Desperate old time player needing help!

To make it clear from the beginning, this is not a rant/whine thread, this is a thread in which I ask for you adviice

Since the new edition our army has changed, a lot of things have changed, But I have for some reason not been able to adapt...I have tried all of the following lists

Venom spam
Harlie Deathstar
Desintigrator spam
Footdar with and ADL+QG
Eldar ellies (war walkers)
Eldar allies (Farseer jetbike)
Eldar allies (pathfinders + eldrad)
Drazhar blob
5 man wych suicide squads (mostly in venom spam)
Wracks instead of warriors
Raider splinter rack spam
Incubi heavy list

I have played all the situations, me being second, me being first, there be night, no night, best matchups, worst matchups...

And all that has happened is that ive lot almost every single match (but not by much though) due to the idea that we are way too papper thin now... no more 4+ fnp and 4+ cover. Our lances do not do as much damage as they did before because ur glance is almost worth nothing (unless it has 2 hp), Our units die faster due to no decent ammount of cover unless you go to ground and if you are not on an objective, sure it helps the unit survive but then they are somewhat usless the following turn.

I have been searching for a list for ages which is capable of handling itself, let alone winning. A list which i can be confortable playing with in a tournament and have to think about only 2-3 armies which might cause me problems.

Some of the good points are that our flyers/incubi/poison shots have all become more useful but sadly, thats about all.

And just to put salt on the already festering wound, last weekend was the national tournament in which for the hell of it I decided to play Vanilla marines with Deathwing, and guess what? I wiped the floor with almost everyone

The metagame here is quite varied, I have played against 6 flyer necrons, 9 flyer necrons, foot space wolves, all sorts of armies allied with IG, demons, orks, tau, SImple IG with my DE army but to no avail.

Ive been playing DE for 5 years now and it pains me to have to actually start thinking of playing space marines if I want to play competitive.

So I have come to ask my fellow DE players advice, what tactics and army lists you have used, which have been successful, what has worked? Because until now I have only seen failure in my attempts to create a list. Maybe I might not see something or I cant get my head around the new playstyle. I dont know.

Godreas wrote:

Our lances do not do as much damage as they did before because ur glance is almost worth nothing (unless it has 2 hp)

Glancing might not damage any more but you can now glance a vehicle to death this great ease, arguably this is better than the previous stun locking glances. Especially against enemy's that can ignore shaken/stunned.

Godreas wrote:

Our units die faster due to no decent ammount of cover unless you go to ground and if you are not on an objective, sure it helps the unit survive but then they are somewhat usless the following turn.

Any cover is decent cover and it is almost always better than your armour. With the new Terrain set up, you have control over where to place it so you should always have it where you need it.

Godreas wrote:

I have been searching for a list for ages which is capable of handling itself, let alone winning. A list which i can be confortable playing with in a tournament and have to think about only 2-3 armies which might cause me problems.

It sounds like you have tried a good spread of lists. At this point I recommend picking on you enjoy the feel of and adjusting tactics. Mosts DE lists will be capable of a win against a standard opponent if used in the right way. It might be harder with some but thats where practice and good strategy pay off.

Godreas wrote:

Some of the good points are that our flyers/incubi/poison shots have all become more useful but sadly, thats about all.

I would also add Reavers, Haywire anything, Huskblades, vehicles and Dark Lances to that.

Godreas wrote:

And just to put salt on the already festering wound, last weekend was the national tournament in which for the hell of it I decided to play Vanilla marines with Deathwing, and guess what? I wiped the floor with almost everyone

Again to bring up the tactics angle. I would wager from this line that you are somewhat practiced with SM's and perhaps are trying to much to use your DE as SM's which we are not. You need a whole separate thought pattern and tactics to use DE than the much more hardy SM's

Godreas wrote:

So I have come to ask my fellow DE players advice, what tactics and army lists you have used, which have been successful, what has worked? Because until now I have only seen failure in my attempts to create a list. Maybe I might not see something or I cant get my head around the new playstyle. I dont know.

