Purge the Alien Woes

I lost one of the most disheartening games yesterday. 2000 point game. I was playing against an Iron Hands army, three squads of bikes, three combat squads, centurions, devastator squad, storm talon, I think a hunter? Some warlord with it will not die and a 3++. I don't know. What I do know is this. At the end of the game, all he had was his storm talon, warlord, and the hunter. He had three models on the table. I had half my army left, but I lost. It just made me mad at my army really.

At the end of the game I had 8 kill points, and he had three models left. You can get 8 kill points from my army just by knocking out my transports. It made me a very sad panda. The only way I could have won the game is to table my opponent, which I would have done if the game hadn't ended.

I knew he had an advantage going in, but I didn't really see how immense it was. I can't even think of a way around it, as most of my squads are as full as their transports will let them be. I suppose I could play less recklessly, and try to keep more models alive, but I think that would backfire since Dark Eldar are not a very good defensive army. His kill points are twice as many as mine. Seems like a pretty crap design.

It would be better if you got kill points based on point cost of the unit, because if I wipe out his 300 point squad that's one kill point, where as if he wipes out 300 points in my army that's easily 3 kill points.

What's the best way to play purge the alien against a low model army?

Yeah, it's crumby but you can't really do that much about it from a list building standpoint. From a strategy standpoint, you could play an even dirtier game with flank denials and whatnot. The good thing about playing low model count armies, such as Deathwing, is that tabling them is often workable.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that Purge the Alien only the mission 1/6 of the time.

Also, the game you described could only be described as a Pyrrhic Victory and your opponent would do well to remember the technical nature of his victory.

There are ways to attempt to mitigate losses. It depends on why list you're playing. For example, I leave all of my troops outside of there vehicles as often as I can. Obviously taking into consideration situational awareness. This alleviates two kill points in one paper plane, as a squad of wyches usually is all but wiped out from explode. Second is, if it is necessary to have troops in a transport, I always lead with the toughest troops I have. For example: if I'm running grots, I throw them in their face ASAP, followed by wracks followed by wyches if I have. Generally people deal with the closest threat first as it is most threatening. So, to mitigate overwhelming kill points use tougher units to lead assaults. It buys time for your venoms to do what they so amazingly do and also keeps them alive. People are more apt to shoot at your incoming grots than venoms as they are more immediate. That's just how I play. I hae come to realize this game is all about distractions and misdirection.

It almost makes you wish our stuff was more expensive so we were forced to take less of it! I've found the best approach is to focus fire on a unit to secure the kill point, whilst maneuvering in such a way that incoming fire is minimised. If it means you have some wasted shots that's fine, as the things that would have fired will at least still be alive the next turn. One unit at a time, their army will shrink while yours stays at relatively the same size (with any luck, and barring them being Guard with Manticores and the like).

Secondary objectives are also super important I've found - if you can get first blood with a really concerted effort, that gives you a fighting chance. The first turn almost needs to be played differently to the rest nowadays - the normal advice for Dark Eldar (less so than in fifth, but still relevant) would be to take a vehicle out of action for at least a turn rather than wasting shots making sure it definitely explodes, but now we have secondary objectives to play for you could be forgiven for going all out to pop a weakly armoured transport on turn one. If it's two easy victory points, go for it, especially if it's night fighting. Linebreaker is a very easy one for us to get too, especially if you have Reavers. In a recent game, I would have won comfortably against Eldar if I'd just been a bit smarter. I had first blood and a couple of kill points, and instead of just turning round and flying back to the other side of the board behind cover to wait for him to try and get to me with his one transport, I pressed the attack and lost everything. But then what kind of Dark Eldar general would I be without pride, hubris and arrogance?

I appreciate the advice guys, unfortunately most of it sounds pretty bleak. Lol.

I have a 1/6 chance of being hosed doesn't sound very inspiring haha. I don't really have a "tough" unit in my army, I used to use grots but I don't have the space for them anymore. Now I do want to add beast masters and beasts, which would add a ton of wounds, and somewhat count as a tough unit, but I haven't really had the money or imagination to create the unit, so currently I'm using scourges, and I'll be honest, they were two easy kill points for my opponent, but only 10% of my army.

And I don't know how I feel about secondary objectives, yes they're important, but hell, with first blood, slay the warlord, and linebreaker, he still would have beat me. That's two venoms and a wych squad, or 190 points lol. I probably should have toned down the aggression, as you said, because I did lose some units just trying to table him. On the other hand his army was pretty mobile, all having bikes, and a flyer, so I'm not sure playing keep away would have worked either.

