More Strategy - Less Crying

Moving on...

Tactical threads should stay on tactical stuff. So lets do that.

I think that the nerfs do something to inform our choices. If we install units that don't care about shooting much inside the Raiders, does that help us? Well yes. It makes jinking still worth doing.

Wyches did win with these nerfs, oddly. Even when one can say quite correctly that the Wyches are NOT the greatest thing since sliced break, one can easily see that they now might become a more explored unit.

I think we have the melee units to put in peoples gfaces, no problem. My question is, why don't we? I get that people love Venom spam but when you think about it... 12 shots = 8 hits = 4 wounds. make your saves! That's pretty good. But is it better than, say, killing tswo fellas and eating them on the Sweeping Advance? Nope. Not better.

I think the Dark Eldar can attack leadership like no ones business, and they can get aerial help from Eldar to this end. i think that the Dark Eldar strategy is much stronger on the melee side in general.

So i am curious as to what melee based lists people would use to mitigate (or take advantage) of the new FAQ's?

The Red King wrote:

I agree that msu still looks viable. I mean the jink change certainly hits our damage output, but who was winning with pure dark eldar based solely on the merits of our excessive firepower lol.

..

I think that view is slightly short-sighted. We might not have killed a TON with our warriors, but it didn't take MUCH to kill a lot of our stuff. So every single model we removed mattered to our own survival, since pretty much every non-DE model in the game is capable of destroying our vehicles and troops. And our own survival IS paramount in our potential to victory. The fewer units we have, the less we can secure objectives...the less we have to maneuver, the fewer points we can secure to win the game.

It might be difficult to visualize conceptually, but if you run the math on the lost shots every round after the first, you'll see that 50 kabalite warriors start out losing only 4 kills on space marines per round(out of 5), but then that snowballs to become even worse as our jinks hurt our offense, leaving the opponent 4 additional models per turn with which to fire back at us. By turn 5-6, there are 20 more space marines on the table than otherwise wouldn't be if those kabalites weren't so effected by jink.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I think Skulnbonz was the one who said he got best DE recently at a major GT.(Congrats again!)

Thanks, I appreciate it.


As for the Jink issue at hand,
Dark Eldar are supposed to win through movement, firepower and "death from 1,000 cuts". heck, one of our mission cards is named that very thing.

It is kind of hard to cut what you cannot hit.

If this rule stands, and i feel it will, Dark Eldar, as they are supposed to be played, will be simply unplayable. Yes, coven units are still effective (but not as much or efficient as warrior gunboat spam) but "death by shambling slow moving horde" is not quite the same.

For tournaments, DE will be facing even a higher hill to climb to just be compeitive, and realistically are not viable. sorry.

For fun games, I am thinking of breaking out the wyches. Why not? If you are going to play with sucky units, might as well go balls to the wall. I know this sounds tongue in cheek, but I truly mean it. Wyches, venoms, raiders, eithersails, reavers and hellions. Should be fun, and you wont expect to win, so every win will be that much sweeter!

I suppose those who use more warriors lose more than those using less. I recently decided (after the nerf) to move to a pure Dark Eldar list because my meta might be soft. So now my venom are scalpel squadrons and my troops are wyches.

Scalpel Squadrons and Wyches seem like they belong in completely opposite lists, at least to my reasoning. The Scalpel Squadron seems like a tax paid to get a complete null deployment option. I don't see how Wyches would work in tandem with that since they want to get into combat in most cases before they get shot up too much. Maybe you can help me see things your way?

Honestly I think Kabalites are still viable. Honestly if I have to chose between jink for 4+ and snap shoot with both warriors and venom, or just use the 5++ and shoot at full BS, I prefer the second, hands down. Not jinking is something I was always tried to do even before, I've never liked to snap with the venom. And if you consider that many army have easy acces to ignor cover weapons, than nothing changes "from a Venom point of view".

Raiders as gunbots are totally spoiled instead, nothing to say here.

Wyches are a little bit more viable in comparison now... but I still prefer the Kabalites.

The wyches are just a trial. The scalpel squadrons are just a personal preference on how to put venoms on the table without the warrior tax. Though, perhaps turning them all to obsec troops could be a better use. Though I have never put much stock in such flimsy obsec.

The scalpels will most likely become a corpsethief claw.

However in the vein of null deploy and wyches, late game pfp buffs make them fairly decent and surviving until then will most likely only occur if the enemy doesn't shoot them. That's theory not practice. Well actually I suppose early 7th I was running double scalpel with wyches in raiders and urien/succubus in a Grotesquerie. The pfp boost from urien really helps the wyches.

Out of curiosity, how many folks played DE in 3rd? 4th? The original codex? The revised codex? 5th?

The army that I originally played became obsolete by the time 5th edition was released. I made a new list (infantry actually - it could competitively outshoot guard at the time). That became obsolete. The 5th edition codex came out and Portals became a thing. 6th came out and the list had to change. 7th edition came... New codex... New FAQ...

I guess my point is, Dark Eldar haven't played the same for what seems to be two years at any given stretch... This seems to just be the way things are.

I'm not a very good general anymore, mostly due to real life and not having time to put into learning the game's nuances. But I think that regular army changes and massive list changes every few years should be expected. I'm sure something will come out within a few years to knock Eldar off their perch... We just have to adapt and adjust.

