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morgoth wrote:

1. Incorrect, the Beast Pack there has Eldrad, the Haemonculus and the Baron in it, totalling 42 wounds at mostly T3, some T4, or 50.4 S6/7 hits without saves, half of which will get the 4++ from the Khymeras, which, once fortuned (assumed), is equivalent to at least 60 hits on the Khymeras before even hitting anything else. With the rerolls and BS4 of the WS that do not have Shuriken Cannons in this setup, it's 8 full Wave Serpents or two turns of shooting just to get the Khymeras, not counting the Baron, Haemonculus, Eldrad, Beastmasters and Razorwing Flocks, most of those wounds can be hurt by ID though. Let's not forget possible invisibility or shrouding which do make it much better.

2. You're not counting the Wraith Knights

3. You're underestimating the Beast Star too. If Justin had deployed all, they would've mostly moved through Cover and would've had a 2+/3+ rerollable cover save against most attacks with a 4++ rerollable against the Serpent Shields.

Justin had the first turn, so there’s no worry about invisibility. Where are you getting a 2+/3+ rerollable cover save from? Eldrad’s powers were Invisibility, Executioner, Doom, and Guide. Woods + stealth is a 4+ non-rerollable, which is the same as the Khymerae’s invuln. That’s 40 wounds.

The flocks are 2 wounds, boosted to 4 if they have cover.

The beast masters are 5 wounds, boosted to 10 if they have cover, but don’t really matter regardless.

I assumed the Baron was the only character in the pack, but in the report, the Khymerae were all up front, and characters won’t matter once the rest of the pack is gone. If they were all up front, the baron would die from the first hit to get through the shadow field. Eldrad dies from 9 wounds (cover doesn’t matter), and would not be in the front after the first turn due to his slow speed. The Haemy dies after about 3 wounds (6 with cover), would also not be in the front after the first turn, and would deny the entire pack access to fleet (which he does not have) if he remained with the unit.

The wraith knights are largely inconsequential, as the serpents can pretty much handle the DE by themselves (hence the reason for this thread).

Shadow Reiver wrote:

Justin had the first turn, so there’s no worry about invisibility. Where are you getting a 2+/3+ rerollable cover save from? Eldrad’s powers were Invisibility, Executioner, Doom, and Guide. Woods + stealth is a 4+ non-rerollable, which is the same as the Khymerae’s invuln. That’s 40 wounds.

The flocks are 2 wounds, boosted to 4 if they have cover.

The beast masters are 5 wounds, boosted to 10 if they have cover, but don’t really matter regardless.

I assumed the Baron was the only character in the pack, but in the report, the Khymerae were all up front, and characters won’t matter once the rest of the pack is gone. If they were all up front, the baron would die from the first hit to get through the shadow field. Eldrad dies from 9 wounds (cover doesn’t matter), and would not be in the front after the first turn due to his slow speed. The Haemy dies after about 3 wounds (6 with cover), would also not be in the front after the first turn, and would deny the entire pack access to fleet (which he does not have) if he remained with the unit.

The wraith knights are largely inconsequential, as the serpents can pretty much handle the DE by themselves (hence the reason for this thread).

I think you're focusing on this specific game and drawing conclusions for other games.
The DE would have deployed differently if the Eldar had decided to put all his forces on the table.
The Deployment happens before spells are rolled.
In most of the cases, the beast star will not be down in one turn, may even be out of sight on first turn.
Because of that, invisibility matters, 2+ / 3+ rerollable are perfectly possible with ruins / others+shrouded (depending on spells).


In this case, the Beast Star did not really get a perfect combo up and was rather weak because of that.


I'm definitely not going to say the deployment decision was a smart one, but your arguments against it aren't correct imo.

In most cases, a decent serpent army can put down a beast pack in a single turn. The only way to keep it alive for a second turn is for the DE player to go first with fortune/invisibility. With DE primary, you will pretty much never have both powers up, and the OP doesn’t even want eldar allies to begin with. Cover saves don’t matter much, given how many ignores cover shots are involved, and the serpent’s maneuverability, which allows it to focus on portions of the pack that can’t fit inside terrain.

