How often do you win with Dark Eldar?

How often do you win with your Dark Eldar?

By 'Dark Eldar' I mean armies whose primary detachment comes from the Dark Eldar or Haemonculus Covens books, and where selections from thos books make up a majority of the army.

We're considering friendly and competitive games together, here. (Please feel free to exclude 'outlier' games, where you built a totally off-the-wall list, like fielding 100 hellions--unless you ALWAYS do things like that!)

When I make a competitive/semi competative list, I win about 75% of the time. I don't play tournaments mind you. When I make an army of my favorite units, incubi, wyches, Succubus, razorwing, I win about 25% of the time. This is usually because I don't have enough antitank in these lists. Also note I don't really play the coven side of dark eldar, not my style.

Hard to say...
While I maintain a 90% winrate over our imperial guard, Grey Knight and Dark Angels player, my track against the new Eldar, SM, Daemonkin, Newcrons is underwhelming. Like... 20% maybe?

That beeing said, our imperial guard player and the dark angels player are both better players than the Eldar, daemonkin and Necron guys.
The real saving grace for me is maelstrom mission and that we exclude FW and SC.

We have one player, he is a very competent and I loose more than I win against him. Against the rest I win AL about 70-80%.

My last two games were against eldar jetbikes spam with seer council, and imperial Knights. I won both, and didn't even play any hardcore lists (except a bit of tailoring against the Knights). In both games I only used had one venom. Kinda proud tbh.

When I play with a group of competitive and much more experienced I know, I have a hard time winning. When I play with my closer friends, who also aim for competitiveness it is about 50-50. Also at the few tournaments I have been to. It once was worse and I have a slightly higher ratio lately. When I go to the GW store and play against random dudes there, I nearly always win. The gusy who hang out there are more the beer&pretzel kind of guys. I play DE with coven (and eldar for the last few games) backup.

I play Coven (mostly Freakshows) and have a very good win rate. I've lost...I think two games in the last year or so.

I saw someone mentioning never winning with their DE, so I was curious.

I have 1 Space Marine player who nearly always beats me, with his old codex ... so dreading the new one. I beat most other people though. I tend to play shooty lists, but I do like to drop in a Dark Artisan quite regularly.

Quote :

I saw someone mentioning never winning with their DE, so I was curious.

It is the internet. Everybody here always wins and if one guy tries to be honest about his actual winrate out come the rulers to compare.... winrates.
There is a reason why we don't even manage to get into the top 30 of any big tournament. And while we are ok in friendly environemnts keep in mind that our lists are not friendly most of the time. While our opponents may play fluff lists or some random crap, I keep reading about Grotesqueries, WWP Dark Artisans, Venom and Reaver Spam.

Jimsolo wrote:

I saw someone mentioning never winning with their DE, so I was curious.

That would have been me and as I said in the post it was mostly do to my lack of experience and the games I've gotten in where against Tau and Necrons (hopefully I will get in some more games next month as I'll have more time and I can improve). Both of the players I played my four games against are very competitive and experienced. I, on the other hand, am still relearning the game after several years off and have been running pure Dark Eldar based around the Kabal.

So not only am I coming off of a learning curve I'm also determined to shoot myself in the foot further by not getting Coven units as I want to maintain a theme.

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

Quote :

I saw someone mentioning never winning with their DE, so I was curious.

It is the internet. Everybody here always wins and if one guy tries to be honest about his actual winrate out come the rulers to compare.... winrates.

So if people don't win, the codex sucks, but if they do win, they're lying?  

CurstAlchemist wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

I saw someone mentioning never winning with their DE, so I was curious.

That would have been me

Nope!  

Just a side mention in another thread, and not specifically referenced because it isn't about that player and their specific win ratio.

Jimsolo wrote:

Nope!  

Just a side mention in another thread, and not specifically referenced because it isn't about that player and their specific win ratio.

I did realise this even if it didn't seem that way in my post and was just adding my data to the thread. I didn't vote as I feel that the poll is aimed more at those with more experience and games than I.

That was me actually. Mostly, I think due to bad match ups, and being super new. I beat an Ork Warbiker list yesterday and lost to necrons so I'm starting to get a better feel for the army.

Right now with my current list I have won 4 out of 6 games and really 5 out of 7 due to my friend running a wraith army, but that was unbound so I am hard pressed to count it.

Depends Is eldar in the league or not XD

Quote :

So if people don't win, the codex sucks, but if they do win, they're lying?

The codex does suck, there should be no discussion about it.
And yes I really think people lie about their winrates. Else we have so much perfect players here that I wonder why actual good players can't even break in the top 20 of any given big tournament (As the ONLY codex!).

Also as I mentioned, our list are not friendly. They are maxed out.
Try to find someone who maintains his "I almost always win" (7 people... sure) without a variation of our only 2 cookie cutter builds and I show you codices who can actually still win without their best net lists.

