Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, dark eldar tactics, army lists that are good against horde armies?

Another Horde army! Bunch of 20 man/woman units of warriors and wych should do the trick!

Lol yeah,

mass warriors in transport shooting the sh*t out of everything.

I lost horribly against DE with my Orks in a 1500 pts game.

You outshoot most horde armies,... and against weakened horde squads your dark eldar with obliterate them... So yeah thats all you need to do..

Since a lot of weapons are poisoned hight toughness shouldnt be a problem, most horde armies have crap armour saves so that wont be a problem... just outrange/shoot them with high mobility transports and clean up with small CC squads... To be honest,... i have never seen DE lose more than 5 times since codex update came out...

Hmmm...

Anti infantry is a DE army specialty, I love it when my opponent starts setting up large infantry blobs.
Venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders will pound on foot squads.
Razorwings with their large blast missiles and disintegrator cannons.
Unless the infantry squads are TH/SS termies (I hate them!) but then they wouldn't be a hoard army.

 Shredder wrote:
Anti infantry is a DE army specialty, I love it when my opponent starts setting up large infantry blobs.
Venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders will pound on foot squads.
Razorwings with their large blast missiles and disintegrator cannons.
Unless the infantry squads are TH/SS termies (I hate them!) but then they wouldn't be a hoard army.

Yeah termies aren't easy to kill!

i've recently been looking into an army list that takes some eldar as allies, mostly for the S6 spam that they can do, i'd then take 2 venoms with Hwyches in both, two raiders for some more DL's (maybe reavers to add blasters and to get those awesome bladevanes) and then here's the what I want to do but many people may say I'm crazy, I'm looking into running two ravagers with Dissintegrators giving me 9 AP2 shots each and then a Razorwing with dissies too to help clean up any higher armor save enemies. not sure what to put in raiders yet but so far the army is pumping out:

24 poison shots, 24 AP2 shots, Two Large Blast Missiles, a Crap load of Scatter Lasers and whatever I decide on putting in the raiders. Oh and 6D3 bladevane attacks.

I'd probably run the Eldar with a Farseer in case of Orks in which case you can doom units to greatly increase your killing ability.

If you're going with a straight up Dark Eldar army I'd say you'd be safe with taking a couple of venoms (like 2-3 so no one calls cheese) some Kabalite Warriors, maybe some Wracks with Liquifiers if you so care to do so. BUT Reavers are by far the most versatile unit in the entire codex, they can literally take anything on, Swarms? Bladevane. MC? Splinter Rifle. Armour? Blaster. and they get a 3+ after turbo boosting making them awesome, for sure invest in some. You might be able to completely stop the movement of a horde using some wyches or a Talos, if you can stop the first wave then the next waves won't be able to move forward.

Basically the real question is what kinda points are you talking about and what kind of swarm? Nid Ork or 'Nilla Marines?

Ah, the main swarm army I fight is Tyranids and i'm being told that the doom of Malan'tai is like the best thing ever because it has some psychic powers....

Then get a farseer, laugth. Big nids go down to poisen, little nids go down to poisen. And doom isnt very good against Dark eldar because he doesnt hurt transports, and if a unit aint in a trasnport, the chances are its close to dead anyway.

Lots of poisoned shots. Be it from Splinter cannons on venoms, or warrior squads with splinter rifles and splinter cannons. If you want you can throw some wracks or wyches at the left overs to finish them off.

The Doom isn't crazy because of psychic powers, he's crazy because of his innate special rules. Units on foot need to be spread out or he'll nuke multiple units at once. In order to kill it, you need S8+ fire and a bit of luck, otherwise it will annihilate ground units.

I have some questions regarding DE too since I'm looking to start picking them up for my 2nd army (after 10+ years of Nids).

