Rantings on Dark Eldar: Continuing the Xenos Surge

Hey folks! 

I always forget to write this at the end of articles, so up front it goes:  As always, we appreciate you clicking on ads!  Hulksmash tells me that your efforts might actually pay for our Adepticon Team Tournament next year.  I presume he’s talking about the entry fees, not plane tickets and lodgings and stuff – but anything that helps is help appreciated. J

The purpose of this article is to address what I see as some “myths” about Dark Eldar perpetrating the internet, often advanced by “listened-to” parties about Dark Eldar – things I find irritating, incorrect, unsubstantiated, or a mixture of all three.  I also intend to browbeat army-building techniques and advance my own agenda for how to formulate a cohesive army.  As always, advice I give is flavored with my competitive nature, so apply as needed. 

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

List Help: Ard Boyz Dark Eldar

Hey Dash/Hulk/or anyone else...
I kinda have the same problem with Dash here has DE doesn't scale really well at 2.5k level while maintaining some coherency and redundancy. But I will say this… I’m going to build Vect with is ride as this is really the only point level I think Vect would work. Let me know what you think:
The Love Bird List (2500pt)
HQ: Vect + Dias of Destruction
HQ: Lady Malys

Troop: 5x Warriors with Blaster in a Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop: 5x Warriors with Blaster in a Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop: 5x Warriors with Blaster in a Venom with Dual Splinter Cannons
Troop: 9x Wyches + a Hekatrix, Agonizer, Haywire Grenades, Shardnet and Impaler, in a Raider with a Flickerfield, Shock Prow, and Grisly Trophies
Troop: 7x Wyches + a Hekatrix Agonizer, Haywire Grenades, Shardnet and Impaler (to go with Vect & Malys in Dias of Destruction)

'Ard Boyz for Dashofpepper

Hey folks!

Tomorrow is going to be an interesting experience. As you probably know, I'm a big fan of efficiency. I'm a systems engineer, process engineer, industrial engineer...different parts of the military and civilian world call it different things, but it all boils down to efficiency. That includes my hobby. All my hobbies in fact. When I'm at home, I'm often playing 2-3 video games at the same time on my computer (Flash games at Kongregate type of thing), while watching a movie with my wife.

But that's tangential to this: Hulksmash and I don't always agree on everything, but we have always agreed that Dark Eldar don't belong in 2,500 points. And yet...here I sit with a 2,500 point Dark Eldar list in hand, regretting having made it, and knowing that I'm going to be miserable playing it because of it's inherent inefficiencies, but with no better alternative. I had four choices:

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Seven

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dashofpepper’s Darklight Storm:

HQ: Baron Sathonyx

HQ: Haemonculi with Shattershard and Crucible of Malediction

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Six

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.


19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!


I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:


Dashofpepper’s Darklight Storm:
HQ: Baron Sathonyx
HQ: Haemonculi with Shattershard and Crucible of Malediction

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Five

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dashofpepper’s Darklight Storm:

HQ: Baron Sathonyx

HQ: Haemonculi with Shattershard and Crucible of Malediction

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Four (with a side rant)

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Three

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game Two

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

Dashofpepper at the Railhead Rumble GT: Game One

June 10, 2011: Dashofpepper makes the drive the Dallas, TX for the Railhead Rumble GT. I arrived in Dallas, checked into the hotel, picked Hulksmash up from the airport, and headed to the Sheraton to scope out the GT area of A-Kon.

19,200 mostly 16-25 year olds swarming an anime convention…an hour after arriving and pushing our way through dressed up (or undressed) anime fans, we finally discovered that the GT was in the attached Marriott and made our way there to check it out. I’m glad that we did an advance recon, or we would have been extremely late the following morning, which is probably why the GT was an hour late kicking off – others weren’t so fortunate!

I brought my Dark Eldar to the Railhead Rumble. The list is as follows:

 

AdMech Counts-As Dark Eldar (Hobby Article)

So last night while I was at home watching the truly awful movie Pirahna (we all have guilty pleasures!) I decided to finally get started on an idea I'd been messing around with for quite some time. Some of you may know and some may not that I built a counts-as AdMech Daemon army last year, you can find it here:

http://hulksmash-homeplace.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-daemons.html

I had a great time modeling this army and producing it. I have little labels printed out and put in the bag to limit confusion for my opponent and it got a very positive response in tournaments if not from some elements online.

