Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The 9th Foundation of Vengeance: Pain

Pain is a constant. Pain is a fact of life. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Pain is a central theme to the Dark Eldar. In fact the main mechanic to the army is the “Power From Pain” special rule. The quest to gain pain tokens and their proper distribution is essential to the function of the army. Not only does it increase the survivability of your units, but it also increases the killing power. So I give you the 9th Foundation of Vengeance. Pain.

Feel No Pain, Furious Charge and Fearless are the stages of pain. Getting the pain tokens can prove to be difficult. You have to kill a non vehicle unit to gain one. This means actually killing the unit. Retreating units don't count and every last model in the unit must be dead. This can prove rather difficult to do quickly and speed is the key.

If you get lucky and roll a 6 for your combat drug units you will start the game with tokens. Haemonculi, Wracks and Grotesques also start the game with a token. You can of course combine these to start the game with a couple tokens for a fearsome unit. The real catch though is getting the units without access to combat drugs tokens quickly. Lets face it your HQ's can't be everywhere at once to play the token game, that is taking tokens with them when they leave a unit to give them to another unit.

For Token Generation in the Webway list I was using a Chronos Parasite Engine. When deployed by webway you are generally close enough to the enemy to start getting some kills and thus generating tokens. Never give the first token to the Chronos. With a toughness of 7 your opponent will be using hi strength, low AP weapons to shoot it so the FNP does not do you any good. Concentrate fire on soft targets. The whole purpose of the Chronos in the list is to generate tokens. So arm it as such.

The infliction of pain upon your opponent is key. The lesson of pain is not just about pain token generation. Any army can learn from the lesson pain. The real key is hitting soft targets and exposed targets. For a dark Eldar army this is ideal as it means quick and easy pain token generation. You thin out the heard so you can concentrate resources to take out the hard targets. If you deploy and move your army so you pick off the soft targets first and ignore the hard targets you really give yourself an advantage. Not only in numbers but the ability to press your opponent. With the exception of ranged heavy weapons, killer hard units are useless if the enemy can't get them in position to use them. Even the heavy weapons, like artillery and heavy weapons squads, are soft targets to me as they can only really do any damage at range. Your opponent does not want them to be attacked obviously so they will be surrounded or set up in a fortified position. This is where your deployment strategy comes into play. If faced with heavy weapons set up in a fortified position in the corner the obvious choice for deployment options is to outflank or deep strike units with the ability to do so. Get them in close enough to take out the threat. You must also set up in such a way your opponent deploys his dead ard units to try and take out your big guns. That Archon with a unit of Incubi, the Seer Council lead by Eldrad. Pain is an essential foundation, as you cannot really inflict the maximum amount without knowing the other, at least a few anyway, Foundations of Vengeance.

Use what you have learned to strike at the weak soft targets so that your units are stronger and able to deal with the larger harder targets. You then overwhelm the enemy with the fury of your assault.


So there you have it The 9th Foundation of Vengeance: Pain. Next time I will be talking about a unit from the Eldar codex near and dear to me. A much underused and unappreciated unit. The Storm Guardian.

I may also have an update on the humble beginnings of my Waaaagh!


Until then..........



Blood Runs, Anger Rises, Death Wakes, War Calls......................WAAAAAAAGGHH!

No comments:

Post a Comment