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My co-worker has committed to Eldar, which is pretty cool - newbie into the hobby. Unfortunately, it means I'm being pulled back in.

This time around, I'm going pure donkey-cave and really leaning towards DE. Yeah, I know -- they're broken, and I will get rolled all the time. I don't care (...I play Sisters ffs, I am used to getting wrecked LOL). They have - IMHO - some of the coolest looking models in the GW line.

With that being said, I am committing approximately 250$ to getting something to play with, and plan on playing with my co-worker and other casual games local.

What dig:
Razorwing (seeeeexy)
Reavers
Venoms


Ravagers/raiders aren't bad, starting to grow on me. I'd love to have a Tantalus, but can't swing it right now with the initial outlay of coin.
Unsure on those pain engine sculpts, I dunno.

I figure I will run a bike/flier heavy set for pure speedfreaking lulz. Might fall apart, but it will look good going it. Thoughts?

I've been watching some games and reading up on them and if your good you can actually do decently with them. I don't consider them the worst anymore, but they are still in the bottom tier.

At the 2017 LVO a DE list made it to 9th and was super close to making the top 8. He did have some Eldar allies in there, but the majority of his army was DE. The DE models are fantastic. Raiders are typically seen to be the superior between the two.

Reavers & Venoms is what you need out of that list if you want to build the traditional DE tournament build.

Also you might want to take a look here -> http://www.thedarkcity.net/t11454-dark-eldar-guides

Without the benefit of Ynnari, the formula for Dark Eldar consists of 'Reavers+Warriors in Venoms=profit.' If you don't want to use allies, this is still a valid strategy. A Grotesquerie formation (grotesques, a haemonculus, and some raiders) can also be a great addition.

If you're only playing casually, then the only real 'never takes' are wyches and hellions. (Mandrakes and Voidravens are on that list for me personally, but some people swear by them.)

And definitely check out The Dark City website! It's a very close knit community, and a great resource!

If you want to take people by surprise a little bit, you can go full Haemonculus Coven. It makes for a decent force with a surprising resilience thanks to everbody having feel no pain, fearless and decent toughness. You will only lack range firepower, but it can be mitigated by the number of venom, raiders and talos pain engins you can put on the board.

Kabalite Warriors are excellent troop choice, they are cheap, offer a decent firepower and have some viable options of special and heavy weapons. If you load up on them in raiders or venom with a good numbers of jetbikes and you will be pretty much as competitive as you can get.

Unfortunately wytches are terrible and mandrake a lot cooler than they are efficient but for the later, it's actualy possible to make them work if you can stick them in cover and are fighting an ennemy with a main armor of 4+ like eldars or guards (make sure to getthose wyvernes quickly though). Incubi are also weak despite being Aspect Warriors on steroids. Their lack of grenades and their high coast makes them a poor choice, but with a Succubus leading them, you can make them worth it should you need a decent close combat unit.

Reavers and kabalites in venoms spam are the most common units, and bikers are surely an autoinclude in every possible DE list while troops in venoms are good but you may need just a couple of them.

Excellent formations for DE are the Corpsethief Claw and the Grotesquerie, so a couple of raiders can be quite handy, I never play DE without taking one of this two formations. Talos and grotesques are nice even without the formations.

Every possible HQ is meh, that's why the lhamean is the most common HQ, but haemonculus and succubus are nice in the grotesquerie formation.

Ravagers, razorwings and scourges are situational, decent units but nothing special.

Cronos is viable only in the dark artisan formation which is overrated and IMHO worths only to boost the corpsethief claw, but we're talking about real extreme lists this way.

Not sure about the new releases, I think the models are awful and I don't like alliances, so not an option for me, but they're probably very powerful characters.

Some other things can have their usage too, but I wouldn't recommend any different units than the ones listed above to someone that is starting this army and wants to be competitive.

IMO, Reavers and Venoms are going to be your bread and butter, I would definitely start there.

Corpsethief Claw is great, I always have fun running it. Grotesquerie looks great, although I haven't played it yet (currently kitbashing some Grots to make this happen).

Pure DE are definitely hard mode against a lot of competitive lists, but can be extremely rewarding.

