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Play the game. Tell us how it went.

 Lobukia wrote:
Play the game. Tell us how it went.

Aye. Dark Eldar are certainly nasty, but they do suffer the moment something hits them. My last couple battles vs them have been either hard-fought draws or total slaughters (exploding Raiders/Venoms often take 50% or more of the passengers down with them). The thing that really hurt me wasn't actually the splinter weapons but the damnable beast packs.

Mike94656 wrote:The points would buy you three 5 man bike squads...
I lied, upon double checking, a 5 man unit with two specials is 135 points per unit. So, 405 points total.

Right, so for roughly those points, you could get two units of 10x warriors in raiders and naked trueborn in a venom.

Assuming that the bikes have moved forwards to attack, that's 52.5 splinter hits, which is enough to kill 9 bikers, especially after you throw the dark lances in for a little extra. Assuming that the DE player has to move because you haven't gotten the bikes in range to do anything yet, that does go down to 7, but it's before the bikes have even had a chance to do any damage yet, and they're already at half strength.

Splinter weapons aren't the biggest weakness of bikes, of course, but we're talking about them struggling against nothing but small arms on cheap troops choices. It's far from a walk in the park against the DE player here.


Also, I'd note that while it is a bit unfair to consider an entire DE army against just some bikes, consider how the bikes are actually going to be used. If they're the only things gunning it forward while the rest of your army sits and gunlines, then in most cases the bikes WILL be on the receiving end of most of a DE player's firepower. At best, then, the bikes buy you nothing but a single turn of reprieve from some amount of DE shooting. Unless, of course, you keep them back, but then you've spent all those points for bikes... why?

Allaros likes to talk down bike armies like they're inefficient, second tier builds. Clearly he's never faced a top-tier player running WS/DA or DA/IH.

There's a reason DE armies don't even place anywhere near top tiers of tournaments, while SM bikes do; The reason is they're made of paper.

Sure you'll cause a few casualties with mass splinter shooting, maybe kill a bike squad or two. Next turn, the TFCs are raining down, while the CM/Command Squad makes mincemeat of your transports/troops, and you never muster the volume of fire necessary to do real damage again.

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Allaros likes to talk down bike armies like they're inefficient, second tier builds. Clearly he's never faced a top-tier player running WS/DA or DA/IH.

There's a reason DE armies don't even place anywhere near top tiers of tournaments, while SM bikes do; The reason is they're made of paper.

Sure you'll cause a few casualties with mass splinter shooting, maybe kill a bike squad or two. Next turn, the TFCs are raining down, while the CM/Command Squad makes mincemeat of your transports/troops, and you never muster the volume of fire necessary to do real damage again.

Bike armies are good. Very good even, no one is disputing that. They are just not good at all against Dark Eldar. The last time I faced a SM bike army, half his bikes were already dead before they even got into range.
A few bikes in a SM list can work out very well against DE, but if the majority of your list consists of bikes you are screwed. SM bikes are not fast enough, their range is too short and their volume of fire is too low against DE.
Against DE, you want landspeeders with flamers and missile launchers, thunderfire cannons and stalker tanks. A stormtalon can be very effective as well, and drop pods can be very nasty, especially if filled with sternguard with flamers.

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Allaros likes to talk down bike armies like they're inefficient, second tier builds. Clearly he's never faced a top-tier player running WS/DA or DA/IH.

There's a reason DE armies don't even place anywhere near top tiers of tournaments, while SM bikes do; The reason is they're made of paper.

Sure you'll cause a few casualties with mass splinter shooting, maybe kill a bike squad or two. Next turn, the TFCs are raining down, while the CM/Command Squad makes mincemeat of your transports/troops, and you never muster the volume of fire necessary to do real damage again.

I think the reason Dark Eldar do not place high normally is because you play many games in a tournament. Dark Eldar are a "glass cannon" army, they either get shatted and don't do much, or completely annhilate the other player. Given the law of averages you end up trashing all over one player one game, then getting trashed later, so its very difficult the more games you play to keep the same results with such armies.

The law of averages tends to favor armies that are more middle road, in that they can survive well and do decent damage. The bounds of randomness are much lower so over a spread of games you do not have extremes like getting tabled yourself as often.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Allaros likes to talk down bike armies like they're inefficient, second tier builds. Clearly he's never faced a top-tier player running WS/DA or DA/IH.

There's a reason DE armies don't even place anywhere near top tiers of tournaments, while SM bikes do; The reason is they're made of paper.

Sure you'll cause a few casualties with mass splinter shooting, maybe kill a bike squad or two. Next turn, the TFCs are raining down, while the CM/Command Squad makes mincemeat of your transports/troops, and you never muster the volume of fire necessary to do real damage again.

Bike armies are good. Very good even, no one is disputing that. They are just not good at all against Dark Eldar. The last time I faced a SM bike army, half his bikes were already dead before they even got into range.
A few bikes in a SM list can work out very well against DE, but if the majority of your list consists of bikes you are screwed. SM bikes are not fast enough, their range is too short and their volume of fire is too low against DE.
Against DE, you want landspeeders with flamers and missile launchers, thunderfire cannons and stalker tanks. A stormtalon can be very effective as well, and drop pods can be very nasty, especially if filled with sternguard with flamers.

Venom spam without Eldar bros is really not very scary.
Bikes don't really do all that poorly against mech DE. 3x Storm Talons is a nightmare to deal with, popping 2-3 skimmers a turn while being proof to all but lucky dark light shots.
Splinter weapons are not as great as many are making them out to be. A venom will inflict 4 wounds on average to a toughness based unit. Just over one marine dead. Whoopee. Efficient for the cost, perhaps, but not army destroying, especially considering the fragility of the platforms.

I think the reason Dark Eldar do not place high normally is because you play many games in a tournament. Dark Eldar are a "glass cannon" army, they either get shatted and don't do much, or completely annhilate the other player. Given the law of averages you end up trashing all over one player one game, then getting trashed later, so its very difficult the more games you play to keep the same results with such armies.

The law of averages tends to favor armies that are more middle road, in that they can survive well and do decent damage. The bounds of randomness are much lower so over a spread of games you do not have extremes like getting tabled yourself as often.

You don't see DE in tourneys much because of the wave serpent. It hard counters the entire DE army list. Wave Serpent spam vs DE is as close to an Auto-Win as it gets.
Necrons, guard and properly-tooled marine armies will wreck them and Eldar roflstomp them. Transport-based armies flat-out ignore most of the firepower, as do low-toughness hordes.

Take the hq that allows deepstriking raiders and venoms. Drop in, rapid fire and laugh.

 Rotary wrote:
Take the hq that allows deepstriking raiders and venoms. Drop in, rapid fire and laugh.

You mean, drop in with 2/3s of your army, mishap or scatter away from being relevant with half, lose 3 vehicles to interceptor fire and 2 squads to explosions, then fire with the remainder before losing everything that dropped to wave serpents/skyrays/broadsides/stormtalons/etc...