New to Dark Eldar - Strategy and Army List Questions

I'm returning to 40k from a many year hiatus and lo and behold, the dark eldar models have gone from fairly awful (in my opinion) to amazing looking. As such I'm interested in starting a DE army. I'd be starting from scratch and expect to play roughly 1500 point games. I expect to face a bunch of Necron lists, a few Chaos Baledrake spasm, a couple of GK and/or Guard, and a few more random lists, but mostly competitive minded players.

I considered posting this in Army Lists, but since I'm starting with nothing, and asking strategy as well, this seemed more appropriate.

Any suggested lists? And how do you deal with baledrakes and other fliers? I read Mush's suggestions and have a handle on rushing their deployment zone (at least in theory), but what about the 360 sight torrent balefire? I like reavers a lot, both in model and playstyle, but I'm afraid they'll all be getting blown up by cover ignoring drakes due to the large threat radius of that weapon.

Hi and welcome.

I think the best way to begin is for you to actually put up what units you are considering to use, with an explanation of how you would you use them, for us to begin a discussion from there.

There are no insta-win lists when it comes to playing DE in 6th. Most of their success comes from the player

Well, there might not be any insta win with DE, but dont get fooled by the codex or to much bad advice. Because thats where the problems are for DE.

We got one of the strongest races. Its just list building that usualy frak it up for most people. Ofcourse we have our weaknesses but who doesnt?

Now we got a few units that in a competitive enviroment is a must have:
Baron Sathonyx (need to be converted) - Might not be needed for 1500pts, and I would only bring him with beastmaster
Heamonculi
Warriors (with blasters! Forget splintercannon,darklance adn all other extra equipment.) Shredders can make excellent blasters, just some converting.
Wyches (dont need more than 7-
Ravagers (need 3 of those)
Venoms (alot)

Now, there are some other units that are good that arnt as essential, but I would have
Beastmaster with Khymera and Razorwingflock (for above 1500pts games)
Reavers (if played correct they are very strong)
Raider(good for wyches group)

Dont go in the list building trap of having upgraded characters. Sybarite, Hekatrix, etc They are just a point sink, that give you very litle other than more costly unit.

I would make a list like this
HQ
Heamonculi
3x Trueborns w/blasters in Venom w/dual SC (1-3 groups)
5x Warriors w/balster in venom w/dual SC (4-5 groups)
5-7xWyches w/haywire granandes in raider (1group)
3x Ravager.

This is a very competitive list, andmight want to change some venoms for Raider... If you want a more fun approach for a list this list is properly not for you:p
Anyway hope it helps

What Dark Light said is good.

Execpt I don't get the Haemonculi. What does he do if there are no wracks in the list.That paintoken for wyches is not worth 50 pts.

3 Ravagers: Ravagers are gold but not so good that the flyers are non usable in competetive lists. Many people here get a great value of the bomber while I use Jetfighters (GW mixed their names btw, Razorwing does the bombing and voidraven is way better in dog fights)

And there are also some very good tutorials how every unit in our codex works so read them first. Then some battle reports before deciding what kind of list you want to make.

I will quote myself from another topic

Darklight wrote:

I wont change a Ravager for a flyer.

Our flyers have huge problems, and Ravagers are better heavy choice by far.
Our flyers actually cause us more problems than benefits they give us. But many people swear by them because they want the skyfire. But thats exactly the problem, it wont work comeptitive and will hurt you down the line. In an allcomers list that is. THere is ofcourse situations where it can work OK. But against most of the armys its a worse option.

First of as you want it to take out other flyers you want it to come inn AFTER other flyers. Now, that is very situational right? and if it come in before its dead before it does any good. and after it will survive one shooting round.

A ravager will get to shoot in Turn 1,2,3,4,5 whatever it survives. Now a Jetfither will get to shoot in 1-2 turns MABY...

Against a team like Necrons its useless anyway with that flyerspam.
The best way to take flayers is actually to play around it, and when the time comes, shoot DL weaponary at the flyer.

One thing Ravager lack is duality. It's no good against mass infantry. Not even the Dissie boat when it comes to taking down a blob or boyz. But when deciding to leave Ravagers out of yuor list you need to make sure you get enough of AT else were.

Yes DE flyers are next to useles against mass Vendettas or scythes. But so are Ravagers. But in the event of opponent not having flyers or only one they became very good and are able to draw a lot of fire to them. Every shot fired to them is not harming your troops.

I try to have duality in every unit in my list (venoms not included). That way I'm prepared to take down any list.

Hi, I'm new to DE as well, but a few weeks further in than you; I am now building my models for a 1,500 list based on advice gleaned primarily from the excellent series of articles by Plastikente on individual models and their roles.
I highly recommend reading all of these, along with their subsequent comments.

