New Dark Eldar player looking for primer vs all armies

Hey guys,

Making my first purchases tomorrow of my dark eldar! I'm looking for some advice, however...

I've been poking around and couldn't really find general strategies vs each army. Without knowing what the DE player will be running I Can see how that would be tough to compile... Here's my 1850 list I'm building towards. I'd love it if you guys could evaluate my list and hook me up with different strategies vs popular lists of all the different armies. Here we go:

HQ:

Vect (in a raider with the wyches)


Troops:

9 wyches w/ haywire grenades (raider with vect)

5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)

Elites:

5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)


Transports: (all accounted for above)

Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons

Raider, Flickerfields, dark lance


Heavy Support:

Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance

My advice for you is to pray your opponent doesn't bring many vehicles.

My advice which is most prob worthless is

Maybe get some more wyches in venoms with haywire instead of all gunboats, your running a dangerous game with so many warriors in venoms as the splinter cannon is 36" range while the blaster is 18" (apart from your ravagers only form of anti tank) so as you come in close you will get rapid fired, nuked pretty quick)  I find some wyches with haywire in a venom can be so distracting to the enemy that they tend to make stupid moves to counter these allowing other units to get a better shot etc.  Maybe even try a trueborn squad I often run a 3man squad (min squad size no need for 5) with either 2 lances or splinter cannons depending what I feel use for




One last thing, you are gonna struggle vs anything in cover while I understand not many like melee at times this can be the best place for us to be to avoid small arms fire which is capable of wrecking our vehicles and troops inside.

To expand upon Thors words of wisdom  his guide is what has informed me throughout all of my army selection (being an also new player).

You can find it in his signature (in fetching green) or here:

http://thedarkcity.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_Eldar_Tactica

Its very useful to know the strengths and weaknesses and make your own mind up from there.

I pick lists on models that I like and the guide helps me counter my own masochisms to some extent by tooling those models and concepts out appropriately.

Thor665 wrote:

My advice for you is to pray your opponent doesn't bring many vehicles.

I hope they do bring vehicles, with 10 dark lances and a bunch of blasters!

django_unchained wrote:

Thor665 wrote:

My advice for you is to pray your opponent doesn't bring many vehicles.

I hope they do bring vehicles, with 10 dark lances and a bunch of blasters!

You have 10 lances, but you have 10 lances on only 4 shooting platforms. That is quite different than having 10 lances on 10 shooting platforms.

What you have is 4 enemy vehicles you can shoot at, and, depending on his deployment and what he does, you can get some Blaster action in as well. Maybe.
Most of your anti-tank (and by most, I mean literally almost all) shows up reliably Turn 2, not Turn 1. To get much Turn 1 shooting against vehicles you pretty much need to be facing an enemy rush list...and most of those don't use vehicles unless they're Orks. Which means most mech you face will be gunline mech (IG, Eldar, Tau, other DE lists) and those can sit back beyond your ability to bring Blasters to bear against them while still being able to damage you.

Thor665 wrote:

django_unchained wrote:

Thor665 wrote:

My advice for you is to pray your opponent doesn't bring many vehicles.

I hope they do bring vehicles, with 10 dark lances and a bunch of blasters!

You have 10 lances, but you have 10 lances on only 4 shooting platforms. That is quite different than having 10 lances on 10 shooting platforms.

What you have is 4 enemy vehicles you can shoot at, and, depending on his deployment and what he does, you can get some Blaster action in as well. Maybe.
Most of your anti-tank (and by most, I mean literally almost all) shows up reliably Turn 2, not Turn 1. To get much Turn 1 shooting against vehicles you pretty much need to be facing an enemy rush list...and most of those don't use vehicles unless they're Orks. Which means most mech you face will be gunline mech (IG, Eldar, Tau, other DE lists) and those can sit back beyond your ability to bring Blasters to bear against them while still being able to damage you.

