Glass Eldar - Super bad luck and why are we so fragile?

I seem to go through phases, one month I'll be terrorizing the entire shop, and then the next month I will lose in such spectacular displays, you would think I'm doing it on purpose. I'm going through one such phase right now.

To put things in perspective, I was play testing a list of 1000 points over the weekend. It was kind of a spam list I had split in half to try to test for an upcoming tournament. All of my boats have nightshields, I deploy far back. I have two units in reserve. First turn, drop pod, furioso, venom explodes, all warriors wounded, failed all the saves. Lost 135 points and first blood. Second turn, thinking I have enough anti tank to deal with this dreadnaught, I fire all my blasters at him. Wiff on all of them. Next turn, vindicator makes venom explode, all but one occupant dies to the explosion. Lascannon hits venom, it explodes, fail all armor saves. Furioso templates the last remaining venom, it gets wrecked and the warriors disembark. Remaining heavy bolter kills the lone warrior, furioso charges disembarked warriors, lose combat by 3 overrun, and I am tabled on turn two. As the rest of my army is in reserve.

Not quite how I expected the list to work. Now I understand the luck factor here, what's the chance of wounding all the warriors, failing all the saves, or having an explosion happen every time, oh and failing all my flicker field saves as well?  Fairly low. That is, for everything to fail so spectacularly. But when it comes to surviving, the odds are heavily stacked against us.

And that's okay, I guess, I mean we're not space merringues or necrons here. I was never one to complain about the vehicle deathtrap, but it's sure been getting the better of me lately. Is the answer to deploy outside of the vehicles in cover? Assuming there is cover, you'll generally only get a 5+ save, and In my local meta there's so much ignore cover, you've pretty much given your opponent free shots at your tiny 5 man scoring unit that lost their mobility.

My reaver jetbikes are about to get benched for this reason. Sternguard, smart missiles, serpent shield, T4, armor 5 is hardly imposing, and that's all they are without the cover save.

At this point I wonder how anyone wins without the farseer cheese.

And thus I've been looking at coven units. With coven units, the only way to remove their save is to hit them with S8 weapons, and they may also receive an armor or cover save on occasion. But the problem with coven units, is they're not shooty in a shooty edition.

I'd like some success stories here. I'd like to know how people have been mitigating the loss of cover, and the age old problem of boat explosions. I can't even properly get out of line of sight anymore what with indirect fire on some pretty powerful units. I feel like GW has taken my finesse army and filled their shoes with cement.

The problem in this case is that you allowed the furioso to get so close to you drop pod wise and then focus too much on it. Essentially the dreadnought was bait and you took it hook line and sinker...I'm not saying its not a threat, but it sounds like you went above and beyond to try and kill it, allowing your opponents forces to get closer and tighten the noose. I find it hard to take reavers due to the ignore cover thats out there and the fact that our save blows for w/e reason while on them.

What I do is use MTO or multiple targets of opportunity. I make the decisions of what to shoot at hard for my opponent by having several heavy hitters laying around along with my support units. I love using my 2 talos to this effect and I also supplement with a wraithknight (WK) and archon with 4 grotesques. My opponents will often focus on these units and leave my more fragile stuff alone. I don't max out on troops as I don't venom spam. At 1850 I run maybe 3-4 DE troop choices (i generally ally in eldar and take 1 troop from them). I then rely on my heavy hitters to get stuff done and casually have the rest of the army (those troops) support and capture points. Also i like running at least one 5 man unit of wyches with HWG for those tough to solve vehicle problems. I only ever have 3 raiders in my lists and generally don't rely on lances/blasters for AT...my luck is terrible there. I rely on my WK, wyches, and warp spiders these days to take care of those issues. This obviously depends on your meta. A wych squad probably would have wrecked the dreadnought if you managed 3-4 hits in cc...and you get your 4++ in cc so they would have lived as well. Mind you I generally start all my units on their transports as well, though leaving them out is viable...just depends on the list you are playing against.

Oh no doubt in retrospect I should have flat out my remaining vehicles away from the thing, but not because i let the enemy get in range, I could have kept one unit alive and not been tabled turn two lol. It was blood angels, hammer and anvil, he deployed 24" up, flat out 18", I had 30" of table and because his vehicles are fast he had a 36" threat bubble. I wasn't getting out of range.

Furioso's generally have one to two template weapons, wyches have marginal success against them. And to be even more whiny, I probably wouldn't have made the dodge saves if they got into combat.

But I've been having these fragility issue against all armies, I'm fairly successful against blood angels since they're an old codex too. I was pointing out I lost almost three entire squads just to boat explosions. In a 1000 point game I basically gave up 165 points just by having the guys embarked. That's kind of ridiculous.

Vehicle explosions are probably my least favourite part of playing DE. We rely on our vehicles and we accept that they are (too) fragile but why oh why do we have to suffer S4 explosions? Our vehicles are made of paper so the worst that should happen is a nasty paper cut!

Another factor to consider is the size of the games that you are playing. At 1,000pts a bad/lucky die roll can change the dynamic of the game entirely. Smaller games have a greater chance of being decisive one way or the other because of the higher percentage of your models that are affected by a single action. I usually play around 1850 and find that it is pretty rare to completely annihilate or be completely annihilated because of the volume of models. In fact, my wins and losses tend to be by fairly narrow margins.

