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I was trying to find a thread for this and came up empty. Is anyone playing Dark Eldar at the moment? I'm trying to muster some enthusiasm but they just feel so empty now. To me, they've always been about cunning tactics, and fun wargear and shenanigans - and that's all been stripped out. It doesn't help that I think every single one of my squads now has an illegal (or irrelevant) load out.

Anyone out there making them work, and having fun in the process? How?

My own Drukari work just fine.

I built them when their 9e Codex arrived. My list was 1 Archon, 1 Venom, 3x3 Talos & 3x3 Cronos. I'd have forgone the Archon but by the rules I needed at least 1 HQ.....
Worked wonderfully.

Here in 10e 1) everything got cheaper, 2) GW reduced my Talos/Cronos squads to two models instead of three :(
Then the shop instituted a ridiculous Rule of 2 (except for battleline & dedicated transports) for our Escalation Leagues.
So I had to add some stuff to the collection.

So now? I run various combos of 2-3 2 member Talos (interchangeable tales, chosen based on the game I'll be playing) & Cronos squads, 1 Succubus + Venom, another succubus + Venom, Drazar + venom, 2-3 5x Scourges (1 squad with splinter cannon, 2 squads with dark lances), 2 - 3 5x Mandrakes, 2 Voidravens, & 2 Razorwings.
Exact mix depends on size of game, but there's always Talos present + at least two of the aircraft.
The succubus now leads the force as she's the cheapest character model. Her ONLY real job is to carry the Pain Token granting enhancement & stay alive. so she hops out of the Venom T1 & often holds the home objective while her ride zips off to be useful.
The Mandrakes bounce around mostly taking objectives &/or doing secondaries.
Everything else concentrates on killing the foe, & doing actions/secondaries/taking primary objectives should the opportunity arise.

This mix works better than my original 99% Elf Free Talos/Cronos list ever did. It's still fun, but I haven't enjoyed it quite as much.

Crispy78 wrote:
I was trying to find a thread for this and came up empty. Is anyone playing Dark Eldar at the moment? I'm trying to muster some enthusiasm but they just feel so empty now. To me, they've always been about cunning tactics, and fun wargear and shenanigans - and that's all been stripped out. It doesn't help that I think every single one of my squads now has an illegal (or irrelevant) load out.

Anyone out there making them work, and having fun in the process? How?

For me, 10th killed Dark Eldar stone dead.

I'm sure they can still win, but all the things I actually enjoyed have been meticulously extracted so that only flavourless slop remains.

Power from Pain feels like a rule that the designers intended to finish writing but never got round to it.

Their first detachment's ability just feels like DLC for the Power from Pain rule.

All wargear options are gone. Enhancements are about as fun and exciting as colon cancer.

Which is your favourite DE HQ - the melee-only one with poisoned weapons, the melee-only one with poisoned weapons or the melee-only one with poisoned weapons?

Moreover, because 10th was written by a haddock rolling around on a keyboard, each HQ can only join their designated units. Like putting a Haemonculus with Grotesques? Tough. He has to go with Wracks now. Like putting an Archon with Mandrakes? Tough, it's not on the list. Want to put a Succubus with literally anything but Wyches? Nope, not allowed.

Oh and troops can disembark and assault from a Land Raider after it moves because it has a ramp. However, the open-topped vehicles where DE literally hang off them to jump right into battle have no such ability.

Boy, what fun and thrills this new edition has brought.

So yeah, if you want to have any sort of connection with your army, I'd recommend a different game.

I'm planning on playing through a three round DE arena fight on Jan 2. This is far from what you'd call a typical 40k game though- I don't do 40k the way other people do- my version is more like Inquisitor 28- as much an RPG as table-top miniature game.

I have two distinct 5 member Wych cults painted- all basic Wyches. After this 3-round battle, one Cult will earn a Succubus, both will earn their Hekatrices, one Cult will receive a pack of Kymerae pups- one of whom will grow to a full Khymera and 3 Wych weapons will be distributed.

I literally can't build or paint anymore Wyches UNTIL I fight this battle. I literally do not know whether my Succubus model will be male or female, nor what colour it will be.

