Need tactics advice vs DE

[Brother Ehrein]

First off, the list...

 

Meph

Priest w/ pw x3

Furioso dread w/ talons : drop pod

Assault squad w/ flamer,pf : land raider w/mm x3

Dakka pred w/ hunter killer x3

2000 points

 

Im not really looking for list advice, though im open wargear swap suggestions. What i need is tactics advice vs the typical venom spam DE you see at tournaments. Advice from deployment to target priority. So far Ive been able to tackle most other tournament quality lists, but DE have been the bane of my tournament life.

[Blitzkrieg861]

Well definitely using Land Raiders against Eldar is going to be an uphill battle what with the abundance of lances...

 

I played against them a lot with my SW, but haven't with BA as of yet...

 

It's a little hard to say without knowing your opponent's exact list but a few things to always think about...

 

Most of the weapons in DE are poisoned. Splinter Cannons are popular on the venoms and they can't even touch your mech so stay meched up as best you can. As much as you can, use terrain or other vehicles to protect your side armor on your preds and even your dred. Focus your fire on a vehicle until it is downed. This shouldn't be too hard since they're almost all AV10 and open topped. DE is one of those armies where if you quickly drop 1 or 2 of their units they pretty much lost the game. Their biggest advantage is massed poison weapons and mobility. Take out their mech to remove this advantage and stay meched up until the last moment you can spare before disembarking. Stay away from wyches as much as possible in combat, roast them with shooting. They have almost nothing to stop your vehicles by themselves. Of course, as we're wanting to stay meched up, take out their targets that have dark lances, heat lances or haywire blasters.

 

Hope this helps a bit bro. Post his list if you can!

[Tamwulf]

I've played a few games against DE, and here are my "Rules of Thumb"

 

1. No vehicle will last more than one turn, thanks to the high speed, mobility, Dark Lances, and Haywire grenades present in the army.

 

2. Toughness and WS do not matter. Everything the DE will field will always wound you at worst on a 4+. They will always get to go first in assault.

 

3. Characters of any type, be they a Sgt or Dante himself, can be picked out and removed from play very easily.

 

4. They are faster then you, and they can get anywhere on the board before you can.

 

Things in your favor:

 

1. 3+ armor save, and if you can, 2+ armor saves are sheer frustration and worth their weight in gold to you (while the DE can easily wound you, they have very few things that ignore your armor save).

 

2. They have no assault grenades, so cover is your best friend in the first round of close combat.

 

3. Sanguinary Priests will help you out more than you can possibly imagine. Take as many as you can. I try for 1/Squad if I can get away with it. Note #3 above though.

 

4. If you can hit a DE vehicle, your chances of destroying it are very, very good. The most vulnerable ones are the open topped raiders carrying all kinds of nasty stuff towards you.

 

5. Your humble Bolter will kill 75% of the DE with no armor save. When in doubt, double tap.

 

Brother Ehrein, while your list is great against just about every other army out there, it's a very, very bad match up against most DE lists. Without you entertaining the idea of changing your list, there is not much advice to give.

 

Go first, go second, deploy everything, or reserve it all matters little to the DE. They are fast enough to zip all over the board and get to objectives, isolate squads, and pick out single models very easily. Your best strategy is to park the Land Raiders on any objectives and hope he can't pop them right away, then wipe the squad out inside the Land Raider in combat. The DE player will try to isolate a squad as much as possible so he can wipe it out and get blood tokens to become better. Your shooting targets should be any Raiders with troops that he has. Take away the Raiders, and the DE are suddenly a lot less scary as they have to foot slog everywhere.

 

I'll back up everything Blitz said- stay massed up, try and take out their transports.

 

Good luck!

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Some DE units like wyches have access to plasma grenades so be careful. Landraiders might work okay versus dark eldar as potentially you could drop six skimmers a turn. A rifleman dread really helps a lot.

