why do you play?

Maybe im missing something but when it comes to flyers wont our flyers down them in one pass? And with psykers you can helm of spite/ freakish spectacle/ armour of misey it up, and make psychic phase way too risky.

As for 2+ rerollable invuls, thats a broken mess for anyone. Maybe bog them down with wyches? Fire enough poison shots and hope for ones? GC's shouldnt be a problem, all our guns can hurt em on a 6. Thats something alot of armies dont have the luxury of. And theres also blaster spam, S8 AP2 LANCE is probably the best profile in the game for its point cost/availability.

gameoverman wrote:

Maybe im missing something but when it comes to flyers wont our flyers down them in one pass? And with psykers you can helm of spite/ freakish spectacle/ armour of misey it up, and make psychic phase way too risky.

As for 2+ rerollable invuls, thats a broken mess for anyone. Maybe bog them down with wyches? Fire enough poison shots and hope for ones? GC's shouldnt be a problem, all our guns can hurt em on a 6. Thats something alot of armies dont have the luxury of. And theres also blaster spam,  S8 AP2 LANCE is probably the best profile in the game for its point cost/availability.

Our flyers are mediocre at anything besides massed blast weapon dispersal.  Our dogfighter is outclassed by the 3 other common dogfighters and will lose more often than not.  Sadly pursuit and agility don't mean very much at all in dogfights but especially when you lack the firepower to down other flyers.

The relics we have for dealing with psykers (1 per character now thanks to the faq) are far too short range to deal with the fact that most psykers are on bikes.  They really don't do much for the price anyway.

As for tying up units with re-rollable 2++s - I'm assuming you're talking about ravenwing bikes?  If that's the case; they all have hit and run and depending on conditions can test it at a higher initiative or simply choose to autopass it.  More than likely those wyches are going to be vaporized in the next shooting phase (doubly so if black knights).

With no way to ignore cover (and reliably wound toughness 5), we have no counter to ravenwing or anything like it outside of melee units which are too slow to ever catch them.  I have been playing a ravenwing heavy dark angels list myself, and a dark eldar match up is... uninteresting to say the least.

Even the dark eldar's strongest facet - their fast skimmers, are eclipsed by the capabilities of ravenwing speeders.

Our counter to ravenwing is a wwp archon in a venom and 4 medusa. Loads of auto hits killing on 5s with no save. Medusa, wracks with liquifiers and chronos weapons will wreck ravenwing.

I find with dark eldar, so long as you know what youre up against you can pretty much counter anything. I love them for that. Far better than the tyranid playstyle of, how can I make it difficult for the opponent to kill me this time.

Except of course when you play a well thought army, you don't have to know what you're fighting ahead of time.

The ravenwing support squad for example that is part of the 2++ re-rollable jink strategy also has interceptor and carries 7-11 heavy weapons choosing from assault cannons, heavy bolters, heavy flamers (+venom = lol), multi meltas, and typhoon launchers.  "Gotcha'" tactics like this simply don't work against this strategy if the dark angels player has any idea what he's doing.

One unit alone will blow the ever loving crap out of that venom and possibly roast the medusae inside before it has the opportunity to fire, and it's common for a ravenwing army to field 2 such units.

Even if the remnants survive and are able to stand to take a charge, the dark shroud in the support unit prevents them from firing overwatch on the bikes.  So - that 250ish point unit will typically end up as "mud" under the tires without having any real effect on the game.

I've played this exact scenario, and like I said... it's uninteresting.

Yeah that sounds really nasty. Seems like forcing jink on those speeders would take a significant sting out of that armies tail. Youd also be sacrificing your best weapons next turn providing you had line of sight to the medusa venom, or venoms.

Building a take allcomers list with dark eldar can totallybe done. But with so many weapons wasted on certain units eg. Poison vs mech, lance vs MCs, soulfright vs marines why wouldnt us sneaky dark kin tailor for maximum impact. With soulfright weapons especially!

If you can tailor, there is no reason not too but the chances are your opponent will likely have the opportunity as well.  I originally built the dark angels army for my nephew to get him interested in the game, and we'd only play each other while he was learning, so tailoring was common.  I never did come up with a good way around the jink save though.

I've since re-inhereted the army, added some nastiness to it and am enjoying 40k on easy mode for a while.

As for an all comers list - The advise you'll find on this forum is generally what I'd give - keep your units cheap and plentiful.  Flood the table with fast moving venoms dropping off objective campers.  Only Play the objectives and learn what you can afford to ignore.

I don't list tailor because I generally play in competitive events where you never know what you're going to be up against. So rather than get into the habit of list tailoring against people when I know what their army is, I simply use one of my all-comers lists that I've made.

