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Hey dakka, with the developments in Fall of Cadia, and the hint on warhammer TV, it seems that eldar are gonna get some goodies.

Lets hope that Dark Eldar get some form of update, some new plastic kits have been rumored (vect, and some plastic trueborn), but what rules would you like to see to make Dark Eldar good?

A decurion? If so, what would the benefits be?

Some new units? what should their rules be?

Discuss!

A better PfP table or at least an ability to increase it much more. More choice of combat drugs. More chances to steal initiative or take first turn. More chances for night fight or to even re-arrange parts of our army. Dark eldar are masters of ambush and generally attack who they want to attack and when they want to attack them. They usually should know who they are fighting in advance at all times and have prepared for fighting them. The whole taking 2nd turn, no night fight and no preparation for the enemy faction you're fighting is ridiculous to say the least.

New units? Go with bike heroes. Perhaps even let hellions jink and have a form of skilled rider (no dangerous terrain). Different types of jetbikes. Add units with more haywire. Add new covens units like a gargantuan creature or give dark eldar some sort of crazy super heavy skimmer like the forge world ones. Buff void mines to be str 10 or D with ap 1 possibly and increase the blast (we only get one bomb per void raven so make it good). Add more crazy weapons. I hear about all sort of blood curses and mind manipulating stuff in the fluff. If nothing else allow ability to control the enemy's minds or force serious de-buffs on them. Perhaps give us more pinning options to the enemy with possible leadership de-buffs to certain leadership or pinning tests. As of this moment only armor of misery has a -2 leadership de-buff on its own and the arch angel of pain only effects certain units. Give dark eldar more types of grenades and give our close combat squads grenades again. Perhaps a form of hallucinogenic grenades as well as the fear grenades but make fear grenades do multiple things. For instance allow them to cause fear in a melee and if nothing else allow them to at least pin ATSKNF units.

I like the idea of blood curses and the such.

It'd be a lot of fun to play an army that specializes in ruining other peoples units, but I play OverWatch competitively and when given the chance to introduce a character who does exactly that, the devs pulled punches, so I don't think that GW is better than blizzard in that regard.

Perhaps a WS and I modifier with certain types of grenades (for re-worked phantasm perhaps)? I mean dark eldar need to go first to win usually and if you modify weapon skill it makes it harder for the enemy to hit you. I don't think we need a str or t modifier but i think a sort of flashbang grenade restricting enemy movement would be good.

In fact now that i think about it shredders should have a similar effect too. Think about it. Look at the description of the weapon. It entraps people in a thin net that they cut themselves the more they struggle. How about every unit that gets hit by a shredder has to take an I test or take extra wounds or possibly have this effect a unit for a whole turn (whether player turn or both turns) and then in melee the enemy either strikes at WS 1 and/or every successful attack or unsuccessful attack hits their own unit (though it'd probably be at the unit's base str rather than via weapons) to represent them struggling in the shredder net and getting hurt. These wounds will possibly go through cover once it's on the unit and because when they're in melee it'll have to go through cover as it's them hurting themselves because they're stuck in it. This alone would make shredders more useful without needing to be a large blast or a template weapon.

A lot of my wishlist items can be found in my recent thread about PFP and vehicle options. Some of the highlights:

* AP1 lance weapons. It's fine that we have "quality" anti-tank weapons rather than "quantity" anti-tank weapons. Why spray scatter laser shots all over the place when you can place a single, delicate shot in a precise part of the enemy vehicle to disable it. The thing is that it's really difficult to blow up a vehicle with single-shot AP2 guns. If we had AP1 on our blasters, lances, etc, we'd be much more likely to stun/immob/weapon destroy/explode our targets. I feel it would be an interesting alternative to getting a mid-strength machinegun option.

* Haywire blasters as an option for trueborn and warriors. Why are these scourge-only?

* Vehicle wargear that lets our vehicles move 2d6" in the assault phase. Right now, we feel less speedy than our battle focusing, rising crescendoing, knife's edging cousins. This would reinforce the "elves in boats" playstyle while giving us the ability to protect ourselves via JSJ tactics.

