[Sethis]

Duke Sliscus
150

Haemonculus with Liquifier
60

Haemonculus with Liquifier
60

9 Kabalite Trueborn with Carbines, Dracon and Venom Blade
163

Raider with Flickerfield
70

4 Trueborn with 2 Dark Lances
98

9 Wracks with Liquifier and Acothyst with Venom Blade
115

Raider with Sails
65

9 Wracks with Liquifier and Acothyst with Venom Blade
115

Raider with Sails
65

10 Warriors with Blaster and Splinter Cannon
115

Raider with Flickerfield and Splinter Racks
80

Ravager with Fields
115

Ravager with Fields
115

Disintigrator Ravager with Fields
115

1501

Compared to my Mech Eldar, this army can put out a frankly silly amount of firepower - 12 Lance shots on turn one. The warriors working in conjunction with the Trueborn - 49 splinter shots, almost half of which wound on 3+.

Alternatives include:

swapping a Wrack unit for a Wych unit

Small Reaver squad instead of sniper Trueborn

Wyches over Warriors to benefit from combat drugs reroll

Unit of full Razorwing Beastmasters - 210 points for 75 attacks, most of them Rending. 5 Wounds need to be caused before any attacks are lost. Downside is they're a bit slow and get insta-deathed by S6 weapons.

Considering Sathonyx as well with Hellions instead of Wracks, but I'm not sure it's a good move.

 

[Sethis]

New idea, not sure if it's an improvement.

Vect
240

Baron Sathnoyx
105

4x Trueborn, 2 Lances
98

4x Trueborn, 2 Lances
98

4x Trueborn, 2 Lances
98

10 Warriors with Dark Lance in Raider with Flickerfield
195

10 Warriors with Dark Lance in Raider with Flickerfield
195

15 Hellions with Helliarch with Agoniser

Ravager with Fields
115

Ravager with Fields
115

Ravager with Fields
115

I don't have my codex with me right now, but I think I have about the right amount here.

The idea is to get first turn and then cause such a huge power imbalance that it effectively cripples the opponents ability to retaliate. 20 Lance shots on turn one should turn any vehicle I can see into a smoking crater with shots to spare to start working on heavy infantry/MCs/Walkers. I don't play many Horde players, but if I do then the Warrior squads will thin them out slightly before I assault with the Hellions.

What does anyone think?

 

[Sethis]

Liquifiers are sure nice and shiny but they aren't exactly helping the Wracks getting into close combat, which is pretty necessary given their dismal resilience to shooting.

Nope, but a 50/50 chance of having a flamer that kills MEQs on 4+ is pretty damn nice for softening stuff up before the assault.

Also, whats the big deal about Flickerfields? A bloody 5++ isn't worth it, just stick a Night Shield on it and you're golden. How often will those 10 points get their points back? Two times out of six, mathematically (and we all know what does that mean). How often will the Night Shield help? A bit more case-sensitive but a lot more. With a bit of clever positioning it can make several guns useless, most of the time Bolters, MMs, Assault Cannons and Plasma Guns.

You'll notice I only put flickers on raiders that are intended to sit fairly still and snipe with their guns/warriors. It's quite hard to position a Raider where it can claim an obscured save and yet still shoot its gun and the passengers on board, so I'm happy paying 10 points for a slightly worse cover save that is permanent. The problem with Night shields is that they do nothing against, say, Autocannon, Missile Launchers, Battlecannon, Lascannon, Lances... they're useless aganst just as much stuff as they are useful against. I'd rather have something that is equally useful against every gun in the game.

The other list is... well... Vect goes where? Do you intend to play Space Wolf and sit back, let the big guns kill everyone and then mop up the floor with your Hellions? If so, Vect doesn't belong there, hes too expensive to babysit one of the Trueborn. Or did you intend to let him run around, middle finger in the air, and let his Shadowfield do the job?

