Monday, February 1, 2010

DARK ELDAR GROTESQUES


Captain Obvious here with another installment of Dark Eldar unit break downs.





GROTESQUES



These units have some pretty special rules. To start it off they have feel no pain, but it’s not your normal feel no pain. Grotesques ignore shooting attacks that aren’t STR6 or higher. So basically you can not kill grotesques from a shooting attack that doesn’t already insta kill them. This works out pretty nicely because STR6+ weapons aren’t usually a huge volume of shoots, and usually won’t be wiping entire squads.They also have some other rules which apply to them as well. Given their unusual tolerance to pain, grotesques are stupid. In game terms it means unless they are accomplice by and Independent Character they must pass a LD test to even move in the movement phase, they need not test for assaults.


Grotesques have one more VERY nasty rule. When ever grotesques win in close combat the enemy automatically falls back with out taking a LD test. Grotesques however do not have a save in close combat, but do benefit from 2 wounds and 2 attacks a piece.How to run them? Well I have been trying a couple ways to run these silly beasts. I mainly use them as a web way delivery system. Ill cover web way later in my posts but a quick run down: Web Way Portal is a portal that we can deploy from a character on the table and lets our reserves come in from the portal as if it were the table edge.


Is what you do is you take a cheat HQ (Homunculi) and give him a web way portal and what ever war gear you way (preferably cheap). Put him in a raider with a squad of 8-10 grotesques. Now u have a tough unit delivering your web way. Seeing as grotesques can be hurt by shooting attacks of STR6+ when that raider blows up unless your opponent wounds every single model that falls out they suffer no wounds, just don’t fail the pinning test. Next turn hopefully you got that raider where it needs to be and u can release that portal. Your opponent can NOT destroy it. Now your entire footslogging force that was kept in reserve can start to enter the table from the portal right on the front line of your opponent. This means TALOS. This is the only time I will ever run Talos because now they will be getting into assault and will become useful. When running a web way list I will usually run 3 squads of grotesques and 3 homunculi, one for each squad all with web way portals. This is to ensure that I get at least 1-2 portals open and to ensure I get my forces there. I also will run warrior squads with 2 splinter cannons and 2 blasters so I can lay down some fire power when they walk through. Obviously you can run it how you want, but this is how I have found it successful.


A small pointer on this list………it has not proven itself to be very competitive for me. I will run this list for fun, or against a gun line list….Like tau or guard just to mess with them. Once again IT IS NOT COMPETETIVE you may get tabled, so be ready lol.

3 comments:

  1. Whenever this lists gets brought up it makes me think of that orc in LoTR that does the olympic torch run into the underwater mine of gunpowder to blow up helmsdeep and unleash the madness! AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

    :)

    -CV

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  2. Have you tried this tactic with a Planetstrike game yet? It might go very well with the Attack Stratagems 'Dawn Assault' and 'Darken the Skies', not to mention 'Terror Tactics'. In a very large game, the DE Army specific Stratagem, 'Hellish Cacophony' would also probably prove to be very handy. And as a bonus, all these stratagems are very fluffy, DE wise. :)

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  3. I forgot, you can replace 'Dawn Assault' and 'Darken the Skies' with the DE Stratagem 'Night Without End' (Planetstrike Tactica, WD360).

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