Eldar Allies just got a whole lot better.

As a Dark Eldar player, Allies were pretty limited for me.  You have a few armies that you can take as Desperate Allies, but there is so much extra micromanagement, and they don't really serve any purpose other than unlocking access to certain units in that army.  Eldar were the only Battle Brothers that we had, the big problem was that they didn't synergize with my play style as well, and were overcosted in a list that was already very points heavy with Grotesques and Pain Engines.  Granted, a farseer for psychic defense was nice, but where did you go beyond that?

All that has changed though.  I had a chance to run a 1555 pt game this weekend running a Coven list with Eldar Allies.  It was the standard foot bound Grots, this time adding Urien and a Spirit Seer, two 5 man wrack units in venoms, 2 Talos and a Cronos, along with two units of Wraithguard and a second Spirit Seer (I was using 2 because of what's been leaked in the Iyanden book, just waiting on it to show up).  It was facing a very mobile Tau army that included 3 Riptides.

I had some thoughts going in on how some of the things would synergize, but I was quickly amazed at how far beyond my expectations the psychic powers performed.  I figured this would be a good test of the resilience of this list because the Tau army has access to a fair number of high strength low AP weapons,  that high strength tops out around 7 or 8  now on average instead of 10.  It was very quickly frustrating for the Tau to have to rolls 4+ or even 6+ to wound vs the large array of high toughness creatures, and what little headway they would make was quickly negated.

Why?  Spirit Seers = pure gold.

One of the two Spirit Seers ended up with the Destructor/Renewer and Enhance/Drain, the second one had Protect/Jinx and Embolden/Horrify.  I'll be honest, I was going to ditch Embolden/Horrify for the Primaris Conceal/Reveal, but since he was in a squad of Wraithguard and lined up to march through ruins I thought it wasn't going to be worth it.  That was the best decision I could make.

Renewer was used over the course of 5 rounds to heal a wound each time since I went second.  1 to a Grotesque, 1 to a Razorwing flock, and 3 to the various Pain Engines.  This was pure gold, and if I could get that on two or three Spiritseers, I don't even know how you would kills some of these squads.  Destructor could be helpful if you get up to terrain and want to soften something, but I think Renewer is the break and butter power there.

Enhance/Drain never got used, I think it would probably have seen use more for the debuff than for the buff, pushing enemies closer to needing 5s to hit in close combat.  In most cases I think both powers should be close to the same, with the major difference coming in making them fail initiative tests easier.

Protect/Jinx was interesting, and also the only power I failed my psychic test on, perils once, and just a normal fail twice.  So one round it gave the Wraithguard a 2+ save, which is nothing to sneeze at for a model that is T6.  The other round it reduced a Riptide to a 3+ save, making it much more vulnerable to the torrent of splinter fire.  I think both of these are very strong powers, but I  think where it will really excel is allowing a squad of wyches to hit a squad of terminators harder than before.  An Agonizer Hekatrix, and the pile of attacks against a 3+ save Terminator is going to be great.

Embolden/Horrify was almost thrown onto the scrap heap, mostly because Embolden isn't going to do much for Dark Eldar who can gain Fearless through Pain Tokens, or the Wraithguard that are already fearless.  Horrify though, is absolutely amazing.  -3 leadership is a huge debuff, and has so many uses.  Couple that with the Torment Grenade Launchers on a Raider and you can put units at -4 vs tank shocks, or shooting.  This was used very effectively to shoot a unit of Firewarriors and make them run off the table in a couple instances.  Even better, although Eldar lost the protection of Runes, a quick cast of this on an enemy psyker means they aren't getting off all those powers.  Better still, my beast pack was left without any beastmasters, and inevitably failed it's leadership, a fall back into the 18" range and Embolden put them right back into the fight.

I think the Wraithguard add another tougher dimension to the army, and instead of two squads I think I could be better served by 1 squad in a Waveserpent, but to better enhance the overall army, I may be just as likely to stack with as many Spirit Seers as possible and as cheap an HQ as I can get once I get a hold of the Iyanden supplement.

