How many troop choices do I need?

Personally, I find the easiest way to win objective games is to target enemy troop choices and get secondary objectives.

mregular wrote:

I suggest you disregard all the people who say they try and table their opponent every single game. They might do it once and a while but if they play even semi-competitive then they are loosing more games than they are winning. Tabling someone takes practice with good movement and objective taking. FACT: 5-6 missions are objective based, so trying to ruin your opponent with only 2 squads of troops you're going to fail, miserably. DE are super mobile so you can grab objectives very easily and force your opponent who 95% of the time is much slower to play your game plan and not theirs. Unlike what some people are saying you can't just run around the board for 3-4 turns and then just simply contest or take them on the last turn. You are going to get obliterated in semi-comp play. Take a couple gunboats and raiders full of wyches to tarpit the crap out of units to keep them from grabbing objectives and you're good to go. Even if you manage to grab an objective or two they can still win it with a warlord kill or linebreaker, etc.

Its not as hard as you want it to be to table someone, as I said several times above. And yes I play competitive. Some army's you just cant play to table because its almost impossible, so you have to play the mission. But I actually think one of our greatest advantage is that we dont need to play the mission as much as other races. Ofcourse there is differant ways of playing every race, and even Dark Eldar aswell. I might not play it the way you do even if we play the same list.

I do have abit more conservative gamestyle playing turnements, that I can say. I dont go out with the tabling mentality as I do when playing more fun/friends. But the mather of the fact is that I have ended up tabling everyone except 1 in turnement since 6th ed. And I lost that game. Other mentality would not have saved me that game as I was punished for poor movement and target priority.

Then again i have also claimed every objective short of 1 in every turnemetn game also (not counting the one I lost, only got 1/5 there i think).

But I would not advice anyone to for tabling theyr oponents.

But there is advatages also, like you are going to be more agressive, and you will most likely bring the fight to them, therefore in objective matches either 2 of 3 or 3 of 2 objectives will be in theyr deploymentzone (as in turnements I experience they usualy have fixed number of 5 objectives with the 2+D3 missions). So its easy to deny them the objective, and then for you to hold both your objective in the end.

I do think people need to figure out what playstyle fits then tho, but back to topic; I still think 1500 =5 troops, above should bring 6 or more (allies)

Great post Darllight, good to have some competitive insight.

I think the definition of playing for objectives is what's confusing people. As they think it means charging onto an objective firing bolters and dodging fire, and hunkering down and holding it like a scene out of saving private ryan. That's how marines play, we are not marines.

What I mean by playing for objective, is the following: I take out threats that can mess with my denial units (reavers), such as heavy flamers on fast vehicles, and other cover ignoring weaponry. I then try and set up two enemy units so that they are depleted enough for a reaver flyby to net them a pain token when they come in from reserve (making my denial unit more resilient). By this point I still haven't claimed any objective, other than the one in my deployment zone which inevitably gets camped by some poor warriors who lost their raider early on in the game. This tends to encourage my opponent to spread out and capture objectives, however the more he spreads the easier it is to hunt down his scoring units one by one.

Dark Eldar don't sit on objectives, they shoot their enemies off them and then grab them last turn (that's what fleet on warriors is for, use it!).

However, when doing the above, I am not playing to table, I will not sacrifice any units blindly just to get some more shooting out of them, they are more useful alive. Even if it means having to fall back off the objectives I have, and inflicting less casualties on my opponent.

That's how I see it anyway.

Thanks Mushkilla.

I do agree with you post there. Its a great way of doing things. I actually like how you use your Reavers. Its something I have had problem with getting the best out of. Going to field them this weekend for the first time in a while.

I'd advice to rethink the question a bit. And instead ask the more relevant:

"How many points do you spend on troop choices?"


Troops are cool, cause they have the ultimate ability to claim objectives. This ability is, what makes the SCs that turn other unit choices into troops "broken/cheesy", as it usually comes at the expense of combat potential. Next thing to consider is that troops have the same ability to claim objectives, no matter their points cost, 12 points of GK warrior acolytes can accomplish the exact same thing as a 10 man strong unit of tactical Blood Angel marines in terms of actually winning the game, on paper the cheap unit might seem easy pickings, but small units are easy to keep out of harms way.

With DE, you could effectively fill your 6 troop choices for the low, low price of 180 points (230 with the required haemonculous). Providing you with enough troops to claim every objective marker on the table, while leaving plenty of points for the troops with the greater combat potential. They wouldn't have much of an impact on the fighting - as they wouldn't pose much of a threat to the opponent - on the other hand, directing firepower towards them would inevitably result in overkill, when an opponent is forced to direct 200+ points of firepower to deal with a 30 point unit (and with a little luck, cover + going to ground and FNP, he might be forced to commit even more), compared to if he were to direct the same firepower towards 200 points of wyches or warriors (or wracks), he would have the potential to do a lot more damage points wise, purely from the fact that the unit has more wounds.

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This train of thought has won me quite a few games as a GK player (172 pts for 6 troops and a HQ, leaves plenty of room for the good stuff). The point is to overwhelm the opponent with targets (adding transports to the mix only enhances the idea), so that he has trouble choosing his targets, and when he does, he does so with disproportionate force. DE's potential for mobility then allows you to concentrate your firepower and take him out hard. Another benefit of adding transports to the mix for DE is that they have decent firepower, while having fairly large signatures for your fragile hard hitters to hide behind.

Interesting post The Red Scourge.

The thing is our troops are actually quite good and killing stuff, and more importantly unlock our transports: raiders (pirate ships!) and venoms. Both of which are pretty useful.

What would you be taking instead of those troops? For anti infantry not much can compete with 5 warriors in a venom, most of our other slots are about unlocking AT potential. Once you have enough AT there isn't really a need to use anything other than the troops section.

The small footprint of three wracks makes it impossible for them to block objectives, so it becomes a lot easier for mobile enemies to contest them. You also need to watch out for barrage weapons and other ignore cover weaponry, or very mobile/cheap units that are designed to hunt back field objective units. It's also very hard to get those wracks onto the midfield/opponent objectives as they are not very survivable.

If you run them in venoms/raiders you would get a lot more out of them. The reason why people 5 man warriors is for the same reason, they are cheap, give you a blaster and some more poison shots whilst unlocking venoms/raiders. For wracks I would do the same thing and up the squad to 5 to unlock a liquifier and make them more survivable.

Dark Eldar unlike any other armies are entirely built around their transports.

Mushkilla wrote:

Dark Eldar unlike any other armies are entirely built around their transports.

Which is ironic, considering that our transports appear to be built out of egg shells.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Which is ironic, considering that our transports appear to be built out of egg shells.

Egg Shell? You must have some tough transports! Mine are more like wet paper bags.