A question about Raiders and Venoms Fragility

I've been pretty quiet on the forums the past couple weeks. After a couple of pretty bad losses I just wasn't feeling all that Dark Eldar...y.

Now I did about 4-5 searches, KNOWING that this topic had to have been covered at some point, but I couldn't find anything. Now, I've heard about how fragile our transports are, but I never really felt it until the past two weeks. I swear anytime my Raiders or Venoms got shot at, they exploded. They're easy enough to penetrate, I get that, but the +2 and +3 to rolls on the damage chart are just overdoing it. And everytime it exploded poof 5 - 7 wounds on everything inside. One time two of my wyches not even involved got caught in a 6" blast and died (okay I understand that part was unlucky). My question is, is there any way to avoid this? Because generally when I foot slog troops they die even quicker. I'm not the best player, my ratio before this was probably 50/50. But I almost got tabled one of these games, and that was very disheartening.

To give a little perspective I always take flickerfields now. Unless you go first every game, ever, flickerfields are always worth it.

I use cover. From buildings to giant rocks.

I guess night shields could benefit against melta weapons but they're still ap 1.

In the two games I played against crimson fists and blood angels.

It got so bad, I got comical, and wished I could fly my raiders into my opponents units and self-destruct, since the ensuing explosion was the deadliest weapon in our arsenals.

Is there a way to mitigate this, or is it something we just have to live with?

Yes and no. To start, though, bad luck happens. I had a game the other day where it seemed that the dice just hated me. I had a mantle'd Jetseer as my HQ take 3 cover-ignoring AP3 wounds (can't remember from what as there was only one Drake in play). Failed all three in one go. 10 Wyches charge through Dangerous Terrain? Cool, fail 4 DT tests. Good job, gladiators...

And it was all against Thousand Sons, who pay a premium for AP3 and a 4++, which is largely wasted against us (until we shoot lances at their troops, anyway).

Moral - don't get too discouraged. It happens.

Step 2 - Night shields, with careful premeasuring, do wonders. 6" doesn't seem like much, but it can really turn the tide. A fair amount of armies are starting to specialize in the mid-range game. Necrons are mostly a 24" army. Tyranid shooting hits the same fence, Grey Knights... Even against Tau Night Shields allow us to dance outside of FW range and still return fire with cannons and lances at the nastier targets. They also laugh at Melta, so long as it's not DS'ing in. You pretty much never have to come into range of a 6" gun, and then melta-range is only 3", so it has a 1/3 of non-penning to boot. Considering what a Melta *should* do to us, that's hilariously good.

All-in-all, I pretty much traded in FF's for Shields. With cover the first turn, and jink after, I haven't found them necessary (although they do have their own benefits). Most armies don't have a ton of *long range* cover-ignoring firepower, so we can always focus it down if need be. Tau have a lot, but again it's in that 24" range (mostly) that's easy for us to negate with Night Shields.

And here's a fun tidbit that a lot of people won't expect - as our Raiders are oddly shaped (compared to a standard box-tank), our front armor and side armor really flow together. Keep in mind that you draw an X across the 'corners' to determine where these facings are. In short, we can easily poke our nose out to get a shot at a target, while still covering our side armor completely (a lot of the time getting a 3+ save for our trouble). This sort of move will go a long way to making our paper boats more survivable.

I dont expect them to survive.
Its a transport, not an IFV.

Turn one turbo, turn two disembark and assault.

What I am slowly learning from my failings is that I just need to deploy better and hide better. Think how I want turn 3 to look, rather than just survive turn 1. If I'm going second and I can't hide something perfectly, I'm better off reserving it. I don't think DE can afford redundancy and they certainly can't take a hit, so I need to be sure that what I focus fire on gets annihilated so that there is no retaliation.
At the moment I have the Duke in my list to play around with deep strike rules to offer a further possibility in tactical deployment. I ran it last week and I farcically mis-happed both my expensive grotesque/haem units off the table and lost them to terrible accidents. Not a great start, but they were small odds that I just so happened to be unfortunate enough to roll. I still want to try it again because my opponent had no idea DE could do that! If you've got the toys, mix it up! If people you play against know you are normally a flying circus type, screw with their minds and biff loads of beasts, hellions and the Baron at them!!
And if all else fails... use the Rending Pony!!

jbwms713 wrote:

And here's a fun tidbit that a lot of people won't expect - as our Raiders are oddly shaped (compared to a standard box-tank), our front armor and side armor really flow together.  Keep in mind that you draw an X across the 'corners' to determine where these facings are.  In short, we can easily poke our nose out to get a shot at a target, while still covering our side armor completely (a lot of the time getting a 3+ save for our trouble).  This sort of move will go a long way to making our paper boats more survivable.

