Hello, I seem to have found my way into the Darkness:

Hello ladies and gentlemen.

I seem to have stumbled my way into 8th edition, and was wondering where the best fount of knowledge can be gleamed about playing this rather... tasteful, and virtuous force. I've decided, since departing in 6th edition, to return to Warhammer in 8th. To give a bit of background, I started playing in 94, during 2nd edition, when I was 8 years old. I've played most of my life, barring the latter half of 6th edition and 7th. The game's changed lots, but a lot of fundamentals seem the same. I've also played every army in the game, barring Necrons, Grey Knights/Daemon Hunters , Sisters of Battle, and Admech (weren't around when I was playing).

I sold my Dark Eldar shortly after getting into them, twice, as I could never paint them for crap, and cuz during that time I was kind of a crap for always playing the strongest army possible. I now find myself tending towards playing more themed lists in the games that I play, rather than overtly powerful ones.

So, for instance, getting back into this, I bought 3 gangs of Cormorragh sets, and 2 starter sets. The reason for this is I really, really want to do a fast attack Dark Eldar Jetbike force, where Jetbikes themselves are the central theme. I know right now they seem a bit jack of all trades, but I wanna make the force as powerful as my theme will allow me.

I'm also hoping to paint my army yellow and black. I'm intending to name my Kabal "The Kabal of the Steel Hornet". I'm also going to name my leader "The Yellow King". I may even name him Hastur, or have a similar name to Hastur in his list of titles. I'm just hoping I can get the paint to go on the minis the way I want. I know I'm airbrushing a few, (vehicles, monsters, "Hastur"), though I'm looking towards techniques that may be simplier than doing all my troops the same way, and may not require so much airbrushing.

Anyway. Enough rambling.

Hi.

First: Welcome.

Second: You poor poor individual. Our Jetbikes have gone from being an autotake in 7th to one of our worst units in 8th.

Hate to break it to you, but you've picked our worst possible unit to build an army around.

Welcome. I love jetbikes too.

Jetbikes are discussed in detail in "The Problem with Reavers". I think you should do what you love even if it's not a good idea as one song put it. I felt it was a bit too negative what was said above, I don't think they're our worst unit, they may well get buffed in the Codex and Tabletop Tactics' Lawrence (here as "The Spider" IIRC) who is a competitive player was actually pretty pleased with a Reaver list (although he said it wasn't really a competitive list).

Fueldrop speaks absolute nonsense.

Welcome, and be assured that Jetbikes are a GOOD unit.
I've been running them quite frequently, usually in large numbers (I started out just wanting a Jetbike force too) and have been finding them to be an excellent unit. Their durable, and can come with some good weapons options. Give them a good go, and remember that sometimes small units work better than large, and sometimes the reverse is true. I've been finding six-man units to be best so far.

Your post could near enough describe myself...I also started playing in 94 and then stopped playing before 4th edition. 3rd edition I went halves with a mate and bought the starter set to get the Dark Eldar and did manage to get the army painted up thanks to the introduction of inks! They looked average and what is odd is that my painting has come on leaps without ever really playing the game since.

I have actually managed to stay up to date with all the editions over the years by watching batreps online, some are much better than others, recently I find TabletopTactics to be the best so look them up on YouTube.

There are some very good posters on this site and they have an amazing amount of knowledge and experience in the game...I have found them all to be really friendly also.

In terms of list building, I also wanted to focus on bikes but so far I have found them to be far too expensive points wise. Having listened to people on here and from what I have read online I would say that there may still be changes to come for the Dark Eldar when the codex is released. Certain units don't seem very effective with their current rules such as the Talos, Reaver Bikes and the Archon. Some have also mentioned Grotesques as needing some fine tuning. For me it is the Venom that I would like to see come down in points along with Reavers but the thing I hope will change the most is the rules of some weapons and the points cost of a lot of them are way too high.

Lets see basically...for anyone that is knew ish and starting without a preferred style of play I would say wait and see what the full codex brings and in the meantime build the list up as you see fit.

Squidmaster wrote:

Fueldrop speaks absolute nonsense.

Welcome, and be assured that Jetbikes are a GOOD unit.
I've been running them quite frequently, usually in large numbers (I started out just wanting a Jetbike force too) and have been finding them to be an excellent unit. Their durable, and can come with some good weapons options. Give them a good go, and remember that sometimes small units work better than large, and sometimes the reverse is true. I've been finding six-man units to be best so far.