If the DE player hides the beast pack (difficult vs. 60” ignores cover shots on a 12”/turn mobile platform), that just gives the serpents free reign against the rest of his (incredibly fragile) list - especially since the positioning required to hide the pack probably set back its assault by a turn (if not more).

In none of these situations does it help to reserve the serpents (the cornerstone of Justin’s strategy). That just cuts firepower when you need it most, in order to “preserve” units that are virtually unkillable (outside assault).

@jy2 I understand that you think he's a great player- and he may be with other armies but from the evidence I've seen he's not. It's not a big deal, he's just not up to par with the better Eldar tournament players now. You can analyze it all you want, it doesn't change that he made critical mistakes that many other players wouldn't have made.

@morgoth this is a tactics thread for Dark Eldar dealing with wave serpents without Eldar allies. You don't think Eldar are as good as claimed. Noted. For the past three pages you've done nothing but troll the thread, and if we can I'd like to return to the topic at hand- regardless of whether you agree with the rest of the thread. This is not a debate thread in general discussion, this is a tactics thread where your arguments not only don't help, but they are impeding our ability to create a solutions.

To begin with Justin's list was really unoriginal. Four DAvu and a pair of WK. It is also hard to read that batrep - it is so long. That said DE should have some tools to negate that list. There is no way that Justin should have reserved though. He split his force in half and gave up his alpha strike.

On topic ... we have been discussing the Duke a bit at TDC ... you can drop three blasterborn squads behind serpents and do some damage. You can take heat of your wyches early. Four blaster shots and a venom is almost the same cost as a rav with one more shot and the dual scs.

The problems with that approach are:

1. They won't arrive until after the serpents' alpha (and possibly even beta, gamma, and delta) strikes.
2. Seeing those blasters in reserve, why would your opponent position his serpents in a way that allows you to deep strike behind them?

I don't see deep striking blasterborn taking the heat off anything. Instead, they'll have to bum rush the serpents along with your wyches and beastpack in an attempt at target saturation. I hope you're going first.

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

Good luck trying to table eldar with DE. In maelstrom they literally can ignore us and win handily. It's also nearly impossible to table a solid Eldar list unless your clubbing seals.

Can I ask an honest question Red? Why do you participate in these threads? I'm not trying to troll you, I'd legitimately like to know.
Your advice seems to boil down to "Can't win. Don't try. Quit now." in the various DE threads. Seems like that'd be a one-and-done proposition.
Do you have any suggestions for how DE can handle Wave Serpents?

He didn't say they can't be beat, only that they can't be tabled.
How would I deal with eldar? MSU. Nobody does it like DE.
We get 30 point troop units, 36 points elite units, 12 point fast attack units, and 50 point HQ's.
At 1850 points, you could plop down 64 units.
Compare that to the typical eldar list of 10-12 units + a few characters, and you've got them really struggling to kill enough.

Thanks Matt. Pretty much this. I never said they can't be beat but suggesting DE can table CWE serpent spam is ridiculous as a strategy.

I participate in these threads to share and garner experience and ideas. That doesn't mean I should or will sit by and listen to poor ideas without providing feedback. So far this thread hasn't been about sharing useful ideas, if you reread it you'll find that it sways way off course where 1-2 people with little or no experience on the subject with DE decided to lecture every experienced player on how WS weren't actually that good and that we were bad and or whiny and should have been trying to table our enemies.

I never said can't win, quit or don't try and suggesting I did very much is trolling and or flaming behavior on your part. Saying your not trying to doesn't excuse you.

Can I ask you what DE models you own and have used? What point level you normally play at?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Everyone was polite at first but you still trying to push this dead horse about how we can all learn from one of your many "pro-level" opponents, who struggled to win a match in which his army just short of hard counters his opponents, is pretentious and quite frankly a little insulting. Believe it or not we do know the game, and no we don't need to pay any heed to such a blatantly low skill match up full of decisions so unrealistic that it's one step away from being anecdotal, just because you have the belief that anyone to ever beat you at 40k must be a godtier player whose games the rest of us should endeavour to learn from.

I guarantee when I play this match up it is at a much higher level of play, and I strongly suspect the same is true for Red Corsair, Hawaii Matt, and well practically anyone who shares with their opponent the virtue of having a solid grasp on the game and more importantly the match-up.