 

Basically the best tactic I have found is circle your wagons and blaze them with firepower. If you split up your army they will play divide and conquer.

 

G ;)

[Father Mapple]

My main opponent is Dark Eldar, so I play against them a lot.

 

I'm assuming all the x3s mean that you have 3 separate Predators, 3 separate Land Raiders, etc. The Land Raiders should be normal ones, right?

 

First, Mephiston is the only thing in your army that will ever go first, but he shouldn't fight wyches OR incubi since they have Invul saves. Send him against Kabalite warriors, wracks, Grotesques, hellions, etc. The trick to Mephiston is choosing his targets. Hide him behind a Landraider, or two Preds sitting rear-end to rear-end, and don't let him get attacked with the ranged poison weapons unless a priest is nearby.

 

Keep the priests inside the Landraiders, because they can be singled out and attacked. If you charge your units out of the Landraider, they should be within 6" most times from the hull, and you won't have them lose their Feel No Pain. At best, you'll go the same initiative against Kabalites, but any of the CC troops that DE have, you're going to go last with or without the +1 I from the Priest. And if troops go from inside the LR straight into combat, the only way they get shot is if you wipe out the enemy unit. If they do, they can weather a ton of shots out there on their own with a Priest safely tucked in a LR.

 

Mass of attacks is important. Multicharge units if you can. Sure, wyches have 4+ invuls, but 50% saves aren't good enough against about 20 or so attacks (I'm assuming you lost a couple of dudes on their initiative) that hit on 4s and wound on 2+ (S5 vs T3). Make sure to use your bolt pistols as well, or the heavy bolters on the LandRaiders if they sit still. A twin-linked heavy bolter is better than a lascannon against any troops in the DE army.

 

All of your vehicles should never sit still. You can use both Lascannons on the Landraiders if you move 6", which means the DE now need 4's to hit with haywire grenades, and the Predators should always move 6" as well, AWAY from the Dark Eldar. Your Autocannons outdistance the Dark Lances on Raiders, so keeping it in that narrow 6" where you shoot and they move up is tough, but your 2 shots at S7 versus an open-topped AV10 is better than their single S8 versus AV12.

 

In deployment, always deploy everything, with LR's providing cover for other things. If you somehow go first (since so many people take Vect or Baron to mess up the deployment orders) then keep your units together, moving 6", for the second turn too. If they clump up to come get you... GREAT! 3+ armor saves and 4+ FNP means you win more combats, especially if you're charging multiple people in.

 

Drop the Furioso a lot closer to your lines than it feels like you should. The AV13 is sort of a wash in shooting since they have lances, and poisoned guns will never hurt it, so the only safe place for it is in combat. But if you drop it in the DE deployment zone, they'll all just zoom away and you'll never catch anything. It's better to drop it midfield, put it's back against some kind of cover/terrain/friendly vehicle, and let it charge the things that come forward. Again, it should, like Mephiston, target Wracks, Grotesques, Beast masters (doesn't matter if the beasts Rend: that's too many 6s they have to roll!) and Kabalites instead of Wyches. But if you have to, charge Wyches, because then the Furioso will tie that unit up for 4 or 5 assaults. They need 6s to hit with grenades (if they even paid for them), never have more than 10 in a squad, and then it's still just a glancing hit 86% of the time, meaning your Dread ignores half those glancing hits in combat. It takes a long time to take off two weapons, immobilize, destroy a Furioso. If they don't have grenades, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. I had 1 Furioso tie up Vect, his Trueborn, and another squad of Wyches for 5 total game turns once, so I cleaned up everything else on the board, then multi-charged my whole army into that one, and tabled the guy on the last turn.

 

For your force, target priority should go something like this:

Ravagers

Monstrous Creatures

Raiders

Venoms

jetbikes

Wyches/hellions

Kabalites/Wracks

HQs - because you'll never be able to target them except in Assault, and power fists are amazing at this.