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Really love the look of Dark Eldar but I know they aren't the greatest right now. The kids I play against are tau (SS), IG/Skitarii (Knight), and Necrons. So as you can see my friends aren't very nice to me. I'm really just looking for help to see what can be pretty good in the Dark Eldar and what to avoid at all costs. Also if you guys have any cool synergies or maneuvers that you like to do/find are very effective that would be huge too.

Thanks a ton guys!

I'm just starting DE and only used them in a couple games as allies for my Harlequins, but double splinter cannon Venoms filled with warriors/trueborn with blasters seem your best bet. Lots of mobility and firepower for fairly cheap. Scourges look great also
Maybe ally in a Hero's path so you can have Armor of Misery+Mask of Secrets+Death Jester or Psychic shriek, or if you're feeling lucky roll and try to get Mirror of Minds so you can kill off Riptides and other bothersome stuff

Blaster Kabalites in Venoms are well known already.
I also like big squads of Kabalites in a Raider with Splinter Racks to make a poisoned gunboat.
Talos Pain Engines look great and perform very well.
Incubi are good as CC beatsticks (Excellent for Archon retinue)

I'm just naming a few of my favourites, I'd check out 1d4chan's Dark Eldar Tactics page for a good idea of what the codex has to offer from a player's perspective.

Corsairs from FW are certainly better..but I can appreciate that not everyone likes using/has access to FW.

For Codex: DE, I find Haywire and Disintegrator shots work best these days. Ravagers, Scourge, with some Poison and DL shots thrown in for high toughness/low AV

The Covens supplement have some really cool formations if you're into them.

Finally Reavers. Never can have enough Reavers. Fast enough to grab objectives, large enough to provide mobile cover (have the Reaver models positioned so that you form an arrow head for units behind them. Then, when the front models are killed, they are shooting through a unit - which in turn grants a 5+ cover.

DE never play fair, so you need to know the rules extensively well and use every trick in the book to level the playing field. A bit of luck wouldn't go amiss either.

@ Frozocrone - Corsairs aren't out of the question, know nothing about them though.

@ StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds - I like Harlequins so that could be fun, don't really know specific strategies and tactics the combination can/should do.

@TheManWithNoPlan - I've read over it, the tactics are cool and interesting but seem a little dated. Talos also seem amazing, what kinds of things do you do with them?

Essentially I think the most competitive thing is to make a good chunk of your army in venoms, some with blasterborne. Scourges seem great when used with haywire cannons. On a side note, the haywire cannons on the Harlequins bikes also is very interesting thing to think about. My next question I guess is what things make fill in the gaps and rough edges of the army? I think the archon is the HQ to go with but what kind of HQ do I want to help fill in those rough edges? (Entirely possible the HQ's in the DE just can't do that, which is ok because at least they look cool)

I have had a lot of fun running lists based on this tactica: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/645774.page . It focuses on using Ld debuffs but I have found it's often very cheap to integrate into almost any Dark Eldar force and offers an extra option to get as much damage out as possible before taking any in return which is the best way to play Dark Eldar.

I recently ran an integrated harlequin/DE army. Usually my DE run a more supporting role (the HQ is used for a WWP primarily, or a 2++ running in front of a large harley mob, I bring raiders for larger units of harleys running around) but I found good results with Haywire scourges, Reaver Jetbikes with Cluster Caltrops, Venoms full of kabalites with a blaster, razorwing jetfighters and a trip-lance ravager.

All the DE units performed relatively well, and did what I wanted them to do. I try to combine things that aren't reliant on cover with my DE, because otherwise large amounts of ignores cover are a hard counter.

Does throwing the Archon in front of your Harleys actually work? sounds hilarious. If I ran Harleys though I was thinking about scratching the haywire scourges with haywire Harley jetbikes, what do you guys think about that? Also since people have mentioned it. Harleys are very very cool and would love to run them but I know absolutely nothing about whats good for them and what kind of things to do with them. At this point, I'm most likely going to look into the DE/Harley route or a small chance on corsairs. But to be more specific, @ the_scotsman, what exactly do you mean when you say your DE take a support role to the Harleys? How effective are the Harley Troupes, and about how many do you want in order to be effective? What kinds of gear do you like to use and what kind of tricks and strats do you like? (The Archon strat seems hilarious).