I have gone for a Wych list, with all troops in Venoms, a Ravager, and a Venom with Archon and Incubi; The Duke and a bunch of Trueborn with their own personal Aegis defence line and Quad cannon, for a central fire base.

Hope you find your flavour soon!

Welcome to The Dark City Izathel! Good to have another 40k vet try their luck in the ports of Commorragh.

If you haven't read it already this is a good place to start:

Plastikente's Dark Eldar Unit Guide - A comprehensive guide to the Dark Eldar.

I don't have any tournament experience like Darklight and Vasara this edition, but the little experience I do have against helldrakes tells me that at 1500pts they shouldn't be too much of a problem. After my game against trippledrake (link) I personally don't think you will see three helldrakes at that level because it cripples the list. You will most likely see double drake or single drake, which I feel we can deal with without flyers, sure the turret is annoying, but it's still manageable.

If you feel the need for flyer support a razorwing will do the job at 1500 points, deepstrike means it can hit rear armour with it's S8 lances and the missiles give it duality as Vasara mentioned. If you don't have reserve control(comms relay) our flyers are a lot stronger when you go second as they will most likely come on after your opponents flyers, meaning we can deepstrike behind them. The void raven is another good option if you want something with more AT punch, but you do sacrifice duality.

Hope that helps.

Vasara wrote:

One thing Ravager lack is duality. It's no good against mass infantry. Not even the Dissie boat when it comes to taking down a blob or boyz. But when deciding to leave Ravagers out of yuor list you need to make sure you get enough of AT else were.

Yes DE flyers are next to useles against mass Vendettas or scythes. But so are Ravagers. But in the event of opponent not having flyers or only one they became very good and are able to draw a lot of fire to them. Every shot fired to them is not harming your troops.

I try to have duality in every unit in my list (venoms not included). That way I'm prepared to take down any list.

Well, DE does not do duality, and against AI you got venoms. If you need more AI you are doing something wrong in the list building from the start off. Its the AT we are lacking, and I will be very surprised if you ever get enough AT.

People are stupid if they care about our flyers, first of they suck. And they dont do more harm than the Ravager.

Now in turn one that will just make them shoot at the troops more using your own example there.

Ravagers arnt good at taking flyers, but mass blasters and DL when you have taken out the mech will get them. I played against flayer in each of my games in my last turnement. Got everyone down, and did not do much damage because of my movement. I rather hurt him because he had to have more stuff in reserves.

I dont know how your meta is so that might be the differance here, but in my meta they play all the top lists, and others... I've yet to have problems against blobs or hords.

Darklight wrote:

I would make a list like this
HQ
Heamonculi
3x Trueborns w/blasters in Venom w/dual SC (1-3 groups)
5x Warriors w/balster in venom w/dual SC (4-5 groups)
5-7xWyches w/haywire granandes in raider (1group)
3x Ravager.

This is a very competitive list, andmight want to change some venoms for Raider... If you want a more fun approach for a list this list is properly not for you:p
Anyway hope it helps

This is a massive help, thanks! I always figure it is easy to add personal choice "fun" units to a competitive list if you want to.

I would ask though, assuming you aren't taking Baron+beasts at 1500, how do keep your HQ safe? I assumed an Archon would be the way to go, but I don't mind using a Heamonculus, just wondering what you do without a shadowfield and the greater CC prowess? And what about the lack of a PGL in the wych squad? I assume that doesn't end up hurting too much?

I actually quite like the idea of Reavers and the speed (and bladevanes) they provide, but it does seem hard to fit a sufficient quantity in.

Edit: Oh, and the unit evaluation I definitely looked through, and it was definitely a big help!

Darklight wrote:

I dont know how your meta is so that might be the differance here, but in my meta they play all the top lists, and others... I've yet to have problems against blobs or hords.

From what I get from yuor battle report on your signiature our metas are quite the same. Good and bad list in tournaments. And yes we have all the good list here also.

But when I look at your list (and its a very good one) it would not benefit from flyers compared to Ravagers. Mine is a different list and it is designed to work with flyers.

So, I'm back to talk a bit about my experiences so far and hopefully get some more advice.

I've been getting some playtesting in (I wanted to try things out before making purchases) and have had some fairly good success with Darklight's suggested list. Against anything with large numbers of footsloggers, I've been tearing things up, but these have been my big problems so far:

Helldrakes - I have been mostly able to use maneuverability to avoid Vector Strikes, and Flickerfields have been a godsend, but even so, the baleflamers are putting the hurt on me. The 360 vision and torrent has meant that I've had a hard time avoiding the templates and since they can penetrate my vehicles, I've been losing things quite often to the resulting explosions. I'm considering using some more Raiders in order to get Dark Lance platforms as the additional range would let me fire back while still being as far out of range of the templates as possible. How has that worked for people?

