Dark Eldar vs. Imp Knight and Riptide/900 pts game

Hi fellow citizens,

First of all if this thread belongs to tactics forum, my apologies.

We got a local mini league at low points value, which is 900 at this stage.

My opponent will bring
Imp Knight with battlecannon,
Riptide,
1 Broadside
and low point hq and troop as allied detachment.
And Void Shield Generator

Mission will be Big Guns and hammer and anvil style deployment (Long table edges)

As i am a newbie dark eldar player, i have not much units to choose from and my list will be :

HQ:Haemy
Elites: 3 grotesque in raider with dark lance
Troops: 3 x Kabalite Warriors with blaster in venom (all venoms have dual splinter cannons)
Heavy: 2 x Ravagers with triple dark lances

This is around 900 points.

Apart from this models :
I have 9 wyches, 6 naked reavers (Old oop models without upgrades)
As eldar detachment i have farseer on jetbike, 3 windriders, 1 wraithknight

It seems that imp knight and riptide outguns and outranges me. I will try to play for objectives but if i dont get to start second, he will probably gun off me from the objectives.

Lastly, i am thinking about changing the haemy for lahmia for gaining points to use 2 reaver squads to delay riptide or imp knight, but i am not sure if this is legal or not.

Is there any advice?

Okay...this is an odd one, and your opponent is clearly in it to win it.

That said;

Knight - 375
Riptide - 180
Void Sheild Gen. - 50
------------------
605

Leaving him only 295 for an HQ and 2 Troops.
Which I'm not even sure why he's taking as he's already unbound so why waste the points?
Weird.

A few things I'd like to know are 'what are the tourney rules'. Because clearly Unbound is a thing, and I'm just curious about the rest.
It would also be helpful to know what army he's bringing his 'allies' from.

============================

Okay, now, I am a somewhat experienced player, and also am sometimes thought of as psychotic - but allow me to say first off; I think his list is TERRIBLE and is relatively easy to kill. I'm going to describe how to kill it, make a few sad remarks about your collection, and leave you with a bit of homework.

Okay, so, really the only thing he has that is an issue for you is the Knight and the Generator - that is because your army is really lackluster when it comes to anti-mech.

That said, his army does *not* outrange you (you have equal or better range than the Riptide, so all he really has is the Knight which can only really outrange you with the battle cannon which, at the end of the day, is not that scary of a weapon to us)

Also, his army is likely to have a few issues with a little something called 'Desperate Allies'
I would like you to take a moment, and go pull out your rulebook and look up the 'Allies Matrix'.
Then note that Tau + Imperium (which the Knight counts as) are Desperate Allies.
That means, at the start of every movement phase if the Knight and Riptide are within 6" of each other they need to roll d6, and if they roll a '1' they basically can't do anything.
This issue might be made worse by whatever extra troops he brings.

This becomes even sexier because, if you reference Stronghold Assault for the Void Shields - your model needs to be "within" the 12" bubble of the shield to gain any benefit - which means considering how big those models are, it's going to be a little tight and he may need to risk getting close to his models.

Make sure you are aware of the Allies Matrix rules, and make sure your opponent always rolls his checks for any desperate of come the apocalypse allies he may have - if you get a turn of one of his models sitting there doing nothing, it is a good day for you!

Second off - the mission type strongly favors you, because you are a CAD force, therefore you have ObjSec. Therefore, at the end of the day, you don't care if he's dead or not as you can claim objectives he's sitting on.

Also, your army list as currently described is 845.
I would not advocate swapping the Haem for a Lhamean (yes, it appears to be legal) that said - the Lhamean is not really helpful o your list, and also your Grots will want an attached HQ to give them a leadership bump).

For your list I would like to note that the Grots are actually pretty capable of killing the Riptide in assault. They might also be good against the enemy troops, but if your opponent actually moves the Riptide up I would want to get the Grots in on it, as though it will take them a few turns (unless you get an ID hit through) the Riptide will barely be able to hurt them and won't be able to shoot if locked in combat.

Terrain is also a big deal for you.

His army is built to sit back and do spit all but shoot from the safety of his shields.
Your army is fast and fragile.
That said - the way to win is to grab objectives.

