Titan Slaying

One thing I have noticed is that the Dark Eldar really lack any heavy target killers. Most armies get some form of superheavy killer (because lords of war are becoming more and more coming), but at the moment Dark Eldar only have the option of spamming more Darklances.

This has traditionally been fine because until 8th edition lances hit most hard targets at about the same level, thanks to the lance rule. However, with T 9+ being a thing and our hardest hitting weapon (void lances) capping out at S 9, we really don't have a good counter to extremely tough targets short of allying in a wraithknight or something.

While not the most efficient response what do you think about using the Yncarne for that? S6 yes, but AP-4 d6 damage and rerolling to wound (6 attacks) and he can use some psychic powers to deal some MWs.

Rhivan wrote:

While not the most efficient response what do you think about using the Yncarne for that? S6 yes, but AP-4 d6 damage and rerolling to wound (6 attacks) and he can use some psychic powers to deal some MWs.

Since when does any self respecting Archon need to rely on some chaos abomination masquerading as a god to deal with his enemies. You have clearly gone soft, and your Kabal shall be conquered from underneath you.

Seriously, screw the Ynarri and everything they stand for. Unity is for the weak.

Well against T9 Dissies are still wounding on 5+, same as Dark Lances, but with 3x the shots. Might be a viable option.

FuelDrop wrote:

Rhivan wrote:

While not the most efficient response what do you think about using the Yncarne for that? S6 yes, but AP-4 d6 damage and rerolling to wound (6 attacks) and he can use some psychic powers to deal some MWs.

Since when does any self respecting Archon need to rely on some chaos abomination masquerading as a god to deal with his enemies. You have clearly gone soft, and your Kabal shall be conquered from underneath you.

Seriously, screw the Ynarri and everything they stand for. Unity is for the weak.

Concur. I have exactly none-percent interest in playing Ynarri and mixing with the Lower eldar. I'm interested in being able to play Dark Eldar as a complete army.

I agree, I don't think we currently have an option and that's an issue. Dark Lances are great and hold a very important place in our army; but our other weapon options need a real once-over given that some are wholly useless. To my mind, one of our pre-existing options could play the role you're suggesting.

Frankly we need a proper titan killer. Everyone else has lords of war, and we really lack a cost effective counter to them beyond "more Darklances". And once you hit toughness 9+ Darklances are really not a great option tbh.

I wouldn't mind getting some tau style air support, something that does extra damage to superheavies. Maybe even give Void Lances an extra d6 damage against titanic targets or something?

Against T9 you have viable options :
- dissies : they are used to wound vehicles on 5+, and they work perfectly fine.
- Voidlances : expensive to field though.

Against T10 you have nothing, except Haywire. But haywire isn't really a thing.

I honestly think haywire and voidlances should be our counter to super heavies ... Though it would need to be a bigger haywire gun ... Something along the lines of a heavy weapon of a "super heavy" platform that employs a much larger haywire type weapon that gets 3 D6 haywire shots and works as wound rolls of 1 nothing, 2-3 one mortal wound, 4-5 = 3 mortal wounds, 6 = 6 mortal wounds against anything with <vehicle > or <super heavy vehicle>, and voidlances could have an overcharge type rule that doubles the strength at the cost of rolling a 1 to hit causes 1 or D3 mortal wounds.

lances could have a rule, never wound anything on more than 4+. that may be a little too much, 5+ is more likely. some reroll or extra damage against the biggest and baddest

Easiest way to fix this? Make Void Lances available to Ravagers for 25/30 pts a piece.

It's not only that we lack good weapons against heavies, but much more we can't amass them to any degree.
Voidraven for Void Lances? Too expensive and carries only 2 weapons. And it's more of an anti-TEQ unit anyway.
Scourges for Haywire? They could potentially work if Haywire did twice the damage, then but Scourges would still die to a breeze.

As I said, the easiest way would be to put Voidlight on your Ravagers. Which, of coruse, won't happen because there are no Void Lances in the Ravager kit.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

Easiest way to fix this? Make Void Lances available to Ravagers for 25/30 pts a piece.

It's not only that we lack good weapons against heavies, but much more we can't amass them to any degree.
Voidraven for Void Lances? Too expensive and carries only 2 weapons. And it's more of an anti-TEQ unit anyway.
Scourges for Haywire? They could potentially work if Haywire did twice the damage, then but Scourges would still die to a breeze.

As I said, the easiest way would be to put Voidlight on your Ravagers. Which, of coruse, won't happen because there are no Void Lances in the Ravager kit.

I could get behind this. Hell, give us access to haywire cannons (with upgraded haywire) and we're talking!

The problem with haywire is that if it becomes a reliable source of damage, it will outshine the darklight (just like in 7th).
So i think it should be a niche for very, very heavy lifting (T9 and above), and a tool for debuffing vehicles. But buff it too much and we're back to 7th were it was the only reliable ranged AT in our army.

