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.

Good day to all. I've recently been wanting to start another army in the 40k universe, preferably a xeno army. So far, I really like the Dark Eldar for their look, their background, and their price (compared to some of the other ones)

So where's a good place to start? Here's some pressing questions I have:

1) Which HQ performs the best?
2) How should I deal with Troop choices?
3) Any particular or outstanding special unit used? (as in is there a unit that out-performs the rest)
And finally...
4) What color schemes are used with Dark Eldar? Are there any colors already established, like it would show in the codex?

Thanks to all for any upcoming advice. Cheers!

1) The Baron, always the Baron, and a Haemonculus.
2) Wracks, always wracks.
3) Venoms make MCs cry something fierce, Incubi are MEQ butcherers, and Taloses are pretty nifty MCs.
4) Black and purple are the absolute dominant color.

I always wanted to see what color was opposite on the color wheel of pink/purple (that's Slaanesh colors) and paint a dark eldar army that color. They hate Slaanesh after all, so I figure they'd make everything as far distant from his/her preferences as possible.

So... yellow dark eldar?

 Blaggard wrote:
So... yellow dark eldar?

The fruity loops Kabal, they capture their enemies by making them laugh until they hurt.

 Kain wrote:

 Blaggard wrote:
So... yellow dark eldar?

The fruity loops Kabal, they capture their enemies by making them laugh until they hurt.

Oh yes, completely ridiculous

 TheDraconicLord wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Blaggard wrote:
So... yellow dark eldar?

The fruity loops Kabal, they capture their enemies by making them laugh until they hurt.

Oh yes, completely ridiculous :S

At first I was going to compliment the model, but then I saw her eyes and now I can't sleep.

Oh look,, a kill bill/uma thurman reference which is a bruce lee/game of death reference.

Not sure if that's the best way to show yellow is a serious choice

Duke, Or a custom archon, succubi kinda suck. Haemonculi are also nice.

Wyches suck, wracks can be nice but I prefer warriors in raiders with S racks.

I love my trueborn death boat. Duke with 7 true born 2 SPlinter cannons & 5 shard carbines means all the poison 3+ death.

As for colors do what you will though they tend to be darker / sinister. I have black & orange halloweenish.

Just like to say DE are deceptively priced, you do need transport(s) for every box of infantry you buy, until you have a good collection of them, so the cost does add up.

1) Baron is a popular choice, duke sliscus too. As for customisable HQ goes, archon offers the most options, can play as combat or shooty, but can get quite costly when geared up. Succubus is the cheap combat HQ options, she is somewhat better than archon in combat, but she is terribly weak outside of combat. Haemonculus is the cheapest HQ, provides the least offensives for the army, but does allow one unit to start with a pain token, which will improve their odd of survival by quite a bit, also unlocks wracks as troops if you wanna take Kain's advice.

I don't honestly know which is the "best", Baron is certainly my favourite, but if you're not planning to run his beast pack, hellions pack, etc, I could see him being less attractive an HQ. Likewise for the others, they're all situational. If you're starting at low points, haemy or succubus are probably your better choice, because they take up the least points. An archon on the other hand means you can just use him forever, as he has all the options!

2) Both default troop choices are great. Kabalite warriors are shooty, wyches are assaul- suicide mainly. Common setups for kabbies is either 5 on a venom with 1 blaster warrior, or 10 on a raider with a defensive upgrade of choice and splinter racks. Wyches are generally used as HWG suicide squad by most people, 5 plain wyches with only the HWG upgrade on a venom, absolutely horrible at everything, but when they get near a mech, they can easily strip HP4 vehicle down to nothing in a turn. Wyches can also be fielded as tarpit combat unit, but that's becoming less popular because 6th ed...

3) Ravagers are the easy go-to for AT unit, and DE do need all the AT. Beastpack is the current favourite, usually fielded in such a way that they can get into combat quick, deal a lot of wounds and have a lot of wounds to soak up damage. Then you have trueborns, which are like, better warriors. Incubi are obviously great, as mentioned. Venom is generally regarded as the better transport of the two, but then you do need raider if you want to bring larger unit. And then there is grotesque, great retinue unit for your HQ... In short, most units are good for DE, just avoid mandrakes and you'll be fine. May be hellions too.