* HQs on bikes/boards/wings. Not so much a power level thing as a cool factor thing.

* Shredders become flamers with the monofilament rule.

* Night shields become +1 to cover saves instead of "stealth" so that they stack with nightfighting.

* Plasma grenades on all our assault units OR make phantasm launchers count as squad-wide grenades again. Either would be fine.

* Wyches... Well, I have a long wishlist for wych units alone.

* Give ravagers the ability to shoot all their guns again, and drop their points considerably.

*Revise PFP to actually reward us for alpha striking instead of turtling/beta striking.

*Drazhar should be able to join non-incubi units. He's actually okay if you change that alone.

I could go on. Basically, there's a huge list of things I'd like to see changed to make our bad options decent and our lame options enjoyable to use. For competitive purposes, we really just need a way to deal with knights and remain alive in the face of scatbike spam.

I've done well against scatbike spam, but not to an insane extent.

All of those sound like really cool options, I'd kill for an archon with wings.

The BIGGEST 2 problems withDE are survivability and power

Shooting Power: They have 4 weapons only, Poison (that is bad), Dark weapons, Dis cannon and HW

B.c there is SOOOO Little Dis Cannons and HW and DL are so costly with Poison being trash

Compounded by the lack of survivability (If you play Eldar, Corsairs or Harlequins its STUPIDLY noticeable) I mean the Harlequins is literally better venom/wyche spam, I win tournament games with pure harlequins :/


So for the DE Decurion

All vehicles can Jink + shoot full BS or instead of shooting are treated as TL
Any unit with Fleet can Run and charge turn 2


Personally I would just add Shuriken and a special Battle Focus to everything in the army other than coven, Corsairs is a great example as a different type of battle focus. DE one should be a unit can get out of a 12" move vehicle still Shoot, Run or charge (but only one not any 2 or 3 of those options per turn).

More Hit and Run
It's made a big deal that Dark Eldar are a hit and run army.
And only Two units have that rule....

(Meanwhile White Scars get it on their entire army, even the units that make no sense being able to do that)

I'd rather see a more fluffy Hit and Run. Like if we lost the combat we can then choose to Hit and run.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
The BIGGEST 2 problems withDE are survivability and power

Shooting Power: They have 4 weapons only, Poison (that is bad), Dark weapons, Dis cannon and HW

B.c there is SOOOO Little Dis Cannons and HW and DL are so costly with Poison being trash

Compounded by the lack of survivability (If you play Eldar, Corsairs or Harlequins its STUPIDLY noticeable) I mean the Harlequins is literally better venom/wyche spam, I win tournament games with pure harlequins :/


So for the DE Decurion

All vehicles can Jink + shoot full BS or instead of shooting are treated as TL
Any unit with Fleet can Run and charge turn 2


Personally I would just add Shuriken and a special Battle Focus to everything in the army other than coven, Corsairs is a great example as a different type of battle focus. DE one should be a unit can get out of a 12" move vehicle still Shoot, Run or charge (but only one not any 2 or 3 of those options per turn).

Poison isn't always bad it's just mostly bad. Against artillery pieces with t7, monsters with 3+ armor (whatever few are left), bikers and some other stuff gets hurt fairly badly by poisoned. Normally the issue being whatever poisoned can do i usually prefer to use melee to deal with (grotesques, reavers with cluster caltrops and incubi) and it usually works better for me (being that i can avoid cover and sometimes armor on all the units i just stated). There are however exceptions and i just dealt with an army that is a massive exception to the rule. That army is AdMech with Skitarii. The big bots with t6, t5 and t7 with 3+ armor saves and in some cases FnP. Poisoned shooting esp. is the best way to handle them as melee would probably see you ended. That said grotesques could probably handle those guys as well but considering they're like str 8 ap 1 in melee or str 10 ap 1 in melee and have decent shooting weapons it's just stupid.

