Epic: Armageddon 101 – Part 4 Eldar
This week we’ll take a look at the various Eldar lists in Epic: Armageddon, from the Aspect Hosts of Biel Tan to the cruel raiders of Commorragh.
The Craftworld Eldar are a powerful and competitive set of armies in Epic: Armageddon with fantastically potent engagement troops, huge amounts of mobility, a whole array of movement and deployment tricks, titans, spacecraft and powerful shooting attacks. They aren’t the toughest troops out there but they’re not all that fragile if you make use of good positioning and some of the tougher units available to you. They do however have a variety of special rules from Webway Gates to Farseer retaining and require a good deal of practice to get your head around the different rules and how to make the different elements work in concert with one another to bring you victory. You’ll need to be comfortable with moving troops into supporting fire positions and how to prep your targets for your scalpel cuts and when to dash away for cover.
The Dark Eldar are in many ways an even more extreme version of their Craftworld cousins. With some faster units, even more deployment tricks and even less durability. Knowing when and how to use your resources and when to sacrifice them to the Archon’s will is paramount. They are an extremely flavourful force, feeling like both pawns to Archon’s schemes for victory as well as sudden raider forces appearing from nowhere.
There is only a single Dark Eldar list and 6 Craftworld Eldar from most of the ‘core’ named Craftworlds and each of these has a different style and emphasis allowing for plenty of choice in your preferred flavour and playstyle. There isn’t really a generic list that would thematically cover what the others can do (you just won’t get enough jetbikes in Biel Tan to satisfyingly mimic Saim Hann for example) so it’s a good idea to work out what interests you and spend some time fiddling with the lists to see if you can find one that suits what you want.
Biel Tan
The aspects hosts of Biel Tan are a sight to behold, sweeping rapid attacks rolling from one engagement to another with potent aspect warriors leading the charge backed up by skilled vehicles and reliable guardians. The intended focus here is on using the support elements to deliver your Aspect Warriors right into the heart of your enemy and through a few decisive activations (that are usually Engagements) breaking the back of their resistance.
The aspect warrior formations of Biel Tan are quite large and can be expensive if you mount everyone up in transports but they are also incredibly flexible. You can mix and match the aspect warriors freely so a formation with 2 firedragons, 2 striking scorpions, 1 swooping hawk and 3 shining spears with 2 wave serpents is perfectly fine and this flexibility allows you to both tailor them to a specific role and to control your point expenditure on them (hint: Wave Serpents can be costly to transport the slow infantry aspects but taking a few infantry and wave serpents and mixing in the faster hawks or shining spears to fill in the rest of the formation means you can be both fast and cheaper than fully mounted). The general use of these formations can vary based on what you put into them – 8 Swooping Hawks is a very different formation to 8 Fire Dragons but broadly these are what you use to crack the hardest enemy formations so need to get there in one piece. Wave Serpents are one way of doing this but can be comparatively vulnerable on the approach. Instead making use of the fantastic deployment options in the Eldar can deliver these guys where and when they are needed. Using the Webway to be able to come onto the table from further up than the deployment zone or using the Webway gate on a Storm Serpent to appear anywhere or using the Vampire Raider to fly and air assault from safety.
Typically the CC focused aspects are less popular – Banshees and Scorpions – while the Firefight focused ones are seen more often. This is mostly due to the huge rolling engagement potential of the Eldar with their hit and run rule meaning that Firefight focused formations can deliver all of their specialist attacks multiple times over a single turn while a CC formation is far less effective at delivering its specialist threat multiple times a turn. Of these the Firedragons and Dire Avengers (with exarchs!) are popular and very common and entire formations of Warp Spiders are frequently used in Vampire Raiders. Because Warp Spiders have the Infiltrate ability they can land in a vampire, wipe out a foe and remain a threat out to 45cm meaning they suffer considerably less from the lack of transports that air assaulting necessitates. This is not to say the CC aspects are bad, just that they don’t play as much to the strengths of the rolling engagement style play.
Another key point of the aspect formations is the Exarchs. You can have up to 2 per formation and – unless you have a very specific plan that doesn’t need them – you will be taking 2 every time. They increase both the attack power and also provide the Inspiring ability twice to their formation which can be a huge advantage when it comes to combat resolution and seeing as you will mostly want these guys to be Engaging that helps a lot.
