Dark Eldars in tournaments

I was wondering, as here are many people who go to torunaments, also those large ones, do you consider DE as one of those harder armies to build all-corners list?
In case of Eldars many times I read complaints that specialist units suffer in tournaments where you can get any kind of opponents. Helldrakes, Long Fangs, NIght Scythes etc, are useful no matter you face, in our codex I dont see many units good against everything.

Does it make DE lists less competitve in tournaments? Do you cover our problems with allies? If yes, which allied units have been most useful for you?

I think with the right build and Eldar allies and a smart player they can be competitive. Being an army that is squishy it doesn't leave much room for mistakes. While this makes for a really fun army to play. I think it makes some people shy away from it for tournaments. Personally I have had some good luck with them in smaller tournies. If you play smart and build the list well then go for it.

I think what you have to do is run a gauntlet as has been discussed elsewhere on the forum - throw your army against the dirtiest lists (ie the ones you WILL face).

Can you deal with 18 wraiths and tesla, cron air, blob guard, heldrake spam, grey knights? I know in the UK DE/CWE is starting to see a bit of a renaissance which revolves around allies of a farseer for psychic defence, GJBs to take objectives, Nightwings and Warp Hunters among other things.

This list came 4th in the UK GT final this year:

PRIMARY DETACHMENT: Dark Eldar
HQ1: Haemonculus (50) = [50]
Troop1: Wrack Squad: 3 Wracks (30) = [30]
Troop2: Kabalite Warrior Squad: 8 Warriors (72) = [72]
FA1: Reaver Jetbike Squad: 9 Reaver Jetbikes (198) Arena Champion (10) 3 Cluster
Caltrops (60) 3 Heat Lances (36) = [304]
FA2: Reaver Jetbike Squad: 9 Reaver Jetbikes (198) Arena Champion (10) 3 Cluster
Caltrops (60) 3 Heat Lances (36) = [304]

ALLIED DETACHMENT: Eldar
HQ1: Farseer (55) Jetbike (30) Singing Spear (3) Spirit Stones (20) Runes of Warding (15)
Runes of Witnessing (10) Doom (25) Fortune (30) = [188]
HQ1b: Warlock Unit: 7 Warlocks (175) 7 Jetbikes (140) 5 with Destructor (50) 1 with
Enhance (15) 1 with Embolden (5) 1 Singing Spear (3) = [388]
Troop 1 : Guardian Jetbike Unit: 3 Jetbikes (66) = [66]
Troop 2 : Guardian Jetbike Unit: 3 Jetbikes (66) = [66]
FA1: Nightwing Interceptor (145) = [145] (Forgeworld Imperial Armour Aeronautica)
HS1: Phoenix Bomber (225) Nightfire Missile Launcher (10) = [235] (Forgeworld Imperial
Armour Aeronautica)
ALLIED DETATCHMENT TOTAL [1088pts]

So nice to see those large units of reavers running around on the tournament scene. I wonder if the Dark Eldar player who came 4th is a member of this forum.

I agree. Just play some sweet list. Learn their tactic and kill them all.

I'd love to see how that list wins battles. 4 Troops choices, all of which I would class as moderately to extremely fragile. How the hell does it take or hold any objectives? Also very easy to give up first blood and slay the warlord by killing the Haem, who presumably goes with the wracks?

...And no turn 1 anti-tank, probably too many upgrades on the reavers, some very expensive flyers.... I would say the big bikes units were quite a distraction that allowed the small troop squads to hide and remain unmolested. They would just rush their opponent and overwhelm them with too much to handle.

Unusual lists surprise people and they don't know how to handle them (since a lot of people prep to face off vs well-known Net lists).

Still, can't argue much with 4th place

Well the reavers sorta have AT and if he ran against hordes the he was good. It is a weird list though. Confusion first turn for the win.

Quote :

Unusual lists surprise people and they don't know how to handle them (since a lot of people prep to face off vs well-known Net lists).

The first time I turbo boosted 6 BA assault squads across the board in Rhinos the other guy just completely shut down.
He just couldnt comprehend what was going on.
Its a lot less scary than it sounds, but unless you are capable of thinking on your feet, yeah, people just have a brain fart and shut down.