The game overall was going to be a loss because of some sneaky kroot and good gameplay, but it definitely gave me a lot of perspective to go back and re-tool my army to add some more mobility and maybe get a little closer to the old Dark Eldar playstyle.

Webway Woes

One of the favorite themes of the Dark Eldar army has always been the strike from the shadows type raiding mentality.  Nothing embodied that more for me than the WebWay Portal.

Shortening the commute to the battlefield

Even back in the days of late 3rd edition when I started to play with the idea of the Dark Eldar, one of the biggest complaints that people had with the army was that they were so fragile.  It was an obvious flaw, but I quickly realized that they were only fragile if you got a chance to hit them.  This was incredibly obvious in close combat, where the high initiative value often meant there were less enemies when it came time for them to swing back.  So what if we could do the same thing in the shooting phase?  Behold the WebWayPortal.  This allowed you to keep units in reserve, and then deploy them when the portal became active, preventing units that you wanted to get into assault from being shot.  At that time it was a much bigger gamble, as you had to declare what units were coming in from the portal, and they could only come in once the portal was active; if the portal carrier died, those units were lost.  It was why you almost always had to take 2 portals, but with a late deploy you take advantage of the reserve rolls and make a focused late push.

When the new book came out it changed up the portal strategy a bit.  Now you couldn't hold units for a late portal deployment, they made normal reserve rolls and the portal merely acted as a table edge.  The plus side to this, is you gained a bit more flexibility in putting units where they needed to be.  Infamously, this lead to bait and switch tactics where opponents would avoid the portal and push towards objectives in my backfield, only to have a unit come on from the board edge and take them out.

Now with 6th edition, I'm left wondering if someone really got mad at our portals.  Reserves come much faster and more consistent so that portal has to be down turn 1, we can't get quite as deep into the opponents backfield with the new movement and disembark rules, and even if we do get the portal setup there is no more assaulting the turn we come in from reserves, and only half the army could be in reserve.  On top of all those nerfs, the addition of Interceptor weapons mean even if we do manage to come in from the portal and expect to shoot, the major advantage is gone, we cannot avoid being shot at.

We are at that point now in 6th edition where people have begun to accept that the ally rules add such a great dimension to armies that there are any number of combinations that could produce unexpected results.  As such I've seen more talk about trying to incorporate the webway portal in again.  While I believe that I could work the portals in to have units of warriors, wracks, or jetbikes come out of the portal to shoot/turbo boost, the only real benefit I see to using the portal over putting them all in a Raider is that you could have more than 10 guys; i.e. 10 wracks and 3 haemonculi for 5 liquifiers.  The only tactical option that comes to mind is to use the webway portals for board control, try and drop 2 or 3 of them at the mid-table range to cut the table in half.  The problem being, how much will you have coming from reserve that will need 3 portals.

I really enjoy the webway portal, and will continue to see if I can work it into my army, but I think it has slowly lost all of it's benefits over time.

Tactical changes Pt. 2 - Assault, the new challengers

I was hoping to get a couple more games in with the new FAQ to add to this, but a small visit to our house by Papa Nurgle left everyone in the house a plague zombie for a week plus, so I missed our normal gaming time.

With the changes that 6th Edition brought, when I analyzed my play style and the new rules it quickly became apparent that  I would need to make some changes.  With my Dark Eldar I always tried to use speed and assault to overwhelm my opponents, while dropping some deadly cover fire.  The firepower is actually better with the changes to rapid fire, and vehicles being easier to counter, but obviously it would require a bit more resiliency to consistently make it into close combat.  So I went back through the codex, and re-evaluated some units.

Bash Brothers

One of the first units that was re-introduced to the list was the Talos.  In  the twilight of 5th the Talos had sort of fallen to the wayside in favor of the Ravager and Razorwing, but with the Ravager seeming less reliable, the Talos was re-inserted with some haywire blasters.  Luckily my first few games after this change were vs. Tau, so I really got a good feel for how the Talos did vs. shooting and overwatch.  T7 and a 3+ save let the Talos get in close to where it wanted and once he got that first pain token he laughed at the AP1 and AP2 that had previously been the  bane of his existance.  Being AP2 in close combat the Talos can handle all those 2+ Meganobz, terminators and broadsides that became so much tougher vs the AP3 power weapon.