Outside of aspect warrior shenanigans the list has a set of other strong options. Rangers are great scouts (keep them cheap at 100pts, you’re better with 2 4 strong groups than 1 8 strong group), falcons with firestorms for air defence and for destroying enemy vehicles (key targets are rhinos, chimeras, etc. that transport infantry as destroying one can slow the down the entire parent formation or the enemy risks leaving troops behind to keep up their speed). Void Spinners and Night Spinners for barrage and the ability to put blast markers where you need them or to break smaller enemy formations. Your aircraft are among the best in the entirety of Epic, they pay for it but they can lock down enemy air assaults or cause punishing damage on the enemy. Using your ground troops to eliminate (or suppress) enemy ground based AA weapons to give you freedom of the skies is advised. Guardians are also great – if they have some cover to hide in! – and bring the critical Farseers to enable some of your nastiest tricks. jetbikes also work great for support fire and bringing along one Vyper in the formation (so it can shoot and put blast markers where you want them) is a good idea too.
Tactically you need to get comfortable with how the supporting fire rules work and how you can use the fantastic Hit and Run rule in concert with the triple retain capability of your Farseers to allow you to keep reusing your troops combat ability in a single devastating attack. A common example would be if your opponent has two formations within 15cm of each other A and B. You double some jetbikes (with their Vyper) to sit between both A and B within 15cm of both, they shoot the Vyper at formation A (dealing no damage but placing the blast marker). You retain initiative and assault A with your Firedragons, their pair of exarchs and their Wave Serpents making sure to get at least one member of enemy formation B within 15cm of your firedragons (so that they receive a blast marker when A loses), the firedragons (with the jetbikes support firing as they are within 15cm!) shatter formation A (and this places a blast marker on B) then the firedragons use the hit and run rule to move up to 15cm to make sure they are within 15cm of B with as many models as possible. You then retain a third time (which only the Eldar can do!) and engage B with a formation of guardians (or something, anything really) and this time you get the jetbikes, firedragons and your third formation all attacking B (because you have the jetbikes and firedragons in support fire positions) to annihilate B too. Using three formations to annihilate two enemy ones and getting to use those jetbikes guns three times in a row, the firedragons get to use their twice in a row (which CC focused aspects could not do) and your third formation got to use their once…but could use hit and run to move to another good position to support an attack elsewhere on the table (or just duck for cover!).
Saim Hann
Commentary here is provided by StevekCole from the Taccomms forum:
This list is all about speed and the 35cm consolidate move. Saim Hann look great on the tabletop with wave after wave of jetbikes screaming across the board. They need to make maximum possible use of hit and run tactics by hiding behind cover and engaging units from up to 50cm away then consolidating 35 freaking cm to lend support fire to another assault. When they’re played right they can use the elder rolling assault like no other army in the game. They’re also great at picking off isolated units and using their 35cm consolidate to redeploy and threaten somewhere new or get back to a place of safety.
Key units are the Wild Rider hosts with 9 jetbikes and the potential to add 3 more plus a mounted farseer and a single wild rider chieftain per army. Both characters are must haves in order to give you the all-important supreme commander reroll plus farsight and the ability to summon the avatar. While the latter isn’t as strong as in Biel Tann he can really tip the balance for your big jetbike units when assaulting tougher targets like dug in imperial guard or big units of tyranids. You can (and should) add vipers for the all-important ability to place blast markers and their better 4+ armour. Wild riders will make up the core of your army.
Aspects are a little different, basically they have to be fast (ie hawks and spears) or mounted up in wave serpents. If you’re mounting up you gain access to stronger aspects like dire avengers and fire dragons but only a maximum of 6 with one exarch. If you’re spears or hawks you gain 8 and the excellent double exarch (so double inspiring) and they become a core choice. Spears give some much needed armour busting capability to the list with lance. Hawks I find less useful as their key strength is speed and the ability to strike almost anywhere and the whole of your army can already do that. The mounted aspects are always solid and give you a slightly tougher BTS than a wild rider unit.
Saim hann get access to all the usual eldar support units including the wonderful rangers for screening, stall activations, late game objective grabbing and sneaky sniper shots on enemy characters. Falcons with firestorms are a must as always. Saim Hann are fragile and need AA cover plus they lack long range shooting so falcons ago-go.
Eldar aircraft with Macro-weapon? Yes please! At least one vampire hunter is a must they’re great for dealing with better armoured targets but also for sniping out small fragile units such as scouts.
