why do you play?

The title is a bit provocative but that's on purpose:
Why do you play Dark Eldar? And why did you stick with them or changed to Craftworld or Corsair?

For me it was the speed and the evil of them. I don't like playing the good guys and back on the days they were the fastest army available.

I'm sticking with them because I still win. In fact I win most of my games. Sure, my friends aren't tournament players, we are doing our own campaign. I don't face teleport super friends death stars but though lists nevertheless.

So I'm able to play the true kin the way I want them to. Well. Mostly. I own iron Warriors too, so I'm fine the way dark Eldar are. I haven't played a single game since the last chaos codex dropped so I'm used to endure.

Damn. Wrong section. Could this please be moved to discussion?

Oh, and I'd like to add that I like being the special snowflake with this army

I played for the models. Having reviewed my current armies however and the usage they get I've decided reluctantly to sell my Dark Eldar as I've only rarely had them out of the cabinet in the last year. That's not to say I wouldn't start them again one day, just that I don't see myself playing them much in the next year either as I rebuild my Space Marine army.

So you're essentially just spying on us, Monh-keigh?

CptMetal wrote:

So you're essentially just spying on us, Monh-keigh?

Something like that.

Mainly though it's just that I find the interaction on this forum far more enjoyable than any other forums I've ever joined (except my club one of course).

What originally drew me to the True Kin? The miniatures caught my eye, and after buying the 5th edition Codex, miniatures, and reading their fluff I found myself really liking the concept of sadistic hedonistic space pirates.

What did I enjoy about playing the True Kin? Like I stated above I enjoyed the fluff, but I also enjoyed the speed. In 5th edition I loved many of the little unique things I could do while utilizing our mobility, turbo boosting envenomed bladevanes and cluster caltrops to re-position and causing damage to those units I passed over was a lot of fun to me and one of the changes I took hardest when I returned after taking 6th edition off do to being to busy at the time among other things.

What made me initially start collecting miniatures to build a Corsair army? I tend to like to stick to a theme, my Kabal is a Piratical Kabal so allying in Eldar Corsairs made sense to me even if the first iteration of them wasn't superb, after buying the 1st edition of IA, a conversion kit and two Hornets I didn't play much longer and the army never came to pass.

Why did I also begin collecting Harlequins? I always liked the concept behind them and when they got a rules update I thought they were interesting enough to buy a few to ally with my Dark Eldar and still planned Corsair Army. Harlequins always caught my attention even when they were just one unit in the codex as they had their own agenda and make sense fluff wise to ally with any Eldar army I would build.

Why did I decide to shelve my Dark Eldar for the rest of 7th, only taking them down when the urge hits me, and switch completely over to Corsairs? Frustration at the current state of the Dark Eldar, the fact that I really don't want to run a Covens heavy list if I want to keep pace with a more competitive element of players, lack of mobility on a race famed for it, and the current changes we have seen with the BRB FAQ got me looking at the 2nd edition of IA 11. What I saw there grabbed me. The amount of flavor put into the army called to me in much the same way 5th edition's unique unit rules had called to me when I started. I could add in a role playing element if I wished with the Corsairs that I couldn't do with just about any other army, they have the level of maneuverability that the Dark Eldar used to have, and can be just as sadistic and hedonistic, with more abandon at times with their unprotected Psykers treading paths that the True Kin fear to tread. With many of the fluffy and flavor oriented abilities of the Dark Eldar removed or pointless in many match ups do to rules like ATSKNF negating them, or just down right removal as in the old bladevanes and chainsnares, I just don't enjoy playing them as much as I used to while I'm finding the Corsairs fill the void left by the 7th edition Dark Eldar codex.

Rules change, I can accept that to an extent but for me the removal of the more fluff orientated originality found in the rules of the Dark Eldar has just left me feeling like the army has moved in a direction I'm not enjoying. The pain tokens system was cumbersome and needed to be changed but when I look at what they did for us then look at what they did for the Khorne Daemons I just can't help but feel like we were cheated by lazy writing and become demotivated to dust off the Dark Eldar to use them. Maybe I just let the Role Playing element influence me to much.

I first came to them looking for something tougher than and vastly different than my Salamander army.

The models and fluff both engaged me immensely (no other army is as customizable with simple bits swaps).

I'm also a huge fan of trying to pioneer new ways of doing things. This usually ends in disaster, but when I started getting success with the Freakshow I knew I was in for life.

I like ninjas. My friend who got me interested in 40k said "there aren't any ninjas in 40k, but the closest thing is probably DE."