I'm hoping to post it as a batrep, so if I manage to actually pull it off, you'll see it soon enough.

Once this fight is behind me and I build the minis that each Cult gains from the fight, then I might get closer to conventional games.

I agree with a lot of what Vipoid said above- I hope the Dex fixes some of these problems, but I'm not counting on it- GW has really given up a lot of the flavour and variety of editions past in the name of simplicity, and Drukhari have been hit particularly hard.

I've been playing my drukhari some. Although not as much as I'd like. I gave them a fair shake at the start of the edition and just got really sour on them really fast, mainly for the reasons vipoid spelled out.

The Sky Splinter Assault detachment did help them quite a bit. Almost all of the flavorful wargearand customization options are still gone, but being able to pounce out of a transport and having some mobility options for playing cagey with transports really does do a lot to help make them feel somewhat mobile. GW graciously allowing archons to join *the* unit known for body guarding them (incubi) is also a step in the right direction, although I'm pretty confident they weren't counting on full-reroll incubi with lance being a thing. Won't be surprised if that gets nerfed somehow in the codex.

Reaper's Mirth looks interesting and fits my fluff pretty well (Poisoned Tongue kabal is known to have ties to harlequins). So I'm looking forward to trying that out as a way to run drukhari units that don't want to ride in transports.

Basically, I think drukhari feel a lot of the downsides of 10th edition a little more harshly than some other factions because our wargear, warlord traits, etc. were not only interesting but frequently the whole point of our characters.

Haemonculi used to be able to choose between being cheap "medics", exotic beatsticks, and fielding whacky one-shot ranged weapons to now just being... precision melee poison guys? Who make wracks slightly more durable except you don't want wracks to be durable because their job is to die.

Succubi used to be quirky beatsticks that you could heavily customize through your choice of drugs, subfaction traits, and weapons. Now you just choose between the good gun and the bad gun, and she and wyches both hit too limply to really do any damage outside of sky splinter assault.

Archons used to be able to open up the whole armory. They could be shooty HQs, they could allow their squad to deepstrike as a quirky alternative to transports, they could be beatsticks, they could bring weird gear that played with the PFP mechanic or supercharged their own abilities as they killed things... Now they can choose between the good gun and the bad gun and give rerolls to incubi...

Also, you might run into the wirdness that is poison being Anti-Infantry (and only Anti-Infantry) if you face opponents with lots of mounted or beast units. It is bizarre fishing for 6s against fenrisian wolves because apparently the venom capable of incapacitating a marine just doesn't do much to a wolf.

Honestly, drukhari play pretty well on the tabletop. You can definitely have an enjoyable time with them. Just know that the current edition has taken away a lot of what made them interesting in the past and that playing them well these days means leaning into some of the gamey cut and paste tactics. Like, peekaboo venoms (hopping out of a venom around a corner to shoot your guns, then re-embarking later in the turn) is a genuinely useful tactic, but it feels super weird. Killing imperial knights with bricks of incubi with full rerolls is powerful, but you really feel like you ought to have different tools for that job. Charging out of a raider that moved is strong, but having to pay CP for the privelege is a bit irksome.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PenitentJake wrote:

I literally can't build or paint anymore Wyches UNTIL I fight this battle. I literally do not know whether my Succubus model will be male or female, nor what colour it will be.

Obviously do what you want with your minis, but it's canon that men don't tend to advance very far in wych society. To the rank, for instance, of succubus. So a male succubus would be considered pretty unusual.


EDIT: I'm curious to hear from any players who decided to pick up drukhari in 10th edition. What was the appeal, and have the rules been what you were hoping for? I feel like a large part of what drew me to the faction in the first place is no longer present. So I'm curious to know what, if anything, is drawing people in today.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Killing imperial knights with bricks of incubi with full rerolls is powerful, but you really feel like you ought to have different tools for that job.

I do have different tools for that job. What do you think those Voidraven Bombers with voidlances, Razorwing Jetfighters & Sourges armed with darklances are for?
Certain Talos tales as well.

ccs wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Killing imperial knights with bricks of incubi with full rerolls is powerful, but you really feel like you ought to have different tools for that job.

