Wacky Dark Eldar Armies, 1 - Haywire!

Disclaimer: Creeping Darkness does not support or condone 80s hairstyles or pouty looks.

I hate tanks. I hate the smarmy grins of the untouchable missile launcher guys, safe in their oversized metal longjohns. And most of all, I hate watching my dark lances bounce off their protective layer of Darklight Protection Factor 30+ Zinc cream.

In fact, I found the disabling and disintegration of these glorified wheeliebins problematic even in 4th edition, before the 5th edition damage chart revised their survivability to levels that may see Land Raiders joining the other cockroaches after the nuclear holocaust. Even when I resorted to packing more dark lances than splinter rifles, the thrice-cursed boxes often took the distinctly rude option of placing themselves in cover, ensuring that not even a direct hit from Ron Jeremy's wang could remove them from the tabletop.

Hence, one of the curvier Dark Eldar lists that I've come up with, and now share with the anonymous internet at large. As you may have gathered from the title and preceding rant, it picks the haywire ball up from where a drunk Phil Kelly left it, and runs screaming toward the distant horizon of suicide-by-horde-army.

At 1,500 points:

Haemonculus with liquifier and venom blade [65]
8 Wyches, including a shardnet and a hekatrix (agoniser), all with haywire [136]
Raider with dark lance and enhanced aethersails [65]

Haemonculus with liquifier and venom blade [65]
8 Wyches, including a shardnet and a hekatrix (agoniser), all with haywire [136]
Raider with dark lance and enhanced aethersails [65]

10 Scourges, including a solarite and 4 haywire blasters [270]

5 Scourges, including 2 haywire blasters [130]

5 Scourges, including 2 haywire blasters [130]

Talos with chainflails and haywire blaster [115]

Talos with chainflails and haywire blaster [115]

Voidraven with 4 shatterfield missiles, night shield, flickerfield [205]

Total 1497 points, 10 haywire blasters, 12 KP, only two troops.

Obviously there are only two units that can actually take haywire blasters, so this somewhat limits the spammability of them. Luckily, a Talos is one such unit; putting some power weapon hand to hand grunt into an otherwise pretty oddball list.

In objective missions, the two wych squads start in reserve, and hope that the enemy have grown tired enough of static shocks that they are milling around on foot. In kill point missions they can get stuck in straight away, using their haywire grenades to fuck shit up, or at least give little tickles to any tanks that they can find. Hence the haemonculus, giving them Feel No Pain as a modicum of protection against both annoyed vehicles that have the temerity of exploding instead of being quietly wrecked, and also against the wrath of passengers who have now realised that they will have to walk home.

The Scourges fly around at approximately 24", stunning vehicles left, right, and centre. The large squad can pick preferentially on vehicle squadrons; any damage result prevents a squadroned vehicle from shooting (at least, with its best gun), as immobilised results lead to death. Four haywire blasters in a unit have a respectable 40% chance of inflicting 3 or 4 damage rolls on an unsuspecting adversary, and a 76.5% chance of inflicting at least two. Naturally these may be subject to cover saves, reducing the odds of rendering a whole squadron ineffective, but still, good times.

The Talos' provide some support to the Scourges, picking other vehicles to try and stun, and if possible assault. With the chainflails, a Talos can be quite deadly to vehicles, and unlike the rest of the Dark Eldar army, has a decent chance of monstering whatever was inside, massed power fists notwithstanding.

The voidraven could be swapped out for another Talos, or a foot squad to hold home base, but is really here to add a more conventional dimension of ranged anti-tank with its twin void lances. That, coupled with 4 rather dangerous shatterfield missiles to thin out the numbers of any advancing hordes before they get too cocky. The S7 missiles mean that in a pinch they could be used against a parking lot, especially if other passengers have been forced out nearby for a two-fer.

Of course, Tyranids will laugh at this list, and so will any foot castle based armies. At least the Scourges can still kick out some anti-infantry poison with shardcarbines, though personally I would reserve everything and hope for the best.

Worst case, at least opposing tank commanders should be mildly annoyed. And that's what really matters!

The Shredder... Returns?

This budding Archon has been scheming, plotting and dreaming about which units will be mustered for war. And, like many, I've noted the devastating potential of Trueborn loaded with darklight.

