Null Deployment in 6th Ed

One of my favourite tricks in 5th ed was not deploying anything at all, forcing my opponent to advance lamely for two turns, then pouncing on his unprotected flank with great vengeance and furious anger! Sometimes Samuel L Jackson would even turn up personally to punctuate my manuoeveurs with his famous biblical bombast... actually he never returned my calls. But nevertheless, 6th ed has made it a lot harder for afficionados of the null deployment.


Well, except for daemons, anyway.

My Dark Eldar do not like going second, do not like deploying downrange of an army with plentiful long range firepower, and especially do not like doing so in the laterally restricted confines of the Hammer and Anvil deployment. After being smashed by a Fire Prism based Eldar army on the weekend, I've started thinking about some ways in which I can relive the good old days of hiding like the coward I am.

The obvious impediment is the rule limiting the amount of forces that can be placed in reserve - up to half of  the units that are not obliged to start in reserve. The obvious work around is implicit; take flyers, they have to start in reserve! But that's not the be-all and end-all - after all, I don't really care if a Razorwing gets shot down, but I'm gutted when my wyches get nailed (and killed in the explosion etc...), especially if its turn one and they haven't had the chance to acquire jink save.

So, up to half suggests that, say, 4 of 9 eligible units could start in reserves, as 5 would exceed half. Whether this is subject to the general rule of rounding fractions up I'm not quite sure, but I'll assume not as it is the more limiting case. With that out of the way, what more can we do?

The next point to make is that units are counted regardless of size, and regardless of transports. An Archon is one choice. 10 Wyches on a Raider is one choice. You can see where this leads. Small, disposable units deploy. Larger, more valuable units reserve.

So this means there are two categories of unit that we can happily deploy. Disposable units, and tough units. Guess which there is more of in the Dark Eldar book! But in saying that, a Talos or Cronos can generally deploy quite happily, as long as it takes care to avoid the really big guns. Sometimes a Ravager with night shields can deploy perfectly safely, particularly if Night Fighting is on the menu. So there are some situational caveats, naturally.

Given that, let me try to make some kind of army list.

Deploying units:
5 Warriors, blaster = 60 points
5 Warriors, blaster = 60 points
1 Beastmaster, 1 Khymerae = 24 points
3 Trueborn, 1 dark lance = 61 points
Ravager, dark lances, night shields = 115 points

Reserving units:
Succubus, haywire, agoniser and power axe = 105 points (I know, I know... but I painted her and now I like her...)
8 Wyches, razorflail, haywire, Hekatrix with agoniser, Raider = 196 points
10 Warriors, splinter cannon, blaster, sybarite with blast pistol, Raider = 200 points
4 Trueborn, blasters, Venom = 173 points
6 Reavers, 2 heat lances, 2 cluster caltrops = 196 points

Must reserve:
Razorwing, flicker field = 155 points
Razorwing, flicker field = 155 points

Total: 1500 points

Obvious problem is obvious: going second will give away first blood. Every, single, time. Shit happens. If you were playing dark eldar, you were probably resigned to that anyway.  Also, kill points in purge hurt (15), and giving away a vp for two models in the Scouring is not optimal. But seriously, when you play scouring, how hard is it to hide two guys?

So, not optimised, but a test list. Does it achieve our objective? It deploys 320 points, 21.3% of the total. A lot of those are infantry that should be able to find somewhere to hide. If there's no Night fight for the ravager to hide, it can always swap with the reavers, too. Most of the firepower and objective taking power is in reserve. So generally, forces are conserved by null deployment.

How about the distraction units? do they bring something to the table? They bring a dark lance, ten extra backfield objective holders, and a laughably disposble beast squad - whose real purpose, if it survives the first turn shooting gallery, is to tank overwatch hits when the wyches decide to get stuck in.

No doubt, this idea needs evolving to become a workable battlefield tactic. And the worst matchup, in my opinion, of Purge/Hammer is still really nasty. But hey, one turn less of being shot to shit is all good for me!

Any ideas on how your army can exploit deployment? Daemons, of course, need not apply!