Are the Dark Eldar supposed to be an Elite army?

Mppqlmd wrote:

For wyches :
- 2 attacks on the base profiles.
- Razorflails being AP-2, reroll to hit
- Every other weapon (including base ones) AP-1
- Hydra remain what they are
- Impaler stays at D2, with AP-1, and Shardnet gains a fluffy rule (bonus to "No Escape"/a rule for capturing prisoners/whatava).

Those are only minor tweaks, but would make such a huge difference.

While I would be VERY happy with this setup, there are some other options to make the Wych weapons better:

Razorflail alternatives (combine with reroll to hit):
+d3 attacks instead of +1
Rending (-4 instead of -1 on wound rolls of 6's)

Shardnet Alternatives:
Bearer rerolls failed dodge saves.
attackers within 1 inch are at -1 attack (like back in the old days!)
attackers within 1 inch are at -1 to hit (both melee and with pistols)

I think DE are supposed to be designed to go along with the "death from a thousand cuts" philosophy. The debate between horde and elite, flexible and specialised is an illusion. DE are kind of all 4, simultaneously. But they're also none of them. What they are are an army in which many units can be reasonably assumed to be able to tackle multiple opponents and in which many units (often those same units) can be reasonably assumed to be capable of specialisation. This results in an army in which many units are able to output a fair amount of damage to a bunch of things. If you want to kill something, you need multiple units and focused fire/assault. Or you can spread your damage around and attempt to cripple a bunch of things.

Every unit is deadly when used alongside other units in the army. But your damage output is diluted throughout your whole army. 6-8 lances spread across dedicated transports do the job of tank-hunting just as well as 2 quad predators, but it's much harder to take out all that anti-tank weaponry. When a couple lances can explode a tank why put all your guns on one platform? This bleeds into the greater DE philosophy in that you have no idea which units are going to die. You know they'll die, you know you spend each unit's lives to get the most effect out of them, but you really don't know which unit is next to die or when. So rather than have one super-specialised squad that is really good at it's job (ala Craftworlders) DE will spread that around 2-3 units instead. And will then attempt to gang up on overly-specialised expensive units to slay them fast, leaving their diluted firepower on the table (or at least some of it).

So DE appear horde-like because they have tons of stuff on the table and some cheap options, but they also appear elite because they can specialise like other armies, but those specialisations are never as good as true specialist armies and they never really have true hordes. They just take 2,3 or 4 guns to do the job of every 1 scalpel weapon from another army. A SM player wanting some more solid AT will take a predator, a DE will take 2 ravagers instead. Tau might take 3 Fire Warriors to fill out troops, DE will take 6, and 3 raiders to boot. Sure the points don't compare but the intent is what's important. DE players tend to have a mentality of doubling everything, taking two of everything, take more. Wanna deal with tanks? Take 15 dark lances. Perfectly reasonable for a DE player. For a SM player 8-12 lascannons might be pushing the boat out.

So the argument of horde vs elite, or generalist/versatile vs specialist doesn't really apply well to DE. They hold to an entirely different doctrine to other armies. They could still use some improvement though.

I think it all depends on how you define elite and what you use as reference.

If you take Craftworlders as a reference, we are almost entirely a horde army that possesses bad survivability, tech and powers but in turn have higher numbers (or at least we should have).

I often like to compare us to Guard, just because of the amount of T3 models and our GEQ, the Kabalites. Taking them as a reference our individual units are vastly stronger, but are greatly behind in terms of body count.

What's left? Orks, Marines or Tyranids? Just see the examples above.

There cannot be a definite answer when there is no definition of what "Elite" means (therefore, agreeing with all my previous posters).

But I think this is what makes us so great. We really are a unique faction that cannot be fit into a single category. What we are is a finesse army that utilises speed as our primary offensive and defensive mechanic.

Our units cannot be expected to last long, but they just need to last long enough to get the job done. This is what gives us this horde-like imagine, we need numbers to have enough backup to get an objective done. But unlike Guard or Orks we cannot throw a bucket of models into the opponent's face, which is why we need to use our speed and range to control the board.

You are very much on spot : we have a playstyle that's quite rare in 40k, and thus cannot be classified in the Horde/elite dichotomy.

I would say we are the most offensive army in all 40k : we pay for good BS and good weapons (and range, and speed), but not for resilience. It's like we went into a "Elite army" catalogue, bought everything that could increase our damage output, and nothing else.