This is what I was thinking, and this is completely based on what I can aquire *relatively* inexpensively (one of my big attractions to the army, they're not nearly as $$$ intesnive as Nids).
Archon ghostplate, shadowfield
4 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields
5 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields

5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL

6 reavers, inc. champ, 2x cluster caltrops, 2x heat lance

Ravager
Razorwing

Farseer
Guide, Fortune, Doom, RoWit, RoWard, jetbike (should I put him on foot and stick him in a trueborn Venom?)

3x Guardian jetbikes
---
Like I said, this is just to get me started. Decent start? What should I add? Thanks

EDIT: Should I just drop the Trueborn and run them as Warriors to fill out my troops slots until I can drop $$ on more warriors and venoms?

 fleetofclaw wrote:
I have some questions regarding DE too since I'm looking to start picking them up for my 2nd army (after 10+ years of Nids).

This is what I was thinking, and this is completely based on what I can aquire *relatively* inexpensively (one of my big attractions to the army, they're not nearly as $$$ intesnive as Nids).
Archon ghostplate, shadowfield
4 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields
5 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields

5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL

6 reavers, inc. champ, 2x cluster caltrops, 2x heat lance

Ravager
Razorwing

Farseer
Guide, Fortune, Doom, RoWit, RoWard, jetbike (should I put him on foot and stick him in a trueborn Venom?)

3x Guardian jetbikes
---
Like I said, this is just to get me started. Decent start? What should I add? Thanks

EDIT: Should I just drop the Trueborn and run them as Warriors to fill out my troops slots until I can drop $$ on more warriors and venoms?

Looks like a decent start. I'd not bother with the archon - I'm assuming he's going in with the trueborn - he's more of a cc monster and you don't really want to get those Trueborn into cc. You might be better off with a Haemonculus with a hex rifle, gives the trueborn FNP and his hex rifle has the same range as the SC.
I'd also drop all the sybarites, hekatrix and champs, they're not really worth the points.
IIRC allied farseers can't embark on DE transports so keep him on a bike. With my farseer I take the four cheapest powers and swap them for BRB powers.
I would also be tempted to swap your warriors and wyches over, have 5 man haywire units in venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders with splinter racks.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.

 Shredder wrote:

 fleetofclaw wrote:
I have some questions regarding DE too since I'm looking to start picking them up for my 2nd army (after 10+ years of Nids).

This is what I was thinking, and this is completely based on what I can aquire *relatively* inexpensively (one of my big attractions to the army, they're not nearly as $$$ intesnive as Nids).
Archon ghostplate, shadowfield
4 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields
5 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields

5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL

6 reavers, inc. champ, 2x cluster caltrops, 2x heat lance

Ravager
Razorwing

Farseer
Guide, Fortune, Doom, RoWit, RoWard, jetbike (should I put him on foot and stick him in a trueborn Venom?)

3x Guardian jetbikes
---
Like I said, this is just to get me started. Decent start? What should I add? Thanks

EDIT: Should I just drop the Trueborn and run them as Warriors to fill out my troops slots until I can drop $$ on more warriors and venoms?

Looks like a decent start. I'd not bother with the archon - I'm assuming he's going in with the trueborn - he's more of a cc monster and you don't really want to get those Trueborn into cc. You might be better off with a Haemonculus with a hex rifle, gives the trueborn FNP and his hex rifle has the same range as the SC.
I'd also drop all the sybarites, hekatrix and champs, they're not really worth the points.
IIRC allied farseers can't embark on DE transports so keep him on a bike. With my farseer I take the four cheapest powers and swap them for BRB powers.
I would also be tempted to swap your warriors and wyches over, have 5 man haywire units in venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders with splinter racks.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.

as he said decent start for venom spam (i'm a raider pirate to be honest...)

on the 5 man venom squads, don't bother with sybarites, stick a blaster in there if you can- it then results in you being able to screw infantry over meanwhile the blaster guy can lean over the side laughing madly as he nukes a transport etc (only drawback you can only move 6" to use the warrior's full BS but it works well enough )

and perhaps invest in a second ravager- one can work but its likley to be buggered very quickly...

just a few tips...

