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.

Buffed PfP and more survivable Raiders means Wyches got buffed. They just lost most of their utility against vehicles (which they never should have had in the first place).

Other than the WWP , honestly the artifacts they have are not terribly impressive at all.

Otherwise reading it a bit it's a good codex imo. It's not overpowered, some units that were bad got good. Some units that have NEVER been good (wyches) other than for like one thing stayed the same option. Also PFP is really good. Especially as you can manipulate it. It's possible to make it so Turn 1 becomes Turn 3, and that's crazy.

I mean seriously a army with a majority Feel No Pain is excellent.

Plus the army is designed around a beta strike with all that Deep Striking. Then you throw in Feel No Pain plus Furious Charge.

That isn't even considering all the wonderful combos you can have with the Eldar such as Dark Reapers in Venoms or Ravagers, Deep STriking Non Scattering Wraith Guard or Fire Dragons.

Everyone get's aggravated with Fliers, yeah you can take 6 of them.

People don't yet appreciate Reavers.

They'll learn.

mercury14 wrote:
People don't yet appreciate Reavers.

They'll learn.

What would you say is the better version of Bladevanes, 5th or 7th? I hear people say that they got nerfed as they can no longer fly over troops and just wreck face..

Which version hits at I10, Ignores Invisibility and rends?

I would go with that version.

Hollismason wrote:Other than the WWP , honestly the artifacts they have are not terribly impressive at all.

I kind of like the two Ld modifiers. If you take 2 HQs with WWP, strong beta strike units, and the 2 Ld modifier artifacts you could realistically force a bunch of -4 Ld tests to take wounds and run from the wounds. If you combo these with some spiritseers for psychic shriek, invisibility, and shrouding you could do some nasty stuff. I am just trying to figure out what unit I want to use to act as meat shields. I think grots may end up more efficient.

Hollismason wrote:Plus the army is designed around a beta strike with all that Deep Striking. Then you throw in Feel No Pain plus Furious Charge.

I think this is where much of the criticism stems from. People are still thinking they need to alpha strike with a dark eldar army and thus are not looking at the strengths of this codex. With some reserves manipulation and a solid camping element to survive turn 1/2 you are really looking at an excellent beta strike army and one in which the later they arrive the harder they become to deal with. There is really nothing but advantages to a DE to fight starting turn 2 or 3 rather than to start on turn 1 when they are weakest.

Hollismason wrote:That isn't even considering all the wonderful combos you can have with the Eldar such as Dark Reapers in Venoms or Ravagers, Deep STriking Non Scattering Wraith Guard or Fire Dragons.

I love the idea of reapers in a venom or ravager. You can DS them to get side and rear armour.

Leth wrote:Which version hits at I10, Ignores Invisibility and rends?

Totally agree. the new reavers are much better as they can now do more damage, to more different targets, and stay alive longer by staying in melee through the opponent's shooting phase and hit and run out (gaining extra movement in the process!) to shoot and charge something again...if you could give them split fire they would be god like.

Yeah I mean what is that like 200 points for a full Reaver Squad that has 4D6 ST6 HOW hits that Rend plus 12 ST4 Rending Hits.
Oh and they get Feel No Pain at some point, plus get Furious Charge possibly. ( I think they get the chart)And don't they get Combat Drugs? Yeah that's a crazy good squad, they'll absolutely beat the crap out of most things.The army also has multiple awesome formations, like seriously there are some that are just awesome.

Even the supposed "terrible" Troop choice can go in a Raider that deep strikes and fires off some insane amount of shots with Splinter Rifles and Splinter Cannons all that reroll to hit if it has a wrack.I mean seriously multiple things in the army became incredibly good. Especially the Archon's Court, Medusas, AP3 Template, yeah that's terrible.Then add in all the Instant Death , I'd hate to face this with a Tyranid army. It's a good codex, it has some like not terrible units, but then when you actually look at them it's like waaaait a second.Seriously, stop complaining about Wyches. A 4+ Dodge and most likely Feel No Pain, yeah that's terrible for 10 points.It even fits in the fluff with the idea that they like to prolong suffering and such that'd they'd be a army that starts really moving along at the 2nd turn.