Lots of good info here, thanks all! I think a bike/skimmer/flier (on reserve) is right up my alley. I also want to peek at these totally-not-end-times (cough) formations with eldar also at some point

So, a quick rundown of the units

good:
Reavers with cluster caltrops and a shooty gun are the best unit in the codex.
Warriors in Venoms (either barebones or with a blaster and haywire sylabrite) are the only troop you'll ever use.
Succubus with Glaive and Armor of Misery and a HWG is the best HQ we have, but unless you're taking a grotesquerie (our best formation) she lacks a way to get into combat, as all the standard melee units we have suck in one way or another.
Grotesques (in the formation) they're durable, shred light vehicles, and eat anything without GMC or 2+. Stick them in a raider and they'll get turn 2 assaults easily.
Scourges are our best source of anti-tank, with either haywire blasters or heat lances being great.

Ok-meh:
Ravagers are our long range anti-tank/MC. but cost too much for their firepower
Beastpacks are ok for MSU, but way too squishy
Incubi would be amazing melee units, but they lack assault grenades, so can't do anything to units in cover
Wracks aren't good by themselves, but can be taken in the Scalpel Squadron formation, which is pretty good.
Talos and Cronos engines are durable, but slow with little firepower. They have uses in the CTC and DA formations, but outside of that they're just too slow

Bad:
Mandrakes lack much firepower, melee ability, or literally anything other than being cheap with good cover saves.
The flyers both lack antitank firepower, which is what we need. They have Anti infantry, but that's covered already by venoms,
Wyches and Bloodbrides are tied for worst unit in the codex with Hellions

Man, it's a shame wyches are crap... they look like cool sculpts to play with.

You need to look up Tabletop Tactics on YouTube. The ringleader of their group (best battle reports on the web, by the way) plays DE and is the aforementioned 9th place finisher at LVO. His list was VAST majority DE. Core of his list was 36 Reavers, so yeah, you'll need some of those.

Anyway, fun army to play, play against, different, great aesthetic and you'll get kudos from everyone for not taking an easy button army.

Go for it.

 ncshooter426 wrote:
My co-worker has committed to Eldar, which is pretty cool - newbie into the hobby. Unfortunately, it means I'm being pulled back in.

This time around, I'm going pure donkey-cave and really leaning towards DE. Yeah, I know -- they're broken, and I will get rolled all the time. I don't care (...I play Sisters ffs, I am used to getting wrecked LOL). They have - IMHO - some of the coolest looking models in the GW line.

With that being said, I am committing approximately 250$ to getting something to play with, and plan on playing with my co-worker and other casual games local.

What dig:
Razorwing (seeeeexy)
Reavers
Venoms


Ravagers/raiders aren't bad, starting to grow on me. I'd love to have a Tantalus, but can't swing it right now with the initial outlay of coin.
Unsure on those pain engine sculpts, I dunno.

I figure I will run a bike/flier heavy set for pure speedfreaking lulz. Might fall apart, but it will look good going it. Thoughts?

Far as i've seen without having gone covens yet is they do ok-ish. Reavers are good in 6's or supposedly 3's (cluster caltrops being needed). Not sure how razorwing is. Venoms are good for their points. Ravagers actually suck for their points. They always under-perform regardless of build. Void raven is decent but i'd probably have no more than one or two (sometimes they do nothing and sometimes they're amazing). Keep most stuff outside of reserves (according to what i've seen). Trueborn with blasters get a good rep. Normally put melee troops in your raiders though i'm curious if blasterborn would do ok in them as well.

What i've figured so far is melee troops are our best answer to enemies with cover. Incubi, grotesques and reavers help the most whether due to armor, toughness or jink saves. It's best to move on one side on the start of turn one so your enemy has to come at you with only 25% of their army vs 100% of yours. If you do take ravagers or raiders put em in area terrain or forests or flat out an empty raider in front of them. I've also found raiders good as a barricade to enemy melee units. So yeah one of our best weapons is movement and fighting our enemy 25% of their army at a time with 100% of ours. Make sure only that much of their army can fight you at a time but vs guard and tau this is hard if not impossible.

------

Our hardest match-ups seem to be tau (seriously you will dread facing tau as they are built to beat us esp. with smart missile systems) and maybe imperial guard though i haven't faced eldar yet. I actually don't mind fighting necrons as even wraith decurion seems like something i can handle. Mechanicus is also hard in the same way (not skitarii but the other mechanicus sub-group) but it can be handled with poison (except that arch magos guy who can only be taken out by talos or just avoiding him). I still think dark eldar have an answer to most armies except tau, maybe guard and anybody that takes a super-heavy.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


I still think dark eldar have an answer to most armies except tau

It depends on the list actually, someone above mentioned the guy that leads Tabletop Tactics channel and he released some time ago a battle report in which he defeated a tau list with a stormsurge and five riptides, a very strong one, with his dark eldar. But yes, tau are probably our nemesis, that's why I love the corpsethief claw formation.