There are a lot of different lists and tactics out there for DE and all of them work and are competitive in there own ways. You can find them easy enough with some looking.

I think a better option is for you to list one of your preferred DE lists and explain how you used it and how it failed. That way we can advice on where to improve that list to help bring victory.

My question is what is failing you in those lists??? I mostly play venomspam, but have also switched up to Harliestar and other fun lists like that. But its hard to figure out where you need help with without a basis for us to start with. Maybe a battle rep or a list to start with?

I can tell you from experience that dark lances are not worse, just different. Gone are the days of stunlocking vehicles, and back are the days of needing to kill them. Luckily AP2 helps alot in that we are rolling on last editions chart, not this editions.

On top of that we need less flickerfields and more nightshields, as nightshields forces the opponent to draw in closer to deal with us, meaning more double tap and blaster range for us. Both are which where we want them to be in.

Also you are seeing a meta shift from all mech armies to all foot armies. Sadly I think this is misplaced as all foot armies have their own problems, but that is something else entirely. Venoms have gotten way better due to the mass infantry we are seeing hit the fields. combine that with nightshields and most basic infantry being only 24" range, and you have yourself a winning combo.

Beasts and Incubi have also gotten better with how brutal assault is. Toss in an Archon or baron, and you got yourself a mighty fighting unit that can easily walk through most things.

Basically I havent seen a major change this edition for us. Its still shoot, shoot, and assault when you need to. Whatever you did last edition to be so good, do almost the same thing this one, just remember that we can no longer stunlock a tank, but have to destroy it entirely.

Quote :

Any cover is decent cover and it is almost always better than your armour. With the new Terrain set up, you have control over where to place it so you should always have it where you need it.

Ofcourse any cover is good, but the cover you recieve these days is not half the dice you roll statistically, Its worse than that, also most of the time in any competitive scene you do not have random terrain, you have a preset table with somewhat equal terrain pieces of either side.

Quote :

Glancing might not damage any more but you can now glance a vehicle to death this great ease, arguably this is better than the previous stun locking glances. Especially against enemy's that can ignore shaken/stunned.

Yes and no, if you cannot do at least 3 glances then ur shots were wasted because that vehicle will still be at its full potential next turn.

Quote :

Again to bring up the tactics angle. I would wager from this line that you are somewhat practiced with SM's and perhaps are trying to much to use your DE as SM's which we are not. You need a whole separate thought pattern and tactics to use DE than the much more hardy SM's

I am a DE player fist then a SM player, I know very well that this army cannot be played in the same manner and it is very unforgiving. The point im trying to make with this is that, tactics aside, me being a person who has played SM 4-5 times in a tournament situation did more than I have since 6th ED has come out than with my DE army.

Quote :

I would also add Reavers, Haywire anything, Huskblades, vehicles and Dark Lances to that.

- I like reavers, but they are only 6-12 units in a whole army, sure they can be useful but up til a point
- Haywire anything? why? since no one really playes AV spam anymore (besides armies such as BA AV13 spam and necron flyers), why would you dump a large ammount of points into haywiring everything when you wont have that many targets.
-Huskblade? I thought about it, but the fact that it is s3 has always made me turn my head away from it, sure its Ap2 but i will almost always hit on 5's which is a huge downside.
-Vehicles? ofc our vehicles are the stable of our army,
-Lances have always been an abundance in my lists, but i will say again, It is harder to take our any form of AV with them, you need that pen or the tank will just shake it off. And this is in the case in which the metagame supports a Dark lance heavy list, because most people these days dont run a lot of vehicles.


In 5th edition I played a venomspam list and a Wych spam list, both lists were confortable to play with and they both worked more or less, you loose some, you win some.

Now? all my lists have been shot down by anything, even terminators have started to beat me and they should be easy as hell for DE, just the blasterborn are a big threat VS terminators.

