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| The local RTT took place over a week ago, and I
have had ample time to consider the games that I played while writing the
battle reports for this website. Several comments and observations
have come to mind, so I thought I would share them. First, a comment about army selection. Several people have asked me how I felt about the army list that I took. They asked if there were any changes that I would make in hindsight. In reality, there were very few changes that I would have made. The army's performance exceeded my expectations. The only significant change that comes to mind would be the addition of a Sucubbus and power weapon to the Reaver Jetbike squad. This combination would have given that squad much better close combat capability against space marines, which comprised the majority of my opponents. Ironically, when I first made my army list for the RTT there was a Reaver Succubus in the jetbike squad. In subsequent revisions to the army list, I dropped the Succubus to reallocate points for a Raider transport for the Wyche squad A second comment is with regards to the survivability of my Raider transports. It is generally accepted axiom within the community of Dark Eldar players that your army should have lots of transports or none at all. The theory goes that there is strength in numbers. If you take lots of transports, then your opponent will have too many targets to shoot at. Your Raiders with HQ and Wyches will likely survive initial rounds of shooting so that they can deliver their deadly cargo to assault enemy units. My army selection went completely against the accepted theory for dark eldar players. I only had two transports and they carried my most expensive units, Wyches and Dracon with Incubi (40% of my army.) Suprisingly, at least one of my transports survived in three out of the four games. In every game my Raider transports were key to repositioning my assault troops so that they could counter-assault enemy units that attacked my larger warrior squads. The survivability of my Raiders in the tournament has enlightened me to several considerations for planning my next tournament army. Every battlefield that I played on in the tournament had a sufficient amount of cover to hide two raider transports. In fact most of the battlefields (20 in all) at the RTT had sufficient cover to hide two raiders. Consequently, there was no need to take extra Raiders for "strength in numbers" or for screening my Wyche and HQ raiders from enemy fire. This to me is an important consideration for dark eldar players who feel that it is essential to field an all- or mostly- skimmer-based army to be successful in a tournament. I now believe that you can get by with far fewer skimmers and still be successful. A third comment is about the various armies that I faced in the tournament. With the exception of Jack Ramsey's Dark Eldar, all the other armies that I played against were classic space marine "rhino rush" armies that featured two or more rhinos charging toward my lines to deposit assault troops. Even the Dark Angels army that I faced was kitted out as a rhino rush army! I noticed that there were many other marine armies configured in a similar fashion. It is puzzling to me that most marine armies in the tournament were constructed to use the same "rhino rush" strategy. Perhaps it is commonly accepted amongst marine players that this style of army is the most effective in tournaments. Whatever the case, this trend makes it much easier to prepare a Dark Eldar army list for tournaments. Use lots of assault-style troops and add in a Talos or two and you should be set. Dark Eldar players can let the marines come to them and then pounce with a well orchestrated counter-assault. Generally, at least half of the armies in tournaments these days are marines, so it is very likely that at least half of your competition will be marines, and many of these will undoubtedly be of the "rhino rush" variety. Knowledge is power, use it :) My final comment is with regards to time limits in tournaments and how this affects army selection. During this tournament we had 90 minutes to setup, play, and score games at 1250 points. Needless to say this has a substantial impact on what army you use, your tactics, and your deployment. If your army is a massive, horde-style army, then you may not have sufficient time to deploy and move your troops so that you can finish any games. A friend of mine with a Tyranid army ended up with 4 tie games because he ran out of time in each one. If your army is a static shooting-style army, then you may be hard pressed to inflict enough casualties on your opponents army in 4-6 shooting turns to secure a victory (if you get that far in the game.) Perhaps this is why "rhino rush" armies are all the rage. They get into close combat quickly, and victory (or defeat) is usually quick and decisive. My army ended up being a counter-assault style army and this worked well with the "rhino rush" armies. We were usually embroiled in massive close combats by turn two and the battles were over pretty quickly; win, lose, or draw. I was able to finish all of my games within 90 minutes despite having 71 models to deploy and move. Needless to say I will keep this in mind when planning my next tournament army. Sometimes you have to think about the format of a tournament and adjust your army list to work best within that format, despite what kind of army you usually field in non-tournament games, or what army you think would work best overall (i.e. All-skimmer, shooty-style dark eldar.) |