DominicJ wrote:

The first time I turbo boosted 6 BA assault squads across the board in Rhinos the other guy just completely shut down.
He just couldnt comprehend what was going on.
Its a lot less scary than it sounds, but unless you are capable of thinking on your feet, yeah, people just have a brain fart and shut down.

God, I hated those BA rhino rush armies! And I mean the 3rd/4th ed ones where the gits could jump out and assault, even after the rhinos had made a full move. But I especially hated the way that even if you took care of the marines, the rhinos could still tank-shock all your infantry (and they didn't have to do it in straight lines back then, so could just merrily steer their way through several squads without so much as a by-your-leave). Once, half my army (eldar) simply ran off the table after being uber-tank-shocked by a death company rhino that essentially cost zero points! I can totally understand the brain-freeze that that causes, even when you know it's coming.

As to DE at tournaments; it can be done, but all-comers lists are much harder to put together, if not impossible, without judicious use of allies. Without them, you have to ride your luck that you don't go up against a guard or 'drake list that we just don't have the tools to deal well with. You can still go and have a good time and be reasonably competitive though.

If they did an erratta with skyfire or interceptor we would be golden

DE routinely get in the top three at our LGS. And it's usually a toss up between me and the other player for 1st and 2nd. Fliers are not usually a concern, use your movement to get under them. Vector dancer makes it more difficult but it's still possible. Against vector dancer and a turret (looks at you helldrake) MSU helps to mitigate the damage but it hurts. With the exception of helldrakes I prefer if my opponent takes fliers. Yes please spend points on something that you will likely get only 1-2 rounds of shooting. At my last tournie I played a IG list with 7 fliers, in the end I had he had killed one Ravager with them (the disse boat that took down a valk with a rear armor shot)

My experience is the DE win tournaments by luck of the draw, they place by great play, and make inexperienced players squirm whether the player or the opponent.

It's also an army that demands sportsmanship of a high caliber.

But. When you look across the table at the end of turn three, and your opponent is pale and shaking, at the sheer destruction we bring, it's a drug matched only by a great one shot in armor, or golf.

DE are great in turnements.

Its just that people, and people in this topic aswell, make them out to be so much harder than it really are. And people are to focused on killing flyers.

I could write a long post on the list building and wrong assumptions by people on DE. But if you understand that Dark Eldar isnt harder than any other team to play, its just differant, and you need to understand which of our units are actually competitive. I am not going to go in to that since it will start another discussion that I dont really care to take :p (but our flyers are the worst)

Still yet not to win a turnement I enter with DE.

Last tournament I was in, DE won. I think I came in the top 10 as well. Funnily enough my list was almost identical to the winning one (Baron and Beastmasters, mix of Wytches and Warriors as troops. The only differencewas that he had double Razorwing and one Ravager while I had double Ravager and one Razorwing, and that he had a mix of Raiders and Venoms while I had just Venoms). The main reason for the difference in positions probably came down to the fact that I had crap luck on the last few games (and got my ass kicked by Cron Air, but there's little you can do against that, especially when every single flyer manages to come out of the reserves at the same time and obliterate half my army).

Con Air is a hard task. Especially if you are unlucky and he gets all his flyers out on T2.

But speaking of general turnements, Tarrain is crap. So in my experience you can shoot at most of the units T1 if you got range, they just got coversave.

This is why I dont need flyers to handle con air.
What will be on the board in T1 of Con Air? 3 Heavy, 2 HQ and some Wraiths. (this is at best, as there might be some heavy flyers aswell).

Now, T1, with a shooty DE list, you can kill all those units. If you bring flyers yourself, you cant.
I have tabled a few Necrons due to T1 with that Con Air, thats why I never see friends bringing it again.

This is also the reason I LOVE playing against flyers and deep strike. Its just to easy to play against. Shoot out what they got on the table, and when they arrive with Flyers and/or deep strike, I have shoot out most of his army, with none to litle lost on my own army. Now I can easy shoot out DS or Flyers. And with flyers its np, just move 12" all the time in to blind spots, got to snapshot anyway.

After reading this thread, I feel rather depressed to be honest. I'm not a tournament buff, but I'd like to enter the scene of big tournaments. So I started practising against a IG and GK player who ends up in the top 10 from every tournament he plays in. He wants to help me get better.

