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Hey folks!

After reading through 15 pages of the Dark Eldar Tactica, it seems that Dark Eldar players have a consensus on the importance of haywire grenades as anti-tank these days...which I haven't figured out, and am not sure I agree with. I'm looking for insights.

In 5th Edition, my tournament list Darklight Storm was basically as many blasters and dark lances as I could cram into a FOC, with a cheap wych unit added in the mix solely so I would have an answer to:

-Monoliths with Living Armor, AV14 that ignores Lances and Melta
-Land Raiders with Blessed Hull
-Multi-assault to IG Chimera lines

With the understanding that Dark Eldar are an alpha-strike army, and I've been told that Turn 1 assaults are no longer allowed (sorry wyches).....

-Monoliths with living armor are gone.
-Blessed Hull is gone.
-I don't know if IG Chimera parking lots are still around, but....

All vehicles can be "hulled" by glancing them to death, which DE already had a penchant for doing.

I've been looking around at peoples' lists, and while I have no practical grasp on tabletops of 7th Edition yet, I've been mentally comparing my 5th Edition Darklight Storm to the various meta lists out there, and am not seeing where those wyches with their haywire grenades are adding anything these days.

Help me out - what am I missing?

Either evade and snapshoot all your fancy brightlight or get wrecked and don't shoot brightlight at all. Besides, count how many brightlight shots you need to kill a serpent...15-20? Or just 1 charge with a 5-strong witchsquad with haywire nades.

Witches are just so cheap and ride in venoms that allready pack decent anti-infantry dakka. So you just make a choice between ultimate anti-tank in face of witches and a bit more anti-infantry fire in face of warriors.

The problem is you need a lot of lances to deal just a few hull points of damage. Lets look at the Ravenger as an example

3 Lances shots at BS4 so only 2 of them hit then against av12+ its a 4+ to glance or better so thats 1 HP for the 3 lances. Thats not good for the 100pt investment. Thats not including cover either which with Jink being a 4+ means you need 6 lances to cause a single HP on a jinking skimmer. Even at the all too common 5+ cover its like 9 lances to deal 2 HPs.

Basically the 18-20 lances you get in an army only equates to about enough HP damage to reliable kill one vehicle per turn. That is terrible.

Worked out this depressing number earlier.

To kill a Wave Serpent you need 3 Hull Points, he has a 3+ jink and down grades pens to glances, so 9 glances need to get through. Glancing on 4+ means 18 hits, meaning 1/3 miss, meaning 27 (!) Dark Light shots need to be fired to wreck a single Wave Serpent.

Alternatively 5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades get use 5 Grenades, get 3 hits and have a 50% chance to wrec the Wave Serpent right there.

Of course, if you throw enough shots to cause a WS to jink that may of been your objective and you could move onto something else, or you'd shoot at ones that fired their shield for a chance to explode them, but still...

Haywire, quite simply, is too good to pass up, and not only are Wyches and cheapest way to get lots of it, they also give access to a Venom to make up for the Lack of Anti-Infantry. Make of this what you will.

It's all very well to say that wyches with haywire grenades are better against a Wave Serpent, but how do they get there?

I mean, it's not like DE have any particularly survivable transports. Plus, in addition to having plenty of firepower, the Wave Serpent also has it's cover-ignoring shield - so you can't even rely on jink to save the wyches.

Is there something I'm missing?

No, you pretty much nailed it. Which is exactly why wyches are so good. Ignore them at your peril, if you fail to kill them and the turboboosting transports they will wreak you.

Cheap unit, probably the single best high AV (12+) destroyers in the game (except maybe the forgeworld Reaper in squads).

What you may be missing is these guys are not talking about 1 unit of wyches they are talking about 5-6 units. It takes at least a single serpent at full BS to wreck each venom (without upgrades) so if you can stay out of range of the scatter laser and thus not allow TL the serpent shield, gave them a 5+ invulnerable, brought a void shield generator or skyshield landing pad, or vect+coteaz to ensure first turn then you can often have 3-5 wyche units in venoms to turbo boost into the opponent's face. At which point even if they pop the venom they will struggle to kill the wyches. The wyches also provide no fly zones as serpents cannot afford to get within 12" of a live wyche squad.

IMO the more important reason for wyches is imperial knights. The imperial knights are even worse with 36 lances on average to strip the HP of even the basic knight and 54 lances for a 3++. The knights are even pretty easy to catch.

