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Wonder how DE cope with the late blood angel codex? I had a game with my mates with a combo eldar/dark eldar army, but i was pretty much minced. Death company < Incubi :S

Poor bugs, the genes didnt get to do anything!

Love these very much, good insight

How about killing a Trygon prime? This beast can get pretty nasty, lots of shots and lots of wounds.

Great report!

wuestenfux wrote:How about killing a Trygon prime? This beast can get pretty nasty, lots of shots and lots of wounds.

force him test like 50+ saves?

The DE Poison weaponry seems absolutely brutal against Tyranids. You really dismantled him and his list was a fairly competitive mix as well. Thanks for the interesting report.

Spellbound wrote:Ummmm....feel no pain? Tervigons? Did he not think to bring these things?

3 Hive guard? Not nine, or six? WITH feel no pain?

It doesn't seem like that was a very competitive nid list.

I can agree about the Hive Guard; they're very effective, but should be target number one for a DE player.

As far as any of the TMC's, they're pretty much a turn 1 or 2 death against DE right now. Between lots of S8 AP2 shots and piles of poison, Tervigons are actually a liability against DE.

Saldiven wrote:

Spellbound wrote:Ummmm....feel no pain? Tervigons? Did he not think to bring these things?

3 Hive guard? Not nine, or six? WITH feel no pain?

It doesn't seem like that was a very competitive nid list.

I can agree about the Hive Guard; they're very effective, but should be target number one for a DE player.

As far as any of the TMC's, they're pretty much a turn 1 or 2 death against DE right now. Between lots of S8 AP2 shots and piles of poison, Tervigons are actually a liability against DE.

which is why you take 6 or 9 of them. Also, if he has 4+ mc's on table they're either not killing all of the mcs turn 1-2 or they're not killing all the hive guard. He didnt have 4 MC's though and it was a 2500 pt game

@Buffo-Ive liked all of your battle reps except for the tyranid one. Honestly i feel like the nid player may not be grasping his army or 5th ed tactics entirely. If you look at your DE list, you KNOW its alpha strike, from the number of AT weapons and long range shots to the 2 characters which give you a huge edge to going first. The common tactic would not be deploy but rather to reserve everything, making the DE play the range game and denying you the satisfaction of killing large parts of his army before they even have the chance to do anything. Genestealers should outflank, trygons should DS, and he should put everything else on the table defensively in order to deny you sustained fire power. That and reserving against an overpoweringly shooty army effectively cuts the number of viable turns of shooting in half for you, meaning you have far less time to devastate him off the table. You miss turn 1 and 2 by going first, and hopefully for him it ends turn 5 meaning youd only have 3 turns to net the kill points, and in that time hopefully his units like the trygon and stealers would pick off units too close to the table edges or with shooting in the trygons case.

I know you disclaimer that you dont know why your opponents do what they do because you may not know their codex, and also that hindsight is 20/20 and people make mistakes in-game. But there were some fundamental flaws in his strategy and it showed first turn. Hopefully he's learned from the experience.

Other than that like I said all the rest of your reports have been very informative. keep it up sir!

Superscope wrote:Wonder how DE cope with the late blood angel codex? I had a game with my mates with a combo eldar/dark eldar army, but i was pretty much minced. Death company < Incubi :S

There are a few BA players in my store. I will try to get in a game with them for ya

wuestenfux wrote:How about killing a Trygon prime? This beast can get pretty nasty, lots of shots and lots of wounds.

In the report, I killed a Trygon Prime quite easily. Which was no different than the old DE codex versus the old Nid codex with their Nidzilla. In my local meta, people stopped fielding Nidzilla lists because of my Dark Eldar. It was an auto loss for them. What I didn't kill with Dark lances I tied up in combat eternally with Wyches.

thanatos67 wrote:@Buffo-Ive liked all of your battle reps except for the tyranid one. Honestly i feel like the nid player may not be grasping his army or 5th ed tactics entirely.

He, like all my opponents, have the option to look at my list. I allow them that. After I deploy my entire army, I tell them unit by unit what everything does.

I can only go so far as to help people.

If you look at your DE list, you KNOW its alpha strike, from the number of AT weapons and long range shots to the 2 characters which give you a huge edge to going first. The common tactic would not be deploy but rather to reserve everything, making the DE play the range game and denying you the satisfaction of killing large parts of his army before they even have the chance to do anything.

You do NOT want to reserve everything against Dark Eldar. People (of roughly even skill) have tried this against me in the past, and it is a certain death sentence. The only army that can do this successfully is Eldar with their invincible tanks, and even then, it is iffy.