As it happens, I've so far only managed to buy one box of warriors, and they've been established as a raider squad. Noting that there is exactly one of each special warrior weapon in the box, I have planned my order of warrior buying and building accordingly.

The second warrior box I pick up will be dedicated to a dark lance / blaster home objective holder squad. These guys will be boots on the ground, probably accompanied by a Haemonculus to harden them up. The next warrior box will be another raider squad, similar to the first.

So when I pick up my fourth box of warriors, that will leave me with one blaster and three dark lances available. The dark lance minus barrel will look enough like a blaster to pass for one, so that gives me a four blaster Trueborn unit to make Land Raider drivers reach for their security blankets. But I've been toying with a few ideas on what to do with the other half of the box. And it has occurred to me, that I will also have four shredders.

The shredder gets a bad rep next to its snazzier cousin. All my raider squads will be toting blasters, and probably blast pistols, for the extra anti-tank threat. Besides, one shredder in a unit of dudes who are quite capable of annoying infantry themselves is not so scary.

Four of them in a dedicated shredder unit may be a different story. It should be straightforward enough to hit 3 models under a small blast marker, so 12+ hits from a round of shooting is quite possible. S6 is nothing to sneeze at, and the non-existent AP is mitigated when firing at units in cover (ie everything).

Naturally it will not be as good against anything with an armour value. But that may yet be an advantage, as they can act as surprise anti-transport! Even with a -1 to damage tables, four S6 hits on side or rear armour can make a mess of many light vehicles. And while the foe is busy running away from the darklight destroyers, he may just overlook these little guys!

At least, that's the plan. At the rate I paint, I'll be putting them together maybe, next December? Still, the best laid plans of men and Archons...

The Rise of the Fallen Phoenix

A nice feature of the new Dark Eldar codex is the presence of Ahra, the legendary fallen phoenix - here named Drazhar, master of blades. Really, the transition between the particularly good bodyguard of the old book to Ahra incarnate exemplifies the evolution of the backstory across the whole codex.

I suppose I should point out that the designers stop short of explicitly calling him out, but they don't stop too far from it. The clincher is his profile, which by sheer coincidence is the exact same profile as the other phoenix lords!

It certainly got me wondering, how would he stack up against his craftworlder cousins? The most obvious challenge would be Karandras, successor to the Striking Scorpion mantle.

Now, Karandras has a problem. If he wants to ignore Drazhar's armour, which he does, he'll have to swing last. This means that he'll have to survive a full round of attacks! Unluckily for him, Drazhar can re-roll his misses, and put 4 S6 attacks into him very easily (as it happens, he has a better chance using the 4 S6 attacks than the 6 S4 attacks, even accounting for the increased Onslaught chance). It works out to be about a 50% chance to kill Karandras stone dead before he can so much as lift his limp wrist.

However, should he fail, Karandras has 6 S8 attacks to show him how its done. And he, too, has about a 50% chance of removing Drazhar's smug little updated head from his shoulders.

As both of them have extremely lethal attacks, and not much in the way of defence, chances are good that victory will go to he who strikes first. In this case, the Fallen One!

Against Jain Zar things start to get heated, as she can throw her 4 S6 attacks at the same time as Drazhar's. However big D's ability to gain preferred enemy against her tips the balance; he will slaughter her in one round ~50% of the time, but will be cut down only 19% of the time himself. While he has the advantage, it is very likely that whoever wins will be in no shape to do much more!

But against the Father of the Phoenix, Asurmen, Drazhar meets his match. Asurmen not only matches his rerolls, but denies him an attack. And while Drazhar can still muster one more S4 attack than his foe, Asurmen rather unsportingly carries the extra protection of an invulnerable save.

Incidentally, the presence of both Asurmen's invulnerable save and Defend ability and Drazhar's Onslaught special rule tips the balance ever so slightly in favour of using the demiklaives to provide +2 attacks. In this situation, the expected value for the number of wounds caused is 0.9791 for the +2S, and 0.9871 for the +2A, so the discrepancy is minor.

Asurmen though administers tough love to his wayward protege, returning an expected 1.4802 wounds (killing him in one round 15% of the time, compared to 7.8%) while spanking Drazhar, and telling him to bring an invulnerable next time.

