Sunday, 24 October 2010

Dark Eldar - Not the end of the world.

Its the end of the world as we know it apparently...

Yes, you guessed it Dark Eldar are going to appear and ruin 40K for everyone by being unbeatable...

Just like Blood Angels were, Oh and Space Wolves and Imperial Guard and...

Here's my take on a few things that seem to be bothering a good portion of the Internet and why I think they're full of shit maybe overreacting.

So, in no particular order,

They have lots of Lance weapons.
So your armour 12 Chimera is treated exactly the same, your Rhino is about as scared of Strength 8 weapons as it was before. Land Raiders may be slightly concerned but they can be killed by an average roll from a 10 point (or less) Meltagun anyway...
On that note they've still got to hit, penetrate and get a good vehicle damage roll so it's not like they auto destroy things is it?

They can Turbo-Boost really far.
Unless your playing from short table edge to short table edge anything that can turbo boost and has an anti-tank weapon can be ready to shoot you in the face on turn 2. Never faced an army with Skimmers in it before? find better opponents then.
Imperial Guard Hydras don't give a fuck about turbo-boost cover saves anyway.

Vect can seize the Initiative on a 4+
If you can't win a game if your opponent goes first then your going to be fucked by everybody you play half of the time anyway.
Learn to deploy properly, get some bubblewrap and laugh your ass of when the Dark Eldar player gets first turn and you steal the initiative and blow up his cardboard transports by the handful.

Poison kills Tyranid Monstrous Creature lists with ease.
You've got 6 wounds, a decent armour save and most Tyranid players can dish out at least 2 lots of 'Feel No Pain' from their 2 Tervigons anyway. On the upside, a unit of 10 Termagants now have an almost 10% chance of blowing a Raider out of the sky with their Fleshborers even if it's Turbo-Boosted and has Flicker Fields so it's not all bad for the Nid players.

They can give Feel no Pain to their units/ Pain tokens are broken.
They can give Feel no Pain to (for the most part) T3 guys with a shit armour save. For starters Assault Cannons, Autocannons, Scatter Lasers, Multi-lasers and various other S6+ weapons don't care.
Admittedly they can also give that same Feel no Pain to tougher units. But if you have trouble killing T4 units, with a decent Armour save, Furious Charge and Feel no Pain that also have access to Fast vehicles then I'd avoid playing against any Blood Angel players you might know ;-)

They can spam 20 million transport vehicles.
So can a great many armies and their vehicles aren't made of fucking cardboard.

They can put 4 blasters in a single unit.
So they have an equivalent to Eldar Fire Dragon units. Ask the average Eldar player how long those guys usually last...

I could go on but you'll be glad to hear that I'm not going to.

In Conclusion.
Dark Eldar have a good mix of anti-infantry and anti-tank and a well organised set of units that can be spread across the FOC in ways that make both Tyranid and Chaos players quite envious.
However many of the 'tricks' that people are worried about require expensive special characters to make work, their transports still fall apart if you throw a sharp rock at them and their troops are mostly T3 with crap armour that might get Feel no Pain if all the decent units already have it.

It appears that GW may have released another balanced codex...good for them ;-)

As a consolation to any Dark Eldar players I may have offended here's a picture of Lelith Hesperax to keep you happy,

Sorry wrong picture,
That's the one...

Thoughts, Comments and Death Threats from Dark Eldar players are (as usual) most welcome.

9 comments:

  1. Nice pics ;)

    Agreed on the rest. DE are a solid 5th ed army, just like the others.

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  2. Yea, I agree as well. Dark Eldar will be alot of fail for most players anyhow. It is a balanced codex, but will take a good player to really take advantage of them.

    Oh yea, thanks for the pic of Lilith. Not the second one.

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  3. Clap! Thank god some one with a valid view point for once.
    Well done.

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  4. Maybe there is something wrong with me but the second Picture 'is kinda hawt ...

    I'm going to be a full on DE player soon enough and have immersed myself in all the info I can get , really struggling to write a list I can even vaguely settle on, which is a GOOD thing.

    Not B0rk3n, not at all , In fact I'm expecting a bunch of people to complain its underpowered.

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  5. I can personaly say that if DE get seized they get broken into chunks. I felt bad about it but the guy quit before he had a turn. and yes it was that bad

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  6. @ Ska_punk_boy - I heard about that game. How do you reckon it would have gone if you hadn't seized?

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  7. Sounds like GW got it right. I know a few people who are waiting for the FAQ before they commit though, although I can't imagine it'll be too bad :)

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  8. i myself keep finding myself writing lists that will win 90% of games where i go first but then probably lose a higher proportion when i go second.

    i think i'll wait for the internet to catch up and see how more balanced lists seem to be looking before investing.

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  9. From what i can tell he would have moved forwards i might have lost a tank or plane and then i would be using short ranged las fire to break things open. but who knows as after 1 turn of your amry going goodbye a further turn was not warrented

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