Dark Eldar in Tournaments

So.... recently I heard someone talking about tournaments and Dark Eldar's place in them

The comment was that Dark Eldar were weak in the tournament scene, but effected the meta adversely. That a heavy infantry list would be dominated by dark Eldar, while a heavy mech army would tear through them.

I dont play in any major tournaments. Just local ones at the shop, where I tend to be very strong. However, I do notice that I am stronger against foot, and find against a good mech army, it all comes down to who goes first...and if I go first, how well my anti-tank does against their army in the first turn.

Figured I'd get the opinion on some experts here.


Also another question, do you think that the new Eldar codex will be benficial to our tournament scene, considering what we can take as allies?

In regards to the allies question you can find a good discussion here:

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t7054-are-allies-really-necessary-for-dark-eldar-to-be-truly-competitive-in-today-s-environment

Aschen wrote:

So.... recently I heard someone talking about tournaments and Dark Eldar's place in them

The comment was that Dark Eldar were weak in the tournament scene, but effected the meta adversely.  That a heavy infantry list would be dominated by dark Eldar, while a heavy mech army would tear through them.

Sounds like someone who only builds one type of DE list and thinks that what everyone plays.

You can build a DE list that is a nightmare for a mech list and useless against an infantry list.
You can do the opposite.

The smart plot is to aim for somewhere in the middle.

I, personally, think a *lot* of 6th edition is paper/rock/scissors.
For instance, Necron flyer spam is a really annoying match for us.
A Nid Flying MC list would eat it for breakfast.
We would eat the Nid list for breakfast.

Almost any type of list that focuses too much on one aspect of what they can do is a 'spoiler' list for a tourney that will sink some lists that maybe should have won and/or hand easy victories to other armies.

I'm not sure what is meant by 'heavy infantry' here - it could be either heavy on numbers (like IG) or heavily armoured (like Terminators) - but I think either of those can give DE a real problem. Conversely, mech needn't be much of a problem at all if you have plenty of DLs, Blasters, and/or HWGs. So, as said above, it all depends on the list.

The problem with tournaments is that most seem to encourage unbalanced lists, since those are the sort that often either win big or lose big. Since you need to win big to win overall, it seems worth taking the chance and hoping for good match ups. A more balanced list is less likely to get defeated, but may find a 100% winning record isn't enough, if they're close wins.

I agree with thor666. Our armies do not have to be good against only one....and now that eldar are back in the mix we can open up even more. My list I run now is good at everything. I have my true born with venoms all shooting splinter cannons for 48 shots combined, I have a 20 blob of kabalites with a splinter cannons and blasters and a farseer, my ravager is set with dissie cannons, a wraith knight who is stock, I have my gun boat with a dark lance 10 kabalites and splinter rifle, archon with his wytch squad in a raider, then I have in reserve my eldar jetbikes, void raven and haywire scourges.
It gives me enough fireit gives me enough fire power to compete with any infantry list and enought anti tank that I don't have too worry about mech armies as much. Also I have broad range of units without spamming. this works for me in my 1850 battles and I have yet too loose with it. I've tabled a mech ig(I went first), crushed a drop pod assault space marine army, beat demons and smacked around raven wing armies.

DE are still a solid tourney army, especially with our cousin's fancy new book! That being said, we do have a couple issues that stop us from being a top tier tournament army (currently).  First and foremost being the new Tau book, 80% of that book screams "FU%& DARK ELDAR!!!!!", their ability to ignore night fight, their long range weapons, med str wpns with ALOT of fire, support fire ::cringes::, I could go on forever.  Adding them to our list of bad match ups and our current list of armies to cry over is something like this.....

-Mech Guard
-Almost anything Tau
-Flyer Crons
-Mechdar (serpent shields are evil)
-Mech GK's

These are EXTREMELY popular tournament armies at the moment; so while we can still own any and all power armor or high toughness army, we struggle with fast moving/hard hitting mech as much as ever.  Couple that with it being perceived as the current meta by alot of gamers, and its easy to see why some DE players are jaded on the tourney scene currently.

I have been playing a lot of Tournaments in my area and am going to Nova (Which is a very large tournament in the D.C. Area) And the Primer that just passed, there were NO Dark Eldar players. What this means to me is that since Dark Eldar have seemed to filter out of the scene not many Tournament players are used to playing DE. And i have used that to my advantage so many times.

I Run a Very simple list with 6 Venoms and 3 Ravagers. Only two units of Blasterborn and I run very minimal Eldar allies. And I have found that most players in the Tounament scene in this area are never truely ready for the amount of Toughness ingnoring shots I through out and the amount of Str 8 AP 2 I can dish out. And by the time they realize what is dangerous, their most threatening units are severely hurting or gone.

If i have first turn I line up on the front line as close as possible. Move my Blasterborn up 6" hop out 6" further ahead and fire 18" thats a first turn 30" Str 8 AP2 4 shots threat range that can really wreck Armor, and then with 3 ravagers throwing more AP 2 at them, tanks on the table are wrecked. And I still have all my venoms and warriors to take care of any Troops hanging around or blown out of their transports.

If it is a heavy foot list then I can out range them easily with my 36" range and night shields.

My point is that while DE are not the top of the list Tournament army, then can really surprise anyone who underestimates them, is not ready for them, or makes a mistake. We are TOO fast for our opponents to make mistakes.

That applies to any army though. There are very few armies that are truly inherently bad, and if you are playing against an army that you have no idea what will be a threat in, then you are likely to have a tough time of it.