Dark Eldar: The One-Shot Cannon

Dark Eldar, in my experience, are singularly powerful in their ability to dish out focused punishment. Even tau and leafblower guard can have trouble matching the concentration of force that the mobile, fast, and deadly Dark Kin can bring to bear. Note, that I know a vehicle heavy guard list can put down more high strength hits then anyone else, but Dark Eldar can put all of their hits exactly where they want them to be better then anyone. I'll break down the three keys to success in my raiding force style of play.

1) Mobility
The Dark Eldar have two main assets in this regard: The Venom and the Raider. Both are fast open-topped skimmers with a powerful weapon. The raider boasts 10 man transport capacity and a Dark Lance, capable of cracking transports with ease and giving you a 50-50 at taking a point off a tank. The Venom carries only 5 men, but brings 2 splinter cannons - or 12 poisoned shots at BS 4 - to bear on anything within 36" even after it moves 12. My favourite part, however, is that unlike rhinos and razorbacks, these transports don't render your powerful shooting units (a kabalite squad with splinter cannon lays down 15 BS 4 Poisoned shots at 24") useless while inside. You can bring squads right where you want them, focusing the power of your full force against a fraction of the enemy's without sacrificing turns to pure movement. That ability to stack the odds to ensure your force is always overpowering compared to the forces that may be arrayed against them is one of the things that makes the Dark Eldar so tough to face.

2) Firepower
At 170 points, a Kabalite squad of 10 with a splinter cannon and a raider can fire a dark lance at one target (a transport, in the case of a mechanized list, or a tank if there are exposed infantry) in order to free up a target that the 15 poisoned shots coming to follow can ravage. Math wise, they put out 5 wounds to be saved, regardless of toughness, or 8 if in rapid fire range, which is damned impressive for the cost. Add that they have a 30" potential movement if their transport flat outs, are scoring, and gain feel no pain if they kill anything, and you have my MVP.

For less points, you can drop four Trueborn with Blasters in a venom for a similar cost, which while more fragile (once the transport is gone these are just waiting for any kind of attention before falling over) allows you to put out a similar number of poisoned shots (12 at 36") but gives you more tank stopping power with 4 dark light weapons. I use them as tank hunters, targeting the venom at either the occupants of the transport my dark light took or an infantry target of opportunity. Regardless, open topped vehicles loaded with hungry warriors lays down a huge curtain of fire for cheap.

Our heavy support, which I only bother counting as Ravagers, Razorwings, and Voidravens, put down huge swathes of hits and wounds, the specifics of which I'll leave to the big guns tactica upcoming. All of our army shares the same trait with few exceptions: they lay down huge amounts of fire on the move.

3) Initiative
This is what I call the ability to control the battlefield and proactively direct the flow of battle. That is to say, you can decide when and where combat, predominantly assaults but you may also control how and when shooting happens. This is done through the combination of the two above traits, but I feel it is important enough to count on its own. Ensuring your mobile fire platforms are positioned for an aggressive move towards a portion of the opponents field, or defensively to make sure that if they have first turn you can minimize their potential damage and maximize your maneuverability in the following turn, if the key to keeping the initiative in the battle. This is especially effective against static armies, like gun lines, and against medium speed assault armies, like infantry blobs (tyranids come to mind). Both allow you to move around the battlefield and focus your forces in such a way as to give your army the advantage in any combat that unfolds.

Welcome to the Kabal

Just in case you couldn't tell, I've decided to start a blog.
The basic elements of what my blog is going to be about are as follows:
1) Predominantly Warhammer 40k tactics and strategy
2) Battle reports of my fairly common matches, rendered in vague detail until I get a system down
3) Observations and commentary on trends I notice in the gaming community of Ottawa and online
4) Random thoughts and ideas surrounding the hobby
5) My slow, arduous journey as I try to take my hobby beyond the battle and into the sculpting, painting and actual craft that makes this game so much more then dice.

This will be interspersed with occasional posts about my merely mortal life, school, excuses as to why I don't have all the shiny new things, and other such unrelated nonsense.
Enough with this, on to the first post!