Dis cannons need more shots or something. Right now they are absolute garbage. Incubi or even void ravens can do their job better. On average against a terminator even you get maybe 4 wounds before inv. saves (so probably more like 3). If you have to deal with marines they don't do enough firepower to handle them and usually none of them do enough for marine spam.

Haywire is ok vs vehicles sometimes unless a vehicle has camo netting and is obscured enough to get cover from shield wall so that they have a 3+ cover save on a 3 HP front armor 14 vehicle (so it mostly sucks as well). Haywire is probably king against super-heavies provided they don't get massive inv. saves which knights tend to.

Blasters are average but we need more shots. If these guns were rapid fire i would be absolutely thrilled but they're not.

Heat lance is good except when it whiffs esp. on webway portal archon deepstriking heat lance scourge with him and then you scream in a deafening rage.

Honestly i'd say most Dark Eldar guns just suck. We're so much better in melee (grotesques, incubi, talos and reavers with cluster caltrops) and we're not even the best at it. Stupid as it is i may consider the Void Raven just because it's large blast str 9 ap 2 bomb and can instant death t4, multi-wound, 2+ armor save guys. Sadly i don't think those few units can cover all the bases and dark eldar will definitely feel the pain if they face something they can't handle well (wulfen, tau, gargantuans, super-heavies but knights esp. and possibly necrons). I might've missed some of the things we suck against too.

-------

Question would you guys be ok if shredders were the same except were an I test every time a unit was hit by one and if failed reduced enemy WS to 1 and possibly the enemies hit and/or wounded must roll to wound themselves again with the enemy using the enemy's basic strength but the self inflicted wounds go through cover (they are after all struggling in a net so they get no cover). Perhaps even let Init go to 1 as well since they're in the shredder net.

Also possibly add buffs to phantasm. Make phantasm cause enemies to take a pinning test at possible -2 leadership but the rest of the old rules stay the same (except with a -2 to Ld to the test that does wounds to the unit without cover or armor). Make phantasm tests stack as well per blast that hits a unit except the pinning effect (if this is done i might actually not mind if the wounds test at least stays at a normal leadership test for each roll). Better ways to pin an enemy would help with overwatch and similar somewhat in some cases.

Poisons works well against so few units tho for it to be justified being so costly and without S.

If DE poison was S4 I wouldnt care, at least at that point it can do something to more things.

But as it is S1 Poison 4 isnt good. I'd rather have a bolter no matter what. Blah blah poison can hurt Bikes/MC/Artillery, but we have Dis Cannons for that, and I'd rather have more Dis Cannons also.

I'd shot my Dis Cannons at Artillery and Bikes before I shoot my poison, AP2 forces them into cover and works better.

Edit: PS yes most DE guns do suck, thats why Im playing Corsairs/Harlequins now they literally are DE but better.........

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Poisons works well against so few units tho for it to be justified being so costly and without S.

If DE poison was S4 I wouldnt care, at least at that point it can do something to more things.

But as it is S1 Poison 4 isnt good. I'd rather have a bolter no matter what. Blah blah poison can hurt Bikes/MC/Artillery, but we have Dis Cannons for that, and I'd rather have more Dis Cannons also.

I'd shot my Dis Cannons at Artillery and Bikes before I shoot my poison, AP2 forces them into cover and works better.

Edit: PS yes most DE guns do suck, thats why Im playing Corsairs/Harlequins now they literally are DE but better.........

I dunno bikes tend to jink. As i said vs the admech i just faced today poisoned does alright. Dissies usually suck but i think they magically did ok vs some flyrants which aren't even so hot themselves. I'm actually heavily considering just trashing the dissie ravagers regardless of how much i like their aesthetics.

Cover and lack of hitting power is alone why i don't use a lot of our shooting. It's usually between shooting which gets ruined by cover and depends on the situation, fear bomb shenanigans (which either does very little or absolutely nothing if there are marines), flame template units like medusae (not very strong attacks and fairly slow so unable to keep up as well as fragile units) or you could do melee which is by far the best option and avoids cover directly. Sadly without grenades on our close combat oriented units going into cover can be an issue unless said units can handle it. Reavers hammer of wrath can help but reavers are definitely something to be careful with.

