Eldar Triumvirate

Having mulled over the newer rules, I am thinking this is a positive move for DE (at least some units) to be taken competitively.
Right now, i run a squad of reavers as an allied detachment with an Eldar and Corsair cad.
Eldar is simply for the Banshee mask and skathach wraithknight.
So to run this army, i am paying in tax:
2 scatterbikes
1 lahmean
5 warriors.

Now, arguably, scatbikes are never a "tax", but the rest surely is, and easy kill points to boot.

NOW, i can run the same army, MINUS the corsairs (as the prince took the mask only and ran with the reavers)

And I am not sure about you guys, but making "throw away units" to trigger special rules is, in my opinion, stupid.
Lets take General Pattons advice here... "You don't win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making the other poor bastard die for his!"

Instead of baiting your opponent with easy to kill units (and giving up kill points) why not trap him into an impossible decision?
Kill HIS units, while ensuring you are within 7" to benefit. That is a win-win for you. Everything in your army should now run within 7 (or 14 depending on formation) inches of another unit that can benefit from any possible destruction.
I forsee movement and set up being crucial to beating this army or winning with it. I know if i am playing AGAINST it, i will be charging units from angles ensuring that the pile in will draw them out of 7" coherency, etc.
This army is not really a "kill me and i will get to shoot you for free" army. I think this army is even more of a finesse army than Dark Eldar is currently. And THAT i like!

Skulnbonz wrote:

Having mulled over the newer rules, I am thinking this is a positive move for DE (at least some units) to be taken competitively.

NOW, i can run the same army, MINUS the corsairs (as the prince took the mask only and ran with the reavers)

And I am not sure about you guys, but making "throw away units" to trigger special rules is, in my opinion, stupid.
Lets take General Pattons advice here... "You don't win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making the other poor bastard die for his!"
This army is not really a "kill me and i will get to shoot you for free" army. I think this army is even more of a finesse army than Dark Eldar is currently.  And THAT i like!

I totally agree. I will continue to run multiple squads of 3 man reavers, but I can guarantee you they will march on the field in groups of two.

This is pretty much a tax cut for most army lists, and I'm especially excited to see what the new rules means for the Freakshow.

Quote :

So I won't adopt the fluff either. I don't want that my death empowers others. I don't want to die in the first place. We use soul swapping and stealing devices. Everyone that read the dark Eldar novels knows what I'm talking about.

"I play Blood Angels but we don't venerate the Emperor."

"I play Tyranids but we aren't really a hive mind."

"I play Orks but we don't have ramshackle technology."

Yeah no thanks.

Cptmetal, yeah I just finished chambers books. Bellathanos was great, that's why I've started going covens. My biggest fear was that we would slowly melt away as an army. But the rules look fun and I might run a pure drukhari army with them

@TeenageAngst what is your story for your Kabal? I just want to know what it is or what you could use for your when using ynnead...

TeenageAngst wrote:

Quote :

No, you're perfectly entitled to your opinion. And don't assume that, while someone may respond directly to you, they're stating the case solely for your benefit.

You and I both know if I rebutted the opinion of the people who are going to enjoy this release the same way you and others have rebutted mine I'd be banned faster than my ex-wife at an all you can eat buffet.

Uh, no. You don't get banned for disagreeing with people's opinions. Also, I would say that there is likely not a single active member of this forum who has less favor with the mods than myself, so if I said anything that would get anyone banned, you can bet I'd know it.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Quote :

So I won't adopt the fluff either. I don't want that my death empowers others. I don't want to die in the first place. We use soul swapping and stealing devices. Everyone that read the dark Eldar novels knows what I'm talking about.

"I play Blood Angels but we don't venerate the Emperor."

"I play Tyranids but we aren't really a hive mind."

"I play Orks but we don't have ramshackle technology."

Yeah no thanks.

Perhaps your Haemonculus has come up with a spangly new type of Soultrap that siphons the souls of the dead directly into your warriors' drug dispensers

All it takes is a little imagination if you want to use the rules if you don't want to use the rules, then that's entirely within your gift too there was a bit of a concern about a forced merging of factions before the release, but that seems to have been assauged now. They've made more options for playing Eldar armies, not less

Oh, and just because I'm feeling cheeky

"I play Tyranids but we aren't really a hive mind." - GS Cults
"I play Orks but we don't have ramshackle technology." - Feral Orks
"I play Blood Angels but we don't venerate the Emperor." - Soul Drinkers (long-shot that one!)

