terrible first game.

I just need somewhere to complain I think lol.

Was so excited for the new codex and got a game against GK.

End of turn 4 I was looking at being tabled after dealing a grand total 6 wounds in return...

His entire army started in reserve before deep striking 7 heavy incinerators. Utterly wiping out an entire squad of Reaver with allied autarch, and both eldar bike squads.

My archons raider gets immobilized because he insists I was in dangerous terrain because my prow was floating over it.

Both squads of scourges scatter directly into his line of fire which is fine because he brought no tanks so they were useless and with 7 incinerators I wouldn't have gotten any cover or feel no pain anyways. All of my guys inside raiders were cooked by them with zero saves and oh let's not forget my bomber killing more of my units then his...

Would've tried to play for objectives instead but I rolled a 1 for my d3 and he rolled a 3 and with 1ish objective a turn (contact lost) it took me 3 turns to tie, not counting his free first blood since he didn't have to start on the table...

Am I wrong or was that list versus my list just like playing chess if all his pieces were queens?

If he had no vehicles the Scourges should have started on the board positioned to keep his DSers away from your core.

The rest sounds like some bad dice, pretty much.

Castling didn't seem viable what with the no escape rule meaning stay out of transports and the torrent flamers meaning distance won't save you.  And besides I deployed first so I had no idea he wasn't going to put a single model on the table...

You're right about the scourges. Though barring the terrible scatter I thought they might be useful to grab objectives at least...but no, dice.

Can't edit on phone :/ - Merged double post - Count Adhemar

Sounds like some bad dice and a tough fight.

I had a couple of questions.

Don't you lose the game if you end your turn with no models on the board? So doesn't he have to place something down? I haven't had it come up before so I'm unfamiliar with the rule.

When you castle don't you traditionally deploy your troops outside of the vehicle spread out as much as possible to limit the impact if blast/template.

The Red King wrote:

I just need somewhere to complain I think lol.

Was so excited for the new codex and got a game against GK.

End of turn 4 I was looking at being tabled after dealing a grand total 6 wounds in return...

His entire army started in reserve before deep striking 7 heavy incinerators. Utterly wiping out an entire squad of Reaver with allied autarch, and both eldar bike squads.

My archons raider gets immobilized because he insists I was in dangerous terrain because my prow was floating over it.

Both squads of scourges scatter directly into his line of fire which is fine because he brought no tanks so they were useless and with 7 incinerators I wouldn't have gotten any cover or feel no pain anyways. All of my guys inside raiders were cooked by them with zero saves and oh let's not forget my bomber killing more of my units then his...

Would've tried to play for objectives instead but I rolled a 1 for my d3 and he rolled a 3 and with 1ish objective a turn (contact lost) it took me 3 turns to tie,  not counting his free first blood since he didn't have to start on the table...

Am I wrong or was that list versus my list just like playing chess if all his pieces were queens?

7 HEAVY incinerators? Like on DreadKnights?

Trystis wrote:

Sounds like some bad dice and a tough fight.

I had a couple of questions.

Don't you lose the game if you end your turn with no models on the board? So doesn't he have to place something down? I haven't had it come up before so I'm unfamiliar with the rule.

When you castle don't you traditionally deploy your troops outside of the vehicle spread out as much as possible to limit the impact if blast/template.

Yes. You cant END a turn with nothing on.

It was the GK formation and he's a rules judge so couldn't really argue when he said it's game turn not player turn so he deep struck on his turn 1.

And sorry I'm unfamiliar with GK. Might have been 2 heavy and 5 regular incinerator. Strength and ap were the same so I guess I got confused.

Yeah unorthodoxy has it. Didn't END with nothing as he made all but two reserve rolls with no re rolls or modifiers. It just meant I had ZERO targets to shoot until after 1/3rd my army was dead. And since they can deep strike turn 1 it means the honourable grey knights are better at ambush tactics than the dark eldar are. That put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth as it smacked of my dark eldar bumbling into a trap by grey knights? In daytime as
night fight was a no go so... thematically I don't really know what was going on fluff wise.

Quote :

If at the end of any game turn, one player has no models on the battlefield his opponent automatically wins.

He is right.

Keep at it. learn from them. Take their tricks and apply them.