I'd rather have Bikes jink and kill 1 with a failed roll of 4 (3 for SW) than a 3+ anyways with no jink.

The less Melta/Plasma/Grav shooting the better.

Edit: I stop using DL on Raiders, single shots where doing nothing for me, the free Dis Cannons have done wonders, 6-9 shots at S5 AP2 worked so much better for me.

I started to put more HW on things too and just dedicated all my AT and tried not to even use Lances on tanks.

I agree that our poison is actually pretty alright. I tend to think of it the same way I think of most of my aspect warriors: great against the right target, but suboptimal against other stuff. Non-ravenwing bikes can jink against poison, but so what? That's still a 3+ armor save more often than not, and you're basically shooting 12 strength 5 shots with a venom when targeting bikes. Against MCs like riptides and flying circuis, venom spam can do a surprisingly good job of taking down lynchpin MCs. Sprinkle Fateweaver with a few poison shots on turn 1 or drop a dreadknight before he can shunt your way, and you'll find yourself feeling pretty good about poison. Splinter cannons specifically have long enough range that they're pretty effective as a kiting weapon even if they don't have the same punch as a bunch of scatter lasers.

The only real frustration I have regarding our poison is that it's ineffective agains the GMCs that are slowly replacing MCs in the meta.

Our disintegrators are actually fine in casual games. Against most enemies, they perform roughly as well as a heavy bolter. Which is to say not amazing but not awful. They can keep light vehicles or bikes jinking, they can be moderately scary against flying MCs, they can be rough on dreadknights, and they have a 50% chance of hitting when fired after jinking. They're not going to win you a game, but they aren't really bad.

Dark lances on raiders sort of work. You have to take a lot of raiders, give all of them lances, give the kabalites inside blasters (and maybe even haywire sybarites), and then probably pack some dedicated AT on your scourges, reavers, etc., but they *do* work. The thing is that a single lance has a pretty crummy chance of doing anything worthwhile to a target, but having a strength 8 shot in almost every unit on the table can pay off big time. Plus, you'll occassionally get lucky and kill off a target with your first shot, thus freeing up other units to go after additional units. Granted, this is dependent upon a pretty specific playstyle, but it does work.

@FlamingKillamajig: I'm not a fan of your shredder idea, I'm afraid. The WS and Initiative changes would require additional bookkeeping, the self-inflicted wounds would take additional time to resolve for either too little effect (in the case of marines) or devastatingly potent effect (in the case of 30 boy ork squads with 6+ armor saves). Plus it wouldn't really address the core issue of the shredder, that being that it's a small blast and thus struggles to get many hits. There was a whole thread on the shredder not too long ago. it's a neat read if you're interested.

Also, from a fluff perspective, it's not so much that you're struggling in a net of "barbed wire." You're freaking out because you're in a neat of molecule-thin wire that cuts through you so cleanly you barely feel it. And then you realize your hand is gone and you freak out, so you move around a bunch and more parts of you fall off and so on and so forth. You freedom of movement isn't actually affected much. it's just that you cut yourself to ribbons as you move.

I like the idea of having multiple soul fright weapons stack somehow. Maybe additional penalties to leadership ( to a max of X?) for each blast that hits? The pinning thing would be in-line with a shadow seer's mirage launchers (very similar piece of wargear), but it doesn't really help with soul fright weapons' main weakness, that being that they don't work against half the units in the game. Soul fright is actually pretty nice against tau, eldar, orks, etc. The problem with soul fright is that you've wasted your points entirely if you're facing marines, daemons, most CSM, necrons (because of their high Leadership), or anything else with an abundance of fearless. They work fine when they work, especially in conjunction with armor of misery, coven formations, etc. It's just that they don't work at all against most things.

