Dark Eldar: A Death or Glory tale of a UK competitive tournament Gamer

Hey guys i'm Mike Marlow from death or glory podcast/blog and i'm a dark eldar addict.

it's true i can't deny it.

The fact is i've played and won tournaments here in the UK with them and frankley this has made them force (perhaps torture) thier way into my heart.

It's no secret that Dark Eldar were suffering end of 5th ed in these isles, with Grey Knights and Imperial guard ruining my day everytime i saw them from across the board from me.

But 6th ed really has boosted us in terms of competitive play and sheer destructive capability. Lets summarise our weaknesses from 5th ed.

1.Terrible anti tank
2. paper thin mech
3. Inability to kill dreadnaughts
4. the temptation to reserve if you go second.
5. going second against some armies is the bane of our lives (anyone with ranged anti mech)

now lets review those points in terms of 6th ed.

1. In 6th there are less tanks about, and those that are around are generally high armour or flyers.... no problem for us! kill 2 or 3 high av tanks is easier than killing 12 chimera hulls no matter how many blasters/lances we have.

2. This is still the case, but with more people using those ranged 24 high rate of fire, our venoms and ravagers can sit in the 30-36 inch window and shoot and not be shot back.

3. Dreadnaughts are now rarely used and are very killable now due to haywire grenades.... huzzah!

4. Well..... this is impossible now. This was such a lottery in old edition and now theres no temptation.

5. Night fight 50% of the time is our saviour. How can a heavy gunline truelly wipe us out if were sporting 2+ cover saves? I'm not saying that going saecond without nightfight is gunna be easy now... but with a 3/4 chance of this happening its alot less worrying than last edition when it happened half the time.

So pretty good right? unfortunatly there is now one major weakness...

Flyers.... Dark Eldar flyers are awefull. They dont help the armies alpha strike they dont do much damage to enemy flyers and cost 35 points more than a ravager. There is only one way around this.... a quad gun! but even that isnt gunna help against a flying blood thirster or a stormraven. How i deal with theis? well that would be telling? maybe ill tell you next time until then

Mike

I'm part of team Death or Glory Check out my dark eldar articles as well as a host of other cool bits and pieces. Just search for Death or Glory Blog 40k on a search engine and you'll find us

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Cheers for coming Mike, it's really interesting to see the thoughts of someone doing well in the UK. After listening to the 40KUK podcast last night it's obvious there is a difference in builds - Beasts are still prevalent but Trueborn builds are very different; the US are going more gunboat whereas we are very Wych in a Venom.

Be interesting to see you add your thoughts to some of the tactics discussions on here.

Welcome to the Dark City!

Personally I find reserves and going second a massive advantage, especially now that reserves come in on a 3+. But maybe that's just cause I'm a unique snowflake.

haha yes you must be!!!

Issue with stuff being in reserves in obviously it means the opponants target priority can get all over the place. Obviously if theres less things to shoot there is less of a descision to be made.

Secondly Dark Eldar in my opinion is Alpha Strike. If you don't have a unit on the board for even a turn your not only loosing out on shots, but theres the potential to restric the opponants return firepower aswell.

Say you reserve 1 venom for example and you kill a long fang unit down to one guy, that last venom coulda been used to kill that final missile launcher. and thats one less unit to shoot. Believe me single missile launchers can and often do kill venoms/raiders!!

I understand your reasoning. But I like building my army to go second. Dark Eldar are naturally good at going first so it will never be a disadvantage if I end up going first, so shoring up their weakness of going second is pretty important in my eyes.

Reserve tie in naturally with going second, if you go first and reserve come in on turn 2 your opponent misses one turn of shooting that unit, if you go second and reserves come in on turn 2 your opponent misses two turns of shooting that unit.

As for saturation, it's a good point but If the unit(s) you keep in reserve are not mechanised, then by keeping them in reserve you present no infantry units on the first turn, denying your opponents anti infantry fire until he takes out a raider. Basically turning a hybrid list into a mechanised list for the first few turns of the game, and allowing you to enjoy the same advantages.

Then there's objective denial, going second makes this a lot easier for obvious reasons and we have one of the best objective denial units in the game. In my experience objective denial is a crucial aspect of Dark Eldar play, as we are not the best at holding objectives.

Some units don't really benefit from being on the board the first turn, so keeping them in reserve can be advantageous especially if they are you denial units.

Most of the time I have around 1/3 of my army in reserve and almost always go second (except against certain flyer heavy lists).

Hope that explains a bit more about where I'm coming from.

I think our flyers are actually pretty damn good.

I've been using a Razorwing in my list for the past few games and it has absolutely dominated. Both other fliers and ground troops.

Keys I've found:

First round target anything that has skyfire and/or interceptor first. These are your primary targets for round 1. If you can't take it out plan how your flier enters later in the game to either eliminate LOS or to come in out of range.

Buy both Flickerfield and Nightshield. Reduces both incoming shots and provides a save without the negative effects of Jinking. Flickerfield provides saves vs Vector Strikes.

