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| Written by Dan Moore, December
16, 2002 |
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| Introduction Recently, there has been some discussion on the Commorragh group about the value of the webway portal in a dark eldar army. Most dark eldar players contend that the portal is a waste of points. They feel that it takes too long to deploy and even longer for reserves to arrive. The other downside is that if the character with the portal is killed before it is deployed then any reserves for the portal are lost. There is a small minority of dark eldar players that argue in favor of the webway portal. They maintain that it is a great way to get slow moving units like the talos into hand-to-hand combat in the quickest manner. I have given some thought to the matter and concluded that most people overlook the most important feature of the webway portal. The portal gives you complete flexibility when deploying all of your troops, not just a talos. Many might think this advantage is insignificant, but it is my contention that much of the success or failure of any army, dark eldar in particular, hinges on proper deployment of your forces. If a battlefield offers little cover for your troops and transports, then you may need a way to deploy them out of sight until they are ready to strike. This is especially true if your opponent has an army built for shooting and you have an army that is primarily skimmer-based. The beauty of the webway portal is that it allows you to adjust your tactics and deployment on the spot to deal with whatever style of army you are facing. It is a way to change the rules for your army alone. The portal can be used to put none, one, or many of your units in reserves depending upon the circumstances. Likewise the portal allows you to bring in reserves from whatever point on the battlefield you desire. |
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| Turn 1 - What happens when you go second? The strengths of the dark eldar army are speed and firepower. They need to be moving at all times to protect themselves from enemy fire and to project a maximum amount of force against a minimum number of enemy models. This is usually not a problem after a battle has started, but during turn one victory or defeat often depends on who goes first. If the dark eldar's opponent gets first shot, then it is quite likely that they will be able to deliver a knockout punch on turn 1 by shooting down all the skimmers that are sitting stationary at the start of the battle. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard players say that their success or failure in a battle depended on who got to go first. This is especially true for armies that rely on firepower to win. If you can silence the opponent's guns before he gets a chance to shoot, then you can win easily. I remember watching a league battle between dark eldar and tau, two armies that featured plenty of firepower. The dark eldar player (who was league champion) had most of his troops mounted in skimmers, while the tau player had a hammerhead, some broadsides, and a few battle suits. Unfortunately for the dark eldar player, the battlefield did not offer much cover, and the tau player got to go first. Needless to say, the battle was over almost before it started. Most of the skimmers were shot down on turn 1 and most of their occupants died in the resulting crashes. There was very little that the dark eldar player could do in this case because of too many transports and not enough cover. A webway portal might have changed all this. There is a reason that the dark eldar race has army specific rules that require them to be the attacker in any scenarios that have attackers and defenders. They need to be on the offensive all the time because most of their units do not hold up well to enemy fire. Dark eldar need to be the aggressors and control the flow of a battle to have any chance of success against a balanced opposing army. In this case the best defense is a good offense. Unfortunately, there are a significant number of scenarios that don't have attackers and defenders. Worse still, the tournaments in which I have played waived the dark eldar army rule that requires them to always be the attacker. The webway portal offers the dark eldar player a way to minimize the impact of getting shot to pieces if they do not go first in a battle. Rather than being forced to deploy your entire army prior at the start of most battles you can opt to place the bulk of your forces in reserve and have them enter through the portal. This can change the whole dynamic of a battle in your favor provided you know which units to put in reserve and have a little luck in rolling for these reserves. If a battlefield does not have much cover, as is the case with many tournaments, the webway portal can be used to maximize the effectiveness of the available cover. Anything that cannot be deployed behind cover can be put in reserve out of harms way for the first turn. |
