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 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
WK's are honestly only a concern if you play with a lot of MC's and Grots. If you just opt for MSU they are not really as big an issue. Still an issue, but more manageable. It's the idiotic amounts of ranged fire the new eldar can produce at minimal cost that's more concerning.

It can split fire, which is a problem for MSU. It can deal with a venom or two on it's way to beat face against whatever it wants to kill.

My issue is the hard counters.
Wraith Knight hard counters Grots and MC's.
Crimson Hunters hard counter our flyers.
Scatterbikes hard counter everything else.
Normal Bikes are still awesome as MSU objective grabbers.

What's our angle? I'm not seeing how a tailored DE list isn't going to have an uphill battle against a Eldar TAC list.

-Matt

I agree, definitely seems like an uphill battle initially. Although if we can get some massed darklight on the WK and get him out of the way, our Haemonculus Covens units should have a field day in assault with those jetbikes. Even if they don't quite get into assault, just getting close enough to trigger Freakish Spectacle would be great; just have to hurt them enough to cause a LD test. I'm actually a little excited to try my hand against the new Eldar, even if just to confirm how bad it's going to suck getting whooped by them.

Ok for the WK.... would it be a bad idea to have urien with a squad of wyches go after it? the wyches to give the 4++ in CC(assuming most players would want to make it ranged WK) Urien will be the one trying to kill it with his fleshbane and ID on 6's. Grots will have no save at all against the WK , so no reason to use them.

Good idea vs the Wraithknight, bad idea vs the Eldar army. That Raider will get shot down by massive amounts of strength 6 shots, then the naked wyches torn apart. Even if the Wyches aren't torn apart, when walking they have no chance in hell of catching a Wraithknight unawares.

Also, how many points is this unit? I'd guess at least 300pts including Raider. That Wraithknight costs the same, but is infinately more useful vs a variety of targets, while your Urien Wych squad is only capable of tarpitting the Wraithknight, That doesn't sound fair to me.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Good idea vs the Wraithknight, bad idea vs the Eldar army. That Raider will get shot down by massive amounts of strength 6 shots, then the naked wyches torn apart. Even if the Wyches aren't torn apart, when walking they have no chance in hell of catching a Wraithknight unawares.

Also, how many points is this unit? I'd guess at least 300pts including Raider. That Wraithknight costs the same, but is infinately more useful vs a variety of targets, while your Urien Wych squad is only capable of tarpitting the Wraithknight, That doesn't sound fair to me.

Well we must accept the fact there is nothing fair when playing against the new eldar codex.
This might be Endtimes 40k for all we know.

The loadout is just one option that you can use, of course it would require lots of support from the list you make with it. But DE really dont have many options against is except for DL spam. Which btw, DL ravagers (to my surprise) work very well against the WK. I used 2, and only lost 1 , the other was destroyed later, but that was from my poor judgement.

I've played against the new eldar and while i lost, it wasn't a total stomp and i did kill the Wraithknight with my Beta Strike. It got caught between armour of misery, mask of secrets and freakish spectacle then a Psy-Shriek. It took 6 wounds from that! The rest were plinked away via Dark Lances and desperate splinter weapons, but it took almost my entire army to do it. It shouldn't take my entire army to do it!

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
I've played against the new eldar and while i lost, it wasn't a total stomp and i did kill the Wraithknight with my Beta Strike. It got caught between armour of misery, mask of secrets and freakish spectacle then a Psy-Shriek. It took 6 wounds from that! The rest were plinked away via Dark Lances and desperate splinter weapons, but it took almost my entire army to do it. It shouldn't take my entire army to do it!

I was able to kill it turn 3. I tried not to Invest in shooting the WK too much. I ran 3-6 man squads of reavers(these guys are MVP for sure), 3 ravagers(2 with DL and 1 with dissy's no NS).

I ran some gunboat warriors, who did alright but did not really shine. The Windriders are just insanely good, But under the pressure my bikes gave him made it much easier to keep him busy.

I have a razorwing, he was able to kill a few bikes, but other than that did nothing. The game was a Tie(last 2nd point grab by the reavers ) But it was clearly an uphill battle I was surprised to have survived (for the most part).