I do have different tools for that job. What do you think those Voidraven Bombers with voidlances, Razorwing Jetfighters & Sourges armed with darklances are for?
Certain Talos tales as well.

Fair. I mostly meant that it feels weird that one of our most effective methods of killing big models is a supercharged infantry melee unit thanks to a probably unintentional wombo combo. (Given that the archon couldn't join them initially.)

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Obviously do what you want with your minis, but it's canon that men don't tend to advance very far in wych society. To the rank, for instance, of succubus. So a male succubus would be considered pretty unusual.

These guys were originally conceived as the secondary "NPC" Cult, and they were designed to be unconventional.

I put the details in a spoiler; it's just a brief description, but it is off-topic.



It's worth noting that 9th provided considerably more infrastructure for this sort of thing; this arena fight uses KT rules, but both Cults are intended to eventually grow to 40k size, and there's not really anything for them to grow into when they get big enough for 40k.

I tried to pick up the Killteam book today, but both shops were out. Not sure I'm going to have it by Jan 2, but it's coming soon.

Edit: What a dumbass- forget the spoiler tags!

@PenitentJake: I dig it.

Could always use the term "archite." I think it's technically meant to be fem-gendered version of archon, but it sounds pretty gender neutral to my ear.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@PenitentJake: I dig it.

Could always use the term "archite." I think it's technically meant to be fem-gendered version of archon, but it sounds pretty gender neutral to my ear.

Archite was the original term (in the reissued 3rd Ed codex) for what is now a Succubus (which at the time was used for the Wych squad leaders). So it’s probably intended to be gender neutral.

Not much to add to this litany of woe.

As Vipoid says, I think DE have been hit hard by the changes to 10th. As a faction its been hollowed out a lot since say the 5th edition codex.

Its perfectly "functional" - but that's not really enough to inspire my interest. You saw similar issues in 9th despite DE being the best faction/overpowered for about a year. I don't think people get into the faction for "roll dice/win game" - that's what CWE are for...

Rules wise I think DE have really suffered from GW's somewhat inexplicable desire to make them "3 factions in 1" - sort of like Daemons, where each faction gets about 3 units. That's kind of been unravelled, but you fear its going to come back in the detachments. The basic issue I think is that the model line up is so small, armies kind of write themselves. I mean massing pain engines is I guess a thing. Much like how spamming Wracks or Wyches could be a thing. But its not - to my mind - enough of a thing to be all that interested in.

I'm sort of hopeful that DE are going to get a big re-release, perhaps as the not-Marine 11th edition starting army that's probably due mid/late-2026. This might however be completely misplaced - and most of the kits still hold up very well so don't obviously need replacing. But certainly as a DE collector I'd like to be able to buy something new.

Tyel wrote:


Rules wise I think DE have really suffered from GW's somewhat inexplicable desire to make them "3 factions in 1" - sort of like Daemons, where each faction gets about 3 units. That's kind of been unravelled, but you fear its going to come back in the detachments. The basic issue I think is that the model line up is so small, armies kind of write themselves.

You think a model line of 24(25?) Kits is small?
Ok, its not SM huge, but....

ccs wrote:

Tyel wrote:


Rules wise I think DE have really suffered from GW's somewhat inexplicable desire to make them "3 factions in 1" - sort of like Daemons, where each faction gets about 3 units. That's kind of been unravelled, but you fear its going to come back in the detachments. The basic issue I think is that the model line up is so small, armies kind of write themselves.

You think a model line of 24(25?) Kits is small?
Ok, its not SM huge, but....

It's small if you divide it up into 4 sections (kabal, cult, coven, mercs) with only 1 of those sections benefitting from a hypothetical kabal/cult/coven-specific detachment.

I agree with Tyel here about the faction suffering from being pseudo split up. It was neat to see Covens get some love with their 7th edition splat, but it has honestly caused more harm than good in most editions. Ironically, 5th edition probably did it best where you definitely got the flavor of the big three factions existing but mechanically weren't really required to separate them out. So you had wracks as a troop choice if you wanted to do a purely coven army, but you could also stick your haemonculus in a wych squad to help them survive on their way to combat and get them that tasty furious charge a bit faster.

