Purging the Weakness

Hello everyone, I've finally been able to get some 40k games in I don't know how long, but I've finally been able to get some games in. So this isn't going to be a battle report thread so much as it is pointing out my mistakes in each of these games so I do not repeat said games again.

So the point value was 1750 and my list was

Archon with huskblade, shadow field, combat drugs, and soul trap.

2x blasterborn

3x warriors with blaster, leader dude, splinter cannon in a Raider with night shields, flickerfield, and splinter wracks.

1 9 man squad of wyches with agonizer sergeant, haywire grenades in a raider

2 ravagers with night shields and flickerfields.

1 void raven with night shields and flickerfields.

Now here is the reason for this list, everyone knows why nightshields are cool. Now, why flickerfields? They have jinx saves now, you don't need invulnerable saves. Wrong, and here's why. First your going to be dealing with alot of weapons that ignore cover saves, you close combat to worry about, dangerous terrain tests, I've had that single upgrade save my raiders a lot more than if it was a jinx save. Now I know that people say don't get your vehicles in combat, which is easier said than done something will get into combat with you if they want it enough.

But anyways the warrior spam in the raiders are like a swiss army knife, having an answer for a lot of different things. The reason for the 10 man is that their more survivable and handle the raider explosions better than a 5 man would.

The wych squad is there to lock up wraithknights, greater deamons, daemon princes, blowing up vehicles whatever I need at the time.

And the blaster born and ravagers do what everyone knows that they do, no explanation there.

The voidraven is there for some sort of air support against Helldrakes or whatever. Dark Eldar can't deal with anti-air all that much. Its just an inherent flaw in the codex because of its age. Now taking a quad gun or something might be an answer but Dark Eldar work best as a swarm I've found, moving and ducking as one coherent unit, if you start keeping units in the backfield than their not with you moving as one.

But thats list building.

My first battle was against Iyanden, from what I can recall it was 3 wraithlords, 3 seers, 2 units of wrathguard in wave serpents, 1 guardian squad in wave serpents.

Now, looking at the list I knew that I could kill everything he had. I had poison and darklight and wyches munch wraith constructs for breakfast lunch and dinner. Not the problem, the problem was the scatter lasers, everything had scatter lasers and you also had the serpent shield. Mid strength multiple shots are the worst for dark eldar. The absolute worst.

I knew that it was a objective based mission with a dawn of war deployment so after I got my side I wanted his side to have all the objectives. Because A I don't really hold objectives, I take them. And B, I wanted to cockblock his speed and keep him bundled in a corner so we're not playing tag the whole game.

Now it wasn't night fight, which meant that trying to decide who deployed first was tricky. My first mistake here was not knowing which turn I wanted. Did I want first or second? As a Dark Eldar player without night fight I was thinking first so I could spring and hit him first.

So I deployed in the center so I could get to anywhere he wanted, he deployed to the right of me in a corner. And this was the mistake that cost me the game in that I went towards him in a bottleneck, thinking that by turn 2 I should have killed atleast 2 wraithlords or 2 waveserpents with everything that I had. When I didn't and instead of hitting him and trying to overwhelm, I should have gone around and hit him from the side.

Now I understand that my dice were terrible and his were excellent for the entirety of the game but I think that movement blunder cost me that game.


The next game was against daemon flying circus which I wasn't too worried about either as he only had three flying creatures, some khorne hounds, a keeper of secrets, and some troops. So this was a little more straight forward than last game as the mistakes that cost me the game in this one. Was that I focused on the ground troops thinking that with combined fire I could kill them and ignore the flying daemons and deal with them later. This turned out to be wrong to my detriment when I should have focused on the daemon princes. As enfeeble really hampered me in the game.

Anyways, I hope to update the thread more as I play more games and if anyone has comments or critiques I am all ears!!

Hallways take out the flying deamons. The ground troops will normally have a hard time catching our vhecials, but vector strikes will kill us quick. If need be dedicate one squad to AI and let the rest deal with the flying circus, generally focusing on one at a time is best.

Yeah, I thought I could kill the ground stuff and I was making good headway actually. The issue was that damn enfeeble.