Defeating our Wayward Cousins

With the new eldar codex out, what is the best plan to take on our craftworld relatives? I run a pure dark kin army but what I have read about the eldar codex its seems we might have some trouble.  They just as fast and can shoot us after they run.  The guardians have a slight advantage in cc against our warriors.  Anyone who has played them or have a good theory to win, please offer some insight.

Shoot them. They're either in tanks, which are good but limit their numbers due to expense, or they're running around, in which case they're chronically short-ranged. A lot of Dark Eldar armies can engage at 36" with a great deal of effectiveness and keep moving. It should be fairly common to have an advantage at that range, and our mobility hopefully allows us to retain it for a fair while, so I see the standard tactic being simply whittling them down for a couple of turns while avoiding too much loss. As for close combat, as long as we're still in our boats, we have an effective charge range longer than a great many of their guns and if we get FnP, we're more survivable too, so not sure that's going to be too big a problem.

And Wraith constructs might as well not show up.

Its never easy, but I think short ranged guns and expensive vehicles do give them a few glaring weaknesses against us.

Dont play hit-n-run and positioning games with them, just shoot and assault them immediately.

Expect your transports to go down really really fast. I mean even more so. When Wave Serpents look at something without Flickerfields that something goes down. So your best bet is alpha-strike. Take a good look at Wave Serpents special rule and understand how good it can take our Raider, Venoms and Ravagers.

60' D6+1 S7 Ignores Cover. So no jink, cover etc. Thats an addition to double S6 guns. Whatever smart trick of postioning you are using Eldar player will have the option to delete your transports at his will. So better go all-out shooting and assault, they are really expensive, so there is not much of them on the table. Bring down some and keep killing untill they are no more.

Most Eldar players brings 2-3 Wave Serpents and Warwalkers.

Reavers might be a real asset with them. Wyches eat their overcosted mech for breakfast.

played a small game against them today banged a couple of raider's in his face with TGL's. zoomed through a blob of guardians with reaver's and pinned them. the return fire was horrendous but 1 raider was still allive and close to his farseer.

heamy jumps out with the second wave of my attack opens the crucible and bye bye farseer and a warlock, that neg 1 to Ld was enough to help them both fail.

he got so discouraged by losing his farseer so early, that he played poorly from then on and i was able to achieve an easy victory.

We still out range their infantry forcing then to close with us to engage where we are also superior in the combat department.

The biggest issue is how much mechdar has gained. IMO this is eldars strongest build, and our worst match up. De-meching eldar effectively will weigh heavily into most games. Obviously dark light spam is an option but not one i would bank on alone due to the sheer resilience of their tanks at range.

I believe a strong assault aspect will be vital, I'm thinking of beast packs but also anything that can assault armour. Beasts are fast cheap and get past serpent shields and cover saves. 2 or even 3 units are every eldar and tau army's nightmare with one turn to shoot before they cause problems. Sure they can try to turbo away but that stops their shooting and a 24" assault radius is hard to avoid especially from multiple units. Meanwhile shooting directed at beasts means ravagers are safer while disembarking troops to deal opens them up to venoms and assault.

Wyches alone won't threaten grav tanks effectively but I feel a combination of multiple wyches multiple beasts and dark lances will be a worthy challenge for eldar with their more expensive Mech vs our msu.

The bad news is eldar shoot even better than before which was already withering S6 fire and now with unavoidable range.
TLDR we have the tools but IMO shifting from strictly shooting to include combat anti tank capable units is the way forward.

Brom wrote:

I believe a strong assault aspect will be vital, I'm thinking of beast packs but also anything that can assault armour. Beasts are fast cheap and get past serpent shields and cover saves. 2 or even 3 units are every eldar and tau army's nightmare with one turn to shoot before they cause problems. Sure they can try to turbo away but that stops their shooting and a 24" assault radius is hard to avoid especially from multiple units. Meanwhile shooting directed at beasts means ravagers are safer while disembarking troops to deal opens them up to venoms and assault.

I'm not sure they will be popular for the most part... But is someone intends to shoot and retreat, going flat out once the enemy gets too close... They might take Crystal Targeting Matrices. They are expensive and one use only... At the moment I would probably only take one on a Warp Hunter, and that isn't an option at the moment.

I think some Eldar builds will be tough, but others will be fairly easy for DE... Spirit Hosts for example are a total waste against DE.

Ya the matrix is pretty bad as an all comers item I wouldn't expect to see them much.

pehldog63 wrote:

The guardians have a slight advantage in cc against our warriors.

erm, perhaps i have missed something but there stat lines are the same as well as pts cost, unless you refer to the Exarch they should be even

They dont even have an exarch. Storm guardians are technically better due to flamers/extra attacks/power sword access but realistically you dont want either in CC tbh

Lets analyze mechdar for a second. Mathhammer HOOOO!

A waveserpant firing its serpant shield means an average of 3.5 S7 attacks that ignore cover. At BS4, glancing raiders on a 3+ and assuming we get 5+ flickerfield saves, that means that (3.5)(4/6)(4/6)(4/6) = 1.037 Hullpoints of damage with each serpant shield fired. Thats without even factoring in the other guns on the serpant.

