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So, with all my current armies very near to being completed for the time being, I'm looking to start another army and I'm very interested in the Dark Eldar: I love the models, the theme of the army and, frankly, I tend to like things with pointy ears.

Now, I was under the impression that Dark Eldar were actually a pretty good army, but recent conversations with the guys at my FLGS have suggested otherwise. So, simple question really, how good are Dark Eldar? I understand their playstyle, and will probably start anyway, but I was just curious.

So, how good are they, and what units are most effective?

Thanks in advance

My opinion, not an expert.

Shooty Dark Eldar: Good Army if played well

Assault Dark Eldar: Dead in 6ed

Dark Eldar/Eldar Cheese: Great Army (but probably about to get nerfed).

If you're going straight DE, I'd say start with Venom spam and build from there. Can't go wrong with Venoms with dual splinter cannons. 1 Venom (with 2 SC) with 5 Warriors is what, 22 poisoned shots at 12 inches, and scoring for 110 points? There's a reason people spam that, it's a whole lot of mobile dakka. 5 Wyches in a Venom with Haywire is great anti tank (although suicidal).

Run a bunch of Venoms in Troops and Elite, Max out Ravagers in HS, and use your mobility to roll a flank with your six million shots.

They're a great army that suffered from the change to 6th edition. You're going to have a tough time scoring objectives, because the combination of squishy and low model count troops does hurt. Wyches, your dedicated assault troop, can't really do much except against maybe Tactical marines and not too much else (except vehicles, because they can get haywire grenades).

With transports having hullpoints now, av10 is much more of a curse. Unlike 5th edition, where glancing hits never usually outright killed vehicles, you can lose a lot of your mech to plain bolters, which are now also overwatching your assault units and stripping hullpoints off of transports.

Their strengths lie very much in mobility, and very scary units that really can't be allowed to run amok - all hitting very early, usually simultaneously. For example - two units of splintercannon trueborn in venoms can kill a hive tyrant in one volley, costing about 250 points total. Or a disintegrator cannon Ravager, which can kill a combat squad of marines in one go. Or the often overlooked Reavers, which can kill infantry by the droves just by *moving*.

I've become pretty terrified of a beast blob, which you'll definitely be told about - Just spam Razorwings, and you'll start seeing things die horrifically. All of the aforementioned units have steamrolled me before, as well. It's mostly about how you want to play them - Dark Eldar are actually one of the most incredibly internally balanced codexes there is. I haven't seen anyone use Talos/Cronos but for such a cheap t7 3+ pain-token-spewing monster, it makes me feel very uncomfortable to think I might face one. Otherwise, I have seen everything but mandrakes played to great effect. Stay away from mandrakes.

Dark Eldar put out a huge amount of fire power.
In the games I play I usually win big or loose big.

5 Haywire wyches in a venom are great anti tank.
A raider full of warriors with splinter racks are great anti infantry.

I love my dark eldar!

Still the glass cannon army!

I disagree with DE assault being dead, I run Baron beastpack myself, while still have some hard counter to that unit, namely mass ID, bloody GK, etc.. It's a deadly assault unit for a very cheap price and surprisingly durable. Small unit of incubi + HQ can murder a lot of things being that we have the high I AP2 assault unit, of course, throw them at TH/SS or MSS crons, and they'd be wiped, but why the hell would you do that anyway?! And then there is the grotesques retinue which got buffed everly so slightly with the new FNP rules, T5 is hard to ID, who'd have thought! Assault wyches and hellions are the two units that are seeing decline, because of how much more fragile they've become.

Vehicle changes is, well, I'd say it's a win for us. Gained jink save on skimmers, can now save on that flickerfield upgrade most of the time. Low HP and glancing kills... well, it wasn't like 5th ed DE were rolling around with AV14, how much weaker can they weaken our AV10? Just stick to same plan as before, use covers, use tactics! In addition, 5 HWG wyches can now take down any vehicle with ease, so how could we complain!?