Well when the Dark Eldar came out as much as I love their models the painting style doesn't mesh well with my styles (not good with smooth, I like edges) so again I was tempted to jump back into my AdMech to convert up a cool counts-as army. Well that project fell by the wayside as I got into my Bugs for most of this year as well as getting stuff painted for Adepticon and trying to get stuff painted for other events. Well I think this is going to be my hobby project for this year. I've been trying yearly to take on a moderately difficult and fun modelling project and I think this is the one. I've got 3 fully painted tournament level armies that would only need a small addition here and there at most so I think I'm ok taking a breath and finally getting started on this.

Dark Eldar Vs. The Universe!

I thought I would foray into a codex vs. codex ranking and compare my thoughts on how Dark Eldar stack up in a game against other Codices. I’ll be using a ranking system of 1-10, where a 1 is a colossal challenge to not get blown away and 10 is a game I expect to win with one hand tied behind my back.


*ponders* Hrm….but then there are some codices that have builds ranging from 1-10. I’ll have to break down some codices by build.


*ponders more* And then I had a realization. I’ve seen people try doing this for various codices before, or ranking codices in competitive order, or assigning tiers to them. And at the end of the day…it is all meaningless. There is no value add in doing so. Codices can’t be compared in a vacuum, or ranked against each other because the definitive factor in a game isn’t the lists at play, it’s the general behind them. And we already have a ranking system for generals – its called RankingsHQ.

Hulksmash is beating people up with Tyranids. I can’t imagine facing a Tyranid army that I wouldn’t almost laugh off the table. I *do* laugh Necrons off the table…and my Necrons are undefeated.

Would you rather have my venoms...or my venoms?

Howdy doodly.

Is is strange that I always start my posts with "Hey folks!" Or "Hey, this is Dashofpepper" or "Sup mah bitches and hoes?!?" Actually, not the last one because my previous posting venue (Dakka) probably would have screened it out.

In fact, to make that more "kosher" I should note that I've always called Black Templar "Black Devils" and lump BA/SW/GK all into a lump of "SM" cheese. Since we all know that Black Templar are bitches, and BA/SW/GK are hoes, then I could actually start my posts with, "Sup mah BDSM fans?!?"

But I digress.

After an unpleasant bout of debate concerning my venom conversions and their attendance at the Alamo, I sent a followup e-mail to the organizers of the Railhead Rumble GT with a picture of my venoms and a more descriptive explanation of the conversions. I had previously solicited and acquired permission to use them - as I did for the Alamo GT, Wargamescon, and the Nova Open - but after Michael Brandt noted that he didn't actually expect them to be as big as they were, I decided to revisit to make sure I was in the clear.

Nova Invitational Dark Eldar List #1

So I officially hate GW!

Well I really don't but those bastards just released some of the models that were missing from the collection and they are, as is consistant with the entire DE range, amazing! I wanna use some so here is a list that I think might work. Tell me what you guys think.

Adepticon - Dark Eldar List #2

HQ

Baron-105

Elite

3 Trueborn-146

3xBlasters, Venom w/2 SC’s

3 Trueborn-146

3xBlasters, Venom w/2 SC’s

3 Trueborn-146

3xBlasters, Venom w/2 SC’s

Adepticon-Dark Eldar List #1

So I'm excited because my stuff finally came in back home and my wife is gonna send it out tomorrow so I'll have some new pretty models to build while I'm stuck out here. This got me thinking about running them at Adepticon in a few months. So here is something I've come up with that doesn't include the Baron.

Dark Eldar w/Webway Portal

So I'm still tweaking and toying with my DE. Some people thought the spam list was a personal list I was planning on running. Now while I like it I also like toys so here is a newer and I think improved version of my Baron list:

-HQ-

Baron-105

Dark Eldar: The Army #4 (Heavy Support)

Well we're onto the newest and craziest section of the force org chart. This section has 3 new units out of a total number of 5 units. Just like the other sections there is a lot of room for choice in this section. Unlike the other sections this one is likely be almost always be filled. So let's get this party started.

Dark Eldar: The Army #3 (Fast Attack)

Well after an article on troops and on pre-game shenanigans we're going to move onto the least used portion of force org from the previous codex: Fast Attack


There are 4 units in the Fast Attack section which include Scourges, Beast Masters, Reavers, and Hellions. This is twice the number of units that were previously found in this entry and all of them can be used effectively unlike before. So let's get started: