Dark Eldar - Melee Army possible

Mppqlmd wrote:

The problem with Dark Eldar is that you can (almost) always find, in another army, a unit of same price and role that does your job better.

But are all those units in the same army? Not counting soup lists ofc, as that changed everything.

Of course not. But every army has to have at least some sort of speciality where it can say "In that field, I'm the best, or somewhere close".

Nurgle has the most absurd resistance in the game. SM all have very strong and versatile units of high quality. CW have the best specialized infantry in the game. IG have the best force multiplying, and possibly the best heavy tanks. Orks have the best value in CC power/points.

IMO, the units that can claim superiority in our Index are 1, Dark Lances, that are the most cheap/easy to field/yet super powerful AT weapon in the game, and Kabalites, that are not broken but still, pointswise, an incredible value. But everything else is... pretty lackluster, I'd say.

I would just like to compliment Kantella for a well written and non-aggressive rebuttal.

Indeed, it was well written. But from the position of someone who loves numbercrunching and who spent extensive time mathhammerring I still consider the best advice for list building that I ever got as a noob from another player when my friend said "Man... ditch the tables and go get some experience". I found out that only then I was able to interpret the tables with a proper... insight, if you know what I mean. That is why I am very skeptical when someone says "this unit is bad, because that unit from that army kills better than this unit for the same points". Mathhammering is a good excercise, but from what I see with new players it often leads to bland lists with only one theme and the players fearing to try the "worse" units, because it could damage their chances to win with already challenging army, while it could turn out as amazingly fitting for his/hers style of play. Is it any clearer?

I don't mean to sound like "everyone who mathammers does it wrong". Only I feel it necessary to point out to the new players, that you need more than the table. Especially when most of the arguments around are purely mathhamer-y. :-)

It's a bit, in a sense, like litterary analysis (which is a bit my field of work). A lot of people consider litterature to be only a matter of feeling and subjectivity. They think you can only talk about a book with a sentence that begins by "I feel...". And sure, emotions are an important part of the artistic experience.

But if every opinion is valid, just because everyone is entitled to his opinion, then nobody can be wrong. And if nobody can be wrong, there is simply no room for truth, we'd be swimming in pure subjectivity. That's why we invent objective tools that are capable of creating facts. And those facts can help us anchor our subjectivity in an objective dimension.

Mathhammer should not replace experience and feelings. It should help you understand your experience. If you have a terrible game where your wyches got destroyed by Lychguards, you can use Mathhammer, and try to understand if A, you lacked luck and that situation was not your fault, or B, that failure was statistically predictable and you shouldn't have played like that.
If your Mortarion gets destroyed by 3 Fire Prisms twin-linking in the first turn, before you go cry on the WH40k facebook page that Fire Prisms are OP, the reasonnable thing to do is Mathhammering : was it luck, or are Fireprisms really capable of reliably destroying Mortarion in 1 turn ?

I have destroyed a squad of 10 genestealers with a squad of 15 Orkz Grots. Experience is subject to randomness and hasard. Mathhammer is there, in my opinion, to understand the role of that randomness, and thus learn from experience without being fooled by the randomness that is part of the game.

I can certainly respect what you are saying there, and agree with the vast majority. I especially dislike the blandness of saying Warriors + Ravagers + flyers is a good army, and the only worthwhile options.

At times it feels like what you are saying is more "ignore the math, these options are just as good", which is quite different from "the math isn't the full answer, and you might find a better match for your playstyle with these options." That may just be the difficulty of understanding nuance from a text only conversation.

I would encourage a new player to start with the 'strong' options, learn to play those well, and then branch out to the more niche or challenging units. I hope it doesn't come across as a straitjacket to creativity in army lists, but perhaps to some extent it does.

The alternative of just taking what you think is neat and learn how to play that, before refining with the numbers, seems a harder road to me, which is why I lean to starting with the more vanilla army composition. If you are willing to suffer more defeats as you learn, then that can be a viable path to greatness too.

Anyway, Sslyths are a powerfull melee units, try them.

^especially with Archon and Doom support. Ooh they nasty.

I know that I may at times sound very... bullheaded. :-) But its just my way of provoking a proper and strong answer to counter my opinion, which is a way even for me to learn. Sorry for that, but well looking at some responses its hard to feel bad about it. Opposition is amazing way to learn for me. Which might have something to do even with the way I play 40K.