The ravagers will be shooting their dark lances most of the time on turn 1 with their range. With vect, I have a 75% chance of going first. I'm liking my chances of getting first blood on a vehicle or 2 turn 1.

I will however ask, against mech... How would you alter the list?

django_unchained wrote:

The ravagers will be shooting their dark lances most of the time on turn 1 with their range. With vect, I have a 75% chance of going first. I'm liking my chances of getting first blood on a vehicle or 2 turn 1.

I feel you're bringing up points I've already agreed with. I concur with you that your Ravagers are capable of attacking Turn 1, I openly stated as such. What I'm saying is that; I don't think that's very much.

It doesn't matter if you go first if you can barely hurt your opponent when you do.

Like, let's just throw up a totally unusual and not at all likely to be seen at a tournament list.
Like...Eldar Serpent spam.
So, they deploy some Serpents and have a Jetseer Council hidden behind a building and out of LoS.
Your army goes first because 'Vect'.
He doesn't deploy like an idiot and is instead somewhat along his back board edge since he can move up and shoot anywhere on his turn.

You unleash the punishing force of 10 dark lances.

So, each Ravager, let's see;
3 shots.
2 hit.
1 will likely glance or pen.
Since you had first turn and his shields are up, that means it's a glance.

So each Ravager = about 1 glance on a Serpent.
Which means, even if the Raider glances/pens a Serpent (we'll call it a glance since it's on a Serpent)
Your alpha strike ought to be able to drop 1 Wave Serpent as long as he doesn't have cover saves of any type.
If he has cover saves then you probably do about 2 hull points off him.

I wouldn't call that assured first blood.
Even if we go with something softer, like IG - it's still a bit of a toss up. The odds favor you to manage to kill a Chimera or Leman on Turn 1, but the odds don't really favor you that much, it's almost as likely you fail to manage the kill. So, basically it's about 50/50 versus IG or Tau gunline (though Tau gunline will probably have a Riptide, and your army is actually quite good at killing Riptides and ought to be able to swing that also, raising your overall chances for first blood).

But I would hardly call that an impressive showing of anti-mech firepower. I would, personally, suggest that you don't even remotely have enough.

django_unchained wrote:

I will however ask, against mech... How would you alter the list?

I would recognize that Venom = good but Venom =/= auto win.

You have spammed the heck out of Venoms. I feel like you read somewhere that Venom spam is good (it is) and decided, 'heck, I can spam Venoms, check this out!' and you have succeed in making a brilliantly Venom-spammy list. When it comes to Venom spam I don't think I could build better, you even have your Trueborn as basically Venoms in your Venom so you can splinterspam while you splinterspam.

But there's a reason I use the 'splinterspam' comment, because that's what Venomspam actually is. It's the spamming of splinter weaponry. Also known as an AP5 poison shot. It is *very* good at killing things vulnerable to AP5 poison (Monstrous Creatures like Riptides, WraithKnights, half the Nid Dex, Daemon Princes, ect. ect.) It really helps against those.

That also puts you in a good place against a number of competitive builds.
Specifically FMC spam (a'la the Flying Circus)
It does you okay versus the Riptide uber death unit (though, honestly, massed darklight can be better, especially if you get first turn and don't give them a chance to pop their shields)
It's even pretty solid versus Jetseers and Screamerstars simply because it can force a lot of saves.

That said, it is inferior versus mech competitive builds.

Heldrakes.
Croissant Spam.
Serpent Spam.
Air Cav Guard.
Gunline Guard.
Any Escalation style Titan build.
Anything behind Void Shields.

To top it off, a lot of those lists are capable of busting open a DE list pretty quick because we're a fragile shooting codex who shoots less and is more fragile than most gunline builds, and now that assault got nerfed in 6th we can't just rush and out assault them as easily.

So, what you need, in my opinion, is the ability to hamper and disable as much enemy shooting as possible on your way in to toss Haywire Wyches at them. To do that you need the ability to toss a lot of darklight at the enemy on Turn 1. I personally think the way to do this is to lessen the amount of Venoms and increase the amount of Raiders - a Raider is still a fine vehicle, is in some ways more survivable than a Venom, and adds to your anti-mech alpha strike.