I've had people tailor against me. Normally it hasn't worked in their favor. When it has, it's been slightly frustrating knowing they tailored a list that wouldn't be good vs most things, while I played a list that'd be good vs anything, but it is what it is. These days, it's basically impossible to list tailor against me, since I own DE, Eldar, Orks, Necrons, and Tau. I want to add space marines just to have them in the available list, so people don't think they can get away with not worrying about AP3 or less.

I no longer tell my opponent what I'm playing until they're ready to exchange written lists. I won't even open my cases up till I have their list in my hand.

back in 3rd i played necrons. i loved how resilient they were with 'we'll be back'. i quit 40k before 4th dropped and then the first dawn of war game came a few years later. i played that game and had some nostalgic moments. Then an addon with the necrons and wow i played that thing through and through only necrons repeatedly. When soulstorm came and i continued with my lovely necrons, the campaign was played a few times.
When that got boring i tried the other factions throughout the campaign, always delaying dark eldar because i remembered back when i was playing in third ed reading through the DE codex and looking over statlines and pic i had thought to myself 'why would anyone play this' T3 av10 etc.....

and after a few games of soulstorms campaign i had completely lost it, this army is by far the best! all the soundwork, models and fluff wow that was it. i got together with my friends somewhere in 2012 i think and got them playing 40k again with me grabbing the fresh awesome new DE range.

so to sum it up i play dark eldar because of soulstorm, fluff and models. we might have some of the worst rules in 40k but that really doesnt affect me all that much. yeah sure im annoyed but all in all they could give us a crappier codex and i would still be rooting for us the one true eldar

doriii wrote:

so to sum it up i play dark eldar because of soulstorm, fluff and models. we might have some of the worst rules in 40k but that really doesnt affect me all that much. yeah sure im annoyed but all in all they could give us a crappier codex and i would still be rooting for us the one true eldar

Yeah, it was the same for me. Me and a friend where looking for a good RTS to play together. When I first played Soulstorm I didn't really like and the factions felt somewhat boring to me, until I played Dark Eldar.

Oh boy, the soundtrack was great, the voice acting of the units were spot on and the speed of the units were simply amazing. Then I started reading the fluff on the 40k wiki which I thought was brilliant and this is how I got into 40k.

For those with a long held love of the dark eldar from soul storm - The table top simulator models are ripped right from the kabal of the all-seeing eye.



Unfortunately, playing 40k on tabletop simulator is still clunky to say the least... it'll get there though if GW doesn't shut it down first (which is likely).

I forgot to actually answer the question of why I own a dark eldar army though...  After my last "I give up on GW" fit, I was selling off all my armies.  During this process, I ended up basically exchanging 5 ork models for about 3k worth of 3rd edition dark eldar models.  I made up my mind then that it would be the one army I would keep and really grew to enjoy playing it.  Of course I had to beef it out first, mostly with venoms.

A few years later though, I'm back up to alternating between 5 armies... so it looks like another summer of selling models on ebay.

I play DE because I love a challenge and winning with them is more rewarding than with an OP army. I am still new to 40k but I have been winning a vast majority of my matches (I pretty much only play against SM) at the local GW I play at.

I also enjoy playing DE because they are under represented in general so it is nice being a little different than everyone else.

I fell i nlove with the ELdar race a Looooong time ago. I had Recently discovered warhammer 40k and wanted to start playing ASAP. So i went to my local store and ask for info especifically for the Eldar faction, the shopowner told me to start with SPM something everyone could take on, it was then that my inner Dark Eldar came out and long story short, Never call "fanboy smurffs scum" on a Ultramrine shopowner. After that i found a group of exiles playing on a garage on saturdays and sundays and when i told them i wanted to play DE (i had a 7th codex by then)  they were thrilled! they told me that very few people liked them that much because they were like playing WH40k in Extra Hard mode. none the less they helped me a LOT to get my new current army and developing strategies they saw fit for them, that and plunging me really deep into a pool of AWESOME LORE arround the Dark Kin made me a die hard fan of Dark Eldar. I love them, i dont mind the squishines of them as long as we are having fun and puting out some pain.

Who in their right mind WOULD NOT play space elf pirates hedonists that feed on pain and are arrogant and elegant beyond belief? that and the lunatic laugh every time you take down a Terminator squad with Kablaites makes my day.

May your Raids be Fast and Terrible Fellow Archons

GW released the Start Collecting Box for the Dark Kin and they seemed intriguing. The models are all beautiful and their playstyle seemed like a nice divergent from the gunline my Ad Mech is.