Your argument is a valid one though. you want your army to follow the fluff that you want it to. Absolutely no problem with that, but it needn't be as restrictive rules-wise to represent it

"I play Blood Angels but we don't venerate the Emperor."

Cool so you play blood ravens then?

"I play Tyranids but we aren't really a hive mind."

Sweet! running stealers in that too?

"I play Orks but we don't have ramshackle technology."

Ah gretchin airforce it is then?

I went the other way on orks but we made the same point.

In this case, it doesn't even require *that* much imagination.

Part of your kabal split off and joined the Ynarri cult.
When you're playing Ynarri, you're using the lot that your defectors have thrown in with.
When you're playing pure DE, you're playing the group that decided to stay.

Of course, there are about a gajillion other possible explanations, but that is probably one of the simplest.

Ofc there will be members of Kabal of the Black Heart who will switch to Ynnari.

Quote :

what is your story for your Kabal? I just want to know what it is or what you could use for your when using ynnead...

They're common gutter-runners that murdered and stole their way to the top. Half of their "allies" are slaves they use in their raids for vanity, and the other half are either acquisitions from lesser forces or hostile takeovers. Above all else though, they're over the top 80s hair metal. Teaming up forces like 2 Saturday morning cartoon heroes is not metal, nor is veneration a deity because of a convenient rules buff.

Honestly I could come up with a million reasons to run Ynnadi. In fact I will run Ynnadi, because it is so good and there are so many reasons to. I will run my chinaforge CWE as them, and they will be used exclusively to table people with minimum list modifications necessary. My spiders and scatbikes just got a massive boost and I don't even need to change a single unit in my list if I don't want. But I will, because I can no clobber people even harder with a solitare and shadowseers mixed in. I don't have to tell you how fast this will get old though. This isn't fun except against Tau players. It's the army I use because I resent not being able to play against certain armies with Dark Eldar.

I run Dark Eldar because I want to run Dark Eldar. I will run CWE as Ynnadi because sometimes I want to WAAC. If I run Dark Eldar as Ynnadi I'm not playing Dark Eldar I'm playing bad, unoptimized Ynnadi. No amount of fluff arguments is going to convince me that my Archon should tolerate the presence of defectors, and no amount of rules arguments is going to convince me that warriors in boats are a viable alternative to scatbikes in the exact same formation slot.

What you will or will not do for fluff reasons is solely up to you and no other. Letting the world know why, though perfectly fine, does not further the discussion. it is a purely personal stance.

As for the boat/scatbike argument, i kind of agree with you, UNLESS they are going for a parking lot. Then, raiders and venoms over scatbikes.

If the rules appear as they are written, I would have to say that sadly, it LESSENS the number of models from the Dark Eldar range i will take.
No more warriors, lahmeans, venoms or raiders.
Wyches wont see the light of day still, and hellions, though improved with this ruleset actually LOSE survivability, making them that much less attractive.

lets be blunt. Pretty much in most tournament level Ynnead armies you will see reaver jetbikes, Maybe incubi and nothing else from the Dark Kin. Everything else we have to offer Eldar or harlies do better, and cheaper.

That is one thing I am afraid/excited this supplement will do.  It will only highlight the fact that almost everything Dark Eldar do CWE can do better and in the same FoS.  So that is/will be disappointing to us.  Then again, most Dark Eldar players have known this for years, but things might get so bad that it might come to actually come to GW's attention and in our next book they might try to fix this and give us some boosts.  To be honest though, I do not necessarily want straight buffs to our codex and call it a day.  I want our army to be difficult to use, but I never want things to be the way they are now and to be at a disadvantage so great that it doesn't matter how refined my skills as a general are I don't have the tools to deal with what the enemy is bringing (*cough* GMC).

There was a line in the 5th edition codex that went something like this "The Dark Eldar are the Evil Kings and Supervillains of the 41st millennium - and they have all the right tools for the job."  I don't believe this is still true and it is part of the reason why we are not as competitive an army as CWE.  Because in the CWE exist so many tools that are just mathematically superior to ours, and what we offer that sets us apart is not enough to compensate for this.  Additionally there are certain tools that we need to complete the army like the ability to take out mass low-armor vehicles.  CWE have Scatter Laser Jetbikes for that.  We have... Grotesques?  Dissies?  Reaver Jetbikes?  Hellions?  Wyches?  What are we supposed to use?  I don't think any of the choices I listed are as effective point for point as Scatbikes.