Okay it's no longer a Alpha Strike army, but when you look at it from the perspective that you can manipulate reserves and even at Turn 3 the "crappy" squads have Feel No Pain. What's to gripe about. It puts even more pressure on your opponent to end things quickly because the longer your on the board the worse it gets for them. That's awesome. Then you get a beta-strike that's incredibly powerful. Being able to Deep STrike a unit where you want it and not scatter and it's not a UNIQUE item, you can take TWO HQs with it or more possibly.

^ 100% Truth.

Problem with running 9 fliers is our flyers are mediocre, poorly armouried and lack of hover/vector dancer really hurt them.

mercury14 wrote:
Buffed PfP and more survivable Raiders means Wyches got buffed. They just lost most of their utility against vehicles (which they never should have had in the first place).

Did you play with the 3.5 codex? Because if you had you would realize how much of a shadow wyches have been since then.

Sucking and being updated to suck marginally less but still mostly sucking isn't gona cut it for most folks so we should move on from the wych debate maybe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hollismason wrote:
Yeah I mean what is that like 200 points for a full Reaver Squad that has 4D6 ST6 HOW hits that Rend plus 12 ST4 Rending Hits.

I like reavers but people need to stop with the unrealistic assumptions that you will somehow base every reaver for HoW. Also your assumption is wrong because it assumes bikes can be 16 strong. Best case scenario, if somehow you manage to get a full unit based its 4d6 s6 + 8 s4

It's not that fething hard. Also that's still super good. I did look it up 9 come to almost 200 perfectly. Add in they get combat drugs, and the Feel No Pain, that's pretty good.

It's a really good unit.

Hollismason wrote:
It's not that fething hard. Also that's still super good. I did look it up 9 come to almost 200 perfectly. Add in they get combat drugs, and the Feel No Pain, that's pretty good.

It's a really good unit.

Actually it is pretty hard if your following the rules for assault correctly moving the closest to closest by shortest route. HoW triggers at i10 before ANY piles ins. I like the reavers a lot but I think the 12 man units are too big and a point sink. I'll be running 6 man harassment teams personally since MSU is so big right now. As I said it is way too hard trying to base 12 bikes on the charge unless your facing horde lists, it is also overkill against things like combat squads.

Yeah plus you know it's not like you are going to be hurting for Fast Attack with up to 6 slots available with that Data Slate.

Hollismason wrote:
Yeah plus you know it's not like you are going to be hurting for Fast Attack with up to 6 slots available with that Data Slate.

Exactly. If you make them too large then they will draw more fire then they can take. They are cheap per model but they get expensive rather fast as a unit if your not careful.

Except closest to closest is only for the first model. After that you go model by model and as long as you meet the requirements you have a lot of freedom.

Also 3+ Jink is pretty significant

rollawaythestone wrote:

Whats the math on Reavers going after a Knight Titan? Ignoring that Ion Shield and smashing it with loads of Rending HoW in it's back or side sounds like a decent possibility off the top of my head.

Full squad with 4 caltrops, you're looking at good odds of knocking of 3 hull points.

 Leth wrote:
Except closest to closest is only for the first model. After that you go model by model and as long as you meet the requirements you have a lot of freedom.

Also 3+ Jink is pretty significant

^^


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elmir wrote:
no, a model can only take on artifact normally (same for all the codexes right now, at least the 6th and up codexes)

"Only one of each Artefact of Cruelty may be taken per army. A model may take one of the following:"

So you can't go and stack artifacts on 1 model. Note the difference with, for instance, the arcane wargear wording:

"A model may take one of each of the following:"

I just want to point out that it doesn't actually say this.

It says ""Only one of each of the following relics may be taken per army."

There is absolutely no restriction on the amount of Relics a model can take. I've tripple checked both the Coven book and the Dark Eldar book. This restriction may exist in other Codexes, but it does not exist in this one.

GW isn't big on consistency.

the Ork codex restricts you to one per IC. The Ghaz supplement does not.

Since I may have gotten a bit overly excited about the DE codex coming out and I may have (in preparation for the impending release) purchased a bunch of wych units to make a Wych Cult force I guess I may be stuck now lol.

Don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad codex by any means, in fact I very much like it. It seems the Wych units are somewhat underpowered according to many people here. I'm not sure I buy into them being the garbage that some people make them out to be, but on my first look I'll agree they don't look to be the most competitive options. Combat drugs and PfP should help them compete, just means they're not an alpha strike force, patience (oddly enough) may be the winning factor in using them successfully.