Genestealers should outflank

Yeah, in the battle, I denied him an entire outflank with a warrior squad. Best he could have done was come in form his table edge normally, killed the warrior squad, and that is it. I deny flanks when I can. He has played me before where, by the end of turn 2, I had the entire board edge blocked, rednering his outflanking units essentially worthless.

trygons should DS,

Which he did, and it still died.

I know you disclaimer that you dont know why your opponents do what they do because you may not know their codex

The disclaimer is there to tell readers I don't know what is going through my opponents head during the game unless they tell me. So I cannot account for their actions if their actions seem odd.

The trygon is going to die, you pretty much buy the thing with the notion that it'll be getting itself killed in order to provide distraction. Best hope for it is to take down a raider (preferably vect, and to block los from your slogging warriors in order to make them move around or give cover.

I dont see reserving against DE a certain death. I've played against dark eldar a fair number of games (good dark eldar too, like 20 lance raider spam in ardboyz finals 08') and almost never is it worse to reserve an army that you know will get shot to pieces in two turns than allow your army to get alpha striked by 20+ lance weapons. Hide in a corner and make you move toward him, and hopefully kill some stuff along the way in order to get some KP's. He cant fight that list toe to toe, so he needs to be much, much more conservative. And by that I mean dont put all your stuff out in the open for it to get maimed turn 1. By doing that he forfeited the game.

In order for you to line a short bord edge by turn 2 you either need to roll 6's twice to run or have 2 squads doing it, one in a raider. Was either of these the case? and if your doing that your not shooting, so its a win for him as well. I mean its possible, just hard and counter productive as you could just move to the middle of the board.

These reports do a great job highlighting the strengths of the new DE codex. Hopefully those of us on the craftworlds will still be able to keep pace with them.

nope convert now or perish

buffo what are your thoughts on the duke? him+trueborn in a raider could be filthy good

BuFFo wrote:

Reecius wrote:If I recall correctly didn't the wolf player not know what a lot of your stuff did and it was his first time playing DE? I seem to remember that his list wasn't too hot, either.

He is experienced enough to have simply asked, or look at my list. He didn't care to do either. At my store, everyone has a very, um, lazy approach to the game. We just play for fun, and we barely, if ever, look at lists or ask about armies.

So he shot himself in the foot. What do you want me to do about it? lol... I am not about to tell him "Hey, um, you might want to take the first turn" or "Don't move your HQ squad out so far bud"... He is used to playing second, it is his style...

I'm not saying you couldn't beat him again, just that is seemed their were a lot of mitigating factors.

There are ALWAYS mitigating factors.... Being that we were both happy with our lists, I don't see a problem here. Unless you are implying "He could have power gamed/WAAC'd more", well, so could have I. See what I mean? Neither of us knew what lists the other person was bringing to the table, so what we had was just 1) either for fun or 2) just our take-all-comers list.

Wait to you see what a WAAC DE army can do in my next battle Report I had to have one of these, and I got it out of my system, for now...

DE are a tough game for MEQ's but I have not seen anything that really scares my Wolves, although since I have not played the new book, that may not mean much! haha.

Is there someone in your area you can schedule a game or two with and mess with the "new" Dark Eldar?

All good points. And don't take me wrong, I am no way trying to undercut your victories, a win is a win. I was just tossing in my two cents. I would love to get a game in against the new DE but I moved recently and have not been able to get a game in at all, but I hope to change that soon.

That last report vs. bugs goes a long way to confirming my fears about that match up. Poison weapons are bugs' nightmare. That plus lots of high strength, low ap and good HtH means that bugs will not like DE at all, at least not the current tournament lists as they are gong to be prime targets for DE weaponry.

And again, thanks for the cool and informative reports.

thanatos67 wrote:nope convert now or perish

buffo what are your thoughts on the duke? him+trueborn in a raider could be filthy good

I will try the Duke in a future list. He seems best in a Wych based army with Trueborn support. He gives the Wyches a chance for better drugs, plus, he makes the Trueborn's Splinter Cannons wound on 3's.

I have not used him yet, so I have no opinion on him at the moment, sorry!

Reecius wrote:All good points. And don't take me wrong, I am no way trying to undercut your victories, a win is a win. I was just tossing in my two cents. I would love to get a game in against the new DE but I moved recently and have not been able to get a game in at all, but I hope to change that soon.

That last report vs. bugs goes a long way to confirming my fears about that match up. Poison weapons are bugs' nightmare. That plus lots of high strength, low ap and good HtH means that bugs will not like DE at all, at least not the current tournament lists as they are gong to be prime targets for DE weaponry.

