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Hey Dakka, recently bought a Dark Eldar Battleforce and wanted to try it out against my friend. Also I don't know tau very well, apologies in advance.

DE:
HQ: Succubus w/ Agonizer and Fusion Pistol
10 Kabalite Warriors w/ 1 Dark Lance and a Raider transport with Night shields and Splinter Racks
9 Wyches w/ HWG
3 Reavers w/ Cluster Caltrops and Heat Lance

Tau:
Shaz something battlesuit( the 75 point one) with melta thing and pulse rifle
10 Kroot
10 Tau Fire warriors, 2 with carbines
3 Stealth suits and 1 Devilfish

We played on a 4' by 4' board with a hill in the middle and two hills in opposite corners, I set up with my raider on the left, reavers on the right and wyches in the middle, sotra behind the middle hill. He set up with kroot on my left, stealth team and battlesuit behind them, and they infiltrated so they were pretty close to my raider. Devilfish and warriors inside on my right. He rolls to steal initiative and gets it...I knew right then that it was not going to be pretty.

Turn 1. Moves everything up, firewarriors disembark and he shoots the devilfish and firewarriors into my reavers and wipes them out, he then proceeds to pour fire from the kroot, stealth team and the battlesuit into my wyches, killing 8 of them. well crap...I roll for morale test and somehow make it.

In my turn I move my raider up and rapid fire into the kroot killing all of them. Wooh! (side note: forgot about pain tokens, d'oh) wyches run forward towards the middle

Turn 2. He re-embarks his fire warriors and moves the devilfish around the middle hill, his stealth team and battlesuit fire into my raider causing 2 pens and 1 glancing, the pens are only shaken and stunned, so it's wreck and my warriors come out of it. We decide to keep the raider on the battlefield as a wreck (side note: forgot about nightshields), My warriors fail the pinning check and i face palm.

In my turn I turn my wyches around and charge towards his devilfish, I take snapshots at his stealth team and to take out one...somehow....I roll a 4 for the wyches charge I facepalm as it's not even close. then i remember fleet and roll again. A Five and!!!! a one, It ends up being 1 1/2 inches away from his vehicle...dicegods why you hate meh?

turn 3. takes out half my warriors who fail morale and begin to fall back, wyches die to disembarked fire warriors, I end up regrouping the warriors and manage to wiff all shots at the stealth team.

The next turn he wipes me out. oh well.


Pretty fun for my first game as Dark Eldar, got a bit unlucky with those dice but I had fun with it so it's all good. I actually learned a lot more than I thought I would from this battle and will be starting more troops behind cover from now on. this game would have been a lot different if my friend didn't steal the initiative but oh well.

Thanks for reading.

-Barry

Yeah, seems you were pretty heavily constrained by using the battleforce (which is a good buy, but limited). Good rep though, hope you do better next time.

Haha thanks, the only thing I'm annoyed with is not being able to use my reavers and not getting my succubus into CC by 1"

Tau getting first turn against DE is an absolute recipe for disaster at just about any points level.

Sounds like you put up a decent fight regardless. Maybe next time try your wytches out in the raider and the kabbies on foot?

Yeah wyches need a transport even more so than cabbies. Tau are so dangerous is because their basic firearm is even more powerful against us than bolters, higher point levels tend to alleviate this more.

ooh wyches in the raider, i like that. now if only i'm able to roll higher than a 6 for rerollable charge distance I'll be set. still, a 18' threat range is nothing to sniff at, especially if i can get the pistols into play.

Thanks for the advice, i'll probably rechallenge him in a couple of weeks.

I'd say that Tau are arguably the toughest opponent for a Dark Eldar army...

 Micky wrote:
I'd say that Tau are arguably the toughest opponent for a Dark Eldar army...

To which I raise you IG and cron air, we lack the durable troops to outlast aircrons and IG is IG. But at lower points games I wholly agree tau are perhaps the worst matchups for us.

Word of advice: remember to always deploy your units out of line of sight, or at the very least, out of range. This means losing the first turn is less of an issue as the opponent won't have any targets.