Dark Eldar vs. Knight Army

Squidmaster wrote:

Yeah, i just don't think Grots have the power needed to do any real damage before they're stomped apart.

I just fought three knights yesterday.

grots (with a vexator mask) took a knight from 24 wounds to 3 (!) in one round of combat.

Wanna tell me how good 12 stomps are when you are hitting on 5's, wounding on 3's and your opponent has a 4+ invul backed up by a 6+ FNP?

I will tell you how good... 1-2 wounds good.

The other knights died in droves to lances, blasters and three units of two talos with haywire. the knights never even got close to being a threat.


As a matter of full disclosure, I used the "reroll wounds" stratagem on the grots.

Wow. How many Grots did you have?

I take a full unit of 10.

Skulnbonz wrote:

I take a full unit of 10.

Ah. I fear I don't even own that many Grotesque models.

Ogre and Rat Ogres, or Crypt Horrors with Talos bits, 99% of DE players are doing them

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 21 wounds way above what Grots should be expected to do against Knights in close combat, even taking into account the reroll wounds stratagem?

Quickly did the math in my head and they should do right at 21 wounds.......before armor saves

My math could be off a bit, but that was 10 grots with rerolls on the wound roll and hitting on 2s. I didn't take into account any damage the haemy might do

Their cleavers do have damage 2, if that makes a difference.

Grots are 1D on their cleaver....

amishprn86 wrote:

Grots are 1D on their cleaver....

Oh, so they are. For some reason I thought they were damage 2.

You might be thinking of the Mindphase Gauntlet perhaps?

If you want to shoot Knights down, your best bets are Haywire Scourges, Haywire Talos and Disintegrator Ravagers. All of those with their low natural wound rate will be significantly improved by getting those Craftworlders you don't want with Doom. Even if you don't, Disintegrators are better than Dark Lances for the big Knights.

Dark Lances and Blasters are good against the Armigers, and are marginally better than Disintegrators. If you add Doom in then the Disintegrators are better there too.

Grotesques and Talos are good options too if you want melee.

Some of the Cult units score fairly well here too. Hellions provided they have S5 are good against Knights and Wyches with at least S4 are good against Armigers. However, the resilience of those units when the Knights step out of combat is a bit limited in return when compared to the Covens choices.

Knights seem like most armies where the ideal Drukhari force to fight them is:
Black Heart Battalion (Ravagers and Kabalites in transports)
Prophets of Flesh Battalion (Large Grotesques unit and multiple Talos/Cronos)
Alaitoc Patrol (Doom/Jinx and Rangers)
(or some slight variation on the above)

I'm gonna vote for Blasters and Haywire, and definitely pull in a Craftworld Doom/Jinx combo. If you put Dark Lances on Ravagers, it just makes them an obvious target.

Nothing really changes, stick to Dissies and Blaster/Haywire spam.

Hi im a knight player.

2 knights and 2 armigers for 1750 means he have batalion of admech, and not a token one.

Concentrate on degrading knights, there are only limited ways to repair them or modify their BS. Haywire Scourge drop should work ok.

Flyers work good against them, degraded knight hit em on 5+ and cant charge them. You can block knights movement with a flyer, if terrain allows it. And it often does, knights are huge. My necron opponent do this to me often.Ravagers are actually not so good unit against knight. Rapidfire battle cannon make short work of them and outrange them by a large margin.

One other difficulty with knight is number of targets - only one per weapon. 2 knights you mention can only target 3 units with meaningfull weaponry.

Blocking with flyers is a great idea.

I was brainstorming this last week with my opponent. He thinks the Shadowsword is really the only option, which as Dark Eldar obviously we don't have available. Going off the board for a minute, Eldar Support Batteries with D-Cannons could be handy as they don't need LoS and get a decent number of shots. Plopping them in the first floor of ruins, a-la ITC rules, means they're virtually invulnerable to shooting but can fire out from their cover. Also the Crimson Hunter is a viable option too.

For Dark Eldar exclusively, the answer is to out-math them. You need to stock your army with units that punch above their weight class. Things that will wound a Knight as easily as a Space Marine. Things that are fast, annoying, and can just *soak*. Things that can fly around and be a massive nuisance for objective coverage against low model count armies. The bird is the word.

Just curious on your thoughts for the Crimson Hunter. Aside from the Pulse Laser and the additional pivot, what do they bring that a Razorwing does not?

I'm seeing these more and more in competitive lists now, and just curious if I'm missing something.

They reroll wounds against anything with the fly keyword, not good against knights in particular but against many other lists it helps a lot. Also they are more mobile than your standard flyers because of that handy extra pivot and can fire 4 S8 shots with serious AP and decent damage for about the price of a Voidraven Bomber. They tear Flyrants, Talos, Morty, etc. apart and help fill the hole the price hike on Dark Reapers left. The Exarchs can swap their Bright Lances for Starcannons which from what I can tell are basically just worse Disintegrators. Oh, and they have a 3+ save instead of a 4+/5++ for whatever that's worth.

Knights are not particularly weak to them but they're a mobile platform for anti-vehicle fire and you can cram 3 of them into a flyer wing and use that in lists pretty easily.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Dark Lances, Dark Lances and some Dark Lances.

Dark Lances aren't bad, but they aren't really good here either. T8 and invulnerable saves makes darklight very inconsistent in performance. They will either do great, or fail in a big way.

Disintegrators aren't any better, though, despite what the spreadsheet-hammer folks keep saying; plinking them for a consistent couple of wounds here and there won't really help (especially if they are Hawkshroud), but getting a couple of lucky darklight damage rolls will.

Haywire Scourges can really see some play against a list like this.

Squidmaster wrote:

Hell, this might actually be an argument for Wyches if you can prevent them from falling back, and I never thought I'd say that.

Wyches can only lock down infantry.  Drukhari don't really have a melee option vs. knights except maybe spammed Talos.  Talos also have haywire, albeit hitting on 4+.