Dark Eldar rumor mill

So there are more and more Dark Eldar rumors and conformations out there. I was looking over at The Dark Eldar Kabal (http://dark-eldar.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-dark-eldar-ultimate-rules-summary.html) for a collective summary of the new stuff.
First, I always question rumors and people who have “seen the codex” or “spent time with it.” If it was Black Box time, then sure, but before then is just so questionable. Yes, pics from the codex are cool; the artwork is good (for what they have shown) and looks free from the horrid scribbling of John Blanche. However, everything posted, minus official conformations from GW, is just rumor now.

Well, I will comment on the trend of the codex rumors/ conformations. The Internet says, "HOORAY DARK ELDAR ARE AWESOME! LOOK AT THE MODELS! STUFF MOVES FAST! LOOK AT THE MODELS! THESE GUYS ARE AWESOME! LELITH AND WYCHES ARE THE BEST! MOVE AND FIRE ALL WEAPONS!"

Yes, they appear, if true, to be a fast and deadly army. They kind of are with the codex now. However, they are going to be terrible like they are now too. Anyone who plays Dark Eldar knows the pain of armor 10. It is bad, but mandatory and well armed, just bad. Now it appears it is raising in price for the exact same vehicle that is available in the codex now.

Seriously?!?! It is going to cost more before the soooper kool awesome upgrades. "THEY CAN GET A 5++ INVUL SAVE! THEY CAN MOVE 2D6” EXTRA! THEY Can"….sssshhhhhh quite down internet.

Yes, spend the points to get a 5++ Hail Mary save. Enjoy making multiples of that from any type of bolter fire as you approach marine pill boxes. 5++ is terrible and trying to make many of them to save your raider is just silly.
Sure you can also pay to make it move faster. Cool, but that just gets you closer to being rapid fired from those same bolters.

Increased points for nothing extra is, well just beyond words (well I can use lots of words, but kids might be looking at this). If the point increase was due to the ability to scout, deep strike or something I understand. Yet, to shove the same raider in there and make it more costly and just as fragile is dumb.

I look to orks and their truks. They are fast, open topped and armor 10. They are almost ½ the cost and dare I say it, better. Yes better than raiders. They die as easily and can’t fly over cover, but they have some rules that make blowing them up not as terrible for the riders. Plus orks are toughness 4 and strength 3 hits aren’t so bad for the rider damage roll. Just ask any ork player how much he spends on upgrading his truks. If the answer is anything outside of red paint job then you sir have found a crazy person.

Raiders are bad (needed and cool gun, but just so easy to blow-up) and soon worse due to an increased cost (before "needed" upgrades). The models are great, so why not make them cheaper in game? Is GW scared the multitude of cheap dark lances will ruin the game? Dark Lances are only good vs. armor 13 and 14. Against everything else, they are no better than any other strength 8 weapon. Which by and by is availble in multiples to most armies now. So why the points increase? These cost almost as much as a valkyrie, more than all rhino patterns and why? Where good codex writers is the reason. Well, the new codex will tell us why, but until then I say pffffft!!

You want alpha strike, then why not go with cheap raiders that can; scout, deep strike, or move 12+ and still shoot a dark lance (and not at additional cost). If your army gets past that, then the dark elder crumble. That is glass hammer. Go big turn 1! and hope to mop up the rest turn 2. Will they be this? Well not without the codex to confirm, my guess is no.

Khorne ideas day 2

So after looking at the next 500 points to add to my Khorne army, I made a mistake. Chariots come with Iron Hide already included. How awesome is that for 15 points? A chariot adds wounds, strength, attacks and 3+ armor; and is only 15 points! Yes you lose Independent Character, but big deal. I mean really, with Eternal Warrior everywhere who cares if a herald is a one man unit. A one man unit that is strength 6 (with upgrade), toughness 5 has 4 attacks, 4 wounds, furious charge, a power weapon and only costs 100 points; yes please I’ll take two. Well my choice has been made and was that easy.

I have to grab another Demon Prince with Iron Hide and Unholy Strength. I like a bit of repetition and two Demon Princes are better than one. Sure the Soul Grinder is awesome as well, but with melta everywhere (and it should be) they are to easily taken out.

