Sunday, October 16, 2011

Conundrum: Filling Dark Eldar Troops

So, I am having trouble wrapping my head around DE troops.  They are extremely fragile and zoom around in a tissue thin transports.  With T3 and a 5+ save, if their fragile, open topped transports get shot at, troops will die.  That's why the minimal units of 5 warriors with a blaster don't make sense to me, or at least not as a mainstay.  10 models is far pricier, but it brings some ablative wounds to keep those units operable when their transport gets blown up. 

In my last post about DE, What Makes a Strong Core for Dark Eldar??, I kind of outlined my thoughts on why I thought DE troops perform better at 10 models rather than minimal units.  A well made marine army should be able to pop at least a handful of venoms and raiders in a single turn and I just don't see 5 warriors or witches surviving the ensuing fallout. 

So, tell me.  Why minimal units?  Is it just to fill out the troop slot?  Do 6 5-man troops in 6 paper thin transports really survive that much better? 

I still can't get over the thought that 10 warriors with a dark lance and raider with flickerfields might be a better option.  It gives you the option of staying further back dishing out 2 lance shots a turn before swooping forward to take midfield and far-side objectives.

Dark Eldar seem to play more evasively slide around just outside of an army's ability to shoot efficiently and then when the time is right, they strike with precision. 

Anyway, those are some thoughts.  Feel free to put me in my place.  I am needing a bit of an education on DE right now.  They definitely have some sweet options and most of them seem to be usable under the right circumstances.  Right now, I'm just trying to wrap my head around what those right circumstances are. 

Other Rants:
Really?!
Who Says What's Competitive?
Warhammer Mythology: One Meta to Rule them All
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2 comments:

AbusePuppy said...

It basically is to fill the max six troop slots, yes. Even 10man Warriors are really not all that survivable unless you can get them a pain token, which is far from guaranteed. If ten Marines open up on your squad, a 5man will vanish, but a 10man will... probably also vanish, due to Flamer, morale, etc. In the end, you're paying 45+pts (and losing the option of the Venom, a very good transport) for a pretty limited bonus.

(Wyches should not generally be run minimum-sized, however; they need bodies to bring more attacks and survivability, so I would never go below six on them and try to get at least eight or nine if possible. Wracks can vary a lot, anything from three to ten works for them.)

>Do 6 5-man troops in 6 paper thin transports really survive that much better?

Remember it's not just six transports- there's also 2-3 more in Elites and three more vehicles in HS and things that take similar firepower (Beastmasters, Reavers) in FA. Overwhelming the enemy is the key to Dark Eldar, because NONE of your units are all that tough when it comes down to it, so you go for quantity over quality.

joe m. said...

I know what you mean, I'm still in the beginning stages of my Dark Eldar and trying to narrow down what I want my 1500-2000pt army to look like is difficult (but also the mark of solid, balanced codex).

Coming from a low-model count marine army, my first thought was that I would try to run DE as a horde type army; large warrior and wych squads, huge beast squads etc. and making use of webways instead of mass transports. Nothing against the DE lists that utilize a saturation of raiders/venoms, I just want to try a different style of list than MSU (I also don't want to build/paint that many transports all at once, lol). Either way, I agree with AbusePuppy: quantity > quality when it comes to DE.

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