Help for a new Dark Eldar player

I have a basic battleforce along with two squads of 10 kabalites and an archon plus a raider. In total I have 2 raiders, 30 kabalites, 10 wyches, 3 reavers, and 1 archon. My typical opponents as of now are as follows: tau (i can give a detailed list i have lost quite a few times and know his force), necrons, and imperial guard. I can provide more detail if needed... Please help me

Any information you can give will help us give you better answers but I'll just ask a couple of the most important questions: What point total are you playing? I'll just assume 500 points for this post. How many vehicles do your opponents generally run? Probably not many in 500 points but it makes a big difference for Dark Eldar.

I'd run both Raiders no matter what and the Archon should probably go in one with the wyches for backup. The other can hold warriors. Past that it's just a question of how many points you have left.

Archon - Venom Blade (maybe a Blaster as well) or Agonizer, Shadow Field
8 or 9 Wyches (give them Haywire if your opponents run vehicles) w/ Raider

10 Warriors - Splinter Cannon w/ Raider - Splinter Racks

This will run you about 400 points which leaves enough for a couple more upgrades or a small Reaver or Warrior squad.

my friend and i usually run 1500 point battles with me using some eldar to fill up spaces as allies. Typically there is always a hammerhead, 2 devilfish, 3 battlesuits, 1 broadside, 20 firewarriors, and a squad of pathfinders. I fight the tau more often but when he decides to throw imperial guard at me he runs 3 leman russ battle tanks (hate them a ton) and 2 chymera transports. The vehicles are my only worry for the imperial guard and the hammerhead plus broadside battle suit make vehicles target practice against tau.

Well you don't have anything close to 1500 points of Dark Eldar (really more then the 500 I listed is a stretch) so this needs to be an Eldar Army with Dark Eldar allies. As such you need to make the Eldar part first and then fill in weaknesses with the Dark Eldar bits.

Or, you could take the opposite tack and just use everything. I make that around 950-1000 points, if you're really generous with upgrades. Would your opponent be willing to play some smaller games while you're getting your head around the army? He's almost certainly going to crush you in the first few games anyway, and can crush you more times in an afternoon at 750 or 1000 points than he can at 1500...

typically in the smaller point battles i fair pretty well against an army he is not used to. I come close to 1500 points of Dark Eldar alone when i add in the razorwing that i just recently acquired. I typically need very minimal eldar allies. I usually take eldar t get some anti tank weapons. Is there a specific force load for 1500 points that will be good against the ranged tau forces. I can buy more people so any list will help.

The problem you have at the moment is not necessarily that your army is not good against Tau, it's that it's really not at all versatile. It's difficult to offer suggestions at this point, because you haven't really told us (1) how you like to play; or (2) what you understand the tasks of the models you already have to be. To what degree do you want to take the fight to your enemy, vs standing and blasting away? How adaptable to various circumstances do you want your army to be? How fast do you want your army to be? Do you want to enact a cunning, competitive plan, or be able to respond dynamically to your opponent's actions in real time?

Really, your question is not a million miles from "I have some models, and I'm fighting Tau. Make me an army list plz". It would be good if people hoping to respond to your question had a little more to go on.

If buying more dudes is an option, I'd say just take a look at other posts and crits in the Army List section of these boards, and see what the sort of things you're missing are.

well i was a defensive player but since adopting dark eldar as my permanent army i have moved towards attacking fast and brutally. The main thing i try to do is to evade his hammerhead and broadsides. He has a hard time dealing with close combat as tau are weak at hand to hand. the only major threats are battlesuits and hammerheads paired with pathfinder snipers. the map is usually very open therefore hurting my chances of evasion but we are going to be doing more city based boards to fight on giving me many options for getting in while staying out of line of sight. i would like my army be fast enough to outrun the railguns (he has 3) and evade the snipers. i need the army to be able to take quite a few shots from the battlesuits and get in close enough to finish off what the dark lance shooting didin't wound or kill. i assume shredders on the raiders would be good but dark lances would be better to take out the hammerhead and battlesuits i believe. along with the razorwwing fighters weapon loadout. i have never used a flyer so have no idea the pro's and con's of its weapons.

Ha! - sounds like what you need more than anything else is actually more cover!

Dark Eldar are never really going to be able to take, like, a LOT of shots. So perhaps you should really focus on getting into combat fast. Perhaps focus your purhcases on more transports, and more CC units (Wytches, Inccubi). Make sure you take enough darklight to neuter the stuff you're really scared of (make some of your kabbalites into blasterborn).

It really seems to me that if you can't keep out of LoS of your opponent, then you need to render them unable to shoot - either because they're in CC or because they're dead. Which to me would suggest more transports, more CC troops, more liquifiers.

