Should the Dark Eldar be concerned with Codex: Dark Angels?

Fellow Archons:

I do not own Codex: Dark Angels nor have I played against the army. I expect that most people have not. What I am interested in is the perceived competitiveness of Dark Angels against Dark Eldar. What do you think?

Please respond to the poll and thank you!

Ravenwing and Greenwing will die like any other marines (Ravenwing even easier, aside from the command squad, because of our poison and their low numbers), though the sheer quantity of plasma they can put out is concerning, and the Nephilim looks like it's going to be reasonably effective against us. Deathwing are just terminators to us, and should be handled as such. Again, Deathwing Assault makes them a bit harder to handle, and the command squad will be rather tough, but we still have a decisive advantage in mobility and firepower. So I'm thinking they won't be much more trouble than Codex Marines. Haven't tested them yet, so this is just speculation.

I would like to think Codex: Dark Angels will start to help our matchups versus Necrons and maybe Guard due to how it will effect those lists.
You don't really have an option for that though.

I agree this is an oddball meta response, but...meh, it's what I think

I am not overly worried about dark angels. if they go elite then they will be few in number and our poision can deal with that.

and like thore said. dark angels may start to change the way necron and guard play with all of the flakk that they have access to.

Nephilim will be good against light armoured vehicles like ours, but considering how much it cost and how it competes for the same slot of Black Knights and Landspeeders, I doubt we'll see more than 1, if any, per army.

There are a few things the DA have that re extremely nasty. Their speeders are cheap and come in squadrons of 5, and due to how squadrons rules work (they count as units, but can be placed up to 4'' from eachother), if a single one is within 6'' of the shroud speeder, they all have a 4+ cover save, even if the last speeder is over 20'' away. They also have one incredibly natsy piece of wargear that nobody on the net seems to have really noticed yet: powerfield generator. It gives all units, friend or foe, within 3'' a 4++ save. And you can take it on a cheap Techmarine that uses nonFOC slot. Park the guy inside a Land Raider and you've got a 4++ save LR that also gives a 4++ save to anything nearby. Or make him stand behind a wall of allied Leman Russes. Less of a problem for use than some other armies, since 4++ LR is ultimately nearly identical to a 4++ Chimera for use (it has one more hullpoint, but we count both as being av12), but that's still very nasty for a 30 point piece of wargear.

Nomic wrote:

It gives all units, friend or foe, within 3'' a 4++ save.

It doesn't affect units, only models. Which makes it less scary.

My biggest concern is actually the infravisor, gives the model night vision (and as we know that affects the whole unit). Sure it can only be taken on characters but that's still means they can sprinkle night fight in where need be (without depending on search lights). Techpriest to fortify the ruin the devastators are in, give them knight fight and tank incoming shots on his 2+ save for 55pts, not bad at all.

Also the shroud speeder has a 2+ cover save when moving flat out, and doesn't need to do much else but zoom around and give the black knights 2-3+ cover saves (as they already have jink and skilled rider), and regular ravenwing bikes 3-4+ cover saves.

Finally those special grenade launchers against us are evil, rad grenades making our units T2 so that bolters can ignore our FNP and wound us on 2s causing instant death. At least grey knights had to be locked in combat to do this, but with those grenade launchers their whole army gets to shoot your T2 models.

They are faster, tougher, stealthier, uglier, hit and run versions of us. Our only saving grace is splinter weaponry and venom blades. So we will be just fine.

Got a match coming up this wednesday against the new codex. I voted Difficult, as with any marine army, it's tough.

We're playing roughly 1650 pts.

I know he plans on fielding 6 knight bikes, 10 terminators, 20 tacticals, 2 razorbacks, a librarian with diviniation, the dark shroud speeder as well as a devastator squad. If his points allows it, maybe the jetfighter.

Personally I'll be fielding 2 haemonculi, 18 wyches, 20 warriors, 2 raiders, 1 ravager, 1 flyer, 5 scourges, 6 bikes and 5 splinterborn in a venom.