Beastsquad with the birdies... can it bring down the WK? Doesn't it's rending auto-wound?

 whembly wrote:
Beastsquad with the birdies... can it bring down the WK? Doesn't it's rending auto-wound?

T3 units with 3 wounds are just asking to get scatter lasered off the table, and really don't like the S6 AP4 (or remove from play) stomps.
So far, our won success is using harliquins and psychic powers? Ouch.
What if he had a 2nd Wraith Knight?

I'm starting to think the toughest eldar is going to be 2 well supported knights.

I was looking at the birdies, they get a lot of rending attacks, but are WS2, ironically the fear aspect of the WK is not much of a factor for them hitting since WS1 and WS2 both need 5's to hit.

12 Flocks=240pts
6 attacks each on charge, 72 attacks need 5's to hit. 24 hits, average of 4 rends. Keep in mind on the upper end you do have an 33% chance to roll 8 rends, but on the low chance a 33% chance to roll 2 rends...

They will ignore armor but the knight will get possibly a shield save, and or FNP.

The problem with the flocks is the stomps, 2-5 is str6 which is IDing the swarms, and of course 6 is bad. so 84% of the stomps will probably gib each base they hit.

I still dont think harlequins is reliable, the odds of pulling off any LD based wound removal is less than 50% when you factor in rolling to harness, rolling to hit, denying, FnP, Inv saves. After all that you are looking at averaging 2-3 wounds even with a large (-4ld) penalty stacked on a WK. That's 2-3 psychic phases.

Well, I think that in a regular event (that usually limit LOW to 1) one wraithknight will not be super hard to deal with... nasty? Yes... but not horrible. Same as same as.

Against friends that run multiples... you can always refuse a game you know?

What about beastpacks that are mixed? throwing in some chimera, boost the Majority toughness so your not ID'd by scatterlasers, then when in base contact spread the birdies out? you could even add a banshee masked hawk winged autarch, can keep up, ignores overwatch for the unit and adds +1 to those reserve rolls for your Crimson hunter formations

How does the stomp work with removal? is it the models directly below? IE - can he target the birdies? or will it be at your choice? I've never faced stomp as of yet and don't know much about it.

I'm not sure the new beastpack would work, regardless of its configuration. The issue I'm seeing is that it's now only 12 models and the nerf to Khymera's invul. It is definitely taking casualties, if not being completely destroyed by Scatter Bikes, templates, D-Cannon barrages, etc. If any models do survive, then the WK will most likely be able to dispatch them easily with stomps. If we could still take 25 beasts in one unit and the Khymeras had their 4++, I would actually say running beasts at the WK would be a good solution due to their size which makes it harder for the WK to escape and their durability. However, as things stand now, I'm not sure that we have an efficient way to kill one, let alone multiples. Yes, Dark Lance Ravagers can take one down over several turns. But how often will they be shooting at full BS past the first turn? If the Eldar player is halfway decent, I suspect they would be one of the first targets for the Scatter Bikes.

Updated first post with links to JimSolo posts on "Freakshow" armies.

Good info, with synergies listed for possible allies from other factions.

Thanks. Got a Freakshow list game in tonight against my second-worst-case army (Khorne Daemonkin) On the plus side, I Mirror of Minds-ed a Bloodthirster for four wounds to kill it. On the downside, I had so much trouble against his vehicles I almost lost anyway. (And he had a unit of Bloodthirsters with him that ran roughshod all over my business.)

The Shadowseer continued to prove his worth, but the Harlequin troupe kind of got kicked in the nuts.

@jimsolo that freakshow list really is something to behold, ever since it first started getting mentioned I have loved the thought of a leadership destroying army.

On a different note, I have a bunch of hellions I got in a trade and while I never use them I really want to (even though the baron is no more ) I was wondering if they can ever be effective?

