Do or Don't: Dark Eldar

originally i wrote out this whole little mini story about what it's like to be attacked by the dark aldarf and imperial point of view for the intro but i decided that that's cringe and i also have story time later anyways so instead picture this you're an elf but instead of being inspired by lord of the rings you're inspired by dead by daylight you only exist to cause intense suffering and pain as well as impotent rage on top of that you have technology so advanced even some of the other members of your race can't recreate it because they went down a different route in the tech tree and every time they ask for it you shoot a black hole at them this is considered to be a minor display of power does all that sound appealing well my friend i invite you to come and check out the drewcari crush my car with a rock i must maximum pain i must endure okay here we go in the 40k universe the dark eldar are the ones who saw their empire collapse and to complete nothingness due to slanesh and then bring it about and when let's not only keep doing what caused this but double down on it when the eldar empire ate [ __ ] and died which was probably literal for at least a few of them the elves who would become drukari were isolated into the webway a sort of pocket dimension where you can travel across the galaxy without having to go through hell to do it because of this they didn't immediately get their souls devour like everyone else but they realized that they weren't safe because you see instead of their soul flooding out of their body in an instant it was more like it was a leaky faucet that they just couldn't fix like that damned door then they realized that by causing others to suffer in their stead they can not only stave off their own souls being eaten but replenish themselves and regain their vigor and thus have the jokari been for the last 10 000 years invading real space periodically to gather more slaves materials and to refill their leaky faucet souls there's more to it than that of course but as far as background goes that should suffice for what you need to know going in so why would you want to play these sweat goblins well if you want a faction that is completely and unapologetically evil they're your guys gals and horrific flesh monstrosities they literally feed on suffering there's a story where when the child first encountered them they did the tau thing and were like greetings your spikiness do you want to be friends and the dark eldar presumably amazed someone didn't gun them down on sight or a like sure thing you blew bastards we'll even help you fight some tyranids say would you mind sending a few dozen of your people back home with us it's just a cultural exchange program so the tao trusted the half naked drug adult spiky elves and sent a few of their people with them you know just a little vacation then another battle happened and when it was done the tower realized that the horrific monstrosities that dark elder called their troops were what the former tao had been turned into enraged they attacked the dark eldar who promptly laughed and flipped them off before flying right away after that the tao army received a desperate call for aid from the planet they came from because the dark elder decided that with the rest of the tao army away it was time to play by the time the tau army had returned to the planet they found that deldar had abducted literally everyone on the thing to take home a torture just an entire planet amber alerted so yeah they're the worst of the worst and they love it to the super villains of 40k because even chaos at least in theory has positives to it zinc is the god of hope on top of merely pretending to be [ __ ] remember dark eldar meanwhile will take captures back to their home to literally feed on their suffering and throw them in a gladiatorial arena the size of a continent hell throw an orphan into a blender the size of a semi truck and see how his organs ricochet around while you're at it why the hell not the world is your oyster if you're a dark eldar you'll be coming up with new and exciting ways to molest that oyster they come in all sorts of flavors too there's bdsm mad scientist bdsm foot soldier mafia members bdsm samurai look the bdsm is kind of required for the dark eldar which i'm putting is a positive because i talked about the merits of clay [ __ ] in one of my videos so i've got nothing to do but double down at this point but my point is they're very varied in their bdsm imagine if doctor doofenshmirtz made a device that caused everyone in the tri-state area to come down with cystic fibrosis and then instead of getting foiled by perry the platypus he flees his skin from his body and sends his head back to phineas and ferb that's the homunculi and they love doing that kind of [ __ ] the cab lights are all organized crime syndicates turned into legitimate political entities so that's fun of course maybe you prefer naked men and women fighting tyranids in the world's largest coliseums pardon me universe's largest coliseums in that case the witch cults are for you something else hand to take note of is that from a lore perspective they're believe it or not in the perfect spot in terms of safety which is [ __ ] ironic because kamara is a galactic version of detroit if it was built in the trenches of world war one but hear me out they're one of the least numerically significant in terms of all major factions potentially even including the tau but i'm not quite sure about that one unlike everyone else however their entire population is anchored to one place camera and its adjacent realms which are directly connected to it because of this trying to actually assault and wipe them out would cause massive and unbearable casualties anyone who tried even if they did successfully wipe the place out this means that the deldar more than anyone else are safe and they're standing in the galaxy craft worlds can blow up the imperium can lose a few planets but kamara is here to stay also ironic for a society that models its views on loyalty and camaraderie on starscream is that the average dark elder doesn't