^This

You came in with a poor example, which in itself is fine, but then you championed the idea that Justin Cook is basically better then all of us and anything he does, even with little experience leaves us in his shadow. All this coming from you, a guy whose only ever played against the guy one time and who has minimal experience with the topic at hand anyway Ego much?

You do realize that just because someone plays at events or writes batreps it doesn't make them the best or only good player ever right?

I've read this thread with many differing reactions.
Sympathy, confusion, shock and mild amusement.

How do Dark Eldar beat serpent spam? (5+ waveserpents)

The recipe is:

3 ravagers
4+ units of haywire wyches in venoms
Beaststar (all khymerae, none of this razorwing foo foo stuff)
as many allied in waveserpents as you can get.
Pray you go first.


Then, and pretty much ONLY then can you beat a serpentspam army when playing against a halfway competent opponent. But to do so, you have to be a good general yourself!

If he goes first... you lose. If you roll poorly with serpent shields... you lose. If you deploy stupidly... you lose.

Gw could not have written a better Dark Eldar counter than the waveserpent. What it comes with stock is designed to destroy us, and do so easily. When upgraded slightly, it is death incarnate to our forces.

To think differently means one of two things- You have yet to face a tournament level list featuring them at the hands of an able general, or, your love for the DE blinds you to the fact that, yes, there are better units than ours out there. Much better!

The above is just my opinion, backed by many many years of tournament play using DE.

Can people stop suggest to use Eldar allies? That is is something I explicitly wanted to avoid, because as soon as people start saying "take an allied Farsees, oh, and a Wave Serpent or two, and what the check, throw in a WraithKnight as well" well then, what is the point of playing Dark Eldar at all? If you did that then 're Dark Elder would simply be holding your Elder forces back! Pure Dark Eldar, how do we counter a WELL ROUNDED Eldar list that contains three WaveSerpents, Warp Spiders and those Forge World skimmers that have pulse lasers. It's not even overly competitive, I just want to be able to have a good with a friend, because as far as I know, me removing models every shooting phase is no fun for either of us...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Can people stop suggest to use Eldar allies? That is is something I explicitly wanted to avoid, because as soon as people start saying "take an allied Farsees, oh, and a Wave Serpent or two, and what the check, throw in a WraithKnight as well" well then, what is the point of playing Dark Eldar at all? If you did that then 're Dark Elder would simply be holding your Elder forces back! Pure Dark Eldar, how do we counter a WELL ROUNDED Eldar list that contains three WaveSerpents, Warp Spiders and those Forge World skimmers that have pulse lasers. It's not even overly competitive, I just want to be able to have a good with a friend, because as far as I know, me removing models every shooting phase is no fun for either of us...

hmm... Is there a summary of whats been covered? Six pages is daunting!

 Anglacon wrote:


To think differently means one of two things- You have yet to face a tournament level list featuring them at the hands of an able general, or, your love for the DE blinds you to the fact that, yes, there are better units than ours out there. Much better!

The above is just my opinion, backed by many many years of tournament play using DE.

All that tournament experience didn't help you read the original post about beating Eldar without using allies

I agree with your opinions though, although i think you missed the third reason - the bulk of the players insisting Eldar are an easy matchup, are of course Eldar players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jancoran wrote:
hmm... Is there a summary of whats been covered? Six pages is daunting!

In the way of actual answers to the topic, very little. Almost every suggestion has Eldar allies or is to just "outplay" the Wave Serpents.

I think the best suggestions involve Beastpacks, Sliscus, Wyches, and putting Haywire Grenades on deepstriking Blasterborn. Ravagers don't seem cost effective in this match up. I'm sure there was 1 or 2 other good suggestions as well.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

What in my army can counter these things! They sit at the very nadir of effectiveness of Dark Lances, which are great against AV 10,11,13 and 14 but have trouble with AV 12, especially when that AV 12 has a 3+ cover save when jinking and has the possibility ti downgrade pens to glances. If i was to do the math, the Wave Serpent has 3 hull points, so I glance on 4+ so i need 6 hits, he has a 3+ jink so i need 18(!!!!) Dark Lance shots to take down a single Wave Serpent via hull points.That simply isn't possible, *EVEN* when they are snap firing they still have the ability destroy most Dark Eldar vehicles with the Twin-Linked Scatter laser and the 'Twin-linked' Serpent Shield. 'Haywire Wyches!' i here you shout, but how on Earth do the Wyches get there in a 2 Hull Point AV 10 Venom. Without resorted to Eldar allies, how can i handle this horrible, horrible machine that can personally take out every tank in my army even when snap firing?