Sorry to hear this Red King. I play both armies so I see what you're talking about. Unfortunately just from getting a new dex, DE still have the same fragile toughness as before. I've been hoping for better with the new dex but don't think it happened from reading it. GK took a hit in their book too but not as bad, I've been looking for balance with most of the new dex's but still haven't found it. Don't get too dismayed because any marine dex, CSM and even sisters can dish out a lotta flamer shots. We just have to figure out ways to overcome this and we will with time, I hope. Good luck in your next game.

For all the complaining on the internet, GK are still a very strong codex. If anything the core of the army has only become more flexible (at the cost of loosing some quirky rules like psybolts and rad grenades). The new codex made psycannons salvo making them worthless on anything that doesn't have relentless. Incinerators went down in price as a result almost all grey knight units in power armour will run with incinerators.

Still 7 sounds like a lot, the formation that lets you deepstrike turn 1 only lets you field two heavy support choice so unless he was running two detachments, he couldn't have had more than two dread knights and therefore two heavy incinerators. I wouldn't see him running more than two squads of interceptors so that's another two incinerators (bringing us to 4). So that leaves three five man squads of strikes with incinerators.

If he was running two detachments it was probably, 4 dread knights with heavy incinerators, 2 strike squads with incinerators (as each detachment only requires 1 troop choice), and a squad of interceptors with an incinerator. Bringing you up to 7.

Incinerators are the bane of DE, with S6 AP4 soulblaze and ignore cover. However Disintegrators are the bane of GK with their volume of S5 AP2 shots. Keep your heavy hitters in reserve so he can't get the alpha strike on them, then come on and pay him back in kind (a few disintegrator ravagers would do nicely). His entire army has a range of 24". Ravagers out range them by a long shot, deepstrike them on and just dance at 36" and slaughter them.

in summary:

-reserve your heavy hitters so that they don't die to alpha strike.
-abuse the fact that once his army has shunted/deep struck it has very little mobility.
-abuse the fact that GK weapons at most have 24" range.
-deploy your forces in two separate castles in wither corner of the board as it will force him to either split his forces, or use his one shot mobility to focus on one of the castles, making it unlikely for him to reach the other.
-remember that none of his units have objective secure because of his formation.

Hope that helps illustrate some of the possibilities open to you.

I made a similar experience just before the new dex. I played against a freind with his GK-Imperial fist list. He brought two dreadknights, two terminator squads with one librarian each (one fists, one GK), five or six squadas of scouts and a thunderfire with tech-marine - his warlord. We played that game twice as i suffered similarly in turn one the first game. His jumping knights just flamed my stuff out of my raiders. Both games he got first turn and did minimal deployment with the attempt to kill as much as possible with his knights.
Game one I died horribly, although I was not tabled.
Game two, I deployed only few things, spread out the warriors and denied him a brutal alpha strike. I still lost due to missions, not only because he got better objectives, but also because so many scouts are hard to remove with about 20 terminator wounds on the table. It was close in the way that I would have been able to table him in the second game if few things went differently. I did not handle the knights early enough. I had one fleeing blasterborn, three splinterborn, a venom with one cannon and one razorwing left, he had three devestators, five scouts and one knight with one woud left. It was a super fun game, totally different to the first one.

What I want to say: close games against those lists are familiar. Experience and excellent deployment are necessary. Deny him targets on turn one without loosing... Spread out those cheap warriors or hide stuff outside of line of sight. Every table needs enough line of sight cover. My opponent told me he still had to roll for reserves, although everything comes turn one-possibly. I am sure your opponent should roll too. Also: the prow counts as decoration/weapon and not hull! The only thing important for area terrain is the base! Agree on that before the game starts.

OkI just read Mushkilla'S advice: also what he says, also: two castles, also: lack of mobility and range frm GKs after DS. So true!

The Red King wrote:

And since they can deep strike turn 1 it means the honourable grey knights are better at ambush tactics than the dark eldar are. That put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth as it smacked of my dark eldar bumbling into a trap by grey knights?  

Yes, you are going to take losses that first turn.  Yes, they have an initial "ambush".  However what he does during T1 will define your strategy for the rest of the game.  Start by deploying your forces scattered and away from the objectives.  He has three options at this point:

1. GK DS onto the objectives.  This is good as it means those nasty flamers are away from you.  You can then choose which ones to focus your forces at to bring overwhelming power to eliminate them.

