Hello everyone, Frankie here to talk about my new Dark Eldar/ Eldar tournament list. Check out the Tactics Corner for more great articles!
My original Dark Eldar list had the Corpse Thief Formation in it and worked quite well. My main loses with that list were against the Tau sniper drone unit with Monster Hunter and vs. Necron Lord Spam. The new list should have little to no problem with those lists so let’s dive in.
First off we have the HQ’s: I take a Haemonculus with the Webway portal to make my hammer unit viable. I also take a Llhamean from Dark Eldar to give me another cheap Venom. From Eldar I take an Autarch and he fills a lot of different rolls in my army. He is mounted on a Jetbike for last turn objective grabs or to help get other units in to close combat. He also has the shard of Anaris to give my Webway unit fearless, and makes him quite a beast in close combat. He has a Banshee mask so that if I charge a Close combat unit at least I will be striking first. And Lastly he has a fusion blaster for a BS 5 Melta shot. My HQ’s are not the strongest but they give me a lot of tactical flexibility especially with the plus one, minus one to reserves from the Autarch.
Next we’ve got the main unit in the army: Firedragons. I take a 9 man strong unit with an Exarch that has the fast shot upgrade for two BS 5 shots. This unit is usually accompanied by the Haemonculus and the Autarch for a no scatter deepstrike and a Fearless character. This unit has been awesome in the few games I have played. It catches a lot of people off guard and packs a game changing punch. Luckily the unit is pretty survivable as well and has a lot of wounds to get through. My Haemonculus is usually the first meat shield in the unit, followed by a few wounds on the Autarch. The Unit has come in on turn two every game so far and has survived till at least turn four.
Then We have the troops. I take 4 units of Dark Eldar Warriors inside of Venoms for a total of 5 Venoms in the list. This is my anti Monstrous creature shooting and it mops of infantry as well. And of course I take one unit of Eldar Jetbikes because why would you not, they are so good. The last turn objective grab from those jetbikes is stupid good. My troops are not very resilient but I think I bring enough to be able to whether the opponent’s shooting and survive to grab a few objectives. Plus the fire power from the Venoms and the warriors inside gives me great anti Infantry.
The most effective slot in my army is my Fast Attack. I take three of the Razorwing Jetfighters which in every game have earned there points back plus a surplus. The four strength 6 large blast missiles they shoot evaporate most units. They are also great at killing armor with there two Dark Lance shots. These three flyers have won quite a few games by coming back on the table turn five and shooting the enemy off of an objective. I also take a Eldar Nightwing Fighter. This is a Forgeworld unit that has vector dancer and a 2+ jink save. In the games I have played so far this fighter has been awesome at dealing that final wound to big scary things and bringing down unwanted flyers. So far my little airforce has been great and unmatched as in I havent had all of them die in a game yet.
Now lastly we have the big guy himself. King bad ass the Wraithknight. This model is so damn good it’s crazy. He almost always earns his points back and in most games deals the crippling blow to my opponents. He almost always dies but usually gets the job done beforehand. If I had enough points I would for sure take another one. They are just too darn good to pass up.
So that is the list. It has been a lot of fun and is a bit more tactical in comparison to the Talos formation. It always feels like I have a chance with this list. I think my hardest match ups would be vs. Wave Serpent spam but honestly who doesn’t have a hard time with that. Second hardest match up I think would be that Tyrannic War Veteran formation with all the Storm Talons. I believe the list is a tournament winning list and I am aiming to prove that very shortly. What do you guys think? What do you think the lists weaknesses are?
