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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.





2 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Great article. It's very useful to have a rethink from scratch, so thanks for let us join you on the journey.

    My rethink made me come to the conclusion that nothing is tough enough (with the models I had - I didn't have any grotesques to run a proper Coven list), so investing to many points in one area was risky. I also came to the conclusion that there was only so much I could do against flyers without hampering the rest of the list too much.

    Apart from the units you mentioned, another unit that did well for me was small trueborn units with splinter cannons, and small wrack units to come on from reserve and go to ground on objectives late in the game.

    I'm still trying to make Incubi work, but they also seem to fragile for me. T3 just means they take so many wounds their 3+ save is not enough to save them. For the cost of the archon, incubi and raider you could have the Baron and a sizeable beast pack that won't get stranded when a paper thin transport blows up.

    I'm surprised your using a haemonoculus without a troop wrack squad. Maybe try out a unit of 9 wracks for the haemonoculus to go with instead of a warrior squad. It would give you a second assault squad, as I think having only the one decently sized assault unit is too risky.

    Anyway these are only my opinions, and I look forward to hearing how your new list does.

    Rathstar

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    Replies
    1. Heya Rathstar,

      So far, my experiment is working out better than I thought it would be. The wyches and warriors have been surprising all my opponents lately and made my wins more pronounced than before (akin to my early 6th ed days).

      However, I realized that the Incubi squad is a little too effective as everyone believed that they are a deathstar from hell. So with that I have taken out the Haemonculus, Archon and the Incubi for something a little more flexible.

      The units that I am currently experimenting with are the Eldar hornets and also the Duke (Which I initially hate). Finally I am able to find a build where the Duke performs the way I wanted him to perform, as he compliments this new idea of mine.

      Hornets have been just brutal with their pulse lasers, and add this to the twinlinking psychic blessings, they are taking down everything they see. To add icing to the cake, their speed and their scout and skimmer assault rules are just amazing. I love them bar none.

      P.S: This reply is late, but I was trying to settle down on my job for forgive me for such a late reply.

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