Their use does seem a bit counter intuitive to be sure but I'm not against the challenge, in fact I'm looking forward to it. used right I think a unit of bloodbrides with a succubus (prob glaive and armor of misery I think) DS with the WWP used properly could make a big mess of some squads. I know there are better options than the Bloodbrides for melee but I got a box to convert into them so they look different than normal wyches and so I'm determined to use them. They'll be able to pump out a lot of attacks with a siren too and should be a fairly deadly unit.

I'm intrigued by the incubi with a klaivex, that seems like a pretty solid unit. Demi-klaives do seem rather overpriced for something that only gives you one extra attack but at the cost of all your attacks having a lower chance to wound.

I like the archite glaive for the succubus, seems like a solid choice for it's points cost. The agoniser I think should be dropped 5 points and I feel it'd be a fair bargain.

This is the first time I'll be playing DE and so I have no pre-7th notions of how the army was/should be. I don't play competitively either, just casual fun games with whomever will be kind enough to square off on the table with me that day. I'm rather excited to try out this force and I'm definitely not ready to write off the wych cult force yet, still seems like lotsa fun and I'll reserve an opinion on wyches as troops until I get a few matches in at the very least.

Also reavers look very appealing, solid unit on paper imo, I really wanna try hellions though, looks a lot worse on paper but meh, they might surprise me.

I am going to miss darting Strike for Drazhar. I wanted to put him in my new DE army just for that reason. It looked hilariously fun.

 Leth wrote:
Except closest to closest is only for the first model. After that you go model by model and as long as you meet the requirements you have a lot of freedom.

Also 3+ Jink is pretty significant

And with no fleet do to being bikes the average roll is a 7, have fun getting the lead guy in and then having everyone else magically base. I love how that lead model is super important when people are factoring in overwatch and the difficulty of making assaults, but then later it is so easy not only to base one guy for combat, but heck the whole crew will get in before pile ins. It doesn't happen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

ShadarLogoth wrote:

 Leth wrote:
Except closest to closest is only for the first model. After that you go model by model and as long as you meet the requirements you have a lot of freedom.

Also 3+ Jink is pretty significant

^^


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Elmir wrote:
no, a model can only take on artifact normally (same for all the codexes right now, at least the 6th and up codexes)

"Only one of each Artefact of Cruelty may be taken per army. A model may take one of the following:"

So you can't go and stack artifacts on 1 model. Note the difference with, for instance, the arcane wargear wording:

"A model may take one of each of the following:"

I just want to point out that it doesn't actually say this.

It says ""Only one of each of the following relics may be taken per army."

There is absolutely no restriction on the amount of Relics a model can take. I've tripple checked both the Coven book and the Dark Eldar book. This restriction may exist in other Codexes, but it does not exist in this one.

Except it flat out says otherwise.

 Red Corsair wrote:


Except it flat out says otherwise.

I think it would aid the point you are making if you had some source to back it up. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or rude in this btw, this is not an attack on you Red Corsair, I'm just trying to help out. Since the artifact thing still seems to go back and forth here is the pertinent information. On page 69 in the wargear list if you look right under artefacts of cruelty it states that you may only take one each artefact per army. The line right under that reads "A model may take one of the following:" One obviously being the operative word there. Some confusion may be stemming from page 109 in the artefact descriptions where it does say that you may only take one of each per army but it doesn't mention only one per model. Under the unit entries it also says "may take choices from:... artefacts of cruelty" and of course artefacts is lumped in with everything else with nothing to remind you that you may only take one.

TLDR page 69 has the important info, only one artefact per HQ

It's the same thing as the ork codex which is widely accepted as one per model.

Depending on placement around a unit it is quite easy to get multiple guys into BTB.

Now am I suggesting that every one will make it in every time, of course not.

But it is quite easy to get three models into BTB with one 25mm base.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:


Except it flat out says otherwise.

