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I have recently had a couple of games vs Dark Eldar and found the going fairly easy with my horde AM.

After the second game I had a good look thru the DE codex and came away feeing a bit underwhelmed.

Is it just coincidence, luck, or do DE just have a soso codex? Is the Voidraven a bad unit?

 scommy wrote:
I have recently had a couple of games vs Dark Eldar and found the going fairly easy with my horde AM.

After the second game I had a good look thru the DE codex and came away feeing a bit underwhelmed.

Is it just coincidence, luck, or do DE just have a soso codex? Is the Voidraven a bad unit?

They are rather underwhelming, compared to their Craftworld counterparts. They have some very good lists they can make, but overall I feel the codex could've used a good bit more love than it received. That being said though, I have a friend who is rather skilled with them and does well most of the time.

Yeah I came away trying to think of a decent 750 point list, played around on battlescribe and just could not feel the love.

The release isn't that bad except that they removed some special characters.
Now that the Craftworld has been released, they have a fantastically bad matchup, since they have a basic troop that can penetrate their transports from an effective 48" range.

DE are still deadly in the hands of a smart General.
They have always performed very well and this hasn't changed.
Their transports and skimmers are even more survivable thanks to jink.

The Coven formations are quite powerful.

No use comparing to eldar, however. They're simply broken. But vs normal armies, DE can do fine.

 koooaei wrote:
The Coven formations are quite powerful.

No use comparing to eldar, however. They're simply broken. But vs normal armies, DE can do fine.

Indeed, don't take into account the new Eldar builds with lots of Jetbikers.

Coven is pretty intense. Multiple wounds at high toughness everywhere.

The core part of the army seems to perform best as a beta-strike. I wrote my DE friend's list for a recent ITC event and he did decent. I had him run a 20 man warrior unit manning an aegis with quad gun that took an empty obsec venom that they couldn't fit inside, a couple 5 man trueborn with 2 lances, and then a bunch of raiders with 10 warriors for poison + splinter racks silliness, a 4 haywire blaster set of scourges, and a trio of ravagers. His HQ was a lone llhamean from a court that just hid somewhere (but was NOT the warlord, the sybarite in the 20 man squad was.) General strategy was to deploy nothing but the aegis crews unless he could overpower the enemy with lances from range, or just hide all but a bare minimum if the enemy had good long range fire like serpents, and wait for reserves.

Most of his army would come in turn 2/3 after the PFP chart had built up a little, get some time to do some damage with lances, haywire blasters, and poison, and then only need to survive a few rounds until the endgame where he had tons of speedy obsec everywhere with all the raiders and crews, as well as one venom and the 20 man unit to be on his own zone's objectives.

Overall I think it had a pretty good setup, but he's only been playing a couple years, and isn't particularly good with strategy or statistical analysis on-the-fly in the first place, so that's probably what made him unable to go higher than middle-of-the-pack rankings.

But in short, I think the core (non-coven) army is an army that plays from turn 2 on, and is pretty nice at countering drop pod lists, since they won't set down much stuff for you to kill. Just enough to stay on the table.

DE are actually quite strong (and against Tyranids, often plain broken), but they require a lot of skill to use well. One mistake and you lose the game.
DE lack huge cheese like the CW Eldar, Tau or Necrons have though.

Dark Eldar 6th Ed. had a lovely codex that was well balanced and had flavour

Dark Eldar 7th Ed. have lost a lost of soul with the removal of special characters and abilities. Some of the point changes make little sense weapon upgrade-wise and it feels like GW wanted to shift certain lines that didn't sell too well by buffing.

7th Ed. codex is dull but perfectly fine - it's still reasonably balanced.


The issue isn't the DE codex being weak, the issue is the absurd power-leap with a handful of newer codices.

Venoms can spit out more shots per point cost than Jetbikes and Venoms have Invul saves without having to Jink (though granted they don't have pseudo- Rending).