I've been trying to figure out the same thing! I have a stupid number of them (over five boxes' worth), and have been trying to figure out how to make them useful. I'm going to put up a YMDC poll about a rules question in regards to this, but I may have a potential answer. (A Fortress of Redemption filled with Hellions, is the long and short of it. You can fit twenty-five of them in, and every part of the building has an access point, I think. WIth their jump capacity, the Repel the Invader rule gets a little better for them. With Void Shields for the building and an Eldar gunline on top, there might be something to be had there...

 Jimsolo wrote:
I've been trying to figure out the same thing! I have a stupid number of them (over five boxes' worth), and have been trying to figure out how to make them useful. I'm going to put up a YMDC poll about a rules question in regards to this, but I may have a potential answer. (A Fortress of Redemption filled with Hellions, is the long and short of it. You can fit twenty-five of them in, and every part of the building has an access point, I think. WIth their jump capacity, the Repel the Invader rule gets a little better for them. With Void Shields for the building and an Eldar gunline on top, there might be something to be had there...

Swap out the arms with extra wych arms. Call them beast masters.

-Matt

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
WK's are honestly only a concern if you play with a lot of MC's and Grots. If you just opt for MSU they are not really as big an issue. Still an issue, but more manageable. It's the idiotic amounts of ranged fire the new eldar can produce at minimal cost that's more concerning.

It can split fire, which is a problem for MSU. It can deal with a venom or two on it's way to beat face against whatever it wants to kill.



What's our angle? I'm not seeing how a tailored DE list isn't going to have an uphill battle against a Eldar TAC list.

-Matt

He can shoot multiple targets but you need to consider his loadout. 2 canons and two shoulder SL's is amazing but single shot sD isn't that scary for our transports or infantry, he has to hit and we need to fail our jink save, or if it's infantry best case for him he obliterates a scrub. The SL's are not much better, he'll land 3 hits and need 4's to strip HP's before we jink. He will be a PITA no doubt, but to think he will be running around like a gundam shooting down 4 targets every turn is a Wet dream. If they go sword and board it's all the better for us to ignore him, he will have more focused damage and higher durability.

I agree with corsair,
He will be a PITA, but only in regards that his capabilities to shoot 4 targets will be causing jink's. a SL alone isn't enough to really put the hurt on units. Still annoying we have an uphill battle simply due to codex power levels (assuming its as tough as it looks to be).

With all this eldar love and S: D going around I hope the rumors about Vect coming back as a LoW are true, maybe he will bring duke with him aswell!

On the note of the wraithknight, yeah S: D is banging and we have an uphill battle but I am more worried about that split fire, is it game breaking? No but it is more annoying imo than the S: D. I really wanted to add eldar to my DE but after this new codex I jut don't want that bad ju ju on my soul, I'll stick to just some Harllie allies haha

I've been thinking about running a coven heavy list with an allied seer council. Imagine a unit of 10 grots assaulting knights that are misfortuned.

 Solosam47 wrote:
With all this eldar love and S: D going around I hope the rumors about Vect coming back as a LoW are true, maybe he will bring duke with him aswell!

On the note of the wraithknight, yeah S: D is banging and we have an uphill battle but I am more worried about that split fire, is it game breaking? No but it is more annoying imo than the S: D. I really wanted to add eldar to my DE but after this new codex I jut don't want that bad ju ju on my soul, I'll stick to just some Harllie allies haha

You said the word Duke and I got breathless. I had to re-read it to see if it was an actual rumor (and my heart got broken all over again...).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

organicpesticide wrote:
I've been thinking about running a coven heavy list with an allied seer council. Imagine a unit of 10 grots assaulting knights that are misfortuned.

Especially with dem Scissorhands.

Mmm-hmmm.

@jimsolo haha sorry bout that, yeah I wish him and baron were still with us :(

On the hellion note I think what would be decent for them and easy for GW to fix is to just FAQ it stating hellions are jump pack infantry, I feel if they could move shoot move it would make them way better and maybe viable to some extent.

Restoring the Helglaives to their former glory would be a big start.

Honestly, I wish there were an 'Arena Hero' HQ we could take. A male wych who had the option for a Hellion Skyboard, a Beastmaster skyboard, and a bike, in addition to normal weapon options.

Maybe a 'Champion of the Arena' rule that gave him a different benefit depending on which of the transportation options he chose, or if he's on foot.