In a perfect world, what you want/need for terrain is LoS blocking terrain - you *want* to honestly spend about half the game hiding behind ruins so that your opponent can't even see you to shoot at you (if he moves up the Riptide to try to work his 30" homing missiles well, then you can assault him with Grots). But optimally what you want is to be able to hide most of your army and/or be out of range of him (this should be pretty doable in Hammer and Anvil deployment) to force him to either move forward (which will allow you to kill him much easier) or to force him to sit back in safety (which will allow you, on the last turn, to rush up, snag objectives, and get an easy win).

Your big fear is the Knight - your army really lacks the oomph to effectively kill him, especially with the Void Shields around. That said - functionally, you ought to be able to ignore him fir this game as long as you can hide from his LoS. If you can't hide (because you're fighting on a desert table or planet smooth surface or some gak) just keep jinking and try to minimize the damage he can do.

The Riptide is a ponce - he lacks the range to hunt you without moving forward, and your Venoms and Grots are a solid threat to him. I would say try to lure him forward via hiding from him and staying out of range - use the Ravagers to drop the shields if he can shoot at you while staying in them (in Hammer and Anvil he really shouldn't be able to do this easily), and then fire all Venoms on him and get the Grots into assault. You can kill that thing, it's really not that dangerous to your army.

His Troops and HQ are the wildcards here - they may or may not be dangerous and they may or may not hide in the shields. Deal with them when and as you need to (odds are that the Riptide will be a bigger threat)

Also, always, always, ALWAYS, keep in mind that the winner will likely be decided by the 3-5 objective markers. You will want to protect your Ravagers if at all possible - and then remember that with ObjSec and your speed it should be very hard for your opponent to hold many objectives at the end.

Hope some of that advice helps - I will be curious to hear how it goes. Feel free to ask for any clarification.

Regards,
Thor.

Hi Thor,
Thank you very much for your response and your advices. I will try to clarify some of the issues you adressed:

-My opponent does not use unbound list, The knight come as an imperial knight detachment. The Tau comes as allied detachment or if this is not possible for any reason, he comes as combined arms detachment. He will use Cadre Fireblade (60 pts.) and 2 firewarrior squads (54 pts. each). He has enough poinst after knight, riptide and VSG.

-I think he will use the generator with 3 charges. No one has ever used the VSG with 1 charge in our meta.

-The riptide will have ion accelerator (5 pts. upgrade for 72" range, 3 shots Str 7ap2 in standard mode, str 8 ap2 large blast in over-charge mode and finally str9 ap2 large blast in nova charge mode)

I can build and paint an extra raider if it is deemed feasible until our match but then i shall remove grots for wyches for the necessary points.

I can try to borrow a razorwing from a fellow dark eldar player but since it is very probable that riptide will have interception and skyfire, he can very well shoot it out of the sky when the razorwing enters the field. Bu then i shall find the necessary points for it...

Razorfate wrote:

-My opponent does not use unbound list, The knight come as an imperial knight detachment. The Tau comes as allied detachment or if this is not possible for any reason, he comes as combined arms detachment. He will use Cadre Fireblade (60 pts.) and 2 firewarrior squads (54 pts. each). He has enough poinst after knight, riptide and VSG.

That would be built via a CAD just fine - though he lacks mobiloty and still has the Allies issue with the Knight. This is also good as those Tau units will be easy as sin to kill if you need to.

Razorfate wrote:

-I think he will use the generator with 3 charges. No one has ever used the VSG with 1 charge in our meta.

That is good to know though it doesn't change any of my advice.

Razorfate wrote:

-The riptide will have ion accelerator (5 pts. upgrade for 72" range, 3 shots Str 7ap2 in standard mode, str 8 ap2 large blast in over-charge mode and finally str9 ap2 large blast in nova charge mode)

This is also good to know - this emphasizes the hiding game on your part, the Riptide still will need LoS, just like the Knight, with the ion accelerator. If he's smart he'll never bother overcharging it.

Razorfate wrote:

I can build and paint an extra raider if it is deemed feasible until our match but then i shall remove grots for wyches for the necessary points.

You don't need to do it that way, that said - I would not advocate losing Grots for Wyches.
Unless you're getting to custom build a list to face his army and only his army? We could build a list that can kill a Knight fairly easily at 900, albeit maybe stretching your available models a bit.

Razorfate wrote:

I can try to borrow a razorwing from a fellow dark eldar player but since it is very probable that riptide will have interception and skyfire, he can very well shoot it out of the sky when the razorwing enters the field. Bu then i shall find the necessary points for it...

