Listbuilding - to TAC or not to TAC...?

Hey guys. I am just sitting at my computer, trying to devise a list for my evening's game. And it hit me... why am I trying to build a TAC list? It does not make sense, especially for DE. Reasons are the following:

1. We need to play proactively, not reactively, making our opponent react to what we do and not vice versa. TAC lists are defensive and reactive as you are preparing for every eventuality and not trying to push your strategy and tactic.
   
2. We will never be able to prepare for all lists. In fact, speaking of specialist lists, we just cannot bring enough counters in a TAC... too many pts taken preparing for other eventualities.
   
3. Specialist armies do actually know what they want to do on the board. TAC lists know only that they will try to counter whatever they encounter.
   
4. Even listbuilding is more fun when you add something dickish and giggle while doing it. :-D
   

I kindly ask for your opinion on the subject. :-)

If you know what you're facing then there's no need to build a TAC list. If you face the unknown and don't build a TAC list you will inevitably come up against a bad matchup at some point.

Are you basically tailoring your list to your opponent or will it just be the same list every game anyway?

I mean generally. I am not speaking about tailoring. I am talking about creating an army that will let me play my game. I know that eventually I will come against a bad matchup, but more times than not I will be able to push my game and do what I want instead of trying to prevent the enemy from doing what he wants. That is a strategy for another armies, not us IMHO. We are offensive army. Why would we try to build defensive lists? You know what I mean?

I dont really understand how a normal TAC list will be different from specialized one...
The only thing that comes to mind is that we dont have any effective AA, so we can just skip that.

Take all comers doesnt mean defensive list, it means a toolbox, when you have tool for each job. When it come to DE we have 3 tools - poison, haywire nades and dark lance. Those tools can take on majority (actually all) targets.

So we dont need to TAC, we need to saturate our 3 general tools.

Anyway, next codex is in a week, list building is kinda academic anyway.

I think Azdrubael is right, build a list around the main strength of the army, but I would not say that poison, haywire and dark lances are our only strength. Dark Eldar have some nice CC options and the reavers should also be mentioned. I tend to write lists that have a lot of different units, as I like to combine different units in attacking runs.

That's my opinion anyway...

I would agree with what you are saying guys, but I always feel that if I balance a list in all those 3 aspects, I am lacking a decisive force in all of them. Say, I will try to make as balanced list as possible. We can get onto roughly 18 lances, perhaps 1 unit of wyches. Or less lances, more wyches. Now I see this force with 2 LRs plus some other nastiness, or 3 LRs. With split fire and shooting after flat out, I wont be able to get wyches to him unharmed or in any meaningful number IF I dont specialize in Wyches. And Lances? Well mine lances just miss or roll silly low numbers on penes. Last game from first 10 lances I shot, I rolled 6x 1, 2x 2, one failed to glance and only one penetrated. And that is in no way an exception. Lance curse seems to sit on me! But statistically I wouldnt be much better if my rolls were average.

Similarly, in a balanced army, I can bring few rockets, 60-70 poison, maybe a template or CC units. Would it be enough against a specialized assault army like Nids can have? Or a gunline like Tau have? Or IG army with their gazillion shots?

Oh and everytime I face an army with 1-2 psykers I soooo understand how powerful they are and how we are lacking... They are such a force multiplier and they can really support their army in a way we cannot. We dont have TwinLinks (save for few exceptions) or other rerolls, our troops, even key troops die just because someone blows a transport under them, we cannot give temporary protection to units we need to protect, we cannot support an unit that had suffered losses to win that CC they went into. Eldar are not the strongest army because of WSs or WKs or Mantle... they are the strongest army, because they have so many rerolls. They can play without fear of their plans failing... Therefore a balanced army balances on the brink of their tactics failing with a few bad rolls... We are too elite - expensive - and too fragile to be balanced.

Azdrubael wrote:

Take all comers doesnt mean defensive list

This. Take all comers simply means it's a list designed to be a generalist list that is capable of playing pickup games at your friendly local gaming store with relative success against a wide range of opposing lists. It has nothing to do with being defensive. As an example, if you designed a list with the Baron, Vect, and an allied character that let's you reroll to sieze initiative(forget name at the moment), then you could make an alpha strike take all comers list that depends on you going first. With the above, you have about a 90% chance of going first. So, you could go purely offensive, and still call something like that a TAC list.

aurynn wrote:

I would agree with what you are saying guys, but I always feel that if I balance a list in all those 3 aspects, I am lacking a decisive force in all of them.

