Field control List

So I decided recently to shelve my Dark Eldar due to having won so few games. For the past 1.5 years me and my shop have been playing Warhammer every weekend and I can count my total wins on two hands. It sucks but whatever.

If I decide to bring them back out of storage for a game, I think this is the list I would run for our 1850 usual games.

Dark Eldar 1848



Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

Haemonculus Gnarlskin; Close combat weapon; Splinter pistol; Hexrifle;

> 3x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Venom ; Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield; Night shields;


> 3x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Venom ; Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield; Night shields;


> 3x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Venom ; Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

5x - Kabalite Warriors Kabalite armour (x5); Splinter rifle (x5);
> 1x - Raider ; Dark lance; Night shields;

Ravager Dark Lance (x3); Night shields;

Ravager Dark Lance (x3); Night shields;

Ravager Dark Lance (x3); Night shields;

@Created by Head Quarters - online roster builder

Doubtful I will though. It's starting to embarrass me how often I lose. I just tell myself they are very tough lists

Two questions: Why use only one splintercannon on your trueborns?
And why do you give your 5 man squads raiders? Make 10 man squads and add a splintercannon, for example.
Then add splinter racks for more quantity.

Easy answer on the second splinter cannon - the website thinks its illegal; which we both know isn't but you know. I'm stuck at work with time to kill and no army builder so I use free craptastic website list builders.

Raiders instead venom's for long range antitank which I think is important in this edition due to increased vehicle survivability. Besides a single str8 ap2 shot is basically a guaranteed infantry kill Long range because staying out of range of as many weapons as possible will increase my odds of living. Splinter racks are a waste of points in this list because I'm only using the warriors as objective holders for late game/last turn capturing.

"Late game/last turn capturing"? So why is the post subtitled 'For Maelstrom Missions'?

Interesting concept. I can see what you're wanting to do here. A few thoughts if I may.
I'd drop 2 of your Haemies and give all 3 Trueborn units a 2nd Splinter Cannon each. Splinterborn in a Venom w/ 2 cannons is an amazing unit as you can still move and shoot if the need arises. Plus you can shoot at 2 different units.
I'd also use those spare points to buy Flickerfields for your 3 Ravagers. You dont want to be Jinking Ravagers, keep them firing. Lastly I'd think about giving all Raiders and Venoms Grisly Trophies. In this edition, you need to pass a leadership test if your transport has suffered a damage result in order to function. A worthy upgrade to spam in my opinion

Out of interest what are the armies that you face the most, or maybe have the most trouble with? With a little bit of info the community could help tinker with both your list and your tactics to move that win/loss record back into the positive

I'd drop 2 of your raider/kabalite warrior combos. + 230 points
Swap out all of your hexrifles for liquifier guns. +30 points.
Get rid of all the night shields for splinter racks(Raiders) and flickerfields(Ravagers & Raiders). -10 points
Add 5 more Kabalite warriors to each squad(except one, only adding 3) to utilize the splinter racks. -162 points
Make all Kabalite trueborn 4-strong, and give them all blasters. -86 points

Leaves 4 points to spare. Blasterborn are SOOO much better at killing things than even splinter cannons, plus they can have a chance to hurt vehicles. The warriors with splinter racks will put out enough poison shots to deal with MCs and infantry. You don't need the night shields on the raiders. Jink is your friend. Use it to get a good save for your vehicle, while allowing the passengers to fire at full ballistic skill. Against decent armored(3+) infantry, splinter fire sucks anyhow. Use your blasters and liquifier guns for them.

My thinking here is staying back at 36 inch range with the entire army for as long as I can. The cool thing I think about fast skimmers is that you can get behind whatever terrain you need to in order to get your cover saves. So yeah I think Jinking isn't worth the snap firing when you can almost guarantee that you will get a cover save anyways.

I completely agree with you on the venoms with splintercannon trueborn.

