Beating those Imperial blast templates

Haven't played much since 4th addition, life pulled me away from the hobby. Getting back in to my Dark Eldar, love how survivable the Raiders can be now. Wanting to work a mechanized army, and I like the idea of a pure dark eldar army with a good number of warriors/trueborn...

Biggest issue is that my chief competitor is an Imperial Guard lover, who thinks that battles are won by whoever has the most blast templates. Any tips for torching those cowards while cackling in the corner?

I don't have a ton of experience, but the thing that IMMEDIATELY comes to mind is Razorwing Jetfighters. Not only is he snap-shooting at fliers anyway, blast templates can't even attempt to hit them. Not to mention Monoscythe missiles will mulch a horde army anyway. I'd say run two, fire full volleys on the first turn (learn him a bit about templates), then use the Dark Lances to pop tanks after that. Easy peasy.

In any case, if he's using normal blast templates, your raiders and venoms are as survivable and better than foot troops, since they can A: Jink for 4+/3+ save, and B: can only take 1 wound/HP max (barring an explosion), which makes aoe weapons like blasts far less effective. Stick to Mechanized and Fliers and you should have no problem dealing with that army.

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Biggest issue is that my chief competitor is an Imperial Guard lover, who thinks that battles are won by whoever has the most blast templates. Any tips for torching those cowards while cackling in the corner?

Keep supressing his artillery and tanks with Dark Lances. Shake/Stun/Weapon destroyed etc... next target.

As you are old school DE player i think you have good amount of Raiders and Ravagers, so you have enough Dark Lance platforms that can start supressing turn 1.

You can add some scary unit like Grotesques with combat HQ to draw attention from squishier targets.

Take a couple of Razorwings, as they dont give a damn about blasts.
Thats pretty much it.

Turboboost a few squads of Reavers or Grots in Riders turn one to his parking lot. You can also use larger Grot squad via Portal. He will have to shoot blasts in his own deployment zone while you will eat up everything with rear armor 10.

I didn't think you can use jink when being a target of blast templates?

Why not? You can. If you are targeted.

If another blast scatters to you only then you cant.

Jinking gives a cover save, which blast weapons ignore.

Definitely like the idea of suppressing the tanks, and a couple of fliers should help. So I'm thinking load up on the Lances, keep his shooters in check, and fire away.

Only Templates ignore cover, not Blast or Large Blast weapons. The Wyvern shoots 4 Blasts, but the weapon is what has ignores cover - not the Blast aspect.

Thank you for clearing that one up. So much debate on the internet about blast weapons and cover saves.

Large blast weapon means it's uses a large blast template. Or even blast weapons. So if the  weapon uses a template it ignores cover saves. I don't get what you mean by only templates ignore cover if all weapons with blast or large blast are using templates?

If your physically using a template on top of a vehicle that has jink, you can't jink. It's called no escape in the rulebook

Template = flamer templates - inherently ignores cover
Blast = small blast marker
Large Blast = large blast marker

lawlskees wrote:

Large blast weapon means it's uses a large blast template. Or even blast weapons. So if the  weapon uses a template it ignores cover saves. I don't get what you mean by only templates ignore cover if all weapons with blast or large blast are using templates?

It may be useful to go back and re-read the Blast USR and the Template USR in the BRB to understand why only Template markers (the tear drop shaped ones) ignore cover.  Hint:  they have the Special Rule called...Ignores Cover.  And Blast markers (the round ones) don't.

lawlskees wrote:

If your physically using a template on top of a vehicle that has jink, you can't jink. It's called no escape in the rulebook

No escape is pertinent to open topped vehicles and buildings with fire points, not jinking. The rule that is pertinent to preventing jinking is the ignores cover rule that all template weapons have.

lawlskees wrote:

Large blast weapon means it's uses a large blast template. Or even blast weapons. So if the  weapon uses a template it ignores cover saves. I don't get what you mean by only templates ignore cover if all weapons with blast or large blast are using templates?