So I looked into the factions, liked the sound of wych cults and thought the models looked incredible. I also started during our 5th edition codex, so it seemed like we had a lot of really cool options available to customize our army. I assumed that would continue with our later codex.

Why I stayed with them? No one wants to buy my 60 wyches. Haha.

But seriously, while playing DE, I really did grow to appreciate them as a faction for their fluff, and the models are great. I am holding on to hope that they get a better codex next time around. If they don't, I don't know if I'll be a die-hard fan for yet another failed codex cycle.

I started playing Dark Eldar because I wanted an ally for my Harlequin army, which I started because I was getting bored of my Dark Angels, and Ninja Space Elf Clowns seemed pretty awesome, and they had their own codex.

I stick with it because the Dark Eldar are just fun. They're different from most other armies, are pretty fast, are incredibly squishy, and, when combo'd with Harlequins, let you do a bunch of silly stuff.
I love the models, I love the mobility, I love that they make anything with a toughness cry, I love that they are difficult to play, but when done right are amazing, I love the fluff of them. Path of the Dark Eldar is one of my favorite warhammer series of all time, right behind the Legacy of Caliban, which takes first.

There might not be many options for us, but those that we do have are a lot more fun and interesting than most armies that I've seen. Just compare how much fun playing an army of Dark Eldar and Harlequins to how much fun it would be playing something like gladius battle company, or scatbike/WK spam, or Tau gunline, or any number of strong lists that can almost play themselves.

Dark Eldar keep me interested because they require attention. They don't have anything like Thunderwolves that you can just ram down your enemy's throat without paying attention to whats going on. Our nastiest CC guys, CTC and grotesquirie units, require proper planning to make use of. Most of our units can be made to do far more than they look like they can on paper when used together properly, and if you make a mistake and use a unit wrong, then they fall over and die like guardsmen.

The army may be unforgiving, weak, outclassed in every possible way by others (like corsairs), lack many things that others have, and have plenty of terrible synergy between many of its units, but that just makes it all that much more fun for me to play.

Way back in the day I was "king" of my playing group, and I wanted more of a challenge, so everyone said DE are rough to play. Years later I'm still running many of the same models, and it's still a very rewarding challenge. Also, Craftworld aren't pointy so...

Quote :

Damn. Wrong section. Could this please be moved to discussion?

Done.

Mod hat off.

I was originally drawn to the Dark Eldar before the fifth edition release. I have always played DE for their fluff. I just love having an army of sadistic space elf pirates who live in a secret pirate city. I have always enjoyed the Eldar race as a whole.

I will always stick with DE because I play for my own enjoyment rather than winning, hence I have always stuck to pure DE when I play. I have CWE as well, but they're a completely seperate force.

I always liked to play with the good guys, but the aesthetics of the dark eldar range, and the challenge of playing with this army hooked me, and with time, I started to like the fluff and theirs nihilistic point of view to the galaxy!
I play with pure dark eldar

I got into Dark Eldar because I liked them in third Ed and thought I'd pick them up after a long hiatus. The new 5th edition models looked awesome and l like a painting challenge. Not sure how DE stack up to the other factions painting difficulty-wise, but the segmented armor alone presents its own difficulties.

I also like being the underdog and underestimated. Drinking the tears of an opponent who thought they were in for an easy ride when they lose is sweet wine

When I first saw DE, in the 3ed release box, I thought 'these guys are stupid. Anyway didn't Slaanesh eat all the other Eldar during the Fall?' Then I forgot about them and kept tooling around with numerous other half complete armies.

Then I read The Torturer's Tale in a White Dwarf.

That same White Dwarf had a showcase of Dark Eldar minis that looked amazing. As I reevaluated the fluff, and found more and more that I liked, so too did I reevaluate the miniatures. The simplicity that I had dismissed in the plastics I soon realised could be a base on which to build, with any sort of conversion I could think of.

And when I played them, that speed, that fragility that punished mistakes like no other army, that feeling when you didn't make mistakes and simply destroyed your enemy... yes, it was addictive.

The 5ed apotheosis was a dream, a Codex replete with options and models that were now in my opinion, at the very peak of GW's range. Keep playing? You bet.

The 7ed Codex was, well, not as good. In fact I feel a surge of rage everytime I look at that debased wargear page. Perhaps it wouldn't be as bad if we'd gone straight from 3ed to 7ed, without kissing the sky in 5ed first - we wouldn't have seen the heights, we wouldn't know what we'd lost.