Honestly i try to avoid shooting with most of my raiders anyway since they're on melee unit transport duty.

Well let me explain the idea of part of the shredder idea. Sure maybe rolling for more wounds wouldn't be so hot but the WS and I chances are big for us. Imagine for a second an enemy unit whose melee becomes suddenly far worse. Sure we can't take a hit but if most of the enemy's tools can't hit us what's the big issue. Also a possible initiative debuff might help counteract a lack of grenades if they don't just add grenades. Also this might even possibly restrict movement. If you're caught in a super thin invisible wire this should effect movement as well. This could be represented by forcing moving enemies to take DT.

Let's take wulfen for instance in the case of this shredder example. They somehow fail one of the shredder tests and now you decide to assault them. Now this effect will stay for both your turn and your enemy's. If you take this and charge with reavers with cluster caltrops and then need to leave after the enemy's turn in their melee you can avoid their high WS. Provided of course your bikes are still alive at this point which i kind of doubt. Chances are you either do your job in 2 combat phases or they die but it's ok since we can't take hits too well but can hit much better. Anyway imagine these wulfen attacking you back on 5's after you charge them (hopefully) or perhaps they charge you after you lit em up with shredders in which case they still just hit on 5's while even you WS 4 units can hit them on 3's. It's just so much better. It neuters some hard hitting units by making their 'to hit' chance that much worse and making yours much better. I think hitting an enemy with a de-buff and then charging the enemy when they're off balance is very much like dark eldar.

Against certain melee armies or even durable units that can do some damage to much more fragile dark eldar melee units it is a very good thing.

I already read the shredder thread. I understand many prefer the simple idea of just giving them flamers. I'm not really opposed i just think we need more interesting weapons that do interesting effects and things. I mean crap tau has a million effects on their stupid suit sub-systems. I'd kill for that many options for my dark eldar.

You might be right on fluff perspective but it sounded like the enemy struggled in the net and got cut more as they struggled. Since dark eldar focus on causing pain and misery i'd highly doubt this being painless is what the GW writers intended even if something that thin and sharp probably would be almost painless. I can't say as i've never had a part cut off of me with a rusty, crooked knife and compared it to an impossibly sharp and thin blade.

Part of the point of pinning units is two-fold. Let's say a unit is assault oriented as doesn't have grenades. Ok then *blam* now i pinned that unit so when i charge in there's no overwatch to worry about and we strike at initiative. That's exactly 2 birds with one stone. Even the crappiest melee squads that we have with the poorest armor can't get lit up by overwatch and if they have no grenades they still can't assault through cover at initiative. That is a huge thing in my opinion. The other issue is this fear bomb stuff doesn't effect marines but pinning checks still would. The fact the enemy doesn't cower in fear from dark eldar just annoys the crap out of me. I don't think we have any pinning in our army. It is so unimaginative i'm just disgusted. I mean even the special wargear in the 5th edition army book sounded interesting. The only exception here being the ossifactors which actually sound kinda cool.

I still think much like harlequins dark eldar need more de-buffs to give to the enemy. We need this. I can't state that enough.

Anyway perhaps this is too many extra rules but one or two cool new toys or fixed old toys should be pretty nice. Just let it be.

@FlamingKillamajig:

Shredders:
Lowering the enemy to initiative 1 is pretty meh in my book if we're also swinging at initiative 1. Dark eldar generally depend on killing off enough enemies to reduce return attacks. If we're swinging at the same time, then our hypothetical assault untis are basically just becoming mean-spirited suicide units. It's better than a stick in the eye, but it's not ideal. I'd rather just see incubi, etc. gain assault grenades.

Making it harder for enemy units to hit us in melee is a cool idea, but it's much more simply handled by simply giving our assault units the option to take defensive grenades (which have the blind rule). It makes the assault unit more self-sufficient, gives us one fewer new rules to remember, and takes away the threat of accidentally shredding your own assault unit with a strength 6 blast due to a bad scatter.

