Druchii.net

My friend was telling me about his games against the Dark Eldar with his Eldar, and he worries that no matter what he does the dark eldar outnumber him, outgun him and out cut him.

A large concern revolves around the Avatar, apparently I didn't know, wasn't immune to instant death, so the Archon with shadow field, soul trap, and husk blade mows through all his HQs, meanwhile his guardian's pathetic 12 in range is nullified with maybe one turn of shooting followed by dark eldar close combat and doom.


These are the bulk of his concerns. I am here to ask if my smarter kin have a more full understanding between the two races and if there are some tactics my friend might adopt to make his army composition any stronger. As of right now he is feeling particularly at a loss of what to do, so I leave it to you to conjure some theory hammer on what might be decent versus what.

I play Dark Eldar, and the range of the Eldar Guardian Shuriken weaponry is harsh. I would only use Guardians to sit on a objective in his own deployment zone. He would get much better use out of blade storming Dire Avengers, which are also troops, maybe take one in a wave serpent and the other to guard the objective. I am sad to say that the answer is to not take guardians, but GW didn't think hard about it when they gave them 12 inch guns.

Also, in order for that Archon to get to a point where he can reliably put down an avatar, he has to kill a independent character or be really lucky on his rolls to wound. You have to understand that a Huskblade/Soul Trap Archon starts at Strength 3, and he has to kill an IC or Monstrous creature to double his strength, and then another one to triple it. It sounds like your friend is either really unlucky with his Avatar, or he is exposing his farseer too early to the might of the Archon's Huskblade so he can get to Str 6, and have an easier time of killing the Avatar.

Dark Eldar really suck at bringing down armor as well, and Wave Serpents are hard to kill. Don't let the Dark Lances fool you, they lose a lot of their potential against AV12, because they are Str 8, and Lance doesnt matter. I would be fully mobilized just as the Dark Eldar probably were. They have been equipped with a large amount of anti-infantry killing power with their poisoned weapons and close combat attacks, but they struggle when the field is saturated with hulls unless they are using the venom spam list with 5 man warrior and trueborn squads all toting blasters.

my 40k knowledge is lacking, but hears my $0.02.

Rumours i hear say eldar will be redone within the next year, and they are one of the older books, with some people mentioning that they are underpowered compared to most of the newer armies. I'm not so sure about this, but don't play enough to stab at an answer.

Anyway. Dark eldar get most of their advantage from fast delivery of close combat troops. Their raiders have low armour, as do their troops. Load up of Shuriken cannons and scatter lasers. With enough shots you'll get lucky enough to take out a raider (or at least stop it moving) and then when their troops are out you can wreak havoc.

As for troop choices, i have a fondness for rangers, despite them never doing me much good. As Jadin says, if you want to hold an objective, go for Avengers.

Generally i use rangers and guardians for my troop choices. i use small cheap units designed to contribute little to the battle other than hold objectives, my other units do the work.

I agree with both the above responses, eldar tanks, either serpents or holofielded prisms/night spinners (I love these) are very tough targets for DE.
Always give guardian defenders scatter laser platforms and pick off the inevitable swarm of raiders/venoms/ravagers.

I use wraithguard a lot and these stand up very well in close combat against anything short of agonisers, even incubi bounce off. If you can use them as a deterent to the DE raider rush, you might buy enough time to knock out all the transports/gunboats?

If the dark eldar list emphasises incubi, wyches and rushes into cc in turn 2 you'll always struggle. Dark lance ravager, warrior & trueborn spam lists are fairly easy to deal with as an eldar player.