This feeling of loss, disappointment and anger at the book led me to take a break from the DE, and pick up some Necrons. I needed some time to get over the book, before I could come back and look to find the fun in it again.

Why did I come back? I'm far too attached to the Dark Eldar to ever leave them for good. Fluff, playstyle, models... rules come and go, but the essence of the Dark Kin endures.

I never played CWE. I always played against them, got used to them having all of the cool toys, all of the special rules, all of the attributes for success on the field and them some. I always revelled in beating them regardless. Sure, it was fun to leave the cream of humanity dead in the dust, mop up Orks like the animals they are, or banish some daemons back to the warp, but nothing compares to spilling the blood of our self-righteous cousins.

Ally with them? Never. Slaanesh can eat their souls. I'm with the Dark Kin.

I collect Dark Eldar mostly for their aesthetic. What's not to love about cybergoth pirate elves?

CptMetal wrote:

The title is a bit provocative but that's on purpose:
Why do you play Dark Eldar? And why did you stick with them or changed to Craftworld or Corsair?

For me it was the speed and the evil of them. I don't like playing the good guys and back on the days they were the fastest army available.

I'm sticking with them because I still win. In fact I win most of my games. Sure, my friends aren't tournament players, we are doing our own campaign. I don't face teleport super friends death stars but though lists nevertheless.

So I'm able to play the true kin the way I want them to. Well. Mostly. I own iron Warriors too, so I'm fine the way dark Eldar are. I haven't played a single game since the last chaos codex dropped so I'm used to endure.

Dark Eldar look totally bad ass and i loved the idea of a dark Circus. LOVE IT. So the Coven and Beatss and Talos and all that? I'm in.

I started with Tyranids who's models I loved, but after 6 months I felt playing them was like bashing my head against a brick wall. Even in friendly games I'd have to run Flyrant spam to get a good chance at winning and frankly I wanted to play with The Swarmlord, Carnifexes, Warriors, Raveners, Hive Guard etc, basically everything that turns out is massively sub par (I know how people who really want to run a Wych Cult feel).

So I looked to DE as their model line is the equal of Nids, and it can be fun to play a faction that is completely uapolageticly evil, turned up to 11. I found that outside of Wych Cults and after a steep learning curve a lot of our units are quite usable, and have won dozens of games over the last year (lost nearly as many but most have been pretty close) where as the number of games my Nids have won can be counted on one hand.

Why I stick with 40K- I like the strategy and the communication in the game pre-amble. I like the drama that unfolds as dice either utterly betray your plans or make you seem like Asdrubael Vect; calling it all the time. I like the banter between my opponents. I like winning but can accept losing if the game was kept tight. I really dislike being out of a game from before set-up because nothing I have can compete with my opponent's new shiny.

I stick with DE because they look cool, they are rarely seen in friendly games or represented in tournaments (although now I could argue that nids have gone the way of the dodo locally). This makes me a more unique snowflake and I crave attention . DE have also retained the moniker: "40K on hard mode." I like to think that makes my play "more intelligent."

I am an eternal optimist and feel that their next major iteration could be tomorrow with the rate of change seen in the past 2 years. I was drawn in by the terms- "lightning fast piratical raiders who are able to lay down a withering amount of fire and cause death by a thousand cuts." Having seen what the Eldar, Corsairs, Covens and Harliequins can do with their rule sets, I have hope that DE can be delivered from this rather mediocre, albeit pretty, codex.

I loke model range and fluff.

I started to play dark Eldar because no one else did, and everyone said they sucked. so I was unique. I also tabled a lot of people! The speed! Oh the speed ! I love being all over the table all at once .

I've always been all about speed and hyperaggression in any game I play - whether gambits in chess, or ranged cavalry in RTS games and the like.

My first introduction to tabletop 40k came through Imperial Guard in 5th, but Veterans in Chimeras just aren't as fast as Reaver Jetbikes. Then by coincidence I ended up getting into goth culture too, so Dark Eldar ended up a doubly good fit for what army to play when I decided to get back to 40k.

I started DE as I wanted something a little more tactically challenging, an army that on paper would lose, but on the battlefield, all bets are off!

Like a lot of others, the fluff helped suck me in, sadly It didn't occur to me, that an ambushy / sneaky faction, could never be played like that on the tabletop.

I have a SM & a small Tau collection too & when my eldest started showing interest, surprise, surprise, he went for the SM's so I saw an opportunity to start something new.

I love how awesome our models look & how great a simple display can look.

Oh, & mostly I went DE because I didn't realise quite HOW badly off they are in Codex power & just assumed the boxes would be better. ie enough weapons in the box to actually equip a squad as per the codex. Grots. not being single models etc.

