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I was looking to start a new army, Ive never had a Dark Eldar army and wanted to know a few pointers.  My thoughts are to use the Cabal list with a large unit of wiches and beasts, 2 webway portals,  3 talos, 5 units of warriors with shredders and Dark Lances, an Archon and 2 Heamonculi all on skyborads.   How does the WebWay Portal work and are there any key ingredients.

The webway portals are being used to "deploy" fast close combat units in front of the enemy. Dark eldar are very fragile and the safest place for them is in close combat...

You may keep units in reserve so that you can let them arrive true the portal. A model with the portal can "open"it in the shooting fase.

Just like normal reserves, you start to roll a d6 for every unit, to see if the become available at the start of turn 2. You do this even when there is not a portal opend yet!!! the models that become available at the start of turn 2 have to wait. in the shooting phase (turn2) its the best time to open the portal. at the start of turn 3 you roll a d6 for every unit in reserve that didnt became available in turn 2, and then all these units can enter the battlefield!!!

dont forget that in escalation the units must still enter from the table edge and cant "wait" for the portal to open. In escalation missions you should always open the portal in turn 1..so that only gets you about 12/15 inch (deployment zone) + 6 inch movement closer....

I use to equip two Heamonculi with a portal. the are both IC.. so the cannot be picked out for shooting....

Escalation has no bearing on what comes through the portal. You may choose to have certain units enter through the portal only. That is in the Web Way Portals description. If the portal carrier is somehow lost as a casualty before the units held in reserve for the portal are deployed, then those units are lost as well.

kaiservonhugal, The portal carriers in a Kabal usually can be 2 haemonculi taken as 1 HQ choice with 1 portal each. usually deployed with ground troops as fodder. The portal carrier(s) have to be protected. The IC's surrounded by troops gets his protection that way until it is deployed.

You also really don't have to move forward to deploy those portals in an advanced position. The main key is just having the skimmers start off the table so they don't get shot and die before doing anything. Even if you just deploy the portals 12" onto the table, the skimmers can still move out of them 12", then the Wych unit inside can hop out (2" to the back of the base makes roughly 3"), fleet (average 3.5") and assault (usually 6"). That's an assault threat range of roughly 36.5" from the DE player's table edge, WITHOUT moving the portals out of the DE zone. If the Wyches roll the 12" assault drug, look out! Note that the DE ICs can ride in Raiders with squads, and then they can detach when disembarking and simply CHOOSE the 12" assault drug with their Combat Drugs wargear.

Webway DE are about the only reliable DE, as they aren't crippled by losing the roll for first turn.