Lastly, black and yellow is totally evil, hornets are evil.

Those eyes... the spice must flow!

EDIT: I'm actually allowed to make that reference now since I finally got around to Dune (got it on audiobook actually. I'm starting it today )

The Baron is just better than all other options, hes very cheap, gives a bonus to go first, gives a unit hit and run, does very well as an ally bullet sponge (eldar) and he hits moderately hard for a character, criminally good for his price. Baring that there are other second tier good options, all of them with shadowfields, either Vect, an archon with huskblade/soultrap or duke. Most other options tend to be CC and the army isnt as up to snuff for that in this edition.

The best option are all shooting, warriors with guns, vehicles with guns and put some guns on your guns.

I tended to max out as many specials and heavies as possible, all mounted in vehicles if able or be jump infantry. I split 50/50 between darklight and splinter weapons. The venom with its second splinter cannon is very popular due to the absurd amount of firepower for its price.

Wyches are a popular choice to suicide vehicles due to the power of haywire grenades, taking two or three units can be good, plus if they get in combat they do fare very well against the upper elite cc warriors point for point due to survivability.

Popular units are the ubiquitous ravager, a 3-5 man Trueborn squad that maxes out heavy/specials., blob squads of warriors in cover or aegis defense line taking advantage of pain tokens to survive, beastpacks lead by the Baron who quickly overwhelm targets.

Beyond any advice unless your taking Vect do not invest many points in any one options. You are playing far and away the most fragile army in 40k, and one with a steep learning curve after people get over the shock of your gun line. Too many eggs in one basket is bad for an army that every option, including vehicles, can be weathered down with small arms fire. Another big point is to use terrain, especially LOS blocking terrain to avoid needless damage early until your ready to commit. Your army is faster than most anyone else and can easily reposition for quick damage

These Baron and Duke HQs you guys keep mentioning are nowhere to be found! Has GW stopped making these? They're not on their website!

 BattleCapIronblood wrote:
These Baron and Duke HQs you guys keep mentioning are nowhere to be found! Has GW stopped making these? They're not on their website!

They have no miniatures.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
They have no miniatures.

Aye, you just convert them out of other stuff. My Duke mini has a Hellion weapon chopped in half and wielded as two single blades, a Reaver's head and a Wyche body. If GW doesn't make the mini for a character it's a great excuse to try your hand at kit bashing. If you don't fancy that you could probably get something from Warhammer fantasy to represent them, the high elves being your most likely bet.

Someone else touched on this higher up in the thread, Warriors on Raiders with Splinter Racks are fantastic. 9 of them with the Duke onboard puts out 18 poison shots that wound on a 3+ in rapid fire range, with re-rolls to hit. Awesome vs models with high toughness. Do know that whilst you will need vehicles for all your infantry (no footslogging with D.Eldar, though a Beastmaster list might be the exception to that) your vehicles are armoured in wet, soggy paper. Cover saves are your friend, because even bolters can take down your AV10 death traps.

I love Dark Eldar, they're a great army to play with some nice options and are totally viable in what is essentially a shooty edition.

I notice that the DE don't foot slog it. What other strengths and weaknesses should I keep in mind?

I don't actually play DE, but one of my friends does.

The best way i can explain the army is a glass stiletto wrapped in paper mache.

Your entire army is incredibly killy. Both with combat and shooting. Everything is poisoned, so you don't really care what people's toughness is. Also your initiative is generaly high on average, so if you can get into combat you will usually kill stuff before it kills you.

The downside is that your troops will melt like ice cubes in a blast furnace if anything even looks vaguely menacingly in their direction.

To get around this you need to get them into killing range as soon as possible. That's where the lovely dark eldar paper planes known as transports come in.

To the best of my discernment, if you can get your army into killing range and start killing stuff then you should win as long as you didn't take too many losses getting there.

