A couple Dark Eldar army lists...

I haven't had the chance to play many games with my Dark Eldar yet, but I still want to share my thought on the couple lists I've been playing with.

A general note: all lists were built for friendly games, you wan't find Venom Spam here. Besides, I wouldn't have the models for the Venoms :-) (I'll wait for the official models in June, don't want to convert)

1000 pts - Quick & Dirty Baron List

105 Baron Sathonyx

185 10 Hellions, Helliarch w/ Agoniser (Baron joins this squad)
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider
160 10 Warriors, Splinter cannon in Raider
160 10 Warriors, Splinter cannon in Raider

105 Ravager
105 Ravager

I initially built this list for team play, 2x1000 vs 2x1000, but also used it in solo. As you probably guessed, the major weakness is in the anti-tank department: all the anti-tank is on the vehicules, kill the vehicules and I'm in trouble. This was my first list and it really showed me how fragile Dark Eldar were.

The Baron adds nice buffs to the Hellions, and making them troops helped a lot, but they died pretty much every time they went into combat. T3, 5+ save means it can be quite hard to survive any combat in which you don't wipe out the enemy before he can strikes back. I somewhat expected that and gave them an Helliarch with Agoniser, but that wasn't enough in some games. Their Splinter Pods are deadly though, and in a table with 25% terrain they can move & stay in cover relatively well.
The wyches did their job (tarpitting or killing stuff in 2 turns) pretty well in most games, and as expected they were wiped out in every game.
The warriors were the most important unit: usually I just dropped all 10 in cover in the middle-field, and shoot every infantry trying to get close. The number of poisoned shots combined with cover was nice. A couple times they hijacked an empty Raider and went to secure an objective.



150 Duke Sliscus

156 9 Warriors, Blaster in Raider
175 10 Warriors, Blaster, Splinter cannon in Raider
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider
180 9 Wyches, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser in Raider

156 6 Reavers, 2 Heat Lances
156 6 Reavers, 2 Heat Lances

115 Ravager w/ Night Shields
115 Ravager w/ Night Shields
115 Ravager w/ Night Shields

This list was designed to test the other units I had. So reavers, more wyches, and the Duke. I had another variant with more upgrades and another with the trueborn, but decided to try something simpler first, with a 3rd Ravager to fill the points.

The results were interesting. I tried to play more agressively with the warriors. The first unit stayed in its vehicule most of the game, rapid-firing anything it could with the Duke's poison bonus. It was nice, but the lack of Splinter Cannon was annoying. The Duke himself failed to impress in CC, but its bonuses were really interesting.
The Reavers... died after killing a couple armored targets. I need to play them more.
The Night Shields on the Ravagers did wonders. Everytime they are mentioned in forums and blogs, someone intervenes to say they are useless because Dark Lances have 36" range and <insert favorite weapon here> has 48" range. In reality though, games are not played in a vacuum. The units with those 48" weapons may not be your target. They might have other things to shoot. The nights shields are for the other threats. Removing 6" was awesome, it meant a lot of units could not fire at all on the ravagers, forced my opponent to act differently, to take more risks when moving to make sure he would be in range, etc. On the other hand, the 3rd Ravager felt like a waste of points, maybe I should have tried it with Disintegrators instead.

That's all for now. I still need to play more games, try a lot of units and upgrades, etc. Hopefully I'll have time to write up an AAR next time I play.

Heroes of Armageddon

Not a real update ; things have slowed down considerably now that I've started working again, and I don't want to start painting yet anyway, as I promised myself to finish painting my Blood Angels jumpers army first. I did get some games with the Dark Eldar but didn't feel like taking notes or publishing battle reports yet. I'll certainly do that in the future though.

But today I want to talk about Heroes of Armageddon. The largest Charity Project ever done in the modeling/gaming community (their words :). I suspect every wargamer on earth will soon know about this from various other blogs, but I wanted to link to it because it really sounds awesome, and, well, the only thing I can do to help right now is spread the word!