoying to work against because the best anti-DE lists...look kind of silly versus most other armies.

Oh, yeah, we also have one of the better death stars in the game that is basically a squad of 12" moving, terrain ignoring, 2+ cover save having, Look Out Sir-ing, generating 40+ attacks roflstomp fest. We also have giant FNP T5 monsters with poison swords lead by guys with AP1 flamers, that's always fun. Also, in assault we have naked ladies with grenades that glance on 2+ versus any vehicle, and pens on a 6+. And did I mention we're fast? Yeah, those assault units are likely to get in.

Do you have lascannons? We laugh at those. Big blast templates? Big whoop - better focus fire on the beast pack and pray it works out for you, because our vehicles are unimpressed.

So what can you do to kill us? Well, we kill well, and we *love* it when people pay for high power single shot attacks, because we generally have a save versus anything...the catch is our save rarely gets too high, and at the end of the day we're only armored in spiked thongs and paper plate skimmers. There will be a lot of us, but we will die easy, and the goal of any general who wants half a chance is to hopefully kill enough of us asap before we stomp your face in.

Did you bring a landraider? I laugh.
3 Razorbacks? I'll cry.
Lascannon Razorbacks? Ah-ha-ha!
H. Bolter Razorbacks? Son'uv'a!

Multiple firing platforms that can generate a lot of mid level strength shots are our bane. Low number of high strength shots are to our benefit.
We also don't like it if you're particularly mobile and/or have long range options.

I would avoid Drop Pods unless you think the DE player is a scrub.
Bikes are good. Razors are good. Devs are good. Ect. ect. Your goal is to shoot apart our transports asap. If there is a beast-star out there try to hit it with blasts to snipe out the Baron first. Then the rest crumbles much easier. Flamers are very optimal versus us as an assault deterrent, as not much in our codex likes eating flamers. You likely can't out spam a half decent player at low point levels, but you can potentially be durable enough that as long as you kill anough of his transports quick enough he should be managable.

Also, if you start doing too well versus him send him here and I'll whip his DE into shape too - I can't be seen favoring you mon'keigh too much.

My bad mate! Serves me right for looking it up on google the lazy way instead of in the codex!

But staying in reserves may still work due to bikes being able to shoot 12+24=36" as well.

Yeah, I don't disagree with the basic core concept of hiding in reserve and coming in to inflict damage partway through - the only danger there is how much damage the DE inflict while you're off board. Sometimes that strategy works great...and sometimes I have my opponent almost tabled by the time the reserves wander in.

I would say in a low point game that I suspect it's a poor risk v. reward payoff. It would work better in 1250+ though. At least that's my quick feel..

I love facing bikes when I play my Dark Eldar. Poison weapons are just as effective against the higher toughness, and you are paying a lot of points for them.

I also love seeing guys on the ground. I've got lance weapons to take out vehicles, but it's more limited and harder to focus.

What do I hate? Flyers. Most DE builds rely on a crapton of transports that are skimming the ground, with a couple units trying to distract you and get in your face as soon as possible, giving the transports time to get in position for end game while whittling you down. I don't see many flyers and typically have to ignore them because I don't have anti-air.

My biggest piece of advice is to focuus on troop transports. Once we are on the ground, DE are extremely vulnerable.

Seeing many rhinos or razorbacks heading toward objectives with Dev squads, whirlwhinds and typhoon land speeders salvoing from the backfield would definitely give me pause.