I'd like to clarify something, i don't hate marines, hell i have an army of them, Alpha Legion with loads of cultists, but what i do hate is that they get so much attention and then when i'd like to play my ork army this century i'm told to live with the fact my army sucks and will get a dex sooner of later. And that has more to do with the players rather than the armies, so actually i don't hate the army but the players of marines. Again, there are good ones out there, but man i'm tired of searching for them.
Secondly, my point of the tournament was not to brag about the fact i beat them, in fact the space wolves guy i only won by 12pts, 9 of which were slaves. my point was that there was no fun because i knew exactly how the first 3 turns would go. What happend afterwards depended on our respective dice rolls. For me, there isn't much fun having to play 5 marine army's even if one was fun and i wasn't given the cold shoulder. Hell, i finished out of the top 10, and 3 guys were in with 1 loss because i was given bad scores on sportsmen. I didn't do half the crap they did, throwing dice, cursing, smart allick crap but i got zeroes in every game but the last one because i beat them badly. After a number of these games, i decided to just slaughter them all without mercy because it didn't matter if the game is competitive or not.
There is no argument from me that the DE could use more fluff, But i really don't see where else they can go with the DE fluff to make it broader. Maybe make them actually important when they are rereleased in a campaign where they are attacking worlds and attempting to bring them into the same realm as commoragh and forge anemprire. Who knows but this 2 sentence per campaign crap isn't helping them.
Again, i only dislike UM's because they are the vanilla army and almost every vanilla army i see either has 3 devastator squads or are drop pod assualting. I mean we keep being told that this is a dark age of technology and that the xenos have better tech than the imperium yet the imperium is the only ones whose basic, vanilla army can all deep strike? Yeah, makes alot of sense.
To tarrin, You might have played them some but you know what, it took me 25 games to actually win with DE. Did you give them 25, or just 3 or 4 before calling them crap. I'll give you the 25 first game with each of my armies because i keep track, and i'm not crazy so don't say it
Dark eldar 0-25
Orks 0-22-3
Alpha legion 2-19-4
LaTD 0-25
by this account DE, LATD and orks suck so therefore are worse than marines.
Next 25
DE 19-4-2
Orks 15-9-1
Alpha Legion 16-3-6
LaTD 5-19-1
By this, De and orks can compete with marines, but sadly Latd can't, god i hate Ld6.
Now, i gave each of my army's 50 games to see if i could improve with them. if i was fine with the records, i stopped keeping track of them, so obviously i'm still keeping track with Latd. Sure the models suck, the fluff is a bit cliched and yes some units are not very good, but does DE Suck? no. You can have your opinion but its my opinion that you cant claim to have experience with something you seem to have tried in passing. Can't say for sure, but thats what vibe i'm getting.
As far as marine players being better or worse than DE players. Well i can give you my stats again, for Tournaments with DE. Against marines they are 18-3-8. And almost all of my 18 wins are against shallow minded guys who spewed crap from their mouths. All 3 losses were fun games, and i actually got good non game scores for. the draws, were good games in their own right as well. Now, it is entirely possible that because there are so many marine players i just haven't met up with great marine players, i've met some decent ones, but not many. That doesn't necessarily mean all marine players are bad, but again, in my experience, its been the case.
note-my De's record is worse in tournaments against guard 4-6-3 and Eldar 2-6-2. I guess i get nervous against Eldar, kin war and all you know.
Archonbleda