How do you feel about the current state of Dark Eldar?

I lost bad against Primaris but that guy is slaughtering everyone at 1000 points at that moment.
I would need more Ravagers and convert the single one I have from lances to dissies.

CptMetal wrote:

I lost bad against Primaris but that guy is slaughtering everyone at 1000 points at that moment.
I would need more Ravagers and convert the single one I have from lances to dissies.

Do yourself a favor as you expand your collection, use magnets. I just got finished going back and installing them on previously painted ravagers. That's much harder!

I used magnets to attach the canopy thingies at both sides and all sails. But you are correct. I'm try to fix it somehow

I think i am going to change my answer. As more codexes are released i am becoming bitter about the lack of imagination in our book. It seems like GW is putting too much stock in the 3 subfactions within our codex. That has to be the reason why Rise of the Phoenix gave us no new options on the level of Faith and Fury. The assumption is that with potentially 6 subfaction traits in a single army, we don't need need strong Relics, Warlord Traits and Stratagems specific to a subfaction. The current selection of 1 per Kabal, Cult, Coven is underwhelming. It is like we are assumed to always work as a soup. i just wish we had anything close to the level of customization power armor has.

Yeah, the Marine meta combined with our relatively disappointing Psychic Awakening has definitely soured me a bit. I still think we're good but God damn have there been some missed opportunities for us recently, and I'm feeling the lack of flexibility in our army more and more.

As other books are released, our book diminishes.

Skulnbonz wrote:

As other books are released, our book diminishes.

Having played two recent 1500 point games against "Thousand Sons" and "Alpha Legion" I just get the feeling we are falling behind at an increasing rate..

To me, it is less about our competitive advantages, as so much our lack of ongoing support from GW. Rise of the Phoenix gave us some options for strengthening Cult and Covens, which were in need of help more than Kabal, which GW still seems to think shoot too well. I am critical of how we got cut out of the specific Relics, Strats and Warlord traits of the codex subfactions, whereas SMs got custom traits and their parent Legion's Doctrine, Special Issue Equipment, Psykers powers, Warlord Traits and Stratagems.

What bothers me is that we have exactly 1 potential Warlord HQ per subfaction. They don't have a ton of variety in what they contribute to the army, outside of paying the HQ tax. Our non-HQ characters are bound to Archons, or the Beastmaster, who specifically cannot have a Warlord trait... like that was something to be feared.

I agree, it's painful looking at everything Space Marines have received compared with our meagre additions.

But we don't have to look that far to be sad, just look at Craftworlds. Expert Crafters alone is better than most of our regular Obsession bonuses. The fact that Expert Crafters can benefit an entire detachment of any combination of units, rather than being specific to Cult/Kabal/Coven restrictions just adds insult to injury. And some of those new Exarch powers...

Still, there are some interesting combinations to work with.

- Test Of Skill Razorwings are genuinely powerful units even at 145 pts.
- Artists Of Flesh is very appealing to both Talos spam or Venom spam.
- Dark Technomancers completely changes the way a unit works and is worth building around. I really enjoy how the rule makes even Hexrifles and Cronos' weapons more interesting as they're much more likely to get that 6+ to wound, as well as giving them one more damage. Because high AP weapons are scarce in Covens, it doesn't feel over the top, but it's a really cool mechanic to build into a list.
- Toxin Crafters is nice against Knights, since you were already fishing for 6s, so you may as well deal twice as much damage every time you do and they fail a save. It's not worth building entirely around, but I did enjoy experimenting with Toxin Crafters + Soul Bound.

All very reasonable observations hydranixx. It's easy to feel super bummed about our Phoenix Rising obsessions, just look at all those dumb kabal melee traits and how much better marine buffs are, but all those combinations you listed are something to consider. I'll also add that with dark technomancers the added benefit is it's the first of other possible traits, good combinations are experimental creations for s8 talos and more punchy wracks and master of mutagens for pretty potent venoms and another potential buff to wracks.

The problem with phoenix rising isnt necessarily that the obsessions are bad, but rather that by using them you are losing flavor and access to some of our best and most thematic stratagems, wl traits, and relics. Losing access to those without anything to compensate is really what kills custom obsessions in my mind.

hydranixx wrote:

But we don't have to look that far to be sad, just look at Craftworlds. Expert Crafters alone is better than most of our regular Obsession bonuses. The fact that Expert Crafters can benefit an entire detachment of any combination of units, rather than being specific to Cult/Kabal/Coven restrictions just adds insult to injury. And some of those new Exarch powers...

Expert Crafters is honestly an outlier (that's also outrageously strong judging by some of the win rate stats for CWE floating around). Remove it and Craftworlders really didn't get much in the way of fun toys from Psychic Awakening either. More than us? Yes, definitely. But still not a huge amount to write home about.

