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Hey people, im planning to start a necron army, but a bit ago I had a flash of doubt.
the dark eldar really caught my eye.
so tell me, should I go dark eldar or necrons

I play Dark Eldar, and will give a better summery later today, but as a general rule.

Dark Eldar: Great models, Competitive enough for a friendly environment but fall of terribly against Post-Necron Codexes.

Necrons: IMHO The models aren't as nice, but they are competitive and can keep up with the meta.

If you want better models and fluff, DE.

If you want an army that's easier to play and master, Necrons.

I would say pick whichever army you think looks coolest, but I suspect you want an answer with a bit more substance than that.

You couldn't really have picked 2 more different armies in terms of playstyle. If you want an army that's hard as nails to kill with excellent firepower, but generally weak close combat ability, you should pick necrons. Necrons can usually grind their opponent down with their resilience and constant firepower.

Dark Eldar, on the other hand, are generally quite fragile. Their units tend to be easy to kill, but can dish out a lot of damage, and can move very quickly. They have units that excel in ranged combat as well as others that are very potent at close combat. I think it would be fair to say that dark eldar need to use their maneuvrability to strike the enemy from a position where his/her ability to strike back is more limited, which they can achieve through the use of their open topped transports, fast moving units and deep strikers.

It is also worth noting that neither army has any psykers, though the Dark Eldar can take allies in the form of Craftworld Eldar or harlequins.

If what concerns you is winning games, then at the moment necrons would be the safer choice. Who knows how things will stand in a year or two though?!

If it were me, I'd pick dark eldar. I think their models are far and away better, and their playstyle seems to be a more exciting prospect to me.

Here's my take:

Models: IMO the Dark Eldar models are (for the most part) slightly nicer than those of Necrons. But, this is pretty subjective - at the very least necrons are mostly new models now and have a lot of great sculpts.

Conversion Possibilities: Probably about equal. DE can swap heads, gear etc. and there are many alternate models from other companies to pick from. Likewise, you can do a lot with the machine theme of Necrons and I've seen some absolutely amazing conversions, though it's worth noting that they do have far less gear for head/arm/weapon swaps.

Playstyle - DE will tend to be faster than Necrons, though not by much these days. Most DE units can expect to die the moment their transports are destroyed, whilst Necron infantry can wade through enemy fire.

Ranged weapons - I hope you like Poison 4+ and Dark Lances, because DE don't have much else. Necrons may appear to be similar in terms of being saturated with Gauss weapons, but they actually have a lot of variation in strength and AP. They also have quite a lot of other stuff, though a lot of it is unit-specific. However, Necron weapons do tend to be short-ranged - with relatively few things having more than 24" range. DE have some 36" weapons (splinter cannons, dark lances and disintegrators, mainly), but nothing over that.

To be honest, neither of these armies has any 'spectacular' firepower. They won't be throwing out D-weapons or apocalypse blasts, or shredding Wraithknights with Grav. Necrons compensate by being tough, DE compensate by being fast and manoeuvrable. The issue is that speed is far from the advantage it used to be - mainly because it's been handed out to other races, who don't pay any of the costs DE do.

Melee - I'm just going to say it, Necron melee outclasses DE melee by a standard mile. First off, DE have very few viable melee units (really, you're looking at Coven Grotesques and the Talos). Unfortunately, they're also stuck with a whole bunch of melee units that just don't function (wyches, hellions, bloodbrides, incubi etc.), and rather than being glass cannons, their melee units are just glass. They can't take a punch, but nor can they dish one out. Necrons, meanwhile, have Wraiths, Triarch Praetorians, Lychguard, Flayed ones, plus various other stuff (CCB, Spyders in a pinch).

General Competitiveness/Viability - Necrons are a lot stronger than DE, and also have very few bad units (Trazyn, scarab... that's about it, really). Everything else is, at worst, about average. DE, meanwhile, suffer from having a *lot* of sub-par units and options.

TLDR: I can recommend DE for the models, which are amazing. I can't recommend them for the codex, which is weak and (IMO) flavourless and dull, having had virtually every interesting rule and unique piece of wargear stripped out. Necrons, at the very least, have a solid codex that can support a variety of builds.

In terms of making up your mind, I'd suggest the following questions:
- Which aesthetic do you prefer? (As well as looking at the ones on GW's site, it might be worth searching the internet for conversions and alternate paint schemes.)
- Does one army's background appeal to you more?
- Any idea what playstyle you like? Do you want Fast an fragile units (DE), or slow, resilient ones (Necrons)? Though, amusingly, DE can do resilience (albeit not as well) with Coven armies, and Necrons have enough fast units/formations to do fast armies (still low initiative in melee though).
- Have you any interest in allies? DE can easily ally with Eldar and Harlequins (and usually have to if they want to compete), whilst Necrons rarely ally with anyone.
- Anything else that appeals to you? Is there anything specific you look for in an army? Strong HQs? Special Characters? Monsters? Customisation (either with wargear or in terms of actual models)? Something else?