So why aren’t they trouncing all comers at tournaments? Well… even by eldar standards they’re fragile. The bike units are 9-13 strong with 5+ armour, they can’t make use of cover like infantry and (unless you’re running storm serpent webway gates) have to start on the table so they’re extremely vulnerable to artillery, air assaults and ranged shooting in general. Their assault power and ability to activate reliably dies away quickly with blast markers and casualties. On the subject of assault power, Saim Hann lack numbers, macro weapon, and good armour in assaults so can struggle to take down really solid targets (tip using commander from your farseer or chieftain to combine an assault can help). Lastly, they struggle to have a sturdy BTS. Essentially, you have 3 options; bikes, mounted aspects, or revenant titans. Of these the latter are the toughest but by far the most expensive and give you great shooting but less on the assault front. The aspects are always on the board, and once the jetbikes are on board (if they deploy via a gate) they are also always on the board (lacking the Biel Tann BTS safety in vampires option) so very vulnerable to being broken and then, due to not being fearless simply picked off.
All in all, a really fun, really thematic army that are hugely enjoyable and occasionally very frustrating army to play.
Thanks Steve!
Iyanden
The wraithhosts of Iyanden are different from the other eldar in that they are absolutely rock solid and very difficult to destroy. They pack a huge punch and can almost look after themselves with much less need for supporting formations in engagements (though you should bring those along anyway). However they are a list that really suffers at lower point games and only really come into their own at closer to 4kpts where they have the points to buy both the wraith formations and the transports to deliver them to the enemy.
You can rely on your core Wraith formations to win most battles. They benefit from having support fire and want to see their targets prepped with blast markers before going in because – while tough and powerful – an engagement has a lot of dice being rolled both for and against you and the end result is usually pretty decisive so don’t take a risk if a little bit of support can cut that risk dramatically. A lot of the time you’ll be looking for suitable ways of delivering these guys to the table – Storm Serpents, Webway Gate, Vampire Raider are your best bets – and getting them stuck into the fight. Slogging across the table with a 15cm speed is not recommended and will likely leave them unable to every actually fight as they can be easily delayed with scouts or enemy maneuver. Unfortunately this transport requirement can get costly.
Luckily you still have access to the cheap core Guardians (in a less attractive configuration with the heavy weapons by default) to bulk up your activations and the great Eldar support formations like Falcons (with firestorms!), Jetbikes, Rangers, etc. while also having access to the cheaper (and smaller) aspect warrior host. These aspects lose the ability to take double Exarchs (take the single!) and generally you’ll want to choose the aspects that are faster by default – swooping hawks for example or Warp Spiders (due to their Infiltrate ability) that allow you to remain combat effective whilst not having to invest in a lot of supporting mobiliy infrastructure (remember also that you can only have 3 formations in the webway and each gate can only be used once per turn so there is a limit that can’t be overcome with just more points and if your Wraith troops are in there then less room for your aspects in the first place).
Remember though that your support formations are also actually pretty strong in a fight. This isn’t a case of shepherding your wraith troops in as your only attack options. There are a lot of useful formations and attack stats mixed amongst those support formations so you can build a good attack with just those while you wait for the opportune moment to launch your Wraith troops into the fray. They just take a bit more finesse to use to that effect.
All in all this list really there if you love the Wraith troops. It revolves around them and has a lot of powerful options with them. It’s competitive but struggles at lower point totals whilst coming into its own at slightly higher than normal (3k is normal, 4k is where this list really shines).
Alaitoc
A pretty different experience here, focused heavily on scouting forces and relying on the smaller (smaller than Biel Tan anyway) aspects and support formations to do the work of actually breaking the opponent’s forces. They also sacrifice the flexibility of being able to drop lots of small 100pt ranger formations for the larger ones (which normally you’d not take in the other lists). In return you’re gaining access to Ranger and Ranger+War Walker formations (11 scouting models with mostly anti infantry guns for 275pts) as well as Pathfinders.
Remember, your rangers and War Walkers can garrison forward near the midway line so they can be right in the thick of the action immediately and u to two garrisoned formations can go onto overwatch during deployment.
The ready access to so many scouts gives you huge area control, able to spread out and have layers of scouts rendering any possible advance or landing point for the opponent a slog to fight through. This gives you the ability to dramatically slow your opponent for your more impactful elements to get into their supporting positions and destroy the enemy piecemeal while they have little ability to coherently organise a response. It also means that you can contest and block enemy contesting of objectives extremely well in the later stages of a game. Played well this means you can r=turn a loss on turn 3 into a turn 4 and a draw by just being extremely frustrating and not allowing them to score their objectives.