8th and 9th both had to jump through hoops to make the separation work out, and you still ended up basically using up all your "detachment slots" to unlock your full codex. 10th has *every army* heavily restricted on who their characters can hang out with, but it's definitely still annoying. Sticking a haemi with some wyches to give them FNP would be nice, for instance. And they had to do an errata to let the archon (and only the archon) hang out with our army's dedicated bodyguard unit.

5th really did it best by giving us the options and tools to lean into the separation as much or as little as we wanted.

Tyel wrote:
As Vipoid says, I think DE have been hit hard by the changes to 10th. As a faction its been hollowed out a lot since say the 5th edition codex.

Its perfectly "functional" - but that's not really enough to inspire my interest.

Yeah. That's pretty much it. I'm still enjoying playing occassional game with my DE, but most of the stuff that drew me to them originally is gone. Back in the day, they really nailed that feeling of the wind blowing through your hair as you jumped off a raider wearing bravado for armor and supercharging yourself through violence. Plus we had the most evocative, fluffy armory in the game. These days, the army is just a lot less juicy. If you enjoy giving your copy+paste archon's buffs to your incubi over and over, they're fine. But if you liked feeling fast or having lots of customization or risking a drug overdose to turn your characters in blenders or even just having quirky weapons... That stuff is all basically gone.

But hey! We're still fragile right? We're the only faction whose vehicles got less durable in 10th, after all.

ccs wrote:

Tyel wrote:

Rules wise I think DE have really suffered from GW's somewhat inexplicable desire to make them "3 factions in 1" - sort of like Daemons, where each faction gets about 3 units. That's kind of been unravelled, but you fear its going to come back in the detachments. The basic issue I think is that the model line up is so small, armies kind of write themselves.

You think a model line of 24(25?) Kits is small?
Ok, its not SM huge, but....

What are you comparing it to?

Not including FW or Fortifications:
Tau have 34 units.
Necrons have 46 units.
Tyranids have 47 units.
Orks have 49.
Eldar have 47 Craftworld units (so already almost twice as many as DE) plus another 7 Harlequin units plus another 2 Corsair units plus the 3 Ynnari characters - all folded into the Eldar codex for a total of 59 units.

I would note, too, that one of the areas we are most lacking is HQs - Tyranids have 10, Tau have 12, Orcs have 17, Necrons have 20, Eldar have 25. DE, meanwhile, have just 6 (only 3 of which are generic).

Further, as Tyel and Wyldhunt have said, trying to split what is already one of the smallest Xeno armies into 3-and-a-bit subfactions has made things even worse. Because now our already-limited unit roster is locked into very specific combinations. Each subfaction has just a single HQ to pick from (and Mandrakes and Sourges, which don't fit into any of the subfactions, don't have any HQs). What's more, Haemonculi can't join Grotesques, and Succubi can't join Hellions or Reavers because they have 0 mobility options. It also means that many of the already extremely limited stratagems and enhancements are locked to units from particular subfactions.

We then have the joy of Harlequins and Corsairs, which the already-fat Eldar codex gets as standard units, but which DE can only take as allies (adding two additional subfactions to a codex that is already far too divided).

Moreover, thanks to some astonishingly bad design, DE can take Corsairs but not the Wave Serpent (which is the only Transport Corsairs are permitted to embark in). Nor will Corsairs deign to embark in any of DE vehicles, even though Corsair Venoms were a thing in 7th.

Oh and I'd just like to point out that Ynnari has gone from being 'any combination of Eldar/DE/Harlequins*' in 7th to 'still any combination of Eldar/DE/Harlequins* but each faction has to be in a separate, legal detachment' in 8th to 'Ynnari are now an Eldar army - you can include DE/Harlequins but they're not allowed to be your warlord and you can't have more of them in any slot than Eldar units' in 9th to 'Ynnari are even more an Eldar army - Harlequins are okay but DE can never be more than 25% of your total points'. DE also lost access to PfP but no longer gain any bonus whatsoever from being Ynnari.