Of course, this all assumes that they all stand in a ceremonial candle-lit duelling pit, where no-one has charged. If Jain Zar wins the charge, her chances of offing the recalcitrant Phoenix rise to ~34.5%, and the odds of mutual annihilation are a quite respectable 17.5%. If Drazhar were to charge Asurmen, he is not only better off with the +2S once again, but his chance to one-round kill the do-gooder climbs to 11.3%, and his expected return to 1.2849. If he has been lucky enough to chew through some mooks first, or simply made friends with a Haemonculus and some Wracks, he might have enough pain tokens to unleash a furious charge. Naturally, this favours the +2A mode of demiklaives, and improves his chances of nailing the King in one go to 21.59%. Going first is nice, too!

So, if you're going to teach those silly Craftworlders how a real Phoenix Lord rolls, feel free. You might not emerge unscathed, but the dark brethren are surely used to that. Just remember, if Asurmen is around, to bring the PAIN!

The Talos is back, baby, and he's got some brand new tricks.

The standout among them, to my mind at least, is the chainflail. No longer need your Talos be stranded at the floor of his considerable combat potential by a poorly timed '1', for you can roll two dice and take the best!

Either that, or you can equip the beast with an additional close combat weapon, for a bonus attack. Or hey, why not both?

Upgrade	None	CF	CCW	CF+CCW
Exp Attacks	3.5	4.472	4.5	5.472
Attacks/pt	0.0350	0.0407	0.0391	0.0438
Charge EA	4.5	5.472	5.5	6.472
CAtt/pt	0.0450	0.0497	0.0478	0.0518

It turns out that the most effective is also the most efficient, in that combining the two options gives more attacks per point than the other, and both upgrade options provide more attacks per point than the un-upgraded golem. The chainflail edges the extra close combat weapon out slightly, and although its expected value (mean) is very slightly lower, its median result is higher (5 vs 4.5).

Personally, I favour the chainflail, as it provides better insurance against rolling 1, 2 or 3 attacks, but if I had the points I would take both. For the cost, I would always make room for at least the chainflails. I really hate rolling just one attack!

There is also the ichor injector, for some insta-death lovin'. If you find your Talos up against a lot of Nobz, tyranid warriors or Thunderwolf cavalry, this little toy will let you chew through them quicker than your dear opponent can reach for a barf bag. On the other hand, its pretty useless against most everything else, so unless you know your foe in advance I would prefer the chainflails. If you do take it, upgrade with the extra ccw so that you won't get stuck on one attack.

And aside from the hand-to-claw upgrades, there are a trio of gun options available. Personally I don't dig the pods; although the blast is nice, and the S5 nice, I can't see it doing anything that the splinter cannons don't already. The liquifier could come in handy if hordes are foreseen, as being a monstrous creature he can fire both the cannons and the liquifier prior to charging. Again, take the extra ccw, as the liquifier takes the chain-flail's slot.

Finally, there are two antitank options, in the heat lance and haywire blaster. As our metal friend has lost the dinky little rule restricting him to one hit against vehicles, he has suddenly become quite a beastly anti-tank assault unit. One of these anti-tank weapons on top will let him harass enemy vehicles from a distance, and give him a good shot at immobilising a vehicle prior to the assault. In which case it becomes very easy meat.

As may have become clear, I have been a long time fan of the Talos, and almost always make room for him in my heavy support slots. Do you use a Talos? If so, which new tricks will you be taking?

Djinni-ous

Previously I looked at the slightly mad idea of taking the Djinn Blade, and started wondering how it stacked up against the other common weapons. Now, I'll have a look at how much flailing needs to happen before an opposing independent character can be taken out of action, thus charging the soul trap and transforming the limp rhubarb of S3 to the brutally sharp knife of S6.

So what is the probability of taking out an independent character or monstrous creature with repeated application of limp rhubarb?

The table below summarises the probability of inflicting sufficient unsaved wounds to remove a character, of 2 or 3 starting wounds.



Clearly the Husk Blade is the best at nailing multiwound characters, since this is what it was designed for. Of interest is that the Djinn blade has a higher probability of doing enough damage to kill compared to the agoniser, against T4, and not against T5+. Again, the purpose of the agoniser is to reliably wound high toughness opponents, so this is no surprise. It suggests that there is a narrow window around T3/T4 where the Djinn blade is optimal against Rank and File, and serviceable against independent characters. Notwithstanding the concomitant risk.

