An Unofficial 7th Edition Codex Update

So by now many of us have the codex in hand and many of us feel shafted by many of the senseless changes that took place. We can gripe and complain or we can put our collectively substantial experience using this army to write our own unofficial FAQ. Sure it will go unheeded by the powers that be and but I am sure with a few minor changes we can make this Dark Eldar Codex all that we deserved it to be rather than what we got.

Unofficial Dark Eldar Codex FAQ

Please feel free to make suggestions and critiques (in accordance with forum expectations) and I will attempt to update the file as often as possible with agreed upon changes though i would appreciate sharing the document with a moderator or two who would be willing to help keep it up to date.

This seems more like a wishlist to me than an actual fix. As much as everyone will hate me for this I do agree with the scrapping of haywire grenades and making the huskblade ap3. I mean the huskblade is a sword that kills a target as soon as it hits its flesh, it's not necessarily made to penetrate armour. Same goes for wyches who are supposedly arena gladiators and not tank hunters. Let the Ravagers and Scourges take care of that.

On the other hand what I would like to see for wyches are cheaper wych close combat weapons, which will increase the damage output.

What sort of damage output increase do you think would be fair for the 10PPM they are charging?

Perhaps shred, or maybe wound using their initiative characteristic? Dodge bonus on the overwatch. I saw a suggestion in another thread that made sense: Treat to wound rolls of 6 as AP2 in melee only (but not true rending).

Dodge in the assaylt phase instead of the fight subphase wouljd be an ok fix but otherwise i agree that they should have lost mass haywires, the huskblade im not so sure because the archon has no ap2 option at the moment which hurts a little

Seriously? The codex has been out for less than two hours...

That^^^

Agreed!

Mushkilla wrote:

Seriously? The codex has been out for less than two hours...

Well said.

Also, "Don't knock it till ya try it."

Modded. This is neither news nor rumour, am moving it to "DE Discussion". Gob.

Thank you everyone who has commented so far on the wych problem. As it is wyches are the same price as Lhamaeans. And while Lhamaeans don't have combat grenades or a dodge skill to help once they finally get into combat they have a 5+ armor save and have some really sick poison blades. If these two units were combined somehow I feel like we might actually have a troop choice worth having. Continued discussion on this would be welcome.  

While I appreciate everyone's optimism about this codex there are still glaring issues in this codex that anyone who has played Dark Eldar can spot even from a quick glance.

We have only 2 troop choices one of which has been gimped to the point of uselessness. That is a problem.


One of our primary (while admittedly not fluffy) means of dealing with AV is gone and has not been replaced with anything nearly as reliable. That is a problem.

One of the remaining and often disappointing Heavy support choices that is actually a vehicle made for hunting vehicles got more expensive, even less survivable and can no longer fire all three of it's often disappointing shots at full BS if it moves like it was meant to. That's a problem.  

I am not knocking optimism, but I  am trying to do something constructive with my criticism of obvious and glaring oversights. It's an alright codex. Have I had a chance to play tested it yet? No. Do i need to play test it to know all of the above are problems? No I don't. I am trying to break that which we have received free of mediocrity and make it balanced but never the less great.

Cheaper Reavers, cheaper Scourges. There's your anti tank, but there's plenty of topics discussing those concepts.

I Feel personally that they changed Huskblade to AP3 since the Succubus Archite glaive is AP2, to simply make her more viable and chosen again. And fluffwise it makes more sense too since they are supposed to be the pinnacle of close quarter fighting in Commorragh, even over Archons .

So you basically have to choose if you wan't a termie and character slicing catwoman or a more "allround jack of all trades joker" with still the great statlines as before, but maybe not the Ap2 insta- death machine he once whas. By this she may actually see some more playtime this time around.

DingK wrote:

Cheaper Reavers, cheaper Scourges. There's your anti tank, but there's plenty of topics discussing those concepts.

You are quite correct DingK. Played a game tonight against our old foe the AM 1500 points. Took 4 sets of haywire scourges 2 blasterborn squads on venoms 10 mandrakes just for fun and a ravager and managed to have the game sufficiently decided by turn 4. That said there was not a single unit moved in the assault phase the entire time. The game play has totally changed. I am finally starting to see the need to shift battle plans away from CC.

Yllithian wrote:

So you basically have to choose if you wan't a termie and character slicing catwoman or a more "allround jack of all trades joker" with still the great statlines as before, but maybe not the Ap2 insta- death machine he once was. By this she may actually see some more playtime this time around.

I really like your example Yllithian. I suppose it makes sense, just wish there was a decent delivery system the succubus. Wyches and bloodbrides are pretty broken now... i suppose you could go for incubi and take the AP2 party even further, and the 3+ armor saves would help protect her till she got in combat. It's an expensive and deadly Deathstar unit by then though and would draw a lot of fire.

Shooting truly is now king... which our HQ's are sadly pretty ill equipped for... and the 5 man minimum squad size for the blasterborn was felt today. really wish i could have gotten an archon in there with a blaster. instead i went with homunculus with a hex rifle who sat back and did almost nothing till he died gloriously to a strength cover ignoring blast (manticore i think).

Does anyone have any suggestions for a shooty HQ load out?

Blaster Archon's probably the best choice, since DE don't have great access to guns. Shooty HQ doesn't really play to our strengths very much at all, we're better with either a choppy one (archon/succubus) or a support one (haemonculus). Remember you can always stick a blaster archon and 5 trueborn with 4 blasters in a raider, with a blast pistol on a dracon and go 2+ save hunting (especially if you deep-strike it and have a disintegrator)/vehicle hunting.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Blaster Archon's probably the best choice, since DE don't have great access to guns. Shooty HQ doesn't really play to our strengths very much at all, we're better with either a choppy one (archon/succubus) or a support one (haemonculus). Remember you can always stick a blaster archon and 5 trueborn with 4 blasters in a raider, with a blast pistol on a dracon and go 2+ save hunting (especially if you deep-strike it and have a disintegrator)/vehicle hunting.

A very interesting thought that I had not considered... it comes in at about 305 points for everything you describe. 5 blaster shots at 18", 6 at 6" plus 3 Disintegrators... that is quite the AP2 hunting death star.
A little over 2 HP stripped vs AV 12.
2.88 HP vs. AV 11.
2.31 Terminators instagibbed and another .89 killed by the single disintegrator.

Very nice