If you use dissi cannons instead of dark Lance what is your anti tank?

Hey guys, reading through the latest ravager and razorwing threads I noticed that many suggest playing both with dissi cannons instead of dark lances.

Does anyone have experience running dissies on ravagers and razorwings, and if so, what did you use for anti armour weaponry? And did you think it worked well?

I run dark lances on everything right now but I still feel anti tank can be lackluster. Especially vs knights. The only thing I can think of is haywire scourge?

Heat lance scourges, heat lances on reavers, haywire scourges, blasterborn, Taloses... there's more available to us than people realize.

Dark lances, haywire blasters, heat lances, and blasters aren't that hard to come by. The Dissie is unique, being that it can only be mounted on a handful of vehicles.

Their usefulness is determined mainly by your meta. Dissie cannons remain as one of the most potent MEQ/TEQ counters in our codex, so if you're expecting to face a lot of Marines, they're invaluable. Otherwise, their potency is marginal at best.

1. Running MSU lists. It is not unlikely to have a disintegrator cannon Raider/Ravager somewhere facing the armor 10 rear.
2. 5 man warriors (sybarite, haywire, blaster). Disembark, shoot n throw, charge n plant. Repeat if unit lives to next round.
3. Often dismissed item is shredders. Inexpensive option that can damage most side armor and pin rear armor 10.
4. Enemy flyers, keep moving units behind them and patiently wait for skimmer mode. Then use above options.


Rarely use Dark Eldar flyers unless playing Apoc games. If when they are on the table will have Dark or Void Lances.

If you use dissi cannons instead of dark Lance what is your anti tank?

Do you mean pure DE?
Cos the answer is always eldar or corsair allies.

For my pure DE list its Reavers, more reavers, grotesquerie, haywire scourge, and i do take some lances and blasters scattered through my list and some more reavers. It works well.

1 knight i can handle, anymore and i will have to ally in eldar buddies or tailor like crazy.

Here is how I do it: I have two dark lance ravagers and one dissie in Heavy slot. Kabs in venom have blasters, reavers have blaster /heatlance, and two squads of scourges with the same. Two raiders with 5/6kabs and dissies. Flyers if I have points for flavour (there is just something satisfying about a successfull bombing/missile run). Gives you a good Balance between "AT" and AI weapons.
I run pure DE, btw.

Painjunky wrote:

1 knight i can handle, anymore and i will have to ally in eldar buddies or tailor like crazy.

Just out of curiosity, can you elaborate on how you "handle" a wraithknight with pure DE?

Am I the only one who sees a Talos as perfectly viable?  Because for me those are always auto-takes, and putting a haywire blaster on them does wonders.

@betraytheworld Knight typically refers to an Imperial Knight in most 40k parlance, so I think its safe to assume he means that, not a catch all term for any unit with knight on the name.

As for how to bring down a WK, weight of fire usually does the job, as pure DE have sooooo much poison.

My mistake on seeing "knight" and automatically assuming wraithknight. Wraithknights are the metric by which I measure if I've properly prepared my list or not. If it falls apart to a wraithknight, I still have work to do.

As for bringing down a WK with weight of fire, that isn't really effective. We've mathed it out plenty of times. If I recall correctly, it ends up taking some absurd amount of venom fire, like 21 dual cannon venoms or something to take it down in 1 turn.

I think it's about the same number of dark lance shots to get rid of it in a turn.(For some reason, 27 is coming to mind.)

Most armies don't have that sort of firepower to bring to bear. If your pure DE list DOES have that weight of fire, that means your entire army is basically going to be dumping everything into killing a 295 point model, allowing everything else in your opponent's army to remain unscathed. The reprisal will be harsh.

Also, bear in mind that the numbers I gave above for lances are from when we were assuming the wraithknight NEVER has a cover save against ANY of the shots being fired at it. When they have cover saves, it gets even worse for dark lances. Poison is unaffected.

Of course that assumes you are only ever using one type of weapon against it, usually I run MSU reavers, as in my local meta its all about maelstrom, as such, I usually run CAD + RRD, and typically 2 razorwings for dealing with other stuff. Since I prefer to focus on nabbing objectives first, I find it best to usually throw whatever stuff I have in position at it, then readjust on the fly, obviously the razorwings take care of other things like large infantry blobs.

Additionally, Dissies could be useful as well. The big thing that I find is not wasting my anti-tank on it, as it has no AV.

It sounds like you more or less ignore it, while occasionally taking shots of opportunity when you don't have a better target, planning to maybe kill it over the course of a game rather than focus on trying to get rid of it ASAAP.

Ignoring it is a recognized, tried and true strategy when you don't have ways to kill it somewhat efficiently.

I expect ignoring Ynnari wraithknights to be much more difficult a prospect.

Srota wrote:

Am I the only one who sees a Talos as perfectly viable?  Because for me those are always auto-takes, and putting a haywire blaster on them does wonders.

In a straight up Covens list for sure be auto take. In mix list trotting along along at 6" to reach range against enemy units that have 48" range. When there is an option for two other mobile units for its price....tough sale.