The unique unit here is the Pathfinders and they’re fantastic…in a different army. Being teleporting scouts is hugely potent, able to utterly stop an enemy critical attack or break up a firebase in a way that’s almost impossible to stop. (Hint: if your opponent has weapons that fire indirectly you can teleport a Pathfinder so that the enemy formation has a model inside your 10cm zone of control, this means those indirect fire units can’t sustain to fire indirect as they have to move out of your 10cm zone or engage you, either way you can silence those big guns for a turn). The first strike is also helpful, especially considering their low armour and limited attack stats (6 stands, 5+ to hit, average 2 hits). The issue they face in the Alaitoc is that…do you really need more scouts considering how many you’ll have from your core formations?
Broadly just by taking your core ranger formations (and some Pathinders, they’re still useful, just notably less so than they would be in other armies) you should have a massive ability to control the board, but generally lack the hard hitting elements to actually attack the enemy effectively. That’s where your selections in the support slots come in to give you your attack power. Pick formations that will be able to get into position to attack and support each other to take advantage of your scouting ability to cut the enemy table positioning apart and then retreat to safety. Don’t neglect your air defence – having someone air assault a formation into your scouts, break them and punch a huge hole in your defence field is not advisable. This also gives you the benefit of being able to use your own air assaults more freely.
Two things to pay careful attention to due to the abundance of scouts. Spread out into a long string scout formations can be very vulnerable to clipping engagements where only one of your stands can fight against a whole enemy formation, making a defeat very likely. Pay attention to your opponent setting up for clipping engagements (usually by placing a blast marker on the scouts and engaging them with a formation of their own that doesn’t have any blast markers, especially if the enemy formation outnumbers your scouts and/or has Inspiring). Second thing to pay attention to is intermingling your formations – if your formations have models within 5cm of each other the enemy can engage one formation and force the other to fight and break as one which you might not want. This is double the case with stringing out a scout formation. Having the enemy engage one scout on the far end of the tail, intermingling a formation 60cm away that you left too close to the scouts and watching as that one clipped scout breaks a core part of your army is eminently frustrating.
Overall a very different army to play. Not necessarily the strongest you’ll see, especially as the point totals increase but at lower values (1k-2k) it is very difficult for an enemy to deal with so almost the opposite of the Iyanden. Better the fewer points there are!
Ulthwe
Guardian focused and potent (because Guardians are a great unit) due to shenanigans with Strategy Ratings. Your Guardians are slightly more expensive than normal as you get a second farseer unit in the formation, this is mostly a good thing. Looking at the list on paper and there’s not a lot that jumps out as particularly exciting. The unique unit is having an extra farseer stand in the Guardian formation and 6 aspects is not a stand out unique thing as the non-Biel Tan all have that too.
The selling point for Ulthwe is the combination of fairly cheap core Guardian formations, not losing access to the general tools of the Eldar (rangers not forced to 8 man units, guardians not forced to use heavy weapons), cheap (due to 6 stand units) aspects (remember mixing in infantry ones mounted in wave serpents with fast movers like hawks or shining spears to keep costs down and mobility up) and the ability to get the equivalent of strategy 5 for one turn (and strategy 5 for deployment tricks like teleports and spacecraft).
It’s not a particularly exciting list one must admit, more fiddling around the edges but the overall effect is to allow you to often squeeze in another formation or a few more upgrades and by using the core tools of the Eldar and their skill at rolling engagements you can often win fairly healthily.
The biggest advantage you have is consistency on Turn 2 Strategy. For most lists going first on Turn 2 is a fairly major advantage – you’ve spent turn 1 getting into good attacking positions and weakening your opponent for your attack to start – and the Strategy 4 with +1 from summoning the Avatar (which should be in range to attack effectively on turn 2) means you have a very good chance of getting to go first and launch your attack decisively before your opponent can launch theirs. It’s a small difference but it can be game winning.
Yme Loc
I have never played with nor against this list so I have only limited insight, though from those who have played it I have heard it suffers from lacking a decisive attacking element.
Yme Loc gives you all the vehicles, all the time, flights of elder skimmers hit and running into range, firing and withdrawing back out again, swift moving mounted infantry and access to a few units no other eldar have (Hornets, Lynx, Warp Hunters, Large Webway). In return though you’re losing flexibility in your formations make up, lose the ability to have cheaper foot based infantry and thus losing many of the special table entry options – no teleports, planetfall or air assaults with the units you’d normally want to do that with.