Positioning & Deepstrike:
I always announce that my flyer will be entering by Deep Strike. This gives me a positioning advantage in that it lets me put it in place either behind an enemy flier that comes in before it, out of range/LOS of an interceptor unit such as a quad gun, or where it can do the most damage.

If I know I'm going to be facing a Flying MC I always take the shard cannon as well. Really helps to put those buggers down fast!

I'll take alot of convincing to say our flyers are anything other than awefull.

Considering there you are now making the flyer 165 points before you get any bombs. That is ALOT of points for two dark lances and a few bombs. And lets face it Dark lances are still pretty poo.

If a lance is shooting the back of an enemy flyer (assuming the other flyer jinks) thats a 20/53 chance of causing a HP (per lance) and only a 8/27 chance of a pen. with a 8/84 chance of a kill.

Am i the only one who thinks thats terrible?

For me id rather look at other options in regards to combating flyers. Subcontracting the anti flyer out to a different race is certinly a option here.

Canyoneromikos wrote:

For me id rather look at other options in regards to combating flyers. Subcontracting the anti flyer out to a different race is certinly a option here.

But then you're paying a tax for an HQ and Troop choice which probably ends up costing more than the DE flyer.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Canyoneromikos wrote:

For me id rather look at other options in regards to combating flyers. Subcontracting the anti flyer out to a different race is certinly a option here.

But then you're paying a tax for an HQ and Troop choice which probably ends up costing more than the DE flyer.

Ah yes the Allies tax. then is there any ally of ours that can supply us with a good tax efficient anti flyer option? Possibly is my answer for now!

Razorwing comes with 4 Monoscythe missiles at its base cost. Str 6 AP5 Large Blast.

Dark Lances have a 66% chance of hitting per shot, vs AV 10 it has an 83% chance of Glancing, and a 66% of a Pen. Which the target has a 33% of avoiding on a jink.

On a Pen it has a 33% of a kill.

I'll take those odds over many other weapons personally.

Canyoneromikos wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

Canyoneromikos wrote:

For me id rather look at other options in regards to combating flyers. Subcontracting the anti flyer out to a different race is certinly a option here.

But then you're paying a tax for an HQ and Troop choice which probably ends up costing more than the DE flyer.

Ah yes the Allies tax. then is there any ally of ours that can supply us with a good tax efficient anti flyer option? Possibly is my answer for now!

Best AA option I've found using allies for DE is an Eldar Exarch, either Fire Dragon or Dark Reaper, manning an Icarus Lascannon.

Balisong wrote:

Razorwing comes with 4 Monoscythe missiles at its base cost. Str 6 AP5 Large Blast.

Dark Lances have a 66% chance of hitting per shot, vs AV 10 it has an 83% chance of Glancing, and a 66% of a Pen. Which the target has a 33% of avoiding on a jink.

On a Pen it has a 33% of a kill.

I'll take those odds over many other weapons personally.

So if you multiply that all together thats 9% kill chance, multiply that by 2 and thats a 18% chance of killing an av 10 flyer

now lets have a look at the necron and guard equivilent

Guard: 14% kill chance per lascannon so 42% chance
Necron: 5% kill chance per tesla hit (av hits is 5) so 20% chance

This isnt exact % here but considering these are cheaper than the basic dark eldar vehicles and are more surviveable the stats speak for themselves

Canyoneromikos wrote:

Flyers.... Dark Eldar flyers are awefull. They dont help the armies alpha strike they dont do much damage to enemy flyers and cost 35 points more than a ravager.

I don't think the DE flyers are awful (neither do I think they are full of awe, as you seem to be saying ), I think it is just that they are probably costed about right for a flyer.

That's a problem because there are several other notable examples of flyers that are badly undercosted at the moment - I'm sure you realise the ones I'm referring to! And when you bring your sleek eldar death-jet to the party only to discover your opponent has 3 or more ugly, boxy vendettas that not only shoot AA better than you, but are also cheaper, better armoured & have a transport capacity - and seemingly suffer no penalties to movement or maneuvering for being heavy and unaerodynamic - you start to wish you'd left it in it's space garage.

Until that changes, you're always taking a risk against all-comers. More recent codex flyers do cost more points, and our flyers actually do ok vs the heldrake (though i can't speak for the DA ones as I don't have the 'dex).

Another problem is that they compete for HS slots with the ravager, which I think you mentioned.

Also the fighter is better suited as a bomber, and vice versa - more an issue of naming than anything else.

It's all in how you run the calculations. It's not as simple as x*x*x:

2 Shots x .66 chance of hitting = an Average of 1.32 shots hitting per round

1.32 shots x 66% chance of a Pen = an average of .87 pens per round

.87% chance of a Pen x 66% chance of the target not making it's jink save = .57

.57 x .33 = .19 % chance of a kill.

However, there's the fact that you have a nearly 60% chance of doing something to make that flyer ineffective per round. And if they take that Jink Save it means snap shots for the next round and that makes it a 100% chance of making them less effective.

