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Dark Eldar Tactics


Following are some specific dark eldar tactics that may surprise even a seasoned 40K veteran.
1. Torture amps - What a great piece of wargear.  It ggives you the unique ability to move a skimmer up to 24" over any terrain and still tank shock an enemy unit.  This is a great way to disrupt your opponent's battle lines, break coherency on an enemy unit, or deliver your assault troops into the enemies lines.   There are several interesting considerations when using your raiders to tank shock. 

First you should position the raider for maximum effect if it is shot down.  Ideally, it should block an enemy units Line Of Sight as much as possible.  For example if you tank shock a devastator squad, then you want to position the raider so that at least half of the squad will be screened.  This will force your opponent to redeploy around the raider if it is shot down.  This translates to one less round of shooting for the devastators.

Second, you should tank shock the models in the middle of an enemy unit to break coherency if the models fail their Death or Glory attacks  If your raider is not shot down by a death or glory attack, then you want to disrupt the enemy unit and force them to regroup to maintain unit coherency.  This will prevent heavy weapons units from firing during their turn after they have been tank shocked.

Third, pack the raider with troops that can assault the enemy if the skimmer is shot down by a death or glory attack.  This strategem will force your opponent to use some of his units to deal with your troops, which are now in his battle lines.  This should divert some of his firepower away from your remaining transports and troops as they close for battle.  A haemonculus with grotesques is ideal for this role as most of the unit will survive a raider crash and subsequent small arms fire from your opponent.

2.
Pop goes the Rhino - Rhino transports and other troop-carryingg vehicles can easily become tombs for your opponents troops if you take advantage of the rules clarifications about vehicle access points.  Simply stated, if you destroy an enemy transport, then the troops within the transport must be deployed next to the wreck near one of the access points.  If these access points are blocked by enemy units then the troops in the transport are automatically destroyed when the transport is destroyed.  Quite nice indeed. 

The keys to making this strategem work are speed and recklessness.  These requirements are a perfect fit for jetbikes.  You can turbo-boost jetbikes up to 24" to put them in a position to block the access points of a transport.  The next step is to concentrate you dark lance and blaster fire on the transport to insure that you destroy it.  The beauty of this is that it works almost equally as well for land raiders as it does for rhinos because of the dark lance's / blaster's unique ability to penetrate armor.  Imagine the look of horror on the face of your favorite space marine player when you destroy his land raider AND its cargo of terminators with a single shot! 

There is one major drawback which should be considered.  The unit that you use to block the transport access points will quite likely be destroyed in the following turn.  The key is to make the sacrifice worthwhile.  If you use a 4-man jetbike unit at 100 points, then you should use them against a transport with troops that costs well in excess of this amount.  Fortunately, most space marine transports that are filled with troops will at cost at least twice as much as the jetbike squad.

Below are two photographs of a reaver squad that has surrounded and Imperial Fists space marine command squad and their rhino.  Note that you have to maintain 2" coherency with the reaver unit.









Miniatures © Games Workshop 2003. All rights reserved. Used without permission - models painted by Dan Moore

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