I am starting a small Dark Eldar force as well. I think I am going to try to build at least a couple of the formations from the haemonculus book, which is pretty awesome. MIght even go with the corpsethief claw.

Other than that I messed around with a few builds that involved no vehicles, I played them on vassal for a bit and actually didn't do that bad. It included 3 20-man kabalite warrior squads with a cronos between each one. 2 talos, 2, 10-man mandrake squads, and a few deepstrike haywire scourge squads. Against necrons it actually performed fairly well, but against Imperial Guard it did terribly.

For 1850 I like:

Archon w/ upgrades in venom dual splinter cannons

6x 5 man kabalite warriors with blaster, sybarite upgrade with melta bombs, each in a venom with dual splinter cannons

3x razorwing jet fighters, nose splinter cannons, dual dark Lance's

3x ravagers, triple dark lances

Works well as a TAC list. Can exchange the jets for reavers, but they provide much needed anti air

Necrons are by far the worst for you to fight against, Tau being 2nd.

So its very uphill fights for you :/ sry about that.

But with all the things everyone is saying, also dont forget some of the small things.

1) You can have a Court of Archon as an HQ, so you could have a 10pt HP (to save points if you wanted)
2) Dont uprage your vehicles to much, they die easily, you dot need AS, NS and SR on your Raids. Pick a roll and if you want give it that upgrade only (Gun boats have SR, Dedicated transport AS etc..)
3) Dont be scared to take Eldar, they are very useful, I take Psykers as allies all the time.
4) Coven is really good!, if you want Grots or Talos take them from the Coven book.
5) DE are really good at MSU, dont need ot make all your units 10 man strong, a unit or 2 being 10 is fine, but multi 5mans is normally better. It helps with Special weapons too.
6) Lances ARE NOT good AT, and DE are terrible at killing Knights, the faster you learn this the better your games go.

Yeah I was planning on staying away from the Triple Dark Lance Ravagers and using scourges with haywire cannons instead. I want to run kabalite warriors and blasterborne in venoms as the base. I'm not sure what the most efficient way to kit them out is though, so some help or opinions on that would be great. Reavers are on the table but the Harley bikes are cool too. To be honest I haven't looked into the covens supplement book that much at all. I've seen the freak show lists people have been running, and I like them and all but a guy at my local store is playing that exact army pretty consistently. So I guess I'm trying to be a little unique (Harleys maybe) and not be terrible at the same time. A lot of wants, I know, especially when theres not a ton of viability among units.

Your best bet is to invest heavily into bikes. Reaver jetbikes are one of the best units that the dark eldar have already and putting them against low initiative armies like necrons and tau means that a small unit of bikes can easily cause enough wounds to sweeping advance a unit per turn. Your opponents will begin to hate you when 6 bikes sweeps 20 necron warriors.

In addition Dark eldar are not as terrible against xeno races. They have many tools that are worthless against space marines but are very good against everyone else. tools like the armor of misery, phantasm grenades and other leadership lowering tools. Combine them with a small harlequins allied force and you can build an army that doesn't have to cause many actual wounds because you will be too busy scaring your opponent's units right off the table. I think you can get up to something crazy like causing negative LD 6! that means necrons will be rolling leadership tests on 4s and tau are gonna need snake eyes after you do 25% damage to a unit.

Also remember that if you assault a unit that is currently falling back, you automatically sweep that unit.

 Renesco P. Blue wrote:


Also remember that if you assault a unit that is currently falling back, you automatically sweep that unit.

They get a chance to rally, but yes, if they fail ld again, they're destroyed (unless they're Marines, because atsknf).

what do you guys think about stock Ravagers? They throw out a lot of AP2 shots from a decent range

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:
what do you guys think about stock Ravagers? They throw out a lot of AP2 shots from a decent range

They're good if that's what you need. We can cause mass wounds on models to make them fail armor saves though. Main thing we have problems with are vehicles, so I never play any 1500+ pt games without at least 2 triple dark lance Ravagers. If you don't want to play pure though, I'd recommend allying Eldar to webway portal in some D template wraithguard

StevetheDestroyeOfWorlds wrote:
what do you guys think about stock Ravagers? They throw out a lot of AP2 shots from a decent range

I always play with 1, Unless Im fighting Tau, then I take Lances. B.c S8 AP2 ID Suits lol.