Bringing the Pain . . . Tokens

Along with the Talos, the Cronos was also re-introduced.  The Talos was always a beast in close combat, the Cronos not quite as much, being only strength 5 with a limited number of attacks hurt him.  But thanks to the Smash special rule, the Cronos can now play like a big boy giving up 1 attack to swing at strength 10.  This really lets him reliably ID multi-wound models, and take apart vehicles.  I've found it harder to include the Cronos with how well the paired Taloi work and the sheer firepower the Razorwing brings, but I may work more to including him to distribute the pain tokens.

The Ultimate Archon standing in for now

Something else that I've been re-visiting is one of the units that I had previously found a waste compared to other choices, the all seeing Archon.  Since he is already running a really high initiative, the furious charge changes meant less wracks and less use for haemonculi, so an HQ slot opened up to play with this guy.  So far my standard loadout has been shadowfield, blaster, djinn blade, with combat drugs and phantasm grenade launcher when I can fit it in.  I know the Djinn is a gamble, but really I want him to be perceived as more of a threat than he actually is, and it's worked out well for me; although the huskblade is really looking appealing.  Telling someone he's WS 7, I7, with 8 attacks on the charge, a 2+ invuln and an 18" dark lance causes some concern.  The trick is he can do some real damage, but he's just there to draw the lambs to the slaughter of the anvil he's running with.


One of the units that I had been eyeing up towards the end of 5th edition has become a true anvil for me in 6th, the Grotesque.  T5 with 3 wounds and a pain token for Feel no Pain off the hop make these guys hard to deal with.  There are two draw backs to these guys.  First is that they are slow, usually travelling on foot because they take up 2 transport slots each.  Second, they require a babysitter or may 'explode' causing potential ruin.  The resilience means they can take the time to footslog across the board, so it's not that big a drawback.  As I alluded to above, dropping an archon in with these guys brings the big boys to them.  With the Aberration and 4 other Grotesques, they can be dropping up to 23 attacks themselves, usually wounding on 2's.  They have been a true shining star for me and will get a full tactics article in the near future.

A Future Purchase

Lastly, one of the units that has been important in my assault testing has been the reaver jetbikes.  My intial thought was that they can easily get in position to support other units in an assault, ideally charging first and soaking up the overwatch with their T4 and 4+ Jink save.  This did work a certain amount, but as I switched my other assault units, I found that the sheer harassment potential of these guys worked much more in my favor and could easily get in close enough to tanks to make a mess with the heat lances.  They brought another high priority target for the enemy to deal with while slower units like the Grotesques go into position to do some real damage.  I'm still tweaking numbers of guys in a unit and the number of units, the fast slot is full of high demand units now.  I have found a distinctly beardy advantage to 3, as long as even 1 bike is alive, he ALWAYS regroups on his normal leadership because he is more than 25% of the starting unit.

So next I'll review how these changes have built my current 1750 point list and what my expectations are of them.

Tactical changes Pt. 1 - Assault, the returning contenders

Tactics article all set to post, GW releases new FAQs, I've tried to edit this real quick.  If something doesn't make sense it may be because of edits, or FAQs.  It was going to be longer, but I decided to break this into a series of articles.

Tactically, the game has changed in extreme ways for my army.  Running a hybrid webway army in 5th edition, relying heavily on the alpha strike type of assaults that it allowed for made my glass cannon a thing to be feared, death by a thousand cuts as I liked to call it.  But 6th edition came, and karma thought it would be fitting to disassemble my list in the very same way, death by a thousand nerfs.  A lot of the changes aren't that big by themselves, add overwatch, random charge distance, no run and assault, no fast moving vehicle assault, nerfs to feel no pain, nerfs to furious charge . . plus others that don't come to mind right now.  None of them seemed overly big changes by themselves, I enjoyed most of them, but coming together, they were the perfect storm of destruction for my webway list.