As for the topic - Had a tourney yesterday... single clawed fiends - amazing! Opponents dont shoot them coz they think its a waste of shots and they can mulch characters quite easy. :-) Srsly, try them out.

I used 10 Bloodbrides, pimped. S drug in 2 matches, A drug in 1. One game (Dominate and Destroy) they scored me 6VP for KP and holding objective. Second game (Contact Lost) they bottlenecked LR, Leviathan, Pedro, Lieutenant and Standard Bearer for 3 turns and killed the Warlord (he had +1 A, reroll all hits, reroll 1s to wound on everything). I lost that game, but it was due to bad cards and no other way to get VPs. Third game (Tactical Gambit) they held up Necron wraiths and scarabs while the rest of my army went on erasing all other opposition and objective control. I also had 7 incubi and 6 Harlequins with Shadowseer in the list. Like 750 pts in melee units including HQs. Not a proper melee list I know, but still a lot more than I see on tables outside of Khorne and Orks.

None of my opponents knew that the unit (Brides) even exists, which I find hilarious really. I don't think I'd use an unit of more than 10, but they certainly are worth the points.

Which circles me back to the math discussion. Incubi are mathematically stronger on offense against anything that is not a horde, they can withstand overwatch - they have advantages on paper. But after using them for quite some time, I think I will be leaving them at home and take Wyches or Brides instead. They simply pose much bigger problem for the enemy and are great in attrition fighting, which is what I need them to do. And my experience with wyches and brides brought me to the point that I do not leave without them. Hence the math vs. experience.

I think you are now also pressing on a second point that makes units that are UP or OP behave very differently on the battlefield.
As you mentioned no one knew bloodbrides. It is often much easier to win if the opponent does not know how to deal with said unit because he has no idea what the unit is or does. And then a unit like bloodbrides which are in my opinion overpriced, who can quite easely be countered if the opponent knows how suddenly shines. Since the opponent does not know how to beat the unit and thus will not shoot them to death like the guardsmen they are, but instead has them in melee with a unit that maybe cannot leave and does not deal the number of attacks to kill bloodbrides. I think once people know how to deal with them it will be a lot harder to make them worth their points.
I had the same with hellions, they were great the first few games, then people learned they are as though as wet paper towels but do have 2D attacks and suddenly they rarely survived the first/ second game turn.

I webway them in, charge in a transport first from another unit to soak overwatch and bite them in. I always have several units to tie the enemy in CC so he cannot shoot them off the table next turn if they fail the charge. It is kinda hard to get any meaningful shooting even on wyches this way. Its the issue of making shooting the wyches as bad option as any other for the enemy.

I dont remember the last time anyone shot my wyches really. Outside of some pistols.

I have never been able to get all (or even most of) the enemy units in cc. I guess that is my problem

I will have a tourney in a month. I will most probably play 2x10 wyches, plus complementing units. I will try to take pictures and make a batrep to illustrate.

@aurynn

Do you have any Ork or Tyranid/Genestealer players near you, out of interest? Those were the opponents that really convinced me to leave the Wych Cult units at home.

Yes. But I have to repeat that I am not aiming to walz over the top lists and if I pull a draw agains those I consider it a major achievement, because there IS a difference in options and overall power and pulling a draw means that the power is in fact comparable with ours.

Speaking of roughly 2000pts battles I dont have much trouble with orks, but I didnt play against a full mental horde plus smite spam yet. I dont think I lost to them so far though. Against nids the matchup is hard, but since I do not do ONLY wych cult, I tend not to lose horribly, usually pulling a draw or close to a draw. IIRC I have two minor losses, two draws and one minor win, which is fine in my book since we are index only. Gends are positively one level of nastiness above the nids IMO. Played them only once and without the cult, so the experience is not relevant to this discussion.

When I started toying with melee and cult I was losing horribly TBH, but I sticked with it for almost a year now. I studied the charge/CC/consolidate/pile in tricks and tried to learn from the losses. And I fell in love how the army works as a kabal/cult raiding party.

aurynn wrote:

Yes. But I have to repeat that I am not aiming to walz over the top lists and if I pull a draw agains those I consider it a major achievement, because there IS a difference in options and overall power and pulling a draw means that the power is in fact comparable with ours.

Speaking of roughly 2000pts battles I dont have much trouble with orks, but I didnt play against a full mental horde plus smite spam yet. I dont think I lost to them so far though. Against nids the matchup is hard, but since I do not do ONLY wych cult, I tend not to lose horribly, usually pulling a draw or close to a draw. IIRC I have two minor losses, two draws and one minor win, which is fine in my book since we are index only. Gends are positively one level of nastiness above the nids IMO. Played them only once and without the cult, so the experience is not relevant to this discussion.