I did also believe the rumors that our next Codex will drop sometime this year, so figured by the time it did, I would have maybe 1000/1250 of models ready & the new Codex couldn't be worse right...

Hi guys, been lurking in the webway a while and just joined. Im in love with my dark eldar! Fast, hard hitting and fragile is alot of fun to play. I didnt play the dark kin until 7th, so I didnt feel the sting of the transition of the last codex.

I think dark eldar are really strong. Coming from a tyranid background I find the codex full of tactics and effective units. We have the tools to deal with literally anything, and our fragility makes the opponents super weapons/units kind of obsolete.

A farourite tactic of mine is web way portalling aload of blaster born or medusa. It wrecks anything. I never realized just how bad Nids are until I looked through the dark eldar codex.

gameoverman wrote:

Hi guys, been lurking in the webway a while and just joined. Im in love with my dark eldar! Fast, hard hitting and fragile is alot of fun to play. I didnt play the dark kin until 7th, so I didnt feel the sting of the transition of the last codex.

I think dark eldar are really strong. Coming from a tyranid background I find the codex full of tactics and effective units. We have the tools to deal with literally anything, and our fragility makes the opponents super weapons/units kind of obsolete.

A farourite tactic of mine is web way portalling aload of blaster born or medusa. It wrecks anything. I never realized just how bad Nids are until I looked through the dark eldar codex.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I fear it may be a touch misplaced. We certainly don't have the tools to deal with "Anything". Psykers, Deathstars with low invuln saves with rerolls, and Gargantuan creatures immediately come to mind.

P.S. I don't believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe in the power of positive planning, and act accordingly. If we know we have a particular set of weaknesses, you can't overcome it by choosing to pretend it doesn't exist. Failure to plan is planning to fail.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

gameoverman wrote:

Hi guys, been lurking in the webway a while and just joined. Im in love with my dark eldar! Fast, hard hitting and fragile is alot of fun to play. I didnt play the dark kin until 7th, so I didnt feel the sting of the transition of the last codex.

I think dark eldar are really strong. Coming from a tyranid background I find the codex full of tactics and effective units. We have the tools to deal with literally anything, and our fragility makes the opponents super weapons/units kind of obsolete.

A farourite tactic of mine is web way portalling aload of blaster born or medusa. It wrecks anything. I never realized just how bad Nids are until I looked through the dark eldar codex.

While I appreciate your enthusiasm, I fear it may be a touch misplaced. We certainly don't have the tools to deal with "Anything". Psykers, Deathstars with low invuln saves with rerolls, and Gargantuan creatures immediately come to mind.

P.S. I don't believe in the power of positive thinking. I believe in the power of positive planning, and act accordingly. If we know we have a particular set of weaknesses, you can't overcome it by choosing to pretend it doesn't exist. Failure to plan is planning to fail.

To be fair, we do have a lot more answers to somethings than the Tyranids do, so in some ways, gameoverman our new plaything is right. Though, I would also say you're right, and add to your list with enemy Flyers give us a lot of grief as ours pretty terrible against them and we have no anti air options on the ground.

@gameoverman , the state of the game is such that both Dark Eldar AND Tyranids are quite weak outside of very niche builds nowadays. However, I agree with you, we do have some pretty awesome choices, and I love portal Medusae as well (eat that AP3, marines!).

As for me, I came to Dark Eldar mainly due to our skimmers. They were very appealing back in 3rd, with entire army lists carried by those arrow shaped Raiders. Having a medley of fast, spiky & expendable flying transports with decent dakka is something not many factions had back then. Now our skimmers and Jetbikes look even more beautiful than before, and are still unique enough to be very appealing to me.

The fluff from 3rd was really dark and mysterious. It showed the faction consisting of torturous, dickish space elves that didn't bother justifying their actions; they did did whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. They did not 'have' to be sadistic for their souls' sakes like they are now, they were sadistic purely because they could be, and because they chose to be.

I particularly like the stories, such as where Vect meets a human prisoner, gives him some tea and then has a nice long chat about the fall of the Eldar, before revealing the tea is poisoned. When he pleads and asks why is he being tortured, Vect smugly replies, "why not?" and then laughs and walks off.

And the one where they capture a young man, torture, blind and drug him and then send him back to the population. He grows old mad, ranting and raving about shadows and the Dark Eldar, sowing fear and making everyone scared foretelling their return, and then literally dies the day that they do arrive to capture even more prisoners, after having served his purpose to make everyone more scared.