 Tyranidcrusher wrote:
Ah, the main swarm army I fight is Tyranids and i'm being told that the doom of Malan'tai is like the best thing ever because it has some psychic powers....

Seriously? Tyranids dont stand a chance if you go mass splinterweapons in venoms and such,. his MC will drop as hard as any other tyranid, Their toughness is effectively 4 if you use splinter weapons,..

Also doom of malentine aint that much of a prob for you,.. he is dangerous only when you dont spread out enough and when your squads are so big he can target more at a time,. also one strength 8 shot Instakills him,

The most important thing to remember as a Dark Eldar player is that a dedicated transport does not shoot with the squad, but shoots at its own targets at its own time(see rulebook). This means that you can spam raiders with anti-infantry units, while still shooting the lance weapon at incoming vehicles.

This is why blasterborns can be fun. Pop the vehicle with the blasterborns, then let the venom take out the infantry.

Our transports are important as they give us at least a semblance of armor. Without them you more or less don't get any armor saves(since most things are AP 5 either way).

As Tactics go, here's a few tactics that seem to work well:

1. Disintegrator cannons allow the REST of the army to deal with what it should be dealing with: troops. Dark Eldar just kill troops by the bucket load with shooting. that's ben said, but I think the Disintegrator Cannons handle the Termies, the only real threat to you that isn't handled well otherwise.

2. The Dark Eldar can force morale checks in a huge variety of ways and I strongly suggest you take advantage of the chances to force those checks: Tank Shocking with Shock Prows, Pinning weapons like Mandrakes and Hexrifles can be everywhere. Obviously jut pure damage and the various vehicle upgrades and weapons like Necrotoxin Missiles. when forced to make so many checks, an army will eventually fail multiple checks. Pressuring the enemy into making then makes some less cool headed Generals (of which there are plenty) lose their sense of target priority.

3. Add a fearless character to the BeastMasters if you use them. Well known but undersold factoid.

TTFN

 Jancoran wrote:
As Tactics go, here's a few tactics that seem to work well:

1. Disintegrator cannons allow the REST of the army to deal with what it should be dealing with: troops. Dark Eldar just kill troops by the bucket load with shooting. that's ben said, but I think the Disintegrator Cannons handle the Termies, the only real threat to you that isn't handled well otherwise.

2. The Dark Eldar can force morale checks in a huge variety of ways and I strongly suggest you take advantage of the chances to force those checks: Tank Shocking with Shock Prows, Pinning weapons like Mandrakes and Hexrifles can be everywhere. Obviously jut pure damage and the various vehicle upgrades and weapons like Necrotoxin Missiles. when forced to make so many checks, an army will eventually fail multiple checks. Pressuring the enemy into making then makes some less cool headed Generals (of which there are plenty) lose their sense of target priority.

3. Add a fearless character to the BeastMasters if you use them. Well known but undersold factoid.

TTFN

I'll add to this.

Beastmasters with Razorwing flocks and Khymaera is a crapton of attacks.

All Disintegrator Cannons on a Ravager is 9 AP2 shots per ravager.

Razorwing/Voidravens have Large blasts that will carve large holes in blobs of units with 5+ saves.

Poisoned weapons will faceroll tyranids. No really, just roll the dice with your face and then tell your opponent to remove his Hive Tyrant.* ** ***
*Especially if you have Splinter Racks
** Especially if you have the Duke
*** God forbid you have them together.

Reavers with caltrops will also faceroll tyranids. D3 S4 attacks per reaver in a unit of 9, but three of those are D6 S6 attacks.

I'd like to point out that Ravagers with Disintegrators make up (on average) their points in 2 turns when shooting at MEQ or TEQ even against TH/SS which means you're getting some serious bang for your buck, especially if you keep it shooting all the time

Yeah, Lances are for other units to mess arounwith Disintegrators cannons on the vehicles makes a load of sense.

Jancoran wrote:Yeah, Lances are for other units to mess arounwith Disintegrators cannons on the vehicles makes a load of sense.

