Dark Eldar December

by | Nov 29, 2012

I've been working on a campaign that we're planning on running at Gamer's Sanctuary next year, and the idea behind it originally was to do a slow growth points bump, to encourage people with some holiday cash to start up new armies. What a perfect excuse for someone like me, who can be less than enthusiastic about actually playing 40K from time to time, to get stuck in learning the ins and outs of a new army. And boy, did I pick one. 

A while back I got really excited about Dark Eldar. Gorgeous models, cool fluff, wacky rules and arcane wargear, and so on. Well, I started in on painting a bunch of stuff, and my ambition petered out after the first Raider, and I wound up selling nearly all of my models. Bad move, I guess. Because as part of the slow grow campaign, I really wanted to try something new. Or old, I guess. Don't get me wrong, I think the new Chaos codex is filled with awesome, I just don't really feel like going any further with what I already have. To be honest, I'm a little bored with 3+ saves and space marines of any stripe in general. Yes, there are some neat little tricks in there, and some units I immediately wanted to fall in love with (read: Warp Talons) that turn out to be situational at best. The Heldrake, while being a beastly model and a kick ass infantry remover, would wind up costing me as much as a battleforce for any other army if I run 2. Eh. The model has grown on me a bit though. And Daemon allies can make a nasty list. But I'm really, really sick of painting black and gold power armor. So Chaos will always be my first love, but I've found a seductive little mistress to cavort with on the side. 

I want to start a petition to have this Deviant Art artist's work included in the next Dark Eldar codex!
For our planned escalation style campaign, I based the first several missions on combat patrol rules, so we're talking about 500 points or so in some fairly straight forward missions. Which should be a great opportunity to learn the ropes. Figuring out threat bubbles for close combat squads jumping out of AV 10-11 open-topped transports has been a fun little challenge so far. I'm still trying to figure out how to strike a balance - not wiping out squads too quickly from combined fire and assault so my units are left out in the open, but not diluting my strength enough so I'm getting wiped by overwatch fire. I'm building lists with the assumption that I'm mostly going to be facing shooty MEQ armies. In fact, splinter fire is incredibly important to making the rest of the army work. I expect to lose a whole bunch at first, but I'm approaching the whole thing with good grace and humor. After all, I'm writing most of the material for the campaign, so it's rewarding enough to see how people do with the missions I come up with. 

For those of you who HATE the idea of this blog not being solely about Chaos, well...variety is the spice of life. The bannerhead change IS temporary (but it does look cool, doesn't it?) and I'll be back to worhshipping pointy looking star shaped things soon enough. Especially if I can ever get a Black Crusade game going again. But in the meantime, it's going to be Wyches, Kabalites, Wracks, and Reavers for a while. 

I'm hoping, time allowing, to do some decent painting articles, with pictures and stuff. Yes, I know I say that I would LIKE to do these kinds of articles, and then I wuss out and get lazy. But I'll try to do my best. I LOVE reading painting tutorial style posts - videos just aren't the same as hi-res photos. 

Also, I think I'm going to do the whole fluff/background thing with this army. I'm going to give my units and HQ characters names, and maybe write little stories as well. To keep the evil Chaos minions who read this interested, I think I'm going to feature the Oracles of Change as a main antagonist. 

In the next couple of weeks, I'll be posting some teaser info about the campaign as well, both here and over at Fresh Coast 40K. Hope to see you up at the Friendly Local Gaming Store!