Finally I am really optimistic about the Strength through Death rule and Soulburst actions. This sounds like it could be a great mechanic in that it is difficult to take full advantage of, but if you do the rewards are tremendous. That is (for me) what playing a skill army is all about, and that is (for me) what I want for Dark Eldar in the future. Just my $0.02.

Frankly, I think that Strength Through Death is probably how Power from Pain *should* work. After all, DE have never been discriminate over where they get their pain fix from, and it seems to perfectly represent the supernatural rush that they get from the pain and anguish around them.

Quote :

What you will or will not do for fluff reasons is solely up to you and no other. Letting the world know why, though perfectly fine, does not further the discussion. it is a purely personal stance.

And yet people have harangued me that "no ur wrong it is fluffy" 6 ways to Sunday. I'm eagerly awaiting why a self aggrandizing Archon would put up with their followers putting a god before themselves. You've already admitted I'm right about the list building, being able to bring CWE means bringing Ynnadi DE is just making your list worse on purpose.

Well the codex already says some dark eldar still worship Khaine. Even if it doesn't say that any more it's my Kabal's fluff.

I have almost exclusively DE minis, I don't like CWE gameplay or models, but I like ynnari rules so far.
I'll keep using my army with a bare minimum of CWE, integrating just some the formation requisite of dire avengers and some bike.
I really don't see the problem with the possibility to have CWE harlies and DE as a single faction, if you don't want to use them just don't. We already could use them as allies.

@TeenageAngst, For fluff reasons my warlord is and will be an haemonculus using the kabal of my archon as tools for her needs, but part of the kabal split from the core troops to follow the vision of the new god.

Anyway the old codex is still existing, we are not expected to drop it just because the new book is out.

I mean, it is, I was just hoping for some DE exclusive goodies. What I got was a faction and formations I have absolutely zero interest in.

Technically nobody got any exclusive goodies.

My statement stands.

But your statement is basely because it was never suggested that you'd be getting that.

I know it wasn't, but that's what I wanted. I got something different, and I don't like it. Everyone else likes it though and that's cool. I will be quite happy to see all the fresh DE and Eldar faces at the shop, and the delicious wins that will ensue as I teach them simply having a good army does not make one good.

TeenageAngst wrote:

I know it wasn't, but that's what I wanted. I got something different, and I don't like it. Everyone else likes it though and that's cool. I will be quite happy to see all the fresh DE and Eldar faces at the shop, and the delicious wins that will ensue as I teach them simply having a good army does not make one good.

See, there is always something good to be had. But I get your concern about your Army. It is based on PfP and if you take that away, then you have to fill it in another way,..


or....

just keep playing with what you have.

Playing DE is a choice you made. You knew it would be harder but, as far as I can tell from your comments, that is one of the reasons you chose to play them.

Now there is a new flavor in town, just an another way to play if you wish or in character:

"The time is finally upon us, there is another way to live by, then the one our beloved Overlord *giggles to himself* has taught us. It is a chance for us to overcome the shackles of his all seeing society! We just change one, pretending to be a god, for another one, but the latter gives us more strength, more power and soon that will be his doom, for who can truly keep the Thornlords down!
We will arise anew and with a different way of life..."

But concerning the play style, I am not sure multiple small units is the way to go. I would go for the overkill, as now there is a bonus for Overkill. Think 10 Incubi or 9 with archon charging a mediocre unit. The obliterate them and would be usually shot to death. Now you just charge them again into the next, maybe even two units.
I think the theory of letting your enemy do the dying, will fare far better and fits the Eldar way of life. Just because we get stronger through absorbing our own souls, doesn't mean we have a lot of them.

I dont like the new thing, either.

Similar reasons, mostly because seems an eldar disneyland with some dark eldar random something. almost sam units count as harlies.

Not wanting a poor man's patch. Want some Commorragh.

Quote :

just keep playing what you have

That's fun

Quote :

Playing DE is a choice you made. You knew it would be harder but, as far as I can tell from your comments, that is one of the reasons you chose to play them.

Actually I didn't. They were my first army and I had no idea how bad they were until after about a year of collecting and building models. It took another six months of practice before I could reliably win against armies other than CSM.

As for running them, don't use Incubi they're garbage. Use Howling Banshees for cheap disposables with a decent AP