Barrywise wrote:I'd like to point out that Ravagers with Disintegrators make up (on average) their points in 2 turns when shooting at MEQ or TEQ even against TH/SS which means you're getting some serious bang for your buck, especially if you keep it shooting all the time

To extrapolate;

Disintegrators kill MEQ and TEQ like a hot sock through molasses. Or something like that. They do it really well.

Dark Lances are anti-vehicle, though Heat Lances do it better. The benefit of Dark Lances or blasters is that with S8 you can ID T4 and below as well as wound those T6+ MCs easier.

and bl;asters are mobile. That is a big plus.

That's an interesting thought. Use dissie on raiders and only take dark lances when you can take multiple like on ravagers or flyers.

no I think it's the other way around, You're going to need several Dissies to actually damage a unit and force a Morale Check, 3 on a Ravager should cause about 4 wounds on an MEQ squad plus if your opponent gets lucky and takes it out, you still have other AI stuff (or you should...) by taking 2 or 3 raiders to carry troops in you can then have those Dark Lances that you need or you can always take some extra on Reavers or even on some camping Kabalites

so the resiliency of your Dark Lances increases by having them spread out throughout your entire army while even if they do manage to blow up your ravager so what. You spent 100 points on it and have tons of other AI,if you're desperate you could always give it a shock prow but the more infantry you can destroy the more heat you're taking off of your troops on the ground.

Also if you do go the shock prow route it makes your units have multiple purposes, making the Ravager AI and possible Anti AV10 if needed and possibly even higher AT if you get desperate and need to use the Shock Prow for something, maybe even pushing an opponent back off of an objective. Then when taking raiders you can take them with DL's as I've previously stated and then fill with Kabalites and Splinter Racks to make it AT and AI and scoring and maneuverable. Which is where the glass hammer aspect come in, hit first, hit hard.

Wouldn't you want to concentrate your AT weapons as one dark lance isn't likely to kill a vehicle by itself.

It's not likely to but it does have a pretty good chance to get a pen in relation to other weapons (AV14) and having it spread out means that you can focus on several different targets if the first one blew up or if you knocked it out for the turn and are approaching it with Hwyches or something.

it's a personal preference and ravagers are the easiest way for DE to get Dark Lances but it can also be used for other purposes if needed

you could always spam Dark Lance if you wanted to, I think i've gotten it up to 33 ish

 Shredder wrote:

 fleetofclaw wrote:
I have some questions regarding DE too since I'm looking to start picking them up for my 2nd army (after 10+ years of Nids).

This is what I was thinking, and this is completely based on what I can aquire *relatively* inexpensively (one of my big attractions to the army, they're not nearly as $$$ intesnive as Nids).
Archon ghostplate, shadowfield
4 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields
5 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields

5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL

6 reavers, inc. champ, 2x cluster caltrops, 2x heat lance

Ravager
Razorwing

Farseer
Guide, Fortune, Doom, RoWit, RoWard, jetbike (should I put him on foot and stick him in a trueborn Venom?)

3x Guardian jetbikes
---
Like I said, this is just to get me started. Decent start? What should I add? Thanks

EDIT: Should I just drop the Trueborn and run them as Warriors to fill out my troops slots until I can drop $$ on more warriors and venoms?

Looks like a decent start. I'd not bother with the archon - I'm assuming he's going in with the trueborn - he's more of a cc monster and you don't really want to get those Trueborn into cc. You might be better off with a Haemonculus with a hex rifle, gives the trueborn FNP and his hex rifle has the same range as the SC.
I'd also drop all the sybarites, hekatrix and champs, they're not really worth the points.
IIRC allied farseers can't embark on DE transports so keep him on a bike. With my farseer I take the four cheapest powers and swap them for BRB powers.
I would also be tempted to swap your warriors and wyches over, have 5 man haywire units in venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders with splinter racks.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Awesome, thanks for the advice!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shredder wrote:

 fleetofclaw wrote:
I have some questions regarding DE too since I'm looking to start picking them up for my 2nd army (after 10+ years of Nids).