Flyer is my biggest complaint this ed, our flyers are unusable, IMO... Supersonic is limiting our range of movement, as well as being on a forced reserve means we need to wait a turn before we could throw those blasts down, and being fragile as hell means interceptor skyfire defences will quite surely shoot them out of the sky the turn they come in... Still, gotta stress that this is IMO.

But being that this edition is very favourable for shooty army, and DE has always been better at shooty, the gap has just widened ever so slightly, still nothing to cry over.

Most effective units are obviously venoms, trueborns, HWG wyches, and ravagers. I personally don't like kabalite warriors, but many people like them as well. And of course, there are reavers, which has cool models and quite an amazing durability for DE! Anything except for mandrakes are good to go. Even assault wyches, yes, they are much harder to play, but given that their role has always been tarpit, and they're still very good at it, with the right strategy, I can still see wyches in assault.

Speaking in a casual/light competitive way obviously.

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

It's good to see that Incubi + Archon is at least usable, since I've always liked the idea of that unit. Same goes for wyches having a use too.

I've also heard good things about Wracks and Grotesques, and I guess that's kind of been confirmed.

I'm confused about DE Flyers/Skimmers, like, anything that's not a Raider. I've heard Venoms are great, but also that Flyers are bad. I'm a bit confused which are which, any help?

Oh, and how come Treuborns are so good? I've heard good press about them too. What differs them from standard Warriors?

Thanks again for all the replies guys

i am also wanting to pick up DE and have been told there are 2 competative builds with them

beast packs

and venom spam.

personally im still going to get raider spam, i just think its awesome and i like the kabalite warrior models quite a bit.
as for the flyers being bad, i havent heard a whole lot about that, and in the batreps ive seen, i usually see one or two on the sidelines.
that being said their flyers are not great at anti air.

splinter racks and night shields on raiders (unless you know you are fighting eldar, tau, or chaos, then i imagine the invuln becomes usefull)

IF your opponent isn't tabled before turn 5, you lose.

From what i've seen of dark eldar, this is their thing. They can't sit and score. They are a glassest of glass cannons, and they have to utterly wreak the opponent before they can have a chance of sticking on an objective.

@ 1850 you can comfortably squeeze 7 venom and have some room left over for Eldar allies. That's 84 poison shots just from those 7 little boats. I find that if I play for the objectives I usually do best. Stick those as many of those shots into scoring guys and you can at least scrape a draw.

Also, Night Shields to keep those venoms alive is invaluable. HYMP will have to get closer to pop those venoms.

Venom Fast skimmer, transport. It's a tiny baby razorwing.
Razorwing jetfighter Flyer. Our other flyer is voidraven bomber, which there isn't an official model for, so you could either convert or use count-as. Deceptively, the jetfighter is better at AI, and the bomber is better at AT/anti-air...

As for why they're bad(IMO)? Well, as I favour the alpha strike tactic, I dislike the idea of having to wait on reserve rolls, even though it is much improved. But less personally speaking, here's how I feel about it:

You have to rely on your reserve rolls, let's say you managed to get it on turn 2, it flies up 18" from your table edge(we lost deep strike in recent FAQ or the one before it), you fire at whatever is in range with the 45-arc weapons(you also fire 1 less than last edition because FAQ invalidated our Aerial Assault SR).
Turn 3, you turn 90 degree and fly another 18"(because supersonic flyers are too cool for efficiency like HOVER, and we all play on 80x80 boards so we need all that freaken movement!), if after this 18" movement, nothing is in range to shoot at, you fly off the board to enter reserve, so this turn, you either shoot a few more or fly off.
Turn 4, if you have shot, you're likely be running out of space to fly as you can only turn 90 degrees each turn, before movement, so you fly off to reserve; if on the other hand, you flew back to reserve, you re-enter this turn, fires at what's left on the table, providing your opponent hasn't somehow moved them to positions that make it impossible to be fired at, such as behind your 18" movement line!
Turn 5, you either fly away as there is nothing to shoot at, or you come back in from reserve to fire at things.
So, best case scenario, you get 3 turns of offensive with your flyer, this is obviously no difference from last ed given that it'd be shot off the board by end of turn 2, latest, but remember I'm talking about absolutely best scenario, if your reserve rolls sucked, if your opponent packs good anti-air, etc... Then you've spent a valuable slot(heavy support has the fabled ravagers) and quite a bit of points on something that's dead on arrival... Well done!