There is a difference between a template weapon, and the plasticky/carboardy things you use to represent who gets hit by weapons. Template weapons specifically refers to weapons that use the tear-drop shaped, flamer type template. Those weapons get ignore cover. Weapons that use any other type of template that you hold lovingly over your enemies' heads to see who gets hit are covered by different rules, such as small, large, and apocalyptic blasts.
Template: flamer... ignores cover
Blast: round marker...does not have the ignore cover rule written in (though I am sure somewhere there is a blast weapon that ALSO ignores cover)

Wyverns are the big issue for me here, which fire barrages of small blast templates and have the ignore cover special rule.

Hopefully some dark lances can pop the open topped Wyvern batteries before the wreck everything, I might just have to leave the Reavers at home for this one.

Thanks for the clearing that up for me, but damn, I should of got my jinks last night then.

Although this is one thing I actually have a bit of experience dealing with, it was mostly as CSM. I've mostly had to deal with the 3 platoon 8 demolisher cannon and 1 pask twin linked auto cannon IG russ spam. Make every effort to limit line of sight exposure to all but the tank/platoon that youre going after first, and make it have to choose between as many anti tank targets as possible. For me it meant deep striking a unit of scourges right in pask's face along with having all of my raiders and ravagers converge on his platoon to do as much damage before he had a chance to split fire or shoot everything against a single target. The deep striking within 12" adds the bonus of potentially having those templates scatter back onto the tank itself, unless this isn't allowed by a rule I'm unaware of.

If you're having a problem with wyverns I'm not surprised - they are really an effective bane to anything with a toughness value - 4 x small blasts w/ (I believe) S4, shred, indirect fire and ignores cover effectively means that any light infantry targeted is going to have a bad time (even grotesques).  Of course, as a dark eldar player you have a few tools to your advantage:

1) vehicles: Raiders, Ravagers & Venom's are fairly effective shelters against the wyvern fury, as shred doesn't grant rerolls for armor penetration so they're still fishing for 6's one at a time to pull glances against your vehicles.  Don't get out if you don't have to!

2) speed: we're able to close the distance very quickly against static armies such as imperial guard (I'll never submit to the "astra militarum" label! Never!)  A single turn of turbo-boosting can put us danger close, so using blast templates becomes a very risky maneuver - pull up 1" away from his platoons & see how happy he is to use those wyverns....

3) webway portals: for all of your choices that can't fit inside (or doesn't make sense to put inside!) transports, we can bring webway portals to precision deepstrike - again, this allows you to guarantee that unit of grotesques, or scourge, will end up right on your opponent's doorstep without giving them a turn to fire at you.


in particular, if you're running a dark eldar list from 3rd / 4th edition I'd assume you have basically raiders full of kabalites and or wyches, ravagers & reaver jetbikes.... Raiders move up as close as they can so you can either charge on turn 2, or begin rapidfiring from inside (splinter racks!).  Reavers start in reserve, the turn they come available, turboboost right in & amongst enemy lines so that you can't be targetted by their templates.  Get close to the tanks rather than the infantry if at all possible as a blob of guardsmen with a priest is a surprisingly difficult CC anvil.  On subsequent turns, use your reavers blade-vanes to put rending penetrating hits on tanks on the charge.

In particular you may find that when playing against IG, this may be one of hte only matchups where "playing the mission" could conceivably take second place to getting up close & causing havoc.

PurEvil wrote:

Wyverns are the big issue for me here, which fire barrages of small blast templates and have the ignore cover special rule.

Hopefully some dark lances can pop the open topped Wyvern batteries before the wreck everything, I might just have to leave the Reavers at home for this one.

A friend of mine loves his damn wyvern batteries...
Do not have a lot of issues with them anymore. He still has no answer to my deepstriking army.
I do not waste lances on his wyvern as they are well protected most of the time and get camo netting (still think it is a joke that an imperial camo net is more effective than a nightfield) but on the other hand they are only S4 and everything on my side is in AV10 vehicles.

Try to focus his S6+ weapons first and ignore the wyvern as they are only a threat to disembarked units (which you do not want to do). Do not bring units that rely too heavily on a good cover save (reavers for example). Razorwing Fighters do a good job with both vehicles and mass infantry.