This is what I was thinking, and this is completely based on what I can aquire *relatively* inexpensively (one of my big attractions to the army, they're not nearly as $$$ intesnive as Nids).
Archon ghostplate, shadowfield
4 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields
5 Trueborn w/ 2 Splinter Canons, Venom w/ 2 SC, Nightshields

5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
5x Warriors, inc Sybarite, Venom w/ 2 SC
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL
10x Wyches, inc. hekatrix, haywire nades, assault nades in Raider w/ DL

6 reavers, inc. champ, 2x cluster caltrops, 2x heat lance

Ravager
Razorwing

Farseer
Guide, Fortune, Doom, RoWit, RoWard, jetbike (should I put him on foot and stick him in a trueborn Venom?)

3x Guardian jetbikes
---
Like I said, this is just to get me started. Decent start? What should I add? Thanks

EDIT: Should I just drop the Trueborn and run them as Warriors to fill out my troops slots until I can drop $$ on more warriors and venoms?

Looks like a decent start. I'd not bother with the archon - I'm assuming he's going in with the trueborn - he's more of a cc monster and you don't really want to get those Trueborn into cc. You might be better off with a Haemonculus with a hex rifle, gives the trueborn FNP and his hex rifle has the same range as the SC.
I'd also drop all the sybarites, hekatrix and champs, they're not really worth the points.
IIRC allied farseers can't embark on DE transports so keep him on a bike. With my farseer I take the four cheapest powers and swap them for BRB powers.
I would also be tempted to swap your warriors and wyches over, have 5 man haywire units in venoms and 10 man warrior squads in raiders with splinter racks.
Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Awesome, thanks for the advice!

Another question, is the Dais of Destruction overpriced? With jink and AV 13/13/13, it seems decently survivable, add in the fact it's a transport and has 3x dark lances. Just curious.

If you want to butcher horde armies like tyranids and orks, put units of 10 kabalites in raiders with splinter racks and splinter cannons. Then just run them around the Orks/Tyranids spraying them with splinter fire before tank shocking, unloading and then chopping them up in CC. Run a couple of Haemies with them for the pain tokens and FNP and to unlock units of wracks to combat large enemy muscle and hold them up.
Raiders are great as well as orks never, ever manage to kill them, I would be careful with small units of wyches in venoms as they won't long stand up to hordes without paid tokens.

I can't imagine ever needing to use Disintegrators.

A unit of termies can be torrented down with the sheer volume of splinter fire even the most modest Kabalite DE list will have.

As several people above have said: DE maul infantry. If it has a toughness value, the DE just love it.

The inverse is that DE struggle w/ anti-tank since their only anti-tank weapons are dark lances/blasters, heat lances, and haywire.

So why on earth would you give up your highly mobile anti-tank (lances mounted on vehicles) to add more anti-infantry?

that 3 disintegrator ravager is gonna kill, what barely 2 TH/SS termies a turn. you could do about the same with a combo of splinter fire and lances.

but even more pressingly: why are you are even bothering with the TH/SS termies? if you're mounted and they aren't, then they can't catch you, so just scoot around, blasting the rest of the army out from under them, then focus fire once they're the only thing that's left.

I tend to run raider w/ splinter racks over venoms for the dark lance. using blasters (even though you can get lots in a small group of trueborn) means you've scooted up awfully close to the enemy, and that's never a good thing w/ AV10.

hang out at range, pick targets that will kill raiders/venoms, and only start to close once those are gone.

use splinter fire to weaken units, and if they're heavy armour (termies), dark lances can clean them up once a few are dead since you should have removed most of the vehicles by then.

interesting anti-tank units are reavers (heat lances) and scourges (heat lances or haywire) both have their uses but both are crazy expensive and i only run them at 1750~2000 pts.

DE have loads of great anti-tank stuff. It's ridiculously easy to tear apart mech armies but still I agree to an extent with your point I would stick with the dark lances on a ravager for sure or they will kill maby 7-8 space marines in the entire game if the are lucky.