What we do is, we emulate tournament conditions, which includes crappy terrain, rulepacks and different missions. No matter what I do he almost shoots everything off the table by turn 2. I've tried every dirty DE trick we got (flickerfield, nightshield, reserves, hugging cover, extreme angles), but I'm starting to get the feeling to give up on tourney's and just play with friends. Maybe I'm just not good enough... I dunno.

I know that feeling..!
I think Tournaments should be thought of as radically different from friendly play: there are different rules of engagement.
I personally think, for example, that the Heldrake is an unfair unit: it is too versatile and powerful, and even if it were twice the cost, it would still be unfair. My Tyranids, and now my new DEldar, get munched by it with no defense; that to me is overpowered. The friend of mine that has two tends not to use them against me, as he agrees they are unfriendly against my armies.
If, however, I took a CSM army to a tournament, for the above reasons, I would include at least 2, maybe a third.

If you want to enter tournaments for experience, you can take your favourite lists, but if you want to win, they require honed, aggressive builds that I, as a friendly player, call "cheesy".

When my friends are entering tournaments, I enjoy being their sparring partner, knowing I will lose, or sometimes taking extra points to give them an uphill struggle. When my Heldrake buddy was practising, we agreed that my Tervigon would spawn 15 Gaunts every turn, with no burn out, just to give him the worst-case scenario.

I have decided I am not a tournament player. I don't want to chase the power meta, I don't automatically like the latest uber-model, and I like playing socially. I, therefore, am not "good enough". I like it that way ;-)

Amen.

The guys that I usually play with are entering a Battle Brothers tournament up at Warhammer World and for the last few months I've been playing against the various iterations of their tournament list to see how it fares and to give them some practise. I've been using different codexes, proxying models where necesary and using some popular netlists or tailoring my lists to beat them etc and I must say it's been quite good fun. But that's not something I want to do all the time. I don't want to buy a new army every time the "Next Big Thing" comes out. I don't want to fall into the Stelek-like state where any unit that is not completely OP is utter garbage and only about 1.5 codexes are "usable" with the rest being trash.

from the sounds of things i guess i must be lucky, our main tournaments always have good terrain, and we get the rulz pack months in advance so we can practise the missions. the only thin that keeps me from going in all 4 tourny's every year is work.

i managed to win the last tournament using 5th with my DE. Didn't win all the games but managed to score really high with painting and sportsmanship which got me best overall.

be interesting to see how the new tau go in the next one, can't imagine ill be seeing to much cron air anymore.

Well, when I eventually get round to playing in a proper tournament in 6th, I'll be damned if my list doesn't have 2x9 reavers!

Well, I have been trying to make the cheesiest lists to win tournaments. Even proxied Eldar allies. If he gets 1st turn, then I know for sure it's over. He sees everything. Everything is in range. Still get shot off the table. 5+ coversaves (or flicker saves) are not enough against IG or GK.

While I win from other mates I play against, so I'm not a complete idiot (provided we have better terrain and are more friendly with coversaves and such). I haven't won a single game from this guy.

tlronin wrote:

Well, I have been trying to make the cheesiest lists to win tournaments. Even proxied Eldar allies. If he gets 1st turn, then I know for sure it's over. He sees everything. Everything is in range. Still get shot off the table. 5+ coversaves (or flicker saves) are not enough against IG or GK.

That's odd, grey knights have an effective range of 30" accross the whole army bar psyfledreads. Just start everything outside transports and be prepared to go to ground. Tournaments might lack LoS blocking terrain, but one thing they don't tend to be short on is area terrain.

Guess what he fields... Psyfledreads. And he has these transports with guns on 'm. BS4 all around the army. Plus almost everything is twin linked. It's a very strong and nasty list.

I've tried once what you suggest. He blew up almost al my transports after destroying my Ravagers. Being able to reroll 3+s is insanely good. So my warriors and wyches were stranded + gone 2 ground. He has this shunt move, which teleports a unit 30" into area terrain. Even this unit is a treat to our AV10 paper planes. He survives a turn of shooting with 3+ armoursave or 5+ coversave (he managed to get a 4+ by being obscured by ruins once). And then assaults what he can next turn.
It's worth mentioning though we practiced with 1000 pts on a smaller table so we could both get a feeling for the core of our army.

I have won against GK often enough, but they were not tourney players. Not this guy. He's an average tourney player and he ussually just shoots up my army in turn 1 and 2. Very frustrating.