Well here's my suggestions WITHOUT the use of allies.

1. Beast Packs are really fast. I use 4 Clawed Fiends. Arrange the unit this way: 3 BeastMasters in the front, 1 Clawed Fiend, Beast Master, 3 Clawed Fiends, 2 Razorwing Flocks. If you mull this for a while it will make sense to you. This unit is fast, becomes very tough and hits really hard when it arrives.
Clearly it would benefit from a Phantasm Grenade Launcher and the stealth doesn't hurt. So Baron Sathonyx makes an ideal attendant for the unit. If you do, put one more beast Master up front. This unit can benefit greatly from mobile cover. The Dark Eldar have a hell of a lot of it available.

2. 4 Grotesques, Abberation with Scissorhands, the Master Haemonculus upgrade and led by the evil Urien Rakarth in a Raider. The Raider is an assault vehicle. It can land on the enemy doorstep, wait for the inevitable fussilade to kill; the vehicle and then assault from the wreckage. Tough, resilient and a major issue if they get the charge, and they can multicharge without losing much efficacy.

3. Webway Portals and Talos Pain Engines unloaded up front and personal.

4. Sslyth. Each Archon allows you to take a group of 3. 105 points isn't a lot to commit, it's 6 wounds that are tougher than Wyches when concerning themselves with vehicles they want to kill, and 15 STR 5 attacks is nothing to sniff at. best of all, it's an HQ slot so it can be taken without losing much.

5. Overlooked perhaps in 7E is the way Ramming now works. You're already headed that way anyways. You may have even accepted the death of the Raiders. Accept their death on your terms. Shock Prows help. Spear them in the rear and git 'em.

These methods don't rely on Lances. They rely on brazen courage and speed, something the Dark Eldar are all about. =)

Is there any reason for a DE player to not move all of his Raiders 30" on the first turn to close that distance once and for all ?

You'll be taking losses, but what's the big difference with doing it slowly while firing useless weapons ?

Squad positioning > single Dark Lance shot. Even the Dais, you might have 3 shots but your squad is more important. Deepstriking is probably better. And I have trouble ever justifying Raider over Venom. Which you should also deepstrike.

 SHUPPET wrote:

All that tournament experience didn't help you read the original post about beating Eldar without using allies

Lol, oh I read it, it is just that the answer he wants is not possible.

It is like asking "What is 2+2, and don't say 4!"

He then later appended his question (how do DE beat waveserpents) to "How does DE beat 2-3 serpents and other units in a well rounded list?"

Two completely different questions.

I didn't even catch that last bit

Two very different questions indeed. And there is no cost efficient answer to either. 2-3 can be dealt with though.

its fairly clear that the answer cna be broken down in several sections:

All but the most die hard Wave Serpent Applogists (and for some reason these seem to be Eldar players -wow what a surprise) confirm that this unit is OP, especially when in numbers.
The suggestions are:

Make sure you only play against Eldar players that don't know what they are doing (see the one single flawed battle report that was dredged up where Dark Eldar/Eldar (not just Dark Eldar obviously) force manages to defeat a very poorly played (almost suspiciously so) Eldar force)
Use Eldar Allies - so debatable why its even worth playing Dark Eldar which brings us on to the other genius suggestion:
Don't play Dark Eldar they are not good enough (but apparently Wave Serpents are totally balanced)

re the much more pertinent sugegsitons:

Beast packs - need to try them more to see if effective
Grotesques in a Raider - they, Urien and the Horms are not fleet so its harder to get he charge off and if one WS destroyed the vehicle (which it will) Other Eldar can trash them as they sit in the open.
Webway portal - Can't assault out of it? Plus need to survive long enough to delivery it? Delivery unit almost certian to die doning nothing else and the Eldar know that assault units have a turn of stadning around when they get out - ready to be shot by the Cheese Serpents and their cargo
Ssylth - remember you need to take all the other comp elements of a Court so to get each unit of 3 you need to spend 145 pts not 105.
Ramming - again need to try but sounds fun.......