Also, I will admit I am also partial to Trueblasters because they are viable suicide options for extra range. If you disembark a Warrior squad for an extra 6" of range on their Blaster then you get +1 shot and pretty much are accepting that as a dead unit next turn. With Trueborn you also tend to die, but get +3-4 shots for the risk - which is a much better return investment. The disembarking thing is important, because it takes the Blaster danger radius from 24" in a vehicle to 30" with disembark - and that 30" can often be the difference between getting in Blaster shots on Turn 1 or not, and you want to be able to have maximum impact if you do pull that move.

So, presuming your local meta doesn't run the really dumb expansions that allow Void Shields and Titans, I would say your biggest threat is being able to put a hurting on armies that can deploy in the back part of their deployment zone (which, against Vect, any halfway intelligent player will...frankly, if they get too protective then you should just deploy defensive as well and don't seize) but, with the goal of alpha-stirke, I would probably recognize that some more lances and maybe some Blasterborn is better than another set of splinter cannons.

replace the splintercannons on the trueborn with dark lances and put them in high cover, then you can still use the venoms and have more anti tank.

I have to agree that 10 lances are nowhere near good enough. I play agains Eldar quite often and even if they do not bring Serpent Spam, I find 15 lances not nearly enough.

10 lances are maybe good enough if your friendly (CH)SM player brings 1 predator and 2 rhinos.

Also warriors with blaster are (in my opinion) waste of points. I like specialized units. And if you do the disembark move Thor suggests, you will lose a troop. With Blasterborn, you not only get a better shot, but if they die, its not scoring.

Lanceborn are also good option. I used them several times with good results.

And last - you are making it easy for your opponent to select targets. The only thing that can hurt him T1 are Ravagers if he deploys smartly, so he will concentrate on shooting them down and considering Ravagers are only double-layered cardboard... Next round He will shoot down your wyches and... well thats all you got, save for troops who will either shoot vehicles and let infantry get to you or shoot infantry and be punished by vehicles... Vect factor does not matter much as they will usually let you deploy first and deploy to minimize or nullify your first-turn advantage.

Thor665 wrote:

django_unchained wrote:

The ravagers will be shooting their dark lances most of the time on turn 1 with their range. With vect, I have a 75% chance of going first. I'm liking my chances of getting first blood on a vehicle or 2 turn 1.

I feel you're bringing up points I've already agreed with. I concur with you that your Ravagers are capable of attacking Turn 1, I openly stated as such. What I'm saying is that; I don't think that's very much.

It doesn't matter if you go first if you can barely hurt your opponent when you do.

Like, let's just throw up a totally unusual and not at all likely to be seen at a tournament list.
Like...Eldar Serpent spam.
So, they deploy some Serpents and have a Jetseer Council hidden behind a building and out of LoS.
Your army goes first because 'Vect'.
He doesn't deploy like an idiot and is instead somewhat along his back board edge since he can move up and shoot anywhere on his turn.

You unleash the punishing force of 10 dark lances.

So, each Ravager, let's see;
3 shots.
2 hit.
1 will likely glance or pen.
Since you had first turn and his shields are up, that means it's a glance.

So each Ravager = about 1 glance on a Serpent.
Which means, even if the Raider glances/pens a Serpent (we'll call it a glance since it's on a Serpent)
Your alpha strike ought to be able to drop 1 Wave Serpent as long as he doesn't have cover saves of any type.
If he has cover saves then you probably do about 2 hull points off him.

I wouldn't call that assured first blood.
Even if we go with something softer, like IG - it's still a bit of a toss up. The odds favor you to manage to kill a Chimera or Leman on Turn 1, but the odds don't really favor you that much, it's almost as likely you fail to manage the kill. So, basically it's about 50/50 versus IG or Tau gunline (though Tau gunline will probably have a Riptide, and your army is actually quite good at killing Riptides and ought to be able to swing that also, raising your overall chances for first blood).

