how much dark light

Thank you DEfan for your reply. That 1:60 point ration seems to be the ratio I'm flirting with too. HERO, on this forum, who seems to be very successful and runs a list similar to ours, ends up at around 1:60 ratio as well.

Count Adhemar wrote:

If Darklight weaponry were 5 points cheaper across the board and we had some means of twin-linking them, at least on our vehicles, then I'd be happy to take loads of them. I personally find Darklight to under perform on almost every occasion, which makes me a sad panda

All it "needs" is the 5 point adjustment, methinks.
If it got both then I would argue it would be too powerful unless we had to pay for the twin-linking (and I never would).

5 points cheaper would be nice. That would be an extra 80 pts in my 1000pt list!

I tend to use haywire and caltrops as primary anti-tank with dark light supporting that.

Thor665 wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

If Darklight weaponry were 5 points cheaper across the board and we had some means of twin-linking them, at least on our vehicles, then I'd be happy to take loads of them. I personally find Darklight to under perform on almost every occasion, which makes me a sad panda

All it "needs" is the 5 point adjustment, methinks.
If it got both then I would argue it would be too powerful unless we had to pay for the twin-linking (and I never would).

What we need is a BRB update, not a codex update. If Lance were reducing armor by 2 to a minimum of 10, it would be perfect (maybe it would even worth a point increase).

Right now against :
AV 14 : Works perfectly
AV 13 : Works well enough
AV 12 : Useless
AV 11 : Useless
AV 10 : Useless

AV 10 and 11 doesn't hurt us too much since S8 usually is enough to deal with them. AV 12 is where our lance underperform and sadly, it's the most common armor you will meet on the battlefield.

How are we defining "underperform"? Because, actually, the ability of a dark lance to damage something strikes me as perfectly fine. The only "issue" wit it is the amount of dark lance I need to take to make its effects functional paired with the cost of a lance.


The real question comes in comparing it to other weapons of similar point cost and what they can or cannot accomplish paired with an awareness of other tools an army has to deal with mech.

Functionally - there is no issue at all with lances if DE had easy access to a scatter laser-esque weapon.

Instead of wishlisting how we'd like dark lances to work, wouldn't it be more productive to discuss how best to use the tools we have?

Spam them - I thought that was agreed upon?

Deamon wrote:

What we need is a BRB update, not a codex update.  If Lance were reducing armor by 2 to a minimum of 10, it would be perfect (maybe it would even worth a point increase).

Right now against :
AV 14 : Works perfectly
AV 13 : Works well enough
AV 12 : Useless
AV 11 : Useless
AV 10 : Useless

AV 10 and 11 doesn't hurt us too much since S8 usually is enough to deal with them.  AV 12 is where our lance underperform and sadly, it's the most common armor you will meet on the battlefield.

I'm.......confused. Do you want additional benefits for lances because S8 weapons need MORE help against light armor?

As it stands:
AV14-12: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 1/3 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart
AV11: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 1/2 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart
AV10: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 2/3 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart

Sounds pretty sweet to me. Our basic transport has access to DL's. Lots of them. Everywhere.

Here's an option, run hay wyches,can have 5-10 in each squad.....oh wait, gw fogged us on our 'update' ,just like nerfing our cc abilities even more...
Personally I think heat lances are a waste of points for a/t...then should be 24" minimum in my book..seems like all our weaponry is short ranged so we have to expose our stuff to a pummeling either by shooting or being assaulted by crap like wraithes or other things that can bum rush 18",ignore cover and terrain,blahblah..but wait our assaulty army has pretty crap cc weapon options. So we are forced to either blast away at oooohhh 36" or get real close,fly over,etc to try to do anything.
Overall I have better results with the hwbs and against troops ic Lt vehicles dissies seem to do well for me. Side note surprisingly my Tantalus armed 'with only dissies' gets ignored..until I take out a whole unit with the 12 shots..so far in 8 games it only died once..
I hate having to use allies just to be viable, it confirms a severe lack of balance if an army cannot stand alone in the game.

Example,I can hold my own with my pure sob army but am going to try a lotd alky just for story fluff to see how it goes..i do not need to rely on them to do my job..

So I will continue to use the lances if for nothing but being bullet magnets...i hand every single target but my dice sure like rolling up 1's and 2's for damage

Wow my apologies for my spelling errors...frikkin auto complete,correct on damn stupid phone blows..

I get bored with lance spam sometimes and like to try something different.  Even if I lose at least I'll learn something and have fun.

For these times I find 2 x lance ravagers, 2 x HWB scourges, 2 x 6 CC reavers and trueborn or dragons with WWP Archon in raider do AT very nicely indeed.  A refused flank/heavy reserve deployment seems to benefit this approach.