really have to fear death at least in real space rates the homunculi can revive anyone as long as they have a scrap of that person's body could be some hair could be a finger could be a whole [ __ ] limp they regrow that person and put their soul in the body and presto you're back in fact some dark elder do this on purpose that is to say die on purpose because they like the experience of death and rebirth most of them give at least a wee bit of flesh to a homunculus because with backstab moving so goddamn common in camera it's best to hedge your bets and lose a finger in exchange for technical immortality you know for when your neighboring cabal decides you looked at them funny and mails you super anthrax that way even if you get blown to bits by a bane blade you're still coming back for round two and while they may be the warhammer 40k equivalent of dark elves more than anything they draw a lot of inspiration from old fae fairy tales you know the kind of fairy tales where entire cities disappear into the forest never to appear again because some elves thought it'd be interesting to see what happens when you kidnap a man and light him on fire before kicking him into a stable or something else nice and flammable looking basically do you want to be an elf but don't like all that [ __ ] [ __ ] like crying over what once was and always being a dying race on the back foot well then here you go elves that kick ass and take names to enslave and torture later there's also of course the more specific inspiration from the warhammer fantasy dark elves with the whole sail out into the world galaxy to rape enslave and torture everyone else the dark eldar and craftworlds just don't hate each other nearly as much as the dark elves in high elves how about rules what are the big things they got going from there well i was originally going to say they're a race of glass cannons but cannons don't usually fly around in mach 3. no one is going to outrace you i'm sorry white scars fans but even jaggedi isn't fast enough to catch these bastards uber fast as [ __ ] on top of that a huge amount of the units have the ability to fly so you're not getting bogged down by terrain either you say alright next turn i'm going to wipe this guy's units off the board and then he moves them halfway across said board and kills you to cope but in case you thought they were just going to bleed you to death slowly while zooming around you like sonic that god damn hedgehog all their weapons hit like trucks too a good amount of their weapons have poison which instead of causing some damage over time like in a video game instead means they have a minimum 2 wound roll that can't be reduced usually it's four plus which translates to if i hit you there's a bare minimum 50 chance i damage you across the unit with 20 models in it while some units like games workshops pet mary sues are immune to poison most are not so abaddon might feel nice and invincible until he realizes that all the chaos space marines he brought with is a bodyguard or convulsing an agony in the ground around him and there's 40 guns pointed directly at him by elves who are actively jerking off on the battlefield run in cause havoc and run out that's the dark held our way i also don't have quite the same problem that the craft worlds have with specialization sure the dracar units are specialized to do things but they can do all right outside of that zone not great but all right at least compared to the craftware levels not that that's saying much but it is still something it's not the craft worlds where if your hauling banshees aren't facing off against the exact right kinds of units they're basically worthless at least this is what i've seen and read so your mileage may vary with this point so please don't type fast to me in the comments nor do i'm not a cop anyway they can also take units from other eldora forces as allied attachments want the strength of a wraith guard to back up your units on the battlefield sure thing bud if you put them in with the yarn you can do all sorts of crazy wombo combos with harlequins craft worlds and other dark eldar so you can shore up your forces and patch weaknesses in a way that a lot of other factions can there's also power from pain which grants additional effects to your deldar as the game goes on i won't cover it word for word because that's boring but the short of it is as the game progresses the dark elder becomes stronger and stronger it makes them hit harder and can even offset their low durability to some extent finally while this is a meta reason and varies from location to location dark l's are one of the rarer armies to see deployed so while everyone and their mother has a counter to the space marines the first few times you roll up with lilith and the girls no one's gonna have any real strategy to counter you beyond really hope the dice don't [ __ ] them so that's fun but of course they have flaws too and we'll start with the lore you are the [ __ ] of the universe not only are you pure evil and forced to be at that but everyone else knows it the closest things to outside friends are the harlequins and that's not because they're on good terms but we're because they harley can scare the [ __ ] out of all of their eldars who their zhukari put up with them and their honk god don't speak anything like you have rain and gillum and being friends with benefits to happen to your affection or even gaskell and eric's mutual hate boner you're alone and because you need to torture others to live that isn't gonna change if you want someone with even the slightest most morally gray shade of good imaginable go elsewhere relatedly people are going to call you an ag 12 year old and you know what they have a point as much as the dark eldar are just reveling in their super villainy they're also a race of edgy [ __ ] who feed on suffering i mean come on to some extent you have to see how that's just a little bit too edgy even by 40k standards i have a few dark elder models so i personally don't think it's too big a deal but that being the case again just look at them edge edge edge as far as the eye can see and