First Steps with DarkEldar

Hey guys,

yesterday I playtested the more or less new Dark Eldar Codex for the first time. I played against a friend of mine and his CSM army. I didn’t take any pictures, because I had had to use proxies for all of my models, not yet owning any Dark Eldars. We played 1.850 points each and rolled for mission and deployment, ending up with Seize Ground and the Pitched Battle deployment. Army lists were the following:

***************  2 HQ  *************** 

Baron Sathonyx

 - - - > 105 Points

Haemonculus

- Webway Portal

 - - - > 85 Points

Haemonculus

- Webway Portal

 - - - > 85 Points

***************  3 Elites  *************** 

Kabalite Trueborn

3 Kabalite Trueborn

- 3 x Blaster

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 136 Points

Kabalite Trueborn

3 Kabalite Trueborn

- 3 x Blaster

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 136 Points

Harlequins

8 Harlequins

- 8 x Harlequin's Kiss

- Upgrade to Shadowseer

 - - - > 206 Points

***************  5 Troops  *************** 

Hellions

20 Hellions

 - - - > 320 Points

Wracks

3 Wracks

+ Venom

   - Splinter Rifle

 - - - > 85 Points

Wracks

3 Wracks

 - - - > 30 Points

Wyches

10 Wyches

- 2 x Shardnet and Impaler

- Haywire Grenades

+ Upgrade to Hekatrix

   - Agoniser

 - - - > 170 Points

Wyches

10 Wyches

- 2 x Shardnet and Impaler

- Haywire Grenades

+ Upgrade to Hekatrix

   - Agoniser

 - - - > 170 Points

***************  3 Heavy Support  *************** 

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

 - - - > 105 Points

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

 - - - > 105 Points

Ravager

- 3 x Dark Lance

- Shock Prow

 - - - > 110 Points

Summed up: 1848 Points

***************  2 HQ  *************** 

Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submision

 - - - > 155 Points

Daemon Prince

- Wings

- Mark of Slaanesh

- Lash of Submision

 - - - > 155 Points

***************  1 Elites  *************** 

3 Chaos Terminators

- 1 x Chainfist

- 3 x Combi-Meltagun

+ Chaos Land Raider

   - Daemonic Possession

 - - - > 360 Points

***************  3 Troops  *************** 

7 Plague Marines

- 2 x Plasma Gun

+ Upgrade to Plague Champion

   - Power Fist

+ - Chaos Rhino

 - - - > 266 Points

7 Plague Marines

- 2 x Meltagun

+ Upgrade to Plague Champion

   - Power Fist

+ - Chaos Rhino

 - - - > 256 Points

8 Khorne Berzerkers

+ Upgrade to Skull Champion

   - Power Fist

 - - - > 208 Points

***************  3 Heavy Support  *************** 

2 Obliterators

 - - - > 150 Points

2 Obliterators

 - - - > 150 Points

Chaos Vindicator

- Daemonic Possession

 - - - > 145 Points

Summed up: 1845 Points

He basically played some kind of dual Lash, but loves to play his Plague Marines and Berzerkers and so always tries to squeeze them into his lists. But besides those changes to what I would play, the list is still a quite strong build.
My list was mostly built around the Baron and his 20 Hellion companions. In combination with some pain tokens these “friendly” guys can take and deal lots of damage and are there to protect my Haemonculi as long as those have not yet placed their Webway Portals. A closer look at this list and how it works will possibly be taken in another article.

Thanks to Baron Sathonyx I won the roll to choose sides and rolled a 6 for my combat drugs, giving a free pain token to some of my units. At the beginning of the game a spread out my Hellions in a long line to be able to deploy two portals at different spots in the middle of board to be able to threaten large parts from turn two on. Besides this unit I deployed all three of my Ravagers and one of my Kabbalite Trueborn in their Venom. The rest of my army remained in reserve.
He deployed his complete army, besides obviously his Terminators, who were intended to deepstrike somewhere they could do some damage. His deployed units mostly remained in one corner with his objective, which was directly opposite to mine.