But I would hardly call that an impressive showing of anti-mech firepower. I would, personally, suggest that you don't even remotely have enough.

django_unchained wrote:

I will however ask, against mech... How would you alter the list?

I would recognize that Venom = good but Venom =/= auto win.

You have spammed the heck out of Venoms. I feel like you read somewhere that Venom spam is good (it is) and decided, 'heck, I can spam Venoms, check this out!' and you have succeed in making a brilliantly Venom-spammy list. When it comes to Venom spam I don't think I could build better, you even have your Trueborn as basically Venoms in your Venom so you can splinterspam while you splinterspam.

But there's a reason I use the 'splinterspam' comment, because that's what Venomspam actually is. It's the spamming of splinter weaponry. Also known as an AP5 poison shot. It is *very* good at killing things vulnerable to AP5 poison (Monstrous Creatures like Riptides, WraithKnights, half the Nid Dex, Daemon Princes, ect. ect.) It really helps against those.

That also puts you in a good place against a number of competitive builds.
Specifically FMC spam (a'la the Flying Circus)
It does you okay versus the Riptide uber death unit (though, honestly, massed darklight can be better, especially if you get first turn and don't give them a chance to pop their shields)
It's even pretty solid versus Jetseers and Screamerstars simply because it can force a lot of saves.

That said, it is inferior versus mech competitive builds.

Heldrakes.
Croissant Spam.
Serpent Spam.
Air Cav Guard.
Gunline Guard.
Any Escalation style Titan build.
Anything behind Void Shields.

To top it off, a lot of those lists are capable of busting open a DE list pretty quick because we're a fragile shooting codex who shoots less and is more fragile than most gunline builds, and now that assault got nerfed in 6th we can't just rush and out assault them as easily.

So, what you need, in my opinion, is the ability to hamper and disable as much enemy shooting as possible on your way in to toss Haywire Wyches at them. To do that you need the ability to toss a lot of darklight at the enemy on Turn 1. I personally think the way to do this is to lessen the amount of Venoms and increase the amount of Raiders - a Raider is still a fine vehicle, is in some ways more survivable than a Venom, and adds to your anti-mech alpha strike.

Also, I will admit I am also partial to Trueblasters because they are viable suicide options for extra range. If you disembark a Warrior squad for an extra 6" of range on their Blaster then you get +1 shot and pretty much are accepting that as a dead unit next turn. With Trueborn you also tend to die, but get +3-4 shots for the risk - which is a much better return investment. The disembarking thing is important, because it takes the Blaster danger radius from 24" in a vehicle to 30" with disembark - and that 30" can often be the difference between getting in Blaster shots on Turn 1 or not, and you want to be able to have maximum impact if you do pull that move.

So, presuming your local meta doesn't run the really dumb expansions that allow Void Shields and Titans, I would say your biggest threat is being able to put a hurting on armies that can deploy in the back part of their deployment zone (which, against Vect, any halfway intelligent player will...frankly, if they get too protective then you should just deploy defensive as well and don't seize) but, with the goal of alpha-stirke, I would probably recognize that some more lances and maybe some Blasterborn is better than another set of splinter cannons.

So this is probably the most insightful response I've ever had to a post... Thank you very much.

You put everything into perspective without being condecending. I had initially had a 3 raider / 6 venom list. After reading this, I think I may run 4 raiders, and 5 venoms total. I will also look into blasterborn as opposed to splinterborn. Thanks very much. I really appreciate this. One question I guess... Raiders with warriors, what's the best way to utilize them? Splinter racks with flickerfields and a dark lance? I know nightshields are pointless ass you want to get into rapid fire range with the splinter racks? I'm not sure, any insight would be awesome. I guess my biggest question is we're referred to as the glass cannon army. What's the best loadout for turn 1 devastating firepower in a alpha strike?

django_unchained wrote:

So this is probably the most insightful response I've ever had to a post... Thank you very much.