Lets not forget that wyches are also a great tarpit unit for holding up the enemy. High WS, good invul, possibly shard nets and feel no pain. Wyches can hold powerful units until your beasts/incubi get there to destroy it.

Moreover wyches are one of two troop choices and warriors just are not that good any more. They are a few points over cost and they don't dish out enough firepower. 10 warriors is going to cost you 90 points for 10 24" poison shots. A venom is going to cost you 65 points can will give you 12 36" poison shots. So a venom is 5.41pts/shot where warriors are 9pts/shot. And who rides best in venoms? Wyches.

I prefer lances over the grenades, because as i understand it (which is wrong i bet -.- ) the rules say when a unit is shooting, ONE model can choose to throw a grenade, not sure if that means each model in the squad can throw a grenade each, or one grenade per squad.
If it is one per model then I can totally see 2-5 glance and 6 pen for 2 points at a 10 woman squad!

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
I prefer lances over the grenades, because as i understand it (which is wrong i bet -.- ) the rules say when a unit is shooting, ONE model can choose to throw a grenade, not sure if that means each model in the squad can throw a grenade each, or one grenade per squad.
If it is one per model then I can totally see 2-5 glance and 6 pen for 2 points at a 10 woman squad!

You don't shoot the grenades you assault with them because in assault everyone gets to use their haywire grenade.

You can toss one on the way in as well.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
I prefer lances over the grenades, because as i understand it (which is wrong i bet -.- ) the rules say when a unit is shooting, ONE model can choose to throw a grenade, not sure if that means each model in the squad can throw a grenade each, or one grenade per squad.
If it is one per model then I can totally see 2-5 glance and 6 pen for 2 points at a 10 woman squad!

You don't shoot the grenades you assault with them because in assault everyone gets to use their haywire grenade.

Well, feel free to throw a grenade before the assault, but the assault is the killer.

Ooooh alright. I can see how that would be deadly. 10 wytches attack and even if only 7 get glancing, thats like every tank I know dead (i dont play apoc so 7 HP is pretty damn huge)

In the distant future, cyberpunk alien gladiators only hate tanks!

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
Ooooh alright. I can see how that would be deadly. 10 wytches attack and even if only 7 get glancing, thats like every tank I know dead (i dont play apoc so 7 HP is pretty damn huge)

Sadly you don't get the extra attack with grenades. So five Wyches: five haywire attacks. But it should be just about enough.

if it was 5 wyches charging they would have gotten 15 attacks on the charge (1 base, +1 from charge, +1 from pistol and CC weapon).

Darklight is nice but haywire has better potential point for point

Barry, unless 7th Edition has new rules for haywire/melta grenades, they are only 1 attack, even on the charge; they don't count as close combat attacks (1 base, 1 from CC, 1 from charge).

Looking at the math folks are using....

10 wyches charging...

1. Don't you still need 4+ to hit a vehicle that has moved 1-6"? to hit 7" +?
2. Since the discussion is seemingly centered around wave serpents, which I'd expect to always be moving 12", aren't we pretty much talking 6s to hit?

It's 3+ to hit unless it's immobile, where you hit automatically. Not sure if that's just from suffering an immobilised result or if it just hasn't moved like in 6th.

My first thought is Knight Titans. Against the Titans, Haywire Grenades would rock. Wyches as a counter-assault unit to Knights could be quite effective. Knights want to go stomp things in assault and Wyches would make short work on Knights in close combat with all the Haywire.

Yeah, the only time you don't hit a vehicle on a 3+ in melee is if the vehicle is immobilized (in which case you hit it automatically), or if it's a walker, in which case you go against its weapon-skill.

 Dashofpepper wrote:


1. Don't you still need 4+ to hit a vehicle that has moved 1-6"? to hit 7" +?
2. Since the discussion is seemingly centered around wave serpents, which I'd expect to always be moving 12", aren't we pretty much talking 6s to hit?

That hasn't been the case since 5ed. Now they are effectively WS1 in all cases unless immobolized and then you autohit.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Dashofpepper wrote:


1. Don't you still need 4+ to hit a vehicle that has moved 1-6"? to hit 7" +?
2. Since the discussion is seemingly centered around wave serpents, which I'd expect to always be moving 12", aren't we pretty much talking 6s to hit?

That hasn't been the case since 5ed. Now they are effectively WS1 in all cases unless immobolized and then you autohit.

Ah. Lightbulb! Vehicles all get hit on a 3+ now. =D That's new to me. The haywire grenades make more sense now.

The issue is there is a difference in vehicle survivability now compared to 5th.

