What I got up to before 8th Edition hit - Part Two [40k - Dark Eldar]

So as 7th drew to a close I had one last tournament to go to.  It was a small local 1250 point Highlander tournament, and I used it to paint up some more units.

With my trueborn with blasters always being envious of Eldar Fire Dragons I decided to paint some up.  To tie them into my army better I used Dark Eldar heads and used a darker than usual colour scheme (well apart from the guns).  Here's a work in progress pic:

[a pic of the painted Fire Dragons and Starweaver will follow in a later post]

The main reason I finally included Fire Dragons was because at the time they were allowed to go in Ynnari Harlequin Skyweavers.  This was important because I do not like the aesthetics of the Eldar transports, while the Harlequin vehicles are similar to my converted Venoms.  You can see my Skyweaver in the pic above, again I couldn't leave the model standard and mounted the 2 shuriken cannons each side of the cockpit, and adding spikes to the front of the hull to tie it into my army, as my converted Venoms have the same, finally I used a reaver jetbike helmet for the pilot.

Both units did well in the tournament, and when Soulburst works on the Fire Dragon it's deadly.  Unfortunately with the move to 8th edition, and the very sensible ruling that each faction of Eldar can not go in each other's transports both the Fire Dragons and the Skyweaver have not made my initial 8th edition list.  However the Skyweaver may make a come back, although it can't transport any models (I have no other Harlequin models) its a very good gunboat compared to the Venom for nearly the exact same points.  The Skyweaver has a better invulnerable save, and 6 shots at Str6, in my opinion, is better than the Rapid 6 from 2 (4+ to wound) Splinter Cannons on the Venom.

After the tournament I converted up my next unit, which was originally going to be some Warp Spiders.  I saw a great conversion online, from Mantle on Dakka Dakka (link here):

The conversion used Dark Eldar Scourge legs with all the spikes and blades cut off, Eldar Guardian torsos, arms & heads, Wraothblade Hip Plates on the shoulders, Wraithblade Loin Cloths and Guardian Aerials for the Warp Jump Generator, and finally the front of a Shuriken Catapult replaced with the end of a Wraith Cannon.

The only change I made was to use Scourge heads rather than Eldar Guardian heads.  Here's the first two models assembled:

Painting went on hold with the rumours of 8th edition approaching.  As soon as the Index's were released, in an effort to return my army list to mainly (if not totally) Dark Eldar, the leader of the unit got his weapon converted to a Shard Carbine, and the unit will now be Scourges with Blasters.


The tournament I won but didn't

The tournament organiser had made the scoring system to hopefully make it more enjoyable for all players.  He didn't like the idea of a player knowing their going to lose and having nothing to fight for with 1-2 hours left of the game to go.  In this tournament each player's tournament points was the amount of victory points they scored during the game (using points killed as a tie break).

While fine, this can lead to two unintended consequences:

• Fast armies tend to do well regardless of whether they win or lose.  Your score can be more impacted on the cards you draw.  This has impacted me both ways.  In a previous tournament at the local GW store I had a close game where both my opponent and myself (playing Necrons) kept drawing maelstrom cards we couldn't do.  I lost the game, but because we both scored very low victory points it basically put us both out of the running.  
• The results are polarising, in that the tournament the top players all scored high victory points even when they lost, eg. one of my losses was 16-19, and my 16 points would have been one of the highest in the room.  This makes later round's matchmaking a nightmare for the TO.  In the last round people at the top had to be moved, sometimes by 2-3 tables because we had all played each other.

In the final results I came 4th (knowing my victory points I guessed something was probably wrong), and out of the four games I had played the person in 1st, 2nd & 3rd.  What turned out was that my game against the person in 1st place had been entered the wrong way round.  Normally this wouldn't have affected the results much but in this case the game had been a 25-10 win to me.  The TO let me know later when he checked it would have swapped my position with the winners.  With my 25-10 win it meant that even losing my last game to the person who came 2nd it wouldn't have been enough for them to catch-up.

I am concerned that the winner in tournaments which similar scoring systems (tournament points = game victory points) is the one who gets lucky and wins by a landslide in one of their games wins.  Yes I played well in that 25-10 game, but not to justify 25 tournament points, compared to what people on nearby tables would have got.

So I won, but not officially, my last tournament of 7th.  Most importantly I had 4 great games, painted up some new units that I can draw on for years to come.  Plus it got me back to the converting and painting table, in time for 8th edition.


What comes next

It's been busy since 8th edition came out, and over the next few posts I will cover:

• The tournament list I used for this tournament, and how I think 8th edition affects it, and the Dark Eldar list I will be using going forwards
• How my Tau will transition to the new edition, and the new models I have built and painted
• How much I love Bloodbowl (well you already knew that), and the new teams I am converting to use in my mate's annual winter league

It'll be much less time between posts going forwards, but in the meantime let me know how you have been finding 8th edition.

Rathstar