Studs and Duds?

Just started my first Dark Eldar army!!
What are the studs and duds so far with 8th edition?
I love conversions but don't want to waste time converting something that will just be terrible on the field.

Avoid: reavers. Haywire. Heat Lances. Shredders. Wyches. Bloodbrides. Hellions. Talos. Succubus. Archon and court.

Studs: Mandrakes, Razorwing jetfighters, Ravagers
Duds.. read the above post.

The Stud: Bloodbrides

The Dud:

So Wracks or Kabalites? Or just kabalites?

I suggest just Kabalites, but I have never been too big on Covens.

What about the monsters? Clawed fiends, khymerae, grotesques, cronos, beast masters? I know the flocks were broken before the nerf. Anyone know how they are after? Maybe not spam worthy, but still curious

Flocks are fine bring as many as you want.

You can't go wrong with Kabalite Warriors in Venoms or Raiders. Grab yourself a pair of ravagers, absolutely fantastic Anit-Tank platforms. The majority of our fast attack choices are solid. Hellions kill multi wound models, Reavers are nice distraction carnafexes with the toughness drug, all the beasts are good for their job, and people still swear by razorwing flocks. Your HQ choice is dependant on who is escorting them. if you are taking a Heamonculus, grotesques or wracks are great choices for that +1 toughness. If you are taking a succubus then you might want to take wyches or nyother "wuch" unit like reavers or hellions to escort. If you've got an archon then the court escorts or just more kabalites are good choices. Incubi are great escorts for any of our HQ choices. Our flyers are solid. I hear mandrakes are good now but I have to used them yet. You should check out the splintermind podcast, the recent episodes are unit by unit reviews and very helpful.

I like wracks. I ran 9 with acothyst with hexrifle and electrocorrosive whip, with ossefactor. In a raider with a haemonculus with hexrifle and electrcorrosive whip. The haemy shooting the sniper rifle on the move at 2+ was pretty effective. Ossefactors are really good too. I liked them better than my warrior squad in a raider.

HQs:
Studs: Haemonculus.
Debatable: Succubus, Lelith, Urien.
Duds: Archon
Dear God Why: Drazhar

Our HQs are...Lackluster this edition. Archon is good if you want a cheap warlord in a pure DE list, but really does little else. Haemonculus, until it is inevitably FAQed makes our vehicles tougher, and can take the Electrocorrosive whip, elevating him to "Stud" status. Aside from that, he works well with a Coven list, and unlike some HQs cough coughArchons, Drazharcough give an undeniably beneficial buff.

Troops:
Studs: Kabalite Warriors
Debatable: Wracks, Wyches

Kabs continue to be the dominant troop choice, cheap with a Guardsmen defense and a Space Marine's accuracy. Makes a strong contender for the best Aeldari troop choice overall. Wyches...well there's plenty of strong feelings on both sides of the aisle. Wracks are a little forgettable, but I don't have enough experience with them to put them as a dud.

Elites:
Studs: Beastmaster, Incubi, Mandrakes
Debatable: Grotesques, Bloodbrides, Trueborn, Medusae, Ssylth
Duds: Lhamean, Ur-Ghul

The Beastmaster Sticks out as he is arguably the best support character in our army. Nothing to write home about offensively, but having a better version of both the Archon and Succubi's Aura, plus the ability to sneak in some Beasts with him on the Force-Org is helpful as well. Mandrakes are great at shooting, but will do pretty much any other role decently as well. Incubi are great at what they've always done: Slaughtering Marines, but the increased minimum squad size means many an HQ, especially the Archon (Seeing a pattern here?) shed many tears about their dreams of tagging along with them in a Venom. The jury is still out on Grots for me, and Trueborn seem to me like slightly cheaper, yet inferior in almost every way, Scourges. Never played Bloodbrides, but mixed opinions on them as well. The Court is mostly situational, usually not worth it, but I guess can sometimes be used.

Fast Attack:
Studs: Clawed Fiends, Khymerae, Razorwing Flocks, Scourges
Debatable: Hellions
Duds:
Oh God Why: Reavers

All of the Beasts are excellent choices...just make sure to stick a Beastmaster with them. The Clawed Fiend is arguably our best CC unit, Khymerae, despite losing 2" of movement, are a solid choice for their points, and Razorwings...well perhaps GW was a little overzealous in doubling their price, but they can still help you fufill your dreams of rolling more dice than an Ork player. Scourges remain a staple of DE anti-tank--Just stick to Dark Lances and maybe Blasters (Dark Lances are better, even after moving)--or keep them with carbines for some serious anti-infantry. Hellions are a bit lackluster in my opinion, but with the Proper Drugs they won't be the worst choice. Reavers...oh Reavers. Horribly overpriced, with mediocre combat at best. Avoid them for now.

Flyers/Dedicated Transports:
Studs: Razorwing, Voidraven, Venom, Raider.

All of these are good choices for any army, with the last two being arguably a must have. Just don't bother with putting Splinter Cannons on any of them, and it's hard to go wrong.

Heavy Support:
Studs: Ravager, Tantalus, Reaper
Debatable: Cronos
Duds:
Oh God Why:
Corner of Shame: Talos

The Ravager is the real star, durable (for DE) Anti-Tank, able to move and operate at full effectiveness. I hesitate to call this a must, but really, it kinda is. Disintegrator Cannons are expensive, but will tear apart MEQ, light vehicles, heavy vehicles, TEQ, PEQ...pretty much, it will be effective against anything you point it at. Dark Lances are nothing to sniff at either, mind you. Both Forgeworld options are solid choices, but I don't really have anything to say about them other than that they're competitive. The Cronos can give some good aura support, but I've personally found it lackluster.