So we've gone from being able to make Ynnari armies that are 100% DE (and/or Harlequins) to Ynnari being a Craftworld Eldar thing where you can maybe include a few DE units if you really must. Except they no longer trade PfP for Strength from Death, so it's basically pointless.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. It's just frustrating that so many things (Harlequins, Ynnari, Corsairs) have been folded into the Eldar codex, while DE are given nothing but table-scraps.

(minus a few units)

Its all been said - but yeah, I'd say the roster is small.

Sort of channelling the older editions - but Kabalites consist of... Kabalites and Ravagers.
Compared with Wyches, Hellions and Reavers.
or Wracks, Grots, Talos & Cronos.

Sure you could bulk it out with Incubi/Mandrakes/Scourge, transports and flyers. But its looking quite narrow to me.

Its more than new Squats - but this is a faction that's notionally never stopped being playable since around 1998.

Hey, we're approaching tau levels of datasheets if you include all those units they've removed over the years. You know. True born, blood brides, Kheradruakh, the duke, the baron, Malys, Vect, Kruellagh, generics on bikes, master haemis...

Can't wait to find out which units we'll lose in 10th. I know some people think it will be grotesques or the court, but my money's on those pesky beast packs that they never seem to know what to do with.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Hey, we're approaching tau levels of datasheets if you include all those units they've removed over the years. You know. True born, blood brides, Kheradruakh, the duke, the baron, Malys, Vect, Kruellagh, generics on bikes, master haemis...

And all of them lost before Legends were a thing, so we don't even have GW's half-arsed pretence of rules for them.

Incidentally, I feel I owe Kheradruakh in particular an apology for all the mean things I said about him in 5th edition. Not that any of it was untrue, but if I'd seen how DE would end up I'd have made the most of him at the time.

I think it's extra frustrating in 10th because we can be pretty confident the things we'd most like to see return (customization, mobility, quirky rules) are exactly the sort of things that 10th has gone out of its way to remove.

So it's like, it's not just a temporary design accident that we can hope will be remedied with the codex. It's an intentional design direction.

Like, 9th edition drukhari frustrated me because I felt like they replaced a lot of the flavorful options and more big brain rules with simplistic over the top offense so that we could trade well despite our fragility. But oh my gosh do I miss the *flavor* and *variety* of 9th.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Can't wait to find out which units we'll lose in 10th. I know some people think it will be grotesques or the court, but my money's on those pesky beast packs that they never seem to know what to do with.

It is my hope that the DE release will include the Court, the Beasts and the Gotesques. The restructuring of both the Beasts and the Court for 10th does suggest a build-what's-in-the-box design philosophy... Which in turn might suggest that boxes are indeed on the way. The Court build is just mandatory 1/1/1/1, so that does (sort of reflect how they were sold) but the beasts are a mandatory 1,2,3- not sure if the razorwing flocks were sold in 3's.

DE seem to be a late release this edition. I'm not aware of any rumours at all.

Only time will tell.

Oh, and thanks for the reminder of the Archite title- if the Faceless men's MVP wins, I think I will go with Archite. I'll be doing another check in for the KT book tomorrow.

Played a 1000 point battle against my mate's tyranid army yesterday. I will add a massive disclaimer that I am generally pretty gak at this game and was 100% not making full use of everything I had - but damn did I ever get crushed. Full wipe of my army in turn 3, other than the Voidraven disappearing off the table edge.

Not looking for a full breakdown of everything I did wrong as frankly there aren't enough hours in the day! But wanted to particularly call out how utterly disappointed I was with the Voidraven's void mine. He had a load of things bunched together coming at me in a wave, and I thought they were an ideal target... I had the opportunity to hit his Exocrine, his Termagants, his Genestealers and his Barbgaunts. For starters I only rolled a 2 for the 'within D6 inches' roll, so that saved his Genestealers. Then I also rolled poorly on 'on a 4+ each unit takes D6 mortal wounds' so I only ended up actually wounding his Termagants - and then only killed 3 of the buggers. Feels like, for a once-per-game special nuke, there's just too much mitigation of the effect...