w7west
09-16-2011, 01:07 PM
O.o
So today let's talk a little bit about the Lady. She is a well rounded HQ choice by dark eldar standards and comes in at a reasonable price (13 Firewarriors). She has an archon stat line and a very high number of attacks (until her blade gets mad). In addition she has some neat tricks that can buff up the army. So with these in mind lets try to find a good spot for her that can make use of her abilities.
First off, an HQ should be able to kill stuff. You don't want a special character that is going to get punked by a jokero in CC every game you play, that would suck. So what does she have to offer?
4 base attacks + 1 for two ccw, making it 5 base. Plus she has a special weapon that gives you 2 extra attacks most of the time. So 7 attacks without charging, wow! Plus these are power weapons, and although strength 3, she can still do some damage to t4. She will probably not want to get mixed up with anything higher than t4 though since her chances of killing anything are bad. Overall I would say she is decent* when she is supported by other close combat troops (more on this later).
*If she manages to get two pain tokens, the whole situation changes. Now she is charging with 8 str 4 power weapon attacks, and that is going to hurt! So she does have to capability of being quite nasty in cc, but most of the time she is just decent.
Too bad she doesn't have a shadowfield, instead her heart is crystal and gives her a 4++. This means she will definitely want to stay away from power fists in cc. She is an IC so you can probably keep her safe from these if you put her in the right squad. Her save has the benifit of not being a one time deal, and you get to use it even after it has been failed previously (unlike shadowfield). Once again she is decent when it comes to taking abuse by dark eldar standards, which really means shes not very good at all when she is being hit with stuff*.
*If you want to get hit with stuff and live go play space marines.
So there is my opinion on her CC. Decent, pretty much on par with most Archons in her point range. Now let's talk about her other abilities; the real reason why she is an interesting choice!
Perhaps her most important feature is that in an army lacking any kind of psychic defense, Lady is the only thing that can throw a wrench in psychic smashing (grey knights). She, along with any squad she is a part of, are completely immune to psychic powers. Immune.. I like that! So she will be a really strong buff for a match vs purifier spam, for instance. There are a lot of strong psychic powers out there (psycher battle squad, cleansing flame, jaws, lash, w/e the difficult and dangerous terrain power that librarians cast, etc.) A lot of armies have ways of negating psychic powers when they are casting but not very many things just are immune. This can be a good surprise advantage since it probably wont be expected.
Reposition D3 units: Only does something 1/2 the time since you will never benefit from this if you go second (except against scout/infiltrate perhaps). When you can use it to your advantage it can be a valuable tool. Putting some cc units really far ahead or moving 20 foot guys out of the path of enemy cc, these can be pretty useful.
So for now lets think about what kind of squad she will do well in, and what kind of army she would work for. I have made a 2500 that I think she would work pretty well in. In this case she would be joining a Bloodbride squad and protecting them from a lot of the psychic shenanigans that we see these days. She would also be buffing the cc just a bit, and I usually feel like one agonizer is just short of strong enough. With the agonizer and her attacks the sweeping potential of the squad will be right around where it needs to be for most cases. I think repositioning trueborn blaster venoms and repositioning a heavily concentrated anti infantry squad (in my case a 5 flamer template raider and the bloodbride + lady raider) could be a neat trick to make these squads more effective.
If you read all that grats, after all this is one of the less celebrated de characters. Please comment anything you think would be worth talking about in regards to Lady (strengths / weakness / suitable models / supporting squads / army types / tactics / boobs / etc)
So today let's talk a little bit about the Lady. She is a well rounded HQ choice by dark eldar standards and comes in at a reasonable price (13 Firewarriors). She has an archon stat line and a very high number of attacks (until her blade gets mad). In addition she has some neat tricks that can buff up the army. So with these in mind lets try to find a good spot for her that can make use of her abilities.
First off, an HQ should be able to kill stuff. You don't want a special character that is going to get punked by a jokero in CC every game you play, that would suck. So what does she have to offer?
4 base attacks + 1 for two ccw, making it 5 base. Plus she has a special weapon that gives you 2 extra attacks most of the time. So 7 attacks without charging, wow! Plus these are power weapons, and although strength 3, she can still do some damage to t4. She will probably not want to get mixed up with anything higher than t4 though since her chances of killing anything are bad. Overall I would say she is decent* when she is supported by other close combat troops (more on this later).
*If she manages to get two pain tokens, the whole situation changes. Now she is charging with 8 str 4 power weapon attacks, and that is going to hurt! So she does have to capability of being quite nasty in cc, but most of the time she is just decent.
Too bad she doesn't have a shadowfield, instead her heart is crystal and gives her a 4++. This means she will definitely want to stay away from power fists in cc. She is an IC so you can probably keep her safe from these if you put her in the right squad. Her save has the benifit of not being a one time deal, and you get to use it even after it has been failed previously (unlike shadowfield). Once again she is decent when it comes to taking abuse by dark eldar standards, which really means shes not very good at all when she is being hit with stuff*.
*If you want to get hit with stuff and live go play space marines.
So there is my opinion on her CC. Decent, pretty much on par with most Archons in her point range. Now let's talk about her other abilities; the real reason why she is an interesting choice!
Perhaps her most important feature is that in an army lacking any kind of psychic defense, Lady is the only thing that can throw a wrench in psychic smashing (grey knights). She, along with any squad she is a part of, are completely immune to psychic powers. Immune.. I like that! So she will be a really strong buff for a match vs purifier spam, for instance. There are a lot of strong psychic powers out there (psycher battle squad, cleansing flame, jaws, lash, w/e the difficult and dangerous terrain power that librarians cast, etc.) A lot of armies have ways of negating psychic powers when they are casting but not very many things just are immune. This can be a good surprise advantage since it probably wont be expected.
Reposition D3 units: Only does something 1/2 the time since you will never benefit from this if you go second (except against scout/infiltrate perhaps). When you can use it to your advantage it can be a valuable tool. Putting some cc units really far ahead or moving 20 foot guys out of the path of enemy cc, these can be pretty useful.
So for now lets think about what kind of squad she will do well in, and what kind of army she would work for. I have made a 2500 that I think she would work pretty well in. In this case she would be joining a Bloodbride squad and protecting them from a lot of the psychic shenanigans that we see these days. She would also be buffing the cc just a bit, and I usually feel like one agonizer is just short of strong enough. With the agonizer and her attacks the sweeping potential of the squad will be right around where it needs to be for most cases. I think repositioning trueborn blaster venoms and repositioning a heavily concentrated anti infantry squad (in my case a 5 flamer template raider and the bloodbride + lady raider) could be a neat trick to make these squads more effective.
If you read all that grats, after all this is one of the less celebrated de characters. Please comment anything you think would be worth talking about in regards to Lady (strengths / weakness / suitable models / supporting squads / army types / tactics / boobs / etc)