How does DE fare versus your army?

[fritzthedwarf]

I was wondering how DE does against a variety of armies. Both Shannon and my nid armies have had serious problems but how does DE do against other armies such as the various SM, IG, Tau, Eldar. Any army that can bring sufficient long range shooting. Or perhaps some lists have ways to address DE's strengths. Insight from DE players (Randy and anyone else) is certainly desired.

[redshirt2375]

So far I've played against Matt's Chaos Termie list, your's and Shannon's Nids, a Tau player and 1 space marine.

We all know how the Nid games went . I got a couple lucky rolls turn 1 against Matt which pretty much sealed the game due to him only having 1 icon on foot left on the table to start.

The tau player didn't have what would be considered a competitive list so I didn't have that much trouble with it.

The only issue I had in the SM game was I had terrible rolls against his vehicles (which was more then 50% of his list's total points) but otherwise completely took out his infantry.

I think some of the power SM lists will prove difficult (points to Guy's blessed hull LR ) though with a more DL heavy list than what I was running it might not be as difficult and if I can get my Wyches in on his termies I could potentially wear them done or at least hold them up long enough for the rest of my army to take out whatever else is on the table.

IG I think will be the toughest challenge due to the amount of long range, heavy fire power they can bring.

Again, as has been mentioned before, my list is far from being one of the powerlists that are being listed online (Bomber-spam being a top one from the little I've read)

[fritzthedwarf]

That's interesting that you can put such a hurt on chaos and SM. I'm wondering what a Tau list that is strong against DE would look like. I think hammerheads only get one shot (unless I've forgotten) and if DE goes first you might be able to cripple those before they can be much of a threat (can't remember how many Dark Lances and other long range anti-tank you had in your list Randy). I have to dig out my Tau codex and see how much long range anti-vehicle stuff they have that could pose a threat to knock down raiders and allow fire warriors/etc to use their shooting before you got into CC. How far can a raider travel, unload units and have the units charge that turn into CC?

[redshirt2375]

They can move 12" and still deploy.

I think a suit-heavy list might be tough since they can put out a lot of shots that can all hurt raiders easily and they can deepstrike in and shoot before I can get a chance to stop them.

My list only had 6 darklances in it and 5 blasters, but without changing the points I can up that to 11 lances. So I really didn't have nearly as much anti-tank as my old edition list did.

[muadib02]

Ive had some interesting experiences thusfar. On the DE side of the house im running around 1500 points. Due to my love of versatility i only have 11 DL and a blast pistol in the army. Another guy here in Fredericton has DE as well and I have thrown my good old foot wolves at both his army and my own.....lesson learned was that DE players tend to come loaded for bear, which means that they often loose out against non-mechanized power armoured enemies....so my Wolves quite often prevailed, unless they wound up in CC with Incubi.
Playing as my DE though I have been trounced time and time again by an IG player who spams autocannons, vet squads, and chimeras...so much s6/7 fire power agaisnt my AV10/11 does not go so well.

[fritzthedwarf]

So incubi are good SM killers? Is it their stats or the weapon they can wield (or a combination of both)?

[redshirt2375]

It's the combo. Base 2 S4 powerweapon attacks at WS 5 at I5 means you hit usually hit first on 3+ and wound on 4+ vs SMs. If they get 2 or more pain tokens they get furious charge which means base 2 S5 PW attacks at I6

Plus if you add in the Klaivex he has the one power upgrade that allows the unit to make an extra attack for every 6 the roll to wound.

They also come with a 3+ armour save so the are potentially the most survivable DE unit...especially once they get FnP

And to top it off, they are now an elite choice and cost less than they did in the old edition.

Only thing they lost was the Tormentor helm which counted as splinter pistol.

[voodoo]

This is my main beef with GW, they leave an army to fend for themselves for so long with an outdated book then release an all powerful uber codex that can demolish just about anything. And yet more popular armies get recycled crappy rules that water them down (Chaos) knowing that people will still play them simply because it's a popular army! Darn you GW! Darn you to hell!

[ryan]

The DE codex is not a superdex that destroys all others. Take all the strengths we just listed for incubi....now think about the fact that they dont have any sort of grenades (unless you put an archon with phantasm launcher with them) and that they are 22 pts per model. They are an offensively powerful army who are fragile as glass, and in all honesty require a fair amount of skill and luck to pull of successfully with any build.

[trevor]

So there says randy coff coff i mean ''Ryan'' ;D

[redshirt2375]

That wasn't my post, though I do, somewhat, agree with it.

DE, I think, hit a harder than before, but won't be a numerous as before (everything but Incubi costs more points-wise). Plus, the old highly feared Lance-spam is gone. You can no longer take the 10-man 2 lance squads. You have to take a full 20 to take 2 lances and the lances are 15pts more each now.

The Poison shots have made up for the drop in the number of special weapons since my units are now more than just special weapons with extra wounds.

I haven't played with the new units yet, but from I've been reading they are the uber-units that all the powergamers are running and tabling people in 2 turns or at most 3. As I've said a few times, Bomberspam seems to be the new Superlist.

[voodoo]

I did some looking at the codex today, and while they have low saves, they're basically a smaller sized, harder hitting orc army. They speed in and unleash sickening barrages of attacks then hit and run. My main beef still stands that when they come out with a new codex it's instantly the baddest of the bad on the block except for some tried and truly broken units. (AKA thunder hammer terminators in a land raider.

[fritzthedwarf]

Although I agree to some extent with you voodoo, I don't think this is always the case (nids - although some strong builds can be built with the dex, a main problem was lack of models for so much of the new stuff that is used competitively). A new dex almost always creates new problems in finding ways to deal with the new builds/special rules/whatever. Even if strong builds can be built often counters are found. It is as you said that there remains some uber units/rules that allow certain builds to remain at the top of the heap (and maybe be considered broken - especially against certain armies).

For DE, Shannon and I have had a lot of trouble with our nids trying to figure out how to deal with them in our all comers lists (let alone trying to tailor a successful list), however other nid players may have had better success. I think the question is, as Randy has pointed out with regard to the power of the new uber units in the DE dex, whether counters are found once players get used to the new units and play style. With new rules/units some armies will always suffer more than others. It just depends whether the dex is strong across the board no matter who they fight.

[redshirt2375]

I hate to sound like I'm bragging, but in my case, the fact that I've been playing Dark Eldar (and 40K for that matter) for so long probably makes the new Dark Eldar seem even nastier since I learned to play them well using the old book, and the new book is pretty much the same army just with a lot of new tricks. I also know what a lot of the other armies can do and I've learned to know what threats I need to eliminate and which ones I can leave alone for a turn or 2 and which units I should be using against what. So now I have a little more powerful army that I've spent 10 years perfecting how to use which means it's that much stronger than it would be for someone new playing it.

I think the problem new players may have is finding that "Iwin" trick and then not knowing what to do when everyone finally learns how to counter it as mentioned above. Right now DE are still new to a lot of people (at least around here you've guys have had me playing somewhat regularly so DE weren't something you'd never seen before) so they really don't know how to handle them whether it is a powerlist or an all-comers list.

So far I've had the same results using pretty much the same list I used to run. Yes I have to admit that it does seem a little easier with the new rules, but at the same time I'm fielding less models at 2000pts than I used to at 1750.

I've heard it said many times that the Dark Eldar have always been a tough army when played right and the new codex is no different. Dark Eldar have a lot of tricks and hit hard, but all it takes is one bad turn of rolling and you can quickly find yourself in a lot of trouble.

I've (for once) been having decent rolling lately. Although as Shannon mentioned, in our game my first 2 turns of shooting went very badly and it meant he got a large part of his army across the table alive, luckily my shooting in the later turns and my combat rolling went a lot better. Where as in my game with Mark, my first 2 turns of shooting saw almost 75% of his army gone.

Dark Eldar are still and always have been a finesse army. They hit hard, but overall can't really take the hits if you don't play smart. They don't do well with attrition unless the odds are in their favour. And a decent amount of long-range shooting can still do a lot of damage with a couple lucky rolls against a Raider list. I have yet to try out a Webway list, but it will likely be a little tougher for people to deal with since it can put out more units than a Raider list and they can be on you the turn they arrive if the portal(s) are placed in a good location. I've heard Tommy is running a Webway list so maybe he can let us know how it's going so far.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Tommy and I had a proxy game at 1k with webway portal dark eldar vs. sisters of battle. I knew by turn two I was tabled. There was little I could do, but this was mainly because of how short the board gets with a webway portal and fleeting units.

Granted this was a first crack at trying out this proxy list that wasn't exactly optimized - but Tommy's list was far from complete either...

those bomb guys... just nasty.... attacking while just turbo-boosting over you.... wow..... that hurt... (was the only unit in his list that wasn't harlies or wyches)

I think in the hands of a competent player, MEq are not going to be a problem for DE... I could see the problem mentioned already though of a raider list vs. Imperial Guard or perhaps missile spam wolves... So they might be prone to that "one bad match-up" scenario....

.....except for Randy though, whose awesomesauce.... just ask him....

(kidding... only kidding)