At first glance the weight of firepower you can bring is fearsome, able to badly damage formations at medium and close range while you then move your mounted infantry into position to launch your finishing blows. The intention for the list is a combined arms style with the vehicles doing a lot of the heavy lifting early on to be followed up by the mechanised infantry forces to defeat the crippled enemy and seize the objectives at the end.
However. The essentially skirmishing your vehicles are doing early on, relying on hit and run, means that you’re frequently doubling your vehicles (not always, but often if you’re not doing that you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to return fire) which can dramatically cut your firepower effectiveness, especially against infantry due to the ease with which they can claim cover. Remember a 5+ to hit on a double becomes half as effective. 5+ is 1/3 hits, while 6+ is 1/6 hits.
For the Yme Loc I suspect you’ll be taking on a challenge. Forced mechanisation costs more points and limits your deployment options and the fragile nature of your vehicles means that you can be forced to use double orders a lot to keep them safe, which cuts your effective firepower. You’ll probably look fantastic on the table though!
Dark Eldar
The dark pirates of Commorragh. Fast, deadly and oh so squishy. I love the Dark Eldar, it’s an extremely well designed list from a thematics point of view and plays in a pretty unique way but suffers from some fairly major weaknesses and has a larger than normal contingent of questionably useful formations.
Broadly the list shares many of the features of the Craftworld Eldar just turned up to 11. You’re blisteringly fast, have some powerful (though CC focused) shock troops and die when someone looks at you funny. You can have an entire army that is only on the table in the place and time it needs to be there to maximise its offensive potential (and then dies once it has done its job).
A big contributor to this is the Raider. A 35cm move light vehicle skimmer transport. It’s really quick and quite vulnerable as being a light vehicle anything can hurt it (so a passing scout formation with heavy boaters for example can blow it out of the sky and cripple the speed of your formations). One thing that is special though is that being a light vehicle means it can use the Webway Portals (and note the plural!) that you can bring. This means your 35cm movement skimmers can enter the table form a portal that is potentially all the way up on the half way line of the board (or even deeper on with the portable one). Raiders in the web way should give you the ability to reach almost anywhere at almost any time and deliver your troops where you want them.
Some people consider the list restriction that requires you to have the Archon’s Kabal as the BTS a disadvantage but personally I’ve always ended up with that Kabal as the most expensive formation anyway so it barely registers. The Lord’s Kabal has Incubi and can run with 6 of them (and some warriors too) for a healthy 12 CC 3+ attacks and a 3+ MW CC attack from the Lord, has inspiring and 4+ saves and the speed and deployment options of your army mean that you can usually guarantee these guys arrive on target when you want them and never be vulnerable to enemy attacks until that point. These guys are the best your army has to offer in the shock department. They do however only work on the offence due to their CC focus (they’re terrible at FF) so expect to see them suffer badly if the opponent counterattacks them. They’ll want to make their attack and then run to hide as they will be a key target for the opponent to finish them off.
Your ability to deploy on the table from off table is second only to the Necrons, meaning your pirate raiders can literally come from nowhere, launch their attacks and then run to hide to enjoy their stolen prizes. This is achieved by having the Webway (which means up to 3 formation off the table), Scourges (a fantastic FF unit with great mobility) can teleport onto the table, Mandrakes (great at seizing ground, blocking movement due to being scouts, CC and FF) can teleport in and you have the absolutely fantastic Slavebringer to do either planetfall or air assaults. I commonly leverage these heavily and will have maybe 2 formations on the table at the start of turn 1 (both of which are Vessels of Pain as they’re able to do useful work and keep themselves safe while doing so) and then bring units onto the table as and when they are needed.
When playing a list with this much off table materiel your early work should be to clear the way for your formations to enter the table. Find and destroy or suppress ground based AA, fight their aircraft out of the sky (and if you can’t manage that the Slavebringer is still pretty tough due to the Shadowfields making it hard to hit and ablating the first hit anyway) and with anything spare place blast markers on your targets (to make your attacks when you launch them more likely to succeed) and get into supporting fire positions.
When selecting your targets you need to think about how attacking it will secure you objectives at the end of turn 3. A sad fact of the way th list is designed is that you need to be laser focused on those right from the off if you want be winning. That does’t mean start standing on the objectives on turn 1. That means think ahead about how what you’re doing will secure the objectives you need to win. Sometimes that means not attacking a powerful enemy at all or isolating them so they can’t stop you scoring. For example you might see a potent enemy formation that could move to contest an objective and thus stop you scoring it – teleport those Mandrakes in to block their ability to move like that, even if that means the mandrakes die or never get to fight anything at all, if they secure that objective by blocking a key enemy unit for a few C centimetres then they’ve done their job.