:(

 Mr Morden wrote:

Ramming - again need to try but sounds fun.......

1 hit at a strength equal to half your armor value.
That's S5, + 1 or 2 more for the prow.
At best you're looking at 1 S7 hit.
I guess you could go with raiders and shock prows and retrofire engines. Deep strike in, take your pot shots, Jink to try and survive, then ram.
I think you're more likely to get the kills with the dark lances then the rams.
One thing that I have noticed, is that Achons are total beat sticks compared to anything eldar. The set up I've been testing is Agonizer, Huskblade, combat drugs, shadowfield, soul trap, and haywire grenades.
You choose between S3 AP2 instant death, and wound on 4+ AP3. Soul trap can boost you to S6, and drugs + furious charge can give you another 2 points of strength.
I've had some luck using the stunclaw to grab and isolate an IC, and let the Achons go to town.
If the Achons get charged up (via soul trap) they become a huge threat to anything. Looking forward to the new book where they get jetbikes back.

While they don't kill waveserpents on their own, they do make the eldar player want to keep his stuff in the transport.

First:
I think we need some sample eldar list for reference.

For examle pretty soft 1750 tac one:

Farseer, jbike, sing spear, mantle, spirit stone of anat...blah

5 DAvengers in serpent (scatterL, Shur Cannon, Holo)
5 DAvengers in serpent (scatterL, Shur Cannon, Holo)
5 DAvengers in serpent (scatterL, Shur Cannon, Holo)
5 DAvengers in serpent (scatterL, Shur Cannon, Holo)

Crimson hunter
5 warp spiders

wraithknight
wraithknight


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Second: we need to go from the contrary - removing what will make us lose untill we'll come to something (or not :/) .

I think the first, what will make us lose to the list from the previous post, is not having the first turn - there are 6 (7) fast moving units, each capable of one-shoting our vehicles, or killing ...loads of our infantry.

Reserve "games" will not help: we need to have something on the table capable of surviving one turn to not autolose (1/4 of the force for example), most of it will be dead or incapable after fighting for 1-2 turns agains full enemy army, then will have "first turn with half the army" (not so good first turn either cause we'll be flying from table edge/scattering with deep strike)... It just better to get normal first turn.

Soo, it makes us in need of Vect or/and Baron.

The chances, as I remember, are 62% first turn for Baron, 67% for Vect and 73% for a team of both.

Do this way of thinking looks resonable?

lol... so that's a soft list

It has 2 WK and 5 WS, like 80% of the core of the most competitive 1850 lists.

Let's continue.

Baron is fine, Vect is overcosted as hell, but still 240 points is less than 4 venoms which shurely be dead if we'll go second. So we are keepeng both.

345 points/

As was suggested previously - for serpent hunt we'll be using beastpack with max chimerae. (360 points) Baron will be with them, vect will join them at the end of first turn for fearless (transport 6' + 6' disembark)

Forth: Wrathknights. Chimerae suck against them, but we have obvious plan - venoms! 2 6W 3+ model will need 54 poisoned hits to die, so 6 venoms looks fine to alpha them.
6*65=390

warriors with blasters inside - they are troops and they needed to fight turbo-busting around beastpack serpents.
60*6=360

1455 points

For the last ~300 points i think we still need to add some razorwings to beaststar and ravagers (maybe drop some chimerae) for some flexibility against other armies.

As I see the most obvious way for Eldar be to reserve all exept serpents, than DE will have 2 turns of fighting against half the points.
Still will be hard battle - I think all venoms will be down before they'll got a chance to shoot at knights, but hope all serpents will be down too,
So it will be knights and remains of avengers vs warriors and remains of beasts.
50/50
:/

-Edit for clarity-

If you try and alpha and don't go first, it's over. If you do get the alpha, you still have a solid fight. I don't find that giving up 27% of the games outright as acceptable.
Wave Serpents have to be killed in combat. We lack the volume of mid strength shots to get past a 3+ jink, even if we are firing on rear armor 10.
Wraithknights can be killed by most things, and agonizers do a pretty good job, as well as massed poisoned shots or blaster/lance fire. I don't like poison, because if the knight get's re-rolls he's suddenly immune.
I'm thinking that deep striking is still the way to go, you just have to put something survivable on the table until the force comes in.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looking at some shooting match ups, venoms aren't the way to go against serpents.