DE Archons with WWP and Medusa can no-Scatter DS to drop AP3 Templates on Jetbikes.

Ichor Injectors still Wound Wraithknights on 2+ with Fleshbane and with ID can cause it another D3 Wounds.

Poison still hurts the rest of the Wraithguard.

Phantasm / Torment Grenade Launchers with AoM and Coven cause Wounds against an Ld check at -3 with no Amor or Cover Saves.

Dark Eldar are not weak but they lack the cheese of Daemons, Eldar, Necrons, Imperial Knights and Space Marines.

They tend to do well against non-cheese armies.

Dark Artisan gives me the creeps. I shot 69 Pulse Rifles at it and not even one wound happened, while a full unit of Broadsides did 1 wound with EWO.
If you don't have AP3, don't even bother shooting at it.

Weak? No. Just not easy to master, which leads to the misconception that they are weak.

In the hands of a skilled player, they can reliably challenge any army. (Although massed vehicles tend to give them more trouble than infantry based lists.)

As others have said, in the hands of a smart, experienced player, DE can hold their own against most anything (new Eldar excluded as of yet). However, they tend to lose big or win big. One wrong move or bad turn of dice rolling by the DE player can be enough to tilt the game decisively in favor of their opponent, as most of their units usually aren't resilient enough to survive a bad turn or two.

Their 7th edition codex contained mostly nerfs with very few buffs, unfortunately. However, they have some really strong Covens formations that synergize well with the regular codex.

To reiterate, most new(er) players should not expect to do well with DE consistently as they have a pretty steep learning curve and I would therefore recommend them to players with a few years of experience under their belt

Well I sat down and this is my first stab at a DE list @ 750 poits. I simply think the models look amazing when painted well.

Archon + Venom
Court of the Archon (2 Ur-ghul+ Sslyth) + Raider

10 Kabalite warriors + Raider
10 Kabalite warriors + Raider

Ravager + 3 dark lances
Ravager + 3 dark lances

Is it ok list? Not sure about the Court of archon, tbh I dunno what they would do they just look so weird they appeal.

My only complaint about DE is that they have some randomly costed items that make no complete sense when compared to other codexes, especially their counterparts Eldar. Reapers come to mind the most. When they first came out it seemed ok, but with the new eldar codex now it just dosent make sense, why did they get a 5+ save when eldar get a 3+, even if it on paper is a +1 to their normal save? Why only 1 special for every 3 when the eldar get all specials (this would have actually been a fun addition, getting a whole squad of heat lances to be a nice spot on anti tank squad). The other thing is the random point raise to get Lances on your raiders and Ravagers, when that used to be something that was free (and considering that their paper transports are still a bit expensive, id say its not an effective change). really when it comes down to it the basics of the book are still alright, such as balanced troops with good options for special weapons (except for you shredder!) and of course the problems with wyches, but they are as much a victim of the edition than anything else, DE just fall back in odd pricing schemes and arbitrary changes that if they were retroactively placed on their craftworld buddies would have made the game better and more balanced.

Also why did they make voidravens so darn expensive and armor 10? And whats the deal with airline food...

Dark Eldar are fantastic... with the right man leading them. They're a little weak, so if you make one bad move it can essentially screw over your game.

 scommy wrote:
Well I sat down and this is my first stab at a DE list @ 750 poits. I simply think the models look amazing when painted well.

Archon + Venom
Court of the Archon (2 Ur-ghul+ Sslyth) + Raider

10 Kabalite warriors + Raider
10 Kabalite warriors + Raider

Ravager + 3 dark lances
Ravager + 3 dark lances

Is it ok list? Not sure about the Court of archon, tbh I dunno what they would do they just look so weird they appeal.

For a 750 tourney? Probably not quite 'optimized' enough (although I'd be okay giving it a shot).

For a friendly game? Absolutely fine. You'll do reasonably well with this list.