For the curious, even though the Djinn Blade has a lower expected return against T4 opponents than the agoniser, it has a higher chance to inflict 2+ wounds than the agoniser in the same circumstances. It also has a higher chance to bomb out completely, hence the lower expected return.

Of course, the comparison is hardly flattering to the imprisoned genie. An agoniser is generally better against a broad range of opponents, and a Husk Blade is much better at offing independent characters and monstrous creatures. Why would you bother with trapping your foes essence in a blade of not so much utility?

	Empowered
	Djinn Blade	Husk Blade
Drug	vs T <>	vs T <>
Fleet/+1WS	4.26	3.33
+1S	4.26	3.33
+1A	4.81	3.89
reroll wounds	4.97	3.89
Fcharge	4.26	3.33

That's why. An expected return of over 4 wounds per charge round, against any foe with T<5, or <6 if furious charge or +1S drugs are enabled.

Of course, if you are willing to spend a few more points, there is the third way. Equip with your choice of agoniser or Husk blade, and take the Djinn Blade along for the ride. As it stands, it is a wargear item, meaning that you can equip one other special weapon and still have a pistol for the bonus attack. Use the other weapon to charge the soul trap, then switch to the Djinn Blade to start reaping the other ranks.

And if you do bet the Devil your head, hope your shadowfield pulls through!

Djinni in a Bottle?

I'm sure I'm not the only budding Archon maniacal enough to consider combining the only item that lets you attack yourself, with the only item that lets you boost your strength past the instant death threshold. Am I?

The Soul Trap is already pretty well known, coming as it does on the stock Archon model. All you have to do is nail an independent character or monstrous ceature, capture its soul, and voila! Double strength. This lends itself naturally to being paired with the Husk Blade, also on the out-of-the-box Archon, to insta-death those pesky targets in one hit.

But, the psychotic within me is drawn to one of the seeming red-headed stepchilds of the wargear list, the Djinn blade. Oh the potential, an extra two power weapon attacks, at S6 with the trapped soul of an enemy poseur! Hell, throw in a pair of pain tokens and a favourable combat drug result, and suddenly its 8 attacks with a S8 I8 power weapon, also known as dead sexy.

Of course, there are a couple of hoops to climb before that combo could be engaged. Even the drug result will only happen one game in six, although 9 S7 I8 attacks or 8 S7 I8 reroll wounds attacks are perfectly fine.

The real kicker, though, comes in the Djinn Blade's rebellious genie, who will stab your Archon instead of his foes if given the chance! Then, all of that extra strength will tragically backfire, instantly ending the reign of terror in a manner that most of his foes would find highly amusing.

So is it worth the risk?

Firstly, what are the chances of skewering oneself upon the soul imbued monstrosity? Any double in the two extra attacks will trigger a loss of control, causing both of them to hit the wielder. Straight out, this is a 1/6 chance to wear two of your own attacks, although there is presumably nothing to stop the remaining six of your strikes from slaying your foe. Particularly galling, this is more than likely (2/3) to convert two of your own hits into two hits of yourself. Of course, if you are still swinging at base S3, this may not be a huge problem, especially if your shadowfield is intact. On the other hand, if you are still at S3, will you be able to scratch the enemy?

To calculate the utility of the Djinn blade, we can subtract the chances to autoflagellate from the overall chances to hit, remembering that 2/3 of these would otherwise have hit the foe. This leaves a 1/3 chance that both extra attacks will hit, a 4/9 chance that exactly one of the two attacks will hit, and a 2/9 chance that you will either fail to hit, or hit the wrong target. The expected return per combat phase is therefore 10/9ths of an extra hit on your enemy, and a 1/3rd of a hit on yours truly.

Now that this is known, comparisons may be drawn with some of the other weapons. The agoniser is the same cost, so beginning there, we can immediately see that the Djinn Blade will outperform it against T3 opponents, by 10/9ths of a hit, or 5/9ths of a wound (I am assuming a 3+ to hit, so adjust the maths if facing phoenix lords, bloodthirsters, avatars, daemon princes or hive tyrants). Equally, the agoniser will outperform the Djinn Blade against anything tougher.

