Dark Eldar Tactica

[helvexis]

well thats a cheap bit of word twisting that can be done ... ive only done it once and it was so cheap i didnt ever do it again.... and i felt bad for beating the little 14 yr old so badly he was wishing hed brought kneepads

my question is about talos i dont use them never have, like my ravagers too much, but are they good? mostly to me they are too slow to keep up with the raiders in wwp lists i can see how they would work just not in a raider heavy list.

oh and your archon do you use punisher or agoniser???
me i go with punisher T.helm, drugs, shad field, plasma grenades, animus vitae. and sometimes a jetbike and terorfex though i rely mostly on horrorfexes
or i go with an agoniser and drop the animus and T.helm for a pistol

[thecactusman17]

There is one enemy that the Dark Eldar fear above all others: The dreaded Sisters of Battle and their vehicles of doom.

Sisters have big, mean advantages against Dark Eldar. The copius invulnerable saves, tons of high-strength ranged weaponry, and other associated problems mean that if you DON'T get that first turn advantage on the charge or shooting, you are potentially very boned.

your biggest weakness is one of your biggest strengths: The high mobility of your skimmers means that a few lucky bolter rounds are going to drop your Raiders and Ravagers like rocks. The heavy flamer is perhaps the greatest bane your army can encounter -- beware things like Heavy Flamers, Incinerators, Flamestorm cannons, or the new Hellhound. It will reduce your close combat monsters to puddles of plastic and pewter goo.

With so much less fully obscuring cover, it can be doubly hard hiding your skimmers and transports. In non-KP games, don't be afraid to use the long profile of the DE vehicles to create walls in front of your more vital troops and vehicles.

Finally, coming in on turn two can be a powerful tactic. with 12-24 inches of viable movement across the board, choosing to leave your most prized units unassailable for the first turn can potentially be a winning strategy. Especially in a game with rules like Dawn of War.

DE are an army that, true to the fluff, excels when your raid is the quickest, your opponent's reaction time the shortest and your hammer-blows are the most concentrated.

[Mindless-Focus]

My biggest bane right now are the Tau. I run against a player that maxes troop choices. He has 6 max squads with markerlights and what have you with an uber Crisis suite HQ. I can not get close enough quick enough to engage in CC. In fact, in one game, he shot everything down and killed everything to a man. any advice on cracking tau? i know if i can get into CC with him that he is through but when you get close enough to charge and he pulls out 30+ rapid fire shots, i know i am dead. any help?

[BuFFo]

my question is about talos i dont use them never have, like my ravagers too much, but are they good?

Well, now that Talos is a Monstrous Creature as per the Dark Eldar Errata, it can now pop tanks pretty easily compared to before.

oh and your archon do you use punisher or agoniser???

I give him the Punisher. Just because 99% of the time he is killing toughness 4/5 models.

I let my wyches with their Agoniser toting Succubus deal with Carnifexes and Demon Princes.

My biggest bane right now are the Tau. I run against a player that maxes troop choices. He has 6 max squads with markerlights and what have you with an uber Crisis suite HQ. I can not get close enough quick enough to engage in CC. In fact, in one game, he shot everything down and killed everything to a man. any advice on cracking tau? i know if i can get into CC with him that he is through but when you get close enough to charge and he pulls out 30+ rapid fire shots, i know i am dead. any help?

Well, unfortunately Dark Eldar's main nemesis in 5th edition is actually one of the lower tier armies, the Tau.

I 'fear' Tau as well, and for the same reasons as you.

The best I can say is Raider Rush everything you got forward, while your Dark Lances try to pick their vehicles apart from afar.

Mandrakes are great for killing Tau. I would advise taking two units of them so they can kill just about anything the Tau have without fear of being shot up.

[helvexis]

yeah tau are something i dont like too much and chhaos daemon have been really annoying recently.

can talos keep up with the rest of your force though just looks too slow and cheaper to just use the lances to kill the tanls and keep the ravagers for everything else?

[Oldgrue]

DE are well rewarded by unadulterated speed. Slowing down enough for a webway portal is dicey, and heaven forbid you get two unlucky hits on folks carrying them.
DE players will argue back and forth over the value of running a Wych Cult or Warrior heavy army when it is effectively the same thing. Raider squads with dual dark lances, and Wyches in Raiders for HTH, with Ravagers to take down clusters of infantry (S4 AP3 heavy 3, with 3 per open topped ravager)

In my opinion the Talos is a waste of points because of how fragile DE are. They can't afford to wait for the talos to really be a viable threat, and are susceptible to its weapons much more than most opponents.

In the same bundle of useless are Hellions because jetbikes perform the same role while being more reliable in HTH. Scourges while able to deliver similar firepwower to a ravager are much more fragile while not being able to deliver their firepower consistently. Perhaps if they get *jet* packs in some future codex. The Splinter cannon is an OK weapon, but simply doesn't have the punch to be truly frightening to infantry. Mandrakes are sort of neat, but they really don't have the ability to capitalize on their shadow-skinned ability. If they could run while they sneak up or could get a single power weapon I'd change my mind on them.

[helvexis]

i completely agree with the helions the mandrakes and to a lesser extent the scourges.. i run 5 scourges depending on the mood im in iether lances or cscannons but ussually lances just sit them up high and start shooting hq's and things like nob bikers with them and the begin to really annoy people... sure i would love a 3rd ravager.. i just dont have one to use :/

havent really run a wych list past 750 pts so wont argue but there fun and useful for killing everything on the table but they cant hold an objective and never should.

[BuFFo]

In my local area, including my local 'Ard Boys locations, the Nightmare Doll still functions normally.

I wanted to know, as Dark Eldar players, how often do you take a Nightmare Doll?

Me? Its pretty much standard in all my lists, just like the Goblet of Spite.

[helvexis]

umm nope i dont take it not any real reason i suppose just never have.

do you use drazhar in your retinue i like to use him instead of an incubi master.
and question to his swap rule, dont have codex on my and cant remember exact wording, it says something along the lines of swap before attacks have landed cant remember if it says all or not because that would be fun keeping draz at the back and swapping him in after yuor archon attacks but before your opponent just a thought i had recently

[BuFFo]

umm nope i dont take it not any real reason i suppose just never have.

do you use drazhar in your retinue i like to use him instead of an incubi master.
and question to his swap rule, dont have codex on my and cant remember exact wording, it says something along the lines of swap before attacks have landed cant remember if it says all or not because that would be fun keeping draz at the back and swapping him in after yuor archon attacks but before your opponent just a thought i had recently

Thats how it works.

The problem is that in this edition, the bodyguard rule, even though still allows switching, does nothing because the Archon is in a retinue, and as such, he just counts as one of the models in the retinue and cannot be picked out individually by enemy models.

So yes, you can switch models, but in this edition, doing so really does nothing as wound suffered by the retinue is applied to the Archon as well.