In turn one I opened my two portals and advanced with my Hellion squad that already had the three pain tokens to make it strong against nearly everything. The shots of my Ravagers only destroyed one of the LRs lascannons, but were useless otherwise.
In his first turn both Demon Princes lashed my Hellion squad in order to ball them up, because he intended to shoot everything he had at them. The LR drove forward to throw his Berzerkers at the rests of my Hellions. Here he forgot to use the LRs smoke launchers and so I was able to destroy it in my next turn. The Vindicator nearly missed the Hellion unit and so only killed two of them, while he could easily had killed 6-8 of them. The Obliterators shot down one of my Ravagers and some of the Hellions died to the Plague Marines shooting at them, in the end the squad was charged by his Berzerkers and the units remained locked in combat. At this point I forgot to use my Hit and Run skill, otherwise I would have been able to kill the Berzerkers in the next turn, thanks to my shooting and FC.

At the beginning of my second turn I rolled for reserves and got one squad of Wyches and my second unit of Trueborns without their Venom. Both units entered through the left portal to be right in the middle of the fight. In this turn I destroyed the LR and destroyed the weapon of the Vindicator, leaving it rather useless. The Hellions were assisted in their fight against the Berzerkers by the freshly arrived Wyches, but also with their help the combat did not come to an end.
In his turn the Vindicator left without its weapon tried to do a ram attack against the Venom filled with the Trueborn, but the Venom was able to dodge the attack. After some shooting and the destruction of another Ravager he used one of his Demon Princes and one squad of Plague Marines to win the still on-going CC. If he had used both of his Princes it could have worked out, but this way I was able to finally kill the Berzerkers and the Demon Prince lost two wounds due to being fearless. This time I remembered to use the Hit and Run skill of my Hellions and the Demon Prince was free to move away, because the Wyches were only locked in combat with the Plague Marines.

The next turn brought me the other squad of Wyches and a squad of Harlequins. I decided to throw the Wyches right into battle, because there were still some vehicles remaining and they were equipped with grenades. The Harlequins were sent in through the second portal, because they were able to around his rather unprotected side through a large piece of terrain without being slowed down. I shot down the already wounded Daemon Prince and realized that Wyches and Plague Marines can be locked in CC for nearly an endless time, because none of these units seems to be able to do any damage to the other one (Wyches with FnP are great by the way, but so are Plague Marines).

The rest of the battle wasn’t really interesting in the end and can be told quite fast. My remaining Hellions killed all of his Obliterators and the second squad of Plague Marines shot down the Trueborn Venom and killed the remaining Trueborn, only to be charged by the Hellions and the Harlequins. After this the Harlequins hunted down the second Demon Prince and defeated him in two rounds of CC. His Terminators deepstriked next to the Venom with my second squad of Wracks and destroyed it, but the Wracks were able to outrun the Terminators. The Vindicator tried to tankshok my other unit of Wracks away from my home objective, but I was able to immobilise it before and a unit of Wyches finally destroyed it in an assault. There was only one critical moment, when in my fifth turn his (still locked in combat) Plague Marines slayed one of the Wyches and my unit ran away. Because of this he was able to mount the unit in his remaining Rhino and controlled his own objective. If the game had ended there it would have been a tie after objectives. But the game continued and my Hellions and Wyches were able to contest the objective, so in the end I won 1-0 after objectives and something like 17-3 when calculated by the ETC matrix.

The game was quite fun to play and I can say that Dark Eldar are by far stronger than I expected them to be. Next time I’m going to try out Beast units, as I have strong faith in those (they just seem great, when they charge out of a portal). Maybe I’ll be clever enough not to forget the use of something vital like Hit and Run, that’s something that really annoys me … but it is a step in the process of learning.
Next battle reports and test games will take a rather long time, because university started all over again today and I’m not going to find much time to play, I think … let’s hope that I can find at least some time to paint and update the blog ;)

Cheers Cleutin