And again, thanks for the cool and informative reports.

I must apologize. I am new to Dakka, and you know what, so far I have only come across respectful posters. I am not used to this, as I used to post on Warsewer and 40KrapOnline, and those places are cesspools of abusive moderation and flamers left and right. Besides Dakka, the only other place I 'breath' my 40k air is on Bell of Lost Souls. I am VERY picky about my 40k websites, as I try to surround myself with like minded people if I can help it.

I may have taken your responses to heart in such a way I should not have, and if I have disrespected you in anyway, I am very sorry!

If you think my Tyranid opponent didn't do so well, wait to you see our follow up game where he faced my 2500 point Hamonculi Coven... If you are a Nid player, you will cringe...

No worries man, it is so easy to misconstrue what someone says on the internet anyway.

Daemons are really going to get the shaft. They pay a premium for their invul saves and poison weapons are going to wreck them through volume of wounds.

I expected the massacre of the nids from your DE. While your list is pretty 'Ard Boyz worthy, his was not. He could use some help online to make a more competitive list. A finely-tuned Nids list is tough cookie to crack and will give your DE a run for their money, even with their poisoned guns. Also, don't take tervigons too lightly. They are one of the cornerstones of a competitive nid army, not because of what they can do individually, but because of how they can buff up the army on the whole. They are the key to Tyranid synergy.

I just have to ask..... in your nid BR your list said it had the Baron but I didnt see him on the tabletop or in the report?.......

Red Corsair wrote:I just have to ask..... in your nid BR your list said it had the Baron but I didnt see him on the tabletop or in the report?.......

He ran off the board on Turn 3 (along with some warriors) after getting assaulted by tyranids and failing morale.

Yeah, he got scared and done ran off the board

Not to derail the thread, but I have to disagree with your take on Tervigons. Put Hive Guard in front of them to give them a cover save and give them Feel No Pain and they are actually extremely durable. Termagants are also quite deadly if you have the Tervigon in range to give them furious charge, poison attack and counter attack. If you have a Tyrant nearby to give them preferred enemy as well, a 50 point termagant squad will put 11.25 wounds on a T4 or less squad on the charge. They even get bolt pistols! Buffed up termagants can handle most Wrack and Warrior units, but Wyches give them real problems. Best solution is to bait the Wyches with a sacrificial gant squad and then either shoot them to death or take them out with a Tyrant squad. Wyches don't like going last in a combat and not being able to take their feel no pain save.

I've played a game aganst a fairly tooled DE list with Tyranids (2 X hive tyrant w/ 2 X tyrant guard and 2 X devourers, 3 X troop tervigons and termagants, 9 X hive guard, 3 X raveners) and it was not fun. Luckily the DE player chose to engage me in CC on turn 3, and I was able to scrape a win. If he had just ran away while shooting, I would have lost horribly. Night shields are brutal against hive guard and devourer tyrants, the ravagers, raiders and venoms can stay out of range almost all game if they want to.

I think that Tyrannofexes are almost a must take if you don't want to auto lose to DE; I'm going to find room for 2 of them with rupture cannons in my list, and I'm going to give my Tyrants Heavy Venom Cannons. You gotta be able to stop the DE from running away from you all game, and you need long range weapons to do that. Nids versus DE is a tough fight, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion.

You can disagree with me on whatever you like. If Tervigons work for you, then great, but I already explained that I have no problems killing tervigon spam lists, and the Tyranid players in my local meta have stopped taking them because for them, Tervigons are worthless.

Everyone uses the same units differently, and that is what makes this game great! A unit one person cannot fathom using, another player may use expertly.

More power to you brother!

Well, what we are asking is "Why do you find tervigons to be average?" and you're replying with

"I have no problems killing tervigon spam lists, and the Tyranid players in my local meta have stopped taking them because for them, Tervigons are worthless."

Which is the eqivilent of blowing smoke up our bottoms.
So, I ask you again, in response to

ChrisCP wrote:

BuFFo wrote:
Tervigon is a unit that was hyped when the book came out, but overall is just mediocre. At best, it poops out crappy units to hold objectives.

Really, really?
What on earth do you base that on given it's a ~195point scoring, FNP giving, relentless giving, furious charge giving, 4+wounding giving , Monstorous creatur - that only makes unit when you want it to?
What you got huh? That makes them "just mediocre."

I agree too that Tervies are more than just mediocre. That being said, let's not derail the thread! Very much enjoying the OP's batreps too, I think the key thing here is he's playing 45 games with whatever shows up at the LGS, its not really meant to be a scientific inquiry, rather more a sharing of personal experiences.

rabidaskal wrote:I agree too that Tervies are more than just mediocre. That being said, let's not derail the thread! Very much enjoying the OP's batreps too, I think the key thing here is he's playing 45 games with whatever shows up at the LGS, its not really meant to be a scientific inquiry, rather more a sharing of personal experiences.

