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Offline Sandseer

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fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« on: July 24, 2014, 01:52:14 AM »
Hi,

I've got quite a few points worth of eldar and I'm finally ready to step into the shadows with a dark eldar army.
The models look great, the army seems fun to play, albeit extremely fragile, and the tactics do look bloody.
Before I start bying stuff (which will most likely start with a battleforce box set) I have a few questions about the codex and it's importation to the 7th edition.

Since I mostly play against marines (no surprise there), IG and orks, I'm going to look at the stuff that can hurt marines.

First of, what the ap value of agonizers, venom blades and the rest of the close combat weapons?

How do you guys fare against drop pods with flamers (seems like they will kill every last warrior and destroy the ship as well...)

The price of the DE units seems to be just as high or a little below their eldar cousins...but with amphetamine parrotty saves...how do you survive besides huging cover or commiting half of your strenght to suicide attack?

Venoms or raiders, or both? there's a lot of interesting upgrades...what do you guys suggest for marines and IG?

thank you so much in advance, and sorry if my questions seem retarded, I'll come up with something interesting later.
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Offline Revener

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #1 on: July 25, 2014, 02:50:52 PM »
1. Agonizers ignore standard marine save. Venom blades have poison, wich is harder to get RR with now in 7ed.
Other then that most other CC (power)weapons we have either have AP3 or better or poison.

2. not played much aginst drop pod flamers, besides  our transport have always  been a bit like lotto :)  and our units seldom have a good save so... well we have Feel No Pain for a reason  :)

3. Feel No Pain helps,  but  usually its more a thing of killing the enemy  before he  kills you. be agressive and divide and conquer. oh and Btw suicide attacks is not always as bad as you think shooty armies do not like being stuck in CC or if you  go where he  can't  get you  but you can concentrate on 1 unit a time.

4. Venoms are good for dakka support with the units of you choice in it,  small CC squad, small AT squad  or just more dakka squad. Venoms only really need the extra splinter cannoon upgrade.
Raiders for anything else, 
best upgrades for raiders are,
Flicker field/ nightshield or  both depending on the purpose of the unit or your play style or if you have ponts to spare,
Grisly trophies for the Ld reroll your CC units really want that because  you do not want them to run when the enemy  get the next turn due to our amphetamine parrotty save :)
Splinter Racks for  dakka boats.

and last don't afraid our weak little fragile units can kill  bigger monster then you think , like a wych with an agonizer killing a really bad ass  combat monster IC in challenge :) just keep rollling 4+  on that save :P





Anyway......

Offline Der-Al

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #2 on: July 27, 2014, 12:20:29 PM »
Sandseer

I recently (6 months ago) also turned to the dark, going from fielding Eldar to Dark Eldar. Revener has covered your questions really well but I thought I would give you a couple of pointers as I found the change to Dark Eldar quite a learning curve.

The hardest thing I found to get my head around was the poor saves (in fact if you do not expect to have an armour save you’ll not be disappointed). The first three or four games it took everything I had to prevent being tabled. However, after much perseverance my Dark Eldar slowly became feared.

What I soon learned and a tactic and has seen me start to win more than I loose was to spend the first two or even three moves being very careful not to over expose your forces while trying to draw your opponents out of position / try and get some of your opponents forces isolated. I’ve found that night shields are invaluable, as they make the table that little bit bigger for your opponent. 

Once there is a few units isolated / out of position, hit them with everything all at once, never attack with defence in mind. The most important thing I learned about Dark Eldar is that it is either ALL or nothing. Never hold half of your force back, never get your units isolated, and never present just a few units to the enemy. The only way to deal with the fragility of the dark Eldar units is to attack on mass, you’ll lose some units but not everything and if you get to hit them hard a second time you should be able to cripple them.

Although with 7th edition, and the maelstrom missions in particular, I’ve had to revaluate the above tactic. With maelstrom you cannot afford to dick about / draw your enemy out at the beginning, you need to score as much as possible. In this case I generally set up in such away so that I can bring as much as possible against the strongest part of the enemy force / the strongest flank of the opponent. Although, I’ve found that a central webway portal can also be useful but then you are at the mercy of reserve rolls (an Autarch almost becomes essential).

I hope these insights will help. But the most important thing is to not get disheartened if you lose your first few games with Dark Eldar. They are a difficult army to play but because of this they are probably one of the most fun / rewarding when you do win.

           
   

Offline Wyldhunt

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #3 on: September 5, 2014, 10:48:09 PM »
Flamers will chew through units in our transports if you let your opponent deliver them. I haven't faced a drop pod army with my dark kin this edition, but I recommend trying the following if he's putting a big chunk of his army in drop pods:  Keep your army even further away from the enemy on turn 1 than you normally would.  Spread your boats out enough to ensure he isn't hitting more than one with each flamer.  When he lands, he will probably do a lot of damage. That's fine. That's what his army is built to do.   Your job is to punish him for it. Those pods he just dropped are now a series of more-or-less isolated targets that your entire arms is set to pounce upon.  His first turn landing party should be torn to shreds by the time you're done with him that turn, and your transports should be positioned to deny additional pods easy shots at your infantry.  You should probably be trying to have nightfighting on that first turn too, so don't be afraid to jink to steal his thunder. 

Our flimsy armor wasn't such a big deal back when the codex first came out because FNP basically made us a 4+ save army (with the armor save being a bonus against poor AP armies for most units). The changes to FNP is, in my opinion, the easiest to spot sign of our book's age. Not that the book is bad right now, mind you. I've been on a bit of winning spree with it the last few games!  My advice is to play aggressively and keep our other defensive strengths in mind.  Wyches will get a shiny invul that works well with FNP when they're in melee, so get them into melee!  Warriors and other shooty units can kite enemies a bit using night shields and by forcing your opponent to deal with centralized threats while the shooty units hide along your flanks. Incubi, I find, are really nasty with FNP, so seriously consider having a haemonculus hang out with them. Some of our fast attack options are more durable than you'd think (reaver jinks and scourges' armor), so keep that in mind as you build your army. 

