Dark Eldar Musings Post-Comikaze

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Well, I performed perfectly average at this years Comikaze and went 2-2-1.  I took a Venom-spam Dark Eldar army that I have had some success with.  However I made some really bone-headed mistakes which cost me.  My opponents were savvy and quick to capitalize and it was hard for me to recover.  I do have some post tournament thoughts on my army, and what I can do to improve it in the future. First off my army was extremely fragile.  I had five units of 5, and three units of 4.  I also had 5-man Wych squads which are extremely fragile when their transport goes boom.  I really like the utility of Wyches over small Warrior squads, but their fragility really hurts them.

Second, of my five opponents, only one of them had infantry start outside of their transports.  Even then, I failed to take advantage of this when I unwisely decided to take the first turn against a Descent of Angels army!  I play against a DoA army all the time and I always force my opponent to go first!  Why I decided against it this time is still a mystery to me.  In any case, the lack of infantry and abundance of armor hurt the effectiveness of my army.

Third, I had too little in the way of ranged anti-tank.  This led me to commit my fatal flaw, and one that my regular gaming buddy mortetvie (Adam G) warns me about ALL THE TIME, and that is getting too close.  Even in our two practice games on the day before the event, he cautioned, "Nick, I think you're getting too close, you want to move those back a bit?"  Unfortunately I was too eager to get off shots with Trueborn blasters and committed them too early in my two losses.  Getting too close with DE is a fatal flaw that I still need to work on, and something that actually got me motivated to play my army more and continue to improve.

Fourth, while I've had some success with Baron + Beasts, they really underperformed this tournament.  The only game they did stuff was Game 5 in which they took out a Night Spinner and helped take out a Fire Dragon squad.  Other than that, they lost combat and promptly ran off the board or got run down.  I will still play-test them occasionally, but I think they will be replaced by 10-man Wych squads.

I think my future armies will have less Venoms and feature larger Wych squads.  I will also be play-testing the double Dark Lance Trueborn units to see how they perform in contrast to the quad Blaster units.  The most important thing I took away from the tourney is the desire to play Dark Eldar again.  Before the tourney I wasn't sure which army I wanted to bring and was actually leaning towards Eldar or Grey Knights.  I decided on Dark Eldar simply because I had the majority of my army painted and was relatively familiar with them in a tournament setting.  However, after Comikaze I'm really motivated to improve my army's appearance and functionality in preparation for future tournaments.