Trueborns can buy most of our special guns, but without the silly "x models before you can buy y" restriction, as DE favours the MSU build, trueborns are basically an unit well suited for this: Need more blasters? Of course you do, our standard weapons can't harm vehicles! Buy 4 trueborns and arm them all with blasters and throw them on a venom, which is also 1 of our most efficient AI unit...! Also if you're doing a shooty HQ, he'd easily fit in a venom with the trueborns, it's quite awkward to fit a unit of warriors and an HQ together on a transport: you need 5 to buy the assault weapon upgrade, any extra men don't help that much, and you can't get to 10 models count to buy the heavy weapon upgrade because a raider can only hold 10!

Reason why fielding MSU is good is because being T3 poor save that we are, having the extra bodies really aren't gonna change the outcome of the unit should they get shot at: if a squad of marines firing at an unit does 7 wounds, a minimal 5 men unit loses 5 and the 2 extra wounds are gone, a 10 men unit'd lose 7, most likely losing the special weapon guys, but even if not, you have a good chance in losing the entire squad if you fail the morale test that follows, meaning you lost an unit that you bought for whatever purpose and have no replacement. Whereas, if you fielded smaller units, you'd have spare points to make another unit of the same build, as your opponent's unit can often only fire at one unit at a time, this ensures that you'll always have something of the same purpose left at the end of your opponent's turn. Also venoms are just so effective as AI, that it is common for DE to just buy barebone minimal size unit just so they could get another venom!

This is not saying that raiders are absolutely worthless, they're great for bringing that bigger unit should you need it and there is the gunboat as Zheak has said. But efficiency-wise, venoms are indisputably the best.

Oh and another thing, as DE, when you plan your list, remember that poisoned weapons don't work on vehicles, so always put in some AT measures in case you face anyone with a lot of mechs.

Wall'o'text, sorry.

Wow, a lot of good advice in here.

I have had mixed success with my DE. They're a glass cannon for sure and definately require some finesse and planning. Tactics are huge and knowing what your units can do to an enemy unit are key. I've lost a game Turn 2 assaulting because I thougt I could just assault a Tau gunline (the whole thing yes) and walk through them. Overwatch murdered me and Lelith took a melta to the face. And this was the old Codex.

I think DE are really effective at seperating and picking apart the targets you want to destroy by using mobility, some range, and weight of fire. Gang up on an enemy unit, weaken it to a good point, then hit it with Wyches. The armor saves and t3 in this army really hurt you when things go bad.

Venom spam and Raider Gunboat are fairly effective I feel. And I love Reavers. Scourge have the most amazing models in the game, but are pretty meh on the table.

Awesome, thanks for all the great advice and clarifications guys, I've certainly learnt a lot. The venoms look pretty cool, so I'll have no qualms including some in my army

Are there any points values that DE work best at? I'm aiming for a pretty small army, maybe only around 1250 points.

I've found I perform better at small points games like around 750-1000 points.

 Shredder wrote:
I've found I perform better at small points games like around 750-1000 points.

Really? Mine usually shine anywhere between 1000-2500, unless I'm doing something extremely right.

Back on topic, even the most "noncompetitive" units can fit well into a Dark Eldar army. Mandrake i found, were extremely underrated, they took out nearly a whole terminator squad for me. Assault DE if far from dead i think, you just need to be smarter about, wracks make excellent meat shields to soak up overwatch and with a second pain tolen reroll wound on MEQs, Reaver, you will come to love, they usuallly make up the majority of my forces generally they are a toolbox unit and can be fitted for anti tank, and while getting into position, rip up some infantry. wyches are awesome at tying up elite units and taking out vehicles, and kabalites and trueborn can be anything you want them to be. the key is redundancy, find an army playstyle that you find atttractive, and make sure you have at least two of everything that you think you'll need. also, if you are thinking of getting grotesques, just buy a talos and they vampire counts vargheist/crypt horror box and use the spare masks from the talos.