With only 2 hull points, venoms will die to a single serpent firing all too often, even with the 4+ jink. Jinking the venom hoses your firepower, significantly.
On the other hand, having a 3rd hull point, a jinking Raider with a night shield has a shot at surviving from a single serpents, forcing the eldar to massively over-kill, which keeps something else alive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
How about a different approach.
A 210 point unit (5 dire avengers, serpent, shur-cannon, twin-scatter and holo) will typically kill a DE transport, and if in range, 5 DE that were inside (via dire avengers); every turn.

What can DE field that can shrug off D6+1 S7 no cover, 3 S6 eldar-rending and 4 S6 shots, that costs a lot less than 210 points?

To me, that is what to build the list around.
The only two things I see that can take that firepower is:
Vect and his bitch'n ride (445, + the cost of 9 homies to hang out with him), and the Monstrous Heavy Support Choices. You can't spam vect, so that leaves us with the heavies.

A wave serpent firing at full effect at a Talos in the open is going to do ~ 1.6 wounds. That's 210 points of shooting being absorbed by 110 points of monster.

Fluff out the troops with as cheap as possible units. You won't survive if the eldar bother to shoot at you, so be as numerous and cheap as possible to limit your losses when you do draw that attention.

With double force org (really the only options since we cannot ally) 6 Talos at 660 points, each with the injectors and haywire blaster. In combat they will tear up the serpents, on the way in, they will get some haywire hits.
With D6+1 S7 AP2 attacks and forcing Toughness tests or instant death, they are a threat to everything, but still cheap and durable enough to take lots of. Poisoned shots from the rest of the army can threaten wraithknights and other hard targets.

@HM, talos and infantry with agonizers/hayware are sloooow. You will never ger into cc with eldar with them (if wrathknight will not charge you themself).

For absorbing damage chimerae are the best in DE codex - full fire of static serpent kills 4 of them(48 points), and they are beasts, so only one turn of shooting before charge.

Also i think you don't get 27% of going second with B+V. Half of it - chance of stealing for eldar if we win initial roll, second halve - our chance not to steal with vect. In both cases it's still wery risky for an opponent to leave knights and other soft targets on the table against 6 venoms, so even if eldar goes first he still need to reserve significant part of his army.

elotar wrote:
@HM, talos and infantry with agonizers/hayware are sloooow. You will never ger into cc with eldar with them (if wrathknight will not charge you themself).

For absorbing damage chimerae are the best in DE codex - full fire of static serpent kills 4 of them(48 points), and they are beasts, so only one turn of shooting before charge.

Also i think you don't get 27% of going second with B+V. Half of it - chance of stealing for eldar if we win initial roll, second halve - our chance not to steal with vect. In both cases it's still wery risky for an opponent to leave knights and other soft targets on the table against 6 venoms, so even if eldar goes first he still need to reserve significant part of his army.

He's doesn't have to reserve a significant portion. He can reserve just the knights. With only mech on the table, venoms do nothing at all.
I haven't played much, but I've been watching as I piece together my army. 4 serpents can largely ignore the rest of the army and gun down the beast pack without too much concern.
One volley from the warwalkers, followed by the serpents (at 30-36" out) tend to obliterate all.

I don't think avoiding 6 Talos is as easy as it sounds, and at 660 points, you could pair the talos spam with the beast pack.
Hell, at 660 points, you can run 6 talos with 2 beast packs (5 beast masters, 15 chamerae and 3 razorwings). That I have not seen, and might just work.

What is interesting is that 9 point warriors soak the shooting almost as well. 2/3rds of the serp shooting is AP- or AP6, letting warriors take their 5+ save. Full shooting kills ~6 and a half warriors, about 57 points worth. If you're in cover, it drops down to 51 points worth killed. Is the answer in plain sight? Spam warriors?

-Matt

 Anglacon wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

All that tournament experience didn't help you read the original post about beating Eldar without using allies

Lol, oh I read it, it is just that the answer he wants is not possible.

