The Dawn of a New Era & A Last Tournament Send off [Dark Eldar]

The Dark Eldar codex is released tomorrow, any many of the rules have already been leaked on the web by peopel who already have their copy.


The Current

I will be picking up my copy of the new codex in the morning, but for the moment my thoughts are still with the old codex as I have a tournament next week that I am going to take my Dark Eldar to.  Also tournaments seem to be the best thing that motivates me to paint up new units.

One unit that's been on my thoughts is Grotesques.  The main reason was to have another option to combat vehicles.  Vehicles seem to be getting harder and harder to shoot down, when you consider the softer damage table, jinking and the availability of cover.  It was just seeming that unless you were Tau with markelights to remove cover and boost BS it took an inordinate amount of firepower to kill vehicles.  Then I considered close combat.

Dark Eldar already have easy access to haywire grenades (it'll be a shame to lose that in the new codex), and to support them Grotesques could add a good volume of high strength attacks (Str6 on the charge with an accompanying Haemonculus giving them Furious Charge).  A unit of 3 would throw out 12 attacks which should do 4 hull points on average to a vehicle with a back armour of 10.

Oddly enough the new codex will not give Grotesques Furious Charge till later in the game making them worse against vehicles, however the addition of Flesh Gauntlets (and the rumoured close combat weapon in addition to the Flesh Gauntlet giving them an addition attack in close combat) makes them better against non-vehicles.

Here's my converted Grotesques ready for undercoating:

Next week will my first and last time using Grotesques with their current rules, and the same for Hellions.  The tournament I'm going to has no strict comp, however in addition to the 9 tournament points available for winning the 3 games there are a bonus point for each of two critera below:

• If there are no duplicated units outside the Troops selection
• If you do not have a 2nd Non-Troop selection unless you have at least one selection from each of the Non-Troop selection, and you do not have a 3rd Non-Troop selection unless you have at least 2 selections for each of the Non-Troop selections.

With these 2 points worth more than a draw in a game I've designed my army to meet these critera, and the give me the opportunity to try out units I haven't tried before in preparation for the new codex (ie. Grotesques & Hellions).

Below is my draft list, let me know what you think ?  Also let me know how you deal with multiple tanks ? Now before I show you my list I want to give the sorbering thought of how many Dark Lance / Blaster shots it takes to strip the hull points from common vehicles (ie. ignoring the small chance to roll a 6 on the damamge chart to explode a vehicle):

AV11 in the open: 6.75
AV12+ in the open: 9
AV12+ with 4+ Cover (eg. Jinking or behind Ruins): 18
Eldar or Tau Skimmers Jinking with Holofields/Disruption Pods: 27
(yes 3 Ravagers firing for 3 turns to kill one jinking skimmer with a 3+ cover save)

I will pack as many as possible Dark Light weapons in my army, but there needs to be other answers, and I think this may be one of the big challenges of the new codex.

Anyway onto my list for the tournment:

Baron - 105
Haemonculus with Venom Blade - 55

3 Trueborn with 2 Splinte Cannons - 56
Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65
3 Grotesques - 105
Raider - 60

9 Wyches with Haywire Grenades - 108
Raider - 60
9 Wracks - 90
Raider - 60
5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades - 60
Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades - 60
Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

3 Wracks - 30

Venom with 2nd Splinter Cannon - 65

10 Hellions including Helliarch with Agoniser - 185

Beastmaster Pack - 186

   consisting of 3 Packmasters, 10 Krymera, 2 Razorwing Flocks

Ravager (3 Lances) - 105

Voidraven Bomber with Void Lances & 2 Shatterfield Missiles - 165

Total: 1750 Points (73 models)


The Future

From the rumours of the new codex I know this list will change significantly.  The lack of haywire grenades will mean that I will have to cram as much anti tank into the list as possible. So the 2nd Ravager will come back.  The Voidraven will lose it's missiles, but will probably be supported by a Razorwing Jetfighter in Fast Attack.  The Splinterborn will change to Blasterborn.  The small wyches and wrack squads will disappear, to be replaced probably by warriors.  The beasts and hellions which both get worse in the new book (Hellion's Helglaive no longer gives +1 attack) so they are both up for the chop.

The rumours give some nice ideas, eg. a character with the armour that gives -2 ld, with the artifact that forces a ld test at -2 on nearby units causng wounds for each point they failed the test.  Combine this with an allied Spirit Seer and the Webwy portal which allows deepstrike without scattering.  Such things could be good, but I will need a full read of the codex and the total points costs to see if it is viable.

How will your army change ?

Rathstar