The most prominent armies in 40K also feel just very easy to play. They almost always have access to some super strong weapons which produces games after the scheme "Unit A points at Unit B, Unit B dies. Other players turn. Unit C points at Unit A, Unit A dies. Other players turn...". 40K just requires almost no real effort when you play Space Marines, Necrons, Eldar, Tau or heck, even Ad Mech! The weaknesses of those armies are either "we are squishy", "we have only medium range" or "we have a low model count". But none of those things is a glaring weakness that would wreck the whole army if not played very carefully (at least at non-tournament level). There seldomly is a real game plan. Ask a Ultramarines player what his strategy is. "Well, I'll bring in X Drop Pods turn 1 with some Grav Centurions and blast the most dangerous unit off the table. After that I'll shoot the rest".

Now, I am generalising here of course and there may very well be brilliant players out there that go beyond that level of playing.

On the other end of the spectrum we have armies like the Dark Eldar. Our army is considered weak or "low-tier" because we have almost none of those allround-powerhouses like Centurions, Kastelan Robots, Stormsurges etc. Instead we are one of the squishiest armies out there, with vehicles that are exploding deathtraps waiting to happen and many units that are falling victim to the power creep of 40K.

And that is where the charm lies for me. We actually have to think and use strategies to win games. We can't just rely on certain units blasting whole squads off the table every turn. Instead we have to use the speed of our papier machè vehicles to control the flow of the battle. We have to pick our fights and force our opponent to play our game. And that for me is how a strategy game like 40K should be at its core. Not a pissing contest to see how can have the most D weapons in a list etc. but much like a game of chess, a test of who can outplay his opponent the best.

It is fun to spend time with the hobby and see the results. See it become something. The community is riddled with geeks and you will see they do have hearts as well. It is hard for an outsider to understand why you spend so much time playing. Most importantly, it is fun to beat people up, using foul plays and seeing people suffer. To always be a bit more competitive than your opponent so you can snatch that win.

I stated playing Dark Eldar when the 5th Edition Codex arrived, but that wasn't the first time I encountered them...

I've played Blood Angels off and on since the Rogue Trader days and when I got back into 40k in 4th Edition one of my friends was playing Dark Eldar, although he eventually switched to Orks and Space Wolves.

I liked the fast, glass cannon nature of the Dark Eldar but I didn't want to buy the old miniatures, so when the new stuff arrived I basically bought two boxes of everything released in plastic and one box of everything released in metal, and built my army from that.

5th Edition was the most fun for me.  I like to assault, and being able to assault from reserve or via a webway portal was a lot of fun.  I used my Wyches and Lelith heavily in 5th, which hasn't been the case since.

My friends and I drifted away from 40k in 6th Edition, because it felt overcomplicated, slow and generally not fun any more.  We came back for 7th Edition and have stuck with it so far.

I won't deny that the 7th Edition Codex was a surprise and, to be honest, a disappointment in some ways.  I couldn't understand a lot of the design decisions that had been made. Some - like limiting weapon options on upgrade characters to just what's in the box and cutting out special characters without models I later understood in the context of the fallout from GW vs Chapterhouse, but other decisions - no Flickerfields on Raiders, no Nightshields on Venoms, the general lack of utility of Hellions and Wyches and so on, I still struggle with a bit.

Still, I remind myself that I started playing Dark Eldar because I was looking for something different to Space Marines that would be a challenge, and that's still what I'm getting. I play because I still enjoy the game and the models still look great on the table, even with my abysmal painting skills. In fact, recent games motivated me to finally finish painting my army last week.  The last unit was ten Hellions, which I fielded for perhaps only the second time in 7th Edition yesterday.  They all died as soon as my opponent looked at them, but they're Hellions, what can you expect?

In some ways I think I'm lucky that I've never had any interest in tournaments or competitive play - which isn't to say I don't like to win, I do, and there have been times when I've gotten as angry about being tabled as anyone - but I can still enjoy the army knowing that it's not the best in the game.

In fact, that game yesterday? This is what I took:

Dark Artisan formation.
Archon with a blaster and WWP and three Medusae in a Venom.
2 x 10 Wyches in Raiders (1 DL, 1 Disintegrator)
2 x 5 Scourges (2 x Blaster, 2 x Heat Lance)
1 x 6 Reavers (2 x Heat Lance, 1 x Caltrops)
1 x 10 Hellions
1 x 5 Mandrakes
1 x Voidraven

The theme was "stuff I don't usually take", and I had a really fun game.  That's why I play Dark Eldar, really.  It's a challenge, but it's fun.