@Count Adhemar don't underestimate a nasty papercut   

This is a good story, and not because I like reading about emo-marines winning.

Vehicles are deathtraps. I stay out of them unless I am pretty sure they are safe. The key here is not just to find cover, but to get out of Line of Sight.

Drop Pods are bad for us, as they negate our mobility, so if he brings them, resign yourself to losing something immediately: mitigate that by spreading out, so that retaliation is easy.

Drop pod flamer Dreads are even worse for us, there's no getting round that: You just have to accept that his army has a huge advantage there, so eat a Snickers, call a draw a win, and a win a miracle!

Expletive Deleted wrote:

Now I understand the luck factor here, what's the chance of wounding all the warriors...

About 13%, or 1 in 7. Not the most common result, but it will happen often.
Also, the chance of killing all but one is about 33%, or 1 out of 3. Not unusual at all!

Expletive Deleted wrote:

failing all the saves

Also 13% if all of them were wounded. 40% if they were wyches.
Or if only 4 saves were failed, the odds are 33%, which is pretty good!

Expletive Deleted wrote:

or having an explosion happen every time

Three times? About 30%. Still pretty good.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

oh and failing all my flicker field saves as well? Fairly low.

Again 30%. Not fairly low at all, pretty high actually, considering that they result in catastrophic failure. Would you get into a car if they told you that it had 'only' a 30% chance of exploding and that, if it did, there was a 33% chance that everyone on board would die instantly except for one person?

Expletive Deleted wrote:

And that's okay, I guess, I mean we're not space merringues...

  

Count Adhemar wrote:

Our vehicles are made of paper so the worst that should happen is a nasty paper cut!

Personally, I always imagine and forge the narrative, that in our love for everything spiky, we actually line the inside of our transports with spikes, so that when they explode the spikes propel themselves into us. Slight flaw in our ship design, but we would value fashion over function.

Evil Space Elves wrote:

I usually play around 1850 and find that it is pretty rare to completely annihilate or be completely annihilated because of the volume of models. In fact, my wins and losses tend to be by fairly narrow margins.

That's true, I never get tabled in 1850-2000 point games. But I still have a hard time keeping my units safe. By the end of the game you see downed raiders and craters everywhere, and dark eldar huddling inside buildings like cold hobos on Christmas.

commandersasha wrote:

Drop pod flamer Dreads are even worse for us, there's no getting round that: You just have to accept that his army has a huge advantage there, so eat a Snickers, call a draw a win, and a win a miracle!

I don't usually have a whole lot of problems with them. Usually I'm deployed in such a way I can throw 3-4 haywire grenades at it then charge it. I hope for a 1 on the template roll but if two wyches make it into combat with it, they should be able to finish it off. I prefer tears to Snickers.

Barking Agatha wrote:

Again 30%. Not fairly low at all, pretty high actually, considering that they result in catastrophic failure. Would you get into a car if they told you that it had 'only' a 30% chance of exploding and that, if it did, there was a 33% chance that everyone on board would die instantly except for one person?

Maybe if I were on drugs... oh wait. To be fair though Agatha, I meant the probability for ALL those things to happen. Which is pretty low. Losing an entire squad to an explosion? Fairly common. Losing three squads to explosions, not so common. I'm no mathematician, but I know the more you roll the lower your chance of rolling 4 and below, or your opponent rolling 3 and above. There should be an outlier there somewhere!

You mentioned possibly deploying out of a vehicle and in cover... My armies are typically Wych heavy and assault oriented with transports to get up field. The only way I have been successful is to deploy all units outside of a vehicle, even if I go first (seize). That has helped immensely and with no real downside for turn 1 performance. Sure, deployment takes longer, but it isn't too bad.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

Barking Agatha wrote:

Again 30%. Not fairly low at all, pretty high actually, considering that they result in catastrophic failure. Would you get into a car if they told you that it had 'only' a 30% chance of exploding and that, if it did, there was a 33% chance that everyone on board would die instantly except for one person?

Maybe if I were on drugs... oh wait. To be fair though Agatha, I meant the probability for ALL those things to happen. Which is pretty low. Losing an entire squad to an explosion? Fairly common. Losing three squads to explosions, not so common. I'm no mathematician, but I know the more you roll the lower your chance of rolling 4 and below, or your opponent rolling 3 and above. There should be an outlier there somewhere!

That's not how it works Otherwise, all you would have to do at a craps table is wait for the shooter to crap out twice, because they can't possibly crap out again. I would say that you had slightly bad luck, but nothing out of the ordinary. It's just the way it is.

The best I can offer is that you might have deployed your guys outside their venoms and not left the rest of your army in reserve, to prevent just such a thing from happening. There isn't much that you can do to prevent them from being killed

Understanding Dark Eldar through pictures.

Learn from other peoples mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones.

To recommend a few I would start with Panic Puppet's and Laughingcarp's reports  as there's a good mixture of losses and victories in them, and a good amount of discussion. Though studying them all will give you the experience of a hundred games, in a far shorter time than it would take to play them.

After that you can make your own, and get great feedback here on the forums to further improve your game.

Hope that helps.

If you have a 1 in 3 chance of a vehicle exploding, in a list with 2 vehicles, there is a 1 in 9 chance of them both exploding; 3 vehicles, 1 in 27.
Have you played 27 games yet? If you have, statistically you should have experienced this!