Also I'm bit bias. Mine tend to go poof to multiple lascannon fire quite often.

More or less, I try to focus first on getting a lead in points early on, then moving onto the big guys, usually by that point I can whittle away at the support for the WK, and get it to be a bit more advantageous for me. I prefer to focus on objective first, then dealing with the big guys second.

Again, it likely has to do with my local meta where you mostly see marines and newcrons... ugh...

It takes 250 poison shots to kill a wraithknight. Don't bother your dead when the entire army strikes back.

Dark light is super bad as proper Anti vehicle. Heat lances aren't bad, merely odd. They are worse than fusion guns against anything you'll face outside of apoc, as the +2 base strength is more important against anything short of av16 but that's really neither here nor there.

We have access to the only true vehicle analog to fleshbane in the game, and since many vehicles don't get saves that's huge! I'm talking about haywire. Armourbane is melts. Haywire is fleshbane for vehicles. For completeness Harlie jetbikes can also get ranged haywire, but at a much higher shot per unit cost tradeoff.

I strictly play blended lists, and I did long before the Ynnari were a thing. I earnestly believe that Corsairs do poison better. Dark eldar only stand apart for 3 things: easily massable RANGED haywire, Via scourges, talos, and Reapers, sheer variety of S5/T5 options, and reavers the only unit in the game with hit and run, rending, and skilled rider. I take heatlances in my reavers almost every time I take them, but haywire scourges are my preferred Anti-V, and I'm saying that across ALL eldar factions. Caress' are cool but ranged haywire is more reliable and frankly more satisfying.

People talk about how you deep strike heatlances scourges and jump haywire ones up the field, I think that negates the greatest strength they have when taken in quantity. Deep striking haywire scourges can be triangulated to ignore any sort of cover or ion shield an enemy vehicle may have and that's incredibly powerful.

amorrowlyday wrote:

Deep striking haywire scourges can be triangulated to ignore any sort of cover or ion shield an enemy vehicle may have and that's incredibly powerful.

But it also takes away 1 entire round of shooting. I'm not saying you should never do it, but I AM saying you should always consider that extra round of shooting when making your decision.

Oh definitely, Don't forget that real play only occurs over ~3 turns of the game anyway, as we've discussed many a time. Normally we're discussing that in the context of how insignificant turn 3/4 boons like PfP are. Here though I'm bringing it up because a "beta strike" army that heavily deep strikes inherently shifts that 3 turn window up 1 turn.

I'm not saying your wrong, in fact I'm very appreciative that you pointed that out because it points to something I forgot to include: Any list that relies on Turn 2 anti-vehicle must be built such that it's beta strike hits maximally turn 3. By which I mean: A proper Alpha strike list hits turn 1, cripples turn 2, tables turn 3. Ynnari compress 3 turns into 2. Normative beta strike lists tend to either have a soft pre-strike if they go first or skip straight to the "strikeback" if they go second, but still rely on such a strikeback, and still end the game by the end of turn 3 as well, but the way I'm describing playing, which I want to dub "Omega strike" lists for my purposes here Mop up the opponent turn 4 at the earliest. They tend to have significant assault elements and they tend to eschew traditional practices for the use of those units in that they make their initial hit later, and have no qualms about deepstriking turn 2, even though that means they will not assault until turn 3.

Frankly if you haven't explicitly built your list to do this Betray is absolutely correct, and I'd go so far as to say that, provided the board has sufficient cover, that extra round of shooting is significantly more important than triangulation.

tl;dr: If you haven't designed your entire list to strike with the majority of it's force later than usual betray is absolutely correct to the point of being correct play.

Srota wrote:

Am I the only one who sees a Talos as perfectly viable?  Because for me those are always auto-takes, and putting a haywire blaster on them does wonders.

@betraytheworld Knight typically refers to an Imperial Knight in most 40k parlance, so I think its safe to assume he means that, not a catch all term for any unit with knight on the name.

As for how to bring down a WK, weight of fire usually does the job, as pure DE have sooooo much poison.

The problem with that is that you pay 130pts for a single haywire shot. This shot has a 75% of hitting and ~80% of removing a hullpoint (62% of dealing overall damage). And at this point, the enemy can still take a cover save, as the Talos is not fast enough to maneuver around cover.

I really don't think this is a good deal. But I am just not a big fan of the Talos and prefer Grotesques as an "anchor unit" in the field. Sure, if you only see it as a 10pts upgrade to a unit you field anyway, that's a different story. Nonetheless, you are missing the very viable stock Splinter Cannon.

A bare-bones Talos has about 3/4 the shooting of a Venom and on top of that has a considerably greater threat range than a Haywire Blaster.

Is there a special way you field your Talos, like a Corpsethief Claw? I guess that could work, but I'm afraid to invest so many points in such a slow unit that can easily be countered with all the D and Grav in the game.


When talking about Haywire there is little that is as effective as 4 Scourges with HWBs.