So as many Dark Eldar players learned, assault is much harder, and more dangerous, to get into.  Wyches take this the hardest, arguably one of the best assault troops in the game in 5th, they were the perfect dichotomy; gods in assault, wet blankets when they were shot.  The bounce back though is their access to haywire grenades.  Wyches are no longer the tarpit unit that they were, now they are used to run up to a vehicle and hit it a few times with haywire and watch the hull points melt away.  It's an odd change for a unit that doesn't want to be shot, and preferred to hide in an assault last edition.

Run from the guns . . . But get the tank?

In a similar vein, the wracks were a powerful short range torrent type squad.  10 strong with a Haemonculus out of a webway portal usually saw 3 flamer templates, followed by an assault where they leveraged 30+ attacks at initiative 5, re-rolling to wound in most cases.  They were easily the workhorse to a beautifully themed Coven army.  Now, unfortunately, wracks often loose as many models as they kill between the loss of the initiative boost and nerf to feel no pain, they could do short range fire fighting with the liquifiers, but that turns the rest of the squad into a delivery system.  With wounds coming from the front and random charge distance, they are self defeating, leaving themselves out of range for a followup assault if the liquifiers do cause any damage.  For all the struggles I've had in getting a decent set of them together, there is a good chance they are going to be sitting on the shelf mostly.

But it is about balance, and other armies are having similar issues.  So some units came through perfectly fine, or in some cases even better.

The plus side is the beasts seem to be just as good as they were before, in fact I'd almost say they are slightly better.  You loose a little average charge distance, and the wound allocation shenanigans, but that's not a big deal.  Ideally, you want the Khymera out front now anyhow, the benefit here is the differing initiative values.  When you move into combat, Khymera and Beastmasters are out front and make it into base to base with the rank and file guys.  Once they kill a few at initiative 6, the Razorwings now get to pile in at initiative 5, hopefully into holes created at I6 that lets them into base to base with the important guys like special weapon troopers and character upgrades.  Since wounds have to be taken from base to base with the razorwings who go on initiative 5, there is a good chance we can burn off those characters/special weapons.  Tactially, I'm looking at adding the Baron as my second HQ, just to make these guys so much better.  They will get Stealth, Hit and Run, and someone with a shadowfield to soak up wounds; oh, and thanks to a FAQ clarification that indicates that they still go at I1 even though they ignore terrain, he also gives them grenades.  With the Beastmasters being characters, it will take quite a bit to have the Baron locked in a challenge, so it should be quite effective.

Come here Mr. Terminator, tell us about your 2+ save again?

Incubi are another squad that is still pretty effective.  Up until a few hours ago, I was going to comment on how these guys would be great for challenges, and continue to fulfill most of the roles they had before.  What a difference a few hours makes.  AP 2 Glaives according to the FAQ, this means that they should still peel through terminators the same as they did before, which is one thing we were maybe going to have to worry about.  Again because of the differing initiative between the Klaivex and the squad, we can use the Klaivex to pick out characters/upgrades.  Because of their 3+ save, these guys are much more likely to survive overwatch and make it into combat with full effectiveness.

I've already touched on the Talos in a previous post, but he had mostly been on the fringes of the list, so I'll review and start with him in part 2 of the series, Assault, the new challengers.

Rise of the Talos

With a change in edition, there needs to be a change in strategies, I've played the game through a little better than  four iterations of the rules and learned quickly that even though it looks like a small update, it's always a whole new game.  With that in mind, my first couple 6th edition games were ran with an old style list.  Webway portals, heavy on assault and short range units like wyches, wracks, and beasts; and of course Ravagers, and a Talos for theme.

