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Monday, October 14, 2013

A Little Bit Of This, A Little Bit OF That - Experimental 1750 pts Dark Eldar - Eldar list.

Heya all and welcome back!



I will be honest here and say that life can be tough when for some reason you are stuck in making your list improve. For some reason, life is not giving me results with some of my current builds as a result of not having the right tools for some armies. Here are the issues I find very vexing;

1) 5-men Kabalites with Blasters are becoming more and more like that ugly crutch that limits my options and also offering very little in return. The passengers are not pulling their weight, and I also need a more reliable unit to take objectives aggressively.



2) My Ravagers, despite their 3 lances, are not the most reliable of anti-tanks and they need to be improved. I will not deny that they are good, but in my case they need to be better.


3) Flyers, Flyers everywhere. Everyone's throwing a flyer or two into their list, and personally despite not being affected too adversely by it due to me being a proponent of using flyers, I find that I also need to take those bastards out ASAP. This is related to #2.

4) Shooting is good, but it is not the end-all for assault in this edition. If anything, it means that you have to choose the right targets to charge and kill, preferably with very little resistance.



5) Venoms are good, but I generally find my Venoms getting the lion's share of the shooting alongside the Ravagers. I find it odd that my Raiders tend to be surviving longer than the other nonsense in my list.


As always, the internet horde generally believes that spamming a certain unit and ignoring assault means profit, but like the American Shutdown, spending points on a build that will shut you down in a long time sucks balls. In other words it is my way of saying that the majority of the internet does not know or wants to think outside their comfort zone.



As I did some soul-searching, I realized that I need to scrap all my thoughts and went the opposite direction with my army and designed it without any love for any units that I once used. In addition, I will have to play around with some of the new mechanics of 6th edition a little more to exploit the weaknesses of the current nonsense. In other words, I am literally singing 'Highway to the Danger Zone' to my listbuilding idea and went on said highway.





Based upon these questions I realized that my problems are quite simple;

1) I need twin-linked weapons

2) I need more options for anti-tanks, especially of the more brutal kind.

3) I need to maximize the usability of squads that I want them to last, while having the 'Fuck it' ethos to those that need not survive that long.

I laboured for a while before I came up with this list, which is almost odd as it is ingenious.



Dark Eldar Main Detachment
Archon with Venom Blade, Haywire Grenade, Combat Drugs, Phantasm Grenade Launcher, and Shadowfield
Haemonculus with Liquifier gun
5 Incubi with Klaivex upgrade in a Raider with Nightshields
10 Kabalite Warriors in a Raider with Splinter Racks and Nightshields
10 Kabalite Warriors in a Raider with Splinter Racks and Nightshields
5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades in Venom with second Splinter Cannon and Nightshields
5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades in Venom with second Splinter Cannon and Nightshields
5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades in Venom with second Splinter Cannon and Nightshields
Ravager with three Dark Lances and Nightshields
Ravager with three Dark Lances and Nightshields
Voidraven Bomber with 2 Void Lances, 2 Shatterfield Missiles, 1 Void Bomb and Flickerfield

Eldar Allied Detachment
Farseer with Mantle of the Laughing God on Jetbike
3 x Windrider Jetbike Squadron

As you can see, this list is an utter scrappy list but one with hidden secrets. 

The calculations are simple;

1) 5-men Kabalites with Blasters = Move aside, Wyches with Haywire are a much more stable investment. They either die or once they see a target they will be hunting it down with haywire grenades. For scoring purposes, 10-men squads help a lot more.



2) My Ravagers' need to be better/ Flyer defennse: Farseer with Guide and Prescience helps in making sure things be more reliable. Also the Voidraven helps.



4) Assault elements to hunt down pesky units : Wyches and Incubi are fine for their jobs here, only one hunts down vehicles like wave serpents while the other kills 2+ stuff, with an addition of glancing most vehicles to death.