The above advise about luring out your opponent before punishing isolated units is sound.  Do that.  You basically want to tilt the odds in your favor turns 1 and 2 by killing as much as you can while losing as little as you can. By turn 2-3 though, you should have your entire army coming to grips with the enemy. Wyches need to be lobbing haywire grenades or slicing up infantry.  Warriors need to be unloading splinter fire into fleshy things or pelting armored things with special weapons.  Incubi need to be wallowing in all the pain tokens they've acquired from your turn 2/3 assaults.  Eldar are kind of unforgiving if you overexpose them, but they're also unforgiving if you don't capitalize on their offensive power.

As for maelstrom games, you shouldn't have too much trouble with those as long as you don't have bad luck with your objectives.  Dark eldar favor lots of transports and small units right now, so don't be afraid to drop off a squad and then have its transport zip out to claim an objective. You probably don't want a squad to spend more than a turn outside of its transport unless they're positioning to attack something, but will often have things to attack.

Offline Dread

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2014, 11:42:07 PM »
Has anyone had any luck taking retrofire jets on vehicles and deep striking them? I think this is one of the most overlooked vehicle upgrade we have and I'm thinking about giving it a try.

FNP is a great thing but with mostly T3 really sucks with so many higher str weapons out now. Plus fielding hammies just to confer this on turn 1 to some units really sucks.

I have side lined my DE for quit awhile now but want to use them so bad and can't wrap my head around this template weapons against open topped rule that just magically came into focus now. What were they thinking, anyhow. I'm thinking hellions, jetbikes and scourges (being used as hvy weapon support).

I like all the break downs that have been posted here and think they may need to be put together and stickied, that is unless we have a new dex on the very near horizon.
"Burning thru the universe in search of peace only brings more war. Peace is an illusion, war is reality, that is the way of things"

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Offline Wyldhunt

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #5 on: September 20, 2014, 12:03:32 AM »
Has anyone had any luck taking retrofire jets on vehicles and deep striking them? I think this is one of the most overlooked vehicle upgrade we have and I'm thinking about giving it a try.

FNP is a great thing but with mostly T3 really sucks with so many higher str weapons out now. Plus fielding hammies just to confer this on turn 1 to some units really sucks.

I have side lined my DE for quit awhile now but want to use them so bad and can't wrap my head around this template weapons against open topped rule that just magically came into focus now. What were they thinking, anyhow. I'm thinking hellions, jetbikes and scourges (being used as hvy weapon support).

I like all the break downs that have been posted here and think they may need to be put together and stickied, that is unless we have a new dex on the very near horizon.

Every time I look at retrofire jets, I picture a bunch of short-ranged dakka tearing apart my transports on the following turn. I like being able to deepstrike, but I rarely have reason to do it with raiders. If I deepstrike them, I might not see them for half the game. Once they show up, they will penetrate rear and side armor relatively easily, but the chance of blowing up a vehicle with a single shot is still low enough to take the teeth out of the tactic. So far, I prefer to have all my dakka on the field and firing on my first turn to take the teeth off my foes. If I really want to get across the table, it's not hard to do it by simply boosting forward.

FNP is still great against small arms fire and such. If they want to deny me my FNP, they have to use weapons that would probably be better spent shooting transports. Still, going back to 4+would be nice. Or maybe make it 5+ and improve it by one for each pain token after the first?

The reason for the flamer vs opentopped rule is obvious: Orks in truks and dark eldar are simply too durable and impossible to counter. The flamer rule is a much needed debuff </sarcasm>.  More seriously, I think it's to make flamers more appealing. With plasma being king and meltas being good against lots of targets, flamers sort of risk being redundant with most small arms fire. The open-topped thing gives them more use against mech armies. It just happens to help against armies that didn't really need an extra counter.  It doesn't help that flamers happen to ignore the armor saves of most things that ride in OT transports. What does get a save in an OT vehicle?  Marine scouts in a land speeder maybe?

I can't speak to hellions and reavers, but I like my scourges. I always make them dedicated AT since I hate not being able to get at the juicy infantry inside a transport, but naked ones in a basic squad can put out a lot of dakka with their carbines. Their 4+/6++ armor is surprisingly helpful too!

Offline Dread

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2014, 01:45:08 AM »
Thanks bud, this really helps with things. I'm gonna set up an army for Monday night game and see how it works. Will post list as soon as I set it up and let you know how it works, in another topic heading.
"Burning thru the universe in search of peace only brings more war. Peace is an illusion, war is reality, that is the way of things"

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Offline Plastikente

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2014, 07:01:19 AM »
Has anyone had any luck taking retrofire jets on vehicles and deep striking them? I think this is one of the most overlooked vehicle upgrade we have and I'm thinking about giving it a try.

I never take retrofire jets. Instead, I take Duke Sliscus (codex p51). His Low Orbit Raid rule effectively gives retrofires to all of his transports for no extra cost. Oh, and it's better than the jets, because there is no limit on disembarkation, meaning you can get out after arrival to at least make flamers choose between the squad and the vehicle as targets.

Offline Dread

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Re: fundamental questions before building a Dark eldar army
« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2014, 05:20:43 AM »
Well if the rumors are true, we are gonna have a bunch of other fundamental questions coming up.
"Burning thru the universe in search of peace only brings more war. Peace is an illusion, war is reality, that is the way of things"

                            Farseer Gol'Istria of    the Morea Nebula craftword

 


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