It's baffling that neither faction got any new warlord traits, relics, or stratagems (aside from the +1 Exarch power one) given what every other faction seems to be receiving.

There's a simple reason for that, Phoenix Rising lost sixteen pages of rules content to reprinting the Ynnari white dwarf rules basically word for word. There's all the space that could have been given over to new craftworld/Drukhari strats, relics and warlord traits.

I've resigned myself to waiting until our next codex for anything interesting to happen to the Dark Eldar again, as more and more of Psychic Awakening releases our codex feels like it has slid further and further down the rankings to where it will end up where it was in 7th. there will probably be Harliquen stuff coming out towards the end of psychic awakening pitted against a whole host of new slannesh models/rules and GW will think that makes up for the pretty abysmal Phoenix Rising book cause the Aeldari as a whole will get something new in the form of a couple of new Harlequin models and psychic tree ... it's getting pretty tiring dealing with another Baskin Robins release (basically many different flavors) of power armor ... power armour armies arent that interesting as a whole (except sisters they have needed something new for a very long time) and it's annoying to see release after release of what is basically the same thing

I do get the frustration on here and I think it's justified in a vacuum, but at the same time, comparing Drukhari to marines seems a lot more like people looking for reasons to be frustrated to me.

Drukhari have been a low priority army for over 20 years. They clearly spend less time and resources on our stuff than on marines. That has never not been true.

Do I wish we got more attention? Absolutely. Am I disappointed that a 20 year long pattern continues to hold true? Sure, a little. I mean I'd like it to change, but I'm not going to get frustrated that an army that was unloved before I picked it up continues to be unloved.

If you choose to marry the red-headed step child, you can't be shocked that he has baggage.

I'll echo what a lot on here have said. Drukhari have suffered since the codex dropped on a few fronts. It's been a slow process, but the decline has accelerated with Psychic Awakening. Various FAQ changes, tweaks to rules here and there, new releases for other armies, Legends removing wargear options etc have just been gently eating away at the power of Drukhari, like Slaanesh slowly draining a soul.
Then Marines coming along was a big blow. They were silly and have been stamping on everyone. But Drukhari seem to have suffered particularly. The -1 to hit, which used offer some help when going 2nd, is wasted vs marines with all their hit modifiers and re-rolls. We get wounded extremely easily, even by heavy bolters etc. Indirect fire will pick up our squads easy as you like, so there's no hiding. The meta feels like its just moved into a really bad spot for us.
Then our Psychic Awakening was....dissapointing. The changes gave us different options for Cult and  Coven, but didn't provide any direct lift in the power of the faction imo. It left us where we were, but with more viable obsessions. Chapter Approved next, and brings increases to the points on two important units, that were barely holding on in the new meta anyway. Both ravagers and razorwings are dying quicker than ever, but they now cost more. The points drops on other stuff were nice, but again didn't really fix or lift dark eldar. Rather it just meant you could include some different stuff whilst staying fairly static in terms of overall power.
I'd have said that was good balance, if marines didn't exist and everyone (except nids) so far got some proper boosts from Psychic Awakening. The other armies I see struggling do at least still have their Psychic Awakening to look towards for help. Drukhari's hope for a boost has been and gone. Meanwhile we fall further behind with each PA book being released for others.
Apologies if that sounds overwhelmingly negative. I'm usually quite a positive person but having my ass kicked by marines week in week out is getting me down!

I must be in the minority here because I feel a little revitalized from Psychic Awakening. I like that we got a bunch of new traits that actually give life to some of our lesser units. (I still want to try a Test of Skill x20 blob of Hellions) Yes, many of the traits (Kabal) are lackluster but some of them change our army entirely! (Dark Technos, Artist of Flesh, Master of Mutagens, Test of Skill, etc.)
I think Psychic Awakening has been a godsend for us as an army and breathed new life into us as a whole. Every DE army before the release was the same and boring because we didn't have a ton of competitive choices. But, now with the new traits you have to make actual choices and cut things out rather trying to figure how to use the last of your points!
Ynnari being involved also gives us a little flare and help if you go that route to as they can now be included.
I am not saying we are on par with SM and we didn't get the love Eldar did, but we did get something and that something is new, it's good, and it has helped a lot in my end.

SCP Yeeman, if we are looking at internal codex balance I agree entirely with what you say. It opens up new mechanics and different list build options, especially coupled with the point drops to fringe units in CA.