Things to watch out for:

1. Your transports can deep strike. this is usually a bad idea, since you can't assault from them anyway and they would be down the enemy's throat by turn 2 at any rate. Not to mention that as a Tau player I absolutely love to see 10/10/10 transports raining from the sky in front of my missile pod broadsides with interceptor.

2. splinter racks, whatever they are, they're pretty good apparently. My friend likes them anyway (although he makes some rather dubious tactical decisions at times, so take that for what it's worth)

3. if your transport gets blown up the unit inside has to take a pinning test. Lots of people forget this rule, and if your opponent is one of them you don't have to remind him...but you should.

Didn't you make a thread on Starting Imperial guard?
Nothing wrong with having more then one army but just wondering.

The strength of DE is speed and killyness, DE can really put in a lot of hurt when you play them well. Their weakness is S3, T3, AV10 vehicles and effectively no save on almost everything. It is the glass cannon army after all...

I've found that, for DE, offence is the best defence. You want to take as many threats out as you can, while you can, then you go after objective(s) with whatever is left on the table. Playing defensively as DE is hard, they really can't take much heat at all. But to correctly identify threats will take a lot of reading up, and obviously gameplay experience, generally speaking, I like to focus on mechs with our AT weapons as soon as possible, while poisoned guns will focus on infantry units that can do long range shootings. Though, this doesn't mean you need to rush your game, you want to wait, hide and reposition until you can do the most damage, rushing means you might end up with only a few units being able to get into range, which means dealing less damage, which means often times, you're leaving your fragile boats and mini planes in the open for your opponent to shoot at.

On the topic of poisoned guns, I'd first like to make a small correction on dementedwombat's post: Not everything is poisoned, only that the most common AI weapons for the army is poisoned. The poisoned shooting is a double-edged sword, on one hand(or edge?), it's as dementedwombat said, you get to ignore toughness, so armies that rely on high toughness tend to ... well, hate us. On the other hand however, poisoned guns lack a strength value, so while other armies with their S4 basic weapons could still try and take down a light-armoured mech, we don't have that option at all, so make sure to bring enough dark light weapons, HWG or whatever AT you want, because nothing sucks more than facing a full mech list and you haven't got enough tools to open those metal boxes.

In combat, only 1 unit can bring poisoned attack on every model, other units rely on either combat drugs or their natural strength to do damage.

Transports also don't get to deep strike; dementedwombat's friend is either playing a Duke list, or has bought the necessary upgrade for deep striking transports in every game they played. But he isn't wrong in that deep striking transports is almost never worth it, for that our fast skimmers can cover 12" - 30" quite easily in a turn, so unless you play on a massive table, getting to places should rarely be an issue.

Splinter racks are... well, different stroke for different folk, I won't deny that it is a very good upgrade, but I don't like the idea of having to get too close, so I'm more a venom person.

DE is 1 of those armies that work very well with MSU list, it's an army where less is more. Instead of fielding a larger unit to increase survival(it doesn't work), it's better to field unit in the minimal size required to get the upgrade(s) you need, so you can spend less points on one unit and hopefully be able to field another same unit. This is to take advantage of the fact that one unit can often only attack one unit at a time, and that we can kill very well also helps(it's usually better to make sure an unit is totally wiped out than to spread your damage around). Also, try not to mix roles, for example, trueborns can bring all the guns, but you shouldn't mix an unit of trueborn with say 2 shardcarbines and 2 blasters, reason being that you're mixing AI/AT weapons in an unit that probably won't last long enough to do both those roles, so instead, focus on AI or AT so they can do better at that, while they can.

Lastly, if you're fielding venoms, always buy the 2nd splinter cannon.

 kinratha wrote:
Didn't you make a thread on Starting Imperial guard?
Nothing wrong with having more then one army but just wondering.

I did, yes. I'm looking for other armies to run. I'm trying to decide which direction to go. I chose DE as they are my favorite xenos in the universe with their background and look. I started the IG thread to add to my Blood Angels. I'm not rushing to get anything yet, but I like to plan ahead.