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 fartherthanfar wrote:

So Haywire is clearly worse against EVERYTHING, except AV12,13 & 14 where it a BIT better. Hence I’m not too impressed by Haywire Blaster.

Am I missing something?

You are missing the codex.
Its dark eldar, you got poison coming out of your ears, MCs are not exactly your kryptonite.

riptides and dreadkights with their 2+ arSv will be a pain, terminators too. I do see your point but I find that taking a bit less poison so you still get lots of Darklight will be a stronger TAC army then cramming tons of poison and a few haywire.

Or just take 54 Reavers and let the rest of the game work itself out

I know I am going to get alot of backlash for saying this but, reavers have some drawbacks. They are very vulnerable to templates especially heavy incinerators, hammer of wraith attacks require a good charge roll, and even with a good charge roll you have to be concern with overwatch, also only the models that get in base to base contact get the hammer of wraith attacks.

Am I the only one having these problems?

 CKO wrote:
I know I am going to get alot of backlash for saying this but, reavers have some drawbacks. They are very vulnerable to templates especially heavy incinerators, hammer of wraith attacks require a good charge roll, and even with a good charge roll you have to be concern with overwatch, also only the models that get in base to base contact get the hammer of wraith attacks.

Am I the only one having these problems?

Templates are indeed dangerous. Kill off their wielders with other stuff in your army beforehand and/or try to move out of their range.

Reavers are Dark Eldar Jetbikes. They've got a 12" movement and Fleet. It should be relatively easy to get them where you want them.

Overwatch might be troublesome from time to time. The damage might be mitigated with +1T drugs (it's a random roll, sadly) or an allied Jetbike Eldar Guy.

All in all, I think the Reavers are very good. Not "the best unit in the game" as some people claim, since they have their shortcomings, but they are indeed very good.

With 12" move it's not that hard to get they to all/mostly hammer unless you're running units of more than six (usually).

Templates, meh. If they're deep striking a template onto you it's obviously a threat for almost all unit in the codex and reavers are no exception. At least they get potential FnP now.

Reavers are some of the best units in the game because for just 16 points they can do so many things. They're the fastest units in the game, can hurt tanks, kill hordes, MEQ, TEQ. They're not objective secured but their speed and ability to kill most Objective secured enemy units makes up for that.

Feel No Pain.

Combat drugs.

Hit and Run.

A good sergeant option.

For 16 points! Less than a Windrider

 SarisKhan wrote:

 CKO wrote:
I know I am going to get alot of backlash for saying this but, reavers have some drawbacks. They are very vulnerable to templates especially heavy incinerators, hammer of wraith attacks require a good charge roll, and even with a good charge roll you have to be concern with overwatch, also only the models that get in base to base contact get the hammer of wraith attacks.

Am I the only one having these problems?

Templates are indeed dangerous. Kill off their wielders with other stuff in your army beforehand and/or try to move out of their range.

Reavers are Dark Eldar Jetbikes. They've got a 12" movement and Fleet. It should be relatively easy to get them where you want them.
Overwatch might be troublesome from time to time. The damage might be mitigated with +1T drugs (it's a random roll, sadly) or an allied Jetbike Eldar Guy.
All in all, I think the Reavers are very good. Not "the best unit in the game" as some people claim, since they have their shortcomings, but they are indeed very good.

I've had problem with low charge rolls keeping the caltops out of combat, and had problems with decent overwatch killing the caltrops if they are too close to the front.
I have been playing with the concept of using very small beast packs (and hellions) to eat the over-watch. Both are fast enough to hit with the reavers.

Wall of Death is a huge problem, and a throw away unit seems like the answer.

Yeah, MSU is the answer. Have a small unit of Wyches with FnP eat overwatch, a few Khymera, etc. And 3-4 Incubi with 3+ armor and FnP will tolerate flamers well.

Small units of Grotesques seem to be a good answer as well. They're relatively cheap for the number of wounds they have , high toughness, Feel No Pain and brutal in CC.I could see a Grotesques, Wyches, Reavers army being really good. Incubi for the AP2.It'd work well with Reavers because smaller units can just leave the combat. A tactic of tying up units with Grotesques then repeatedly hit and running out of them seems to not be a pleasant experience.

Think of it like a boat. The Anchor is Wyches w/ their 4+ Invulnerable and 5++ or Grotesques , The boat is Helions , Reavers.

You just keep units in place for 1 turn so you can get 2 hit and runs. It's also incredibly cheap to do.

What do you guys think about using raiders for transports over venoms because the raider can block line of sight to our reavers. With advance aethersails the raider can move up to the enemy lines and the reavers can turbo boost right behind them. If the wyches in the raiders survive that turn they can charge and eat overwatch. But overwatch really isn't that big of a deal, with the exception of maybe tau. Most units do not have the volume of fire to do a lot of damage.