Your idea is neat. I'm just not sure it's worth the extra complication in practice. I'd like it more on some sort of craftworlder platform where they're *supposedly* meant to depend on cooperation between different units to perform well.

Soul Fright:
I see your point on the pinning. I'm not opposed to making them have more of a pinning role, but I'd still be more interested in a change that lets them harm more armies. A marine might not know fear, but he should probably still have a rough time inhaling psycotropic neurotoxins. Maybe leave them as is but simply add the pinning and poison 4+ rules to them?

One thing about Shredders that bugs me is that it is described as a monofilament weapon, yet doesn't have that rule.

And on that note of weapons not working as described, am I the only one that thinks Darklight weapons should have blind?

For me have 3 DL lances isnt enough to do anything, so I take 3 Dis Cannons instead, ever sense I swapped it has made differences.

This is how it goes... I shoot 3 DL's 1 missing, 1 will do nothing most the time and the other 1/2 the time gets the wound through or a HP, mostly a Glance or a crappy pen.

Now those 9 Dis shots will hit 6x and kill 3 models (sometimes 2) it nearly dbls the DL for me AND ITS FREE so I saved 15pts.

Yes a DL has more potential, but just b.c something CAN do more damage doesnt mean on average it will.

Dark Lances are in the same position as every other high strength, single shot weapon like Lascannons, Bright Lances, Heavy Rail etc, completely useless unless taken en mass and then becomes too expensive for what it does. I'm finding that Ravagers with the Disintegrator cannon is far more of a threat, 9 S5, AP2 shots can be a threat to things like Dreadknights and other T6 MC's, bikes, Kataphron Servitors, Terminators.

I would like to see the Disintegrator bumped to S6 though, it makes no sense that it's a S5 plasma weapon.

I like the idea of S6 Ravagers and at least flamer shredders.

Any new unit ideas or formation ideas?

 Imateria wrote:
Dark Lances are in the same position as every other high strength, single shot weapon like Lascannons, Bright Lances, Heavy Rail etc, completely useless unless taken en mass and then becomes too expensive for what it does. I'm finding that Ravagers with the Disintegrator cannon is far more of a threat, 9 S5, AP2 shots can be a threat to things like Dreadknights and other T6 MC's, bikes, Kataphron Servitors, Terminators.

I would like to see the Disintegrator bumped to S6 though, it makes no sense that it's a S5 plasma weapon.

Perhaps dissie is better but overall the ravager doesn't do enough to justify its points. Monsters are always at least t6 (meaning 6 hits on average as normal and then 2 wounds if no FnP or inv. saves which isn't the norm btw), flyers (which dissie ravagers are ok at actually due to ap 2 and volume of fire but only vs armor 10 flyers), heavy infantry (pretty much where they shine even if cover or 3+ and 5+ inv. and possibly FnP screw that hardcore) and anti MEQ (which is the worst possible way to use them). Honestly i wish they'd just up the amount of shots on the ravager. Could you imagine if instead it was 12 or 15 shots instead? I might actually really enjoy having them around even with a slight point increase.

My issue is ravagers just don't do enough. Most of our shooting is absolute garbage. In fact against a fairly mild necron decurion most of my shooting did next to nothing against him including the void raven. Most of heavy lifting was done by melee units esp. the reavers. The incubi also did damage but i'm finding more and more that str 4 isn't good enough.

If i could switch out which units i have right now i'd take a much more melee oriented dark eldar force (or at least the good units). It does far more for us than anything else we have (ranged and fear bomb) ever will. The one exception to this rule may be venoms, a void raven or two and some anti-tank/anti-monster shooting units (blasters seem to be the most versatile though i'd never count on them alone for AT).

Necrons are a bad example, Decurian's +1 to reanimation means they're a hard army for anyone to shift.

I'm OK with poison since we put out so much of it, I mean I tabled a Ravenwing force last week because his bikes didn't want to get anywhere near my Talos, Incubi and Grotesques leaving my splinter cannons and disintegrators to out range him and cut down the bikes.