That isn't true.
Wether Fueldrop is exagerating or not is debatable, but there certainly is sense in what he said.
I don't know if it's our worst unit, but one thing is sure : it's certainly not a "good" or "competititve" unit.
It's a "mediocre" to "bad" unit that can indeed be used in casual or semi-competitive (just like any other bad unit). But going to a tourny with a list centered around Reavers is either suicidal, or a very specific type of genius i fail to understand

Mppqlmd wrote:

Squidmaster wrote:

Fueldrop speaks absolute nonsense.

Welcome, and be assured that Jetbikes are a GOOD unit.
I've been running them quite frequently, usually in large numbers (I started out just wanting a Jetbike force too) and have been finding them to be an excellent unit. Their durable, and can come with some good weapons options. Give them a good go, and remember that sometimes small units work better than large, and sometimes the reverse is true. I've been finding six-man units to be best so far.

That isn't true.
Wether Fueldrop is exagerating or not is debatable, but there certainly is sense in what he said.
I don't know if it's our worst unit, but one thing is sure : it's certainly not a "good" or "competititve" unit.
It's a "mediocre" to "bad" unit that can indeed be used in casual or semi-competitive (just like any other bad unit). But going to a tourny with a list centered around Reavers is either suicidal, or a very specific type of genius i fail to understand

Its not the worst. Thats Wyches.


And sorry, but i do disagree. not to turn it into a thing, but I have been using Reavers, and have been finding them to be good. They may not be "competitive", but they are fun and useful. I wouldn't even put them is the bottom half of units if ranked by quality. Its just a case of how you use them and what they're supported by, just like everything else in the army.

Yeah unfortunately even though I love Reavers and they were my favorite in 7e, and I have painstakingly painted models I would love to use, if it's a competitive game I can always find something more worth the (big) price in 8e so far. But they're not the worst, that would be such as wyches or the Archon or the Talos. And then you should probably run Ynnari if you want to be maximally competitive too.

In my experience wyches are more useful than reavers
But i guess everyone's experience can differ. I still think it's safe to warn a newcomer about the fact that Reavers aren't half of what they used to be.

I would like to chip in here and say that there is a very good reason to not theme your list around Reavers:

Nothing else fits the theme.

We have no Jetbike HQ options.

We have no Jetbike Support Options (EG Craftworld Viper, Space Marine Attack Bike)

We have only the one Jetbike, and very limited loadout options with said bike.



If a craftworld player wants to make a Jetbike themed army they have an inundation of options. Multiple HQs. Aspect Warriors, Windriders, Vipers... they can make a fairly balanced army on the theme, no problem.

We do not have the same options. Our Jetbikes are mediocre at best, have little flexibility, and are not thematically represented in our army.

Is there a chance people will start to take a small squad of 3 Reavers for the purpose of capturing objectives? They are the fastest troops in the list after all.

Actually this will help me out, objective secured is going to be troops only is that right? Or is that already the case?

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

Is there a chance people will start to take a small squad of 3 Reavers for the purpose of capturing objectives?  They are the fastest troops in the list after all.

Actually this will help me out, objective secured is going to be troops only is that right?  Or is that already the case?

Reavers are fast attack, so they are not troops (and thus have no objective secured).

Hey Drakthul. Welcome mate!
I've always loved reavers. In 7th all my DE lists included 18-24.

They were needlessly nerfed in 8th but you can still play them and win in casual and semi-competitive games. They really cost too many pts for true comp play.

Can i recommend many units of 3 with blaster for AT or heatlance for sniping HQs and grav talons for CC.
Don't send them up the middle like jerks. Use them to hide and snipe and grab objs and invade the backfield and stop units shooting and bully weak/damaged units.

Happy hunting!

I agree it's a bit of a pain not being able to put an Archon on a jetbike but in all of the fluff it's not that common. Archon's are usually ferried in on a Raider with a retinue or a Succubus with some Wyches.

It'll be expensive to deal with enemy armour via just the reavers, but you could look at using a 4 man Scourge squad with Blasters. They'll move very quickly alongside Reavers and Hellions but pack a pretty decent punch.

I quite like the idea of Themed armies, I can imagine a ton of Fast Attack would be difficult to deal with.

Maybe a Razorwing Jetfighter might be useful for some additional anti tank?

Humourously enough, I also have 24 Jetbikes and 30 Hellions. So I mean... quantity does have a quality to an extent, depending on the list I run.

