Haven't played warhammer 40k in over 7 years looking to come back.

Hey guys/gals I recently made contact with some old friends who still play warhammer 40k. I want to start building a new army, but I'm having trouble deciding which one to play. I previously played CSM (both nurgle and emperors children) but want to switch up the play style a bit. I gave away all those models years ago so this new army would be built completely from scratch.

I read the new 6th edition rules recently and from what I have read on forums and the like the new meta revolves around shooting( which I always preferred). I would enjoy a more balanced army that can do well in CC or shooting depending on the list. I am not interested in a space marines army of any kind or an orc army. I have narrowed it down to either Dark Elder(heavily leaning towards: shooting and kiting sounds really fun), Tyranids (new codex soon not sure if good investment), CSM(once again), and maybe Tau (but they seem rather immobile and stale).

I've been doing a lot of lurking/stalking here this past week and seem 80% in favor of Dark Eldar. I was hoping the community could sell me on them. I've heard its table or be tabled, and that they just outright suck from one of my friends. I contacted my local shop and almost no one plays them which benefits me.

If you could please guide or advise me from personal experience the pros/cons of the Dark Eldar army.

Thanks for your time. Hope this is the correct sub-forum for my particular post.

Hey and welcome to the forum.

The play style of Dark Eldar is one that takes a long time to learn but can reap rewards, the meta is always changing so part of the 'fun' is trying to adapt; at my last two tournaments I came second from bottom and second...

When you say table or be tabled, you're not far off. I find it hard to use an uncompetitive or soft, friendly army - unless you go for the jugular then you will find out why our vehicles in some circles are nicknamed 'paper planes'.

A big pro for me is the models, technically speaking I would say they are the best range, of course the aesthetics are up to the viewer but they are a massive pro to me.

I wouldn't say there are lots of cons, be prepared to have to take a lot of time learning what you can and can't do and adapt, that's half the fun.

Yea I love the style and models of Dark Eldar as well. I've been saving miscellaneous images of awesome DE color schemes. I was also thinking about allying with some Eldar. Do DE strategically work better amongst themselves or would a complimenting Eldar force make for a more competitive list. Do you have any input on that issue?

My experience with Eldar/Dark Eldar is that if your opponent thinks that they suck, they are about to be tabled. A lot of people seem to make these types of assessments based on statlines but can't see the strengths of the units. If your friends are marine players then the game I like to play is, "Don't lose a model." I win half the time.

This is just my opinion of course:

PROS
- the most reliably mobile army in the game
- strong medium-range shooting which uses essentially 2 weapons which fares well against almost everything in the game
- capable of fielding shooting, melee, complicated special rules, resilient units, Monstrous Creatures and flyers
- every unit in the DE book is viable in a competitive setting
- the diversity of the list allows you to play to the weakness of your opponent's list rather than playing just to the strength of your own list
- an army of small, mobile units is probably the most fun way to play WH40k

CONS
- the majority of the army is fragile and highly vulnerable to small arms fire
- a bad game table with low terrain or improper size can result in a loss before the game begins
- the most popular lists currently being run tend to be weak against flyers and heavily mechanised lists
- if you don't know what one of your own units is capable of doing, it can ruin a whole list
- if you don't know what your opponent's army can do, you will struggle

Overall, the biggest thing about DE in my opinion is that you have to learn the game in order to play DE well. This involves getting your hands on every army book, and figuring out what's good in your own book. If you're on these boards, then you're well on your way to figuring out our army and I'm sure you'll do well. Post battle reports and we can help you learn and get better!

organicpesticide wrote:

I was also thinking about allying with some Eldar.  Do DE strategically work better amongst themselves or would a complimenting Eldar force make for a more competitive list.

I am a long-time Craftworld Eldar player and I've chosen to ally in Dark Eldar. I would not say that it is necessary for DE to ally in CWE, but the option is always there. DE have a large variety of units and can get wins even against supposed "hard counter" armies. CWE has a low amount of strong units, but the ones which are strong are very strong. I would say that CWE benefits greatly by allying in another army to add versatility and flexibility and DE can ally in CWE if you want resilient units and medium strength shooting.

My advice would be to start with DE because they are incredibly fun and strong in small games. Once you get over 1000 pts of DE, then you can start looking at allies. You don't need allies in order to succeed but CWE are also a very fun army to play and the option is always on the table if you're interested.

I know this is the DE forum, but the opposite is also true. You could start with CWE (which are less fun in small games imo) then decide whether you want to ally DE or Tau as your army grows. My experience with CWE is that they are excellent allies and not as good primary. If I could do it over, I would have gotten DE first then added CWE and that's my recommendation unless you're still interested in Tau.

The good thing about DE is we have alot of 36" range weapons i.e Dark Lances, Splinter Cannons, Disintegrators. Use that to your advantage to outrange the enemy and kite them.

As said above, make sure you utilise cover well as our troops & vehicles are weak in comparison. Don't forget to move your vehicles, even if it's just 1/2". Jink saves save lives.

All of this comes with practice though. Dark Eldar is a fun army to play but a hard one to master. When I first started playing I lost so many games and I thought they sucked, but it wasn't until I used better tactics and through experience I now love the army and win a lot of games.

As someone new to dark eldar they are fun to play but they do take a little bit to learn to use correctly. You have understand what they can and can not do to make them affective.