I started at the beginning of 3rd edition mainly because of the awesome cover art of the armybook, and the old jet bikes with their copious amounts of spikes. Reading the fluff only intrigued me more as it was mostly imperial reports of massacres caused by unknown assailants. Cool stuff for a young me.
Now I have restarted collecting them, it's the beautiful models, which I think are some of gamesworkshops best sculpts up there with the Diaz demonettes. Im also a fan of the death by a thousand cuts style of play and no other army can do it with this much style.

Style. That's the key word there.

"If cats looked like toads we would realize what *expletives* they are. Style, that's what people remember."

There are myriad reasons I play Dark Eldar, but at the root it's all about style

My first love was Necrons, and I still prefer them over DE. I found Necrons to be very repetitive, though, and wanted something at the other end of the spectrum. I was also kind of broke, so buying new models was a problem. A friend had a DE army he never really finished assembling, so I bought it off him for a song.

A decade later, I think DE are a good choice because of how punishing they are. I'll really have to improve as a player in order to be successful with them, while some of the easier armies don't provide as much incentive to improve.

I started DE in 5th for a few reasons:
- The models were gorgeous.
- I liked the fluff (and I have a thing for the bad guys).
- I thought the rules were fun and flavourful.
- I liked the playstyle
- One of my friends wanted to sell his DE, and offered them to me at a very reasonably price (also meant I was the only person in our group using DE, which I like).

In 7th, most of what I liked was removed and replaced with . . . nothing. I don't want to turn the thread into a list of complaints, so let's just say that I found the 7th edition rules severely lacking in both flavour and function. Of particular sadness to me were the changes to characters and wargear. I just ended up feeling that points spent on characters were points wasted, which (as someone who likes characters) is something that depressed me no end.

Anyway, when Corsairs came out I felt that I suddenly had the opportunity to play the DE army I'd always wanted to.
- With Reckless abandon, Scout and Jet Packs galore, my armies finally felt fast and manoeuvrable.
- With easy Fusion Guns, Scatter Lasers and Shuriken Cannons, and far more prolific access to Dark Lances, I no longer felt like I was constantly scrounging for anti-armour.
- With the Corsair Prince, I finally had an HQ that I actually wanted to spend points on.

For me at least, Corsairs just felt like what DE should have been.

It also gave me an opportunity to get some use out of the DE models I never use (my Corsair Prince and Void Seer are converted Mandrakes, my Malevolents are Wych/Hellion Skyboard hybrids etc.).

All that said, my group hasn't played 40k for a while now. So this is more a 'if we were still playing 40k, I'd be using Corsairs'.

I have a thing for elves. Every game i play if i can be an elf, i'm an elf. So that narrowed it down to Eldar. I chose the True Kin over the Craftworlders because i liked the models better. I also didn't want to be the goody two shoes race; evil just felt... right, considering we're going to war and what not. I also liked the idea of being the glass cannon, a role i stray to often. After buying the models and really getting into the fluff i fell in love even more.

After reading about the Harliquins i was super excited, they were automatically one of my favorites. I started in 5th, so it was originally my plans to fill my Deldar army with them. But before i even bought a model 7th was out. Im really excited to start my Harli army soon, the models look really fun to paint and it will be a nice complement to my Deldar (which are still my true love).

I've recently been reading about Corsairs and have a feeling that after Harlis these will be my next project. As The Shredder said, they have what Deldar seem to be missing. I also like their fluff/story more so than the Craftworlders.

When Jes Goodwin redesigned the models, I had to paint them, they looked so lithe and beautiful compared to todays extra chunky space marines.

I play De for the fluff & models, My friend plays tau and I think he gets a bit jealous of my models. All honour the god JESS GOODWIN! (and Phil kelly).

Back when i was 14 my friend was given a 2 army starter set for WH40K. I ended up painting the space marines half of the set adn playing my frined a game or two using the dark eldar half.

I wanted to play tyranids when I was that age, but never had the money to invest in warhammer.

Years later I had decided to give up playing MTG as I had played since around ice age and had become disillusioned with the franchise. I traded my collection of cards to my local game store and used the credit to pick up some dark eldar.

initially it was a talos, 10 wracks, 5 hellions, 5 scourge.

This was actually my second venture into warhammer 40K the first being nids and necrons. They just didnt feel right. and I no longer have either of those armies.

I play Dark Eldar partly because everyone think they are crap (which they are not), because they are challenging to play since they require use of mechanics that noone else uses, because they require you to think in ways that noone does and finally, because they have one of the best model lines in the W40 and are not marines. :-D

Thats why I am currently adding Harlies too. The very same reasons.

I am also adding Corsairs for the opportunity of converting the gorgeous DE models into them.

I will probably never add any purely CWE units or models. I have a dislike for our light cousin from both aesthetic and fluff point of view.