When I plan out my lists, I tend to look at how to handle situations with a variety of tools. This usually includes handling a situation, say an elite unit of infantry, from multiple angles. The more I study DE, the more I realize our toolbox often becomes very one dimensional in the face of certain situations. The above mentioned example of elite infantry really can be a conundrum for DE players, especially one like me, who started out play an MEQ army. The bottom line is that DE can't handle every contingency in the same way, or even at all sometimes. However, they have other methods of surviving and winning the overally battle.
First, as mentioned, I so want to have a combat solution for such things as elite infantry (hammernators or I6 grey knights). This just isn't going to happen. I personally don't think DE have the combat options for handling such units. With low toughness and armor, even though they generally strike first, they just don't have the combat power to greatly damage such units.
This make me sad.
Luckily, this doesn't mean we don't have options. Which leads me to my second point. DE have two important tools for handling such units: torrents of fire (usually poisoned) and speed.
Torrents of fire work very simply. Statistics say that if you create enough probability situations, all things equal, your desired result will eventually come up. Thus, if a DE army can throw out 50-60 shots a turn at a unit, even if it has a 2+/3++ save, it will eventually roll 1s. So, option one is simply to throw tons of shots at it. Considering most of our transports and units have the ability to shoot double digits worth of shots, it should be fairly easy to handle a reasonably sized elite infantry unit.
On the other hand, we speed. This means that we shouldn't have to engage such a unit if we don't want to. With fast skimmers, we should be able to strand such units so that their impact on the game is minimal if any at all.
So, the lesson I learned is that eventually, you have to face facts and stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Dark Eldar can't go toe-to-toe in many situations with their counterparts in other armies, but they do have the tools to negate the effective of such units. So take it how you like. Dark Eldar require playing them like Dark Eldar, sneaky, devious, and smart.
Other useful articles:
Staving Off Hobby Burnout
Really?!
____________________________________________________________
Did you find this article useful? Subscribe to Gone to Ground for more great updates.
1 comment:
Strange how obvious solutions to problems sometimes evade us for so long. I've found it useful not to examine somethings within a vacuum, but rather to consider it from a realistic perspective. The only real meaningful way to this is against a real opponent on a tabletop, at least when speaking in terms of 40K.
Post a Comment