Mppqlmd wrote:

The problem with haywire is that if it becomes a reliable source of damage, it will outshine the darklight (just like in 7th).
So i think it should be a niche for very, very heavy lifting (T9 and above), and a tool for debuffing vehicles. But buff it too much and we're back to 7th were it was the only  reliable ranged AT in our army.

Given the hard nerfs to poison and the increase in multi-wound models even if haywire became a 1-hit ko against tanks darklight would still be popular for dealing with MCs, crisis suits, centurions, et all. Plenty of non vehicle targets for multi-wound weapons now.

But then we'd have a fluff nightmare, where the occasionnal disruptive tool is spammed to deal with all the tanks, and the main artillery tool is used in small numbers to deal with elite infantry

Mppqlmd wrote:

The problem with haywire is that if it becomes a reliable source of damage, it will outshine the darklight (just like in 7th).
So i think it should be a niche for very, very heavy lifting (T9 and above), and a tool for debuffing vehicles. But buff it too much and we're back to 7th were it was the only  reliable ranged AT in our army.

I have to grant you, twice the damage for Haywire Blasters would be excessive. We all want more choice and variety in our lists.

I think the question shouldn't be whether Haywire should outperform the Lance, but at what point it should outperform the it.
Mind you, a Haywire Blaster has less range, much less durability and are completely useless to non-vehicle targets.

Let's take 4 Scourges vs a 3 DL Ravager.
I think the Scourges should deal about equal damage to Lances on targets with T5-7 and a 3+ sv.
Subsequently, they are superior on T8 and vastly superior on T9 (just by keeping the way they work now).

Given that Haywire is a specialized anti-tank weapon and Scourges are easily killed, I don't think that this is unreasonable. Sure, they cost less and have DS, but a single turn of shooting is not worth that much.

Edit: Of course this needs further tweaking. Maybe the Scourges should be 20% works than Lances on T5-7 targets, maybe they should be 15% better. Who knows.
But I am convinced that there is a fine line where we can find balance without making either of them obsolete.

Also, we should not leave Heat Lances out of the picture. Most of all, they need a rework and more units need to be able to take those.

Mppqlmd wrote:

But then we'd have a fluff nightmare, where the occasionnal disruptive tool is spammed to deal with all the tanks, and the main artillery tool is used in small numbers to deal with elite infantry

It's not really a fluff nightmare. I can't count the number of time a darklight have been used in the lore and book to kill a character. WAAYYY more often than destroying a vehicle.

Let's do some math here.

4 scourges either dark lances or haywire. Assume a 3+ save and 5+ ward to give the haywire a chance.
t7 t8 t9
Haywire: 2.66 hits: 0.88/0.44/0.44 wounds+ 1.77 mw : 0.44/0.22/0.22save +1.77: 2.22/2.00/2.00
lance still: 2.66 hits: 1.77/1.33/0.88 wounds : 1.19/0.89/0.67 saves : 4.15/3.11/2.07
lance moving 2hits: 1.33/1.00/0.67 wounds : 0.89/ 0.67/ 0.44 saves : 3.11/ 2.33/ 1.56
When not moving dark lances deal more damage nearly twice as much against t7 and only a fraction more against t9+ when moving the dark lance still deals more damage except against t9+ with a ward save. If we skip the ward save or make it save 2+ then the difference for the dark lance becomes even bigger.
If we consider the price: 133 vs 165
Dark lance still always better except against a ward save and t9+.
Dark lance moving better against t7 (save does not matter) and against t8 without a ward save.
And the dark lance has bigger range, which is really nice for keeping scourges alive.

|Meavar wrote:

Let's do some math here.

4 scourges either dark lances or haywire. Assume a 3+ save and 5+ ward to give the haywire a chance.
                                t7  t8 t9
Haywire: 2.66 hits: 0.88/0.44/0.44 wounds+ 1.77 mw : 0.44/0.22/0.22save +1.77: 2.22/2.00/2.00
lance still: 2.66 hits: 1.77/1.33/0.88 wounds :  1.19/0.89/0.67 saves : 4.15/3.11/2.07
lance moving 2hits: 1.33/1.00/0.67 wounds : 0.89/ 0.67/ 0.44 saves : 3.11/ 2.33/ 1.56
When not moving dark lances deal more damage nearly twice as much against t7 and only a fraction more against t9+ when moving the dark lance still deals more damage except against t9+ with a ward save. If we skip the ward save or make it save 2+ then the difference for the dark lance becomes even bigger.
If we consider the price: 133 vs 165
Dark lance still always better except against a ward save and t9+.
Dark lance moving better against t7 (save does not matter) and against t8 without a ward save.
And the dark lance has bigger range, which is really nice for keeping scourges alive.

