Dark Eldar Rumor Roundup

[Rotten Deadite]

I always consider it a personal victory if I manage to get to the end of the game with a single vehicle left in the army at all!

See, now that's revealing. If Dark Eldar players are having trouble with survivability, then an early FnP makes sense. Is that enough to allow a Dark Eldar army a chance to win on every scenario type? I don't know. Seems like the army's themed to table the enemy in record time, simple as that.

But I just don't feel like the codex reflects that. Even the current codex doesn't seem to create that kind of an army. Rather, it seems like the Dark Eldar army is an army designed to get tabled.

These debates would all be a lot easier if there was a centralized database of tournament-sanctioned results, I think.

[Mr Mystery]

But tournaments skew things.

Dodgy rules interpretations, more likely to run into a powergamer and his list o'bore, cheats playing for time to force an early turns conclusion (which favours shooty armies overall). They also tend to lack enough terrain on each board, hence the preceived dominance of firepower over combat.

Tournaments are a horrible source of information!

[eldargal]

Plus tournament players tend to go for more forgiving armies that let you make more mistakes.

[Rotten Deadite]

Tournaments are a horrible source of information!

On the contrary, they're an excellent source of information.

"Dodgy rules interpretations." See? Already you've learned that the rules aren't printed clearly enough, or are just plain terrible, or you need better judges at your tournaments. Oh, I'm talking about "official" tournaments, by the way. I'm certainly not suggesting that every LGS that runs a table should be monitored.

"Powergamer and his list o'bore" Powergamer lists are incredibly informative. They teach the designers what's effective, what the players find easy to play with, or what other players are having a hard time countering. If GW cared about the meta, they'd be looking long and hard at wave serpent spam, for example.

Speaking of meta, that's the biggest issue with tournaments. LGS meta is really hard to take seriously. One decent player with a WAAC Necron list, for example, could skew the meta of an entire region if he's got enough gravity. And he'd throw the statistics way off until he manages to get into a large enough region where someone's solved his strategy already.

Meta's a tough thing. It can solve a game in a good way, do the balancing for the developers instead of against them, like Starcraft Brood War, to name a famous one. But a region's meta can become infected and inbred if it isn't exposed to competing environments as often as possible.

[Charon]

PfP - Currently, to get the first stage, you need to wipe out a unit.

Now, you get it from turn 2 onwards - globally (well, on all units that have said rule). So from turn two, all DE have Feel No Pain. No need to risk getting into combat, just need to dodge the worst of the enemies incoming fire, or (now do correct me if I'm wrong) just arrive from Reserves already feeling well tough.

So how is that actually worse than having to risk it, on a unit by unit basis (with the beneficiary worked out randomly in a multiple combat)?

Seriously? Anyone? No? Dust? Bueller? Bueller? Dust? Anyone? Bueller? Dust?

The problem is that key units already had Fnp 5+ on turn 1. If you are lucky maybe even Furious Charge too.
Do I need Fnp 6+ on turn 2 on my Splinter/Blaster/Shredder/Shardborn and on my Kabalites? No. Not at all. The only time when I need FnP on these units is when their transport gets blown up. And when it does, they are dead anyways as no amount of FnP is going to save them from Lasguns and Bolters. Also lots of multiple S6+ fire (or Blasts) is around currently preventing FnP from happening anyways.

Now we are speaking of turn 3 and 4 where my Incubbi finally may stop hiding and start to charge something, because as soon as they leave the Protection of their vehicle they absolutely need Fnp.

Also PfP only really helps CC units (FnP, Charge, Rage) which where not used too much before and wont be unsed too much now. Even with point reductions across the board DE are in an awkward spot. They have the profile of a Horde Army while pretending to be an elite army with elite army costs. A Hellion is no Match for an Ork Stormboy, still the Hellion (after dropping 3 points in the new dex) is 1,5 times as expensive as the Boy.

Even the anti-tank department (after the loss of HWG) is severely lacking. To drop a single Hullpoint from any AV12+ vehicle you need to point betwen 4 and 5 lances at them. And vehicle spam has become very BIG in this edition.

[40kGamer]

Plus tournament players tend to go for more forgiving armies that let you make more mistakes.

And that is definitely not Dark Eldar... one dumb move and "poof" your army disappears!

[Gamgee]

I thought I was alone thinking that he looked bad. The pose especially.

[0rph3u5]

That Archon needs a helmet ... and looking at it I think you make a nice pose out of it but the stock one is meh due to the arms...

But I don't think this will get off playing my Iyanden-fluff list ... makes DE the 2nd army I'll mothball since 7th

[Rotten Deadite]

And that is definitely not Dark Eldar... one dumb move and "poof" your army disappears!

I think you'll agree that an unforgiving army is not in itself a bad thing. The trick is to balance the army in such a way that a player who makes no mistakes, or rather no seriously bad mistakes, will win decisively, but not invariably.

In game theory, a perfect strategy game is not one that you play against an opponent, but rather against yourself. Unfortunately there are no perfect strategy games, aside from possibly chess or Go. And I'm sorry, but I don't terribly enjoy painting Go stones. Call me crazy.

[Charon]

Plus tournament players tend to go for more forgiving armies that let you make more mistakes.

Which is completely different to pick up games where we never see forgiving armies/units like space marines and knights.