[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.

 

[Creon]

I don't mind you disagree. If your enemies are not intelligent enough to snipe the little squads first, then more power to you! We have different styles, and that's fine. And I do admit it. i like wyches cause of the models. I do think beastmasters with a blob of kymerae and razorwings make a better close assault unit, I'm still sticking with wyches. I like the duke for his giving deep strike to your vehicles ability. It's a tactic I'm considering, as all vehicles after deep striking can fire in this army. I also would have put sliscus with the Blob-you-don't-like anyway

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).

 

[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.

 

[Creon]

I would guess, then, that things like Thunderfire cannons and the like are less prevalent with you than with me. And, I guess, outflanking 'nids with fleet. I can support if it works for you, go with it. I just don't think it would work in my common environment.

 

[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.

 

[Creon]

I tend to have an all outflanking 'stealer based nid list, with a few pattern str:9 weapons and several MCs. I do what to see how they fare against various DE lists.

 

[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!

 

[beakerpsych]

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!

I don't know the nids well, but I do know that poisoned attacks are pretty good against most monstrous creature. (My guo hates them.) DL are always good, but against mc poison is just as good, no?

 

[Creon]

i'm pretty sure 10 warriors with splinter cannons would take out a MC a turn.

 

[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...

 

[Creon]

Perhaps so. I'm not sure of mathhammer though.

18 shots(9x2) +6 shots=24 shots. 16 hits,
8 wounds=4 saves versus 4+, 4 full wounds
8 wounds=4 saves versus 4+, 2.64 wounds

I think you didn't calculate that SC have 6 shots stationary. If you assume a 15 man squad, the MC should die every round.

 

[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.

 

[Creon]

That makes sense. Though I'm not sure I'd do it that way. In any case, he'd get is Splinter Pistol shot at RF range.