# Countering Dark Eldar Tactics



## emporershand89 (Jun 11, 2010)

So I am in the process of converting from my long time Orkdom to the world of Imperial Gaurd. I love the fighting of humanity, and all the different units and tactical approached that can be used.

Armed with all my knowledge and practice and went into 3 strait battles....and got creamed. :angry: I fought Orks, of which I held my ground decently. I fought Chaos, with I got overrunned but managed to kill Abaddon(Suck it Panzi's). :laugh:

The worst of all was my fight against the Dark Eldar. I brought an Armor Brigade to the table and within 5 turns had all my armor, arty, and even heavy weapons teams had been mauled. I would like to note that most of this was done by Lances on the Raiders, and the Dark Elves drug ability to boost Attack and Weapons Skill.

I'm therefore asking those of you much more experienced in this how to take a Imperila Gaurd Army and defeat Dark Eldar. Thoughts, comments?


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## Iraqiel (May 21, 2008)

Dark Lances are a pain, as is the incredible charge range of the DE. Manticores can help you shut down lance bearing raiders, but generally i think you'll need to use cover to shield you from the lances and throw ablative infantry into the teeth of their drug fuelled rampagers. If you are playing vets, hide until you can mass your multilaser fire from the chimeras to bring down their transports, and try and focus your fire on their troops as soon as you can to stop them closing with you.


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## Archon Dan (Feb 6, 2012)

Unfortunately for us, Dark Eldar are fragile. Auto Cannon teams will make short work of our vehicles. We may hit hard but cannot withstand an extended firefight. Of course, our poison weapons are comparatively worse against Guard compared to higher Toughness armies. You want to make sure you finish off a threat though. A half-dead unit of Wyches can bite back surprisingly hard. Stunning a vehicle should suffice; just don't forget to finish it off later. As for the Combat Drugs, they are random. Hope your opponent rolls bad.

Find cover and pray we don't take you alive.


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## khrone forever (Dec 13, 2010)

if your running full mech with chimeras/ russes i would run autocannon IS (infantry squads) with a multilazer HB chimera (2 S7 shots, 3 S6 and 3S5 is nothing to be sniffed at) and maybe leave the russes, as the lances will negate the better armour.

maybe take a hydra or 2 for shits and giggles


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## maelstrom48 (Sep 5, 2012)

This I can do.

- SHOOT EM DOWN: Kill the transports with autocannons and laz0r beams.
- WHACK EM WITH YOUR KNIFE: Bog down the close combat units with your cannon fodder.
- KILL EM WITH FIRE: DE love cover. Flamers eat cover. Especially reavers; you'll ignore their 4+ jink save.
- INTERLOCKING FIELDS OF FIRE: Related to the above, DE will stick to cover whenever possible. Don't give them anywhere to hide.
- CLUSTERFUCK: DE want to divide and conquer your army. Make that harder for them to do. Also, clustering infantry around your tanks will give the tanks a save. You want that against lance spam.

Combined with the already-mentioned tactics, I think you'll be good to go.

Sorry for the caps. I get excited.


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## LTKage (May 2, 2012)

maelstrom48 said:


> This I can do.
> 
> - SHOOT EM DOWN: Kill the transports with autocannons and laz0r beams.
> - WHACK EM WITH YOUR KNIFE: Bog down the close combat units with your cannon fodder.
> ...


What he said but Reavers usually have a 3+ cover save. Also, aside from deployment and line of sight blocking terrain, I do not really see why a Dark Eldar army would need to stick to cover because Jink and/or Flicker Fields.

I am of the opinion that a game against Dark Eldar is almost entirely determined by their deployment and first round of movement. Suppose that the army has Night Shields and the game is not a Dawn of War scenario. He can basically nullify your first turn of shooting even with 48" range weapons and still hit you.

You can also be lazy and just tailor your army with Hydras but that would be pretty lame.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

LTKage said:


> You can also be lazy and just tailor your army with Hydras but that would be pretty lame.


Taking 1 Hydra isn't really tailoring, as you pay a little more for a Quad-Gun that you can't Evade against and an AV12 hull.

As for my 2 cents, quantity of fire over quality of fire against DE. Fire a Lascannon and it'll bounce off the Flickerfields and Jink. Fire 2 Autocannons and the 5+ will fail them.

Midnight


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## emporershand89 (Jun 11, 2010)

Cudo's to maelstrom48 for the tips, my Flamer units worked well against the basics. i must admit I had to burn both my guys and there guys in order to do it, but that tactics can be refined. 

The Hydra idea failed epically, being sniped first turn. Also the autocannons got mauled, and the lascannons only last 2 additional turns. Are DE vunerbale to leadership and psyck abilities?


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## LTKage (May 2, 2012)

MidnightSun said:


> Taking 1 Hydra isn't really tailoring, as you pay a little more for a Quad-Gun that you can't Evade against and an AV12 hull.


It is when someone comes onto the board asking how to deal with a certain army and someone just says take a Hydra or two. There was no mention of any air units and Hydras are only useful against Skimmers and aircraft.



emporershand89 said:


> Cudo's to maelstrom48 for the tips, my Flamer units worked well against the basics. i must admit I had to burn both my guys and there guys in order to do it, but that tactics can be refined.
> 
> The Hydra idea failed epically, being sniped first turn. Also the autocannons got mauled, and the lascannons only last 2 additional turns. Are DE vunerbale to leadership and psyck abilities?


You burned your own guys? Whaaa...? What do you mean?