The approach of death

Obviously, the list fell completely flat, but I needed to see how bad it was before I could re-build.  One of the things that has been echoed throughout the Dark Eldar community, is that our vehicles didn't get nerfed as badly as others with the addition of Hull Points.  To an extent I agreed with this, Raiders and Venoms were already fragile and once they got into those rapid fire and melta ranges they died, this remained the same.  The one thing I did notice was my Ravagers were getting destroyed much easier.  Sitting at a further range, I often took more heavy shots with the ravagers, resulting in stuns and weapon destroyed results  with the occasional destroyed result; often the Ravagers would still be alive at the end of a game.  6th edition though, the stun locks, or multiple stuns turned into Hull Point death, and the move and fire at full range of rapid fire weapons put more things in range sooner.  The Ravagers were still quite good at anti vehicle, but they just weren't lasting long enough to work as that anvil unit.

Bash Brothers chillin

My first instinct was to try and rely on Flyers, we have some very good ones.  But I quickly realized that two things, they weren't going to be available enough through out the game to bring to bear effectively enough(2/3rds or less of the game turns), and they were just a gimmick effectiveness for now; as more armies got flyers, or figured out how to torrent of fire them down they would be just as vulnerable.  So I was concerned for a bit, but then I noticed how well my Talos was performing, twin-linked haywire blasters had him tag teaming vehicles dead via hull points with a scourge unit with two more haywire blasters, and once he got that first pain token, he was much harder to kill.

'Come at me Bro'

So as part of my Apocalypticon build, I had gotten another Talos kit, mostly for some more bits, but also to throw together another Talos with these observations in mind.  The last few games, the Ravager has sat on the shelf, and the heavy slots have been filled with 2 Talos, and usually a Razorwing.  Surprisingly these guys have absolutely preyed on vehicles that take any damage(finishing them off quickly stripping two more hull points), laughed at overwatch as they crash into assault with hammer of wrath, and dominated the table.  In combination with a few other changes, that I'll detail in a later post, I think the foot bound Taloi are here to stay, and spark the Dark Footdar revolution, I definitely believe they give the Ravager a very viable run for that 'king of the heavy' crown that it once had.

Codex Thoughts

So it's been a couple months with the codex, unfortunately Christmas/New Years ate up alot of that time, so I didn't get any games in across that time. But I have gotten in about a half dozen games, and tried to change up parts of the list each game to keep trying new stuff. I've tried to stay away from special characters, I only used Drazhar in one list, because there was a phoenix lord on the other side of the table.

I still need to get in a game with scourges, mandrakes, hellions, succubus, archon court, and the fliers. Some of the units have performed dismally, and I may re-visit.


HQ

Archon - this guy seems like a glass cannon, it's a gamble whenever you use him, even more than before. The plus side is he's cheaper, depending on how heavy you go on upgrades. I suspect that I'll find most of the archon type special characters out perform the basic archon very well. I think there would have been a great benefit in an upgrade of some sort that conveyed the Eternal Warrior rule to the Archon. For a viscious eternal overlord of the web way, it seems like they would be easy to kill and replace.

Haemonculus - I was already a huge fan of the haemonculus before, they were great cheap HQs, that came in bunches. They still come in bunches, but they are a bit more expensive now. But with all the new toys you can get, still pretty cheap, these guys are still the jewels of the HQ slot in my eyes. I've particularly become a fan of my webway snipers, a Haemie with a wwp and hexrifle. These guys jump off a transport turn one and drop portals, then go into an overwatch with the hexrifles from there.

Haemonculus Ancient - I'm still trying to find the right spot for these guys, a little faster, another wound and better skill. My initial thought is to load these guys up with the Electrocorrosive whip and make them part of a CC unit, unfortunately they fall to similar issues as the Archon. Alot of investment in points for basically a space marine captain in a bath robe and special toys. I'll need to keep toying with these guys.

Elite

Incubi - Little cheaper, and some nice upgrades. I'm actually liking these guys now, which says alot, because I was a big hater of the old Incubi. They didn't do anything special, and by comparison wyches were always better. With the slightly less godly wyches, and some tweaks to make the Incubi like aspect warriors give it some fluffy effectiveness that just pulls me in. In my eyes, the Klaivex with Onslaught is a must. Whenever you roll wounds and then tell an opponent, oh I get more attacks, it really demoralizes them. They thought they were safe with you only rolling 5 hits, but Oh!, now you have 4 more swings, all with power weapons. Beyond that, demi-klaives are nice, but everything else is just for the heck of it.