| HQ | ||
| Haemonculus | Webway Portal | 1 |
| Autarch | Eldar Jetbike, Fusion Gun, Shard of Anaris, Banshee Mask | 1 |
| Llahmaen | 1 | |
| Venom | 1 | |
| Elites | ||
| Fire Dragons | Exarch, Fast shot | 9 |
| Troops | ||
| Kabalite Warrior | Syrabite (Warlord) | 5 |
| Venom | Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Kabalite Warrior | 5 | |
| Venom | Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Kabalite Warrior | 5 | |
| Venom | Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Kabalite Warrior | 5 | |
| Venom | Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Guardian Jetbikes | 3 | |
| Fast Attack | ||
| Razorwing Jetfighter | Two Dark Lances, Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Razorwing Jetfighter | Two Dark Lances, Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Razorwing Jetfighter | Two Dark Lances, Splinter Cannon | 1 |
| Night wing | 1 | |
| Heavy Support | ||
| Wraithknight | 1 |
Only played it once but Frankie and I had a helluva game with it… great list! Better than the previous one imo.
If you bring a Fast Attack empty Raider, then you can put Haemy+Dragons inside for the no-scatter drop, then you disembark the Dragons without the Haemy and they can Battle Focus.
He drops the Autarch with them and he is on a jetbike, so the Autarch either wouldn’t drop with or would need to lose the bike
Yeah I have thought about that option as well and I might try it out before ruling it out.
Great list Frankie. Love the inclusion of the tooled up Autarch and the airforce led by the Nightwing is awesome. So glad to see you’re getting good use out of yours. Mine is SO good… in 15 games he’s never died and killed almost every single flyer fielded against him.
Yeah the Nightwing is a beast.
I can see the battle focus with raider working well with interceptor armies like tau. DS out of site and focus. But that worth losing a venom?
Can’t wait to bring my Darkdar to the LVO again. 🙂
I would suggest to use blastarchon instead of haemy for hq choice. Haemy does not give any bonuses to firedragons.
You do not have any dark lances starting on board except wraitknight who only have 2 shots, i would suggest to use 1-2 ravagers to have reliable dark lances instead of lahmia, venom and maybe nightwing 8Do not know its point cost, 2 triple lance ravagers are 250 pts.)
The raider suggestion for the firedragons is a must i think, the raider effectively gives them fearless and mobility.
Very good points and I will have to think about getting some more anti tank long range in my army.
You will be happy to note that the Autarch is BS6, so he hits on 2’s and rerolls misses (hits on 6s). I think that’s worked for me once or twice. 🙂
Ah good point thank you
have there been batreps with the corpsethief list? i am about to build one.
Sigh. How I miss the days when stand-alone Dark Elder were still considered tournament worthy.
To be fair, there are very few armies that do that use allies.
Interesting list, Frankie. I think I agree with the comment about the empty Raider above for the Fire Dragons- drinsanotron made excellent use of his at TSHFT and I think that the additional tactical flexibility (and protection) it offers is pretty key. It allows you to dodge Ion Shields, essentially guaranteeing a kill there, and also gives you a token layer of protection against Interceptor shots, which may be the difference between getting vaporized by a huge volley of Broadside fire and getting to actually shoot at something.
Does the Autarch typically run with the Windrider Jetbikes, or come in with the Fire Dragons, or what? I’m not sure if I see a really strong plan for him overall. I ran a guy with a similar setup (except adding a Laser Lance and Mantle of the Laughing God in place of the Shard) and was reasonably happy with him as a combined melee deterrent/objective-stealer, but I think if you’re looking to optimize your list there are better options. A cheap Spiritseer (if you don’t care about your reserves) to drop some scary psychic powers out might work better for you and give you more room elsewhere.
I think my biggest concern with your list overall would be anti-tank. That unit of Fire Dragons obviously packs a wallop, but presuming that they die to enemy return fire (or get tied up in melee, etc, since there’s no reasonable way the other guy will leave them alone, not with that many points and two HQs in there) you’re essentially down to just the flyers and Wraithknight. That’s not terrible, but neither is it all that exciting and while the Nightwing has Vector Dancer to keep it on target, the others do not and are going to struggle to land shots where you need them at critical times. I’d be particularly worried about Wave Serpents, the natural enemy of Dark Eldar- on average, you will only BARELY kill one Jinking Serpent with them.
With 1/3 of the army being flyers, SS isn’t an option. The list doesn’t have the durability to wait 3 turns for the fliers to meander on when the dice don’t cooperate.
