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I've been proxying the DE list I'm building, which consists of:

Archon with armor of misery, WWP and haywire grenades w/ 4 medusas in venom with splinter cannons
5 kabalite trueborn with 4 blasters in venom with splinter cannons

4x 10 kabalite warriors in raiders with splinter racks, dark lances and night shields

2x 3 reaver jetbikes with heat lance and cluster caltrops
razorwing jetfighter with dark lances

2x voidraven bombers with 2x shatterfield and 2x implosion missiles, each.

(1850)



It's been doing well, until my 4th game where I finally learned something amazing:

My army can assault.

I was in a bad situation against some necrons that just wouldn't die. His jinks were all saving. His warriors were unkillable and being resurrected by two ghost arks. I tried to shoot them down all the way through turn 6, and it just wasn't happening. I had taken a risky gamble, too, and left myself out of position for several objectives.

After the game, I realized what I missed: I had about 25 warriors in a position to charge his squad of necron warriors that was giving me so much trouble. I have open-topped transports! I have furious charge! I'm fearless! And on turn 6, I have rage! I could have been looking at over 60 attacks, at initiative 5, and strength 4. Even if I lost combat, the assault move would have put me on the objective rather than barely 3" away, only to be gunned down by his forces at the bottom of the turn. And if I WON combat, well, I could have wiped out his entire squad of necrons and his warlord in one go. Risky if I'm hoping for the sweep, but since I'm fearless I had nothing to lose, and his unit would have been locked down. At the very least, I should have just charged 10 warriors in - with 5+ armor (that I wasn't getting against his gauss flayers as I sat there and tried to trade shots) and 5+ feel no pain, I should at least be able to live through a couple rounds of combat and be around to tell about it later - on the objective, no less. And if I only sent in the one unit, others could have tried to run about and get on other objectives with Obsec.

Another thing I've learned about playing dark eldar: Vehicles with 3+ cover saves are pretty silly.

And lastly: 5+ saves are broken. I know....crazy. But I find myself being very very careful with my 5+ save warriors, trying to avoid situations where they can take a ton of fire. The result? They don't take a ton of fire. They're put in positions that I think a 5+ save unit can survive - and then the good part? Lucky rolls. People expect marines to make 2/3 of their saves. A squad of marines suddenly shrugging off ALL the hits you throw out - annoying, of course, but not unreasonable or unexpected. It happens. But on those occasions where my FIVE plus save models make all of them? Or all their feel no pain rolls?.......that's unexpected, and my opponents have already begun to see why that's a problem. Unexpected lucky resilience on a dark eldar unit is DEADLY. They thought they'd kill you but NOPE! Now your unit is free to do damage and because they didn't devote more to it, they're now isolated and cut off.

With my chaos marines, I would put them in risky situations, hoping that their saves would see them through (and I'm constantly disappointed). But cautiously positioning to bear in mind a fragile 5+ save, and then getting lucky with that and/or feel no pain is so much more unexpected that it can completely throw them off their game! Loving it!

So I have to ask how the medusa fair to you. I think 4 s4 ap3 templates coming down sounds crazy but no one seems to be running it.

Are your void raven pulling their weight. The Internet has deemed these terrible and with the price tag people have been avoiding them. How do they compare to the razorwing?

You have a lot of poison but not much anti tank have vehicles been a problem? You are running the true born but have you though of scourge?

Razorwing is pretty good, had a game with my IF versus my friend's DE army at the weekend, his pair of fighters really did well - taking down my stormtalons, a thunderfire cannon, and my stalker. Once the air defence was down they really did dominate my light vehicles and threaten all across the board.

Although I think he forgot they have fixed firing arcs at one point?

Actually, he has a fair amount of antitank - that many fighters and raiders rack up a fair number of lance shots...

And yes, people used to bolter fire tend to ignore a 5+ save as 'irrelevant' - right up until they try to cut through it in assaults. Guardsmen are much the same - annoyingly hard to kill with blades.

I'll be honest, I'd still probably prefer to have a sybarite with something stabby in a squad before I threw them in, but yes, with WS4, I5 and furious charge, you can hold your own, at least for a round or two, and the raiders let you bring your numbers to bear.

And yes, jinking raiders are a lot tougher than their tinfoil surfboard statlines would suggest. Be very, very careful against some opponents, though, as no escape with flamers can murder the warriors inside en masse regardless of whether the transport survives, and it only takes one square hit from something with ignores cover (a blastmaster, for example) to blow you out of the sky in a cloud of smoke....

Yeah, jinking open topped Raider gives a very high probability for a Turn 2 Assault.

Assuming CAD; Wyches can tie down lots of opposing ObSec units and can contest Objectives. Yes, you'll lose a bunch of them to Overwatch but the rest that survive wiill be hard to dislodge in CC.

Yes Reavers are better in CC, but for a cheap ObSec unit that can assault out of a Raider in Turn 2. Wyches still have a place.

 Spellbound wrote:

I was in a bad situation against some necrons that just wouldn't die. His jinks were all saving. His warriors were unkillable and being resurrected by two ghost arks.

Lol, bad situation? No you were not. I made 2 jink saves. Meanwhile you wiped out all but what, 6 warriors? I would have been much happier if you had jumped out of your transports and gone for the warrior blob at any point in the game.
Ghost arks only brought back 3 warriors, the entire game.

You also need to remember that you can't assault after firing rapid fire weapons.

They're still quite choppy when buffed up by pfp. Basically, ini5 asm on the charge.

Reavers are, in my opinion, hands down one of the best units in the game. They are cheap and deadly enough to be a spectacular distraction carnifex. You can ignore the gun upgrade completely, jink your brains out, and bring the pain with cluster caltrops, and still get +1 attacks by having a cc weapon and pistol at I5. Their mobility allows them to run all manner of blocks, screens, and entrapments a la mushkilla. They simply cannot be ignored and their Skilled Rider 3+ jink makes them hard to kill. Any opponent that knows DE will be focused on what your Reavers are doing next, freeing up the rest of your army to take them apart, and those that don't know will underestimate the pain of cc Reavers and pay for it.

 gwarsh41 wrote:

 Spellbound wrote:

I was in a bad situation against some necrons that just wouldn't die. His jinks were all saving. His warriors were unkillable and being resurrected by two ghost arks.

Lol, bad situation? No you were not. I made 2 jink saves. Meanwhile you wiped out all but what, 6 warriors? I would have been much happier if you had jumped out of your transports and gone for the warrior blob at any point in the game.
Ghost arks only brought back 3 warriors, the entire game.

Different game. Guy after you also played necrons. I didn't win that one.