So then that leaves me with the five painted Bloodletters, two Hearlds, a Demon Prince and extra points, and now how to spend them? I could add upgrades to stuff. Well, wings on the prince are an obvious and very necessary one. I could throw some icons in for summoning safety. I could add some extra Bloodcrushers. They are pretty effective, but the heralds already act like them with more wounds. EUREKA!

What am I missing from a pure Khorne force? Puppies! Yup add in some Fleshhounds. Yes they might suck by most standards, but I’m not a win at all costs guy. They need to be in the list and they need to not be the horrible GW models. Stupid fins! So, here is another chance for me to model some alternatives. I’ll throw six of them in, and that should run me to 1500.

Awesome! I now have an idea of what I want, now to get finished with the current project so I can start this.

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

So here is my 1000 point demonic host.
It is a pure Khorne force, duh, that was part of our 2009 Adepticon team tourney.
Our team consisted of 2 Khorne Demon and 2 Khorne Berzerker forces.







Roughly 1000 points of demonic assault!
Well we finished 78 of 110, so we did better than expected. We were expecting to fall into the bottom 25%.

We totally kicked ass with the theme points though!



This list is really fun and needs no finesse. All you do is; drop in, survive shooting….kill all you can or die trying. Either way, Khorne gets his skulls.

My list currently contains...


HQ Bloodthirster

ELITE 3 Bloodcrushers

TROOP 8 Bloodletters
8 Bloodletters Icon
8 Bloodletters Icon

HEAVY Demon Prince, Wings, Iron Hide, Unholy Might





To run this up to 1500, my next goal after this Night Lords fiasco, I will add some more punch.


HQ 2 heralds of Khorne, Chariot, Iron Hide, Unholy Might ( oh the fun to be had making these guys! )

TROOP 5 Bloodletters

HEAVY Demon Prince, Iron Hide, Unholy Might

This puts me at about…60 points under my 1500 point goal.

I like the extra points for filling out wings on prince, icons, gear, etc.

Then I thought of this list….

HQ Bloodthirster

TROOP 5 Bloodletters

HEAVY Demon Prince, Iron Hide, Unholy Might

This has me at 40 points under my goal. So it will basically come down to $ and time.
The same as always when it comes to this game.

Why the 5 Bloodletters in each list? Simple I have them painted already.

So here is my future project, and by future I mean far distant.

Counts as Seth

Using a few Death Company bits, Chaos Marine helmet, Night Lord bits pack, Nob big choppa and some Khorne Berzerker bits.....I have my Night Lords Chapter Master.









I needed some blood splatter on the axe, but I didn't want to cover the model. So a few bits of Blood Red and the Baal wash seemed to do the trick. I wanted the axe to look like it needs a good cleaning, but this guy just hasn't had time.

Once again the Death Company kit is just awesome for bits. Sure you might have to trim a few blood drops off or file away a feathery wing, but it is totally worth it.

Just great if you want to zazz up your assault guys or give marines some extra bits of flair.

Anyway, this "Seth" will get some alternate name to fill the role of Night Lord claw leader such and such.

1st steel coffin

Here is the 1st of my rhinos. I added some bullet holes and a couple schorch marks/ melted burned marks for flavor.
The flash on the camera killed the wash detail on the treads.
The storm bolter is removable for weapon destroyed results. The top hatch is also removeable for wrecked results, I can drop some G-Force 9 fire in there for the desired effect.
There are also chains a fantasy skull and eye symbols to chaos it up just a bit, but not too much. We Night Lords are evil; but not super crazy cult marine or Black Legion evil.
Once again the lightning I like and hate.

Adepticon 2010 Team Tourney list is........

HQ Seth or really counts as Seth

ELITE Sang Priest with power weapon

TROOP 8 man Assault Squad with melta gun, power fist, rhino

TROOP 8 man Assault Squad with power weapon,melta gun,melta bombs,rhino

FAST 3 Attack Bikes with Multi-Meltas

HEAVY Predator with auto cannon, heavy bolters and storm bolter

HEAVY Predator with auto cannon, heavy bolters and storm bolter


This falls 2 points shy of the 1000 point limit. I can't speak for my teammates yet, but I like the 1000 points I am running. I have tried and watched the Baal i action and wanted to used one. It can knock light armor open, if you roll well enough with the assault cannons. Massed Multi Melta, to me, seems the better option. Outside of something stupid should not be taken out by one shot, can threaten armor quickly, on bikes has a nice range and can be hidden behind a couple of rhino chassis 1st turn.