And if they choose to not take that jink save... it's a 29% chance of a kill per round.

Are there better anti-air options in other armies? Yes.

And it gets better with the VoidRaven... as its lances are St 9.

Is there a Better Anti-Air option in our own Army Yes: Lelith on an icarus...

At the same time, to call our flyers ineffective is I think foolish as they are absolutely devastating vs non flying units and Flying MC.

Well that's a new one to add to my blog list.

I'm always interested to hear other players opinions, I already accept that everyone plays different and the more views I can experience the better player I will be. I agree our flyers are underwhelming in comparison to other flyers, this is mostly the 'penalty' for having flyers before there were flyers. Nobody really got any new rules to any of the existing flyers, and we were already the bottom of that stack; the addition of flyer rules to all those troop transports made them so much better even without rule additions. Vector Dancer could be supported by our fluff of the pilots, and I think that one change would nicely balance off our points.

I do agree that 6th helped mitigate some of the general weaknesses of our army book, but the one thing I liked about 5th over 6th was the versatility that our book had. There were reliably 4+ army builds/themes that could perform well, now we are slowly being shoe-horned back into the old one or two list style of the 3rd edition book. We've lost the viability of the webway lists, the wych cults, and the coven lists. I think over all 6th has reduced our weaknesses, but severely debilitated our versatility.

xzandrate wrote:

Well that's a new one to add to my blog list.

I'm always interested to hear other players opinions, I already accept that everyone plays different and the more views I can experience the better player I will be. I agree our flyers are underwhelming in comparison to other flyers, this is mostly the 'penalty' for having flyers before there were flyers. Nobody really got any new rules to any of the existing flyers, and we were already the bottom of that stack; the addition of flyer rules to all those troop transports made them so much better even without rule additions. Vector Dancer could be supported by our fluff of the pilots, and I think that one change would nicely balance off our points.

I do agree that 6th helped mitigate some of the general weaknesses of our army book, but the one thing I liked about 5th over 6th was the versatility that our book had. There were reliably 4+ army builds/themes that could perform well, now we are slowly being shoe-horned back into the old one or two list style of the 3rd edition book. We've lost the viability of the webway lists, the wych cults, and the coven lists. I think over all 6th has reduced our weaknesses, but severely debilitated our versatility.

an excellent point. However in terms of tournament builds in 5th, i only ever saw 1 successful build and that was the hellion, baron + friends build. Championed by myself, Stu Robertson and Nathan Roberts.

ofc this was only the UK tournament scene

These days I've seen Dark Eldar used in many ways. Eldar's first choice in allies (and vice versa) but there was a very successful jetbike list aswell roughly the following....

Haemonculus

1 nit of wracks
1 unit of warriors

2 large units of reavers

Farseer

Seercouncil 7 strong

2 small units of jetbikes

Nightwing inteceptor

Phoenix Bomber

As you can see many jetbikes followed by 2 hard to kill vehicles and it worked very very well, i just nipped it to first in class at the caledonian uprising.

Although the sorta lists that came from our own codex has been limited but with the use of allies, there are other untapped sources of lists were yet to see.

How do you think reavers would perform in UK competitive tournaments?

Sky Serpent wrote:

Mushkilla wrote:

How do you think 27 reavers would perform in UK competitive tournaments?

It's not that bad I only run 18 nowadays!

But you're right, I should have phrased the question as: "How do you think squads of 9 reavers would perform in UK competitive tournaments in a pure Dark Eldar list?"

PM me a list, Never really seen a pure reaver jetbike list before! Make it 1850pt list

Canyoneromikos wrote:

PM me a list, Never really seen a pure reaver jetbike list before! Make it 1850pt list

Sent, and thank you.

Mike can you explain what the great north/south divide on the UK tournament scene entails?

Of course

Northern tournaments generally consist of alot of people taking the current meta list. There will be alot of the same... and when i say the same i mean almost identical lists so for example in the caledonian uprising there was 8 of the same necron wraithwing list, 7-9 similar tyranid lists and 10 very similar daemon lists.

Currently that meta is fast units (beasts wraiths etc) supported by flyers. This concept is spammed throughout the army and effectively the tournament. In every game in mansfield each army had a flyer without fail.

Southern tournamnets are normally totally different. Theres normally a better spread and larger variety of lists. Perhaps theres a greater want to be different down south? Anyway as a result whereas you can gear your army to take on the meta lists up north, down south you can litrally play anything. Flyers arent so prevalent, wraiths dont live in hordes as you get up north an so on.

Does this mean the north has better players than the south? nah its just a oddly different attitude to approaching the game.

|It's odd but the theory we came up with is generally based on the major players in each area. In the north the big players (40kuk, Flame on dudley and so on) they develop the meta lists and a few of them take similar lists and alot of people copy and folow them.

The major players down south (Brighton Warlord, Death or Glory to name a few) each army and the development of it is unique perhaps recognising that each player has there own different playstyle.

its a odd area but it means that depending on wether your north or south of london, your tournament experiance will differ greatly