The mission is about objectives - a flyer will not particularly help you with that.

For the record: A Void Shield Generator is approximately 6" across, so it's fairly easy to put one knight on one side, and the rest on the other, so "one eye open" will probably not be an issue.

The major problem I see with your current models would be penetrating the shields. Assuming your blasters will get in range, you have 10 lance shots. That's 3.3 shields on average. Meaning you only have to be slightly below average luck to not remove all the shields, rendering your entire poison arsenal useless for that turn.

I can build 1 extra raider instead of a venom but i am not sure about loosing 12 splinter cannon shots for 1 dark lance shot.

Are you fighting other armies with that same list?

I would not custom build if your army selection is locked in - but if it isn't then a lance might serve you more ably than poison versus this specific army

We can change our army lists for each fight. Well i think i got good news. I just managed build a third ravager which i couldn't before due to it being a recast and a very poor one... What is more i maanaged to make an archon with a blaster by kitbashing a disintegrator and splinter rifle.

So my army list can be:
HQ:
1x Blastarchon and venom

Troops:
1x Kabalite warrior squad with blaster and sybarite with haywire grenade with raider with dark lance and night shields (Archon goes with this group, i added the night shields as he will probably concentrate on this vehicle for warlord kill)

2xKabalite warriors with blaster on venom

HS:
3x Ravager with triple dark lances

This makes an all shooting force, i lost the grots but gained 4 more dark lance shots and a hwg.

Be mindful that in this scenario your heavy slots = potential points for your opponent.

It looks like he is planning to field zero heavy slots - which means if he can bag some Ravagers it makes the objectives more important.

Yes i know that...

I will probably try to down the void shield with the ravagers while venom troops will close the distance with the enemy to negate their range advantage. Then i will play hide and seek with the ravagers and shoot first his riptide then his troops.
I will probably loose at least two ravagers but if i kill the riptide and his broadside early in the game , i will have a chance.

I'm not super experienced in 40k, but I imagine that if he's spending all his time shooting your ravagers then your ObjSec troops are flitting around winning you objectives?
If it gets to the point, give him something to shoot at perhaps.

Hi again.

We played the game tonight. His list was slightly altered from what I expected:
Imp knight
Inquisitor with servoskulls (warlord)
Riptide with ion cannon ewo and skyfire
1 commander battlesuit 2 flamers
1 bodyguard suit with 2 flamers
6 firewariors
Voidshield generator.

After a practice match against wavewerpent and wraithknight list, I changed my army list as:

Archon with blaster
Kabalite squad with blaster in raider with dark lance and nightshields
Kabalite squad with champion (my warlord) in venom with 2 sc
Ravager with 3 darklance and nightshields

Autarch with ejb mantle fusion gun and laser lance
Windriders
Wraithknight

He played to kill me while I played to survive and score objectives.  After 2 turns of shooting att voidshield generator it didn't loose the last shield charge and regenerated 1 shield each turn. His deepstriking crysis suits flamed my troops killing all my warlord's kabalite squad and killing 3 of the other squad with blaster (blaster was one of the dead)

In turn I hold the imp knight and riptide for 3 turns with wraith knight which died at the end. The riptide took 4 wounds from the combat. Imp knight was unharmed through whole game.

I also killed the 2 crysis suits which made kebap from the kabalites as I mentoned before. My autarch Killed his firewarriors and warlord inquisitor who was sitting atop the battlements of voidshield generator.

In the end he scored 1 obj, killed my warlord and got linebreaker. Wraithknihht and ravager gave 1 pts for being heavy support.. 1 object was contested with my archon and imp knight;) I scored 2 objektives with autarch and windriders. I also got firstblood, linebreaker and slay the warlord.

The game ended as 9-7 dark eldar victory in tje 7th turn.

A VSG, riptide, knight AND a servoskull inquisitor.... Man this guy is a tryhard!

congrats on winning this! would have loved to see the look on his face

Thank you very much Anterzhul:)

My opponent is a good friend of mine and the last night's game was played in a very friendly and also competitive manner.

The issue was the Imp Knight player normally plays with space marine lists which were not very competitive in our tournament meta (Sometimes players bring reaver titans, Ctans, stompas and such) were loosing more games than his wins. So i think this time he tried very hard to be competible, but as our fellow commorites posted before, the game rules favored the number of objective securing troops, not the be all kill all type units such as imperial knights.