I know he's very eager to do the whole scout move followed by that nasty DW precision deepstrike, so I'll have to take that into account. Hopefully I'll start the turn and get a good shot at the bikes before it happens.

I'll probably ignore the jetfighter. I think the most concerning choice of his is the squad of 10 terminators, my plan is to simply get a full round of hits on them. Pref. get the flyer in at turn 2 as well if he does suceed at deepstriking in turn 1.

It depends... Here is the breakdown of most of the lists your going to see.

Deathwing- I think the love of termies out there, you will see this most of all. Sadly I dont think that its going to be that good. They do have some really good tricks though, like being twinlinked the turn they deepstrike, and having belial for no scatter can open up some very interesting landings (TL heavy flamers anyone???) But overall I see them being a normal force to fight. And I feel that deathwing knights are a trap waiting for unsupecting nubs to fall into. So overall I guess it depends on the build.

Greenwing- 14 pts a marine, like 12 for the first 5, and a heavy or special at 5 man??? And people said mech is dead I easily see the good ol razorspam back in force. And adding some of DA trickery (seath razorspams anyone???) and cheaper than dirt devs... Greenwing is a very balance army. Sadly I think I will miss combat tactics... so I wont be changing... but I am very jealous (as a blue book player ofc...)

Ravenwing- This is where I think you will see most of the competitive players fall into. 80pts for their bikes base is rediculous...also adding in that stupid shrine vehicle... and some heavy plas influence... its alot of shots. Also having scout means that there is no where they cant touch T1. Its definately going to be a tough army to play against.

Atleast the Balck Knights and the Terminators seem reasonably costed. Full units of eighter is around 400 points, so it's a big investment (and the knights die like Mariens to us; concentrated fire from 4 or so Venoms should wipe them out in a couple of turns). Termies deepstriking on turn 1 will destroy something, but after that we atleast have the ability to rapidly redeploy and stay out of most of their weapons range. More static armies don't like them at all.

as with all PA lists, it will depend on the situation. if they can camp down, it can be a rough ride but as long as we play to our strengths and keep moving we should be ok. imho, kabal and wych lists will suffer if DAs camp down, but have useful tools for digging them out (but bear in mind to keep your scoring units ok) whereas coven lists will pretty much give them a run for their money at medium to short range. i don't think they'll be much more of a threat than most PA lists, they'll just have a different bag of tricks and shiny new toys.

Nope. Shouldn't be concerned at all. Dark Eldar: We will fight you anywhere, anytime. Matter of fact, when the announcement of Dark Angels released hit the store, I about tripped over myself to get to my Dark Eldar list that would silence all those band wagon DA players on DAY ONE! Nice to have a well made list that, no matter what, you can contend if your clever. DA die, and we are more then happy to provide the means.

Would love to see this list. Obviously not to copy, but to give me an idea of what im doing wrong.

I got pooped on twice yesterday by the new DA codex, the only targets i could hit with my splinterfire were bikes - everything else was vehicles. All they did was speed away when i got in range - so splinterfire was ineffective and useless vs 3/4 of the army.

The Shroud provided some ridiculous saves to the vehicles he had, my darklances were not up to par this round.

Granted my only reference is having beat Chaos space marines 3x before this - but these all vehicle lists are really aggravating.

But Eighty, you cry. we have dark lances and haywire blasters! yes we do my son, but 4++ cover and bad luck make for a baaad day to be eldar.

I challenged him to another set of games next week. Im hoping some deepstriking scourges will help pop his shroud provider earlier, giving my ravagers a chance to put some work in. (also devestators in a bloody fortress are annoying lol)

Recently having a closer look at DA due to still having some DV marines lying about I think they'll be mostly like other marines against us.

Having not played any games against them so far though the reality may differ, but let's have a brief look at the army on paper:

Ravenwing: all bikes, formerly mentioned to be probably the most competetive. funnily this should be the easiest for us to handle since we completely ignore their high toughness, which they pay a price for. This will be a small elite force with standard marine like saves, maybe 2+ cover with a darkshroud, but don't forget it's AV 10 with 2 HP. Only the plasma bikes will have a lot of firepower, otherwise every bike just has one twin-linked bolter, not that scary with the low numbers if you ask me.
Additionally bikers get absolutely toasted against that stupid chaos drake, just by the way .