2. GK DS to each of your castle points.  This means his forces are not only split, but, if you dropped objectives correctly, they'll be away from the goal of the game.  You should be able to safely ignore a good part of his army while focusing the bulk of your force on the parts you want to hit.

3. GK DS everything that can onto one of your castle points.  This is the best option for you.  Yes, he now owns that part of the board and whatever you had there is complete toast.  However the rest of your army is free to get out of their way and secure the objectives you need or to handle the rest of his reserves piecemeal.  Again, this requires that you dropped the objectives and your units as far away from each other as possible.

Even assuming the objectives are all bunched up, away from you and he deep strikes into the middle of them then that means you can hit him from long range and only approach the part of his force you can reliably remove while staying out of range of the other stuff.

The initial setup and game deployment is crucial to DE.  We don't have the staying power necessary to stand toe to toe with most armies.  So, instead, we have to use a bit more guile by controlling the choices our opponent sees.  For example, ensuring as many objectives as possible on their side of the table will normally result in either their inability to claim (because they decide to try and catch us on ours meaning they are too far away to grab) or forcing them to stick to their side of the table and allowing us to engage the units we wish when we wish - giving us line breaker.

I haven't played a game with the new DE yet - too busy this weekend - but the core mechanic of the army seems to be the same: we MUST keep the objectives as forefront in our mind and use setup and deployment to our advantage while being completely willing to sacrifice units as a way to maintain that control or distract away from our purpose.  We aren't there to trade blows so the only thing that shows up in his cross hairs should be what we want him to see.

When I put together a 1500 point army, fully 1000 points (maybe more) of it are sacrificial or distraction units - things I don't expect to live to see T5.  They aren't in my list in order to kill 1000+ points of the enemy.  They exist to keep 1500 points of my enemy away from the parts that matter.

I'll always remember the time I had a unit of Reavers moving in a literal circle around the board with a large group of khorne dogs chasing them.  Those dogs could have won the game by themselves, but my opponent was so scared of the Reavers that he kept pursuing them and completely ignored the objectives.  When I finally allowed them to catch and destroy the Reavers, he was too far away from any objectives to help and the game ended in a big win for DE.  He was initially satisfied at killing them, then surprised at the situation.  I simply smiled: Just as Planned.

I guess I should have asked to see his list before hand but time was short, so I had no idea I had to deploy against an all deep strike list.

Still some good advice here.

How can he deepstrike ALL his army turn 1 ?

Selvhan wrote:

How can he deepstrike ALL his army turn 1 ?

Because the Nemesis Strike Force Detachment has the Rites Of Teleportation special rule, which lets all units with deepstrike roll for reserve on turn 1 (coming in on a 3+) and also lets them run before or after shooting on the turn that they deepstrike.

Sorry Mushkilla, I wasn't complaining just explaining. I for one only had one gripe with the new GK dex and it was the loss of psybolt ammo. Other then that, it's the way I always played my army before so I like the new dex. The DE on the other hand, I will complain some on it..

I like our null deployment options but it irks me that KNIGHTS ambush better than us.

Had I reserved too much I might have just been tabled since none of my units got saves against those incinerators and my Reavers rolled an improbable amount of 1s when they did get their cover saves.

Black Death wrote:

Sorry Mushkilla, I wasn't complaining just explaining.

That wasn't directed at you Black Death (my post just happened to follow yours), it was just a general statement. Pretty much all the 7th edition codexes have had very mixed receptions, the grey knight one in particular as a lot of GK players were power gaming army hoppers.

The Red King wrote:

I like our null deployment options but it irks me that KNIGHTS ambush better than us.

Don't see the problem with that. They are a surgical strike army that relies on teleportation for deployment, they literally materialise out of nothing. Its not a ambush in the traditional sense, it's not like they are waiting in the shadows for a chance to strike.

If you want to fall into the trap of fluff arguments, why would dark eldar ever be involved in a pitched battle or fight a foe they didn't have an overwhelming strategic advantage over? Why would they attack the strong when they have the mobility to always attack the weak?

Yeah I guess that always gets me too.

Well I don't think my whine post needs two pages so unless there's something else useful to be gleaned here I guess we're done. Thanks for the responses everyone.