To get a general idea of what I played, I had two main lists that I juggled with besides the huge list i wrote earlier

1: A balanced list

5x5 warriors w/ blaster in raider w/ DL
1x5 warriors w/ blaster in venom w/ ext.cannon

2x4 Trueborn w/ blasters in a venom w/ ext.cannon

Haemonculi

3 flyers w/ FF, normally 2 fighters and 1 bomber, but I would juggle them around trying to find a nice combination depending on how much AI or AT i needed.

There is like another 100 pts in which i would either put Night shields on all my vehicles or a quad gun

2: Seeing as i started to notice a lot of players using foot sloggies marines I decided to use a desintigrator spam list, instead of venoms, raiders with desintigrators.


I will post the exact lists laster, need to find my book where i write them all down, cant seem to remember where i placed it.



@ Shadows Revenge.

How do you keep ur venoms alive? 2hp? bolters kick the hell out of you now and you cant really keep out of range because eventually you will have to move in either for an objective or a quarter or even the opponent advancing towards you

Assault for me seems to be useless, even more so for us DE, sure thing we got a raider/venom with 5 incubi, but any decent opponent will shoot that out of the sky like there is no tomorrow. Beasts I have not tried though, they seem to be as good as in 5th

I have not really seen a change either.. but something just wont work, Im guessing its me if you do say that you have found a tactic etc.

In the Real Space Raids section we just had a guy post about how he won a tourney, including an army list and battle reports (not detailed or anything but still). Check it out if you like: West Australian 40k masters - ultimate 40k - 2012.* Then of course there are Mushkilla's excellent battle reports where he's been converting people to using Reavers recently: The Big Thread of Illustrated Battle Reports!.* Likewise in the Army List section we had a new post by a player talking about how he's had great success, included is an army list and his tactics for playing it: 2000k point DE/Eldar allies list, my strategy with this to great success.*

Note that I'm not recommending copying their lists or anything like that, I just want to show that there is success happening for the dark elves and to give you an idea of what has recently worked for some others (and how, to an extent). At the same time though I don't really know if the edition has changed all that much for it to explain such a night and day difference for you. I mean there is the obvious stuff like swapping Dark Lances/Splinter Cannons in/out depending on your meta but I'm sure you've got that covered already. Other then that though I'm really not sure what to say. I guess I too would ask, how has your army been failing and why now and not then?

*Note I wasn't sure how the forum feels about links so these are just the names of the threads so you can quickly find them.

Godreas wrote:

5x5 warriors w/ blaster in raider w/ DL

Eh? This instantly caught my eye as distinctly odd. Why 5 men in a raider, for 5 men a venom is a better transport. If you are takign the raiders for anti tank i think i may have found your problem. Also 3 flyers seems a tad overkill especially since you dont know when they will show up, your effectively fighting your enemy with half your army for the first 3 turns or so doing this. You might wanna consider a ravager or two to pop transports to actually give you targets turn one.

Mud

Mudpuppet wrote:

Godreas wrote:

5x5 warriors w/ blaster in raider w/ DL

Eh? This instantly caught my eye as distinctly odd. Why 5 men in a raider, for 5 men a venom is a better transport. If you are takign the raiders for anti tank i think i may have found your problem. Also 3 flyers seems a tad overkill especially since you dont know when they will show up, your effectively fighting your enemy with half your army for the first 3 turns or so doing this. You might wanna consider a ravager or two to pop transports to actually give you targets turn one.

Mud

Depends, a raider does miss the 5+ inv, true but he already has the jink also he carries desintigrators, raiders have always been a stable platform in which you can fire out of, if you put DL's or dissies is ur choice but tbh, the +1 hp makes the difference unless you are playing a venom spam list.

3 flyers? turn 2 all of your flyers can come into play? its at 3+? (im not even taking into account the possible comms relay or warlord trait) Im considering going back to 3 ravagers seeing as I noticed that i need the firepower earlier on.

