Dark Eldar for the Nova Events!

Hey folks!

The Nova Invitational and the Nova Open approach, and with army lists coming due, I decided it was time to think about what to do. The Nova Invitational is a one day, 5 round event at 1750 points, followed by two more days of the Nova Open at 2,000 points.

My traditional Dark Eldar army doesn’t much change – my 2,000 point army roughly looks like this:

HQ: Baron Sathonyx
HQ: Haemonculi
Troop1-5: 5x Warriors, Blaster, Dual Splinter Cannon Venom
Troop6: 9x Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Raider
Elite1-3: 4x Trueborn with blasters, Dual Splinter Cannon Venom
Fast: Beast Unit
Heavy 1-3: Ravagers

This is my “Take All Comer” army. There’s nothing out there that I don’t have the ability to kill – even Blessed Hull and Monoliths will go down under massed Haywire grenades, which is their purpose in this army.

My intent for my 1750 army is to cut out the wych squad and raider, along with the Haemonculi, while adding a fourth trueborn to the third trueborn unit (3x4 Trueborn with blasters), leaving me with exactly 1750 points.

I lose a close combat unit…but my wyches never had a Hekatrix or an agonizer anyway; they serve as a “tie-up” unit. I’m not particularly concerned about losing my haywire grenades – at this event, I don’t particularly expect to run into Necrons, and don’t expect land raiders to be a common occurrence – let along Black Templar ones. Razorback/rhino spam seems to be much more of a popular option, and the chances of one of the top players in the country showing up with one of those two things…and SURVIVING against armies better equipped to deal with them to end up against me doesn’t seem particularly likely.

I also lose my haemonculi. I don’t particularly need FnP without the wyches around, and since it would only apply to the beastmasters within the beast unit, I wouldn’t put it with them either. My haemonculi packs a Shattershard and a Crucible of Malediction. To be honest, the Shattershard NEVER kills anyone useful. In the history of playing Dark Eldar, the first IC kill that I’ve gotten with it was this Saturday against a Techmarine manning a Thunderfire Cannons. I killed the Techmarine, and the Thunderfire Cannon disappeared. Other than that, I’ve employed it against Marneus, Eldrad, Librarians, even Mephiston once, Big Meks, and anything else I could try to snipe. Sometimes I’ll kill a random model or two, but never the ICs. So I don’t feel particularly bad against losing it. Losing the Crucible of Malediction is also not painful. It too has never really done much – it’s been more of an insurance policy. Eldar can re-roll leadership with the right seer council members still alive, everything else is LD10, and even with the application of Torment Grenade Launchers to try forcing -1LD, I still haven’t had any luck with it. So it’s time for those to go.

In fact, I think maybe they’ll stay gone, and be replaced by a Hekatrix with an Agonizer if my wych unit can afford it. I’ll have to see how the points break down.

Depending on tournament and configuration, my elite choices usually boil down to three units of trueborn; two units of four, and one unit of three (based on points). At 1750, bringing that third unit up to four members evens me right out at 1750.

As long as I don’t run into triple monoliths playing “hide behind the monoliths” in a killpoint game that get lucky, or multiple Black Templar Land Raiders in the same army….I expect to be just fine.

I’m a bit disappointed to only see one Killpoint mission out of the five – despite playing a high killpoint army, remember that my sole goal in every game is to table the enemy across from me, regardless of objectives. Killpoints are right up my alley.

On a side-note, I’ve got a PACK Air now. We’ll see how it fits into the overhead when I fly to D.C. My first one showed up with damaged foam, which Battlefoam thankfully replaced – it arrived yesterday. Also, I have beautiful new venoms! Nine of them to be precise. I don’t think that I’ve done any battle reports with them, or have taken any pictures of them, but they are much nicer than the converted raiders I was using before the model came out. Now I’m trying to get a bunch of the new warriors finished in time (because my old ones look dipped say judges; I used a shiny clearcoat instead of matte). Eventually, I’ll probably start switching out my wyches – the ones I have now are metal, and I find that despite my best efforts, metal models eventually lose arms. Or legs. Or weapons. I’ve got several wyches that are visibly damaged because they’ve lost arms, and I tried gluing them back together at the scene of a tournament – often having to use some baking powder to get it to stick.

As always, click our sponsor links to fill the Hulksmash coffers! We managed to buy shirts (says he) which drained the ad fund, but as it replenishes, we’ll hopefully be able to pay for some tournament entry fees with it!