If you use another unit to eat overwatch for the reavers than there is less room for them to get into base to base contact as the first unit that charge is taking up the majority of the space. Especially when you look at the rules you must get as many units in base to base contact as possible so no being sneaky and leaving space for the reavers. Also reavers do not have fleet so the average roll of 7 with lets say 1 die from overwatch equals not alot in base to base contact or if you use another unit to eat overwatch that unit will take up space. Also the hammer of wraith attacks do not automatically hit rear armour it hits the side they are facing so I am not seeing how they are so good against vehicles. Also they have a 5+ armour save ignore cover weapons totally annihilate them, especially that smart weapon that tau have. Feel no pain can only do so much.

With that being said I am looking at the unit not the army, with the right army they are good, but I dont see mandatory written on this unit at all.

Reavers can pen Land Raiders in CC with caltrops. They're good against vehicles.

mercury14 wrote:
Reavers can pen Land Raiders in CC with caltrops. They're good against vehicles.

If thats your only requirement for being good against vehicles is its chance of killing a Land Raider than ok. If you have 10 hits with caltrops on average thats 1 or 2 rending hits, stats wise its not good enough for me.

Well they also can have heat lances as well so I'd say they're pretty good at penetrating Land Raiders.

People generally don't think in terms of this but they basically have a 21 inch melta range.

I am not going to keep talking bad about a unit that I like I just wanted to point out its weakness.

Raiders screening reavers works really well. I pack the raiders with warriors with splinter racks, and you get 24 shots on the over-watch with re-roll to hit. Raider gets the 3+ cover jinking.

I'm starting to like blasters on the reavers too. You can dart out from the Raider (wreckage), fire, and scoot back behind with the assault move. 116 points for a pair of very hard to kill, very mobile blaster shots isn't bad. With a good drugs roll, they can double duty in combat.

Yeah it's really hard to pick between Blasters and Melta on the Reavers, I think Blasters might just be a bit better




Also HawaiiMatt I don't get your signature, even after reading the context. Why did you make that your quote?

I think Grotesques in Raiders from the Grotesquirie Formation is probably the best bet for Tarpit in analog to assist Reavers or Reavers assist grotesques.

Small numbers , High ST, Multi Wound, and Feel No pain , plus Fear less.

If you don't wipe them out in 2 concurrent turns, then just leave combat with Hit and Run to go and help with another combat.

The thing with Dark Eldar, possibly more than any other army, is the game is won from really just two things.

1- the movement phase
2- unit allocation/target priority

1 is hard to discuss, because it is highly variable based on setup, terrain, opponents move etc.

2- You want to always be in the position where you have your worst unit(s) tying up the opponents best unit, and your best unit on their 2nd best, your 2nd best on their 3rd best, etc. This of course ties in with point 1, which is why 1 is first, because that lets you setup this scenario.

With 2 in mind yes reavers can pen a land raider, so can a 10 man warrior squad that has a blaster/s cannon in a raider with splinter racks, but there are things in the dark eldar list that can do it much better. ie haywire scourges, blasterborn deepstrike with an archon with blaster, 2 ravagers with dark lances.

I've enjoyed the few small pointish games I've gotten in with some borrowed models and some substitutions.

For example, I have a lot of success using Urien who i'm using a Fabius bile for.

He's a lot of fun stuck with a unit of Incubi with Lelith. It's such a nasty little unit for not really that much.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Yeah it's really hard to pick between Blasters and Melta on the Reavers, I think Blasters might just be a bit better

Also HawaiiMatt I don't get your signature, even after reading the context. Why did you make that your quote?

Reavers is the only place we get 10 point blasters, we should be using them.
As for the sig, it's from the fantasy side of forum, a very vocal self proclaimed expert who nearly never actually plays. It's good to let people know where the advice is coming from. It's about time I update it anyway.

I like heat lances because of the AP1. To me that's worth it as 2 penetrates on a Imperial Knight could possibly destroy it , that's why I always say heat lance.

I'm sure there are lots of maths on the subject though.

Hollismason wrote:
I like heat lances because of the AP1. To me that's worth it as 2 penetrates on a Imperial Knight could possibly destroy it , that's why I always say heat lance.
I'm sure there are lots of maths on the subject though.

I don't care about the math hammer, I always roll a 1 on the D3.

Is it just me, or is DE an army that's all fast attack?
Most cost effective Anti-tank, Anti-infantry, Anti-monster, and Anti-flyer are all in fast attack.
If I was building a WAAC unbound Dark Eldar army, I don't think I'd take anything but fast attack.

Good thing they got a 6 FA FoC chart than, is it?

Using 2 FoCs isn't much of a strech either, the HQs are useful, and another raider gunboat is not bad.

I sometimes get confused with 7ths detachments.

You can in fact take a combined arms detachment and have a Detachment that is Real Space Raiders, and a Detachment that is the Coven Detachment correcT?

Yes.

You can also have 7 combined arms detachments, each of another army if you want (and somehow manage to.