You put everything into perspective without being condecending.

Wait...now I've ruined my rep!

django_unchained wrote:

One question I guess... Raiders with warriors, what's the best way to utilize them? Splinter racks with flickerfields and a dark lance? I know nightshields are pointless ass you want to get into rapid fire range with the splinter racks? I'm not sure, any insight would be awesome. I guess my biggest question is we're referred to as the glass cannon army. What's the best loadout for turn 1 devastating firepower in a alpha strike?

Eh...some people swear by splinter racks. Personally I think they're pretty terrible - I tend to put 5 man squads with blasters in my Raiders and, personally, consider them pretty solid all purpose shooting, sometimes I shoot infantry with them, sometimes I shoot mech. They're pretty decent at killing everything, and that's a usefulness all its own.

For generic questions like this I suppose I'll just point you to the link in my sig to my tactica - I do have a number of unit builds, suggestions, and thoughts in there. I will caution it is somewhat out of date as halfway through 6th edition I decided GW was just trolling anyone who wanted to play competitively and so I sort of stopped caring - my opinion seems to have borne out correctly considering the decisions they've made since then. But a lot of the stuff in there is universal, and a lot still holds true even now.

For my money, the best alpha strike involves lance Ravagers, a mix of Raiders and Venoms (both are important to have - because sometimes there are different/multiple unit types you will want to alpha strike) , some Blasterborn, and some unit (Vect or Sathypants) built to help you control whether you go first or second so you can adjust as needed depending on the board and your opponent's army.

I personally tend to favor a mech alpha strike, but that's because I don't think there are enough tourney level armies that worry me that feature enough infantry for me to adjust much for them. Lootas, Pathfinders, Riptides/Crisis Suits, FMCs...that's about it. I dunno, maybe bikes, but lances work wonders on bikes, and frankly do well against Riptides too. I mean, you definitely want enough shooting to be able to put pressure of saves on your opponent in case you need to chew through something tough, but for my money the big question nowadays is whether you can kill a Serpent Spam list, because you will face that (unless the tourney allows Titans, in which case - same principle, because you need to be able to kill a super walker or drop void shields or both...and, heck, probably a Taudar list will feature a Titan and some Serpents). I consider those the threatening lists and build accordingly.

I see a lot of people fielding big piles of bikes and splinter rack packed Raiders...and, i dunno, they just play in a different environment than I do, and I sorta wish mine looked more like that, frankly, but for me the mech emphasis is important.

Holy venom spam!

I can't give super great advice on an all-comers build nowadays. Between Escalation, Stronghold Assault, Forgeworld and new formations and dataslates popping up monthly 40k has become a very expensive game of shifting meta. I can, however, answer the title! For a generic primer against all armies, here it goes:

Tyranids: This is only first because it's easiest. Not that the Tyranids are bad; they can literally drown you in gaunts and cheap Monstrous Creatures. Basically kill the synapse creatures, without them they revert to instinctive behavior and literally eat themselves. Lance the zoanthropes and warriors for Instant Death, poison everything else and hope the sea of gaunts doesn't reach you before then.

Space Marines: Prioritize their transports and artillery (especially the thunderfire) so you can strand them and then outrange them. If they brought grav guns, great! They suck versus a traditional DE army. If they brought bikes, they just paid a lot of points for models that die like marines. You'll probably just want to play keep away with the 2+/3++ eternal warrior bike captain of death, or late game feed him some fearless units who have the pain tokens.

Chaos: Dat Heldrake. Anything else they've got is just space marines but susceptible to leadership. Haywyches make pretty short work of their combat walkers and their mobile assault elements generally rely on toughness for resilience, which the entire DE army effectively ignores. If they brought more than two heldrakes rejoice, because they're not gonna have much on the table barring a cultist spam combination. In that case despair

Dark Eldar: C'mon, you know.

