Dark Eldar Tanks

I wonder if our pupils use (well, could use) something that could be called tank. By that I mean non OT vehicle with "decent" armour and turret (s)?

I dont see, why they have to use tanks if they are pirates, maybe they have fome kind of tanks that loks more like craftworld falcons but I thinks they leave them for...hmmm...well I dont think they keep them.

I wouldn't think so.

I imagine that the Eldar Empire would recognize the utility of a tank, but the Dark Eldar are not their ancestors. Keep in mind that what was in Commoragh at the time of the Fall was the toys of the wealthy and civilian craft. The Ravagers and Raiders are the Eldar equivalent of taking some rich guy's yacht and putting guns on it.

If you wanted to make a Dark Eldar tank unit to use in friendly games or Apocalypse, you could certainly justify it by saying the ancestors of your Archon/Kabal had a military hardware fetish and now they show off the Kabal's collection every so often. But as a part of the main Dark Eldar Codex in the future? I don't see it fitting in with the background or character of the Commorites.

Yeah, I don't really see tanks fittign them very well. The Dark Eldar are primarily slavers and pirates, and prefer to attack quickly and escape before the enemy can retaliate. Extremely fast vehicles taht are open topped for easy disembarking (and loading of captives) fit that style much better than heavily armoured tanks. Secondly, as mentioned, most Dark Eldar craft seem to be based on the vehicles they had availeable before the Fall, which were primarily civilian craft. Raiders and Venomc and pretty much pleasure boats and sky-chariots fitted with guns and supercharged engines. The role of tanks is instead filled by aircraft, which fit the Dark Eldar style of warfare much better. I'd imagine that in addition to the Razorwing and Voidraven, they probably also have equivalents of Eldar superheavy aircraft (Vampire Raiders and Hunters).

I don't see them using tanks in any traditional meaning. Their tanks would all be ravager/voidbomber -esque in nature.

Something like the new forgeworld lynx maybe, can move as a flyer for rapid redeployment/ambush. The dark eldar version would probably be armour 11 instead of 12 and I imagine look like a cross of a elongated falcon and a razorwing. They may have more traditional tanks for wars between kabals, but not take them on real-space raids(they have other things more suited). So any falcons, scorpion,..etc a kabal may have would never leave the kabal's home turf, unless for fullscale invasion of rival.

You know, TacticalWargames did something about this for the Dark Eldar in Epic. I didn't like what they did for a DE-equivalent Titan, but check it out if you want to see a heavier DE army:

http://www.tacticalwargames.net/archive/rules/epic/raiders.html

@up

There are some sound ideas....like more heavy crafts ect.

Well the codex does say that they consider the Voidraven the ultimate in heavy weapons deployment... however utterly disappointing the void mine is after the description it gives of it

Anggul wrote:

...however utterly disappointing the void mine is after the description it gives of it

My thoughts exactly. Who needs so much fluff/tech when a big rock could do just as much damage?

As I wont see DE running around with a Falcon of any kind, I think FW has it right with those two super heavies they have shown. Now for rules, I think we would be happy if they get AV 13 and some structure points, but anything bigger, nah... Its too un DE. Although a captured and tortured Eldar Titan would be cool.

Shadows Revenge wrote:

As I wont see DE running around with a Falcon of any kind, I think FW has it right with those two super heavies they have shown. Now for rules, I think we would be happy if they get AV 13 and some structure points, but anything bigger, nah... Its too un DE. Although a captured and tortured Eldar Titan would be cool.

Yeah, they could just have the same energy fields that the Dais of Destruction has for the AV13. The reason that the Dais has it when Ravagers and such can't would be because Vect gets a really good one which is compact enough to be carried by a non-super-heavy.

...not flickerfields or night shields mind.

does the dais of destruction count? pretty decent armour and weapons

I love the idea of a tortured eldar titan, though I'm very hazy on the 'machine spirit' that such things have? And thus how torture-able they would be? I'm assuming at that point you'd not have traditional drivers, more slaved wracks/grotesques or some form of created bio-brain?
(I'm using machine spirit as in the actual personality, soul etc of the wraithbone construct rather than anything even remotely linked to the concept of machine animus that the blind followers of the Omnimessiah pray to)

As to tanks I'm gonna stick with general opinion and go with no probably not, though things like the Lynx would slide close enough to the line that defines a 'tank' as to potentially slip through it. Also I've been trying to stat sumat that unfortunately sits in exactly the same fluff that the Necron Annihilation Barge uses (damn GW dream walkers mining my brain ) so whilst said fluff still makes sense - to me - its probably even less likely to ever exist in anything else now.
Such thing being an anti-grav platform with a long range heavy weapon mounted on it, traditionally used in sem-fixed defences within Commorragh that can slowly move if required and therefore doesn't get to go a-raiding much, or at all, unless its deployed to sit around a rear webway portal.