I’m running a pretty standard 5 dragons w/WWP carrier in my list now, and I have to question if 9 is a good idea. 5 is enough to drop a knight, or take it down to 1HP. Being as knights are the most common, and durable, heavy armor you are likely to see, I wonder if you’re being served well with all the FD redundancy. You could have 7 WG for ~ same points, and losing only 3 shots nets you a TON of durability (which I assume is the prime motivation for the bodies anywho).
Just curious why you went the FD route instead of the WG route, especially if you’re not taking advantage of battle focusing out of a transport.
Understandable for the reserves, I suppose. I still feel like an Autarch build that was doing something more for the list would be more useful, though.
For FD vs WG, I think it boils down to the FD being a lot cheaper (although with Frankie’s setup somewhat less so) and AP1. Better against MCs, worse against AV13/14 (unless my math fails me.) T6 is obviously a big deal, but the larger bases also do stop them from fitting some places also.
The autarch is actually pretty standard, the fact he’s decent at HtH is kind of a side effect not an end. Jetbike and banshee mask is a no brainer, and Shard is a vehicle for fearless more than anything else.
Normally I’d agree about FD’s being cheaper, as I mentioned I run 5 myself. Partly it’s due to them being cheap, partly due to 5 being sufficient to take most targets. W/o split fire, 10 melta shots is overkill for most things in the current meta. I suppose if you see a lot of LOW’s then the extra guns help, but most of the time the extra 5 shots are going to waste. So that would leave durability as the reason for the bodies, and as I said I think 6 WG ends up being better there.
I’m guessing the idea is to just drop 11 melta shots to overwhelm the knight’s ability to shield them off. However, as other’s have mentioned, using a raider allows you to bypass the shield altogether. It would be cheaper, and more reliable to boot. It just seems his current Dragonstar is pretty sub-optimal, and most of us are wondering what secret sauce the Greatest-40k-Player-In-The-World has discovered that we’re missing :p
I have to third that the Dragons need a Raider. With the Raider they become scary fast for a unit with 10 melta shots coming your way. You disembark 6 after the Raider moves 6 and then Battle Focus up even more if you need to for a possible 18″ which lands your guns at the 30″ threat range. Will the raider save them every time? No, but it gives them leverage where they need it to max out the effectiveness of the unit. And another lance never hurts. But your air force is scary, especially with that Nightwing! I know my list would have a hard time trying to kill all those jets.
I like the Archon, Wraith, Seer, Irillyth bomb myself. It is very nasty.
Dragons work deep striking in a serpent with wwp? Or would a raider be better?
I have a unit of 6 with exarch/fast shot, autarch with fusion and blaster archon.
This is how I use them. 5 FD’s in a WS w/archon. Most of the time they just drop by themselves and the WS starts on the board, but vs Knights they go into the WS so they can Battle Focus around the shield.
*Edit*
Only because I’m running Eldar main, DE ally and have my FA slot filled. If it’s reasonable to use a raider for them, do that.
Yeah Wave serpents are great but I think I hate them to much to use them haha. Ive always said running Eldar primary you really do not need anything from DE. The webway is nice but not something the Eldar truly need.
I think that you could change the firedragons could be replaced for wraithguard. They are a little more expensive but could be troop choices( with the right hq) and have more toughnes so no worries with t3 instant death. I can see that the autarch is needed in an Reserve heavy army, but i also think that wraithguard troops can be a huge Bonus. Overall a nice List.
Sorry for my poor english
Yeah Wraithguard are usually a great choice. But they are more expensive, slower, and in my opinion arnt as good at killing vehicles especially when there numbers start diminishing. Im really not sold on them in all the games ive played against them. Where as the firedragons have been amazing every game and have survived way longer than the turn they come in.
Great list Frankie. I love the Nightwing!
Yeah me too and I really like the razorwings they always kill so much.
Needs Scourge. At least 3 units, with haywire blasters.