I am playing games with people who are able to make lists to counter mine if they wish. most don't, which is great because in my local meta, everyone just plays the game for fun.

Rarely do I just find a random list and play it.

I'll defend Buffo's position on the tervigon not being worth it. If you have to fight 20+ antitank weapons per game with a model that will almost never get cover and cant actually shoot back at the antitank without getting fairly close, you dont have much of a chance of surviving. And gaunts are free kp's and pain tokens for his DE shooting. I think thats why Buffo felt that reserving was a bad idea when i posted that comment, due to nid's limited ranged capabilities vs. his own.

Buffo you should post a running record of W-L-D in your sig with respect to these 45 games so we know how well dark eldar in general are fairing for you. Just a friendly suggestion. They seem to be doing great but once you get up to like 30 games it'll be interesting to see how many times you've lost vs won, then go back and look at which games were successes and which were abject failure.

thanatos67 wrote:I'll defend Buffo's position on the tervigon not being worth it.

I thank you for taking my 'side', but it is just my opinion based on the games in my local area. I am sure there are Tyranid players out there, many in this very thread probably, that use Tervigons to great success in their local meta.

Whether or not a unit is useful is always up for debate, and for every player, there is a different way of using a certain unit.

If you have to fight 20+ antitank weapons per game with a model that will almost never get cover and cant actually shoot back at the antitank without getting fairly close, you dont have much of a chance of surviving. And gaunts are free kp's and pain tokens for his DE shooting. I think thats why Buffo felt that reserving was a bad idea when i posted that comment, due to nid's limited ranged capabilities vs. his own.

From my experience, over the years of playing DE, DE is an army where you need to alpha strike turn one hard. I have played countless games where I have went second, and in those games putting anything in Reserves was a death sentence, as half my force dies in the first two turns, and everything else just dies as it comes in the game unsupported.

Dark Eldar is not an army you want to Reserve things with for the most part. I am sure people out there play opponents of lesser skill, so Reserving works for them, but when you have two roughly even skilled players, they know how to deal with DE Reserves.

Now, I am sure there are a few DE builds where going second is just fine, and that is what I am trying to find for myself through these games. I saw another poster here having success with Reserving his Voidraven Bombers every game. This is something I most definitely need to look into.

Buffo you should post a running record of W-L-D in your sig with respect to these 45 games so we know how well dark eldar in general are fairing for you. Just a friendly suggestion. They seem to be doing great but once you get up to like 30 games it'll be interesting to see how many times you've lost vs won, then go back and look at which games were successes and which were abject failure.

I will put it in my sig right now for you. Good suggestion, and thank you.

I just wanted to note that in your Wytch Cult vs. Space Wolves report you said

I have not mentioned this, but the Space Wolf player was also pissed that he could never get his bonus for Counter Charge, nor regular Charging, because of the Wyches now "new" Defensive Grenades.

He should be upset. Defensive Grenades don't work on Counter-attack, as per the Space Wolves FAQ, page 4. Likewise Counter-attack doesn't trigger Furious Charge. Defensive Grenades only work when your unit gets Assaulted, not Counter-attacked when they themselves launched the assault.

- Marty Lund

mlund wrote:I just wanted to note that in your Wytch Cult vs. Space Wolves report you said

I have not mentioned this, but the Space Wolf player was also pissed that he could never get his bonus for Counter Charge, nor regular Charging, because of the Wyches now "new" Defensive Grenades.

He should be upset. Defensive Grenades don't work on Counter-attack, as per the Space Wolves FAQ, page 4. Likewise Counter-attack doesn't trigger Furious Charge. Defensive Grenades only work when your unit gets Assaulted, not Counter-attacked when they themselves launched the assault.

- Marty Lund

That point is addressed already in the thread. His gaming group doesn't use the FAQs: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/324509.page#2078433

Iamjack42 wrote:That point is addressed already in the thread. His gaming group doesn't use the FAQs: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/324509.page#2078433

Ah, my apologies. I must've gotten confused with the INAT comment and whatnot and forgotten about the comment between when I last visited the threat and when someone pointed out the FAQ to me. Since I play in a different sort of environment I'll just dismiss that particular aspect of the battle report as being irrelevant to my perspective, then. I did really enjoy the bits about proper use of Shardnets, though.

- Marty Lund

When's your next game? I want MOAR!!!!!!!!