Realistically I don't do ultra competitive anymore. I don't go to tournaments (I used to, I won a lot too. But I always felt like a vagina by the end of it). I also like making obscure lists work for me. I'm building Tau at the same time as Dark Eldar to boot. I find anytime I start any army, I start with 2 forces to give myself different painting challenges, or I'll lose my mind. Painting the same scheme across a large swathe of miniatures would drive me mad. So I break it up by painting new things.

Besides, we'll be getting a codex probably within the next 12 months, maybe the next 18 months. They may unfuck Jetbikes by then too.

Beyond jetbikes I'm pretty sure I'm going full Kabalite warriors and raiders. Maybe a few venoms but raiders will probably be my first choice as I'm going to be doing 10 man squads. Painting the vehicles is going to be a nightmare given that I've foolishly decided to choose a bright yellow colour scheme (KILL ME). I'll probably replace my airbrush with a higher quality one like an Iwata by then however. The thing that terrifies me most is doing all this and then botching the colour scheme I wanna do. I'm a way more experienced painter than I used to be, and I've been watching tutorials like mad for yellow schemes. So yellow + Black is going to be a challenge to paint.

The jetbike army is going to be a challenge to play.

But life is full of challenges. That's what makes drinking the souls of your enemies so much fun. If it was easy why would you bother doing it? Am I right?

I may look towards getting some scourges later on. But realistically I wanna have a full blitz army. Jetbikes, Hellions, and all troops in transports, designed to blast up the field as quickly as possible and delve into my enemies with small arms fire.

I'm hoping to make Incubi my main source of close combat goodness. Though I suspect, as with all my builds despite getting a lot of models up front, it'll be a slow burn, that I'll be waiting for them to be released in plastic. I actually imagine Dark Eldar will get a small to moderate release when their book drops. There is a lot of resin in that lineup and I know GW's trying to withdraw from that. So I'm hoping beyond hope that Incubi get a plastic kit.

I may eventually make a small coven to join up with the bigger force. Inevitably I design all my armies for Apocalypse by ensuring I can take tons of game configurations and options. I'm doing the same with my Tau as well. Though I'm finishing painting 90% of what I'm getting now, before I really consider getting the Talos's, Wracks, ect.

Anyway. Yea. Plans man. Always the plans.

Hello and welcome back. Just to echo what Mppqlmd and Lord Johan (they're really smart) they're not a good pick much less building an army around. Despite their limited load outs their cost is crazy high. Since you own so many I'd just experiment, you'll see what we mean. They're just crazy inefficient. If I ever take any it's just 3 with +1 T drug and barebones outside a single grav to go tie up something for a single turn before dying.

Edit:
Check out the last 2 splintermind podcasts for a good look at our index of units and army abilities. The discussion threads and tactics also are fantastic stops to get a hyper in depth look at the math and reasoning behind weapons, units, toughness, and the like.

Math hammer kinda ruins the game a bit. Breaking the game down to raw numbers only kinda just creates an environment where the pieces of the table don't really matter, and it's just about the arbitrary numbers assigned to them. Don't get me wrong, I'm aiming to get the most out of my jetbikes. I'm not exactly putting a dunce cap on and going "We are going on a trip to the losing pit today my friends". 30 points, 2 wounds, T4, 4+ sv, 2 attacks, and moves 16 without shoot or charge IIRC, seems to be not a *terrible* deal, even if its not a great deal. Terrain on the board is going to matter a lot too, as that's going to determine how much you can use that speed to your advantage. The nice thing about Jetbikes, is that speed does give you options in terms of where you can go. It gives you an advantage on taking the literal iniative by being able to always get your charge off versus their charge (if so desired), or being able to run away unless you over commit. Seizing objectives would also be a possiblility. There are other units that can do this too of course, hell, even the Hellions I'm getting.

Right now I'm more trying to figure out where in the army my heavy damage is going to come from and where is it going to go. Do I outfit some bikes for tank hunting? Do I get a Ravager? Do I cry in a corner because my jetbikes are bad, and taste the sweet salt of my own tears to inspire me in my moment of pain? I'm generally trying to look at options which I think match the overall zerging assault that my army is gonna be built around. So I'm still looking into options for that. As right now, my Bikes could be fitted to do such things... but realistically, I'm not sure I'd trust them to tank hunt *quite* yet.