Would any of your opponents let you proxy some other skimmers for more venoms? shooting across he board turn one flat out as they can move 30" would really surprise him. wyches with haywires parked up right next to anyones armour will give them something to think about, and certainly puts them on the back foot. some will survive and definitely wreck a couple of vehicles.

see the bad thing is that he is used to my tactics so not much will catch him off guard. he reads a lot of DE tactics to fight me as well as reads my codex when he gets the chance.

Some general advice to think about with us is target saturation! Try to lure him into shooting non essential targets or hard to kill targets! Or there's so many essential targets that he can't take them all out at once. If you want to get into cc I'd seriously suggest beatmasters. They have excellent offense thanks to rending, are fast duu to being beasts, and are hard to wipe due to 4+ invulns from khymera. There are lots of great lists and tactic advice here to get excited tho.


Other advice : Really explore the codex!

thanks, will keep in mind the power of the beasties.

Edit: So now that i have my tau troubles solved mostly does anyone have suggestions on tactics used for killing necron forces? Also imperial guard leman russ battle tanks have proven difficult in the past, any thoughts for those monsters?

Please dont double post. If you want to add any infomation, just use the edit button in the top right -Your Friendly Neighborhood Mod SR-

Dark Light is our answer to tanks and Ravagers are the best Dark Lance platforms in the army. You could also make use of small 5 man Haywire Grenade armed wych squads in venoms or Trueborn with Blasters in venoms, it depends on your preferences and how many vehicles you'll need to kill/what else you need the squad to do.

In a sense Dark Eldar are a very "simple" army to build for. You really don't need to change you list all that much except vs really extreme army types (all flyers necros for example). Apply enough Splinter Cannons and Dark Lances/Blasters to a problem and it will go away. Vs necrons its all about focusing fire on a units to th epoint where they models can't get back up anymore. Be sure to read the rules for the necrons.

that was really helpful. i tend to notice that with the armor on the leman russ battle tank i have to either deep strike in behind and try and out maneuver the tank to get a good shot off on rear armor. Chimera transports packed with ogryns also scare me half to death. those brutes get in close enough and ill have to go out and get some incubi as a little ogryn killing squad. maybe some beasts could give them a run for their money? Also i have an out of production warp beast i believe it is? does anyone actually know what the stats were for it? it was a little gift thrown in with an ebay lot i bought.

You really don't need to deepstrike behind the leman to get a good shot on it (and frankly I'm not a fan of deep striking with Dark Eldar in general). Dark Lances and Blasters both have the Lance rule which means any armor greater then 12 counts as 12 for us. As such a leman's 14 front armor is only 12 when we shoot it. Likewise Haywire doesn't care what your armor value is, it just rolls to see if it glances/pens off a chart no armor values needed.

As for Ogryns, just pop their transport before they get close (Dark Lances again are key) and make them walk. They won't get anywhere in a hurry and you can mow them down easy with massed splinter fire (plus any extra Dark Light you have on hand). Beasts could maybe mop up a heavily wounded squad but a full strength Ogryn squad could probably beat a Beast Squad (especially if they get the charge... Never let them charge you).

i'll definitely have to keep in mind the power of dark light. i had never known about that lance special rule. sadly i am also stuck in the 5th edition rulebook. i still dont know the ins and outs of the rules completely but i started playing 40k like a year ago so i am still pretty new. not to mention my friend reads tactica all day long wich is one of the various reasons i started this topic.

Wracks are wonderful for taking out Ogryns... a 10 man unit with Aconite/Venom Blade can put a lot of wounds on them as the poison attacks in CC ignore their Toughness advantage.

Since you are handling mech, please get 2 ravagers with 3DL's each. Now that will put a dent somewhere together with your jetfighter.

If you want *some* inspiration check my 3rd army list in the following post, 2 ravagers and 1 jetfighter in a 1k list should get you started if you want some AT as well as AI. If you want to expand to 1.5k from there why not have some fun and get some beasts and/or 9bike squads with HL/BL.

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t4670-1k-6th-tourney

I'm sorry if my immediate advice is for you to get two ravagers, but you sorely lack AT unfortunately. Put Night Shields on them and keep them just barely within 36" of your foe..

okay just heads up for the ravager thing. my friend is very close with his railguns which shoot 72". so just btw the nightshields are pointless unless i take out the broadside suit and hammerhead with railgun.

Maytbe not for railguns, but in general NS can save your ravagers from inconvenient fire. They are after all AV11 and can be put down by smaller S6 arms usually with shorter range.

true, my friends only S6 and up weapons are on battlesuits so them and hammerheads are major targets. so on friday i will be fighting against space marines with my dark eldar maybe. is there any particular tactics to take 'em out?