Comparing that to our raiders, which fire 1 S8 shot at BS4, and glance on a 4+. To be fair, lets add in the serpants basic jink save of 5+. (1)(4/6)(1/2)(4/6) = 0.222 Hullpoints of damage dealt with each darklance fired.

This means that in a serpant vs raider shootout, the serpants have 5 times the numeric advantage over our raiders. Us being open-topped gives them +1 on vehicle damage rolls, but our AP2 shots give us +1 as well, so were even there.

If we assume the DE player has enough points for 6 raiders and 3 ravagers with flickerfields, that means the opponent will probably have about 6 or so wavesearpants if they spend a roughly equal number of points on their mech. So we'd be dealing 1.98 hull points of damge per turn to the eldar, while they deal 6.222 hull points of damage to us.


I think even without factoring in the other guns on the waveserpants, its clear that we cannot out-shoot those things with our boats. Even without factoring in our firepower diminishing over the course of the game as we lose boats, we can't even drop a serpant per turn! We need to come up with a better strategy. Boats vs Serpants is a lost cause, unless you have the luckiest dice in the world.

shouldn't the average number of serpent shield shots be 4.5 since it's 1D6+1? Maybe I'm wrong since mathhammer isn't my thing.

Your correct its 4.5 but likely twin linked. That's why I would prefer to actually present assault threats to their Mech. Not just a few though, an entire army.. Plus lances.

Scourges would be a decent option, since the serpent shield gives them the option to practically ignore penetrating hits, a full scourge unit with haywire blasters is quite capable fo wrecking a tank a turn, just need to be careful with positioning to minimise return fire.

Wyches with haywires should still be viable too, and if taken in large enough units can comfortably block the exit to the transport, destroying the unit inside as well. The difficulty would be getting close enough.

Duke and deep striking ravagers with disintegrator cannons is an option, though as I managed to prove last game, you're not guaranteed to get a 5 or 6, even if you roll to hit quite well.

I firmly believe that trying to pen the wave serpents is basically pointless, since the shield has the potential to downgrade penetrating hits almost all of the time - if I were playing Eldar I'd save shooting with the shield until I'd got where I wanted to go. My own philosophy therefore would be to try and glance them to death.

Wave serpents die to glances just like anything else. Also their shield doesn't protect their rear armour, which is also AV10.

also you forgot to factor in that a serpent is double he points of a raider... so its 1 vs 2 not 1 vs 1

Below is a report from my most recent game against eldar (played by shadow):

BR26: The Black Buzzards VS Eldar Mech - 1500pts

Hope that's useful.

I played my own mechanised Dark Eldar against a mechanised Eldar army yesterday and I got absolutely destroyed.  Usually the combination of Skimmers, lances and splinters gives enough speed and versatility to hold its own but I really struggled to do any damage.

Not having the first turn didn't help but even if I had from the way the game went I believe my transports would have been sure and certain toast.

Scatter lasers can bring down transports and planes on their own but even if they don't their markerlight-type thing means another weapon will blow you up.
Shurikens are a perfect living nightmare for any of our units on foot and charging Dire Avengers in particular is not a healthy option.
Prisms before were not that good. Now they are awesome. They are fast, have unlimited range and a gun that can select the perfect mode to kill any of our particular units.

Also worth noting reapers. Because they ignore Jink they now glance vehicles to death then have a lovely time killing the occupants  in the open. Even if you're lucky enough to draw night in the first turn...they've probably got night vision now.

They are also more resilient themselves and Holofields are what I wish Nightshields were. Sure the Eldar tanks are a bit more expensive but not so much that you will ever radically outnumber them. The shooty Eldar list has no need of open-topped assault transports so the Wave Serpent is nigh-on perfect. Wave Shields are worth a special mention as Raider/Venom destroyers. 1-7 S7 shots with ignore cover (including jink).. Argh!

Granted I was playing an experienced player and luck always plays a big part but I think this is a really challenging type of army for us to beat now. Deep striking can give an advantage for a while but these Eldar are as fast as us!

I'm all ears for killer solutions.

Depends. Beating a mechanized Eldar force is a tall order, specifically because of Wave Serpents.
On the other hand, non-mechanized forces seem like they will be entirely manageable. Wraith armies in particular stand out as a disaster waiting to happen. The foot elements of the army are also very short range, so much so that Night Shields are even more crippling than usual.

Frankly, there is a lot of doom and gloom whenever a new codex comes out, Tau being an excellent example. If there is so little hope, why did some young gun with the new Eldar call Dark Eldar broken? It's all going to depend on what types of Eldar armies become "mainstream." If Saim-Hann goes big, then we don't have to deal with Wave Serpents. If mechanized armies go big, you'll just need to learn how to outplay your opponent. If infantry and/or wraith armies become the new staple, I'll just cackle madly during a patented Raider Drive-by.

I'm all ears for killer solutions. wrote:

All out super agressive tactics and actually having an army that can support such tactics.