DE shine as a shooting army.

Archon
Haemonculus
Baron
Trueborn
Wracks
Warriors
Reavers
Beastpacks
Ravagers
Razorwing Jetfighters

All are good choices. I think the army shines below about 1750. Any more and your troops are all going to die and have a hard time holding objectives from the increased firepower enemies can add with those 250 points.

Most of the assault units are dead entries because random charges, worse FNP, overwatch vs T3 bad save, and S4 explosions. I'd take beastmaster packs, or maybe a minimal squad of Incubi for a counter-assault unit.

The army wins this edition by two ways: one involves a bunch of flyers and reserving a bunch of stuff, starting your more durable units (reavers, squads in cover) on the board, the other uses more ravagers and lines everything up on the board and just shoots until the enemy is dead. Allying Eldar helps somewhat in this regard, but unfortunately that's your only ally, and other than a farseer, they're pretty much like you.

De are just as good in 6ed as in 5ed. And some units are really overlooked. I use a reaver squad (9 strong) that if plyed wisely really shine most games. I use a grotstar (archon, haemie w/ crucible, 4 grots, raider aethersails) that against some lists can be deadly - i have surprised many opponent using heavy psycher lists that had no idea that crucible had a 20" bubble.

No one hasmentioned wracks as troops and they are a favorute of mine - durable objective holders. Over the last three months I have played DE exclusively. I'm now just finishing my daemon army and will start to play them a bit too.

DE do not play like smurfs. If you try and play them that way you will lose every game. But once you figure out how to reserve properly, when to play transports empty, how to grab linebreaker late, etc., they suddenly seem quite good. Now having said all that ... I'm having a lot of difficulty with the new Tau. You will not out shoot Tau so you need a strong cc element in your list to compensate. And Tau will not allow you many cover saves and they can ignore LoS. Other than Tau though DE play most lists well .

Great advice everywhere in this thread. One thing about beast packs though beward high str opponents like tau. If you still decide to run them against them put bigger threats nearby and hope one threat survives. S6 ID's everything

Exalbaru wrote:
Great advice everywhere in this thread. One thing about beast packs though beward high str opponents like tau. If you still decide to run them against them put bigger threats nearby and hope one threat survives. S6 ID's everything

can you ID the Kymera and the Beastmasters, even though they only have 1 wound?
you certainly cannot ID the clawed fiend, even if you wound on 2s, it does not ID them when it gets to them.

against tau, Khymera and beastmasters are fine. You dont need many razorwing flocks at all.

why can it not ID them? They are T3? So s6 means they die with no save, right? if so I had my blob taken out for nothing

Exalbaru wrote:
why can it not ID them? They are T3? So s6 means they die with no save, right? if so I had my blob taken out for nothing

clawed fiends are T6, so you need str12 to ID them

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
why can it not ID them? They are T3? So s6 means they die with no save, right? if so I had my blob taken out for nothing

clawed fiends are T6, so you need str12 to ID them

T5

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Exergy wrote:

Exalbaru wrote:
why can it not ID them? They are T3? So s6 means they die with no save, right? if so I had my blob taken out for nothing

clawed fiends are T6, so you need str12 to ID them

T5

well still not T3

well i would have at least had that alive still if it passed leadership. lol. pathfinders and broadsides are a very lethal combo

Exalbaru wrote:
why can it not ID them? They are T3? So s6 means they die with no save, right? if so I had my blob taken out for nothing

They'd always get their stealth save if they're with Baron, barring bloody Tau and their cheating weapons( ), and kymerae/Baron's invulnerable. S6 or ID means nothing for most of the beastpack, ID is only an issue for the beastpack if they have multiwound, like clawed fiends, which is T5, razorwings, which is why we have khymerae around, and PfP DE who rely on FNP, but how many beastpack setup you see bring a haemy for starting PT?