5) Venom attrition; Put in more Raiders to become LOS Blockers, Roadblocks and extra lances. Add that with the 10 men kabalites, they prove to be a way I build redundancy in the list without weakening my scoring options.



In many ways, this list is meant to work in a more Eldar-like manner than my other lists which are more Dark Eldar in nature. All the elements have their role to play, but at the same time I blanket all my glaring weaknesses with their similar roles. Of course as with every list I must put it under fire to truly appreciate what it does, and to see if all this wishlisting is practical.

So far my first game with marines proved to be very successful, as all the units worked wonderfully. Of course a single game means nothing, and thus this will go under the knife against other builds to see its true viability. The build is growing on me, as it fits with my rather aggressive wave playstyle.

I will try to post a battle report with this list as soon as I could, win or lose to at least show what is going on in my mind when I play this list.





Wednesday, October 2, 2013

A dull 1750 pts Dark Eldar-Eldar alliance list

While I was at work today, I was wondering if I could make an allied 1750 pts list that can be an utter bore to face against and/or play as. So with that I decided to throw this little cutie out. Note that this is something of a min-max list without much variety, thus take this with lots of sauce....hot sauce.


Main Detachment
Baron Sathonyx
5 Kabalite Warriors with 1 blaster in a Venom with two splinter rifles
5 Kabalite Warriors with 1 blaster in a Venom with two splinter rifles
5 Kabalite Warriors with 1 blaster in a Venom with two splinter rifles
5 Kabalite Warriors with 1 blaster in a Venom with two splinter rifles
Ravager with three dark lances with Flickerfield
Ravager with three dark lances with Flickerfield
Ravager with three dark lances with Flickerfield

Main Detachment total pts: 950

Allied Detachment
Farseer on jetbike
5 Fire Dragons with an Exarch with Firepike and Fast shot in a Wave Serpent with twinlinked scatter lasers and holofield
5 Dire Avengers with in a Wave Serpent with twinlinked scatter lasers and holofield
5 Dire Avengers with in a Wave Serpent with twinlinked scatter lasers and holofield

Allied Detachment total pts: 800

Total pts: 1750 pts

Retardedly enough, it managed to end up at a precise figure which I tend to like. Nonetheless you can see how this list works just by looking at it; move and shoot and shoot and move. The main muscle of this list are the Wave Serpents, Venoms and Ravagers. The Baron is there mostly for me to get first turn and will be camping somewhere like a sad panda (he is a tax, but one with a single worthwhile ability).


The Farseer has a simple job to do; Be a mobile twin-linker for the army when it needs it (though I expect most of the twinlinked abilities to be on the Ravagers and Venoms. If I managed to get Doom or Perfect Timing, I will be utterly giddy).


The Dragons are mostly there because they are the cheapest unit that I can use to buy another Wave Serpent within the allied list that functions well within this army's design. Likewise the blasters on the Kabalite warriors are there just because they are a staple for those Kabalite Warriors in Venoms. As for the Dire Avengers, I will admit that they are the tax I pay for the Wave Serpents.



This list functions in a rather simple and dominating way; You will need to handle a lot of things and you need to handle all of them at once, because all of them are able to cripple your army. The twinlinked weaponry only made this choice more crucial as they will be damaging an army quite often. The army also has some interesting anti-air options as a result of the twinlinked weaponry in abundance. In its retardedness, it is oddly balanced against anything.



Honestly the way I would deploy them is to let the Serpents be in front (hiding behind cover of course) while the rest of the army will hide behind those Serpents. Due to the darn Serpent Shield being a perfect way to prevent an alpha strike against me, all the flimsy nonsense will hide behind. Once I get to move, I will be moving forward as one, Serpents as shields, and I will just attack and exploit any weaknesses I have created, and then from there make more attacks to exploit any more weaknesses I have created, and keep on doing so until the other side surrendered or I run out of gas.

A rather blunt and thuggish list for an Eldar list, but it does the job. I believe that it is time for me to lend my friend's Wave Serpents and test this weird boring list out. Who knows, I might actually like it.