I've enjoyed the views on tactics here (this post and the forum as a whole) and appreciate the ability to have a solid community to listen and vent with. So complaints and all, I am thankful for the forum and the different views on how to roll with the new changes.

So can we create a list of units that have benefitted or are unchanged (and still good) with the new rules?

From what I can gather, the only thing to get better is the Razorwing due to our missiles now being able to target fliers.

Because of the jinking/snapfiring transports, I do see why people are looking at assault troops (wyches) who can still charge without penalty after their transport jinks. But this is more of a "unchanged" rather than a "buff".

Also, we still have some viable squads that are fast moving and dont require transports (beastpack) for our ally ICs. We can still ally, so long as we dont want to start the game in a transport.

With the slight buff to ruins, how are people feeling about mandrakes? I know people generally dont take them due to the prevalence of ignores cover, but they are fairly cheap for a 2+ cover save in ruins (and now its slightly harder to charge them).

Thoughts?

I'm sorry but I'm not sold on Wyches to "replace" Warriors for the same reasons as since the release of the 7th ed codex; no assault grenades, die to Overwatch, no haywire grenades. If the Jinking passenger FAQ stands I will be placing less reliance upon Warriors and going more for Reavers and Grots/Raiders/Sails initially. We're a fast army, so lets use it!!

1++ wrote:

I'm sorry but I'm not sold on Wyches to "replace" Warriors for the same reasons as since the release of the 7th ed codex; no assault grenades, die to Overwatch, no haywire grenades.

While I generally agree with your sentiment, I think it's important to note that wyches DO have assault grenades.

The Razorwing appears to have lost sky fire in the new flyer rules meaning it's of no use against enemy aircraft now

Nope, all Zooming Fighters can choose whether or not to have Sky-fire each turn, it's the Voidraven that misses out.

1++ wrote:

I'm sorry but I'm not sold on Wyches to "replace" Warriors for the same reasons as since the release of the 7th ed codex; no assault grenades, die to Overwatch, no haywire grenades. If the Jinking passenger FAQ stands I will be placing less reliance upon Warriors and going more for Reavers and Grots/Raiders/Sails initially. We're a fast army, so lets use it!!

Preach it brother!

For about 4 months now i have been using a grotesquerie in raiders (or a CTC) + a shedload of reavers as an assault force... they take the fight into my opponents half and threaten his objs.

Venoms, ravagers, hayscourge provide covering fire. Minimum kabbies camp on my obj, out of sight of course.

The grotesquerie and reavers work so well together. SO much fun to play.  

Edit - I'm hanging to cram a grotesquerie, reaver msu and a sword and board wraithnkight into a list but i fear i may giggle and scream like a schoolgirl during the game.

Aroshamash wrote:

Nope, all Zooming Fighters can choose whether or not to have Sky-fire each turn, it's the Voidraven that misses out.

Not in the Death from the skys rules to my knowledge.

Only fighters get skyfire which we don't have

The Razorwing is a Fighter though, not an Attack Flyer. As such, it can choose to have Sky-fire, as per the Death From the Skies rules.

Its an attack fighter

hydranixx wrote:

Scalpel Squadrons and Wyches seem like they belong in completely opposite lists, at least to my reasoning. The Scalpel Squadron seems like a tax paid to get a complete null deployment option. I don't see how Wyches would work in tandem with that since they want to get into combat in most cases before they get shot up too much. Maybe you can help me see things your way?

The delay serves you on the Power From Pain chart.  That is one advantage.

It's a Fighter, just the same as the Crimson Hunter, and all other Fighter craft, as opposed to the units marked Attack Flyers. This is reading directly from the mobile version of the book. Razorwings are definitely Fighter units.

Huh! There you go. I had a friend of mine quote it as an attack fighter in the hard back. I pick mine up tomorrow... see whats what then

So other than the Razorwing, has anyone else been able to find a unit that has benefited from the FAQ? Possibly due to the new blast/template rules or cover saves (medusa bomb anyone)?

fisheyes wrote:

So other than the Razorwing, has anyone else been able to find a unit that has benefited from the FAQ? Possibly due to the new blast/template rules or cover saves (medusa bomb anyone)?

Reavers have benefited from the hammer of wrath hitting the side of a walker that its touching rather than the front.

Not that we saw too many walkers, will be useful vs knights tho.

With the new template rules we may be seeing a few more furiosomthing BA dreadnoughts in pods as well. They have 3 templates, 2 with the frag launcher and 1 for the heavy flamer. Thats pretty good actually.

fisheyes wrote:

So other than the Razorwing, has anyone else been able to find a unit that has benefited from the FAQ?

Razorwing- buff. extra turn and missles versus bs3 vs ground
Voidraven- nerf
Wyches- nerf (1 grenade in combat, jink/shooting)
warriors- nerf (jink/shooting)
covens- nerf (due to ld bubble not working in transports anymore)

and on and on.

So... nope. Just the razorwing with 2 buffs versus 1 nerf.

It is sad to note that wyches, though actually nerfed with this faq, were nerfed so much less than other units it seems like they got a buff. That is the epitome of rising up by tearing others down

No problem, Massaen. There's always a bunch of false info floating around whenever a new book comes out. I know the Craftworlders get an Attack Flyer, the Hemlock, maybe there was some confusion? Kinda hoping we do get a third plane for an Attack Flyer as well in the next book, to round things out. We are supposed to have soe of the best aircraft out there, after all. (Not that the rules really show it at the moment...)