Quote :

Math hammer kinda ruins the game a bit

Mathhammer is there to inform you of what you can expect from a unit. You will probably be disappointed or surprized, since reality isn't statistics, but it gives a very solid ground when comparing units.
I understand people that think that in-game experience beats theory. But one day i killed 9 Genestealers with a troupe of 15 ork grots. Got lucky. Do i have to jump to the conclusion "grots is OP, let's buy 10 boxes of them ?". In game experience is subjected to randomness, and you can be led to wrong conclusions by a moment of luck. Mathhammer is objective, but while using it you have to remember that the game will not play like mathhammer predicted.
So i'd say Mathhammer is a fantastic tool, but a lot of people tend to use it as THE TRUTH, and get disappointed when reality differs. I've seen some people quit the hobby over that frustration, blaming the RNG.

Quote :

Do I cry in a corner because my jetbikes are bad, and taste the sweet salt of my own tears to inspire me in my moment of pain?

I highly recommend it. Pain is always delicious, no matter where it comes from.

Def not tank hunting. Throwing a blaster on them makes them all around better. You can reliably knock a few wounds off vehicles and reliably kill a peq. An agonizer makes your champ better in cc. A grave talon is the better of the two fun bike weapons. The problem here for me is the cost just goes higher and higher for something bolters wound on 4's. The drugs will really decide what your bikes are going to do, +2" move drug in a yannari army is insanity.

I disagree with your math hammer comment drakthul, I'll remind you this is dark eldar. We need efficiency above all else as we do not have staying power. The boats have more wounds but can still get cracked by small arms fire. On top of that a vast majority of our special weapons and weapon options are very expensive. So saving points here and there for more efficient weapons and units allows us to bring more things so we can stay on the board and throw more firepower.

Tank hunter everyone including myself will tell you ravagers are the way to go. Whether you go dark lance's or dissies l.. well there's about 5 threads going on arguing which one is more effective. After that is the Razor wing jet fighter, less power than a ravagers but more in your face and still a good tank hunter (I use both rwj and ravagers), then you have scourges which sometimes pay off a ton and other times just fail, then the void Raven which is an odd specialist unit that can kill tanks and heavy infantry alike.

As for hellions, they're good. I don't own any but I've seen them do a lot. They're great against peq (which you'll see a ton of most likely) and meh against geq. Another insane ynnari unit.

Sorry for the long post.

Don't be sorry for long posts!

I should clarify, I don't hate Mathhammer because people are trying to figure out what's worth what. I hate mathhammer because people literally turn their lists, and their game, into mathhammer. What is the point in *doing* this if you're just trying to obtain the only most optimal list? Where is the character? Where is the flavour? Where is the fun? I understand people wanting to optimize a bit, no one wants to play an army that doesn't stand a chance. I used to play very competitively. From 3rd edition - early 5th edition, I never bothered with a list that I didn't find to be mathed perfectly. And I learned to slowly hate my hobby. As others did it around me, I learned to hate it even more. That's one reason that despite coming back into the hobby, I'm avoiding the tournament scene. I don't see the point. It seems like a toxic, unfun environment.

I'm building my army to tell a story. The battle is that story, and it's apart of it. My characters all have meaning and motivation, at least to me. The army's paintstyle, the name, the characters, they all get titles and names and have meaning behind it. The theme of the list, from painting the army yellow and black, to using mainly Jetbites, to calling them hornets, all fits in with a subtle theme. Sure, jetbikes aren't great right now, and I recognize it, I'm not building this army because I want the most mathed out list I can get. I'm building it because it's a new adventure for me to explore for painting, its a playstyle which is pretty far from the Tau I'm building, and an extreme contrast in both playstyle and aesthetic (I'm doing a modern, camoed up Tau army with 2 stage camo. I'm also painting their symbols red and implying they are radical breakaway Tau communists who want to murder all the Ethereals. Like Farsight, only more radical, and revolutionary. I also am jokingly calling them the PLA. lol)

Given that I'm doing the speed approach, and because I don't really like the look of the Ravagers, I may actually do a Razerwing of two. One thing I will admit is that all my armies had redundancy. There largely shouldn't be one unit of something on the field. There should always be two, to give me an opportunity to lose some men, and not lose the desired function as to why I took them.

Anyway. I hope that explains why I am averse to Mathhammer at this point. lol

Well, it will clarify things a bit when you keep in mind it's a game and there is no right way to play it.

If you are mathhammering then you are probably looking for what is optimal. It's a puzzle, figure it out. It's a competition. Math helps.

If you are instead telling a story, with a focus on role-play, or having fun playing a game over some beers with a friend who is not very competitive either, then you probably think mathhammer would just ruin it.