But from our standing within 40k as a whole, I have to disagree. I'd have loved every faction to get something similar to Dark Eldar - opening up more variety to each armies play style and bringing better balance without the power creep. However, power creep has been evident for most other factions either in CA or Psychic Awakening. Dark Eldar have at best stood still, or arguably gotten worse. The other factions are all being moved forwards, and so DE have been left behind.

All other factions have been moving forward? I don't think so. Pretty much all the other xenoes armies are about where they were since they codexes dropped, and substantially lower in strength than new marines. Sure nids got a bigger boost than we did in PA, but I haven't been suddenly seeing tons of nid players everywhere, there's only so much you can boost if the core codex is just decent. CWE got a big boost with the expert crafters trait, but that's one trait, not much of a boost to overall varying playstyles of the army. Chaos got lots of new toys last year, but all of them are still a big kick in the face compared to what happened to marines.

Dark Eldar are still solid, just as they were when our codex dropped. The issue is marines pushed up to a new level of power, and because loads of 40k players had a marine army gathering dust in their basement, the second all the supplements dropped the overall meta was just oversaturated with marines everywhere. I actually feel like the exception, I don't face a ton of marines, some of them here and there but they aren't massively overrepresented in my local group, so I actually still feel quite good about the current state of DE because I'm not facing IF/IH silliness on a regular basis.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

All other factions have been moving forward? I don't think so. Pretty much all the other xenoes armies are about where they were since they codexes dropped, and substantially lower in strength than new marines.

But I said "are being moved forward". So far only 3 Xenos armies have had their Psychic Awakening. And so far, the Drukhari release has been the most lacklustre of any faction, not just xenos. Also, the majority of Xenos armies got points reductions in Chapter Approved (with the exception of GSC but they still have the hope of their Psychic Awakening book). Any points drops we got were offset by increases to core units with no real alternatives to them in our codex.
I'm not saying we're trash tier, I'm also not comparing us to Space Marines which are clearly stupidly OP. But we have definitely taken a bigger hit than most just recently. And a lot of the armies around us still have the potential of boosts from their PA books. Just look at whats coming for Grey Knights, 1k Sons and even Dark Angels. It's only gettting harder for Drukhari to compete right now.

No, they tyranid nids one is the most lack luster, they are borderline unplayable and they didn't actually become more playable.

I dont honestly remember seeing anything on a tyranid release ... and as comparing our army to the space marines, I dont really have a choice ... in my area there are so so so many power armour players that the handful of xenos players (I think 5 out of 50 players that i know of play xenos at the local shop) have basically stopped showing up if there aren't going to be other xenos players around because there really is no fun in facing the power armor armies ... I constantly have to look at their troops and think "what can their basic troop units threaten?" And the answer is everything, so to keep them from being a threat to everything you have to delete the unit, which is not easy to do, while looking at my own troops and thinking "what is the best target for this unit" and again against power armor the answer is very very little, and if the response is "well just play coven they are more survivable and the talos chews through marines" then I'll ask "why should I be forced to play a part of the army that overall I'm not that interested in, just to attempt to even the playing field? And why is it that one of the only real threats we have to their cheapest models is one of our most costly models?" Plus ... this entire edition was built on comparing one thing to another, they talked about how there was so much playtesting and consideration into how each individual model matched up to its counterpart from every army

Yeah, 8th is all but dead in my area now, and its been a dominate game for 15yrs. With AoS, Star wars 2 games (mini and X wing) why play broken 40k?

40k didn't understand the power of Detachment system combine with; Wound chart, more shots, re-rolls, and AP system would force Min/max units/armies to insane points. Oh also cover is almost gone now too.

We need a real change in core rules.

I haven't played a 40k game in months, this is the first in 10yrs, i normally play 2-3 games a week, not playing for months is insane, i was still playing even at the end of 7th, at least there was 1 or 2 clear things that was broken (To many super heavys/D weapons, so limited 1 per side) and formations (limited 1 per side, and only if both played them) but with 8th that isn't the case.

The players near me, at least, have been pretty happy with 8th edition up until the recent wave of Marine releases. Now Marine players are upset about the sheer number of rules they have to keep track of, and everyone else is upset about the massive disaparity in power between armies.

Here there's no problem at all about 40k (north Italy). But after the last GT/big event results we got that there's a big difference between CA19 and ITC format.
In ITC, the game is broken and Marines are all over the top.
In CA19, Marines are good but are way more beatable. Still a bit over the top, but if you play around conquer the ground it's affordable.
In ITC you can list ignoring that and just kill the opponent: there, SM are broken.
All 40k has an inner balance about firepower/control objectives. CA19 is the best way to play the game as intended and the best balanced format in my opinion.
You can see it even in the last events (ie. Caledonian, GT GW...). Even Tyrands are good in there.