I like learning lessons from a loss. Like if I get pwned by tanks, I'm not using enough DL haywire. Or if I get stomped blast templates, I'm not spreading my guys out enough. In this situation, I think there's a few things I could have done differently, but I don't think they would have prevented a loss. The only lesson I think I've learned, is don't play purge the alien.

Ps. One thing I did just learn while reading is a lot of these marine A-holes have been cheating me. Usually I take whatever S AP they tell me, because they know their army better than me. A lot of them have been using the profile for Krak Missiles on their Krak Grenades. That's how I lost my Talos last weekend, and I've lost a LOT of transports to that in the past. Very infuriating.

It's not as bleak as it seems man. I consistently table my enemies with kabal and coven builds. I know you said you have no room, if this is the case I believe you should make room. I don't have beasts either as they are crazy expensive ($). There is so much ignore cover that wee need to rely on higher T and more wounds. So with this in mind, target priority with your venoms is absolutely essential. I focus all of my shots usually on one target that NEEDS to come down first until its gone. Also, negating your opponents shooting is also very useful. I have to the conclusion that going second is a better option. I set up usually on my opponents weak side with everything. Negating first turn shooting really irritates anyone, and causes them to mobilize the rest of there units. This narrows down your lanes of fire which disallows target saturation. Also, if you do go first, there is nothing wrong with completely turbo boosting EVERYTHING out of his range moving to his weaker side. It gives a better cover save and once again makes him change his tactics. Our mobility is our strongest point. 6th edition also calls for much more terrain for us to hide behind. I have foregone shooting first turn on numerous occasions and it has proven extremely effective as it allows second turn decimation if you move your units correctly. It's u fortunate that you ppl in your meta that cheat. I live by the rule, if I'm unsure about something I ask my opponent politely to show me in the rules or in his codex where it says he can do something in question.

Well to be fair if some one tells me a Krak Grenade has the same profile as a Krak Missile, it makes sense and I'm not going to question it. I just happened to be reading another codex and spotted the difference. Who knows? Maybe they don't know, but I doubt it. Once you've been playing an army for a while you should know pretty much every weapon's stats, especially if they come standard on your units.

I somewhat lied I'm currently running a talos and a cronos so those could be considered tough units. When I say I don't have space, I mean in the FOC. I could easily drop the scourges for grots, but I have a unit of splinterborn, a unit of blasterborn, and a unit of incubi to escort my archon. Each one of these units do a specific job and they do it very well. If I replaced the incubi with the grots the unit wouldn't be nearly as effective.

I might agree with you on going second. I've noticed I have a bit more success when going second, even though I still make it a point to go first if I can. Just habit I guess. It's been drilled into my head Dark Eldar NEED to go first. What you're giving me Doomseer11b is very sound advice in general but the underlying problem here is our units cost half of the opponents. Meaning in a game like purge the alien you have to be amazing to pull out a victory.

My Blood Angels friend said he didn't sympathize because we got more options for our points. I told him that may be true, but there's a problem when you're playing an army like the Gray Knights, and you can wipe out their entire army, and only have 6 kill points. That means to win you can't lose 6 units. I find that to be unreasonable. Especially since our transports are so vulnerable. Or, in other words, keeping your casualty ratio at 1:1 is hard when you're T3 5+ or AV10 when playing marines. Perhaps, potentially, I should try some wracks as troops.

Weapon stats can be remembered wrongly though. I've been playing with dissies thinking they were strength 6 for a looooong time

The Incubi are perhaps tough enough to throw into the face in the enemy, as long as they don't spam low AP weapons. Otherwise beastmasters might do the trick.

Another tip: if you want to win the battle, then find an opponent who is fine with playing another mission than purge the alien  

I disagree respectfully elzadar. I find it more fun and challenging to play games that require more thought and sound tactics. However, to survive these days in 6th it's either venom spam (which I despise as it's so over used ad does not give me a sense of accomplishment when I win) or another type of mixed list of shooty and CC. I'm sure many would disagree but honestly with a kabal/coven list I have won almost ALMOST every game in my meta. I can count on my hands how many since I started our gaming group in feb last year. I say this not to brag but to show it's really based on "in game" tactics. List builds to me are 30% of what makes a good army. Being able to make your opponent question what his next move should be is my main goal every time I play. But that's just me, I thoroughly enjoy coven units for reasons already stated, I will never EVER have room in my list for scourges or incubi. Well at least not with the current codex. I find high T and FNP much much more useful.

doomseer11b wrote:

I disagree respectfully elzadar. 

I said if he wants to win, I don't really mind if I win or not so no disagreement here  

It is all about balance, and whilst Purge is a tough mission for us, MSU builds like yours have a distinct advantage in objective games, especially the Fast one with 6 objectives.