And the Dark Lance can be put onto all sorts of platforms, strapped to transports, ect, becoming an assault weapon on a vehicle to outclass the haywire blaster even more.

Honestly, I think the Haywire Blaster will only be noticeably more effective on average against toughness 16+ targets (I heard a friend mention that some of the bigger titans have that but cannot confirm at all), in which case the pitiful wounds it outputs aren't even going to scratch the regenerating void shields.

We really have no counter at all to someone plonking down a Reaver Titan or the like on the table... and before you say "Well how often does something like that happen" I live in a town with several Reaver Titans, several Phantom Titans, and a genuine Manta from forge world. So yeah, having something to deal with big stuff is kinda important to me.

You would think the depths of the dark city, or the riches kabals would have something big enough or some for of weapon that can bring down even the largest of the mon'keihs Titans ... But then again they do kinda go out their way to raid and pillage less defended systems and places that are more then likely to not have anything much bigger than a small knight Titan to defend it. However it would still make sense to have something to deal with those huge machines as our craftworld cousins have those massive machines as well ... But it seems GW and forge world feel that the dark eldar don't need anything bigger than the Tantalus ... Maybe we will get something ... Maybe not ... I just want a pure DE lord of war for once ...

Huh. Void shields work vs mortal wounds, and only defend against ranged. If only we had some kind of melee anti armour, like... *takes a deep breath* Wraithknight Stompa Gorkanaught imperial knight dreadnaught wraithlord carifex barbed herodule killer kan et all...

I was actually at Throne of Skulls the other weekend. I had to fight a single Reaver titan... Now my list had 27-37 AT weapons depending on how well I rolled for the number of shots from my Reapers. It just wasn't enough... Even if we have weapons powerful enough to hurt them reliably they still have their void shields.

I was rather unlucky in that game, I just could not roll a 5 to wound. Though when I did he passed his invul' the majority of the time. I did a grand total of 12 wounds over 5 turns with only an Archon surviving. Two rounds of combat with it at that and only taking one wound.

Not only do we need something to wound them reliably but enough of it without getting to outta hand and making normal tanks way easier to kill than they already are. That's where I think stratagems should come into play. Enhanced void mines, just remove the reality bubble they create and watch that dark energy go into overdrive. Or just a haywire bombardment to remove invul's for a turn. Give us that little edge we need in circumstances such as this.

*edit*

I was talking to a mate a while ago about us needing bigger guns and it dawned on me. Why not an upgrade sprue to the Tantalus? Have some doomsday gun slung between the two prows of it's hull. I'm sure some mad Archon will come up with something stupid to hang there.

Honestly, in previous editions it wasn't so bad due to how lance and void shields worked. we could strip away hull points like nobody's business with haywire and our lances were reliable against even the thickest armour.

Add to that our mobility allowing us to get off rear shots, and while our only real option was death by a thousand cuts, at least we could reliably cut them.

You know one option? give heat lances double strength when in half range, on top of their existing ability. Strength 12 isn't some miracle wounding against regular tanks toughness 7-8, since it's still 3+ like our lances against 7, but it will at least give us a tool to deal with T 10.

Or we could get haywire grenades back as a melee option. our toolbox includes plenty of melee units but none, not even either of our monsters, is able to go toe to toe with big stuff like other monsters and vehicles. it's a gaping hole in our list that can be fixed with a simple dreadnaught close combat weapon equivelent for the Talos, which would then be able to mob a reaver titan with high strength high damage weapons that ignore its void shields.

The thing is, I am pretty sure that every other army has SOME source of S 10+ hits be it melee and common like Space Marine Dreadnaughts with close combat weapons or ranged and rare like Shadowsword superheavy tanks. The only other armies that I can think of off the top of my head that are short like us are the Sisters of Battle, Genestealer Cults (possibly, not too familiar with them), and Harlequins. Sisters used to be able to rely on their mass melta to kill big stuff but with the changes in 8th they find themselves, much like us, with tools that no longer fill their previous role in the same way. Cults and Harlequins are both designed somewhat more as supplemental forces than as complete armies, being expected to ally in anything that they need to fill holes in their very specialized lists.

I agree on what you're saying there oad. But even Tyranids have stronger AT guns than us, look at the Tyrannofex's rupture cannon. It baffles me that we don't have anything stronger than S9. Give us an upgrade sprue to wraiths and Revenants xD Bring out the corrupt wraiths and tormentor titans xD

URIEN wrote:

I agree on what you're saying there oad. But even Tyranids have stronger AT guns than us, look at the Tyrannofex's rupture cannon. It baffles me that we don't have anything stronger than S9. Give us an upgrade sprue to wraiths and Revenants xD Bring out the corrupt wraiths and tormentor titans xD

It'd be nice to have something that's not an off brand model of a craftworld weapon for our superheavy...

I guess. But they do exist and heck it'd be cool to see them. Or maybe just give our opponent a black hole in a box?