All are good ways to play. Fortunately you can use the same models for all. You can even mix elements of them.

Interestingly Reavers might be better in narrative than in matched play since they have an above average return for PL (120 pts/5 PL for max upgraded squad). But I have never played that mode.

Thank you @AshCrow.

E: and yeah I realize where you are coming from @OP, being over-competitive can be toxic. So it's a good choice.

It's kinda like what happened to 3.5 D&D.

People all loved it. But everyone optimized their characters. You knew what they'd pick when they progressed. So all of them ended up being cookie-cutters.

If everyone just plays the most efficient list possible, then everyone is just playing against one another with constantly the same lists, or near to it. That just seems boring. Again, I was pretty successful at a local tournament level out where I live (During the EoT campaign for example, I went 27-3-0 as my Chaos Space Marines), I understand how to build a vicious list if I really want to. During 5th when I ran Orks, I cleaned up the local tournament scene as well.

I just find now that playing the game only to play optimized lists, is genuinely really just boring. But then again, I did that for almost 12-15 years worth of my hobby venturing.

My main game outside of 40k is Bolt Action, and all the German players take all STG44's for most of their troops late way. I tend to take, well, rifle MG squads, with few exceptions, because they didn't build many STG 44's. I only take STUGs (a bad unit in game, but great in real life) for my infantry companies because in real life those were the typical armoured support for infantry units. I like the historical accuracy, versus optimal builds.

For 40k, I'm not limited by historical accuracy, but I do aim for a theme.

Funny, mathhammer makes the game more fun for me

BUT good news, 8th is NOTHING like other editions, we have a "Living rules book" where once a year they are going to change rules, Main rules, army rules and points to make the game for balanced. They really want all units to be viable options.

SO for now it is very important to math hammer while 8th is still in beta.. Oh PS 8th is in beta atm, we already had 2 faqs, and they already announce teh 1st living rule book changes, they are calling them "Chapter Approve".

We dont have our codex out yet either, as proof of balance changes between index and codex, the 6 codexs that has been release in the past few months all had points adjustments, so when we get our Codex they will change the Reavers and Hellions.

GW already stated on their facebook via comments they are aware of Hellions and Reavers (and many other units).


So for your Reaver/Hellion theme, i'd guessing a 20-25% points decrease between them, and some options like Heat Lances (these will for sure go down in price).

If you can fields 30 bikes and 30 Hellions now, you might be to pick up 5 more bikes and 5 more hellions with the release of the codex, its not much but it is something. EDIT: this is my hypotheses from seeing how the other codex changes were.

Lastly Each codex is getting extra Command points and Stratagems, a good Stratagem could boost Hellions and Reavers to make them a 1st pick, so with points and potential Formation rules for them, they might be A tier.

I can field 30 Hellions and 24 Bikes at the moment.

I was thinking of doing 4 squads of 6, or 2 squads of 12. I haven't decided yet.

Drakthul wrote:

I can field 30 Hellions and 24 Bikes at the moment.

I was thinking of doing 4 squads of 6, or 2 squads of 12. I haven't decided yet.

Well MSU units and large units both have their place, and you will need to try and balance it for yourself.

Currently who every has the "least" amount of units gets 1st turn, but b.c players can abuse this, via transports and other means, GW already is going to change this soon (November i think the 1st Chapter Approve comes out) and instead always going 1st you get a +1 to the dice roll off for who gets 1st turn.

MSU is good for a few reason

1) If you play Ynnari it really is a boost (can talk about this if you want more info)
2) You can more easily make Niche rolls and more Niche rolls like AI, AT
3) You can get objectives sometimes easier (this is a maybe b.c its model count within 3" but if there are 6 objectives and you need to control 3 for a turn)
4) You can hide them easier
5) You wont lose Moral Phase
6) Can sacrifie a unit and not worry as much
7) You can tie down Tanks and only have a small unit not doing anything while others can go do something else (if you dont know what i'm talking about we can explain more detail)
8') Drug RAW abuse (if you dont understand we can go into more detail)

Large units Pros

1) You have less drops so more likely to go 1st
2) Its harder to tie down b.c of firepower
3) If you cant Drug abuse, you get better use of drugs with less units
4) You can Split fire with everything, so you dont need multi units, your Poison and shoot at infantry while you lances can shoot at tanks
6) Stratagems might be better for larger units, Moral is a good example.
3) Harder to get 1st blood on your