When I started toying with melee and cult I was losing horribly TBH, but I sticked with it for almost a year now. I studied the charge/CC/consolidate/pile in tricks and tried to learn from the losses. And I fell in love how the army works as a kabal/cult raiding party.

I'm right there with you, mate. Wyches have always done well for me. There are a tonne of subtleties to CC that make it way harder, but also more fun, than ranged. That being said, I can't see running more than a single sqaud - they really really need that +1A combat drug to function.
They also fall apart easily against tyranids and Orks. I play against those frequently, and the pistols/numbers are hard to get past.

That being said, I do think wyches need some buffs to really make them viable. Have 2 attacks base, their invuln work against pistols, something like that.

Yea, you cannot just throw them in some random melee and think they will do well. They are very surgical, so to speak, strange as it sounds and webway helped in that regard greatly. My biggest problem was that they were not worth the transport tax. Now that I can throw 20 wyches from webway, leaving me A LOT Points to support them, I find them great.

I'd love to see some tweaks on them too, but I hope they won't overdo it.

Wyches are not for killing. I would never take more than one, and I don't think I'd ever kit them out to any significant level unless I just had spare points.

They are for tarpitting stuff that can't effectively kill it back - specifically, vehicles and any big nasty thing with a small number of super powerful attacks (certain daemons, certain big 'Nids).

SHOULD they be able to kill things? Probably - from my understanding of their fluff, they should absolutely murder anything their size (non-power armor infantry) but due to weight of dice currently they get destroyed against specifically those things.

That said, there are some neat tricks since we're on the topic of charge/fight phase tactics. For example, if your Wyches start on/near an objective, and an enemy is heading your way to contest the objective, move towards them and make the charge, but string your Wyches back to the objective while they're in combat to still be holding it for points. Enemy can't fall back and re-engage on the objective, and you hold it for as long as your No Escape and Invuln saves keep you going.

What I see of Wyches so far, (haven't been able to play a game myself yet) is that they should be used for hammer and anvil tactics, with their No Escape rule making them the anvil.

And as for getting them in combat, I plan on putting 10 (with 3 Hydra Gauntlets) on a Raider. If I get the rules correctly, I should move the Raider to about 15" (max) + the movement speed of the target. That way, after my opponents turn, I will hopefully be at 15" -ish range. I can then eject the Wyches, and move the Raider and Wyches forward separately (they'll be within 7" or less), charge in with the Raider to soak up overwatch, and charge in with the Wyches.

However, this does seem tricky to pull off, and since I haven't actually played yet, this still needs to be proven viable.

If I do pull it off, I'll let my Wyches tear up the target as much as possible and either die, leaving a small target to finish with probably Reavers or Hellions due to their movement, or I'll win and charge to the next target.

In general, I think our army is trickier to master than some other armies, but we do have the potential to get stuff done both in Ranged and Melee.
Armies like Space Marines are kind of straight forward and easy to play with, but when mastered, I think it's armies like ours that can be stronger.

Again, this is just me using my tactics I know only from other games, and watching battles on youtube, because I am a complete Warhammer noob. So take my comment with a big grain of salt.

@Gelmir
You are on the right track. Only it cannot be your only threat for T2, preferrably not your only melee threat, because it is rather easy to remove by shooting. That is why I use the webway. The thing is that if we cannot force the enemy to choose between bad and worse, we are pretty much screwed.

@Gelmir it's true, we need to master some trick to get the best from DE. Wyches are not an Hammer, but once you get their role these girls becomes pretty usefull.
I hope into a different fix for them: no rolls on "No Escape". Nothing to buff them in CC, but a great unique tool for these ladies. We still have other choices for the punch into melee (Sslyth, Incubi, hoping in new Grots, Clawed Fiends etc.), I would like to see Wyches as something different and unique for them. GW already rewrote their role with the No Escape rule...so now just boost this rule! I would like it.

@Aurynn, that is true, and I am indeed planning on using more melee aside from Wyches. Every anvil needs a good hammer.

@Cerve, that would indeed be nice. I also think Wychcult weapons really became way less interesting after the 5th edition. There really is no reason whatsoever to use Razorflails. :/ And even Hydra Gauntlets used to be more awesome.
Same goes for several other weapons, like the Hellions Stun Claw. They are just not worth the points.