On the blasterborn, I dont really have anything to model for blasters or I think I would try them out. I'm using mostly old models for everything. We all know back then anything other than a splintercannon/rifle warrior was rare.

I also had another thought about having three trueborn; 2 of which having dark lances. With three of those and three ravagers thats like having a total of 6 ravagers on the table. Add in 6 raiders with darklances and thats a lot of dark lances.

bveazey wrote:

My thinking here is staying back at 36 inch range with the entire army for as long as I can.

I understand what you're getting at but... Dark Eldar work by moving fast and putting pressure on the enemy. If you're sitting at 36" you're giving the enemy all the breathing space they could possibly want while relying on Dark Lances to fire potshots at enemies who will be in cover pretty easily.

Oh. You're also giving him free reign of probably 4/6 objectives... remember: in Maelstrom of War there is no "last turn objective grab".

well thats true but I do want to argue that Dark Eldar are not all about moving in fast.  

All moving in fast accomplishes is getting your units killed sooner rather than later.  Our units are described as being glass cannons.  Thats not the case, maybe it was once but definitely not anymore.  Our units are simply just glass. This is based off my previous 1.5 years of gaming experience every weekend.

Our best CC units pale in comparison to others best CC units.
Our best shooty units pale in comparison to others best shooty units.
Our best etc etc

bveazey wrote:

All moving in fast accomplishes is getting your units killed sooner rather than later.

Moving Fast or being mobile is not about moving in towards your enemy. IMO there are only 2 units that you want to move as fast forwards as possible and thats Wyches with Haywire Grenades and Grotesques. Warriors aren't a forward pressing unit on Turn 1 IMO.

bveazey wrote:

I also had another thought about having three trueborn; 2 of which having dark lances. With three of those and three ravagers thats like having a total of 6 ravagers on the table.  Add in 6 raiders with darklances and thats a lot of dark lances.  

The big change with 7th edition is that you now can infact have 6 (or more) Ravagers in your legal list. As Ravagers are cheaper and more mobile than Trueborn they are better. Basically, you can take multiple detachments of your main force. As long as you meet the 1 HQ and 2 Troop minimum you can build a 2nd or more detachments ie:

1st Detachment
Haemie
5 Warriors in Raider
5 Warriors in Raider
Ravager
Ravager
Ravager
2nd Detachment
Haemie
5 Warriors in Raider
5 Warriors in Raider
Ravager
Ravager
Ravager

and so on, HOWEVER tournament organisers are looking to only allow 1 additional detachment to your main detachment FYI

As for the 36" strategy, yes that works against some armies (GK being a main one) but you still need to be mobile as your opponent may be closing in on you and when you run out of board space, or the enemy weapons are 48" or more to begin with, you're screwed. As a side note, if you take Nightshields on Ravagers, you can set up outside 42" and be out of the 48" enemy weapon range AND STILL be in range on your next turn, as you can move 12" and shoot. As you can pre-mesure you can get this inch perfect. If your opponent is going first, by using this set up and deployment strategy you are taking out his 48" weapons and stumping his alphastrike. On your turn, you can move up to your range and kill what needs to be killed first. So for your alphastrike, I'd be thinking along those lines....esp as you are not going first in every game. I'd prefer paying for 6 Nightshields on your Ravagers rather than a better Seize the Initiative ability.

I thought you couldnt take a second detachment from the same codex?

bveazey wrote:

I thought you couldnt take a second detachment from the same codex?

Where does it say you can't? You can't ally with yourself.... but you can take multiple detachments of the same faction (codex)

oh I see. Then yea ravagers are way better than trueborn in a raider for sure. Having said that, Ravagers are still not that good

I think on average I hit with one shot per Ravager per shooting phase

My local shop meta is FMC Nids, Several different types of CSM, Orks and SM. Think someone earlier in the thread mentioned that.

I think what disappoints me the most about this game is the units that I think are the coolest looking, are often not competitive or point efficient.

