A Rebuttal...

This is a rebuttal to some comments from Kristwithak in regards to my latest article about building units that are both unique and effective.



"Sorry but your opponents must be terrible."

That's fine if that's how you feel—no need to say you're sorry. My question is how do you know? Really you don't. This quip is often given to refute what others have said without going into much specific detail as to why.


"That Trueborn loadout is a points sink. Asking to die in flames. (Which it will do with pleasure)."

How do you know that—explain why you think so. More often than not the opponent has more pressing issues to deal with if you're doing it right—it's all about protecting the unit until its time for them to do their thing, which they can do quite well based upon my experience.


"If you want to play friends who think foot slogging eldar is good (ie who are fluff bunnies with armies for fun not competition) then that is fine, but this squad loadout is frankly bad and a terrible example of trying to build duality into a unit."

Are you talking about infantry heavy eldar armies or the squad of Trueborn? So now we are a bunch of fluff bunnies... LOL !! The captain of the Irish ETC team runs foot slogging eldar and recently beat a top player from the west coast of the USA—there was a video batrep over on Dakka Dakka if you're interested. I still don't understand why you think the Trueborn stinks other than we must be a bunch of fluff bunnies.


"The reason people use MSU for DE is because lances are totally overpriced and vehicles are sadly one of the few reasonable choices in the codex."

That's true but it doesn't by any means equate to this style of play being the only competitive type of build for dark eldar. Name some large events over the past year that were won with this type of army. I'd love to know. Dark eldar won WGC last year but the winning army was not MSU.


"While I won't argue that there are (a few) other ways of using Trueborn that offer a little duality the above is definitely NOT a good example."

Why? You still have not provided any good reasons to support your claims.


"This is trying to build DE as marines. Something that GWS sadly tried to do with a lot of the weapon loadouts, but actually doesn't work at all."

Okay so finally you give us a reason but it's quite scant at best in my opinion. Are you saying its not a good build because the unit is fragile? There are lots and lots of fragile dark eldar units. Does the MSU approach really counter this weakness of Dsrk eldar—I don't think so and say this based upon my actual gaming experiences. Ben Mohile, the captain of the American ETC team experimented with dark eldar and his approach was not MSU.

MSU simply means more units will be destroyed and give up more killpoints. Often I've seen MSU dark eldar armies start off quite strong then collapse over the course of the game and are then swept away. It's just more targets for those psyflemen dreads we love to hate here.


"While I agree that armies can have a certain flavour or be unique in some way, even in a competitive environment when building these lists they have to take into account how fluff or fun are incorporated into the build and make sure the rest of the list is rock hard to make up for it."

So now it's okay if we follow your guidelines. Right? To a large degree isn't that basically what I said as well? That said though it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with an army's background. Actually what you want is to build units that coordinate well and have lots of synergy.


"Player skill and tactics come into play."

I sure hope so... That's rather obvious.   >.< "In fun games you can get away with a lot, but DE aren't on par with SW/GK, and against really good players with really good lists this just won't work. Simple math and weapon loadouts tell them target priority and as a DE player with paper planes that normally means you'll lose a few."

That's true to a large extent and one of the main reasons why I don't play dark eldar anymore as they have no effective counter to the psyfleman dread. You're making a sweeping generalization though. I have found dark eldar to be very effective versus Space Wolves.


"Some of the repetitious internet dribble about what does and what doesn't work can lack value because it doesn't impart why these options may not work, but unlike vaccume arguments are more likely to be based upon real world experiences against smart opponents taking into account all factors, like being shot to death before charging, and a myriad of other things generally not taken into account with paper comparisons."

Nothing I presented was created in a vacuum—it's all based upon my experience at the tables.

That's all I have to say for now.