Heavier raider/ravager-esque things again sit in that weird place for me, whilst I really like the ideas proposed in the Epic Raiders book, I'm questioning our need for such massive deployment vehicles. Fleet engagements we use Cruiser or Escort scale void-ships (which can be brought in close via the webway -

[Tangent Alert: speaking of which how do our vessels cross the massive interstellar distances between the webway portals / pre-existing rifts and other target zones? Or is it a definite that we have the ability to open massive temporary portals? And if so do we think we have to be in real-space to do so - like the wargear we have access to? In Path of the Renegade we seem to be always using pre-existing gateways into the webway and I've never assumed that those things are just about everywhere. Which means we must have a decent FTL or the ability to open portal webway-side (questioning why we don't always do that in really precise or specific places - or at least closer to such places - for precision strikes). Also theres the fact that being real-side for too long leads to ones soul escaping through ones orifices...]

- ) and then deploy raiders etc from orbit whilst using smaller webway portals planet-side. Again to be honest, whilst I love the designs I probably actually question the concept of our kind doing battle on that scale...
Though we do strip worlds I've always seen it as death of a thousand cuts - even if said cuts are all occurring at the same time on a planet-wide scale - and not the disembarking of a warhost that rolls over the defenders like a crushing wave.
So I suppose maybe a superheavy... but only maybe, and/or it'd have to be quite small on the super heavy scale anyway.
However I see custom craft like the Tantalus being rife throughout Commorragh, with Kabals having numerous differently designed 'raiders' etc.

The codex does seem to suggest that the Dark Eldar are able to open webway gates. There's several mentions of Raiders and other vehicles screaming down from a rift in the Webway opened in the sky of the target planet. For ships, they probably use existing gates and Warp travel (the Eldar do have Warp travel, they just prefer to use Webway because it's safer. The Corsair armylist in IA11 even has the Corsair equivalent of Navigator as an HQ choise).

What the point of tank when a side arm blast pistol can destroy it just as easy as anything else.

Remember raider is a pleasure craft, yacht, and weapon for inside and outside wars.

Tank cant be used for inside wars and as a pleasure craft. You can go to whatever Wych arena you like and watch the show.

I could see a Dark Eldar vehicle being kitted out to have an extremely high front armour. Like a kamikaze battering ram of some sort. I think that would be 'fluffy' enough to get a 14 up front, but you would still have 10s on the sides. Plus the Haemonculi and Archon would totally get their jollies from watching that thing smash into whatever intended target and the carnage that ensues. Otherwise, I agree with everyone else in that the DE just wouldn't see the point in having a heavy vehicle that smashes everything in it's path. Remember, the point isn't to annihilate the enemy, it's to make them suffer as much as possible before you consume their souls. Also this...

Azdrubael wrote:

Tank cant be used for inside wars and as a pleasure craft. You can go to whatever Wych arena you like and watch the show.

seggygetshyphy wrote:

I could see a Dark Eldar vehicle being kitted out to have an extremely high front armour. Like a kamikaze battering ram of some sort. I think that would be 'fluffy' enough to get a 14 up front, but you would still have 10s on the sides. Plus the Haemonculi and Archon would totally get their jollies from watching that thing smash into whatever intended target and the carnage that ensues. Otherwise, I agree with everyone else in that the DE just wouldn't see the point in having a heavy vehicle that smashes everything in it's path. Remember, the point isn't to annihilate the enemy, it's to make them suffer as much as possible before you consume their souls. Also this...

...That's what the ram is for...

Again, going with the general consensus here and say that "tanks" in a traditional sense are probably a no go. Heavier skimmers such as the Tantalus and some of the other FW sketches we've seen are definitively a possibility. Personally I'd still butcher a craftworld in thanks if FW ever produced one of those multiple deck heavies we saw sketches of. In fact some of those heavies could classify as non-open topped as although it seemed to the top deck was open, there were others fully armored.

Option two would be for some heavier fliers. If we look at Battlefleet Gothic we've got a couple of ideas to play with. We can accept the Razerwing that is mentioned, then we also have the Raptor fighter. (Whether these have since become the Razorwing and Voidraven is possible). We then have the Impaler Assault Module which may be too large for the table, but we also have the Enslaver Assault Boats. I could see these working in a similar fashion to the Space Marines Ceastus Assault Ram, heavily armoured skimmer/flyers with a large transport capacity and heavy melta weapons on the front for chewing through a hull.

Fully enclosed crew compartment, special rule to allow to assault in the same turn we disembark and heat-lance and hayway weapons big enough to damage a space ship.

Edit: There is also the old Rampage Gunship from the VDR rules years ago, which was a heavier version of the Ravager.

The Raptor fighter and Razorwing bomber probably aren't the same thing as the Razowing fighter and Voidraven bomber. The Eldar atleast have planes separate from the Nightwing and Phoenix for attacking spacecraft (the bomber is called the Eagle, can't remember what the fighter is called) and space fighters/bombers are considerably bigger than atmospheric ones. Altough if I recall correctly, the Eldar assault craft is the Vampire Raider, so the Slavebringer could potentially be a very similar craft.

Take note that the Tantalus is considered a "tank" as far as the rules go. While I'm normally a proponent of fluff and rules separation, this is the first real bone we've been tossed by GW for DE tanks. As such, I like to think that any possible DE "tanks" would be like the Tantalus.