When DE came out blasters/darklight were much more potent for their cost.

Now not so much.

The chance to destroy a vehicle outright was much higher in 5th than in 7th due to the vehicle charts, coupled with many of the "top armies" having a lot of skimmer (tau/eldar) jink saves, as well as vehicles not being quite as effective mobile platforms, even a fast vehicle moving can only fire 2 weapons at full BS the third DL on a ravager would be fired as a snap shot for example.

all these things combined make shooting less effective against vehicles than in past editions. :(

This is why wyches tend to fare better, but of course have the issue of having to make it into assault. Jink doesn't work in assault, and even though they have only 1 attack each when you hit on a 3+ (or automatically if immobile) the unit has a good chance to score some hits. Often the difference between a pen and a glance isn't much, so glancing works just fine from haywire.

blaktoof wrote:


The chance to destroy a vehicle outright was much higher in 5th than in 7th due to the vehicle charts, coupled with many of the "top armies" having a lot of skimmer (tau/eldar) jink saves, as well as vehicles not being quite as effective mobile platforms, even a fast vehicle moving can only fire 2 weapons at full BS the third DL on a ravager would be fired as a snap shot for example.
.

What? Ravagers have Aerial Assault, and may fire all weapons normally at cruising speed....something else changed I have missed?

 Dashofpepper wrote:

blaktoof wrote:


The chance to destroy a vehicle outright was much higher in 5th than in 7th due to the vehicle charts, coupled with many of the "top armies" having a lot of skimmer (tau/eldar) jink saves, as well as vehicles not being quite as effective mobile platforms, even a fast vehicle moving can only fire 2 weapons at full BS the third DL on a ravager would be fired as a snap shot for example.
.

What? Ravagers have Aerial Assault, and may fire all weapons normally at cruising speed....something else changed I have missed?

No, Ravagers can still shoot all three weapons normally unless they jink. Had someone tell me Venoms had to snap fire one of their cannons. It's just new edition confusion

To be fair, I've had success still with both haywire wych and lance heavy lists. If you go the lance route, you don't kill as many outright though, so you have to learn to be content to force a target to snap fire (through jink or pen table) and then move on to the next one. I did find the lance lists better for fighting armies like grey knights and tau because there were lots of instant death shots and ignored 2+ saves.

To be honest, i feel DE have the best weapons for overall competitive play these days.

While lances arent anything amazing (not as they once were) they are still great at times against weaker armour (trukks, other DE and light walkers)

However, haywire really is nasty no matter how you look at it.

Granted you need the transport to get there, but even 10 wyches in a raider are more potent than the same points worth of lances.

Add in the poisoned weapons and DE really are a great shooting army.

Lances are more reserved for TEQ though as haywire takes the tank hunting role.




Im an eldar player and ill admit, i even make use of haywire from my hawks to take out armour as i find it quicker than trying to get dragons close enough.
Yes they are a bit more fragile, but points wise i can take 2 units of them for the price of 1 unit of dragons.




Its seems these days that CC has only got better against armour.

 Jackal wrote:
To be honest, i feel DE have the best weapons for overall competitive play these days.

 Jackal wrote:

While lances arent anything amazing (not as they once were) they are still great at times against weaker armour (trukks, other DE and light walkers)

Lances were never good, and now they're just worse than ever.

Yes, against the above they're ok... but what about all the other vehicles?

 Jackal wrote:

However, haywire really is nasty no matter how you look at it.

Granted you need the transport to get there, but even 10 wyches in a raider are more potent than the same points worth of lances.

Getting the transport there can be a big problem though. Often the armies I'd want wyches for are also among the best at shooting down our transports.

Still, if you can get there, they're virtually guaranteed to destroy their target.

 Jackal wrote:

Add in the poisoned weapons and DE really are a great shooting army.

Honestly, I've rarely found poison to be a great help. It's occasionally useful - like when you happen to be against a biker army or a horde of MCs, but otherwise I find it lacklustre. The inability to hurt even AV10 is annoying - as is our weapons being worse than bolters against IG, Tau Firewarriors etc.

More importantly though, it seems like we're denied access to other weapons because we have poison 'instead'. I don't know about you, but I'd happily give up poison if I could instead have access to plasmaguns, meltaguns, flamers etc. (or evil equivalents thereof).


As a question, has anyone here used (or had used against them) one of the vehicle upgrades that damages a unit attempting to assault it? I was just wondering if anyone had tried this as a counter to wyches, or if it's just not worth the effort.