Well fast forward a few years and a total redesign of the Dark Eldar line had everyone excited, so we raised the banner and decided that we should get out of retirement and participate. The road is paved with hard work, planning and may even call for an occasional update or two! After looking at the amazing models we went about creating our lists/theme and so forth.
Though we are still hammering down our "theme" and army lists are rough plan is to bring four Dark Eldar armies, two being part of a larger Kabal while one is a wych cult (mine) and the last a haemonculus cult. We are aiming for a desert/sand world theme, after all one look at the raiders and they scream Jabba the Hutt's desert skiffs!
Currently we are testing out our proposed lists before we make any final purchases, the funny thing about that is that all of the team members have had little to no experience with Dark Eldar. Aside from myself who played Dark Eldar when they first came out (1998 or so) I quickly sold them thinking that I would need to buy tons of raiders to make them effective. As it so happens I picked up Orks right after and it has been an obsession ever since.. but what can you say?
Our first test run of lists was me teamed up with Jon, though the game only got half way (we faced "That Guy") we did learn more of the rules and their subtle interactions than before. Im short we faced:
Eldrad
Avatar
Warp Spiders x6 w/ exarch
Fire Dragons x10 w/ exarch in wave serpent w/ scatter lasers
Dire Avengers x10 w/ exarch in wave serpent w/ tl bright lances
Dire Avengers x10 w/ exarch in wave serpent w/ tl bright lances
Dark Reapers x5 w/ exarch
Wraithlord w/ bright lance
Vibro Cannons x3
vs
Jon:
Haemonculus w/ ID gauntlet
Mandrakes x7 w/ champ
*Warriors x9 w/ splinter cannon and champ in raider w/ chain snares
*Warriors x10 w/ splinter cannon and champ in raider w/ chain snares
*Warriors x10 w/ splinter cannon and champ in raider w/ chain snares
Ravager x2 w/ night and flicker fields
*the warriors could have had blasters I don't recall them being used much/at all.
Myself:
Archon w/ venom blade, combat drugs, clone field and webway portal
Wych x7 w/ razorflail and champ w/ venom blade in raider
Wych x7 w/ razorflail and champ w/ venom blade in raider
Wych x8 w/ shardnet and champ w/ venom blade in raider
Beastmaster x2 Khymera x8
Reavers x6 w/ heat lance x2 and champ
Cronos w/ soul siphon
Webway: Mandrakes, Cronos, Reavers and Kymera
Combat Drugs = +1 WS
The first turn and a half we were getting hammered as we failed ALL of our reserves rolls, the Eldar player getting first also didn't help as just about all of his weapons could down Raiders. Once our reserves came in though the game started to turn very quickly, I have to admit we were plagued with some horrible case of bad luck early on. But just as we managed to turn the corner the store was about to close so we called it a tie, constant rules disputes and unclear rules (thanks GW) slowed down the game.
Observations:
-Chain Snares rock I don't care what people say about them, Jon's weaponless raider ran over countless Eldar unlucky enough to be caught outside of their transports.
-Open topped isn't so bad! We learned that wrecked/destroyed vehicles subtract 1 from the strength of getting wounded. Now this may be old news to most people but coming from people that have never used open topped vehicles in the past or 5th ed in general thats BIG news for transports that have as much armor as a paper mache statue. On top of that fact it just so happened that every +1 added to roll for damage turned out better than the original result.
-Combat Drugs/+1WS just about anything you roll on the combat drugs table isn't bad, at first I was bummed I didn't get +1 str or attack but in retrospect. Hitting enemies on 3+ (most times) isn't that bad and actually helped me greatly in combat.
-Power from Pain is a great "free" ability given to Dark Eldar with the first pain point giving units what they really need some staying power on the field.
-Cronos was very nifty to have around between having a MEQ cutting flame template and bouncing around pain tokens it seems solid enough via webway.
No comments:
Post a Comment