Dark Eldar (DE) Strategy Guide 5th

[Scribe of Khorne]

1500 points.

2 in Warrior Squads (1 Lance, 1 Blaster)
4 on Raiders
6 on Ravagers

So 12 actually, but yes I am going to tweak my Reavers to carry blasters or Heat Lances I think so that will get me another couple, but after that the Wyches with Haywires are about all I have room for.

Rough List.

Succubus w/Agoniser + 9 Wychs in Raider
Warriors w/Blaster/Cannon in Raider
Warriors w/Lance in Raider
Wyches in Raider
Reavers w/Caltrops -> Will change these to blasters/heat lance.
10 Hellions
2 Ravagers w/Dark Lances

I think I probably have too many points tied up in the hellions/reavers right now that dont bring enough shooting.

[SgtTaters]

on the tournaments question I had earlier, Adeptcon results

no Dark Eldar in top 8. Winner was space wolves, 2nd place goes to IG. tyranids and orks also in top 4.

I figure the lack of troop melta and durability is a huge hindrance for Dark Eldar.

[Scribe of Khorne]

I was looking at that today, I wonder if getting models for our fliers + venom will shake that up a bit this summer.

[Hashmal]

on the tournaments question I had earlier, Adeptcon results

no Dark Eldar in top 8. Winner was space wolves, 2nd place goes to IG. tyranids and orks also in top 4.

I figure the lack of troop melta and durability is a huge hindrance for Dark Eldar.

This means nothing. What was the winning SW list? What was the winning IG list? What did the DE players take? How many of them were there? Was painting/comp/sportsmanship involved (i.e., anything that can dilute victory scores)? How many DE players were there? Are they any good? *dodges a bullet from druchii* What was the strength of schedule? (This matters; if you'll look in the Daemons Gone Wild thread in my siggy, you'll find a discussion recently about how the scoring format of 40K tournaments engenders n00b stomping, while ensuring that two well-matched players who fight a close game will not advance to overall victory)

Quite simply, there are a ton of variables that are not accounted for here. Orks made the top 4; are you seriously suggesting that Orks are in a better position, competitively, than Dark Eldar?

[Frankly]

Interesting. While I said that V. Dreads weren't worth it, I should've amended that statement to saying full-up Dread Spam isn't worth it ....

He actually had 4 dreadnoughts, no joke. 2 x V.Dreads 2 x normal, but only one normal was 2 x autocannon. Note that even though he plays DE, he certainly wasn't tailoring it towards DE. At first it was going to be another Nidz game. We actually wanted to try out the Venerable + fortitude + Techmarine combo, verses straightout normal dreads + fortitude + techy.

Well ... Lances are there to take out Armour, at some points I had to deal with that unit after targeting the 2 strike units. Theres always a point where you have to go after the hard targets and the V.dreads were going to cut through my list anyhow + the one I targeted was supporting an objective holding unit.

TBH the strike squads DS'ing was the harshest thing, they thinned out a few second turn options straight away. Dropped my Incubi + HQ off their raider and the other got my trueborn unit's transport.

Edit: skulls reduce the dice rolled for scatter + other things.

[Hashmal]

He actually had 4 dreadnoughts, no joke. 2 x V.Dreads 2 x normal, but only one normal was 2 x autocannon. Note that even though he plays DE, he certainly wasn't tailoring it towards DE. At first it was going to be another Nidz game. We actually wanted to try out the Venerable + fortitude + Techmarine combo, verses straightout normal dreads + fortitude + techy.

Oh, I don't believe he was list tailoring in the slightest. Psyflemen are devilishly effective against any army out there that relies on transports that aren't Land Raiders. I actually think that these things are going to put one mess of a dent in Mechvet IG armies.

Well ... Lances are there to take out Armour, at some points I had to deal with that unit after targeting the 2 strike units. Theres always a point where you have to go after the hard targets and the V.dreads were going to cut through my list anyhow + the one I targeted was supporting an objective holding unit.

Oh, understood. However, it helps to know your chances when shooting at one of these things.

Chances of doing anything lasting (i.e., above a Shaken/Stunned result): ~12.7% chance. It will take an average of 8 Lances to achieve a result that isn't ignored by Fortitude.

Note: this might be a little low as your opponent may not want to risk a Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized result morphing into a Destroyed. Then again, with only a 33% chance that'll happen, he may risk it.

Chances of destroying the blasted thing: 2.1%. Yep. Just under 50 Lance shots required to, on odds, kill one of these things.

They might make a mess of your lines, but if you're shooting to kill, you might just want to target the objective squatters next time.

TBH the strike squads DS'ing was the harshest thing, they thinned out a few second turn options straight away. Dropped my Incubi + HQ off their raider and the other got my trueborn unit's transport.

Edit: skulls reduce the dice rolled for scatter + other things.

This sounds simply like something you just weren't prepared for and got caught with. Those DS units won't come in until Turn 2, earliest. While Servo Skulls reduce scatter distance, they also disappear when you get within 6" of them - not exactly a problem for the DE.

It's also only a 44% chance that both of those squads arrive on Turn 2, even counting Psychic Communion, so far from an assured strategy.

Also, Night Shields.

[Souleater]

I think the Servo Skulls reduce blast/ordy scatter.

[Hashmal]

Okay, now just because I'm having fun and to illustrate why you take Heat Lances...

Chance of a Heat Lance to destroy a V. Dread: 9%. Doesn't look impressive until you realize that it's literally a 4x (400%+) jump in effectiveness over a standard Lance weapon. Not shabby for something that costs less than a Blaster.

Chance of a Heat Lance to cause meaningful damage against a V. Dread: 25% (assuming you value Immobilized results). Now we're cooking with fire. 4 Heat Lances should lead to at least one result that cannot be ignored by Fortitude.

[lethlis]

Now lets look at the haywire blaster for the same thing
2/3 glance - 1/3 resulting in a meaning ful result 2/9th
1/6 pen - 2/3 resulting in a meaningful result - 1/9th
1/3 chance per hit for the haywire launcher to do something meaningful

and this is at 24inches against anything. I am looking at you mister storm raven

[Torpedo Vegas]

Thought I'd trow out this article I wrote, but I don't want to copy paste a wall of text. Anyway, its some maths on Wyches combat res, assuming you have a Hekatrix/w Agonizer and two razorflails. General results came out to show that they won't kill much of anything (ran the numbers against marines) a decent armor save unless they outnumber them about 2 to 1, but will be able to hold off big bad MCs for quite a while.

Maths and elaboration can be found here.

I'd like to see what players with more experience and skill than I think about my results.

[lethlis]

That my friend is why I run them basically naked with haywire grenades.

[Frankly]

Chances of doing anything lasting (i.e., above a Shaken/Stunned result): ~12.7% chance. It will take an average of 8 Lances to achieve a result that isn't ignored by Fortitude.

Note: this might be a little low as your opponent may not want to risk a Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized result morphing into a Destroyed. Then again, with only a 33% chance that'll happen, he may risk it.

Chances of destroying the blasted thing: 2.1%. Yep. Just under 50 Lance shots required to, on odds, kill one of these things.

They might make a mess of your lines, but if you're shooting to kill, you might just want to target the objective squatters next time.



This sounds simply like something you just weren't prepared for and got caught with. Those DS units won't come in until Turn 2, earliest. While Servo Skulls reduce scatter distance, they also disappear when you get within 6" of them - not exactly a problem for the DE.

It's also only a 44% chance that both of those squads arrive on Turn 2, even counting Psychic Communion, so far from an assured strategy.

Also, Night Shields.

hehe N.Shields wouldn't have helped the situation in this case, just because he had a few targets. 24 inch storm bolters Psi.Ammo and a good DS. As I said in an earlier post, he had Psychic Communion x 2 so he got to +2 or -2 from his DS'ing rolls adding to this servo skulls and you got yourself a pretty good combo, I think he had 9 skulls all up. He had first turn, second turn he drops 2 strike squads, so I only had one movement phase beforehand which was aliitle restricted by target selection and the dreads.

Thanks for the mathshammer, a couple of guys just read it, they were pretty impressed, we had it wrong ... so much for a 'veretans night :P'. A nice 'heads up'. We targeted the V.Dread, because the objective holder was in Bolstered cover thanks to his Techmarine. Even so, your right the maths still says shot at the objective holder even though I was out of range with the trueborns. It was one of those situations of consentrating fire at the one valued target or splitting it. I went trueborns firing first ofc, but then should have switched maybe ... there still some debate going on behind me about that.

GK went down to SW mech tonight and win against IG barrage btw.

LOL, maybe its sound like I'm arguing, but actually its interesting feed back, thanks Hashmal.

[Frankly]

Now lets look at the haywire blaster for the same thing
2/3 glance - 1/3 resulting in a meaning ful result 2/9th
1/6 pen - 2/3 resulting in a meaningful result - 1/9th
1/3 chance per hit for the haywire launcher to do something meaningful

and this is at 24inches against anything. I am looking at you mister storm raven

Guys is your maths including Fortitude + a techmarine being on the board?

Just wondering.

[Hovey]

Thought I'd trow out this article I wrote, but I don't want to copy paste a wall of text. Anyway, its some maths on Wyches combat res, assuming you have a Hekatrix/w Agonizer and two razorflails. General results came out to show that they won't kill much of anything (ran the numbers against marines) a decent armor save unless they outnumber them about 2 to 1, but will be able to hold off big bad MCs for quite a while.

Maths and elaboration can be found here.

I'd like to see what players with more experience and skill than I think about my results.

If both units are attacking each other un-harmed, There is about a 95% chance the wyches are assaulting, and so each girl/guy should have +1 attack on the first round of combat. Very important.

I don't know about others, but I always field my wyches with a Haemi /w Liquifier & Agonizer. So Feel No Pain on top of an additional agonizer and Liquifing into combat. Really swings how good wyches are.

[Sami]

I think your thinking Dreadnoughts, not Dread Knights.

But 3x Shardnet & Impalers + an Agonizer in a unit of Bloodbrides can make a Dread Knight suck it in combat.

Errr, they were talking about venerable dreadnoughts...

For Dreadknights you just spam them with poisoned fire like any ol' MC.

[The Laughing God]

Hey everyone, bit of an odd post here but thought you guys could help me and my brother out. I want to try out my dark eldar at a team tournament where my brother would be bringing his guard. 1250 point limit for each person. The plan is mostly for him to be gunline, stay back and hold objectives provide some anti tank, while I would finish off units and contest objectives at the end of the game. Here's my list.

Succubus-Agonizer-85

Hekatrix Bloodbrides x7-Haywire grenades and hydra gauntlet-230
Syren-Agonizer, Phantasm grenade launcher
Raider-Flicker Field

Kabalite Trueborn x4-Blasters-215
Dracon-Agonizer
Raider-Flickerfield

Kabalite Warriors x9-Splinter Cannon, Blaster-215
Sybarite-Agonizer
Raider-Flickerfield

Kabalite Warriors x9-Splinter Cannon, Shredder-205
Sybarite-Agonizer
Raider-Flickerfield

Reaver Jet Bikes x5-Grav Talon, Cluster Caltrops-182
Arena Champion-Power Weapon

Ravager-3 Disintegrators, Flickerfield-115

Total: 1247

Now I know there are some guard experts among you guys. What would an effective guard list that complments the dark eldar consist of?

Cheers,

[lethlis]

Guys is your maths including Fortitude + a techmarine being on the board?

Just wondering.

Yea but that does not kick in until his shooting phase, and then it is too late to move or shoot

[druchii]

This means nothing. What was the winning SW list? What was the winning IG list? What did the DE players take? How many of them were there? Was painting/comp/sportsmanship involved (i.e., anything that can dilute victory scores)? How many DE players were there? Are they any good? *dodges a bullet from druchii* What was the strength of schedule? (This matters; if you'll look in the Daemons Gone Wild thread in my siggy, you'll find a discussion recently about how the scoring format of 40K tournaments engenders n00b stomping, while ensuring that two well-matched players who fight a close game will not advance to overall victory)

Quite simply, there are a ton of variables that are not accounted for here. Orks made the top 4; are you seriously suggesting that Orks are in a better position, competitively, than Dark Eldar?

I saw a few DE builds. One spammed venoms (I think they had between 8-10 per 2k list), we took two fighters and a bomber, and a bunch of assorted squads in raiders (and I took scourges which were AWESOME). I saw another hybrid team but didn't get a look at their list. I can tell you that things like SW and guard still messed our day up-just not much we can do against 3+ cover saves (for hydras) and drop pod ownage (oh, there goes our fighters/bombers...). Psychic defense is also pretty huge, since things like lash run rampant on the mobility-needing DE.

Can I say that DE aren't competitive because of the adepticon results? Nope. Do I believe they aren't competitive? Nope. But I HAVE seen Orks place incredibly well in pretty much every adepticon I've attended...I guess we'll have to wait four more years for DE :P

Oh, and on the topic of strength of schedule Adepticon DEFINITELY favors "noob stomping". We drew (in our favor!) all but one of our games, and even if we had won that game we would still have placed mid 15-20s, and I now we helped tank several other teams that could have been VERY competitive because we only gave up 10 or 12 points...

d

[Symrivven]

Thought I'd trow out this article I wrote, but I don't want to copy paste a wall of text. Anyway, its some maths on Wyches combat res, assuming you have a Hekatrix/w Agonizer and two razorflails. General results came out to show that they won't kill much of anything (ran the numbers against marines) a decent armor save unless they outnumber them about 2 to 1, but will be able to hold off big bad MCs for quite a while.

Maths and elaboration can be found here.

I'd like to see what players with more experience and skill than I think about my results.

I agree with your general conclusion but I'm curious about a few of the choices you made in your math:

You say wyches wounding marines 50% of the time, this should be 33% unless they have +1str combat drugs or furious charge (but you disregarded combat drugs).
Therefore it requires 6 attacks to wound a marine and thus 18 to kill one.
Marines only require 6 attacks to kill one wych.

Vanilla marines will generally only have 1 attack while charged and wyches will have 3 on the charge, on a wych charge it will be even*.

Didn't double check the assault squad fight but it appears to be ok.

Versus the dreadknight wyches hit on 4's if I'm not mistaken. With your setup the wyches will cause 0.85 wounds and the dread knight 1.11.
but if you give the wyches 2*nets they will reduce its attacks to 2 and thus halve his damage potential


*With wych weapons combat drugs and succubi this will generally be more in the wyches favour. The combat drugs are for free and will often be beneficial, the hekatrix with agonizer will cost some points but marines are more expensive than wyches to start with.

Wyches can win from vanilla marines in a fair fight (if you have no other choice) but it will cost you, its generally safer to use multiple units and kill them before they strike back.
As tar pit they are indeed mainly effective versus MC's, characters or (with grenades) walkers. and can often hold up many times their points especially with nets.
As for defensive abilities assuming a 10man squad limit based on our raiders I'd go with 9 wyches, a net and a haemonculus versus rank and file models. And 10 wyches with 2 nets versus MC's characters and walkers (as these will often ignore FNP anyway).

[Hashmal]

Now lets look at the haywire blaster for the same thing
2/3 glance - 1/3 resulting in a meaning ful result 2/9th
1/6 pen - 2/3 resulting in a meaningful result - 1/9th
1/3 chance per hit for the haywire launcher to do something meaningful

and this is at 24inches against anything. I am looking at you mister storm raven

Against a V. Dread like I was discussing? Erm... no. Not at all.

First, you entirely discounted the To Hit roll, which I incorporated in my maths above (basically, I did fractions and then converted to percentages).

Here's the likelihood that a Haywire Blaster achieves a meaningful result against a V. Dread: 10%. You need 10 Haywire Blasters to achieve a meaningful result against a V. Dread in a GK list.

I think your math was looking at the broader picture, in which case I'm discounting Fortitude and just looking at straight results. Also, your math, even in that case, was still off.

Chance for a Haywire Blaster to cause an effect against any vehicle not sporting Fortitude: 56%. For those of you following along at home, that's good.

Now, looking at your numbers again, perhaps you meant any vehicle in a GK army that isn't a Venerable Dreadnought? Let's try.

Chance for a Haywire Blaster to cause a meaningful effect versus any vehicle that's not a V. Dread in a GK list: 26%. Still off.

That drop-off alone shows where the Haywire Blaster gains its effectiveness. Shakens and Stuns count for over half of the meaningful results a Haywire Blaster can hope to achieve.

I am a nerd due to how much fun I just had doing all of that.

edit: Now I'm just curious. Let's explore how effective a Dark Lance is versus a Haywire Blaster against Fortitude-spamming GKs. Using your example, let's target a Storm Raven.

We already have a 26% chance for the Haywire Blaster to score a meaningful hit against a GK Storm Raven. How's the Dark Lance measure up?

Chance for a Dark Lance to score a meaningful hit against a GK Storm Raven: 19%. Well, that certainly puts the H. Blaster out in front.

Let's pull that back a bit, though. Chances are that the reason you're targeting a Storm Raven isn't to blow off its guns. You're looking for the Immobilize result or the Wrecked/Explodes result. I'm separating the two to illustrate something.

Chance of a H. Blaster to Immobilize a Storm Raven: 9%; D. Lance: 6%. H. Blaster comes out ahead due to the overall number of rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table it can get.

Chance of a H. Blaster to Wreck/Explode a Storm Raven: 4%; D. Lance: 7%. I'm rounding, but you get the picture.

Chance of both guns to get a desired result on an AV12+ Transport: 13%. Obviously, the D. Lance will improve in performance against AV 10-11 transports while the H. Blaster will stay flat.

I'm not really sure what anyone will use that for, but it sure was interesting for me to discover!

hehe N.Shields wouldn't have helped the situation in this case, just because he had a few targets. 24 inch storm bolters Psi.Ammo and a good DS.

Night Shields are money against a GK player owing to the average shorter range of weaponry across the army. Psycannons aren't so scary when they have to get within potential DE charge range to fire. Psyflemen, however, will drill you with abandon. So it goes.

As I said in an earlier post, he had Psychic Communion x 2 so he got to +2 or -2 from his DS'ing rolls adding to this servo skulls and you got yourself a pretty good combo, I think he had 9 skulls all up.

First, that's a fair number of points in skulls. I didn't realize he had that many. Second, Psychic Communion stacks? Again, wasn't aware. That's... well, that's not nice.

edit: I stand by my original statement, though. It seems like it, but it's not a guaranteed strategy. He has a 69% chance to bring in both squads on Turn 2. That ain't shabby at all, but it's not automatic. Nearly one out of three games he plays, this will haunt him.

I'd bank on it, though. Them's bettin' odds there.

He had first turn, second turn he drops 2 strike squads, so I only had one movement phase beforehand which was aliitle restricted by target selection and the dreads.

This much I definitely figured. What I would've done is moved in a consolidated group to a flank, eliminating the Skulls on one side and showing few straight-on hulls to the Deep Strike. I'm a Daemons player, so I'm used to cagey DS tricks. However, I obviously can't see how your game went, so consider this little more than hand-waving.

Thanks for the mathshammer, a couple of guys just read it, they were pretty impressed, we had it wrong ... so much for a 'veretans night :P'. A nice 'heads up'. We targeted the V.Dread, because the objective holder was in Bolstered cover thanks to his Techmarine. Even so, your right the maths still says shot at the objective holder even though I was out of range with the trueborns. It was one of those situations of consentrating fire at the one valued target or splitting it. I went trueborns firing first ofc, but then should have switched maybe ... there still some debate going on behind me about that.

I'm glad that y'all got some use out of it! Mathhammer is useful for one thing and one thing only: informing actions. A lot of players confuse that with dictating actions and let those expected odds drive what they do.

Bzzt, wrong. Reaching these expected odds will take at a bare minimum hundreds, likely thousands, of inputs. Expecting these odds when you're throwing 10 chances into the mix is simply not going to happen. Game mechanics, strategy, and reactions should also inform your actions and, likely, will play a greater hand in dictating them.

As an example. I played a tournament game with Orks against a Land Raider heavy list. About two to three turns before the game ended, he castled up on objectives with his LRs and scoring units within. Now, everyone knows that the odds of a Power Klaw and/or Rokkit to do anything to a Land Raider are abysmal, especially when you're looking to outright destroy it. There were other things out there that were great targets, too! Didn't matter. If I didn't get the LRs off my objectives, I was going to lose. (To end the story, I lost.)

GK went down to SW mech tonight and win against IG barrage btw.

LOL, maybe its sound like I'm arguing, but actually its interesting feed back, thanks Hashmal.

That warms my heart to hear that the GK beat IG. They're still a thorn in my side.

Doesn't sound like you're arguing at all, dude. Conversation's given me a good reason to flex mental muscle.

Guys is your maths including Fortitude + a techmarine being on the board?

Just wondering.

Fortitude, yes. Kinda. I'm discounting Shaken and Stunned results entirely rather than factoring in the percentage chance that the Dreadnought using Fortitude will either fail his Psychic Test outright or suffer a further meaningful result from Perils of the Warp. So, actually, your chances are slightly better than what I've listed (I'd estimate it at no more than 2-3% better, though).

Techmarine, no. I haven't seen one of these guys hit the field in 4 years; aside from repairing, I have no idea what they do. I also have no idea how their repair skill works.

I saw a few DE builds. One spammed venoms (I think they had between 8-10 per 2k list)

Not bad. I'd need to see his assorted tank pop to judge, though. Venom Spam can easily veer to too little pop.

we took two fighters and a bomber, and a bunch of assorted squads in raiders (and I took scourges which were AWESOME). I saw another hybrid team but didn't get a look at their list. I can tell you that things like SW and guard still messed our day up-just not much we can do against 3+ cover saves (for hydras) and drop pod ownage (oh, there goes our fighters/bombers...).

Reserve your Fighters/Bombers! That's what you can do against DS armies.

3+ cover saves for Hydras? Is that Camo Netting or something? I don't see many IG vehicle upgrades. Most players I run into eschew them for MOAR TANKZ!

How'd you outfit the Scourges?

Psychic defense is also pretty huge, since things like lash run rampant on the mobility-needing DE.

If you're all mech'd up, how is Lash a big deal at all?

Oh, and on the topic of strength of schedule Adepticon DEFINITELY favors "noob stomping". We drew (in our favor!) all but one of our games, and even if we had won that game we would still have placed mid 15-20s, and I now we helped tank several other teams that could have been VERY competitive because we only gave up 10 or 12 points...

I feared this. It's one of the reasons why I'm not so hot on 40k tournaments these days and why I just simply can't look at their results as an indicator of strength of army.

Oh yeah, 4 digit posting. Clearly this means I know something. Or I'm just loud.