When did you start playing dark eldar?

I'm trying to see when most players started to play dark eldar! With playing them I mean either actively playing and/or collecting them. If the time when you started playing isn't included, then choose the option that is chronologically before it.

I personally got interested in them after playing Soulstorm, but I waited with playing them till the reboot.

Started in 2012 when I decided I wanted a new army. Was a toss up between DE and Necrons as they were both new codexes with new model ranges.

2010 when the rebooted range came out - loved the models and as i didn't play at the time, I just went out and bought the stuff that i liked the models for.

I'm sad, apparently a lot of other people started with the first release but didn't want to post and represent

I started when the initially came out in 3rd edition with the starter set. Played them for a little bit and then got out of them when I sold off everything to pay for life stuff.

Got back into them as my 2nd army about 2 years ago. Now adays they are pretty much my primary army.

I played Eldar. I then saw dark eldar and thought, I love the idea of them, but I really didn't like the look of the old models. Still got myself about 30 old DE warriors and a raider etc but never really played them. Then a year or so later in 2010 out pops possibly the best looking models and army in the history of GW. I bought as much as I could in the week they were released and haven't turned back since. Clearly not a veteran DE player but a vain image obsessed jump on the bandwagoner. So perhaps Dark Eldar have always been my spiritual army

Ah, just give it a few years - eventually you can make an Old Archon post about why the current 'Grot Bomb' is, in fact, not a Grot Bomb at all - but simply a unit of Grots

This was all fields in my day. All fields.

I just started a couple months ago. None of the armies I played felt right for how I wanted to play them. My bro offered to trade his DE for my Raven Wing. Now I am beyond happy. DE fit my B.S. trickery glass cannon style of play like a glove.

Since i start WH40k in early 2010

Way back in third

Another vote for 2010. The new model line really pulled me into the army. I had a bunch of the old models from a friend who moved but never really had any interest until those models and that new codex came out. Now DE are my second favorite army to play. Sorry, Tyranids are my first/strongest love.

2012. The models were too sexy to pass up, the fluff is awesome, and nobody else in my meta plays them.

Wanted to, when I started the hobby back in 2003, but the models were just so plain ugly and my primary interest was in painting. So I chose their craftworld cousins and hopes that the dark kin would some day get a makeover.... The years went by and then November 2010 came by, and on the first Day of Their release I bought almost 2000 points of Dark Eldar. (Still love the craftworlders too though. They Will always be The first army I had, and a brighter future of the entire eldar race is what I pursue)

Today I see myself as more of a Dark Eldar player. I guess I was always a DE player at heart. I was just waiting for Them to catch up with my demands

Thor665 wrote:

I'm sad, apparently a lot of other people started with the first release but didn't want to post and represent

Say it loud
I put the ancient in ancient Haemonculus

Well, I technically play them since Dawn of War Soulstorm but not the tabletop version

Be it a strategy game or a FPS, I prefer the "Dark Eldar" appraoch of gameplay over everything. Speed and firepower is amazing and so are DE models as well as their fluff.

I do want to start a real army when I feel that I have more time to actually get into painting and lurk the Dark City once in a while to see what's happening in the world of Commoragh

I started back when they where in the battle set of 3rd ed. Black templars vs Dark Eldar, back in the days of all the codex rules being in the rule book... Spent more time with the templars manly due to the bizarre and slightly ugly DE models, though I did quite like the DE vehicles once I got my hands on them. The new models and loss of Black Templar's unique codex where what made me finally switch the Dark Kin to my main army and haven't looked back since then

I started playing DE when my brother bought the starter box with Marines in it. He was much older than me, but we started playing then. i really enjoyed them from the beginning. They fit the playstyle I play in almost all games.

In games like Twisted Metal, I was always Spectre. Hit hard, super fast, but died so easy. In RPGS I enjoy playing thieves or ranged characters that dealt death from afar but could never take a hit. i feel because I am used to evading and and feinting here or there and have been playing the style of this army for so long on many different platforms is why I have excelled with such an army.

Great fun and very hard to master army overall. I loved playing DE when no one else was. The most fun I had was in 5th with an almost all reserve WWP army with MSU Wyches, Talos, Mandrakes, and Bikes. Loads of fun.

Only a few months ago, I was never really sure what I wanted from my second army and I have always been a big fan of CC so when I got my hands on the new codex it just clicked!

2001-ish, after The Torturer's Tale was printed in White Dwarf, and Vect's beautifully painted marbled green Kabal were featured.

At first, I was of the school of thought that the Dark Eldar were a cheap knock-off of Dark Elves, a further example of Warhammer Fantasy - IN SPACE, and had no real place in 40k due to the Craftworld origin story of the Fall. The nasty Eldar were all eaten by Slaanesh, right?

That short story opened my eyes to another perception, revealing the dark kin to be the ones who survived the Fall through cunning and sheer bloody-mindedness, and the terrible price they paid for their survival. From that point, in my mind, they ceased to be a poorly conceived ret-con of a comic book villain, and became much more. Now I appreciated the motives behind their depravity, the fully fleshed evil, the pathos, and I embraced them as part of the setting and resolved to try them out on the battlefield.

I never looked back.

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On a side note this is a very interesting poll so far, showing that about half of the respondents so far joined the True Kin at the time of the 2010 apotheosis; or, in other words, on revealed evidence the 2010 Codex approximately doubled the existing Dark Eldar player base. I wonder what GW's target was?

Creeping Darkness wrote:

On a side note this is a very interesting poll so far, showing that about half of the respondents so far joined the True Kin at the time of the 2010 apotheosis; or, in other words, on revealed evidence the 2010 Codex approximately doubled the existing Dark Eldar player base. I wonder what GW's target was?

I'm surprised how many people started off with their first release in third edition and how many people played Dark Eldar because of the starter set.

It makes sense though - starter sets are a stepping on point for a lot of players, and odds are you're going to get interested in the idea of one of the featured armies.

Even if it was the most mis-matched battle they ever put together

I stopped playing before DE was first released. When I came back to the hobby 2010 they were the most awesome models and still are.

1998 first release, then waited a looooooooooooooong time fore the next codex

I played them first release, then went to uni and found beer

started replaying them around 2010 they have always been my primary 40k army