Dark Eldar - The Good, The Bad, The Pointless

[arch_inquisitor]

Either he can't be serious, or hes kitting the archon out completly wrong or sucks at playing. An archon can take mephiston, a demon prince, a wraithlord or the swarmlord out in one turn....theres not much else out there that can do that! Blast Pistol shot first to inst-kill the weaker ones, then 6-7 attacks with a huskblade/agoniser at WS7, Init 7

DE are the polar oppsoite of MEQ its just they get an extra save. Doesn't make them as durable. Hit them before they get change to earn those saves and they're die easier than a lot of other armies. Theres not a single unit in the DE codex that is a tough as a marine. When you factor in lower toughness, a default armour save that is high enough that most default weapons (bolters, shuricatapults, flamers) ignore it and the fact FNP is a worse save than a marines 3+ and is ignored by anything high strength or low AP, they're considerably worse than a marine who gets his better save, at higher toughness, when he gets shot out of his AV14 vehicle...

But in CC with a marine a DE warrior squad with a pain token will get his 5+ witch contrary to popular belief works quite a bit. then they will get the FNP 3+, Terminators aren't even so lucy as to get an extra save if the first one fails.

Another example, a squad of gaurdsmen shooting a DE warrior squad with a pain token will again get his 5+. then they will get the FNP 3+. If I were a gaurdsmen I'd rather be shooting at marines.

And you didn't point out all the ++ they can do. I had a list with almost all 4++ -5++.

Raiders with FF an NS are better than rhinos/razorbacks and LRs. And Ravagers just rape Armour heavy lists.

Oh yeah we also have decent template weapons now, that are better than the marine ones.

And did you seriously just suggest 'hitting them' before the can 'hit you' as a tactic.

So I'm not really scared of bolters.

I'll admit against an actual Marine army it takes tweaking to make a list marineish, which you don't really need to do. but against others Guard, Tyranid etc, they might as well be marines. Its the fact that you can do such lists that bugs me.

On the Archon, no the guy I play is better than me he generally avoids him in CC at all costs and wastes copious amounts of firepower on him whenever he gets the chance. I might have been a little cocky in those first games, but still.

[Porty1119]

Night shields are very powerful against space marine armies or IG. You know those melta guns? Yeah don't even worry about those anymore they can't touch you. You know those assault cannons and multi meltas? Yeah don't worry about those either they don't have a chance. What about all of those multi lasers and heavy bolters bull**** that IG have 3 of on every piece of plastic? Yeah just sit at 30-36" cool scenery bro.

It's not as clear of a benefit as ff since you have to play kinda dirty to make the most out of nightsheilds, but my ravagers don't leave home without them.

Ha. Ha. I play Airborne, upgraded Vulture and all. I can play the mobility game,too. So, good night to you, my good sir. My plasma gun looks forward to meeting your Raiders.

[DrLove42]

But in CC with a marine a DE warrior squad with a pain token will get his 5+ witch contrary to popular belief works quite a bit. then they will get the FNP 3+, Terminators aren't even so lucy as to get an extra save if the first one fails.

Another example, a squad of gaurdsmen shooting a DE warrior squad with a pain token will again get his 5+. then they will get the FNP 3+. If I were a gaurdsmen I'd rather be shooting at marines.
.

FNP is a 4+ actually. So no....

Looking at the common weapons....

A bolter or shuriken catapult (S4 AP5)
Has a 66% chance of killing if it hits a DE warrior without FNP
It has a 33% chance of killing a DE with FNP
It has a 20% chance of killing a marine.
It has a 8.5% of a Terminator Kill

A Pulse Rilfe (Fire Warrior) (S5 AP5)
DE (No FNP) 83%
DE (FNP) 42%
MEQ 33%
Termy 8.5%

Scatter Laser (Eldar Weapon) (S6 AP6)
DE (No FNP) 54%
DE (FNP) 54%
MEQ 27.39%
Termy 14.11%

Lascannon
DE (No FNP) 83%
DE (FNP) 83%
MEQ 83%
Termy 54.78%

Lasgun
DE (No FNP) 33%
DE (FNP) 17%
MEQ 11%
Termy 5.61%

These are probability of a hit (cos the shot's chance of hitting is a constant, don't depend on whos rolling saves) scoring a kill through wounds and saves.

As you can see a marine is more survivable in every weapon except for a lascannon (which be kinda understandable).

Termies might only get 1 save, but theirs is good enough to win every time, and an invulnerable, thats the same as a DE's armour save....

