More Strategy - Less Crying

Hi guys,

As everyone here I'm pretty sad for the first draft of the new Facebook FAQ, but I think is meaningless to keep crying and put your army on the shelf, so the only thing we have to do is thinking about new strategies to keep playing our armies. For sure these strategies will never bring us on the top of a tournament, but at least they will let us getting some power from pain, extending our life of a couple of hundred years

So everyone knows that the possibility of deepstriking Wraithguard of Firedragons in a open topped vehicle or in a WWP Wave Serpent was pretty cool, but sadly we can't do it anymore.
So how can we react to this?

For sure WWP+ footslogging Wraithguard or Firedragons is still viable, and still pretty killy, but how to protect you unit once on the battlefield? Farseer hoping for invisibility? Spiritseer hoping for Gate of Infinity and frak the world? Jetbike cover bubble? SF archon with fortune on front?

Let's discuss about the pros and cons and the best strategies to keep Deespstriking with our yuppies cousins.

Your yuppy cousins are the only thing making your army viable, even as allies. You can take a WWP archon, 1 minimum unit of warriors as an allied detachment to give you scatter-free deep strike on a single unit of wraithguards for 135 points.

But honestly, eldar even do scatter-free deep strike better than us with baharroth and a seer council.

I started as a pure DE player. Allies came out in 6th, and I was like, "Oh, cool, I'll take a farseer and a minimum eldar troops unit to supplement my DE."

Then, as time went on, I slowly found reasons to take more eldar, and less dark eldar, up to the point where it became difficult to justify bringing my DE most of the time.

Legitimately, these are the current circumstances I think tactically justify bringing DE:

1. You don't own any other models.
2. You're running a craftworld eldar-based anti-leadership list(aka "Freakshow")
3. To no-scatter deep strike a unit that doesn't have a better native option.
4. To add some venom spam(althought most armies have better options than this for weight of fire)
5. You love the bitter, bitter taste of defeat.
6. You like removing models from the table.
7. You just want to watch the world burn.

This is supposed to be the tactica section of the forum. Please don't come here to cry, because crying is not a tactica. Is full of other topics in "Dark Eldar Discussion" or "News & Rumor" where you can do it.

You don't want to use DE anymore? Good, change army.

I want to keep going with DE, even if I'll probably lose, because is the army I like to play, and this is a game.

Cheers

Doesn't seem like crying to me. He is providing an accurate analysis of how 40k has changed from a competitive viewpoint. There is a fine line between pessimism and realism.

People can play pure DE. I would if I managed to play more. But that is because I love the fluff and love the Dark Eldar; for me that is enough of a reason to play them by themselves. But, realistically, that isn't going to give good chances of victory in what is, as you stated, a 'game' that has many tournaments that people like to compete in around the world. It is just unfortunate that even with allies many people see us struggle to be competitive.

However, I would like to see what tactics DE players start to adapt in the face of the FAQ, to see if we are viable at all by ourselves and what can be done.

It seems like MSU and blocking line of site is the best way around the snap firing when jinking. Something I would try for fun would be Hellion escorts for Venoms filled with Kabalites. Wouldn't really survive well, or for long... also having Hellions as a meat shield is a bit costly.

I don't really know what else to suggest. As far as DS is concerned I think that saturation would be the best way to go. DS as many units as possible whilst having other threats in the enemy's face to worry about

Kind of seems weird to strategize yet. The FAQs aren't finalized. I think the odds of the final version reversing a ruling, changing our interpretation of a ruling, or adding more rulings is roughly 100%.

I'm the first person in the "deal with it" parade, but not until the actual rules are out.

Before finalized rules, both planning and kvetching are potential wastes of time. However, if you're doing it with any quality, strategizing wastes a lot more time.

So if you DO want to do some Chicken Littling, seems like the perfect time. At least that's cathartic.

When the rules actually come out, I'll sit down, put pen to paper, and come up with some plans. Until that point, discussion for review seems totally reasonable, regardless of whether the review is negative or positive.

I'm going to keep useing my venoms filled with warriors. I usaly try and stay outside the 24'' range of rifels anyway.

Gherma wrote:

Please don't come here to cry, because crying is not a tactica.

You don't want to use DE anymore? Good, change army.

My kneejerk reaction upon seeing the title of your thread was to come in here and tell you to "Eat a bag of cocks" in the nicest way possible. But against my better judgement, I tried to give you a legitimate, well-considered response listing the legit cases DE could be decent, with a little added humour to lighten the mood.

I'm glad my effort was rewarded with the attitude I restrained myself from delivering to you when I first arrived, exactly as I anticipated this thread would be with my first instinct. You've made me feel like Supreme Overlord Vect: Just as planned.

This time, I brought a bag of cocks. Feel free to help yourself to one.

Although I think that was a well worded rebuttal I would like to point out that his original statement (minus all the unnecessary personal jabs) is accurate. Your post was more complaint than tactics and he specifically made this post because people in the "whine about everything" threads said (paraphrasing) "we are discussing dark eldar and any discussion about dark eldar is going to be negative, if you want to talk tactics go to the tactics thread". So though his answer was harsh I find it well within reason to ask people to not complain here. You have the entire rest of the site for that right now.