Here is a quick example balanced TAC list:

(Dual Combined Arms Detachments)
HQs:(215)
Duke Sliscus
Haemonculus w/liquifier gun & venom blade
Troops:
6x 5-man wyches squads w/haywire grenades in a venom w/dual cannons (750)
17 Kabalite Warriors(153)
Heavy Support:
6 Ravagers (630)
Fortification:
Aegis Defense line w/Quad gun (100)

Total: 1848

Duke and Haemy go on aegis with warriors to form gun line with the quad gun. Duke man's the quad gun to hit on 2's.

I would call this a take all comers list, not because it's defensive at all, but because it does what he said above. It utilizes our toolbox to be prepared for pretty much any kind of enemy. Hordes, mech, whatever. This list is dangerous to all of them with:

18 dark lance shots
72 splinter cannon shots
A quad gun hitting on 2+ for AA/Anti-Skimmer(Important to remember it can target skimmers.)
A gunline with 17/34 shots using 3+ poison, 2+/4+ cover save, and feel no pain.
6 squads of haywyches with upgraded combat drugs(Can be CC or Anti-vehicle)
The option to deep strike all vehicles.
All units highly mobile except for gunline blob.

Against heavy vehicle lists, the above list would destroy tons of mech with 6 haywire squads and 18 dark lances. Against hordes of infantry, the list has high mobility with well over 100 shots per round to pump into infantry.

The most fancy thing in this list is the duke. One problem that I see people run into is they often just want to create some fantasy CC archon/succubus who's goal in life is to get in combat and stomp face. Sure, I see the appeal to that, but when you're just tactically thinking about winning, he's normally not all that effective. Usually only in combat ~30-40% of the time, and any time he's not in combat, it's wasted points. You lose very little CC ability by going duke instead, and gain a vast number of benefits to your entire army. I've done the math, and against most enemies, the duke performs just as well as an archon with shadowfield plus huskblade or agonizer in CC. So, in essence, if you leave the fancy pants at home, you can make a balanced list that includes all of our tools in large numbers, and is decisively deadly.

EDIT: This reply is more suited for my list's thread. Its focused on my particular problems, so please treat it as such. This thread was supposed to be general.
@BetrayTheWorld - what would be your offensive plan with that list then?

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Ah. Sorry guys. I forgot to mention that 2x CAD is not used around here, although that should not be that much of a problem, and spamming, as you may have noticed from my other posts is not my alley anyway. I have a rule of thumb - no unit can be present more than twice in my list in the same config. I for sure know that 6 ravagers migth be what would solve my problems, but first - I dont have the models and second... the spamming... I dislike WS spam, what would it say about me if I took a Ravager spam?

Question - why can Quad target skimmers?

Anyway as I was saying 18 lances is nowhere near being enough against LRs. It really might be just me, but lances perform extremely horribly for me. Last game I shot twice a heatlance on a back of a walker armour and first failed to hit and sencond failed to pene!

As for archon choices - Huskblade is not what I like to use. He is expensive and arguably not worth the points. And TBH I am happiest with just a VB/Blaster archon.

aurynn wrote:

Question - why can Quad target skimmers?

Skyfire can hit skimmers as well as flying targets with full BS

aurynn wrote:

Anyway as I was saying 18 lances is nowhere near being enough against LRs. It really might be just me, but lances perform extremely horribly for me.

I know how you feel but you can't account for bad luck. On average, 18 lance shots should produce 12 hits, 2 glances and 4 pens (not taking any cover into account). This should be more than enough to deal with a Land Raider, possibly even two if the pen results are good to you.

Count Adhemar wrote:

aurynn wrote:

Anyway as I was saying 18 lances is nowhere near being enough against LRs. It really might be just me, but lances perform extremely horribly for me.

I know how you feel but you can't account for bad luck. On average, 18 lance shots should produce 12 hits, 2 glances and 4 pens (not taking any cover into account). This should be more than enough to deal with a Land Raider, possibly even two if the pen results are good to you.

Bad luck is a one-game thing and I would not complain about that. :-) I have this problem constantly. And soon enough I will be faced with 2 LRs :-D

However... getting back to the point of the thread, I feel like we are forced to spam the multithreat choices without any means to protect them - like Wyches (AT, CC) or no means to take them at all in some FOC slots.