Combat drugs may come partially to the rescue, as a +1S or reroll to wound is very handy. Likewise, after a couple of pain tokens, furious charge is a nifty boost.

Unlike the Husk Blade however, a Djinn Blade needs to do more than one wound to get anything from its sister wargear, the soul trap. The condition of having low S is not such a problem when only one wound is required; although the expected number of wounds drops sharply at T5 and six, one could still reasonably expect to deliver at least one wound per two combat phases. Presuming the target is a monstrous creature that will activate the Soul Trap, the Archon will then be free to resume reaving, this time at the much healthier S6.

The table below lists the expected output of wounds, assuming that the Archon gets the charge, and opposes enemies of WS < 7.


Next installment, I'll look at how many hits from each weapon are needed, on average, to knock off a variety of characters.

Haywire!

Nothing warms my black and twisted Dark Eldar heart more than basking in the flames from a destroyed enemy tank. However, since the Darklight Manufacturers Incorporated unionised, dark lances are neither as cheap nor as widely available as they used to be. And while I am hopeful that that means I will no longer be shipped dodgy dark lance knock-offs that bounce off armoured vehicles like summer rain, I feel I must investigate other options.

Among these, is the option of cheap haywire grenades that have suddenly become available to wyches. At half their previous cost they are suddenly a lot more attractive. But how effective are they?

The following table reflects the probability of achieving one or more of four levels of damage: Shaken or better, damaged (weapon destroyed or better), M-kill (immobilised or better), and the self-explanatory kill. Each figure is calculated by subtracting the probability of scoring 0 of these outcomes from 1, and therefore gives the chance of scoring at least the indicated result. The chance of failing entirely is therefore 1 - Shaken or better.

Results are illustrated against immobile vehicles, vehicles that travelled at combat speed (or immobilised dreadnoughts), and vehicles that travelled at cruising speed or more (and mobile walkers).


It can immediately be seen that chances of scoring a kill are relatively poor. The haywire grenade only penetrates on a 6, so this is not really its role. Instead, I prefer to look at the chance for damaging, as it will take only a couple of these results to cripple most enemy vehicles.

Immobile vehicles are easily pumped. Even 5 wyches with haywire have a 66% chance of immobilising permanently a vehicle that had the temerity to stand still in its last movement phase, and a squad of 10 even has a 45% chance of killing it outright. The astute will also recognise that the same fate may befall any other vehicle successfully immobilised by haywire attack. If the wyches cannot be cleared before the enemy assault phase, a free haywire attack will very likely be the end of the metal box in question.

Against vehicles moving at combat speed the numbers are a bit harder, but 5 wyches still have a 40% chance of scoring an immobilised result. This rises above 50% at 7 wyches, but does not reach 66% until 11 wyches are used. As this is too many to transport, I haven't bothered to reproduce that portion of the table.

Vehicles moving more than 6" are generally fairly safe from assault, and sadly haywire grenades are no exception. The best that could generally be hoped for here would be a shaken result - 5 wyches will still shake a fast moving vehicle 52% of the time, though they will cause lasting damage half as often.

By contrast, a ravager with 3 dark lances has a 45.9% chance of scoring an immobilisation or better, against any vehicle with AV12+. Albeit at any speed, from 36" away.

So, although I am not advocating taking haywire wych wenches in place of ravagers, I feel they have a place in the overall scheme of tank hunting.

But if they are taken, how many?

By dividing the probability of any given result with the points cost required to achieve it, we can gain an estimate of efficiency. The following table shows this efficiency for units of haywire wyches with between 5 - 10 members:


5 is the most efficient in all cases, with steep declines in shaking efficiency, but quite slow declines in M-kill and kill efficiency. As these latter two are generally more important than shaking vehicles, there is considerable leeway. Is 5 wyches enough? Efficiency is useless if your unit cannot be expected to perform its role. A unit of 5 performs well against stationary targets, middling against slow moving targets. A unit of 7 performs well against moving targets, but is overkill against stationary targets.

For me, I think it will be 5 wyches in a Venom. The lower profile (when it comes out) may help them fly under the radar, though they will cough up an easy kill point, and provide little assault support. I tend to play smaller point value games, and don't think I can spare a full unit of 10.

But let your own dark heart be the quide here. Whatever you choose, may your enemy's prize tanks roast like chestnuts!