You got sniped. Shit happens. Lascannons are worse than useless against Dark Eldar because they're a point sing that doesn't give you what you need: volume of fire. Most of their units are Leadership 8. They generally do not have psychic defenses unless the player takes a specific special character. That said, most units are either in melee or in a boat so getting off Psychic powers that mess with leadership is pretty hard.


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## emporershand89 (Jun 11, 2010)

LTKage said:


> You burned your own guys? Whaaa...? What do you mean?


I declared an attack on the corner of a unit that was in melee. I succeeded in burning there leader to a crisp and frying 2 other members of his honor guard. However IOT do this I ended up burning 6 of my own men in the crossfire. I repeated the same tactic with mixed results on there haemonculus, lost 3 guys but ended but burning him to death. Was rather brilliant actually 



LTKage said:


> You got sniped. Shit happens


While I appreciate the honesty here LTKage, I started this thread to find answer to avoiding it. The 2 DE players I fight seem to ignore cover and use even the slightest glimsp for an opportunity to nail me at 24' +


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## Iraqiel (May 21, 2008)

Have you checked that out for legality? I know last edition template weapon rules specifically stated that you couldn't fire a template weapon if your own troops came under it.


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## Archon Dan (Feb 6, 2012)

Page 28 of the BRB says you can't shoot into a close combat, unless of course you scatter into it. So, no, you can't choose to burn your own guys to get the enemy. Page 52 reinforces this by saying that a Template weapon may never place its template over a friendly model.


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## Loli (Mar 26, 2009)

Unless the rule for the weapon bypasses this, IE Kazimov


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## andygorn (Apr 1, 2011)

I've not played 6th yet, but played infantry Guard (no conscripts, but + a couple of tanks & transports) so this might be useful advice (or not), however:

Are you asking for ways for an IG armour brigade to beat DE's?
Or just any way for IG's to beat them?
Are you losing tanks to multi-assaults? Or do they charge one tank per unit at a time?

I always use autocannons in my Guard armies.
I don't go for lots of heavy weapon teams, but I always stick them in infantry units, as I found that they always need as many shots as they can get (due to average BS), but that the extra hit can help a lot with stuff like armour penetration (i.e. you're 
not relying on just a single hit for a knockout).

Basilisks are cheap & Griffons are even cheaper, for big templates. Even if they get a jink or a fnp save, you should have some big templates who will hurt something..?
Plus, you can stick heavy flamers + heavy stubbers on them and move them against infantry who kill your tanks (i.e. unless they get immobilised).

Do you find that you have so many tanks that they just get in each other's way for shooting (i.e. making it easier for the DE's to pick on one or two of them and kill them straight away)?

I always liked Leman Russes with as many shooting guns on as you can get (e.g. Punishers or the ones with autocannons on (can't remember the name) and 3 heavy bolters + heavy stubber.
Even if they kill the battle cannon, you still have 11 shots at Str 4 or 5 to kill stuff with...okay, it's not as nice as a str 8 big template, but they have a good range and can glance most of their transports or just machine-gun their infantry.

I also always take a Ratling unit for fun. Cheap & disposable, but might snipe some guys and make their points back.
I'm not sure if DE's have very many guns that ignore cover (apart from liquefiers)? So ratlings might be a bit better at surviving (the DE's still need the same numbers to kill them with splinter weapons, but they will have a better save than normal IG's).

I also take as many flamers and special weapons as I can fit into my normal infantry squads and command units...3-5 guys with flamers/combiflamers will hurt infantry with no armour. It's not guaranteed to _stop_ them, of course, but will put them in real pain.

How about deep striking Stormtroopers using flamers (to kill infantry), or melta/plasma to shoot transports, or just to grab objectives?

Just from what little I've seen of 6th, I thought that pretty much an Aegis line + quad gun were standard fare for almost every 6th ed army, too?


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## Antonius (Jan 10, 2012)

I've always seen Mech IG as the "hard counter" to DE. Remember, their infantry is only marginally better than you (better BS, better gun, more fighty), but until they get pain tokens, they are guardsmen with souped up guns. And also, remember that Lancespam is no more dangerous to chimera mech armies than SW LF spam which is knocking around the internet.

Hydras were the 5E counter to DE, but they are simply an AA platform now, so they are not as cheesy as they were.

Tbh, with an army that wants to put loads of troops into your face ASAP, Artillery slogging is probably not great. Massed S5/S6/S7 will wreck DE HARD. Autocannons, Multilasers, Grenade Launchers, Heavy Bolters, Plasma and all that jazz (Spam it, Box it and laugh - AP is irrelevant -- Treat as you would another IG army until they get into CC - and laugh again as you cut through both their armour and FNP in one fell swoop).

With their range issues, a simple hint is to remember that Dark lances have the same range as multilasers/Heavy bolters. Use this fact to shank up raiders/ravagers that come and try to wreck your parking lots. Avoid CC like the plague, particularly with Wyches and other CC units, and NEVER feed units to them (don't wanna hand them free pain tokens, do we?).

And remember, YOUR MEN ARE CHEAPER. YOUR RIDES ARE CHEAPER, but as equally destructive against DE raiders as they are against you. Outnumber DE with mid S weapons and profit. And laugh at poison because it has about the same effect as Hot-shot lasguns against IG (and they suck, don't they).


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## ChaosLordAzaroth (May 28, 2013)

I have a small DE army myself so il give you some advice
Auto Cannon heavy wep teams with bring it down on are brilliant versus us. I played a game against a mostly foot guard player (except 2 vendettas). Thanks to bring it down he was able to take both my raiders down with his 2 auto cannon teams.
Marbo is also great as is any guardsmen who can take demoliton charges


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