Played my first 8th edition game, here's what I found.

So. Around 1850 points of True Kin vs the same in Korne Marines with Demon support, mainly Korne Hounds.

I won. Handily. It was incredibly one-sided.

So, why was that? Well, that is actually fairly simple. My build was almost all gunboats full of warriors, with some Blaster Scourges, a Ravager (3 lance) and two Razorwing Jetfighters. My enemy fielded a mostly melee focused army, with a Defiler, a squad of combi-plasma terminators, and a squat of Obliterators as the only ranged units of note.

So how did I win so spectacularly? Fairly simple: I focused down his ranged units, then danced around the vast majority of his army using my raiders speed and just whittled him down.

I am not going to pretend that this is a demonstration of how a regular game will work, but I do feel it gave me a good enough sample for me to talk a bit.

First thing, Razorwings are now awesome. I mean, I always loved them but with the new ability to ignore firing arcs, split fire so their loadout is always going against something they can hurt, and their ability to pick the right missile for the job whenever they fire is extremely powerful, along with the fact that their missiles are now effective against non-infantry targets.

Secondly, my Dark Lance spam proved very effective for focus fire. The ability to reliably move and fire with them proved very valuable.

Sadly, the lack of splinter racks really hurt and while I was looking through my index I could not help but notice that our vehicles are slower than the Craftworlder equivalent (in addition to being frailer and less heavily armed, which I had expected). They can use a crystal targetting matrix to equal us in move and fire with heavy weapons shenanigans with a large arsenal of heavy weapons, have access to multiple durability boosting upgrades (one gives their tanks equivalent of our power from pain save, the other gives enemy shooting -1 vs their tanks), and have Star Engines, which lets them advance 2d6 instead of 1d6, and makes them insanely faster than us (and still able to fire all guns if they take, say, a wave serpent with three Shuriken cannons). I cannot help but feel that stripping away ALL of the DE vehicle upgrades has severely hurt us, since even Aether Sails would be a valuable asset.

Still, no use crying over spilled milk. Stay out of melee, move and shoot, and True Kin can bring the enemy to their knees without even putting a boot on the ground.

What FOC did you use in that point limit and how many gun boats?

And congratulations of course!

Just wait until the "your Enemy was incompetent' or "you had to win against Khorne" crowd starts coming in.

Battalion Detachment.
List had 3 gunboats, a lone Ravager, and two Razorwing Jetfighters.

Should probably add that the Scourges ended up doing a net of about 2 wounds despite shooting every turn with 4 blasters. But that was exclusively due to the fact I missed every goddamn roll with them. Some of my shooting phases were truly terrible.

And every single time I tried a command reroll it always came down as the exact same number.

Nicely written! I'll have to pick up a few more Razorwings now. It's a shame about vehicle upgrades, but it's good to know that a shooty list is still viable in 8th.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Nicely written! I'll have to pick up a few more Razorwings now. It's a shame about vehicle upgrades, but it's good to know that a shooty list is still viable in 8th.

Well a Melee list for DE sure as hell isn't!

Our cardboard boats take a lot more effort to destroy than you would think and risk of explosion isn't too high.

I had a Succubus+Incubi combo for counterattacking, dealt with some chaos terminators who were trying to gun me down with combi-plasma. Second HQ was an Archon with a Blaster in the same boat, taking potshots with 2+ ballistic skill as needed. The ability to split fire is extremely useful for special weapons in squads, and that one blaster mixed in is SO much more valuable now it can pick off high priority targets without forcing the rest of the squad to waste their shots.

Loss of grenades is a bit of a blow though

FuelDrop wrote:

Well a Melee list for DE sure as hell isn't!

A mono-melee list surely isn't good, but my x10 bloodbrides and the x10 5T Wracks did a petty good job at dealing with the vanilla(?) space marines and even with the rhino!
(ok, perhaps it's not something to get excited about, but it was my first game so i got pretty excited, because my troops actually did things )

zbardekz wrote:

TheBaconPope wrote:

Well a Melee list for DE sure as hell isn't!

A mono-melee list surely isn't good, but my x10 bloodbrides and the x10 5T Wracks did a petty good job at dealing with the vanilla(?) space marines and even with the rhino!
(ok, perhaps it's not something to get excited about, but it was my first game so i got pretty excited, because my troops actually did things )

I have 40 Wyches, 10 of which are the old Pewter models. Plus a Succubus. Plus 3 raiders painted for the Wych Cult. I do not forsee fielding anything except the Succubus in this edition.

The reason is pistols. Wyches charging Tactical Marines looks something like this:

>Wyches charge and unleash a flurry of attacks.
>Tactical Marines look at each other in bemusement as the 2 S3 AP - attacks each bounce off T4 3+. Then pull out their pistols and blow the Wyches to a fine paste, ignoring dodge saves.

Wyches in this edition lack punch (as always), but because you can shoot pistols in melee and almost every space marine has a pistol stock they cannot even tarpit effectively any more.
I would take them against 'nids. Maybe against Guard. Possibly even against Chaos, if they have demons or cultists. But never against Marines.