I think the best advice is in the codex: "Play unfair"
Saturate saturate saturate. We are not survivable any more, so I like to imagine we are like tyrannids but with the brain of a space marine- on drugs. If you want to win competitively with DE now, I would argue that you have to make your opponent hate you and say- "You didn't play fair". Swarm half his army with everything- I mean super overkill, let nothing that side of the board hit back and utilise nightshields and raider walls to protect your army. Fueled up on combat drugs, you should happily be able to attack the remaining half with at least 3/4 of your army. Simple rule of 40K is: If I roll more dice then you, I will beat you.

Godreas wrote:

Mudpuppet wrote:

Godreas wrote:

5x5 warriors w/ blaster in raider w/ DL

Eh? This instantly caught my eye as distinctly odd. Why 5 men in a raider, for 5 men a venom is a better transport. If you are takign the raiders for anti tank i think i may have found your problem. Also 3 flyers seems a tad overkill especially since you dont know when they will show up, your effectively fighting your enemy with half your army for the first 3 turns or so doing this. You might wanna consider a ravager or two to pop transports to actually give you targets turn one.

Mud

Depends, a raider does miss the 5+ inv, true but he already has the jink also he carries desintigrators, raiders have always been a stable platform in which you can fire out of, if you put DL's or dissies is ur choice but tbh, the +1 hp makes the difference unless you are playing a venom spam list.

3 flyers? turn 2 all of your flyers can come into play? its at 3+? (im not even taking into account the possible comms relay or warlord trait) Im considering going back to 3 ravagers seeing as I noticed that i need the firepower earlier on.

I can see where your coming from. But if its 5 men a venom is deffo more bang for your buck, even with one less HP. The beauty of ravagers is if your enemy list has transports then take DLs, if you know they are almost entirely foot then swap em out for dissies, they are the same price. Also being able to move 12" and still fire at full power gives them a good bit of theoretical tactical moves.

My point about the flyers is you tie up a lot of points in something that might not turn up for a few turns. This means your ground forces are out numbered early on. Not a good position for low toughness low armor troops and vehicles to be in. So by the time your flyers arrive to fire those juicy missiles it may already be too late. Your army might have been overwhelmed beyond the point of no return already.

This is all just stream of consciousness you understand not from experience so take it as such. But I think 3 flyers is going to hurt you a lot in the long run.

Mud

I have definitely had times when poor rolling has seen reserves not come on until turn 4, its something that always has a chance happening and should all your HS be tied up this way you are going to be on the back foot.

For my comments I personally have still seen a lot of lists with transports and tanks. Not in numbers like before but being able to pop them early with HW has given some extra options for targets and tactics.

When I mentioned vehicles it wasn't that you need them as is obvious with most DE lists. Its to use them effectively. Abuse Jinks for extra survivability, lose a turn to put your entire force at their weak flank, abuse Nightshields to keep the Bolters at range while you kite around thinning the ranks.

Finally just because you can't strip all 3 HP's in a turn doesn't mean it was wasted. I would rather have a fleet of tanks around for a turn longer then them all gone the next turn than have them keep rolling around shaken for several. Keep at range and safely pick them off over a few turns leaving his army foot slogging while you dance around in skimmers.
He can't catch you and you can limit his scoring units near objectives to swoop in the last 2 turns to disembark and claim.


What has been your experience with the raider spam list? Whats worked well and how has it been defeated?

I myself play Venomspam or Raiderspam. And I have found it easier in this edition than 5th. Well, I feel more things die, but I usualy win most of the games I play. I have played most of the competitive lists around and lists tailord to take me, still won. I have had bad and good luck with dices.

And those few games I have lost I have had some insane bad luck. (Against deathwing for example with him saving all but 3 shots through 4 rounds.)

There are a few changes yes, but its easy to adapt. I dont play with Flyers, and people react to that, and think I'm going to have huge problems. But reality is that when he gets his flyers on to the board (or should have) I have crippled my oponent so much that its no problem for me manouvering so either he dont get shots with flyers on me in his 2nd turn or that I can focus fire at them, or even that he dont got stuff on the board so I win anyway.