Nightscythes - I've faced upwards of 4 of these even at my point level. I've been better at evading them than the Helldrakes (since they don't have 360 vision) but even so, when they show up in numbers, I find that I'm taking a lot of tesla fire. Maybe I've been unlucky, but I've tried to focus on ground targets, but I find, late in the game, that units are teleported onto objectives after the flyers have cracked open a lot of my fragile transports. I considered Eldar allies with a Aegis and Quadgun, but I don't know if that's viable at these point levels.

Unrelated to the specific things I've had issue with, I've seen this beast list floating around (Vect, Baron, Eldrard, etc.). I'm considering giving that a shot, but is it likely to stick around or be errata'd away? I'm trying to improve my playskill with Venoms/Raiders since those aren't likely to go anywhere, but the invisible beast deathstar seems pretty damned powerful.

If you're having trouble with flyers one of the guys around here has a list with telepathy eldrad, some dark reapers, and darklance true born using a bastion with a sky fire gun as a fire base. I was really impressed with how well it does.

That's probably me. I use 4-5 Dark Reapers with Exarch and Eldrad (Divination, not Telepathy though) in a Bastion with an Icarus Lascannon. Works a treat against flyers and is also very scary against anything without a 2+ save, especially if I roll Perfect Timing for Eldrad!

Count Adhemar wrote:

That's probably me. I use 4-5 Dark Reapers with Exarch and Eldrad (Divination, not Telepathy though) in a Bastion with an Icarus Lascannon. Works a treat against flyers and is also very scary against anything without a 2+ save, especially if I roll Perfect Timing for Eldrad!

Yes! It was you lol very nice reports btw.

Count Adhemar wrote:

That's probably me. I use 4-5 Dark Reapers with Exarch and Eldrad (Divination, not Telepathy though) in a Bastion with an Icarus Lascannon. Works a treat against flyers and is also very scary against anything without a 2+ save, especially if I roll Perfect Timing for Eldrad!

That does sound like a lot of firepower, but I'm generally playing 1500 point games and am concerned about that kind of point investment. In addition I play an "all comers" kind of list and was wondering how well that did against non-flyers. It seems like I might be spending 110 points to have a building manned by troops that die quickly to baleflamers, regardless, not to mention the cost of Dark Reapers and Eldrad. Still, the helldrakes are enough of a problem that I'm certainly open to the idea.

Count Adhemar list is at 1500pts and form his reports it seems to do well against a variety of lists, worth checking out the realspace raid section for his battle reports. Besides it's not like the those AA weapons can't be pointed at vehicles.

Count Adhemar wrote:

That's probably me. I use 4-5 Dark Reapers with Exarch and Eldrad (Divination, not Telepathy though) in a Bastion with an Icarus Lascannon. Works a treat against flyers and is also very scary against anything without a 2+ save, especially if I roll Perfect Timing for Eldrad!

I've swapped to trying this tactic (with and without a beast pack to get invis spam) and I've found that it has increased my effectiveness against Necron flying lists noticeably (though there are still sometimes problems if many scythes show up at once) and when I first faced some Vendetta-heavy IG it proved worth its weight in gold.

I have found, unfortunately, that I just can't get it to help me vs. heavy Heldrake spam. I've found that if a single drake shows up on turn 2 I can usually either kill it of put a heavy dent in it. If the flyers come in later, their troops are usually pressing in on my bastion and threatening the gun if not blowing it up outright. If they come in multiples (on any turn) they are usually flaming me off the board before I do too much damage. In the games I've done well versus Heldrake spam (at least better than others) I've found that just camping out and waiting for their forces to approach has worked best, but I think I may just have bad opponents. I've replaced guardian jetbikes with rangers for my CWE troop choice and I pick things off at 36" letting my nightshielded (and often empty) transports provide cover for anything trying to shoot at infantry. When they do approach, I charge in with my beast pack, which usually seems to give the bastion enough of a reprieve to fire some on incoming drakes, but with It Will Not Die and the speed to rush over and flame my bastion, I can't seem to actually reliably win against them.

As an aside, even though they are more points, I've found myself liking rangers even in "all comers" lists more and more. Has anyone else had experience with them? I've found that the range, toughness (in terms of improved cover save), and the ability to provide some AP1/AP2 anti-infantry shots has been quite handy and, so far, I haven't had issues getting troops onto objectives without the jetbikes.