But you're not totally wrong on the fear of ID part, mass force weapons GK hurt clawed fiends, because they just need an unsaved wound to trigger their force to ID them. And of course, stuffs like JotWW(can't think of any SW who'd still buy that when fighting against DE though ), our own hexrifles, and anything that can ID regardless of toughness will hurt clawed fiends as well.

My take on DE (kind of stream of consciousness.)

I believe the razorwing flyer is near worthless. In a typical game with a situationally aware opponent it might kill 1 tank (taking 2 rounds to do so). The points are such that it's much cheaper to get a venom with 5 wyches and haywire grenades with a guaranteed kill when you get into contact. The bomber is *almost* as bad. It's good if it flys on *after* your opponents flyers do and can target them, but a waste otherwise. I think it's better to simply ignore the flyers and stay in the enemy DZ making it harder for the enemy flyers to make a ground attack. If you aren't ignoring them, put vect/lelith or similar on an aegis line.

Small groups of Wyches with haywire grenades in a venom is an auto include. 1 assault usually means 1 very dead vehicle; they can reliably destroy bastions too. It's as easy to kill AV14 as it is AV10 so I usually prioritize tanks with blast weapons first. Bear in mind those wyches are sometimes "single shot"; meaning that you will kill what you originally intended but they are normally cut down shortly thereafter. This is ok as that means a round of shooting didn't go into your real troops (the warriors).

I tend to like warriors in raiders for the simple fact of getting splinter racks (reroll to hit) and showing up with enough poison to knock out a full tac squad. They are hard to ignore. However be aware that the raiders and venoms will likely be dead by turn 3; 4 at the latest. So don't bother loading them up with a lot of extras. "Dark Eldar always walk home" is a truism for a reason. When the raider is wrecked, make sure you pay attention to where your guys are getting out and use that cover. Also note you never ever want to be caught in a cross fire with units surrounding you. DE operate better on the outskirts striking in; not dropping into the middle of things.

I use Incubi as HQ hunters. They tend to make short work of units that are likely surrounding an HQ. I don't normally put a klaivex in because I typically want too avoid the inevitable challenge.

Trueborn are generally a requirement depending on points size. The blaster weapons are good enough to kill most transports and terminator types. I typically run 4 in a venom.

Reavers are simply great. I try to run units of 8+. They use a bladevane attack when turbo boosting and can duck into cover afterwards (2d6" move in assault phase). I use them to harass a sit and shoot unit like long fangs or devastators then hide them in my opponents DZ to get line breaker once they have been whittled down to 3 or less bikes. This usually means those long fangs are swatting at the reavers instead of my transports.

I tend to use a cheap haemi to provide a pain token to wyches at the start of the game. Then I just move him to be with a group of warriors on the back field objective. Usually I'll give him a hexrifle to play with.

With DE you have to have a plan going into the game. My usual plan involves putting an objective in my back field with a small cheap troop unit on it (usually kept in reserves for as long as possible). If there are more objectives, these are spread out all over the board to make my opponent split his forces up. Then I use my high mobility raiders, venoms and reavers to ensure my opponent is locked up in his DZ safely away from them. Some people say put the objectives forward; however because we can reliably keep an opponent from even crossing the middle line then denying them is a better choice. If your opponents forces are split and you have a good amount of terrain on the board you can generally be able to concentrate fire on a very small number of units to whittle your opponent down. Use this idea to pull enemies away from objectives for long enough to ensure they can't reach them by turn 5.

Turn 1 is critical. So pay attention to who goes first and the likelihood of your opponent stealing first turn (if you had it). Because we are so mobile it's more important to be behind as much cover as possible turn 1 than it is to be forward.

My experience has been that you usually want the game to end on turn 5. The longer it goes the more likely you are to be tabled. Purge the Alien seems to be the bane of my existence as I usually roll that mission against large model count armies... That combination never bodes well for DE.

In 5th the previous thought was that you wanted a lot of Dark Lances. However... my experience has been that haywire is far more reliable. So I always put disintegrators on my raiders (extra shots against troops). Also I tend to stay away from fielding ravagers. The armor is just too weak for the role it is supposed to fill and the points can be used elsewhere. With 3 DLs hitting a tank you are likely to only get 1 glance/pen per round. It's also likely to be destroyed by round 3. Again, better to have wyches jump on what you want dead right now.

