Alternative Trueborn

[bethor]

I stumbled on different elite setup trying to save points for some smaller point (500 and 1k) games the past few weeks, and have been pleasantly surprised.

3 Trueborn, 2 Dark Lances, 86pts.

Its burn up all my elite choices, but for 258 points I'm setting 6 Lances in my deployment zone. I'm thinking that this shouldn't work, but it is. Has anyone else been including these? Are they just on a good run for me, doomed to fail miserably in the near future?

[thecactusman17]

Well, the reasons why I don't run them are threefold: Firstly, they are static models and won't be able to reposition themselves if the battle goes to one extreme end of the board or the other, or if the opponent decides to place all of his heavy tanks 37 inches away. Second is the limited range, you are often going to be outranged by several anti-infantry tank-mounted guns. Thirdly is the small unit size in conjunction with these last two issues, which means that anyone shooting at them scores at least one wound and forces a morale check, ona T3 Sv5 model. With each DL costing more than the squad it's attached to, that's quite a lot of points invested into extremely fragile and obvious targets.

[bethor]

And those were my objections...until I started running them.

Everything else in the army is running around and highly mobile. I've lost one squad early in each game, but there are still 2 more. I've yet to loose all three in any of the 5 games. They just aren't scary enough to the good guys. The prefer to put their heavy weapons into the skimmers and troops, and the snipers just sit back and harrass the little boxes (I've only wrecked 3 vehicles in 5 games, but I've stunned/shaken/imobilized several more).

I had been sold on the 3x or 4x blaster in veonm, but they always died. These guys aren't dieing, and are having about the same overall impact.

[Cereal n' Milk]

It seems like a good choice...with the rest of your army running around theirs, a squad of 3 trueborn doesn't seem that dangerous. I feel like this squad would be annoying to play with in killpoint games though...

[Yriel_The_Angelic]

Well here's the thing, i used to play around with lists building when DE first came out and actually tried the 3 man DE trueborn "Sniper unit." Overall it comes down to gameplay of your opponents. I play against Drop pod marines and Tau regularly, Tau dance around [those] DL trueborn to the point it feels like we're playing Chess and loads of drop pods with only one or 2 rhinos tops? I had to stop using my "Sniper" unit .__. However every now and then if i need a lil more "umpf" in my list (because i took disintegrators instead of DL) then i may add one Sniper unit. Good for you if it works.

[Tarasque]

It's an interesting idea, and I wonder how it would work in larger games (1500+).

Another Trueborn squad I've had fairly good results from, though it may not be as good as Blasterborn, is 5 Trueborn in a Venom w/ 2 SCs and 3 Shredders. Basically a suicide unit to kill off a lot of infantry after you pop their transports, and with 3 S6 blasts and 12 Poison shots, you can really lay the hurt on a squad fast. I haven't played many games with it though, I'd have to test it out more to really be able to definitively say it's either good or bad.

[bethor]

I intend to see how it works out at 2000 points here this weekend. The points savings of the three pairs versus the three x4 blasters in venoms let me make room for a second squad of scourges with two haywires.

[Skari]

The lance trueborn are not too bad but you have to make sure you have other units in your army that pose a threat to the enemy to draw attention away from them. Practice does make them worth their weight in gold.

[Kevlarshark]

The 2x lance sniper squad used to be a common sight in the last Dark Eldar codex...Have not seen it since the coming of the new codex.

Glad you are having success with it, any DE unit that can do damage and regularly survive the game should be worth considering.

Have you tried an anti infantry version with 2x Splinter cannon (might be fun too).