Deathwing: Termies die to weight of fire, plain and simple. I don't consider them that competetive because of all the plasma most marine armies are packing and their lack of mobility. However it's still difficult to remove at least 20 terminator bodies from the field.

Greenwing: Slightly cheaper marines... option for razorspam, yeah we know that.

@Thor: I'd be curious why you think DA will affect the metagame of crons and IG. Sure, crons may not have tons of AP2 (not sure since I don't have the dex), but the DA's anit air is absolutely lackluster. Flakk missiles are very expensive and their flyers are just bad until FAQed to have proper armament. Many people on the DA forum of B&C think that AA will be a major problem for DA armies and tend to give the same advice as us DE players: try to outmaneuver and ignore if possible.

i play against a few Marine players and they come in all shapes and sizes, ive not come across any DA yet and not really been bothered to look at the new dex.

The 1 thing that ive picked up on in this thread that seems to be different from the others is cheap troops (comparative)

[quote]12 for the first 5, and a heavy or special at 5 man? (shadows post)

chuck in the return of razorspam for these cheapez and some cheap speeder squadrons (similar in AV and speed to our paper boats) and we could face a more tougher and heavily armored version of ourselfs, they wont have the poison that we have but they wont need that, our poison wont hurt their boats but bolters can still do a number on ours.

just from this info im not sure who you can even compare them with; wolves at 15 pts each and no real fast attack option, GK too many points too few models, BA only really seen death company with flyers and vindicators, so DA seem to be the same but different....

Childs play! It's just more fat guys in power armor hehe
plus, deathwing has too little to holds its own.

During my last tourney I had a game against the new DA. I feel that the list was not the most competitive but it wasn´t bad either.

He DSed most of his forces in the first round but was not able to kill enough of my firewower in this turn. I boosted almost everything out of is range and just flew cyrcles around him, abusing my Nightshieds and his 24 Range.

In the end I tabled him within 5 turns.

Lots of poison shots > +2 Save

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Darkcity- May I bring your attention to the Land Raider Abuse that the Dark Angels may fling at us.

With a minimum of two Land Raiders the Dark Angel army can put down a world of pain down onto us.
This assumption is made with the fact that the DA player takes 2 things: INV field and Salvo Banner.

The Salvo banner will give each LR Crusader the ability to fire 24 Bolter shots a piece at 24" From its Bolter Sponsons alone.

The Inv field will grant the LRs a 4++ save, effectively negating half of our glances/pen hits. If you do the math hammer on this- we're in a bit of a tight spot.

May I also state that if the player doesn't take a pure LR spam list- he can still deploy the minimum 2 LRs and deploy a reasonably sized DA force with devastators and rifle dreadnoughts.

More here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/502018.page

I have recently played against a DA player who utilized the bare minimum of 2 LRs- it was not a great time.

Don't forget though that this combo is a minimum of 745 points. It doesn't leave a great deal to buy anything to actually claim objectives, kill vehicles etc with.

Honestly, we have no real difficulty bringing down Land Raiders (unless they're BT, at which point they can be a little more troublesome,) and we decisively outrange them thanks to Night Shields. I find it difficult to be concerned by this.

To be honest, if I remember the wording of the salvo banner correctly, it applies specifically to bolters. So no stormbolters, hevay bolters or hurrican bolters (works for bikes tho, sicne they have twin linked bolters). Much like splinter racks onyl works on rifles and pistols, not cannons and carbines.

hurricane and avenger bolters are a bit of a grey area until FAQ'd, since they technically are a collection of several bolters all fired at once. Or simplier put: they use the bolter profile, even though they don't have the same name.

I don't see any issues vs. the new Dark Angels as well. We have enough shooting/melee to deal with everything they have, and good play over army lists will determine the victory.

Dark Eldar excel at killing elite armies, and DA is considered one of the more elite.