Lame Eldar: Wave Serpents are awesome, as are jetseer councils. I'll mention daemons next, but consider the crucible of malediction! Really, their warlocks are leadership 8 or something, slap them with the crucible after you've parked a torment raider next to them. Trust me, it's awesome. Go for rear armor on the serpents and if they've blown the shield too early (ie. you have a lot of lances left) punish them for it. Wraith units are insane overkill vs DE targets and die like space marines, you'll probably do fine versus a wraith list.

Daemons: So there's some BS here; giant packs of Khorne dogs, Screamers which are assaulting jetbikes that can get a 2+ re-rollable invulnerable save, and loads of psykers/psychic shooting. I think their psykers are also low Ld, so again consider the crucible and torment raiders if they're a real problem in your area. Also lots of flying MCs are a possibility, and venoms are good for forcing grounding checks. Once they're grounded just shoot them with everything you've got. Kill the portalglyph. Also, if they brought Bel'Akor (or however it's spelled) ELIMINATE HIM. He's a ton of points and they likely built their list around him. Kill his support if they're pulling grimoire shenanigans. Another dangerous thing about Daemons is the Warpstorm. You never have a game in the bag against a daemon player. Anything can happen, on Turn 1 their flying monster warlord's head can pop for no reason at all, and they can still pull a win out on the last turn by spontaneously spawning troops anywhere they need to, or rolling snake eyes after a key assault and not only holding, but effectively taking no casualties from said assault. It might sound like nonsense, and that's because it is. But remember this, the Daemon player doesn't know what's going to happen either.

Tau: Most "competitive" Tau armies use short range guns in an army with little mobility outside of jetpack boosting. You can outrange and instant-death broadsides and crisis suits with night shield ravagers and raiders, a handful of wyches will wipe the floor with those pesky kroot, and Pirahnas are annoying, but also shorter ranged. If they're smart and they brought railcannons prepare for an uphill struggle, if they're silly and are spamming High-Yield Missile Pods (HYMPs) go ahead and punish them for it. Also the obvious Tau quirk is that they're absolutely pathetic in assault. Even the Riptide is only WS2 and I2 and isn't fearless. The dream is to multi-charge fire warriors and a riptide and run the riptide down in assault. Don't be gunshy about getting warriors into assault with Tau.

IG: Ugh, in my opinion still the hardest matchup. They just have guns, guns, guns and bodies to match. You can try and use their size against them as IG players have a tendency to castle in a corner, or you can try and bait them in certain gametypes like the relic. If its a Killpoint game against a good IG player, you seriously are in for an uphill struggle. This is a nut I have yet to crack. Go for the command squads, their warlords are squishy and a lot of their BS moves rely on orders.

Orks: There's all kinds of ork lists, and even more evolving from the various expansions. In general; Battlewagons are lance food, trucks are lance food, lootas and nob bikers are poison targets. Watch out for legitimately wacky stuff coming up here, like mobs of 20 skorchas chilling behind prometheum relays and void shields shooting 20 torrent flamer templates. Give that nonsense a WIDE berth.

Necrons: Cron air is a game of cat and mouse; hugging terrain, camping on home objectives and avoiding giving away secondary objectives. Flyers have limited mobility and game time, luckily the Necron flyers are fairly traditional in this sense whereas a Heldrake or Vendetta can just turn the heck around. The other cron mechanics are reanimation and quantum shielding. Consider bringing haywire shooters like scourges or Talos to bust the shielding and use lances to finish off the rest of the armor, which I think is almost all just 11 without the shielding. As far as reanimation goes, they only test for it at the end of every PHASE, so try and wipe Necron units in their entirety every shooting phase, otherwise you're expending wasted effort and that's what they want. The cheap and cheerful Lord with mindshackle scarabs and a scythe is a real jerk, as are wraiths. They might have to be priority if they deploy close enough. If they bring the crazy centipede lance it, they have a rule that makes poison less effective, I think wounding on a 6+.