I played a game last night, 2x1000 points vs a 2000 point player. I had built my army before showing up because I like to be prepared. I used Lelith, a sslyth, 10 wyches in a raider (dissie) with agonizer, and one of each wych weapon, 10 Hellions with pgl and agonizer, 6 reavers with 1 caltrops 1 grav talon a blaster and heat lance, and a DL razorwing jetfighter.

My ally was admech and our opponent was a strange Tau army... not sure how he did it but it was like 8-10 commanders, each with 2 gun drones, a few marksmen and an ethereal. I'm sure there was something else too.

I will be using wyches more often. I got into combat with them and held up 4 commanders for 2 turns. I rolled higher each time so he was locked in combat. Lelith killed 2 commanders on her own. She was a beast! My raider even charged in with shock prow and did some damage.

Ended up losing but it came down to objectives in the end. It was fun! It was like playing an entirely new army. Can't wait to play more!

Sarkesian wrote:

I played a game last night, 2x1000 points vs a 2000 point player. I had built my army before showing up because I like to be prepared. I used Lelith, a sslyth, 10 wyches in a raider (dissie) with agonizer, and one of each wych weapon, 10 Hellions with pgl and agonizer, 6 reavers with 1 caltrops 1 grav talon a blaster and heat lance, and a DL razorwing jetfighter.

My ally was admech and our opponent was a strange Tau army... not sure how he did it but it was like 8-10 commanders, each with 2 gun drones, a few marksmen and an ethereal. I'm sure there was something else too.

I will be using wyches more often. I got into combat with them and held up 4 commanders for 2 turns. I rolled higher each time so he was locked in combat. Lelith killed 2 commanders on her own. She was a beast! My raider even charged in with shock prow and did some damage.

Ended up losing but it came down to objectives in the end. It was fun! It was like playing an entirely new army. Can't wait to play more!

If you had fun that is all that matters.
and agree, Wyches are pretty solid vs Tau due to lack of pistols and low tau toughness.
My local Meta is almost all Space Marines/Chaos Marines, so I have a disproportionate view of them as a threat.

Going to assume that your gunboat warriors has DL's? Genuinly want to know as theres a lot of doom and gloom when it comes to gunboats this edition.

I Love gunboats this edition, because they function the way I want them.
They are great for supporting some units and giving them some fast deployment/speed options.
But they are not mandatory anymore.

They are fun to run in pairs with wyches in one and kabalites in the other. I had a blast with running them on each side of a mob of orks, thinning them down, charging them in from both sides and charging the wyches next turn. Kept them from surrounding the boats this way.

FuelDrop wrote:

Stay out of melee, move and shoot, and True Kin can bring the enemy to their knees without even putting a boot on the ground.

Two things-
1. Congrats. I had an.. (ahem) disagreement in another thread where I claimed our boats were better point for point than anything else in our army. Time will tell, but all of my test games seem to be proving that point.

2. Charging empty boats at enemy units and vehicles is a great thing. It prevents them (or others, or both!) from shooting at you and you just fall back on your turn and blast away.

The list I am fielding presently (8-0) w/l

Arcon/ agonizer
7 venoms with dual cannons
6 ravagers triple lance
2 razorwing fighters / lance/ cannon

smattering of shock prows.
4 command points using the spearhead (I think) detachment.

My games have not even been close.

Keep in mind that the indexes are a placeholder for the actual codices. And, I've read a number of places that vehicle upgrades and wargear will be present in those. As a Craftworld player, I can tell you that the enhanced speed of Eldar vehicles and the CTM are both overrated compared to DE vehicles. Also, look at the price tag of a kitted Wave Serpent. It's a phenomenal transport, don't get me wrong, but Dark Eldar vehicles definitely play distinctly faster and maintain the 3+ to hit. Crystal Targeting Matrix only lets a Serpent ignore the -1 when firing at the closest target. More often than not, in my games with them, the closest target was not what I wanted my serpents targeting, and maneuvering them in such a way that got me a better line would involve jeopardizing them too greatly.

Congratulations on the win! I'll echo others in saying that our vehicles are clearly our strong suit right now.

Skulnbonz wrote:

FuelDrop wrote:

Stay out of melee, move and shoot, and True Kin can bring the enemy to their knees without even putting a boot on the ground.

Two things-
1. Congrats. I had an.. (ahem) disagreement in another thread where I claimed our boats were better point for point than anything else in our army. Time will tell, but all of my test games seem to be proving that point.

2. Charging empty boats at enemy units and vehicles is a great thing. It prevents them (or others, or both!) from shooting at you and you just fall back on your turn and blast away.

The list I am fielding presently (8-0) w/l

Arcon/ agonizer
7 venoms with dual cannons
6 ravagers triple lance
2 razorwing fighters / lance/ cannon

smattering of shock prows.
4 command points using the spearhead (I think) detachment.

My games have not even been close.

That list seems hardly beatable. (is that a word?) O.o

My main problem with vehicles is that I think cannot kill enough orks and nids to claim objectives. I need bodies to do that. Now I must say I played smaller games and their the extra shots and attacks from cheap bodies helped me a lot. Also our vehicles are not that much faster then ork vehicles, and they fight much better >