So I'll play this a bit and go from there.

Outgoing Dark Eldar

So I have a Dark Eldar force and am neither happy nor sad for the new release.
I was looking over the list of confirmed and yet unconfirmed Dark Eldar stuff at Dark Future Gaming (http://darkfuturegaming.blogspot.com/). I found some of the information interesting, some sad and some just blah.
So I thought I would list what I will and will not miss from the current and ancient codex.



What I’ll miss from the Dark Eldar codex

1. Cheap unit of warriors with 2 dark lances. Wow is it just silly that 2 units of 10 guys each can throw out 4 dark lance shots at BS4. That and only cost 200 points. Just silly stuff and it had to go away. I’ll miss you most of all.

2. The cheap and cheatsie tormentor helm extra attack in close combat.

3. Urein Rakarth’s abilities to auto wound with his weapons if they hit, and his points cost ( hell maybe even him if he isn’t in the new codex ). Nothing says goodbye to squads like an auto wounding destructor, if you roll well enough on the variable AP.

4. Jetbikes that get a 50-50 armor save and +1 strength. If the rumors are true, then this will be gone and replaced with strength 3 and 5+ save. A 5+ save is awful for a probably 20+ point jetbike. Hopefully, there will be something else besides the hit run attack (strength 3/4/5/6 or whatever it is) bit and a melta gun blaster thing. The 4+ armor helped them stay around a bit, but 5+....ICK!

5. Grotesques and their silly ability to negate most main liner shooting. Sure double tough and close combat eat through them, but they made an excellent delivery system for a cheap Dracon.

6. Cheap (and yet overpriced by today’s transport standards ) Raiders. If rumors are true, they are getting more expensive and somehow better? How is open top 10/10/10 getting more expensive and better at the same time? I’ll miss the 55 point cost if they are indeed raising them plus additional upgrade costs.

7. Combat drugs on HQ’s

What I won’t miss from the Dark Eldar codex

1. Combat drugs on units. Way too random for me.

2. Wyches. I never used them before, so I can only hope they look more appealing to me in the new codex. Along with them…

3. Hellions, Scourges, Mandrakes, and Warp Beast packs; these are awful units now. Hell, they were bad way before 5th edition too. I can only hope they get better. It shouldn’t take much to fix how awful they are.

4. All the other special characters. They were just drek. Vect is way too expensive and easy to get rid of in this edition. Lelith is cool, but I hate wyches so she stayed home. Decapitator? Really ? Kruellagh? It is proven science that fielding here causes sterility. Look it up.

5. The Talos and its abilities. Sure it has a nice stat line, but it is just too bad otherwise. It has random attacks, a shooting attack that is just weird, is a skimmer, but moves no faster than anything else on foot. That and it competed with Ravagers which were x3 in my army.

6. The destructor on Ravagers. Sure it might still be there, but will it be have the plasma cannon stats? Will it also have the ability to shoot at 3 shots S4 AP3 24”. A nice little gun on a fast vehicle. So I miss it ( hopefully it will still do all that and not jump the cost too much ).

7. Incubi as retinue only. Boo to that. If they were elite units, then would we have seen wyches at all in armies? Nope. They were good, but not good enough to only field as a bodyguard ( which GW seems to be getting away from thank the maker ).

8. The wargear section. Most of it was drek ( which GW also seems to be getting away from, thank the maker )

Sure the codex is still over a month away. I’m not advocating panic or joy for Dark Eldar players. Yes a new codex is good and new models are good. I however am very meh on it. My army is 1500 points and I have the models to finish and to push it to 1850.
Now those old models will look even worse next to the new range and adding new to the existing old just doesn’t work to well. How many old Dire Avengers do you see on the battlefield? Oblits? Rough Riders? Ratlings? Rhinos? Razorbacks? Stealth Suits? (small metal guys) Everyone can’t get all new toys when their army gets an update. Some have to make do with the old models and that guy is me. I can’t afford to replace what I have with new and shiny (and more costly) fancy new Dark Eldar.

So I’ll more than likely pull a Cavil and box my Dark Eldar like so many 3’s. At least till after the current project is done and the codex has been out for a bit. If I need new/old models, hopefully the old line isn’t marked up to the 9’s on discount sites and e-bay. Then I can cut, paste and pin what I need out of them. Right? Maybe?