And as meta goes, now the glancing hits actually does something against that god damn power of the machine spirit. (as all my pen and galncing hits always rolled 1-2s) and getting +1 on damage chart is nice

For us I dont think much have changed much on what works and not, just given us some more options. Now Raiderspam and Venomspam is not THAT much differant as in 5th ed. (even tho I still think Venom edges it)

The major thing that keeps Venoms alive is cover, they are easier to find cover for doe to being small which mean less needs to be hidden for the 25%.
At times you can with positioning, place your venom to see just one of his unit hopefully a small one, shoot it do death, which is one less unit of his and your little venom is now out of LOS for return fire. This is what is nice about venoms, is they are small easy to hide. Which if he wants to get rid of the dual VC platform he has to chase, which allows you to influence his movement. The more you effect, the easier the victory. D.E. need to be played with Sun Tzu in mind at all times. Or any other tactically brilliant, ruthless general.

Control the battlefield, the war is won. When your opponent is making a mistake never interrupt them. If your opponent is not trying to interrupt you... then your making a mistake.

Grub wrote:

I think the best advice is in the codex: "Play unfair"
Saturate saturate saturate. We are not survivable any more, so I like to imagine we are like tyrannids but with the brain of a space marine- on drugs. If you want to win competitively with DE now, I would argue that you have to make your opponent hate you and say- "You didn't play fair". Swarm half his army with everything- I mean super overkill, let nothing that side of the board hit back and utilise nightshields and raider walls to protect your army. Fueled up on combat drugs, you should happily be able to attack the remaining half with at least 3/4 of your army. Simple rule of 40K is: If I roll more dice then you, I will beat you.

Thats how ive always tried to play, unfair, but the only thing which has stopped this is any army that puts his whole force behind an ADL (i.e Imperial Guard) and when needed he just goes to ground 2+ which is a pain in the ass to shoot at if you do not have any form of CC

Mudpuppet wrote:

Godreas wrote:

Mudpuppet wrote:

Godreas wrote:

5x5 warriors w/ blaster in raider w/ DL

Eh? This instantly caught my eye as distinctly odd. Why 5 men in a raider, for 5 men a venom is a better transport. If you are takign the raiders for anti tank i think i may have found your problem. Also 3 flyers seems a tad overkill especially since you dont know when they will show up, your effectively fighting your enemy with half your army for the first 3 turns or so doing this. You might wanna consider a ravager or two to pop transports to actually give you targets turn one.

Mud

Depends, a raider does miss the 5+ inv, true but he already has the jink also he carries desintigrators, raiders have always been a stable platform in which you can fire out of, if you put DL's or dissies is ur choice but tbh, the +1 hp makes the difference unless you are playing a venom spam list.

3 flyers? turn 2 all of your flyers can come into play? its at 3+? (im not even taking into account the possible comms relay or warlord trait) Im considering going back to 3 ravagers seeing as I noticed that i need the firepower earlier on.

I can see where your coming from. But if its 5 men a venom is deffo more bang for your buck, even with one less HP. The beauty of ravagers is if your enemy list has transports then take DLs, if you know they are almost entirely foot then swap em out for dissies, they are the same price. Also being able to move 12" and still fire at full power gives them a good bit of theoretical tactical moves.

My point about the flyers is you tie up a lot of points in something that might not turn up for a few turns. This means your ground forces are out numbered early on. Not a good position for low toughness low armor troops and vehicles to be in. So by the time your flyers arrive to fire those juicy missiles it may already be too late. Your army might have been overwhelmed beyond the point of no return already.

This is all just stream of consciousness you understand not from experience so take it as such. But I think 3 flyers is going to hurt you a lot in the long run.

Mud

You do have a point there, I think i will try venomspam again, maybe one of the lists which was shown to me earlier, but i am still way worried about the 2hp's you got there, makes me uneasy to put them on the table

Orthien wrote:

I have definitely had times when poor rolling has seen reserves not come on until turn 4, its something that always has a chance happening and should all your HS be tied up this way you are going to be on the back foot.