Sad person that I am, I keep a list of my games and their results. Just checked it. Since the release of our current codex I have played 9 games with DE as my primary detachment (either covens or codex) and have won 6, lost 2 and drawn 1. I've also played quite a few games with DE as allies (or non-primary I suppose these days) and have a roughly 66% win rate there.

So I do have to keep track of my win record and get my enemies to sign it for you to believe me?

My last games:
Won against Eldar Maelstrom
Massacred guard in eternal war mission
Lost bad against orcs
Lost against Nurgle demons because I lost track of the mission because I was busy wiping him out. Almost succeeded, he managed to hide one squad of plague bearers.

So I do win more than lose because I count the Nurgle fight purely my own fault. I got carried away in the heat of the moment. So bad codex here. I don't care if we don't have a 'frak with my enemy in one turn death star list because everyone in the tournament is doing it' list.

I see a 50/50 here.
Maybe the Eldar also lost because they had a bad Maelstorm draw or "got carried away"?

Also you guys keep ignoring the 2nd part of my argument. Who of you plays friendly lists and not maxed out lists and do your opponents do the same (as in playing maxed out lists) or do they just play toned down lists against which you actually can do well with your maxed out lists.

@Klaivex Charondyr - I think you need to take into account the fact that we are all posting on a Dark Eldar forum. Almost by definition, you are talking to people who have invested a lot of time and effort into making a DE army work for them. For every one of us who has enjoyed a degree of success there's doubtless a couple who tried DE and gave up due to the steep learning curve. I don't mean to say that we're any sort of 'elite' but just that we're all likely to be veterans who have learned the hard way and can make the army work in spite of its obvious shortcomings.

Klaivex Charondyr wrote:

Quote :

So if people don't win, the codex sucks, but if they do win, they're lying?

The codex does suck, there should be no discussion about it.
And yes I really think people lie about their winrates. Else we have so much perfect players here that I wonder why actual good players can't even break in the top 20 of any given big tournament (As the ONLY codex!).

Well, if you're just going to accuse everyone (including me) of lying, there isn't really a point in trying to discuss it, is there?

Quote :

Also as I mentioned, our list are not friendly. They are maxed out.
Try to find someone who maintains his "I almost always win" (7 people... sure) without a variation of our only 2 cookie cutter builds and I show you codices who can actually still win without their best net lists.

What are our two "cookie cutter builds?" I can't say whether or not I do that without knowing what you think they are.

My win rate has changed drastically with new editions and new army books. I used to win more often than not up until 6th. My main matchup is Eldar, Tau, Necrons and Iron hands, so needless to say I lose a lot these days. Mostly it was eldar on eldar action and I did not beat the old eldar dex once with DE, mainly because of wave serpents. To be honest the last two games I played against eldar, all I wanted to do was wreck his serpents so I did not care about the mission at all. With the recent wave serpent balancing I am a lot more optimistic.
BTW. With my raven guard I won about 50% of my games against eldar.

CptMetal wrote:

So I do have to keep track of my win record and get my enemies to sign it for you to believe me?

Well, there's such a thing as 'Burden of proof'. i.e. if you make a claim, it's up to you to prove that claim.

Although, in any event, I find win rates a rather dubious measure to begin with. It just seems like they leave too many important questions unanswered:
- How strong your list was
- How strong your opponent's list was
- How well you played
- How well your opponent played
- Terrain
- Effect of random stuff (such as maelstrom cards)
- etc.


Still, in the interests of the topic, I believe my win ratio is about 50%. Though, that could easily be an over- or underestimate, as I don't actually record my wins or losses.

In terms of armies, I have a good win record against GKs, Daemons, Chaos, Ultramarines* and Blood Angels

I have a poor record against Imperial Guard, Iron Hands*, Orks, Eldar and Necrons (though mostly against the old Necron book - I haven't faced the new one much).

With the other races, I'm either average or don't play them enough to make a reasonable judgement.

*I should point out that the main distinction is less Iron Hands vs Ultramarines, and more the players who use them (especially since the Ultramarine chap also uses other chapter tactics - including Iron Hands - on occasion). The Iron hands player uses stronger lists and is generally better tactically.

Oh, one other thing - a lot of the games my group plays are 2v2s (if youre wondering why, it's because there are usually 4+ of us but only 1 table ). So, that might skew things a bit.

My win rate was reasonable with the old codex (using my black buzzards list). With the new codex my coven list (repugnant ramblers) has had a pretty successful run. I would say I almost always win probably losing 10-20% of my games.

However, to paraphrase another denizen of the dark city, my strategy is keenly based on close placement of objectives and having just enough mobility to secure/contest them whilst being hyper-aware of the tactical objectives deck and what objectives are achievable when, and which ones are best to throw away. This playstyle might not appeal to all, and is a far-cry from the original aggressive mobility based play style that got me into dark eldar originally.

As always these things can be quite meta dependent.

Out of interest, Mush, have you tried any other lists with the new book?