Highlander tournament 1500pts

We had an ITC Highlander at my FLGS with odd rules:

No named characters.
If you want to take duplicates you must have 1 other unit in the same slot.
No FW
No duplicate HQs
No Superheavies
No Flyers.
Must be a standard CAD (but somehow Harlequins were allowed to play O_o)

My list was a Haemonculus with a Scissorhand and Helm of Spite, a Succubus with Armor of Misery, Archite Glaive, and Haywire grenades. Troops were 3x warriors in Venoms with a blaster and 1x Wyches in a Venom. Elites were 2x Wracks with Acothyst with Scissorhand and Ossefactor in Venoms and a 10 man Grotesque squad with an Abberation with Scissorhand. No fast attacks, and only HS was a Chronos with the Spirit Siphon.

First round was against a double Dreadknight Grey Knights player on Crusade. He shunted up early and my splinterfire managed to take out one Dreadknight before it could hurt my guys with its force weapons. The second Dreadknight fell similarly on turn 2, though the final blow was dealt by a single lone warrior with a blaster in overwatch. He's getting something special for that. After the 2 big guys went down the remainder of the battle was me basically forcing his stuff to stay bottled up in transports while scoring Maelstrom points. He had 2 Razorbacks and a Land Raider watching objectives, but my ob-sec guys managed to deny both his objectives at the end of turn 5 while scoring both of mine, ending the game with me winning 10-0, almost a shut-out.

Round 2 was the Relic against a Necrons player with 12 Wraiths. Turn 1 went much like before, I shot an entire unit of Wraiths off the board while his scarabs, spiders, and everything he had really marched up to hold me back. He shot my boats out from under me pretty fast with his tesla barges but the melee in the center between my Wracks and Grotesques and his Wraiths and Scarabs went on for 4 turns. Eventually I pulled out, snagged the relic, ran to cover, and though he tried to deny I punched his boat off the field, denying him table quarters and getting me a win for 6-5.

Round 3 I was on table 2 and got cocky, as this was the best I've ever done in an event and there were a fair number of people attending (22). So naturally I got my teeth kicked in. It was by a Tau player running suits, mostly Riptides with Crisis Suits. 0-11 he tabled me, first by shooting out my boats, then by picking off my Grotesques while jumping away. Not much I can say about this one, it was a hard counter to my list and Dark Eldar are notoriously weak against Tau to begin with.

So all in all it was a good time and I did well, especially for the army I chose. Even got compliments from the winner of the event, as we've played each other before and it was very close. He seems impressed I'm the only Dark Eldar player to consistently win games. However I think I've pushed the upper limits of what this codex is capable of. Aside from a Corpsethief Claw/Dark Artisan/obsec Venom spam there's not much I can field that's going to perform noticeably better than what I'm already deploying.

how many warrior venoms?

Glad to hear it went well. What was MVP?

3 Warrior Venoms, 6 Venoms in total. MVP was probably the warrior with the blaster who pasted a Dreadknight, but other than that, it's a tough call. The Grotesques did their job of being a big tough block of mans, the Chronos did its job of holding them together. The Wracks were effective flanking support, the Venoms shot the ever loving crap out of things and rushed objectives, the Succubus murdered stuff at AP2, and the Haemonculus kept the psykers at bay. All in all every part of the list did what I'd hoped it would do without any real problems until I went up against Tau.

So you had 3 warrior squads, and 1 wych squad? Doesnt that break the rules you posted? (you needed a second wych squad)

So if you didnt have any MVP's, can you give us some feedback on what you wish you HAD brought? Would a DA formation have been useful?

fisheyes wrote:

So you had 3 warrior squads, and 1 wych squad? Doesnt that break the rules you posted? (you needed a second wych squad)

So if you didnt have any MVP's, can you give us some feedback on what you wish you HAD brought? Would a DA formation have been useful?

The specific rules of the tournament were that you could take 2 troop units of one type, and could unlock a 3rd, if you took a troop unit of a different type. In order to take a 4th of one type, you had to take 2 of the 2nd type. So, 3 warrior units and 1 wyche unit was legal. Of course, if your army only has one troop unit type, then none of this applies.

I competed in the exact same tournament. I'll be posting my summary at some point in the near future.

fisheyes wrote:

So you had 3 warrior squads, and 1 wych squad? Doesnt that break the rules you posted? (you needed a second wych squad)

So if you didnt have any MVP's, can you give us some feedback on what you wish you HAD brought? Would a DA formation have been useful?

Honestly I was at a huge advantage here relatively speaking. Dark Eldar formations are good but other armies' formations are downright ruthless, so forcing Necrons to make do with their stock reanimation and Tau with only a single unit of marker drones really damaged people's play styles. Meanwhile I was merely denied a bonus from a Grotesquerie table and could run obsec Venom spam. Other armies were forced to fight at my level and I beat 2 of my usual worst match ups by plowing through their own cheese.

Not having MVPs is usually a good sign, as that means there was not too much or too little of anything. The army functioned well as a cohesive unit. I don't wish I brought anything specifically from the DE codex.

Quote :

I competed in the exact same tournament. I'll be posting my summary at some point in the near future.

Were you the other DE player? If so how did you do?

TeenageAngst wrote:

Quote :

I competed in the exact same tournament. I'll be posting my summary at some point in the near future.

Were you the other DE player? If so how did you do?

Not bad. I got off to a really rough start though. First game was vs. a Tau player - might have been the same one who tabled you - unit of 3 riptides, broadsides loaded with missiles, deepstriking unit of ghostkeels. I lost that one 11-1 (I managed to get linebreaker with my last remaining unit for 1 point). However I won my other 2 games (10-1 and 8-3 respectively). I got paired vs. Tau for all. three. games. Every list I played against had at least 2 riptides and at least one ghostkeel unit in it. I'm going to open a new thread and go into slightly more detail when I have the time.