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So last week i faced one of the worst armies i've faced yet. It was an imperial fists list with a biker unit with 2 heroes excluding the main leader affectionately named captain smash face. Anyway they were sitting on a 2+ FnP and had 3+ armor. The leaders of this unit were even stronger. Supposedly this was a tournament winning formation.

Now i have to say poison is ok-ish sometimes like against some admech, necrons, bikes and some ogryn equivalent units (grotesques, ogryns, some nid units, crisis suits and similar). However against unit in cover, FnP, reanimation protocols or 2+ armor with various other saves it falls flat on its face esp. vs gargantuan.

I have an odd solution that might somewhat work. You see archon though they only have an ap 3 weapon and it's only strength 3 and it only boosts if they get a character kill/wound or manage to get furious charge from the pain table on turn 4 it does instant death at all times. It's not on a 6 it might do it but all the time always. Now i understand the str 3 holds it back but with 4 of them in a unit with shadowfields (durable and annoying on just one model but more so on more) it could allow them to tank a lot of high strength low ap attacks if they are in fairly small number. There's a good chance i could throw em at a stormsurge and tie it up for a while and they won't die unless the stormsurge gets pretty lucky (provided they make it to the stormsurge in face it in melee in one piece which is a bit of a stretch). Considering their attacks have instant death there's a good chance for every wound that goes through they also do the d3 wounds vs one.

I mean i don't think this is the best thing ever but i think if i check out the various death stars i could work some viability to this idea.

I'm also unsure if i should give these guys an escort of grotesques or not. It's a massive points sink but against some super tough units i can't seem to find much way other than mass talos to win.

I'm not kidding though when i say this loadout with 4 archons kitted out with huskblades and shadow fields comes out to exactly 500 points and that's not considering taking the troop choice tax i have to take.

So do you guys think this is worth a shot to play test at the very least? Dark eldar being fairly low tier at this point i feel like i'll try anything that might have a shot at doing damage to the enemy. The main issue being vs some armies like guard this will be a big waste in points unless i just kill infantry en masse but that's not too hard.

It's awful - you should try it.

Its absurdly expensive for 4 guys who will only sometimes be able to scratch guys in deathstars.
Your best bet is just blow away all of his supporting units and win the objective

This might sound weird but i tried out this tactic today and surprisingly it somewhat worked. I killed a stormsurge with it after most of the rest of my army was getting annihilated. I also managed to help take down a riptide (though it mostly killed itself which was surprisingly unlucky). In the combat during the first turn vs the stormsurge i did 6 unsaved wounds to the stormsurge as 2 got through and both d3 wounds rolled 3 wounds each. That said i failed at least half my leadership checks and failed at least 2 on my archon units (one for a fear check and another for turn 2 combat resolution). His stormsurge stomped on my guys in turn 2 and normally it'd do nothing with the pitiful str 6 ap 4 but i managed to roll 2 ones on 2 of the 4 archons so they bit it instantly and then fled. Later he charged the remaining archon warlord after shooting an absurd amount of firepower at the 2 remaining archons (only killing one archon with shooting). The remaining archon managed to kill the stormsurge in combat but only just.

So yeah it was super hard but i did far better with this loadout than i have ever done before against tau and the 2+ inv. saves mean the squad is super survivable even surviving stomps and shrugging off low numbers of high strength weapons. Tau seems to have a lot of numerous str 5 but not a lot of numerous str 6 and above which was good for me.

I was pleasantly surprised the 2 hardcore players there were shocked at what i did to the stormsurge and killing it really made me happy. Anyway i still lost but it was a moral victory. Also most of my luck was pretty poor that game so maybe next time it'll change. I'm very much going to keep fearless on my warlord next time if i get it and have to go against gargantuans. Still can't believe i failed so many ld 9 and 10 morale checks though (i'm counting at least 3 out of maybe 6 taken on those guys).

I've never played the archon as HQ with DE, always the cheap lhamaean or a succubus with grotesques. I had great results with DE only playing MSU plus the grotesquerie or the corpsethief claw. The archon seems a huge tax for what he does, four are certainly too much. Maybe they can kill something like the stormurge (with very lucky rolls) but they're extremely vulnerable even to troops' firepower and melee. Especially against tau the MSU approach is rewarding.