For my comments I personally have still seen a lot of lists with transports and tanks. Not in numbers like before but being able to pop them early with HW has given some extra options for targets and tactics.

When I mentioned vehicles it wasn't that you need them as is obvious with most DE lists. Its to use them effectively. Abuse Jinks for extra survivability, lose a turn to put your entire force at their weak flank, abuse Nightshields to keep the Bolters at range while you kite around thinning the ranks.

Finally just because you can't strip all 3 HP's in a turn doesn't mean it was wasted. I would rather have a fleet of tanks around for a turn longer then them all gone the next turn than have them keep rolling around shaken for several. Keep at range and safely pick them off over a few turns leaving his army foot slogging while you dance around in skimmers.
He can't catch you and you can limit his scoring units near objectives to swoop in the last 2 turns to disembark and claim.


What has been your experience with the raider spam list? Whats worked well and how has it been defeated?

Seriously? on a 3+ you have had bad cases like that? its a dice game and you must not take into account so much that idea that they might not come, if we all did that, no one would play Space marine because all his 3+'s would be useless because he would take into account the times he would roll 5-6 1 or 2's when saving a squad.

On ur idea with 3 hps's, if you do not do at least one pen (and with 1 ravager if you fire you need to get at least 1 pen) your shots have been useless, with the DE when you do the damage, you need to do it then and there and if you roll decent, you have a high chance of just doing 2 glances and the vehicle next turn does whatever he wants unless you put more darklight shots into it, which by that point it gets ridiculous because you can only put X part of your army into shooting at Y target when thinking about the bigger picture of the game

My experiance with Raiderspam has been probably the best one, even though ive lost matches Ive seen to win more than i would with venom spam, due to the dissies I ran on them and the extra hp, which in my opinion makes up for the lack of poison shots.


Thanks for the advice anyone, it has made me think that our army is not as useless as I have come to believe, but one more question. Ok sure, you take out flyers, put ravagers, use a ADL with eldar allies for no cover reroll to pen, alls good but what do you do against necron 6 flyer? let alone 9-10, since you no longer have the air support capable of supporting your army.

I will try a few venomspam lists again, relplace flyers with ravagers, add beasta (which I love) and see how it goes... The funny thing is that my 3 flyer models have just arrived X_X and if im going to put them out for ravagers, there goes over 50 pounds in models >_<

Godreas wrote:

Thats how ive always tried to play, unfair, but the only thing which has stopped this is any army that puts his whole force behind an ADL (i.e Imperial Guard) and when needed he just goes to ground 2+ which is a pain in the ass to shoot at if you do not have any form of CC

I guess assault isn't dead. In my experience, the shootiest armies (GK, IG, NEC) are subpar in assault.

Godreas wrote:

Seriously? on a 3+ you have had bad cases like that? its a dice game and you must not take into account so much that idea that they might not come, if we all did that, no one would play Space marine because all his 3+'s would be useless because he would take into account the times he would roll 5-6 1 or 2's when saving a squad.

That's flawed logic, with 3+ armour you will be getting a volume of rolls, hopefully enough to come at least somewhat close to a statistical average. On the other hand with 2-3 rolls for reserves anything could happen, not to mention external modifiers like the warlord trait that reduces your reserve roll or Master of The Fleet.

At the end of the day you have less targets on the board turn one reducing saturation as well as depending on a few "key" dice rolls, this is the problem and is why "re-rolls" are so important in games like Blood Bowl.

Godreas wrote:

Thanks for the advice anyone, it has made me think that our army is not as useless as I have come to believe, but one more question. Ok sure, you take out flyers, put ravagers, use a ADL with eldar allies for no cover reroll to pen, alls good but what do you do against necron 6 flyer? let alone 9-10, since you no longer have the air support capable of supporting your army.

Try and minimise shooting by outmanoeuvring him, and in the case of 6+ flyers table his ground forces in the first two turns.

Hope that helps.

Godreas wrote:

@ Shadows Revenge.