If you are going to do Deldar may I suggest that you buy Ravagers and magnetize the 2 side guns. This way you can use them as raiders too. Other than that, we can hold up against any army with the right list. Also an important note, there is loose talk of us getting a new Codex early next year. Oh and we can make good use of Dark Elf models too.

@organicpersticide: Your experience is quite the same as mine. I played CSM when the first codex was released in the mid 90s (2nd ed.) . I stopped playing one year before 3rd edition release in the end of the 90s. During ten-twelve years, I have always been thinking about playing again, but the time spent in painting and modelling, other occupations, money, ... etc, life, you know. And I've finally had a look at the dark eldars...

If you are collecting and painting miniatures, they are among the most beautiful GW product range. This is one first good reason to play DE.

About gameplay, playing a DE army is quite addictive, even between games. This is the second good reason.
I check this forum almost everyday since April, and I discover new strategies and specific tacticas almost every day. If you want to play DE, you have to be curious, you have to check your rulebook & codex line by line in order to get the best of your army. The result is that in five months, I know the rules better than some of my friends who are playing 6th ed. since its release in 2012.

No offense, but when you play SM with a 3+ armor, you usually don't care about cover save ... When you play DE, you have to know everything about cover saves, wrecks, craters, PGL tricks, stealth and shrouded stuff, and so on.
I recently told a DA friend that he should have a look at his darkshroud + jink + skilled riders on blackknights bikes to get the 3+ cover saves they deserve, and he looked at me with an interrogative face as he was whining about his unit being killed by several shots of an AP2 eldar pulse laser. I just answered : "Believe me, you're talking to a DE player, the most fragile army in the universe.You have 3+ cover save."

And the same is true about assault phase, weapons range, night fight, deep strike, ..., etc. Almost everything in the DE codex seems to be a particular case, and that's why it is so interresting, because you have to understand how your units work independently, and how they work together (this is also true for any other armies, but even more for DE).

The more you play DE, the more you want to play it again, at least that's how I feel at the moment.

They're space pirates! What's more to sell?

This is how I feel about the dark eldar. Now there is a bit of variation but you have two weapon types.
You have splinter weapons, and you have darklight weapons.
Pretty basic, yes I know, but what does that mean?

YOU CAN KILL ANYTHING.

S8 lance, means you'll glance anything on a 4+. Anything. Except I think a necron monolith has some special rule against it. I once destroyed a land raider turn one with one group of blasterborn.

Splinter weapons wound anything on a 4+. It's essentialls SX where X is your targets toughness. Meaning T10 means jack crap. You get 12 of these shots from a venom.

Now I know every army has answers to everything but these things are standard issue. They come on our friggin transports.

The only thing that can plop down on the board that you don't have an answer for is a flyer. Everything else you generally have something readily available to kill it.

That being said, that's kind of why Dark Eldar feel like table or be tabled. you're essentially gambling. On the first turn you have a 50% chance to damage anything you're firing at. If enough of those coin tosses come up heads, you're opponent Is going to think you're army is overpowered. Contrarily, if they all go bad, he'll think he's god's gift to Warhammer. Because if he sneezes at your army, if they're not behind cover they'll die. Even if they're behind cover, they'll die. They just die. A lot. That's why Haemonculi clone them.

LSK is totally right when he says that Dark Eldar force you to really master the game - there are issues that wouldn't come up nearly as often if you were playing marines, or indeed any other army. Getting a good grasp of the rules to understand exactly why certain things are so good is essential.

An added reason to get them (in addition to the beautiful range, the crazy speed, the drug popping and so on) is the Night Vision special rule. Half of the time the games in the standard missions will be played at night, giving Dark Eldar the ability to move up with a much greater degree of safety, or just sit back and blow stuff up without too much return fire (apart from against Tau).

As Expletive Deleted says, it can feel a little like gambling. In my first few games, I thought I was pretty bad at the game and had built a bad list, but over time I adjusted my strategy and adapted my list to get something I'm happy with that really worries my opponents. The false sense of security some players get from wiping out your list the first time you play them works wonders too - they really won't be expecting the absolute thrashing you'll give them later  

I'm relatively new to DE but have loved every game I've played so far, win or loss. The thing that I have noticed the most is that our standard issue 4+ poison is shots are just that - 4+. This means there's a 50/50 chance that it'll do great or terrible. This is great for higher toughness monsters; however, it also means we'll never dip into the 2+/3+ to wound range with our standard guns. Heavy weapons are another story here but poison, in general, can mean the same list can have a dramatically different performance from game to game depending on the dice.

In terms of flyers - this is a weakness; however, we still have a couple options. We can point all lances to the sky and hope to hit the thing(s). We can bring our Razorwing. We can rely on an ally. All of these have their pros and cons as well; however, in my opinion, we're not in THAT different of a situation as some other armies. Many lists (fewer now it seems though) still run ADL's almost exclusively for the ability to have a gun with skyfire. Flyers are something that, to me, people still aren't 100% certain how to manage well in either an offensive or defensive manner.

Lastly - out HQs are pretty sweet in my opinion. While they are usually just as fragile as any of our other infantry, they can be extremely tactical or extremely menacing in combat. With the amount of low poison or instant death weapons available to our HQs, players learn to fear them rather quickly.