It would definitely be a "sit back and shoot" army, and depending on how aggressive the enemy is being, the Hellions can sit and wait for him to come to me, or I can aggressively go after him. Vect would do one of two things; either displace a Warrior unit from their raider and ride into enemy lines on it by himself, or run from cover to cover by himself given that he can pretty much solo anything that isn't a Dreadnaught. If the enemy wants to focus any kind of serious firepower at him then I'm more than happy for them to do so - it means they're not shooting the Trueborn or Ravagers who are frankly bigger threats.

Because I have Vect and Baron, I don't have the points to accompany both of them. It's a choice between a Raider Incubi squad for Vect, or a Hellion squad for the Baron, and I figure Vect works the better of the two without the luxury of a bodyguard.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Sethis]

Yeah, they are fragile as hell, but I'm kinda semi-hoping that they'll have done their job by turn 2, and also that the Hellions and Raider Squads might absorb some of the flak that would otherwise have been aimed at them.

I also have been playing with the list in my head and have considered swapping out Vect for another Raider squad and a bigger Hellion unit, or of swapping him for some Haemonculi and a Wrack Raider squad. The Raider Warrior squad gains me two Dark Lances, but the Haemonculi gives me FNP for the Hellions, as well as a Wrack squad in a Raider which counts as a troops choice, and can engage with Horde-ish units fairly well.

 

[Sethis]

I concede that Imperial Guard are relatively overpowered, and that Leafblower is one of the most competitive army builds out there. Bearing that in mind...

My original point was to argue that Dark Eldar are capable of handling the majority of lists out there if played right and built right. I wouldn't call Imperial Guard the "Majority" of lists all by themselves. I think this list (or a tournament tested version of it at an appropriate points size, given that most tournies don't run at 1500, which is what this list is) would give Razor-spam, Mechdar, Nids and several other armies a good run for their money.

Saying what Ragnar said, which was "Dark Eldar can't handle tanks" is in my mind utterly wrong. Give me *any* army that can "handle" Leafblower or its varients easily and I'll give you the new uber-powered codex to replace Guard. On the other hand if you play any other Mech list, I think it would be a different story.

You're also forgetting that every vehicle in the Dark Eldar army will have a cover save on the turn you arrive, right? You can't just say "My army turns up and rapes you" because it all depends on how lucky you are with rolls, what the terrain is like, what edge you outflank from, what you have LoS to and so on. For all you know I'm hiding behind a statue of the Emperor two feet wide in my own deployment zone...

Even if I'm not, with Guard BS a Chimera hits 1.5 times with a multilaser, averages less than a glancing hit on the penetration roll, and the hits I do take I save on a 4+. In the meantime my return fire pops three chimeras and I wipe out two of your troops choices with my Hellions that are now in your Deployment zone. It's amazing how armies perform when you're just pretending what would happen, isn't it? :grin:

 

[Sethis]

Don't mix Vect with anyone else. Too many points held up that way. I would suggest EITHER the Baron or Vect, not both.

I've been working on this list since it was posted. I've settled for Baron at 1500 and adding haemonculi for 1800, or alternatively having Vect solo in 1800. 2 Special characters in 1500 ties up too many points.

'sall right, I'd rather see Sliscus here, since you're not really using his abilities much in the following army.

Sliscus doesn't do anything for my army except allowing me to reroll my Hellion drugs, which you advise dropping... so I'm not sure why I would shell out 150pts for three abilities I wont use (apart from the Warrior squad he joins).

Get Blasters, Get Venoms. Two units of (4xtrueborn, 4xblasters, 1x Venoms). This gives you the ability to turbo across the board, and usually one will live to glide along, blasting at it's enemies. Three units this size walking? Dead meat.

In the games I've played, these units have more than paid for themselves because the opponent normally ignores them in favour of higher threat targets like the Hellions or Ravagers.

Buy a Blaster for these crews. That gives you an extra lance when needed, as the enemy closes. And they will.

They will do when I have the points for it.

Drop these. Far to expensive for their use. Replace with Wyches in a Raider. Ok, I'm going against the grain here, but a Raider full of wyches is a distraction the enemy. Give 'em Blast Pistol and haywire, and the enemy will waste a lot of work taking down the unit. use them to turbo in amongst the sheep, and watch the enemy scramble to take them out, letting the rest of you sneak up.