DE struggle big time with their lack of formations outside of the Haemonculus Covens. That being said, their ability to spam Obsec units can also work very well in many of the tournament missions. I have a small DE army really based around one list that I like to play that mixes in some shooting with a bunch of assault (I know, gasp!), and some air support. Here are the units I both like and have found pretty useful:

1. Reaver jetbikes. Don't kit them out for shooting, give them Caltrops and start smashing into things. They will kill most things they assault, provided you get into base-to-base. Things that ignore cover (Tau) will crush them.
2. Razorwing Jetfighters. Their missiles are super good anti-infantry, and having the option to take 2 dark lances on the hull to take care of other aircraft is pretty dang good.
3. Blasterborn in Venoms. Both good units, putting them together and then deepstriking has been clutch for me.
4. Grotesques. In particular, the Grotesquerie formation. Stick the Haemonculus with them in a Raider, go flat out into something that needs punching for turn 2 assault. Make sure you're outnumbered so you can get all those super cool Rampage attacks.
5. Court of the Archon. This is a sleeper unit, but I get tons of mileage out of these guys. I like 3 Sslyth, 1 Lhamean, and 1 Ur-Ghul. Majority T5, has decent shooting with the Carbines, and actually hits pretty hard on the charge in CC.
6. Warriors in Raiders with Night Shields. Keep it cheap, jet around to objectives, and jink like your life depends on it (because it does). Again, ignores cover (Tau) will wreck your face.

As a Necron & SM player who frequently plays vs DE/HC lists, I can tell you to not just brush away your Kabalites if they arent Blaster-toting & in venoms.

A squad of 9+Splinter Cannon in a Raider with splinter racks + shadow field is actually borderline impossible to deal with unless you have fast reliable CC or ignores cover.
Three of these things will do extremely well against virtually anything, being Fast, ObSec, & 15/24 TL Poison shots at 24"/12" respectively.
Not to mention the ruling on Jink not effecting the dudes inside, so the entire thing has a permanent 3+ cover save.

To reiterate what several people have already said, Caltrop Reavers (6 w/ 2 Caltrops usually) are the bane of your opponent's life.
With Iniative ridiculous and Hit&Run, they will get a charge every one of your turns for 2D6 S6 Rending HoW.

Scourge are actually scary good at killing Knights, dont let anyone say otherwise. Two units of 5 with 4 Haywires can & will destroy a Knight in two turns, in one if you get lucky.
24" haywire is about as reliable as it gets.

Other than that, you are left with the 'tried & tested tactics', such as the Talos & Blaster wall, which are still just as good as ever.


One thing that I saw a little way up was ther negative Ld + Mirror of Minds. I saw a guy hit a WK with that in turn one, the maximum possible score for the WK was 10, with the minimum on the Shadowseer being 11, so it was a point-click-remove.

To reiterate the Eldar comment, an Aspect Shrine formation will do wonders. Reapers/Hawks/Spiders with +1BS are actually silly good when supporting DE

Also if you don't mind dipping into the Craftworld allies, you could take a Autarch Skyrunner with a Banshee Mask. Then add him into a Reaver unit and be able to avoid overwatch on charges.

This is a little list I have come up with that I feel offers a good amount but I am worried it lacks enough anti tank

Dark Eldar Realspace Raiders Detachment 1500 points:

HQ - 2x Archon WWP - 95x2

Elites - 2x Kabalite Blasterborne (venom) - 170x2

Troops - 3x Kabalite warriors (Raider w/splinter wracks and nightshield) - 165x3

Fast Attack - 2x Scourges (4 w/haywire cannons) - 120x2
- 2x Reavers (2 w/cluster caltrops) - 126 x2

Total: 1517

Let me know what you guys think. The idea is to deep strike the scourges with archons to give me some precision. If the scourges have another way of deep striking without the archon please let me know, I couldn't find anything. If you guys see any places I have too much overkill or places I am laking don't be afraid to point out what I'm doing wrong, any help is appreciated. All of the feedback has been amazing and I can't thank you guys enough!

Edit: Looking at the list again, the third unit of Kablite warriors and the second archon seem a little overkill but I'm not sure what exactly I'd replace it with.

Also, the Autarch will give you a dude with 3+/4++ to tank (if you're lucky, on majority T5 from combat drugs on the Reavers), plus a bunch of S6 AP3 Lance attacks from the laser lance you really should take on any Autarch Skyrunner who wants to charge. Don't forget he still has a shuriken pistol, even if you take a fusion gun as your second, so you're still dual-wielding.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Scourges are Jump Infantry, so they have Deep Strike built in. They will scatter, but 100pts per unit is a huge tax just to avoid the scattering. If you do, at least give the Archons a blaster and haywire grenades so they can contribute.

I would also consider running one squad of Scourges with haywire blasters and the other with heat lances (for double-duty against MCs or heavy infantry), but maybe that's just me being weird.

Depending on how much you like Venoms, you could run squads of 5x Kabalite Warriors with 1x blaster each in a dual-cannon Venom - you could probably get 5 of them for the price of 3 tooled Raider squads. That's a lot of splinter dakka...

I've never wanted a WWP archon with scourges. Scourges are, what, 145 points for a haywire squad? You're going to pay almost 2/3 the cost again, JUST to avoid the possibility that they're going to scatter and mishap/get out of the range of their 24" range guns?

There's no way that's worth it. WWP is for deep striking things that DO NOT have the capability whatsoever.

For the cost of those archons, if you trust your ability to deep strike intelligently with Scourges, you could get a Lhamean with another poison venom and a dissy ravager for heavy infantry hunting goodness (which is what your list really lacks).

120 points.

And I just had a 500 pt game with Heat Lance Scourge and I can safely say, Haywire for me. Failed to glance, let alone penetrate AV13 with 3 hits.

Still won, opponent conceded. Caltrops are brilliant for what you pay.

If I only had one Scourge squad, I'd totally agree. With two, I take one of each.

I had an opponent bring only one vehicle - a Land Raider Redeemer full of assault termies. My allied Wave Serpent detonated it turn 1 (brightlance - great when it works), but then I dropped heat lance scourges next to the termies the following turn. Three heat lance hits and five more hits from a plasma grenade added up to five dead termies before my Reavers shot the survivors off the table. (But died because they didn't get to charge. Oh well.) So, I like the heat lances for their versatility. But against tanks and only tanks, haywire all day every day - they're hell on wings.

I've been less enamored with Scourges recently as I've started throwing in Eldar armies with access to Fire Dragons.

Paired with a WWP archon donning the Armor of Misery for my leadership goodness, they really put the birdies to shame in terms of reliability.

Ain't nothing you can drop dragons on that won't be dead if it's on tracks or cares about low AP.

I don't have Craftworlds because I don't have the Codex, I don't like the resin models they provide and I don't like feeling like I've wasted all my money on DE models!

Yeah I didn't like the archons too much but didn't realize the scourges had Deepstrike. So I scaled the list down to 1000 points to get a better focus of what I want to be fundamental to my army.

HQ: Court of the Archon - 10

Elite: 2xBlasterborne w/venom - 170

Troop: 10 Kabalite Warriors in Raider w/splinter racks and nightshield - 165
5 Kabalite warriors w/blaster in venom - 110

Fast Attack: 6 Reavers w/2 cluster caltrops - 126
5 Scourges w/4 haywire - 120
(Flex spot to place another squad of either Scourges or Reavers)

Total: 997 w/Reavers 991 w/Scourges

Not 100% sold on the raider or on my HQ but I think the list packs a punch for 1000 points.

cwalt wrote:
Yeah I didn't like the archons too much but didn't realize the scourges had Deepstrike. So I scaled the list down to 1000 points to get a better focus of what I want to be fundamental to my army.

HQ: Court of the Archon - 10

Elite: 2xBlasterborne w/venom - 170

Troop: 10 Kabalite Warriors in Raider w/splinter racks and nightshield - 165
5 Kabalite warriors w/blaster in venom - 110

Fast Attack: 6 Reavers w/2 cluster caltrops - 126
5 Scourges w/4 haywire - 120
(Flex spot to place another squad of either Scourges or Reavers)

Total: 997 w/Reavers 991 w/Scourges

Not 100% sold on the raider or on my HQ but I think the list packs a punch for 1000 points.

However you decide to do ot, get the second splinter cannon on all your venoms. Doubling your firepower for 10pts is mileage thats too good to pass up.

Out of curiosity, can you deepstrike Fire Dragons in a nondedicated raider?