It is like asking "What is 2+2, and don't say 4!"

He then later appended his question (how do DE beat waveserpents) to "How does DE beat 2-3 serpents and other units in a well rounded list?"

Two completely questions.

''Not possible'' to beat Eldar with Dark Eldar without resorting to allies. Well i am sorry to say, but that's simply not good enough Gamesworkshop, shame on you. Yes, i am very interested in a Pure Dark Eldar list that can beat a Serpent Spam, because if i come across it in a tournament i want to have a list that has a fighting chance. The reason i changed the question is because it has already been answered, albeit not to my satisfaction, that there simply is no definite answer. Beast Packs may work due to their speed and strength 4 attacks, they may also be shot of the table very easily because no allies means no invisibility, no fortune and no shrouded, so it is basically just 30 wounds with a 4++. To a Serpent Spam, that isn't overly daunting, especially when you consider a Farseer rolling on telepathy could control them, a Wraithknight would tarpit them. Grotesques could work for the same reasons, but they are also reliant on a 3 HP AV 10 Raider to get them were they need to be. Blaster born leave much to be desired, even with a perfect deep strike into rear armour 4 Dark Lance shots, 3 hits, 1.5 glance/pen, 3+ cover, 0.5 Glance/Pens. add that to only exploding o a 6, they are far from reliable. But i also disagree strongly with your comment;

It is like asking "What is 2+2, and don't say 4!"

A comment which i find frankly ignorant, due to the nature of the game. It's a dice based game, meaning there is always an inherent luck factor, so saying that Dark Eldar don't have the tools is just wrong, Beast Pack as previously mentioned. The problem lays with these tools being inefficient points wise or the Eldar being able to counter it. Comparing a luck based, tactically driven miniature war gaming scenario into ''2+2'' shows a distinct lack of thought in the subject.

As for my new question, how would you handle 2/3 Wave Serpents for similar points? The problem i am seeing is if the best tool we have is the Beast Pack, then they will be a priority to go down, then i am left with just a load of lances. Has anyone considered multiple Beast Packs? They are cheap enough and durable and now even scoring, is 2/3 Khymerae beast packs out of the question?

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 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

As for my new question, how would you handle 2/3 Wave Serpents for similar points? The problem i am seeing is if the best tool we have is the Beast Pack, then they will be a priority to go down, then i am left with just a load of lances. Has anyone considered multiple Beast Packs? They are cheap enough and durable and now even scoring, is 2/3 Khymerae beast packs out of the question?
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I don't get the drama really. For a cost of the serpent you can get 14 chimerae pack, which is fast and got enough wounds to survive 2 turns of it's shooting and kill it (moving serpent kills like 3 chimerae per turn, static - 4).

The real problem is if he DO NOT shoot at beasts, but drop our vehicles, and then deal with beasts using units, equiped for it (knights/wrathlords/ets). That's why you need army-wide tactics agains eldar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So list:
Vect - 240
Baron - 105

Wariors in raider - 105 (no blasters - warriors just for poison shots)
Wariors in raider - 105
Wariors in raider - 105
Wariors in raider - 105
Wariors in raider - 105
Wariors in raider - 105

Beastpack. 15 chimerae - 221
Beastpack. 14 chimerae - 209

Ravager, ffield - 115
Ravager, ffield - 115
Ravager, ffield - 115

1750 :/

Baron joins one pack, H&R if it'll be charged by knight, Vect - second one, he can kill knight in hth.

Double beast pack is the only hope. Though your packs really need some rending to help out.
Ravagers seem to be pretty meh now. With a 1:6 explodes on the penetrating hit, the full allotment of firepower is going to net 3 hull points to a target in the open.
I'd rather have the talos. If I'm only going to get 3 glances, I'll take the hayware blasters (more reliable) and the much more durable T7 3+ save over the Av11 open-topped.
If you just want poisoned shots, why aren't you running venoms?

Troops, obviously, can be anything. Raiders just to add lances to alpha strike.

Or Disintegrator Cannons. =)

 Jancoran wrote:
Or Disintegrator Cannons. =)

Can only damage it on the rear - due to the Wave Sepents "oh so weak" AV 12 armour..................