unlike with chaos they don't have the slight excuse of serving evil gods so of course they're going to be edge lords the dark elders decided that this was the height of fashion so yeah get used to people not only calling you an edgy 12 year old but again they're probably at least a little right hey you can always own it whenever you wipe out a space marine player's land raider and they cry and call you an edgy [ __ ] bless lincoln park and say they're right but that won't untorture the chapter master as for something you can't as easily refute the dark eldar aren't the most influential faction for a few reasons for one their small numbers means they can only do so much damage on a galactic scale i mean there's never going to be the dark outdoor equivalent of a tyranid high fleet or anything like that but they also will don't really want to massively shake things up they thrive in the miserable status quo of the galaxy and engaging in massive battles that changed the outcome of fate is to their detriment ideally the dark eldar would never fight a battle at all and only attack those who couldn't fight back but then they wouldn't make a very good candidate for a faction in a war game now would they but still they can only attack the weak to bring home and mutilate if they can help it they did once capture an imperial panacea which would have cured literally every disease ever and make nergal irrelevant but aside from that don't expect the dark elder to be making any waves like the imperium craft worlds or anyone else might and even with that example they didn't change anything about the setting they just preserved it and kept it from changing it was just in a big and noticeable way if the dark elder started to rock in the boat then the imperium would suddenly upgrade them from nuisance that sometimes makes a backwater planet disappear to threat we actually need to focus on now instead of ignore so yeah don't expect too many major plot threats from these guys more so than zenos usually don't get major plot threads anyway as for rules here's some issues they have the biggest without doubt is their fragility if the craft or leather are made of paper mache the dark elder are made of used napkins if someone so much just sends a mildly disappointed look at your way you're dead on top of that because so many of the units can fly while they're very mobile anything with a bonus against flying units is going to thoroughly wreck your ship this is actually one of the reasons they're rare to see on the tabletop you need to properly be able to maneuver and deploy units and if you can you'll be wiped you know what you're doing then you're probably going to have a rough time granted they're currently the top rated faction in terms of win rate so take all this with a grain of salt not too much salt because i definitely know what i'm talking about just like a single french fries worth of salt also expect dark elder games to be decided in about two turns of the game with the rest of the match being more or less a formality you'll either crush them underneath your spiky towed boot or your elves are gonna be smeared across time and space there's very little in between with these guys i watched a game of my local gw lady or was a prime erase combat patrol versus a deldar combat patrol and yeah what i described is exactly what happened the drucari players slaughtered the primaris wasn't even close so if you like tense games where the winner can be decided at any moment or you can clutch victory from the jaws of defeat at the last second you probably won't get them here a big reason for this being their aforementioned fragility and need to be moved and positioned correctly if you let your bdsm soldiers get caught in the open you're royally screwed so you better know what you're doing this is probably why despite being the top of the warhammer tearless right now they're not the most commonly played army bit of a skill ceiling for them the dark eldar don't have very many super heavy options either in fact you really only have the void raymond bomber kind of and maybe the tantalus if you include forge world stuff i say kind of because to what extent those two are super heavies is debatable can ally with the craft worlds if that really bothers you but if you run pure dark elder then yeah you don't get any wraith nights or stuff like that speaking of not having things they also don't have any psyches so again ally with craft worlds if you want to use magic when you live halfway with your reality in hell magic is a bad idea because it attracts the god that wants to eat your soul specifically it makes perfect sense lore wise don't get me wrong but from a rules perspective yeah you might be a bit better that you don't have wizards finally one of their major strengths in their poisoned weapons usually has some trouble piercing armor basically think of it like this if you hit them you're probably going to wound them but actually hitting the enemy might be a concern so don't go throwing your cabin lights at a land raider just something to keep in mind it's not that they can't pierce armor it's just that you shouldn't be fooled by how poison works don't get overconfident and toss your foot soldiers into the meat grinder they're going to be coming out in liquid form so that is the dark eldar glass cannons who fight for selfish gain and for being the edgiest [ __ ] around if you like an army that requires skill to use properly being pure distilled evil and [ __ ] and ball torture these are the guys for you thanks for watching and take care out there oh if you wonder where the term drukari comes from it's because games workshop likes to reference fantasy even though they killed it drookie for dark elves drewkari for dark eldar same things for the asura and the craft worlds or the asir yani creativity is dead and gw killed it

Channel: PancreasNoWork

Views: 451,907

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer 40000, 40k, WH40k, Dark Eldar, Drukhari, CBT, Eldar, Aeldari, PancreasNoWork, Do or Don't

Id: 8HXUS0OQpEc

Length: 13min 42sec (822 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022