Dark Eldar Offensive Defensive Tactics 101

Captain Obvious here,



Doing a little bit of a different article here, instead of just hitting
Dark Eldar tactics I am going to hit on some over all tactics. Ill go
over some Offensive tactics defensive tactics how to use them and how to
watch when they are being used against you.

First off your best defense will be knowing your opponent and knowing
his army as well as he does. When you know these things you won't be
surprised when he makes his moves and deploys.

Next I will go over defense. Setting up a good defense should always
leave you with a decent sized force for offense. Depending on the
mission type you will have to judge your army and know what your
defense/offense capabilities will be. You know your army/list better
than I do so that will have to be your call. You will always want to
make sure that if for some reason he gets into your defensive positions
you have a way to either redeploy to counter the threat, or a way to
clear it out and move on to the rest of the game. Don't over estimate
or underestimate a threat. Sometimes a unit in your zone doesn't pose
as much of a threat as your opponent wants you to think. There are
times when something can be ignored because there are larger things at
hand....Such as a huge close combat threat pushing there way straight
into you. All that entire unit is doing is attempting to pull fire and
awareness away from the main force. It's basically like a slide of
hand, you know the trick magicians use.

When setting up your defense you will want to cut the table into 3rds.
Picture these thirds as "Fire Lanes". These Fire Lanes (FLs) are where
your fire is concentrated. If your opponent doesn't see these he will
blindly move into them and you will then be allowed to pop targets at
will. If he does, it will still work out to your advantage. He will
have to deploy around them giving you the ability to coral him where you
want him to go. This leads into your offense.

As the game progresses you will want to start moving your offensive
units into the areas you are corralling him, or pushing them down the
fire lanes that he is moving up. This will allow you to setup to
basically tie the knot on his forces. WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT, don't get
to cocky or to pushy, you will want to hit his units with your offensive
units. This will allow your firing lanes to either assist them or to
continue using their big guns to keep clearing out his larger mech. The
reason I emphasis when the time is right is because you don't want to
get over zealous and get your self counter hit by his nasty offensive
units or get you into his FLs.

Another thing that newer players tend to do is straying away from the
mission. ALWAYS PLAY THE MISSION NOT THE PLAYER. If it's an objective
mission, play for the objectives, don't worry about kill points. At the
start of your turn remind yourself what the game is and stick with your
plan. Plan your moves at least one turn in advance. When doing this
attempt to predict what his moves will be. For objective missions don't
get over zealous and start taking them right off the bat, this will
allow them to counter you and clean you off them in the later turns and
allow him to claim them for the victory.

Another offensive tactic that people overlook is friendly trash talking.
Talk up some of your units, get him to fear them more than he should.
Make him make the mistakes you want him to. If you can get into some
ones head they will make mistakes, sometimes game breaking ones. I'm
not saying to be a jerk, friendly trash talking is part of the game and
if used correctly is as much of a tactic as flanking.

As always there will be more to come, comments are welcome and
encouraged.