The Talos officially has my nomination for worst unit in our entire codex. Expensive, unimpressive shooting, prohibitive cost, and with melee capability less threatening than a handful of wet spaghetti throw by a moderately annoyed toddler, this is flatly an utter and complete waste of points. Clawed Fiends can absorb more anti-tank, and just about any melee unit in our index will outperform it in combat. Seriously, don't bother with this garbage.

Bacon Pope has it correctly.

Agree with Bacon Pope
But remember some units need support to be duds (a lone heamy and no coven units is not that great)
Beasts and beastmaster are great, but just 2 khymera and a beastmaster is a waste of the beastmasters points.

I agree with the Pope mostly:
I'd still take extra Splinter canons on a venom and I like the Archon. The buff is underwhelming but it has decent shooting, close combat abilities and durability. Since they are cheap, they are like my true born / Incubbi combination unit.

Well with nearly the same shooting as a trueborn (a trueborn has 80% of the archon shooting because of the to hit) and 1 less attack then a klaivex (better to hit wich barely matters because of pfp and poison -2 ap instead of+1str and -3 which is better in an army where poison is everywhere)
I would not say he is a unit of trueborn/incubbi combination I would call him combination of 1 trueborn/incubi but for around 3 times the price he is still slightly expensive in my mind. The one thing where he beats them is in survivability.
I would much rather have another unit then 1 archon.

Don't get me wrong, the Archon does have his good points. 2+ invulnerable is nothing to sniff at, and within a very narrow range of targets a huskblade is actually a good weapon.

Said narrow range of targets are T3, Multi-wound, and with an invulnerable save at least two worse than their armour save.

The catch, of course, is that anything he can do can be done better elsewhere. Urien's 4+ rerollable is almost as good as a 2+ while also not wasting all your points when you roll a 1 on your first save.

The Klaivex is a better melee combatant, with 2+ to hit stock (only just realized that part!), 4 attacks, and a Klaive is a good budget saving option (Demiklaives can bring that attack number up to 6, and lethal precision means he can deal with multi wound stuff as well if not better).

Shooting wise, a trueborn with a blaster is pretty damn close to matching the Archon's best ranged output at a fraction of the cost. You can actually take both trueborn and Klaivex and have points to spare.


I just realized: I started this out in an effort to show that the Archon has something, anything, to bring to the table that others cannot do better. Now it seems that his 2+ invulnerable and leadership buff are pretty much all he has, and both of those go away sooner or later.

Well, the Archon has that 2+, and doesn't do much, so if your opponent shoots at him instead of shooting at something more useful, that's good. You were forced to bring a HQ and he is the cheapest, so taking him and not Rakarth maybe got you 4-5 more dissie cannons. Also you can use him to soak overwatch without feeling bad. If you nominate one as your warlord he can be somewhat hard to kill since you can hide him in the ruins in a corner and only lose 1 blaster shot (the CC ability unfortunately tends to underwhelm).

I think you would take a single Medusa as your HQ 90% of the time if Court of the Archon was still a HQ choice this edition though.

I miss the days when picking our HQ and outfitting him was a fun, with a bunch of options. I hate having a HQ tax.

Yes that is the thing, the archon is not neccesarely the worst choice all the time. He is the cheapest option, and has decent survivability. But if we did not need HQ choices we would not play with them (the exception being the heamy if you bring a coven army).

I don't have many indexes, but how many armies get a HQ tax? I know my Craftworlders love them some HQ options, Farseers especially. I haven't given my harlies a good try yet but I cannot see the Shadowseer being a tax.

So can someone more knowledgeable tell me if it's a common thing or just us.

FuelDrop wrote:

I don't have many indexes, but how many armies get a HQ tax? I know my Craftworlders love them some HQ options, Farseers especially. I haven't given my harlies a good try yet but I cannot see the Shadowseer being a tax.

So can someone more knowledgeable tell me if it's a common thing or just us.

I'm in the same boat as you, but I do know that the imperial guard has hqs that are on par with our craftworld cousins in terms of usefulness. Their characters are also nothing to sneeze at unlike ours are. I honestly wish the beast master and the court were still hq options for us. I'm personally using a farseer skyrunner in my vehicle heavy wych cult list solely because the succubus is meh at best and Lilith is basically the same but with slightely better stats.

Well I know that Flyrants are still a thing.

Space Marines have plenty of solid options, as do Chaos and, I believe, Necrons.

Not sure how good Ork HQs are, but I figure that a Warboss can't be too hard to do right. Give him a high toughness, a crap-ton of wounds and Strength, a power-claw and about a dozen guns all strapped together, options for 'Evy and Mega armour. And a boss pole of course, plus a git-stompa. Boom. done.

What's a heamy?

Also, flyrants are 100% not still a thing. They aren't garbage tier but they are nothing compared to the end all be all they used to be. I have played exclusively tyranids until I started my DE army They are basically very expensive suicide units. Around 240 lpoints when kitted out properly.
what saves tyranid HQ is the malanthrope, broodlord and sometimes tervigon.

Glutenfreek wrote:

Also, flyrants are 100% not still a thing. They aren't garbage tier but they are nothing compared to the end all be all they used to be. I have played exclusively tyranids until I started my DE army   They are basically very expensive suicide units. Around 240 points when kitted out properly.  

My bad. My buddy still runs dual flyrant as a mix of support and mobile heavy hitters, and I figured that since he's the 'nid player he would know what is good in his index better than I would.