Check out my mathcrafting section in the tactica articles to see how badly Hellions out-kill Wyches (even without including their Assault 2 rifles). Wyches barely perform well enough against Guard, never mind MEQs. And I'd rather not kit out an anti-infantry melee squad with anti-tank weapons since I already have 20 lances to destroy vehicles and Haywire grenades are crap (imo) regardless.

Use the points saved by only using one Special Character to put 20 warriors on foot with 2 lances out. Gives you a decent sized "holding" unit, that can dish out some pain when needed and absorb incoming fire.

I don't like warrior blob squads, either in how they play or how they look.

Nothing wrong here. I prefer the VoidRaven instead of Ravager 3. Play around and find your comfort zone.

Ravagers outperform Ravens against AV10 and 11, and break exactly even vs AV12. I don't fancy paying 40 points in order to just lose open topped.

Thanks for the feedback! Even though I disagreed with pretty much everything you said, I still enjoy hearing what people have to say.

Ragnar, I have no interest in playing on Vassel, sorry. It's not a question of "right" or "wrong", I just prefer to play against people in real life, and from what I've seen in real games, Dark Eldar are perfectly playable, can deal with Mech, can deal with a variety of opponents and play just fine. The fact that they're not a looney-tunes level of OP-ness is not what I'm trying to prove, just that they are a perfectly playable army. Dismissing them as totally uncompetitive (and therefore joining the ranks of armies like Tau and Grey knights) is doing them a disservice.

 

[Sethis]

I don't mind you disagree. If your enemies are not intelligent enough to snipe the little squads first, then more power to you!

It's not so much them not being intelligent, it's more the fact that a lot of anti-infantry weapons are 24" range at best, with a couple being 36" and almost none being 48". If I deploy 12 men scattered around the back of my deployment zone in serious cover then generally speaking I am presenting more and bigger threats to the enemy than the little sniper squads. Heavy Bolters and the rest tend to be focused on my other units, and the long range AT on my Ravagers, leaving not much left to focus any kind of real fire on the snipers. Obviously things like bikers and outflankers can cause them problems, but such units generally:

- Cost more than 98 points, so someone detailing them to kill a 4-man unit is doing me a favour
- Can be intercepted by the Hellions
- Are not scoring, so I don't need to worry all that much about them

Haywire grenades are useful imho when facing dreads. I HATE watching a dread eat my units without even die rolls, since dreads are fairly common where I play, and invunlerable to plasma grenades (which have STR:4 against armor, little known fact).

Fair enough, but my point of view is that the Dark Eldar have plenty of anti-walker tech available without resorting to paying 20 points to enable a unit not designed to engage them in the first place to glance them to death. Dreadnaughts (esp BA ones) would be one of my first priority targets for the lances.

 

[Sethis]

Yup, that's fair enough. I play a lot of MEQs (none of which use Thunderfires) including Jump BAs and Razorback Wolves as well as Vanilla Sternguard bomb/Vulkan, and quite a few Mech Guard with a Green tide/Kan Wall thrown in, so my lists tend to focus around them. Only ever played a few games vs Nids, and never as a competitive list.

 

[Sethis]

I think against Nids I would focus on the Hellions, Reavers and Carbine Trueborn to cope with the horde while taking the normal amount of Lances for MCs, and give unit champions venom blades, because a 3-4 attack model has a good chance of knocking a wound off a Trygon in every round of combat!

 

[Sethis]

10 Warriors with Splinter Cannon (Rapid Firing, not Moving)

vs 3+ save: 2.44 Wounds
vs 4+ Save: 3.66 Wounds

So not as amazing as it could be, but the MC will probably have lost a wound or two to lances, and you can knock a wound off in assault provided you have a Venom Blade. All in all, Tyranids don't like Dark Eldar much...

 

[Sethis]

No, I did give the cannon 6 shots, but I was assuming the squad had a sybarite with venom blade as I mentioned later in the post. Hence 2 less shots.