I think it would aid the point you are making if you had some source to back it up. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or rude in this btw, this is not an attack on you Red Corsair, I'm just trying to help out. Since the artifact thing still seems to go back and forth here is the pertinent information. On page 69 in the wargear list if you look right under artefacts of cruelty it states that you may only take one each artefact per army. The line right under that reads "A model may take one of the following:" One obviously being the operative word there. Some confusion may be stemming from page 109 in the artefact descriptions where it does say that you may only take one of each per army but it doesn't mention only one per model. Under the unit entries it also says "may take choices from:... artefacts of cruelty" and of course artefacts is lumped in with everything else with nothing to remind you that you may only take one.

TLDR page 69 has the important info, only one artefact per HQ

Exalted this. Thank you for clarifying which page this wording was on. I felt like I was taking crazy pills because I kept reading the p. 109 words.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

And with no fleet do to being bikes the average roll is a 7, have fun getting the lead guy in and then having everyone else magically base. I love how that lead model is super important when people are factoring in overwatch and the difficulty of making assaults, but then later it is so easy not only to base one guy for combat, but heck the whole crew will get in before pile ins. It doesn't happen.

I'm not sure what you are implying here because in my experience it happens all the time. Maybe you only assault things perpendicular to each other? I'm not sure how you are having this experience with assaults.

You typically have units standing in a line-ish formation relative to the deployment edges. They will stagger a bit, and spread out as needed depending on the weapons you are throwing at them. However, it's quite common that several models are within, say, 6 or 7 inches of each other.

Now, you probably won't get all of your units in base to base. But I think you can reasonably rely on the 3 or so that have CCs to get there. That's the lions share of you damage from HoW anyway.

I actually like what i read.

I have a very big (old style) DE army with 8 raiders and a few units of everything and as i read it they can simply go back to business now!

And i personally don't like the monsters and non-DE retinue models, so i am glad that warriors, raiders, scourges, reavers and more or less all old units are back to being good.

I did buy new wracks to add to my old metal grotesques (now used as wracks) and even that seems a good buy.

I'm not sure why Warriors keep getting called 'good' by people. I don't think they're bad, but they don't seem great to me either. Maybe because Wyches don't have a purpose anymore and wracks can't be troops? So by default Warriors are the good choice now? I guess their points went down slightly but aren't we only saving like 5 points on standard load outs now. Am I missing something?
I do agree that the codex is generally a bit better now, with mainly Wyches and HQs getting nerfed and other units becoming viable, should make for some interesting lists.

What does everyone think about large squads of foot warriors? My thought is 2 squads of 20 with 2 dark lances and 2 blasters to anchor my line and provide some mid/long range anti-tank. That squad rolls out at 230 points.

I'm making a coven list, so I'm going with 6 squads of 5 wracks in venoms. I have thought that my default loadout will be an acothyst with a hex rifle and a wrack with an ossefactor in each squad. I'm really liking the chance of getting an instant death precision shot every now and then, and the rending doesn't hurt either.

Problem with running 9 fliers is our flyers are mediocre, poorly armouried and lack of hover/vector dancer really hurt them.

You can realspace without nine flyers - three are enough for sure and then you have 'hunter' and scourges and/or reavers for the other three slots.

I am currently building a test list ... I also am quite fond of the haemie grot coven detachment - fearless/FNP grots ... yes please. That was the biggest issue with grots - they ran. Now - with small squads they hit like a ton of bricks and you can take casualties without fleeing off the table. Very good little detachment
Haemie - pick your upgrades
4 grots raider/sails
5 grots raider/sails

As for warriors being good. Well first off any unit in the army that stays alive to turn 3 get's Feel No Pain, with the mass amount of ability to Deep Strike plus the ability to manipulate the Chart, then you get a situation where depending on your play style your paying 8 points a model for a model that can have Feel No Pain, Furious Charge and Eventually Fearless.

It's why this whole Wyches and X units are terrible is so weird to me. Yes, if you charge a unit on Turn 1 with your Wyches then you will probably get them killed. However if you hold off for a turn 2 or later charge they're excellent troops.


I'd say the reason Warriors became good was because of Splinter Racks affecting everything but also because

5 Warriors w/ Blaster
Haywire Grenade
Venom w/ 2 Splinter cannons

125 points

That's not like terrible.


Dark Eldar have always been a interesting army and a harder playing army in regards to actual player skill. They were like that when they first came out. It's not like a point and click army and it's become even more complicated with the chart and the playstyle.

It's pretty cool mechanic.