Bloodbrides - I know everyone seems to LOVE these guys, and I can understand why, more attacks, more special weapons, they are closest to the wyches of old. But I just am not feeling them. I feel like they are just glorified Dark Eldar Ork Boyz, lots of attacks, not alot of punch. In most cases, you can get the same number of attacks from a wych squad of the same points. I'll definitely give them another go, but it will take alot to convince me of these guys over Incubi, or a normal wych squad.

Grotesques - If I use them, I'll likely convert from the same Rat Ogres I proxied with. Big, strong, tough, and lots of wounds. They draw alot of attention, unfortunately, it's usually the attention that ignores their FNP save. They are a bit prohibitive because of the high points cost, but I found that they really do a job vs. rear armour when accompanied by a Haemie to give them furious charge. I'll likely use them again, but I won't count on them as a major unit, more a distraction. Besides, even though it happens infrequently, it EXPLODES!

Kabalite Trueborn - My first pass through the book I dismissed these guys as the standard veteran squad. But realistically, most of the veteran squads are good and these are no different. These are closer to what the old Warrior squads were, a small cheap squad with 2 heavy weapons. But where they really start to shine is the addition of 4 special weapons and the option for shardcarbines for the whole group. They can get expensive quickly, but some smart shopping gives you a really tough squad to ignore.

Troops

Wracks - I know they show up in the elite slot, but since I abide by always having 1 Haemonculus, these guys will be troops in virtually any army I run. That aside, T4 starting with FNP makes these guys surprisingly tough in a Dark Eldar army. Add the paired poisoned weapon and the Acothyst with an agonizer makes for a flexible close combat unit. Especially with up to 2 Liquifiers making a mess just before you hit assault. One trick I've already warmed up to is a minimum 3 man squad with the Acothyst with a Hexrifle escorting a Haemonculus with a Portal and Hexrifle. I know the Hexrifle catches some flack, but it's a nice cheap assault 1 sniper rifle and I think it's a bargain for a unit that would otherwise be expendable.

Wyches - It's great that they are a core troop all the time now. They lost a little bit of punch because of some changes in the combat drug chart (I'll miss the 12" charge), and they split the wych weapons back into individual upgrades. But they got cheaper for the same basic statline. I'm not sure which if any of the upgrades I'm sold on, I think the shardnet/impaler combo helps bring the wyches a little closer to the tarpit unit they were before. I forsee atleast a squad of wyches in virtually all Dark Eldar armies.

Warriors - Same basic warrior, but with the night vision and Power from Pain. Apparently those are worth 1 pt. I don't think I'd have complained about them being 9 pts instead of 8 if the wyches hadn't seen a reduction, and the Wracks been introduced as another viable cheap troop. As it stands, although it needed to have the Lances limited. I think the increased heavy weapon costs with the increase per model makes these guys a little less desireable. I think the way to go with warriors is an anti-infantry squad, with the rifle and cannon spam sitting on an objective.

Fast Attack

Reavers - Worse save, worse strength, worse unit. The points reduction is nice, but really, with the terrible save and lack of strength to push into close combat, the reavers have two options. Try and move around the board and get side/rear armour tank hunting, which should be familiar to old reaver users. Or use the new gimmick to blast over units to try and hurt them, and give yourself any measure of survivability. With the uselessness that is a 5+ save vs. shooting, the anti-tank role is very limited, because most vehicles steer clear of terrain to avoid getting stuck. That just leaves the gimmick, which doesn't seem that great.

Beast Masters - Although the mix and matching style of the unit can be confusing, this is by far the hidden gem of the codex. Razorwing flocks are ridiculously powerful, mixing in Chymera's gives some great survivability. This is the close combat deathstar unit of the codex, all for much less than your standard deathstar price.

Heavy Support

Ravager - Same basic stats, but the change to move 12" and fire 3 lances make these a much better gunboat then they were before. The disentegrator changes are disappointing, but not as disapointing as them basically becoming star cannons. I understand the theme change behind it though.