Beastmasters are popular right now; although I don't run them so no real comment there.

Talos/Cronos sounds good, until you try to use them in a fast army; they are extremely hard to get where you need them. With the rest of the army being so mobile, allowing a near complete redeployment ANYWHERE, the talos is dreadfully slow. Because my strategy is generally to tie up my opponent in his DZ, walking this creature 24" or so to get close enough to something is an exercise in frustration. If I had one wish it would be that these acted like fast skimmers, but they don't. I only take if I've already filled out the rest of my list and just want some protection against assaults on my side of the board.

Mandrakes - don't bother. Fantastic looking models, lousy rules.

Bear in mind that the DE fluff states that they really don't care if their comrades live or die. You should take the same approach. Don't get attached to that "special" unit. Each is a weapon with a very specific purpose. As long as they fulfill that purpose it doesn't matter if the unit dies shortly thereafter. In my case: Incubi are there to get the Slay the Warlord; Reavers - Line Breaker and harassment; Wyches - keep the armor off my back; Warriors - claim objectives; Trueborn - kill enemy support units; etc. As long as you know what each units purpose is and stay focused you'll be good.

This is getting long so I'll stop. The tldr version is: Dark Eldar are a very fast and very fragile army. You need to have a plan before you show up as the army simply doesn't allow for any mistakes. However, when you do have that plan then your opponent should be in a purely defensive mode the entire game allowing you to control how it ends.

I think one of the few things Dark Eldar can have some trouble with is spammed light armor units. With their complete lack of STR value to a variety of their weapons, enemies that Mechanize do fairly well against Dark Eldar.

Although Mechanization is not the current meta for most armies, so Dark Eldar don't do that poorly. :-)

clively wrote:
Reavers are simply great. I try to run units of 8+. They use a bladevane attack when turbo boosting and can duck into cover afterwards (2d6" move in assault phase).

Can you actually do this? I thought you could, but my opponent in my last game said I couldn't and we looked up in the rule book, and it seemed to suggest you couldn't perform any other action after turbo boosting.

 Shredder wrote:

clively wrote:
Reavers are simply great. I try to run units of 8+. They use a bladevane attack when turbo boosting and can duck into cover afterwards (2d6" move in assault phase).

Can you actually do this? I thought you could, but my opponent in my last game said I couldn't and we looked up in the rule book, and it seemed to suggest you couldn't perform any other action after turbo boosting.

you cannot assault after turboing so you cannot assault move after turboing

No voluntary actions after turbo boost, I'd say EJB assault move is very voluntary both in gameplay sense and fluff sense, unless you homerule it that you roll a scatter...

Just like to add to what Farseer Faenyin said, it does suck as well when you fight Tau or IG or army with low T and you can't utilise that advantage as everything is 4+ for our AI shooting... :(

felixcat wrote:
DE do not play like smurfs. If you try and play them that way you will lose every game. But once you figure out how to reserve properly, when to play transports empty, how to grab linebreaker late, etc., they suddenly seem quite good. Now having said all that ... I'm having a lot of difficulty with the new Tau. You will not out shoot Tau so you need a strong cc element in your list to compensate. And Tau will not allow you many cover saves and they can ignore LoS. Other than Tau though DE play most lists well .

Not the greatest news, Tau are popular at my local store

@ clively: Thanks for that awesome and informative post, really helpful, thanks a lot!

So, based on what I've learned, I'm thinking that the DE Battleforce is a good purchase. I was thinking of getting the battleforce, along with the Venom, an Archon, some Incubi and another Raider. Which would give me:

Archon + 5 Incubi in a Raider
10 Kabalite Warriors in a Raider
5 Wyches in a Venom (I'm correct in saying that the transport capacity of a Venom is 5, right?)
3 Reaver Jetbikes

That, to me, seems like a decent starting point for an army, what would you say?

Thanks again for all the advice guys