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| Webway portals - Points to remember There are several things to remember when using a webway portal in this fashion: First and foremost you should give the portal to a durable character that will survive long enough to deploy it. If needed, the character can be assigned to a squad to for added durability. The haemonculus is one obvious choice for this role as they are cheap at 25 pts and have toughness 4. I have heard of some players giving webway portals to sybarites and deploying the portals successfully. Personally, I think this is risky, but if it works for you all the better. Second you should deploy the character with the portal behind or in cover so that he/she cannot be shot at or assaulted on turn 1. This will allow him/her time to deploy the portal before the enemy can close for battle. Third, you will need to be wary of indirect fire weapons; especially those that could instant kill the character with the portal. An obvious tactic here would be to give the character a shadowfield. It is expensive but effective. Another tactic is to assign the character to a squad and put them between two or more pieces of cover. If the indirect fire is slightly off target, then you want to insure that your squad gets as many cover saves as possible. Likewise, if the indirect fire scores a direct hit then you want as many bodies as possible to soak up wounds to preserve your character. Alternately you could put the character with the portal on a raider but this is risky, as there is a chance the raider could be annihilated by ordnance fire. |
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| Webway Portals - the good and the bad Aside from the obvious risk of putting many of your units in reserve to the webway portal there are potential advantages and disadvantages to bringing your army on piecemeal from reserves while your opponent has his entire army deployed. You need to be aware of both to gain the most advantage from using the portal. First the advantages: Any units that you bring in as reserves from the portal will be moving. For raiders, this means that your opponent will only be able to glance them if they move more than 6", which they will of course. This certainly is better than giving your opponent the chance to get a penetrating hit on your skimmers while they hover motionless on turn 1. Along with movement your units will gain the benefit of being able to shoot enemy units first BEFORE the enemy can shoot at them. This is a huge advantage for dark eldar because they are great at destroying enemy units with firepower but poor when it comes to surviving return fire. Fortunately, most dark eldar units excel at shooting while moving. With the exception of dark lances in squads every other weapon in the dark eldar arsenal can be fired as the unit advances. Assuming that most of your units are in reserve, your opponent will be faced with a number of difficult decisions. Does he/she move their forces out of cover to claim objectives or table quarters? Or does your opponent sit tight and wait for you to come to him. If your opponent relies on firepower, then they will probably hold position to maximize the range and effectiveness of their weapons. If they move their forces, then they run the risk of your reserves popping out of the webway at an inopportune moment and shooting/assaulting them when they are more vulnerable. The disadvantages to using the portal can prove lethal so you need to keep them in mind. If you place most of your units in reserve with the portal, then you are giving the initiative to your opponent. All of his/her units will be on the battlefield and ready to claim quarters or seize objectives while your units enter from reserves. For many armies this can be a serious problem, but it is less so with dark eldar because of their mobility. They can move fast when needed and rapidly cover any ground lost to an early enemy advance. Your placement of the webway portal will focus your deployment to a single point on the battlefield. This gives your opponent the opportunity to charge that position so that he can focus his firepower on your units as they come out of the portal in a random fashion based upon your reserve rolls. The key to avoiding this problem is careful placement of the portal in the first place. Presumably the character with the portal is behind cover at the start of the game so it is likely that the activated portal will be screened from most enemy fire. Even so, you may want to screen the portal with a raider or other unit should your opponent flank your position. |
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| Webway Portal - Key to the City - a short battle
report One battle where I used the webway portal was memorable because the portal proved to be pivotal to victory. In this instance the battle was multi-player with a 12-turn time limit. A 12-foot long gameboard was used and it featured wooded countryside and a city separated by a fortified zone with trenches and bunkers. A 6000 point chaos/dark eldar force was advancing from the woods to capture the city, which was held by a 6000 point combined force of Eldar, IG, and Sisters of Battle. Since this was a large battle I equipped my 2000-point dark eldar force with two webway portals. Each was carried by a haemonculus with a grotesque retinue on a raider. The raiders were given screaming jets so that they could deep strike into the city. The other dark eldar general took one webway portal and gave it to the sybarite of a scourge squad. The strategy was daring and straightforward: the dark eldar units with portals used deep-strike to deploy at the far end of the city. They then opened the webway portals so that 3 talos, a pack of warpbeasts, and a large foot squad of wyches could assault the city's defenders from within. The strategy worked fairly well as both raiders and the scourges were able to deep-strike on turn 2. Both raiders and the scourges were destroyed by enemy fire after deep-strike, but both sets of raider passengers survived the crashes to deploy their webway portals on turn 3. All of the reserves were through the portals by turn 4, and they proved to be decisive in the dark eldar/chaos capture of the city. |