I agree with you, one that had the option to take any of those, maybe some upgraded beasts as a bodyguard if you took the skyboard, but mainly to also interact with hellions to make them worth something. Dont get me wrong, the coven is cool and great and all, but I play DE for the speed, for the Kabals and the wytch cults! That's what drew me in to them, that and the pure psycho genius that is vect haha favorite fluff in 40k for a single guy that can be a real d**k

It just doesn't make sense fluffwise that we don't have hero HQs' or designable (aka bike, board etc) I mean the dark city is about carving your own path, through all the treachery, deceit and lies. Not to mention your combat prowess must be through the roof for you to remain top for long. Theres going to be so many archons, wyches and hameonculi that are in leagues of their own, using methods that they have honed for 1000s of years. I mean even scourges are going to have some absolute insanely skilled warriors, why was there no way to represent that in any form?

But OT, bringing eldar for psy support is always going to boost our units considerably, as we have no psychers, so in general our units are powered around that they don't have psy support. So once we do get it they gain a huge boon.

Solar Shock wrote:
It just doesn't make sense fluffwise that we don't have hero HQs' or designable (aka bike, board etc) I mean the dark city is about carving your own path, through all the treachery, deceit and lies. Not to mention your combat prowess must be through the roof for you to remain top for long. Theres going to be so many archons, wyches and hameonculi that are in leagues of their own, using methods that they have honed for 1000s of years. I mean even scourges are going to have some absolute insanely skilled warriors, why was there no way to represent that in any form?

But OT, bringing eldar for psy support is always going to boost our units considerably, as we have no psychers, so in general our units are powered around that they don't have psy support. So once we do get it they gain a huge boon.

At this point, you might as well call us Codex Eldar Taxi Service.

I was running a pirate themed list of dark eldar and eldar. Now I'm finding I only want these units:
1 unit of reavers to be led by Autarch
1-2 units of scourage w/haywire
1 small unit of medusae (very cheap for S4 ap3 template)
Venoms and Raiders

I'm struggling to find a use for anything else, compared to its eldar counterpart.

-Matt

Yeah, it's really hard not to have a raging case of codex envy towards our CWE kin these days.

I was just thinking that War Walkers, while solid by CWE standards, aren't getting a lot of buzz due to how great a lot of the other units in the new Eldar codex are (Scat Bikes now do essentially the same thing for cheaper and with more utility). But if War Walkers were transferred over to the DE codex with same stats and options, they would instantly be one of the top three units in our codex. Depressing.

sweetbacon wrote:
Yeah, it's really hard not to have a raging case of codex envy towards our CWE kin these days.

I was just thinking that War Walkers, while solid by CWE standards, aren't getting a lot of buzz due to how great a lot of the other units in the new Eldar codex are (Scat Bikes now do essentially the same thing for cheaper and with more utility). But if War Walkers were transferred over to the DE codex with same stats and options, they would instantly be one of the top three units in our codex. Depressing.

How about units of falcons?
A Ravager with 3 lances is 125 points, AV11/11/10 open topped.
A fireprism with a pulse laser, lance and free catapults is 130 points, and AV12/12/10, a tank, can transport, and isn't open topped.
Just to add a little salt to the wound, falcons can be taken in squadrons, so the limitation of heavy support slots vanish, and they gain deep strike without scatter.

How about Dark Reapers? Seriously, why doesn't dark eldar have a dev squad choice? Our only option for heavy weapons in good numbers show up on jump troops; which makes no sense.
What's worse, reapers are cheaper, with options for BS5 and re-rolls to hit vs flying stuff.

We didn't get the short end of the stick, we're didn't even get a stick.
It's honestly very tempting to convert the DE to corrupted craftworld.

Very few things we get are remotely close to eldar, and we only have a handful of units that can do something that eldar don't do better.

Matt, it's starting to seem like you aren't really interested in Dark Eldar anymore.

Do you have any ideas on how to make thinks work, rather than why nothing will work?

It seems like you've been putting a lot of thought into it, so I'd be interested in any constructive insights you may have come to.