Betray The World I'm really happy a forum discussion made you so happy and proud, it means you should have a really poor and emotionless real life, and I like to give joy to poor people.

That's said I think moderators should close this topic because it seems too few people are really interested in talking about tactics, and there is no point to have another copy paste "how crap we are discussion".

Cheers

First:

Venoms are still viable. Even more so now because they are really easy to hide. You can still give the Warriors a Blaster because you don't need to jink anyway.

Second:
The Raider in terms of a gun boat is... Difficult. If you can stick to enough cover you're fine but out in the open sucks ass now. But it's still viable in terms of an extreme MSU with many of those with only 5 dudes inside.
Massive amount of objective secured units!

Third:
Most enemy flyers are having a hard time hitting our skimmers now! That is awesome! Maybe we'll see less flyers now so if we use them we got air superiority pretty easily.

Quick question: what about drop pods? The half of them is arriving the first turn, but what about the second half? Does the enemy have to roll for them or do they arrive automatically the next turn?

That's everything important that I can think of.

DE do skimmer spam very well... Its not hard to fit in 17+ skimmers at 1750pts.
Jink passenger nerf is not a big problem for 5 kabby units. 90% of the time my msu kabbies are sitting in cover by the end of turn 1 or chillin in reserve. Even worst case, they do have to snapfire 5 rifles or 4 + 1 blaster, who cares?

DE Reaver spam is also very effective.

DE do null deploy and refused flank tactics very well.

DE do maelstrom type missions very well. If some LOSB terrain is on the table.

DE covens can throw large brick units in your face. Like corpsethief, grotesquerie a dark artisan or 2. Not deathstars but tough enough to demand attention and buy you time.

Lawrence recently took out 1st at the SN international using a combination of the above tactics... for the SECOND YEAR IN A ROW!!
Who says DE can't compete at tournaments?

Personally i've had IK, necron decurion and SM gladius players call my DE OP.

check out pages 83 and 84.  

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/2460/668091.page

It's a Tau Empire thread i frequent, but in this case i talked about Dark Eldar strategies and have VASSAL screen shots so you can follow along.  The guy basically told me I should take more Riptides.  I told him my own Dark Eldar had convinced me that there are armies that can make you pay dearly for that.  

He disagreed and came up with a mickey mouse drawing to illustrate his point and decided to just throw NINE Riptides out as a possibility for it to face, completerly mising my point in the bargain. But I humroed it and followed along to a point. I did one better and did a VASSAL one to show mine and because his dimensions and such were WAY off.  

Anywho, one hopes you can suck it dry for some ideas against the Tau Empire.  

The list is two Grotesqueries in Raiders, plus Talos.  The end.  Real complicated list.  Lol.

Something I have been wondering about is the potential of using beast packs as a screening unit for gunboat Raiders (I'm old school and models Dark Eldar and so own a fleet of Raiders and just one Venom). With a mix of say 2 Beastmasters / 5 Khymerae / 5 Clawed Fiends the beast pack would be majority T5, invul saves at the front and able to give a Night Shielded Raider a 4+ cover save without jinking. The big bases are a bonus to cover a number of Raiders

The beasts would also provide a disincentive to anyone thinking about charging the Raiders, plus help keep Drop Pods and flamers away.

Having done some math on our vehicles, Raider with a Night Shield (but no Jink) is still harder to kill than a Venom with Flickerfield. If we can get some cover saves, Raiders are still much tougher and carry a bigger cargo than a Venom.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

My kneejerk reaction upon seeing the title of your thread was to come in here and tell you to "Eat a bag of cocks" in the nicest way possible. But against my better judgement, I tried to give you a legitimate, well-considered response listing the legit cases DE could be decent, with a little added humour to lighten the mood.

You started my day out with a laugh. Kudos sir.

And, Sadly, I can think of no valid tactic with transports and jinking except having wyches inside. And we all know how point efficient and great those are.

Skulnbonz wrote:

And, Sadly, I can think of no valid tactic with transports and jinking except having wyches inside.

Really? You think wyches are now better than warriors? And can think of no valid tactics for using warriors? Really?

Things have not changed THAT much.

Jink passenger nerf is not a big problem for 5 kabby units. 95% of the time msu kabbies deploy in cover, have disembarked into cover by the end of turn 1, or are chillin in reserves.

Even worst case, 1 or 2 kabby units have to snapfire 5 rifles or 4 + 1 blaster, who cares?

Painjunky wrote:

Even worst case, 1 or 2 kabby units have to snapfire 5 rifles or 4 + 1 blaster, who cares?

I don't think we'll be seeing too many blasters on Kabalite units now. They were pretty ineffective before but are even poorer now.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Painjunky wrote:

Even worst case, 1 or 2 kabby units have to snapfire 5 rifles or 4 + 1 blaster, who cares?

I don't think we'll be seeing too many blasters on Kabalite units now. They were pretty ineffective before but are even poorer now.