Apart from the many other joys of CC reavers I find almost nothing more satisfying than surrounding a full transport with them and wrecking it.

Evil Space Elves wrote:

Deamon wrote:

What we need is a BRB update, not a codex update.  If Lance were reducing armor by 2 to a minimum of 10, it would be perfect (maybe it would even worth a point increase).

Right now against :
AV 14 : Works perfectly
AV 13 : Works well enough
AV 12 : Useless
AV 11 : Useless
AV 10 : Useless

AV 10 and 11 doesn't hurt us too much since S8 usually is enough to deal with them.  AV 12 is where our lance underperform and sadly, it's the most common armor you will meet on the battlefield.

I'm.......confused. Do you want additional benefits for lances because S8 weapons need MORE help against light armor?

As it stands:
AV14-12: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 1/3 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart
AV11: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 1/2 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart
AV10: Glances 1/6th of the time, penetrates armor 2/3 of the time, adds +1 on the damage chart

Sounds pretty sweet to me. Our basic transport has access to DL's. Lots of them. Everywhere.

Yes. I'm a greedy bastard My point is thta against AV 12, a S8 gun without lance (and therefore cheaper) will work just as well as how DL. I would not mind if AV 12 wasn't the most common armor value I have to face.

I work on 1 lance per 70-80 points ideally - minimum. That's for a serious competitive game at least.

If I can get more in I will every time - at the expense of just about everything else.

Currently I want to play a list at 1300 using:

WWP Blaster Archon

Lance Ravager

2 5x infantry with blaster in lance raider

2x 5x infantry with blaster in venom

2x scourges with haywire / heat lance

Blaster born in raider without lance

Those raiders without a lance don't need it because they got night Shields and are probably jinking anyway.

I would f anklu be happy if ravengers could take a void lance.

Also....dark lances against 12 armor is the same as a lascannon at 14 armor. Now that said I prefer firing against terms. I leave to popping armor to scourges and trueborn. More shots means more chances of penning. That is why I leave it to them.

Firing a lance against AV 12 is like firing a lascannon against AV 13, not 14.

Buttons on the phone. But correct. 13.

Hoping to not de-rail the topic but.. To those of you that have been using Reavers, how effective have you been finding Cluster Caltrops as a source for anti-armor when compared to a couple Dark Lances?

I have only played small games using them so far and never had the chance to face them off against a list with a decent amount of tanks/vehicles.

They are hard to use since HoW hit on the facing you touch, not on rear armor. They will perform ok against AV 10/11/12 but it can be pretty tricky to manoeuver them to attack rear armor on an AV13. And they are pretty much useless against AV 14.

I use them as a backup AT but I always make sure to take a fair amount of Dark Lances in my list.

I've only tried it once, when they took down a pred annihilator (albeit already damaged).

My biggest problem though is the random nature of the hits, as I tend to roll poorly (4, 5 hits is pretty average for me) against models/units where an average roll would do, but incredibly well when I only really need a single hit for example.

Thor665 wrote:

All it "needs" is the 5 point adjustment, methinks.
If it got both then I would argue it would be too powerful unless we had to pay for the twin-linking (and I never would).

Does it seem at all ironic that you consider this game-breaking, when Eldar just got:
- D-weapons on a ton of units (at no extra cost)
- 1:1 Scatter Lasers on troop jetbikes
- +1BS and +1 on the damage table for Fire Dragons
- Haywire grenades on swooping hawks that hit any flier the unit moves over on a 4+

I think the game is already broken.

Yea I agree, screw the dark kin and buff the light ones....I honestly do not think gw comprehends their own game system or there is no oversight to look at balance in the armies and practically no play testing.i mean if an army blows in cc you may balance with shooty and vice versa, we are stuck with an army that unless you take allies, is hard to deal with either shooty or cc armies. Both ranges in our army either cost too much,equipment nla,range blows,strength blows,toughness,etc you name it...
So we come up with spam to deal with overall short comings and then gw screws us again with a bunch of nerfs....

Not to get off topic of my original post (its kinda relates)

I'm having a difficult time determining which of the following would be better. Disclaimer: I am trying to get as many lances into my army as I can, venoms are not gonna work.

3 gunboats, DL, blasters, racks: just over 500pts

Or

4 raiders.: just over 500pts
2 with 9 guys, racks, and DL (no blaster)
2 with 5 guys, blaster, DL

Both have 6 dark light guns total. The first one there are 3 total boats, all the same, very versitle. The second one has 4 boats, 2 more geared for anti infantry, the other 2 for anti tank.

What do you think?

The anti infantry use diss cannons and give the blaster to random guy. If that is their job let it rain from afar