So no DE aren't as durable as marines. I know this is only a cross section of all the weapons out there, but these are some of the most atypical and common ones.

Then factor in most the MEQ vehciles being harder, being able to fire when stunned/shaken (machine spirit), cheaper heavy weapons, (and outside the game hundred times more support and special models to buy and use). So no i don't think a DE is as durable as a MEQ




And yes hitting them before they hit you is a viable tactic. How do you deal with Ork Hordes, and Nid Swarms?

[w7west]

Ha. Ha. I play Airborne, upgraded Vulture and all. I can play the mobility game,too. So, good night to you, my good sir. My plasma gun looks forward to meeting your Raiders.

Not a raider can be found in my army I am all venoms all day. For those who have not given venoms a try they are where the real cheese is in this codex. Other than 9 venoms the rest of my army is just antitank. 3 ravager 12 blaster trueborn, 2 dual heatlanced reavers, 4 haywire blaster scourge, 6 blaster warriors.. I think that is it. Comes in right around 2k depending on what i take for HQ but lately a simple 120pt agonizer archon works out.

But yeah hope you didn't plan on spending a lot of points on vehicles they gonna die.

[darthken]

im actually not becoming a big fan of wyches after this weeks playttest of a wych cult themed army.
had a succubus, with electro whip and blast pistol with 9 brides 2x shard nets and 1x hydra gauntlet, syren with agoniser.
3 games against vanilla SM and 2 games against Tau
drugs against SM's was 1st +1WS 2nd re-roll to wound 3rd +1 A

2 games they assualted in, bounced off, lost combat and got run down. the 3rd game they got stuck there for 4 turns. This was against just normal SM troops with no special upgrades or characters. Who i had depleted with shooting before the assault.

Against the Tau drugs were both a pain token.
1st game he rolles double 6's for his spotting distance and blow's the raider to bits and 7 brides died.
2nd game they got stuck against a normal unit of fire warriors for the whole game, just couldn't kill them or break them.

so am i just unlucky or is anyone else finding them to be not quite up to standard

[GrenAcid]

@up
You are unlucky, my brides eat marines...maybe cuz I dont give succubus whips but agonizer(its better to have 6attack wounding on 4+ that 5+)

As for Tau, unleas you are new with DE you should know that blu-face are rly good against DE.

[w7west]

Wyches do much better coming out of a webway. They are just too expensive to stick in raiders, since one missile will wipe 230+ points off the board. Wyches are not a killing unit. They can certainly kill weak troops by sweeping advance, or slowly grind down a tac squad over 3 turns, but that is not a good use of your points. Wyches can and should be thrown at the biggest, baddest, point sinking, power weapon toting, 2+ save squad they can find (assault termies are ideal targets).

They key thing to remember about wyches is that they will do just as good against 50 point crazy termies as they will against a scout. Also it is the agonizer that does the killing, not the str 3 attacks. Try using smaller squads coming from a webway. Usually 7 wyches is more than enough to accomplish what they need to do since the agonizer is the only thing killing stuff anyway. Also, new wyche weapons are hardly worth 10 pts, and certainly not good enough to warrant automatically bringing 10 guys if you are in a raider. Seriously it is a huge waste of points. Half of the squad dies when their raider gets hit by rain.

These are a few lessons I learned playing with dark eldar back in the day (referred to by vets as the glory days). So much has changed.. but wyches still occupy a similar niche although they are not as good at it as they once were.

[Drew da Destroya]

I keep laughing at all the new DE players who are trying to use Wyches to kill things. They aren't a killy-assault unit (although Bloodbrides can do alright), they're a tarpit unit. One of the best tarpit units in the Galaxy, in fact.

[Dingareth]

Drew, as he so eloquently put it, is right on this one. They're great at holding up units, and whittling them down. Now with the right drugs... That story changes, but a 4++/4+ is about as good as a Dark Eldar player can ask for.

[DrBored]

Actually, if I was going to use a Webway list, I would throw maxed out Wych squads onto the table with 3 Shardnets. That way they can be the great tarpit, but also, after those 3-4 assault phases, will still have enough models to go on and contest or clear out an objective. 7 Wyches will fail enough saves against Assault Terminators to die real fast, but a squad of 15 with Shardnets will weather a whole heck of a lot more, and with Webway Portals placed at least 24" up on the board, there's very little that would be out of their range when they come in.

In fact, if I was using a Webway list, my troops would be almost exclusively Wyches, with maybe some Wracks, and maybe one or two of the Wych squads would have Haywire Grenades so they don't end up tarpitting against another tarpitter (Dreadnoughts or other walkers, for example).