Talos - Finally, gone are all those ridiculous rules that made this an arguement waiting to happen. It's an MC now, all of it's attacks hit and pen on vehicles like normal, and it starts with a normal ranged weapon that shoots like everything else. All for the same cost. Add to that some spiffy upgrade options, like chain flails, twin linked liquifiers, or even another CCW to add to the painful number of attacks. This thing is much more beastly than it was before, and people should worry much more about it getting into their lines.

Cronos - The smaller, less assault oriented brother of the Talos. It's still an MC, but with WS 3, and Str 5, close combat isn't it's main goal. However, with an AP 3 flamer, and an upgrade to take a AP 3 large blast template, I doubt there should be much left to assault. Oh, and just for giggles, if you kill any model with either of those weapons, you can give a free pain token to any Dark Eldar unit within 12". I love this thing, run it close enough to the incubi, have it shoot one unit, buff the incubi, and the better stronger faster incubi assault a seperate unit and turn it into paste.


So that's my opinion so far. In all likelyhood I'll give everything else except the Harlequins a try, I don't like the odds of the Hellions or the Jetfighter doing enough in my eyes, but I'm very interested in trying the Bomber with the Str 9 lances in place of a Ravager.

I'm going to be trying a couple new methods for posting over the next week or so, hopefully it will help get updates much faster.

How to put the RAID in your Raiders

So the new book has hit, and they are full of new creatures, and changes to lots of the old creatures. Regardless of my opinion on the book, the important part is how do I deal with them with my Dark Eldar army.

First, the Dark Eldar rely on movment, and high initiative to win, with a good spread of high strength weapons. So first we need to identify what can threaten those strengths.

Although they've gotten greater access to deep strike, and infiltrate, overall the Nid army isn't much faster than it was before, probably more flyers, but less 12" chargers, so we shouldn't have to worry about movement and speed. If you've already gotten used to the Marine drop pod armies, then the spore pods shouldn't be a big issue, just be sure to hit them with a Dark Lance, they can pack some decent weapons and you don't want that surprise later.

What we do have to worry about is high initiative, virtually all of the Tyranids have access to Adrenal Glands, which grants Furious Charge. Combined with alot of 4 and 5 initiative values means that we have to avoid being charged. To add to the pain, a number of models can gain access to Lash Whips, which can reduce the intiative of all models in base contact to 1. This is going to bring up an argument vs anyone with drugs that 'always go first', I'm of the mind they will cancel each other out.

The drawback the nids really took in the teeth, is most units lost access to grenade type upgrades, and they are succeptible to instant death again. So assaulting into cover they are going last, or at the same time with lash whips, and a well placed Dark Lance shot means a very dead 3 wound warrior.

What does all of this mean for my tactics? Choose your targets when assaulting, use Dark Lances on units with extreme prejudice, and hide in cover and wait for them to come to you.

That being said, there are a few oddities that stand out and need their own priority.

• First among these is likely the Tervigon, who is a large breeding pit. This guy will likely be surrounded by termagaunts, and spawning more. He gives bonuses to all the termagaunts around him, so trying to assault him will be difficult, your best bet is consider him a vehicle and make him a primary Dark Lance target.
  

• Second is the Swarmlord. This is basically a Hive Tyrant(check some of their issues below) with 4 Bonesabres. The problem with him, is his swords inflict instant death and force you to re-roll any successful invulnerable saves, and give him a 4+ invulnerable save. This means he's a big problem for your wyches, wych lords, and shadow fields especially. If he has a couple Tyrant Guard, expect them to be sporting Lash Whips. The good thing is he is slow, so either avoid them, or shoot them.

• Hive Tyrants are as good as they were before, but aren't quite as bad as the Swarmlord. They do have a few new tricks that can be problematic though. The most annoying being Paroxysm, which is a psychic shooting attack that reduces a units WS or BS to 1. This means he can very effectively neurtralize the Warrior snipers, and make combat much harder for some squads. If you use the goblet of spite regularly, then you won't have much to worry about, otherwise hit him with multiple units and bring him down. Also watch out for Leech Essence, another psychic shooting attack that inflicts a D3 S3 AP2 wounds, that heal the Tyrant. All of that in addition to being able to fire 2 weapons plus a flame weapon from the thorax means may not want to get too close.
  