The Mandrake example above also leads to another key point. Everything is sacrificial to the goals of the Archon. Any formation can and should be thrown into the jaws of death so long as they achieve what you needed of them first (which is eminently thematic for a Dark Eldar Lord!). A good example of this is Wyches+Warp Beasts+Succubus in a Slavebringer (that’s two formations for 500pts). These guys are great, able to surgically strike a target, land 6 CC3+ first strike, 4 CC4+ first strike and 1 CC3+ first strike macro attack (plus shots from the slavebringer) and hopefully win before the foe even gets to strike. These are almost a suicide missile, find your target, destroy it and run! They are a premier strike force and if you’ve done things right they come swooping in on a target that has blast markers already and your guys come in without them giving you a +3 to combat resolution right from the start (the succubus is inspiring!). They’re almost certainly going to die afterwards though and because they came in from the sky don’t have their raiders to rapidly move elsewhere to help out other fights.
Now onto the downsides. There are 3 main ones. 1. CC focus, 2. you die super fast and 3. uncompetitive units.
The CC focus on your shock units means that they can’t do a lot of supporting of each other as their support fire attacks aren’t all that great it also means that on the defensive they will never get to use their CC values unless they’re worse than their opponents. I.e.: if an opponent engages your CC troops they will FF them and position to make sure you can’t get into CC so your super elite Incubi will be stuck in a firefight with a guard infantry company or space marine devastators or fire dragons or something (look at the Haemonculi coven, if the enemy engages it in a FF the bulk of the units literally cannot fight as they don’t have a FF value!). The other major issue they will face is an opponent with Skimmers. You can never CC a skimmer unless the owner wants you to (which will only be when it’s to their advantage!) and canny players of things like Eldar will hide their troops behind a screen of skimmers forcing you to get at least a few of your models engaged with those first, wasting their CC potential.
Dying really fast is a fairly major weakness! It’s an exaggeration to say it but it can at times feel like if your units are on the table they’re dead. If your formations are in a position close to the enemy they can easily come under attack and if they do they will die or lose effectiveness very quickly. The CC focus above compounds this as the units can be very mono focused and thus can have their ability to do their focus degraded rapidly making the formation very little use except as fodder, blocking or contesting. Frequently your formations making their surgical strikes will kill a lot of enemy and take crippling casualties afterwards (another reason the Incubi with their 4+ armour and Wyches with First Strike are so good, they’re less likely to suffer this!) making them one use only. You have to choose when and where you expose your formations to danger because if they are in danger they will likely collapse under the weight quickly. This weakness also manifests in the base of Dark Eldar everywhere. Overwatch. An enemy formation on overwatch is a thing of fear – able to place blast markers on your engagement troops weakening them in the fight resolution at best or destroying many models before they ever get to attack at all at worst a few well positioned formations on Overwatch can stymie your attack entirely. Overwatch combined with the light vehicle nature of Raiders is also a nasty double whammy. Random scouting forces on Overwatch can shoot your Raiders as they pass and stand a not insignificant chance of blowing one out of the sky in passing, potentially killing the guys mounted and even if they don’t stranding the infantry on the ground slowing the rest of the raiders in the formation. You may want to carefully plan your moves to avoid this happening to you.
Number 3 is not a unique problem to the Dark Eldar. Everyone will have a few duds in their list or units that just don’t do their job as well as other units. It however feels a bit more extreme for the Dark Eldar as so many formations have the same use – CC shock units. This means you’re often selecting your units for a role critical to the Dark Eldar way of war and then ignoring many of the units supposedly for that role. I know I only use Incubi and Wyches for this role and when trying the Haemonculi and Talos out they always disappoint. The Kabal Flotilla with the Ravagers is scary on paper but usually does very little of use and competing against the excellent firefight support capability (something the list sorely needs) of the Warrior Kabal (which is also cheaper!) it’s hard to justify. It’s unfortunate but many of these characterful formations are just not making their way into armies that see the table.
Overall the Dark Eldar are great fun to play, tense and cautious play until you unleash havoc and suicide your way to victory. You will need to know how to handle placement and movement routes, how to block and corral your foe, when to sacrifice something for victory and when to conserve your strength. Pay attention to supporting fire form your own formations and those of your enemy, know how you’re going to get into CC and above all focus on how you’re going to score objectives on turn 3!
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Hopefully there’s something useful for you here.
Happy Gaming!
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