The only way we can win on Killpoints is by tabling, but that is easier for us, with out high mobility, than for most armies: If GK want to table us, our last remaining stragglers can whiz out of range of their army-wide 24", whereas if he plods off round the corner, we zoom and bladevane!

Go for the table, deploy on one side, wolf-pack across his backline: destroy units as you work across his deployment zone (keeping Linebreaker for you, and forcing him to give up on it), that way his other flank can't shoot you clearly.

Thanks for all the advice guys. You know honestly I don't mind losing either. It can be fun, so long as, of course I'm getting some knowledge out of it. This weekend I actually lost to a Tau player, but mainly because I'd never played tau before. I had fun though because it was something new, and it was my bad decisions that made me lose. A loss is great, so long as it's a learning experience. Markerlights are apparently pretty badass.

The other scenario though I made all the right decisions so far as I can tell. The only three models left on the table were an HQ with It will not die, a hunter with It will not die, and a flyer. And frankly, I just couldn't kill them. Not in the time allotted. I don't even run an MSU list. I have 3 gun boats with 10 warriors in them. I was upset at this loss because it was, as Dark Kindred said, a Phyrric victory. If the game went on more turns than it did my opponent would have lost, but because of this one particular mission, and the fact I have to kill units on at least a 2:1 ratio. I lost. It made me feel like I was playing at a handicap just because of the race I chose to play with.

yeah Tau are rough for us. their marker lights and massed S5->8 weaponry is perfectly designed for downing our skimmers and murderising our weak troops.
its in the same league as DE being a hard counter to 'Nids, our massed lance and poison fire rips through Nid MC's like a hot knife through butter.

sme armies just do well against others and unfortunately kill points is not a game for DE. if its just a friendly game with other people down the club, i usually just say "you are definitely going to win this, shall we re-roll and have a better chance at an event and fair fight?" I'll play it if they insist but i'm yet to win kill points with DE and struggle to find the fun in it.

I've won kill points as DE, and I've nearly lost kill points against DE as other armies... it's certainly doable. The trick is hiding stragglers where possible... assume that the vehicles are going to die, and try and keep the infantry alive in terrain.

@Expletive, I feel your pain - Iron Hands are one of those armies where it's just impossible to make them stay down. Last KP game I lost was against IH, and it was one of the least fun games I've ever played (partly due to opposing attitude, mind)...

@csjarrat: Yeah, I'm just going to have to grin and bear it unfortunately, and work on tactics to try to counter the handicap. Read below!

@Panic_Puppet: Glad to know it wasn't just me who found it hard to kill those last three models. I was hiding straglers, but his biker warlord started just running around the board picking them off.

Somewhat on-topic as it's still purge the alien, but this is an interesting development. So originally the Tau player asked me if I just wanted to play kill points. I had no real knowledge of the tau. and his model count seem comparative to mine so I agreed. It wasn't until I got home and started reading up on the tau until I realized how much of a blunder this was. 2000 points of Tau that don't have to move... ever?

Let's just say, from now on, I'm rolling for a mission. Every time. Unless I'm playing another Dark Eldar army... maybe.

I've seen many attempts to 'fix' purge the alien, mostly from 5th edition (it's not as annoying now as it's only 1/6 rather than 1/3 missions), and none of them work. By far the worst was the blatant attempt to swing the pendulum the other way; essentially someone proposed that each player started with a number of tokens equal to the number of units in their list, and every time you lost a unit you gave a token to your opponent...

I'd personally prefer to see a return to the victory points system of old, where units were worth their own points value in terms of VPs. As it stands, popping a rhino transport is a trivial task for any army in the game to accomplish, whereas taking down Be'lakor gets you the same VPs, despite him being 10 times the cost. Maybe bring it in line with 6th edition VPs whereby you get a single victory point for each full 100 points of the enemy destroyed, with taking a unit below half its starting strength nets you 50% of its points (50% of wounds value for single-model units). Actually, I like that idea, might see if I can find a victim to playtest that idea.

On topic, I played a KP game last night; DE and Nids vs SW and SW... we were completely facerolling them when we had to stop due to time, but were almost level on VPs thanks to DE being so flimsy and only won due to secondaries (I think we were dead level on actual units killed). I agree, it's rough, but you've just got to roll with it and do what you can! It heavily benefits low-unit-count armies, but that's the way it is sadly.

Amusingly my biggest win in the recent Throne of Skulls tournament was a Purge the Alien game. I killed an entire GK army other than Crowe by the end of Turn 2 for the loss of a single Venom