• While it may not seem bad at first, the Parasite of Mortrex can cause some real issues if it manages to hit our low toughness warriors. We can very quickly end up outnumbered by ripper swarms that weren't even on the original list. Again, high initiative, multiple wounds, but only T4, so Dark Lances and Blasters are great.

• Last bit of hurt I'd like to address is the Broodlord. Sure, he's basically a glorified genestealer seargent now, but it's one of his psychic powers that are hurtful. Hypnotic Gaze. Basically it works similar to the Eldar Mind War, but the brood lord has to select a model in base contact with the Broodlord, and if he rolls higher on the combined D6+Ld, the selected model cannot attack in the following assault phase. That means when you are moving your guys into assault, again, pick where your Sybarites and Succubi are.

Beyond that, it's standard slaving with the rest of the bugs. Shoot the little ones, use Agonizers on the big ones. There are some other threats you can read about elsewhere, like the lance Zoanthropes, but the Str 10 shot was plenty on us before, so it's not as big a deal for us.

Good luck breaking the bugs, the first of my bug slaves are sure to go under a giant magnifying glass in the sun.

Feel free to share any experiences against the new Nid Codex, hopefully I'll have some soon.

Tactica Wyches

After the Ravager taking the spot for the FTW collaborative post, I thought I'd re-visit the other unit I was pondering, Wyches. I was hoping to do it sooner, but have been a bit busy lately, but I have a few things to get posted in the next couple weeks.




Really, Wyches are probably the thing I slot into my army right after a Ravager. Although I've toyed with more Koven themed Haemonculus lists, I always find that atleast one squad of wyches gives me a much more competative list.

So lets look at the basic wych to start with


WS: 4 BS:4 S:3 T:3 I:6 W:1 A:1 Ld: 8


They have a fairly decent statline, nothing to shout from the mountaintop about though. The part of the statline that does the most work, is easily the I:6. Not only does this ensure you are likely going first, but it also means most non-fearless units are likley being swept if they fallback from assault. Add to this the 4+ dodge save in close combat, and the combat drugs, and they are a deal at 12 points.



Of course you can upgrade them with wych weapons, plasma grenades, and haywire grenades with a per model cost, and some assault weapons. Also, the Succubus upgrade is almost manditory to let you get an agonizer into the squad. I've yet to hear anyone not take wych weapons, for one point, they are far too useful. Remove opponents abilities for additional close combat weapons, and if the opponents is below strength 6, they half their WS when attacking the wyches. The first part is going to be the most obviously advantagous, but if you manage the +1 WS roll, the second becomes quickly the more potent. Most rank and file squads have WS4 at best, it's rare to come across higher. This means they will count as WS 2 when swinging against your str 5 needing 5's to hit. This is one of those rarities that make the Dark Eldar so potent, when was the last time you remember assaulting a squad that you needed 5's to hit?


Plasma grenades and haywire grenades are generally an as points allow upgrade in my eyes. Plasma grenades are only good if you plan on assaulting into cover against fearless troops. Otherwise, I'm probably going to try and pin the unit with a horrorfex to remove thier cover bonus. Likewise, haywire grenades are great, but with so many dark lances floating around, they really only come into their own against things like monoliths, and Black Templar landraiders with blessed hulls. Besides which, wyches assaulting a vehicle means they're getting shot next turn. As far as the weapon upgrades, like the blaster or shredder, I'm not overly partial of. In my mind wyches are meant to be in assault, and half the time you should be running and using fleet instead of shooting, so really the upgrades aren't that great.

Overall, Wyches are easily in the top 5 for best overall assault troops in the game, and once you factor in points they quickly move into the top 3. In my mind they are always going to be number 1 and they make an already dangerous Dark Eldar army, down right deadly.