Not sure why I never thought of this, but thanks for sharing that tidbit! Most of the players at my local store play space marines and that's only increased with the new codex. I've never felt nightshields to be worth it over FF because usually I see a lot of drop pods and deep striking. Which has been another issue with cover. Unless I can fit my raider in a building generally they can shoot at it from anywhere.

Dominicj wrote:

I dont expect them to survive.
Its a transport, not an IFV.

Turn one turbo, turn two disembark and assault.

I agree completely, but even with that strategy they're going to need to survive two shooting phases.

@DEfan
I've been thinking more about reserves and deep striking, but that kind of flies in the face of everything I've come to understand about Dark Eldar. Which is hit hard and hit fast. I've seen what our army can do to tough deep striking armies, i.e. kill most of the units on the board, then as other units come in it's like sending them through a meat grinder. And the fact that all our models are so fragile, it deters me from trying it. If you destroy all the boats I have on the table, you're easily going to destroy them as the make their way in on turn 2 and 3. But then again, with grotesques inside, that's hardly worrisome.

Also running full warrior squads outside of the transport and in area terrain also helps troop survivability. This way when the raider goes boom, you dont lose half the squad due to S4 hits and bad rolls.

Give them a splinter cannon, and let them pour out shots. If you get T1, you can move up the raider, disembark them into some cover around midfield, and get even more done with them than you ever could in the raider.

Why should there be S4 hits? It is open and thus S3, isn't it?

Jochmann wrote:

Why should there be S4 hits? It is open and thus S3, isn't it?

That was in 5th edition, in 6th edition that clause was sadly removed, upping our casualty rate significantly.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

They're easy enough to penetrate, I get that, but the +2 and +3 to rolls on the damage chart are just overdoing it.

What kind of weapons are shooting at you? AP2 gives a +1 and AP1 a +2. +3 would mean AP1 with tank hunters. That should be pretty rare.

+1 for our being open-topped :-(

Also, Tank Hunters no longer gives +1 on the damage result.

I have not had that much of a problem with fragile transports. I'm pretty sure it is because I have managed to find cover, get in a range where the opponent cant fire, but if he moves and fires then I can fire from a better position.
And, most importantly, most dont really know anything about dark eldar. When they see raiders, ravagers and venoms, by appearance they target the ravagers first, or raiders if they know there is someone important in there. Then, they freak out when they figure out what venoms can do...
And also, empty transports are not very tempting targets, and if they blow up, like it has been already said, no one dies, and no one is exposed to the spot where the vehicle used to be.

The key with drop pods and melta, while going second is a good castle.

Put NS on everything that can take it. Then take a talos/cronos. Position the talos such that if he drops close by it will eat them for breakfast. Try and have your vulnerable stuff behind it to get the cover save for intervening models. Kind of like a spear tip led by the talos with at least one side protected by the board edge.

When the pods come in he will have to make a choice. He can't assault out of deep strike, so his models will have to take a round of shooting and possibly an assault before getting stuck in themselves.

The real choice is: does he land close enough to get a melta shot in and therefore lose the squad when the talos liquifies and assaults on your turn. Or does he waste his bolters trying to take the talos down? I think the average is around 60 or 80 bolter shots to kill one.

If he's smart, the drop pods will come down too far away from your raiders to use the melta or bolters on them. Which will allow you to turbo boost away and fight in turns 3 and 4 on your terms. Essentially denying him the benefit of the pods.

If he's not smart then the talos will crush the squad that drops close, while giving a few pain tokens out. At this point the rest of your army deals with the other pods.

Clively
That falls down when three empty dev pods sit in reserve and four tactical pods drop T1
The choice is the same.
If enough can run and fight on, sacrifice what cant be saved and run
Otherwise, counter attack.

The Danger is that they can out MSU you

Honestly, make sure you are using LOS blocking terrain in your games. There should be a few pieces on every board. GW made sure to include rules about each player taking alternating turns to place terrain from an agreed upon pool, and went so far as to point out that generals choose the places of engagement to suit the styles of their army. Use this rule if you are having a hard time- its there for a reason.

Reece from frontline gaming made a point of making multiple pieces of 8+ high LOS blocking terrain for every board at his most recent tournament. I did the same for my own board as well. Its fun, fair and makes for an exhilirating game where the movement phase is of vital importance! I'm going to post some pictures of my board and post it in my project log just to show how easy such terrain is to make, and how atmospheric it can make the board.