Case in point being Incubi and Drazhar

bveazey wrote:

So I decided recently to shelve my Dark Eldar due to having won so few games. For the past 1.5 years me and my shop have been playing Warhammer every weekend and I can count my total wins on two hands.

bveazey wrote:

well thats true but I do want to argue that Dark Eldar are not all about moving in fast.  

Just an observation above. If you've played DE a lot, but always lost a lot, perhaps your vision of how DE should be used effectively could use some mentoring by players who have been successful with them. Please don't take this the wrong way, I just wanted to point out what I feel are contradicting statements above.

bveazey wrote:

I think what disappoints me the most about this game is the units that I think are the coolest looking, are often not competitive or point efficient. Case in point being Incubi

Incubi aren't bad units. Quite the contrary, they're awesome at what they're supposed to do, which is to absolutely destroy MEQ and Terminators in CC.(Make sure you're using the FAQ, which makes their weapons +1S, AP2.) The problem with Incubi is twofold: First, they suffer from the same thing all other non-jump CC infantry suffer from - No reliable way to get into CC quickly, short of a vehicle escort. And as you know, our escorts are made of hopes, dreams, and wet napkins. Second, they are an assault unit without assault grenades.

Now, you can't do anything about our transports being wet napkins, but you CAN do something about the assault grenades issue. While Drazhar seems like the obvious choice to lead a unit of Incubi, they're actually much better off being led by an Archon with assault grenades. With assault grenades, even when they charge through difficult terrain, they're attacking at initiative 5, which is earlier than pretty much all marines and termies that aren't special characters. This means that any marines/termies they kill don't get to swing back at them.

In 7th edition, it may even be worth it to take a phantasm grenade launcher on your Archon, because a thrown defensive grenade has the "blind" special rule, which lowers the WS and BS of the target unit to 1. This will make the charge from incubi even more effective, as your opponent will only be landing hits on you back at a 5+, while you're hitting on 3+, wounding on 4+ with klaives, 3+ with demiklaive.

My point is, the fluff and the mechanics don't match, this is true. When you're looking at how to build and how to utilize your army, skip the fluff and focus on the mechanics if you're looking for effectiveness. If you'd rather it be fluffy and fun, focus on that instead, but don't be surprised when your record reflects the fact that you're using units/HQs together based on what makes sense in the fluff rather than what works with the rules.

Okay. I will try it. To be fair though, I dont think DE can be used effectively. Just too weak of a codex. We die too easy

The codex doesn't control where the models go on the table my friend. My experience 3 of the 4 armies listed above I have smashed more often than not. FMC is tough, but unit positioning is pretty crutial

Maybe you just get lucky whereas I get unlucky. The CSM player often cheats I think. His army as a whole seems just too good at surviving everything I do to him. Our local shop actually calls it the Demon special rule. Means he gets whatever he needs to win

As much as I now feel like we're being trolled...here goes:

You have a right to see any and all rules that don't sound right to you. If something sounds wacky, you may ask your opponent to show you the rule. If they don't have their codex, rulebook, or the FAQ printout clearly showing the rule, they may not use it.

The above is all clearly outlined in the rules.

what are you talking about

bveazey wrote:

what are you talking about

You said the CSM player cheats. I said you can see his rules any time there is a question. You should exercise that right.

Oh yeah. Right on. I need to start doing that also. thanks for reminding me

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

As much as I now feel like we're being trolled...here goes:

You have a right to see any and all rules that don't sound right to you. If something sounds wacky, you may ask your opponent to show you the rule. If they don't have their codex, rulebook, or the FAQ printout clearly showing the rule, they may not use it.

This x1,000,000!!! Don't let anyone try to pull stuff over your head. If your unsure, ask for written proof/evidence. Your completely entitled too. Even if it's something like "all space marines weapons Ignore Cover so you can't take your Jink save". Ask him, show me where it says that.

Out of interest, what are some of the things that don't sound right? And can u recall what he uses in his army

He tries to switch it up fairly often. Hes one of those I dont play the same list twice because I dont want people to know what I've got type guys. Pretty competitive almost to the point where it hurts him. There are several players that refuse to play him because of the above mentioned "demon" rule.