How do you keep ur venoms alive? 2hp? bolters kick the hell out of you now and you cant really keep out of range because eventually you will have to move in either for an objective or a quarter or even the opponent advancing towards you

Assault for me seems to be useless, even more so for us DE, sure thing we got a raider/venom with 5 incubi, but any decent opponent will shoot that out of the sky like there is no tomorrow. Beasts I have not tried though, they seem to be as good as in 5th

I have not really seen a change either.. but something just wont work, Im guessing its me if you do say that you have found a tactic etc.

2HPs havent really effected me at all. Remember we are a glass cannon anyway, and Im used to my vehicles going up in smoke at the first sign of a missle. What really has saved me lately is nightshields. Depending on how you play them, either with a 6" or 9" rapid fire, they really cause those bolter marines to have to get close to do any damage, and when they get close is when you counter-assault.

Assault isnt useless anymore, actually I feel that it is needed more than ever now. DE need to deal with the ever changing battlefield, wheither that is a LR that just rolled up with a squad of termies or a Storm Raven coming in dropping off some Purifiers. Shoot is amazing over the entire game, but assault can quickly and efficently end that threat. Incubi and Beasts are amazing at this job, and I wont have a list without atleast one counter-assault option. And look at it this way, if it gets shot down early, then that is shots not put into the meat of your army, the shooting elements.

Godreas wrote:

Thanks for the advice anyone, it has made me think that our army is not as useless as I have come to believe, but one more question. Ok sure, you take out flyers, put ravagers, use a ADL with eldar allies for no cover reroll to pen, alls good but what do you do against necron 6 flyer? let alone 9-10, since you no longer have the air support capable of supporting your army.

It rather depends on your army and the mission.

My usual short answer is to crowd their deployment zone and focus fire on a flyer at a time - transports being primary.

Generally they also have a problem with objective missions.

Also, read up on flyer movement and fully enforce all the rules.

Godreas wrote:

Seriously? on a 3+ you have had bad cases like that? its a dice game and you must not take into account so much that idea that they might not come, if we all did that, no one would play Space marine because all his 3+'s would be useless because he would take into account the times he would roll 5-6 1 or 2's when saving a squad.

As Mush has said there is a big difference between worrying whether your Marines on the table will fail and die and risking having your reserves not come in. The dice gods are fickle and its a 1 in 3 chance for your planes to each not come in. Sometimes the odds are against you and you have to go a turn without the full force of your amy. Meanwhile the SM's may be dying but at least they are fighting back.

Godreas wrote:

On ur idea with 3 hps's, if you do not do at least one pen (and with 1 ravager if you fire you need to get at least 1 pen) your shots have been useless, with the DE when you do the damage, you need to do it then and there and if you roll decent, you have a high chance of just doing 2 glances and the vehicle next turn does whatever he wants unless you put more darklight shots into it, which by that point it gets ridiculous because you can only put X part of your army into shooting at Y target when thinking about the bigger picture of the game

I still fail to see why you think 2 Glances are useless and wasted. Yes for that turn you killed nothing but next turn you only need a single Glance to kill that vehicle. Its not as effective as and Exploding Pen result but its hardly useless.
Granted you don't want to waste all your DL's on a single target should you have bad luck of cause.

Godreas wrote:

Thanks for the advice anyone, it has made me think that our army is not as useless as I have come to believe, but one more question. Ok sure, you take out flyers, put ravagers, use a ADL with eldar allies for no cover reroll to pen, alls good but what do you do against necron 6 flyer? let alone 9-10, since you no longer have the air support capable of supporting your army.

The trick with that many flyers as others have said is to try to table them turn 1 & 2 when possible and if not get behind them and abuse the flyer movement rules. As long as they can't table you, you can somewhat ignore the flyers and focus on removing their ability to claim objectives etc.

My two concerns reading the codex were tank popping and Armour saves.

Tanks have ceased to be (sort of, expect them to come back with a vengeance) and even TEQs die to weight of fire, which DEldar put out like no other.

Wyches with Haywires will wreck even land raiders without trouble.