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Hi.

Soon I'm gonna attend a group tournament. Three players a team. On my team I've got an ork player, dark eldar and me eldar. Ork guy is gonna be our "defender". He's gonna take all the bad match-ups.
When it comes to the eldar cousins I'd like to pair as as best as it is possible. I (eldar) vs other dark eldar etc.
The thing is that our dark eldar friend has started collecting his army quite recently. Before the tournament we will practice with him a little bit. Still he himself doesn't know his good/bad match-ups yet since he lacks experience.

This is where you Dakka can help me. He will bring a typical old school 1500 list. 5 venoms, 3 ravagers, a bunch of warriors (one trueborn squad), 2 khymera packs, archon. Can't ally with eldar since I'm already playing them. What are the match-ups that he should do well and which are the opposite?

Obviously he should dodge eldar like fire. What about the rest of the more popular armies out there?

Be careful always pitting your eldar vs dark eldar, if you see lots of reavers dodge it Asap cause you will lose.

That style of list likes bugs, marines, orks ect... Basicalling is a middle of the pack dark eldar army that can take in same power level.

Anything that is flyer heavy, such as CronAir, is a bad matchup for Dark Eldar as they lack AA units, aside their own Flyers (which cut into the HS and FA options).

This also includes FMC's, so Flying Circus (Daemons), as well as Triple Flyrant + Skyblight (Nids) are gonna cause your DE player trouble, even though DE have mass poison, they still need sixes to hit (although I find 10x Warriors in a Raider w/ Night Shields and Splinter Racks, with an option Splinter Cannon, work to some degree).

It's funny, because I disagree with Frozone insomuch as I think we do fine versus FMCs. Especially if you're going Venomspam as indicated. Your friend should be able to maneuver in an annoying way and to toss up lots of shooting that can harm the FMCs - literally almost everything in the army is capable of hurting an FMC at range, we're good vs. MCs in general, and that doesn't stop if they strap a jetpack to their backside.

I do agree with him that flyer heavy lists are a problem though. The dark lance is sometimes insultingly called the dark glance - and though that's not an issue per se' we do rely on weight of fire to bring down mech, and when the mech can only be hit on a 6+ that makes things a little hard.

The core threat to DE, in a nutshell, however, is massed mid range firepower. An enemy army with a handful of Str 10 melta shots doesn't phase us. But an army with a lot of Str 6-7 Ap- shooting is a nightmare. So, basically, Wavespam and certain tau builds bring troubles. Also, for my money, well played Guard remain our toughest possible matchup as they are basically everything we hate in one package.

We tend to be better versus lists that rely on high toughness or high AV values to win - as basically our entire army ignores those. Also, anything that is slow that we can outshoot also tends to have issues with the DE, because we are highly mobile so can pick and choose our fights, and if you can't outshoot us...well, bad day for you.

I would caution that I often see newer players making poor design decisions with their army - so I would tend to advocate going over his collection and talking through some choices. There are a lot of pratfalls out there for a new DE player.