Sisters of Battle: You get a cross between IG numbers and space marine shooting. They can be pretty tough and if you come across a sisters player they're probably a diehard, so don't let your guard down. Fortunately for us range and mobility once they're unhorsed is a pretty glaring weakness, so I would suggest go for their transports then mount up and leave. I've never played against them, so take that advice with a grain of salt.

Space Marines - Cool Ranch or Spicy Nacho: A space marine is a space marine. Dark Angels will spam bikes or terminators, because Dark Angels players are silly and don't realize how awesome the regular green dudes are in their book, I swear. Poison the bikes and ignore the Shrouded skimmer, it improves their cover save to an awesome 3+...the same as their armor save, womp womp woooomp. They'll be in your grill fast, though. If you don't have first turn deploy defensively. Against Deathwing Deep strikes a good tip is to play like you used to versus an all reserve army in 5th edition; castle up in one corner and eat them as they arrive piecemeal. Poison will be your friend here, Dark Angels have all manner of cover save improvement, storm shield spam-ability, and wacky energy shield wargears. Space Wolves! Long Fangs are still huge jerks, and cheap to boot. Kill them! Jaws of the World Wolf isn't a threat but living lightning will tear you up, get those deny the witch 6's ready. Grey Hunters are pound for pound some of the gnarliest troops in town, keep them at a distance. You'll have to either unhorse them out of their transports or lance the random Wolf Guard bro in termi armor leading from the front before you can poison the juicy 3+ insides. Blood Angels! Considered a bad codex for having Space Marines that cost two more points than all the other space marines for, like, no reason. However! They're still sporting two great characters in the form of Mephiston and Corbulo. Mephiston is a monstrous creature cleverly disguised as a space marine, lance him. Corbulo's a real piece of work, drop-podding up in your business with angry sternguard and tanking wounds on 2+ feel no pain and handing off instant death lance shots to his bros with Look Out Sir! like a true hero. He's no slouch in combat and neither are his friends. If you still a stormraven, dedicate most of your effort to killing it, its probably carrying half their army.

Grey Knights: Space Marines but waaay more expensive and with shorter range guns. The biggest threats to YOU, the DE player are "riflemen" dreadnaughts. Double autocannon setup with psybolts for S8 death from 48" away, and for just about a ravager in points cost. Those are your priority, shunting Dreadknights are a pain, too, but are also lance food. Especially if you have the first turn. You may not see it often, but the Grey Knights codex is capable of wackiness unheard of, hidden in a swamp of spotlight stealing space marines. Like 5 characters with Orbital Bombardment all camping in reinforcement cover saves. With outflanking Terminators as troops. Have fun with that. Luckily most Grey Knight players are bandwagoners and not the courageous, devious Grey Knight players of days past, so you likely won't see any REALLY hair-brained lists. Which is a shame, because there's a lot of possibility in that book.

A note on playing Escalation: Strength D really shakes things up and makes durability pretty moot. Which is great for us because we never had it. Bring lots of small units with lances, don't be shy about reserving some stuff for late game objective grabbing/contesting/line-breaking, and absolutely never bring a death star to an escalation game. A titan doesn't give 2 laughs about your rerollable shadowfield save, or your feel no pain, or your skilled rider cover save.

About Stronghold Assault: Void shields are the most obvious new hotness. As a DE player, look out for flame weapons getting torrent and landing pads letting Heldrakes, Vendettas, and flying Death Rays start the game on turn one. The macro cannon is silly, expect to lose one thing a turn to it, spread out, and then proceed to haywire and lance it to death. It's going to be at least a quarter of their list so it's worth it.

Allies!: The most successful allies lists are those with Battle Brothers and obvious synergies (Tau/Craftworld Eldar) and those that combine two radically different, radically dangerous threats (Cron air and Nob Bikers, say whaaaat). Luckily DE are fairly plug and play between Dark Lance targets and Poison targets, unless your list is heavily themed your hardest matchups are probably going to come from whatever the flavor of the month is and Imperial Guard. They are your nemesis! Well, they're mine, haha.