He usually runs two 10 man teams of plague marines, typhus with a couple blobs of zombies, abbadon the virgin slayer, used to run his hellturkey until recently, obliterators, chaos terminators, one of those dog things thats a walker, and the other bigger crab looking walker and hes always dying to use the lord of skulls. Think he has those jump chaos infantry guys and some khorne berzerkers but he rarely uses them. Although for an upcoming torney my shop is doing mid July hes bragging about a new CC focused list. He probably has more than that but I dont remember. The main problem facing him is that all his models seem way to good at both surviving the full force of the dark eldar and killing the dark eldar at the same time. All my experience with this game is that there is always an exchange of power. Speed for survivability, survivability for damage output, etc etc but this guy seems to have it all.

Another complaint I have about him is he uses those GW nurgle dice that are impossible to read and hes always very quick to pick up his hits and wounds after he rolls.

bveazey wrote:

He usually runs two 10 man teams of plague marines

Plague marines are tough to kill 3+/FnP at T5 is very solid but not impossible. Loads and loads of Splinter Fire to wear them down works, also using AP2 weapons (Dis Cannons, Dark Lances and Blasters) will bypass their armour save and they they start dropping off a little quicker, but you need to pour everything into killing a whole unit, one at a time.

Quote :

typhus with a couple blobs of zombies

I haven't had the pleasure but if Zombies are T3 then Wracks/Grotesques/Talos would have a field day! Bladevaning Reavers would do a number on T3 Zombies too!

Quote :

abbadon the virgin slayer

Tough but not impossible (Dark Lances again)

Quote :

used to run his hellturkey until recently

Good riddance!

Quote :

obliterators

Kill these guys T1. I repeat KILL THESE GUYS TURN 1. Lances will insta-kill UNLESS he takes Mark of Nurgle (which he probbably does) which makes them T5. Then, pour in more Splinter Fire....(Mark of Nurgle is what makes these guys really hard to kill, and what makes you think he's unbeatable)

Quote :

chaos terminators

Dark Lances again. Can they take Stormshields??? 3+- Invul makes them tough to shift

Quote :

one of those dog things thats a walker and the other bigger crab looking walker

Crab looking walker is a Soul Grinder. Wyches with Haywire work great against Walkers. Maulerfiend is the dog one I think. No experience but I would say Haywire Wyches to take it down on the charge!

Quote :

The main problem facing him is that all his models seem way to good at both surviving the full force of the dark eldar and killing the dark eldar at the same time

Yep, sounds like Mark of Nurgle. Mark of Nurgle (MoN) is an upgrade that gives +1 Toughness to the unit. Which means T4 can't be insta-kiled with our S8 Lances. Plague Marines have MoN and FnP. If the Plague Marines are in the open, i'd shoot them with all the Lances. They are 1 wound only so once they fail their 5+ FnP they die quick. But I would kill his Obliterators first. They are his long range support and your main threat on Turn 1. Oblits with MoN are T5, 2 Wounds 2+ Sv. If your shooting Splinter Fire then its like kiling 2 Terminators per Oblit. If shooting Lances then he'll be taking Cover Saves (4+ if in Ruins, 5+ if other...remember this difference too!) and they will dies quicker.

Lances into Oblits
Lances into Plague Marines (focus on shooting EVERYTHING into 1 squad only)
Haywire against the Walkers
Wracks/Grotesques/Talos/Reavers into Zombies

My $0.02 worth but I'd like to end with an overall thought; Think of your army as a spear or an arrow. The whole thing travels in the same direction to cause maximum damage. SHOOT EVERYTHING INTO ONE UNIT AT A TIME. KILL IT, MOVE ON.

So yes, it does appear that massing the highest amount of dark lances seems to be key in this edition. I tell you what, we will get a video batrep in this weekend and I'll post the link.