Okay so Beast units can be taken in groups as small as one, and we get 6 FA slots. Or more than 6 if we bring multiple detachments. That means we can bring things like 10-point Khymera units running around all over the place, grabbing objectives or drawing overwatch. Or single Fiends. And would anyone bother targeting a single Flock with S6 fire to insta-kill it when there are far better things to aim S6+ guns at?

I haven't thought about it too much but I sense that tiny Beast units with one or maybe three models could have some real utility in a DE army. Obviously first blood would be an issue but if we get first turn we should be getting that anyway. If not, tiny beast units can easily hide behind BLOS cover or in reserve.

Next match I'll run a helper monkey along side my Wyches in Raiders to supplement their attacks with half a dozen S5 monkey punches and see how that goes.

Thoughts?

mercury14 wrote:
Okay so Beast units can be taken in groups as small as one, and we get 6 FA slots. Or more than 6 if we bring multiple detachments. That means we can bring things like 10-point Khymera units running around all over the place, grabbing objectives or drawing overwatch. Or single Fiends. And would anyone bother targeting a single Flock with S6 fire to insta-kill it when there are far better things to aim S6+ guns at?

I haven't thought about it too much but I sense that tiny Beast units with one or maybe three models could have some real utility in a DE army. Obviously first blood would be an issue but if we get first turn we should be getting that anyway. If not, tiny beast units can easily hide behind BLOS cover or in reserve.

Next match I'll run a helper monkey along side my Wyches in Raiders to supplement their attacks with half a dozen S5 monkey punches and see how that goes.

Thoughts?

i think this is an interesting point. there are two sides to it.

on one case, your likely to lose first blood, and in missions where units destroyed count as vp's your likely to lose a few there. You could argue that with 6 of these units that you could lose enough vp's to lose the battle. But on the otherhand, even if you lost all 6 units in overwatch or to enemy shooting, you could argue that they allowed you to win the battle. As by simply tying up a unit, or drawing away fire can certainly allow you to get your units into the right combats and positions.

My thoughts would be not to take units of 1. But to take units of 2-3, yes you are tripling the cost, but what your actually allowing for is the fact that by combining these units in charges with wyches or whatever other you its like reavers your dramatically increasing the beast packs chance of surviving combat or the overwatch.

For example, by using 1 khymera to charge a unit of marines or whatever, then charging with wyches. With only 1 khymera it is likely to be destroyed either by overwatch or by the marines striking back in combat. so in both cases you have given up a vp even if your wyches do end up winning the combat. But with a slightly larger unit they are much more likely to survive not only the overwatch, but also the combat, as youd hope that through the combination of high initiatives of DE units you can reduce/remove the enemies ability to kill the entire beast pack. Thus saving you losing a vp in some missions and also give the unit the ability to then make more assaults in the next turns or to simply go contest objectives.

I truly do think that MSU DE will be very effective, as with the idea mercury just gave, its not so much about bringing so many 1 model units to eat every overwatch, its about bringing 4-5 3man units (or other sizes around these areas) to eat specific overwatches, or tie up key units. in this case i would then consider taking certain combinations for certain tasks. So i think a clawed fiend combined with 3 khymera would be much more effective at tying up a unit for a turn. although you could argue that you could simply take 6 khymera for the same amount of wounds, but with a clawed fiend you can take as many wounds onto it as possible that way to prevent losing 25 percent of a unit (if you take a unit size of 5). To this extent, razorflocks would be better for eating overwatches as single units, due to the fact that with multiple wounds on the single unit at a cheaper cost makes it more likely they will survive to be backed up by your second charging unit.

mercury14 wrote:
Okay so Beast units can be taken in groups as small as one, and we get 6 FA slots. Or more than 6 if we bring multiple detachments. That means we can bring things like 10-point Khymera units running around all over the place, grabbing objectives or drawing overwatch. Or single Fiends. And would anyone bother targeting a single Flock with S6 fire to insta-kill it when there are far better things to aim S6+ guns at?

I haven't thought about it too much but I sense that tiny Beast units with one or maybe three models could have some real utility in a DE army. Obviously first blood would be an issue but if we get first turn we should be getting that anyway. If not, tiny beast units can easily hide behind BLOS cover or in reserve.

Next match I'll run a helper monkey along side my Wyches in Raiders to supplement their attacks with half a dozen S5 monkey punches and see how that goes.

Thoughts?

That's what's tough about the DE book. It really depends on your local meta of what's ok to field. If you area is playing RAW (unbound or as many detachments as you want) DE become crazy good in that they have 10 point HQ's, 40 points troops and 10 point fast attack slots. You can easily over-whelm an opponents ability to target enough (sans Purifiers in a SW pod).

Well with a combined arms detachment, Wracks suddenly become super good to take.

I mean it's feasible in 1850 to take 2 small squads of Grotesque, 1 large squad, the rest be Wracks in venoms.

Then be able to take

6 Fast Attack slots.

So yeah the book really shines when you get into the Combined Arms detachment because of what you can do.

I wouldn't sell short a army that had 3 to 4 squads of Grotesques backed up by Reavers and Fliers.