Time to respond I guess
Ichiyo1821 wrote:Would probably work against everything but Empire, Dwarves, Bretts, Demons of Chaos with Flamers and flying characters, Skaven and les gasp! Wood Elves! Seems so 6th ed to me though. Will work on Battleline and Dawn of War but Blood and Glory and Watchtower? One Caress of Laniph on your General, game over...
It heavily depends on the way you play with it. Sure, shooting armies are harder to defeat than armies that have just some static blocks of combat units (which you see very often at tournaments..), but it is surely doable. In the deployment, you can lure your oppontents army into being split up across the table and use your vanguard moves to reform your entire army. In the first turn, your Dark Riders can already be behind the enemy lines!!! The enemy will not be able to shoot at you if he cannot see you..
I am not saying here that it will be easy wins over and over again, but get creative: In Blood and Glory, you can keep the general waaaaay behind your lines, out of reach of any death spell which can threaten him. I do not know if you are a player from 6th edition, but the old tricks still work!! Charge a character in a unit, and chances are high that you will win the combat, or loose in a minor margin.
In reaction to aimbob:
True, it is not a Dark Rider list in the sense that it is made entirely out of Dark Riders (which, i guess will not work: 4 units of DR's are quite enough)
- Few bodies: True, but why would you expose them to the enemy? No armies still have shooting units that can reliably shoot over half range, through woods whilst moving etc. and still inflict a decent amount of wounds except maybe for the squishy wood elves which you can charge in turn 1, holding your Dark Riders out of range in the first turn or for Daemons which have flamers, which do not like to combat characters either.
- Loosing the Hydra's: A key point in this army is timing. You do not need the hydra's in the first or second turns of the game, so why would you show them to the enemy? Keep them back whilst the characters kill the enemy mages and the rest of the army kills the other dangers of the hydra's, and the hydra's can emerge and come to kill in turns 4-6 (in which you kill the enemy's big blocks)
- DR's give CR: Know what to charge. A unit of archers, ok. A full block of infantry, hell no. It is the synergy of the list that makes it work: The Dark Riders are not meant to see combats in which the enemy has T4+ or an armour save better than 5+. On top of that, most units which are not meant for combat are not able to return anything better than 5 WS4 S4 attacks with hatred and 5 WS3 S3 attacks to you, so you will be the one who kills more.
- Small units: True. 2 kills is enough for a panic test. Again, move where you should move. The general should be where the panic tests may arise (where the enemy CAN shoot you) and well, if a unit flees, it is not really a huge problem. Nevertheless, the units are small indeed and the army looks tremendously small, but on the field you use more space than any other army
- no BSB: You could exchange the PoS for this, but I personally do not really feel the need to have a BSB. Yeah, its good for the re-rolls, but you will win the combats you enter (otherwise you will not charge). For panic tests the BSB would be handy, but I would rather have the PoS to be able to smack big monsters. Personal taste I guess...
- ASF: Again, the Dark Riders are not meant to fight units that they cannot defeat. The only army that fields ASF on a great scale are the High Elves, and the only unit to which it makes a difference that they have ASF in the decision whether to charge them is the archers. These units can also be taken care of with the characters or be shot down with the dark riders + shades. They have gun priority in early game
- Unmounted Sorceress: Yes. I guess this needs some explanation. I feel that magic in 8th should be regarded as a threat if the enemy's list relies heavily on it. Too much of a threat not to bring a Dispel Scroll. Now, the only character that can bring a scroll is the sorceress, therefore you need one. Would you like it to come to the enemy? Risking being shot at, magicked to death, possibly even ending up in combat? Nope, rather not. In this list, I just put it about 48" of the enemy army out of LOS, being able to cast miasma on his units. The enemy could direct his light units to go to the sorceress (if he still has some by the time he would get there), but it is not really like the sorceress is such a threat to him. And if he directs anything to the sorceress, fine by me as it is not going to other units. He must have had the intentions to go to the sorceress and has given up other priorities to kill her. Fine by me
- Vulnerability: See above, move where you can, play the enemy's army.
- Enemy has steadfast: That is where the hydra's join the fight. Turn 5/6 are there for the monsters to chop up the infantry blocks of 30 ladz together. Add in 2-3 characters, and watch the units pop. Sure, 30 man units are huge, but you have 4 turns to shoot at them, and then 2 hydra's which you probably will still have, to kill them off.
The armies I have recently played against include the new O&G, where my opponent was quite clever in deploying behind a river in a corner. This prevented my Dark Riders from getting behind his army, making me attack from the front. He had 4 Bolt Throwers, a Doom Diver and 3 units of Night Goblins with fanatics. He had also a Lvl 4 caster and 2 units of 6 trolls and some support units. The losses on my side were the RoH pegasus master (shot by a bolt thrower and killed of by a fanatic.. bad chance) my unit shades which ended up in front of a unit trolls after having lost 3 models to shooting, and the Lord who failed a dangerous terrain test, lost a wound to one volley of NG-fire (20 shots needing sixes to hit despite his 2+ save and rev WsV) and one wound to a Bolt Thrower. The wounds inflicted by the Bolt Throwers were also the only hits my opponent inflicted. Result: Major Victory
Another game was against beastmen with 4 individual razorgors, 6 Mino's, 2x 30 ungors with Mino Character, A lord on Razorgor Chariot, 8 (!) units of 6 ungors with bows, 5 harpies and maybe something more (a chariot or 2 i guess). This was a meeting engagement in which half my army ended up as reserves after having rolled a lot of 1's. Therefore, I had to deploy deep to make the rest catch up. It all ended well with me having lost one unit of Dark Riders and his army totally anihillated. Result: Massacre
Then I had three battles on a tournament where I twice faced lizardmen and once the dreaded Vampire Counts. Vampire Counts are not a really mobile army, so this was not very hard at all.. Strike where you need to and you win the game. He had killed one lord (not general) and one hydra I believe with his Lord whom was tooled to kill monsters, so that was well deserved. This was a massacre win for me.
The lizardmen then. The first player was not really experienced IMHO, as I managed to kill his support in the first two turns (all he had left was his slann, his temple guard, and one unit of sauri) The remainder of the game saw his warriors being killed by a combicharge of 2 hydra's and 3 heroes and his temple guard being partly blown up by his slann miscasting and partly by the hydra's and characters again. Result: Massacre win, DE casualities: none.
The other lizardmenplayer knew more what he did: he held his support behind his lines in the first turn in order to show itself later in the game. Some skink units were killed however by characters and he killed my shades with his salamanders. After the first three turns in which he managed to kill a unit Dark riders, he killed no more, and the Dark Elves defeated the lizardmen, killing every single one of them. Result: Massacre Win.
EDIT: Woooow, long post XD