Agreed.
I haven't taken blasters on my msu warriors units in a long time but thought i should mention them anyway.

That just backs up my point... who cares if a unit or 2 of 5 rifles has to snapfire?

Painjunky wrote:

Count Adhemar wrote:

Painjunky wrote:

Even worst case, 1 or 2 kabby units have to snapfire 5 rifles or 4 + 1 blaster, who cares?

I don't think we'll be seeing too many blasters on Kabalite units now. They were pretty ineffective before but are even poorer now.

Agreed.
I haven't taken blasters on my msu warriors units in a long time but thought i should mention them anyway.

That just backs up my point... who cares if a unit or 2 of 5 rifles has to snapfire?

Splinter weaponry relies on weight of fire. A Venom plus 5 Kabalites puts out 22 poison shots within 12". Under the current rules, that's 14.67 hits. If the Venom jinks it's 8.67. Post FAQ that goes down to 3.67. So we lose 5 hits per turn, or nearly 60% of our firepower. With an MSU strategy, that's massive!

Yes that is true. But in my exp 95% of the time msu kabbies deploy in cover, have disembarked into cover by the end of turn 1, or are chillin in reserves.

The kabbies are their to hold obj, anything else is a bonus.

I cannot remember having a venom loaded with kabbs within 12" of their target.
Not saying that it couldn't happen but it seems like a good way to lose ur venom + kabbs in one go.

Painjunky wrote:

Yes that is true. But in my exp 95% of the time msu kabbies deploy in cover, have disembarked into cover by the end of turn 1, or are chillin in reserves.

The kabbies are their to hold obj, anything else is a bonus.

I cannot remember having a venom loaded with kabbs within 12" of their target.
Not saying that it couldn't happen but it seems like a good way to lose ur venom + kabbs in one go.  

Your meta may vary from mine. In our games, if you deploy 5 Kabalites anywhere in LOS of an enemy they're dead, cover or no cover. T3 models with (effectively) no save just can't survive any sort of firepower. Inside the Venom they're more survivable, although that bloody No Escape rule put a serious dent in that. Now our units have literally nowhere on the table they can be safe!

Quote :

Third:
Most enemy flyers are having a hard time hitting our skimmers now! That is awesome! Maybe we'll see less flyers now so if we use them we got air superiority pretty easily.

There isnt such rule, only Fighters in Death from the Skier are affected that way, in trade off they get Skyfire. All bombers and atack craft still batter our skimmers with impunity at full BS. They dont get some bonuses from Atack Patterns however, those that directrly mentions Ground Targets. But there isnt rule that states -1BS on ground targets.

And i hoping there is more flyers - we can kill em much easier.

If I do use my Dark Eldar under this FAQ (and let's not forget we still haven't seen the Dark Eldar specific one, so it's possible, albeit improbable, that we'll see the jinking snap shots element not apply to our raiders, or raiders with splinter racks perhaps) I'll still likely be using them the same way. Two gunboats filled with splinter rifle kabalites hitting on the DS. Within half range those two units pour out quite a bit of firepower and won't be affected unless an interceptor weapon targets them as they arrive. It'll mess up strategy a bit after that as I'll probably have to jink and move into cover in the next turn but provided you don't play on a bowling ball planet there should be enough cover to achieve that.

Reaver jetbikes with caltrops got a distinct boost when charging walkers as they hit the facing they're in contact with so we can use caltrops to disable them (ok, you don't see all that many walkers, but it's another reason to take reavers). My only issue with reavers is that locally I see a lot of wyverns and thunderfire cannons that are able to take them out pretty easily.

Painjunky wrote:

Lawrence recently took out 1st at the SN international using a combination of the above tactics... for the SECOND YEAR IN A ROW!!
Who says DE can't compete at tournaments?

That tournament had 30 people in it. Calling it "The SN International" is sort of like a toddler wearing it's dad's pants.

Painjunky wrote:

Yes that is true. But in my exp 95% of the time msu kabbies deploy in cover, have disembarked into cover by the end of turn 1, or are chillin in reserves.
 

In my experience, your experience is very unusual.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Painjunky wrote:

Yes that is true. But in my exp 95% of the time msu kabbies deploy in cover, have disembarked into cover by the end of turn 1, or are chillin in reserves.

The kabbies are their to hold obj, anything else is a bonus.

I cannot remember having a venom loaded with kabbs within 12" of their target.
Not saying that it couldn't happen but it seems like a good way to lose ur venom + kabbs in one go.  

Your meta may vary from mine. In our games, if you deploy 5 Kabalites anywhere in LOS of an enemy they're dead, cover or no cover. T3 models with (effectively) no save just can't survive any sort of firepower. Inside the Venom they're more survivable, although that bloody No Escape rule put a serious dent in that. Now our units have literally nowhere on the table they can be safe!

No my meta is exactly the same as yours. In 95% of my games they are deployed and spend most of the game in my dep zone, behind LOSB terrain, holding an obj. Thats what i meant when i said they deploy in cover and are just there to hold obj, I should have added the LOSB part.

In alot of games they do not even shoot!

Riding around in a skimmer is just suicide!