1500 Points of Dark Eldar for the Ironman GT in Vegas

On January 14^th they have having the annual Ironman GT up in Las Vegas.

http://lasvegasgamersclub.com/ironman-xvii.aspx



I have never gone to one before, but I have had friends that have gone up to Vegas for this and they say that the Las Vegas Gamers put on a good tournament.


The details are:

1500 points (Low, but fine for semi-quick games)

4 Games in one day (Not a full GT, but more time for Vegas!)

Throne of Skulls scoring (Um…what is this again? You are comparing your scores to everyone else with the same army? What if you are the only one that is playing that army?)


So I thought I might be able to get my Dark Eldar done in 2-3 weeks. Lucky for me it is only 1500 points, but DE are cheap, so that is a lot of models still.

This is what I was thinking about taking:

First match against the new DE

I played against the new DE today at one of my rare local RTTs with my foot Eldar.

Thoughts:
DE can dish out the shots.
Repeat the mantra over and over again: 3s to hit, 4s to wound.
Practice your dice counting skills, because it takes a long time to play the games when you are always counting out handfuls of dice (My foot eldar have prepared me well for quick counting, but not my opponent).
The DE army moves so fast that on turn #2 it seemed like a lot later in the game.
That move, disembark, fleet, and assault is brutal if you are not careful.
Lack of grenades hurts a high Initiative, but fragile army.
If you are playing DE, bring lots of craters to make your own terrain because your raiders are going down, and you need a place to hide.
I liked Blasters. They increased their range to 18" in this edition (up from 12") making them a lot more effective.
We only did get to about turn #3 though because all that shooting slows down the game if you are not practiced with it.
I liked Venoms: 12 shots at 36" and moving 12"
Foot Eldar are a bad match-up for DE. Strength 6 let me ignore all of their FNP, and whenever a Shadow Field dropped, their HQs were goners. I also think all eldar builds might give them trouble.
He did not take any night shields, and he sure could have used them. I was on the fence about them after reading Stelek's article saying why they suck, but I am becoming a convert with the speed of the DE vehicles I think it will greatly help them refuse-flank.

It seems like the army struggles against a few things:
MEQs
Anything with high saves.

For an example they did a number on one if my Wraithlords and killed one quickly, then after that I cast fortune on my other Wraithlord and my Avatar, and it really slowed down the damage. He also had trouble killing my Warp Spiders. Their 3+ save kept them around for a long time, and here is something else I noticed...he wounded me only on a 4+ so toughness 3 was not such a liability as it normally is. He was wounding my guardians on a 4+ and I was wounding him on a 3+. That stalled his killing a lot more than I thought it would.

I am trying to build an army for tournament play, (I got a couple of boxes with my RTT winnings) and I have a few old DE Raider hulls that I am going to add to some Vypers to make some Venoms. I like the idea of having Trueborn in Venoms and I want to see how they will play out.

Were in the world is Blackmoor?

I just had 3 wonderful weeks of vacation, and as they say, all good things must come to an end. 


During my vacation I:

I played at a GT in Las Vegas, NV

Played in a GT in Rochester, NY

Played in an RTT in Brea, CA

And another RTT was canceled in Mesa, AZ so I did not get to play in it.

So I came close to 4 tournaments in 4 states in 3 weeks. Of course the local RTT is the one that crapped out because the 40K gaming scene here sucks. Of course if I played LoTR, I would be in great shape for getting in some games. That is what I get moving to a place that has everything backwards.


I received some news recently that I will be buying and playing a Dark Eldar army. I was thinking that I was going to take a pass on them and skip on over to the Grey Knights since my specialty is small and durable armies, but just like the mafia, each time you think you are out, they pull you back in!

So know I have to build a DE army without using any raiders or ravagers so I do not know how that will go. I will try to get them ready for an RTT in LA on Dec 26^th, and depending on how my painting is going I might take them up to the Ironman GT in Vegas in January on MLK day, as well as the Sprue Posse Grand Prix in LA the following weekend.