A Poison Tree

(TL;DR? Scroll down and check out the awesome pics.)

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine.

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

-William Blake

Dark. Mother. Fucking. Eldar.

When the book first came out I was pissed. No, I was furious. I was Rudy Ray Moore hatin' on angel dust furious. I was Keith David when Rowdy Roddy Piper tries to make him wear the glasses furious. I was this guy furious:

I may have overreacted.

To be clear. I loved wyches. I loved Vect, and I was really looking to some cool new wargear and shenanigans. When I first read through the Dark Eldar codex and realized that Vect -- the Avenging Disco Godfather of Cammorragh -- and his lovely wych ho's were all screwed or gone I could not believe it. That on top of a pile of mostly shitty wargear, half of which does nothing to models that have And They Shall Know No Fear, was more than I could take.

But I took a few breaths, went through the five stages of grief, drank myself into a stupor, and then started making lists. 

This is the one I decided to play my first games with.

HQ

• Archon (blaster, Helm of Spite, haywire grenades, shadow field, webway portal)

Elite

• (9x) Trueborn (four blasters, two splinter cannons, three splinter rifles)
• Raider (nightshields, dark lance, grisly trophies)
• (5x) Trueborn (four blasters, 1 splinter cannon)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)
• (5x) Trueborn (four blasters, 1 splinter cannon)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)

Troops

• (5x) Warriors (four splinter rifles, blaster)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)
• (5x) Warriors (four splinter rifles, blaster)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)
• (5x) Warriors (four splinter rifles, blaster)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)
• (5x) Warriors (four splinter rifles, blaster)
• Venom (extra splinter cannon)

Fast

• (6x) Reaver Jetbikes (two heat lances, two cluster caltrops, arena champion w/agonizer)
• (5x) Scourges (four haywire blasters, splinter carbine)
• (5x) Scourges (four haywire blasters, splinter carbine)
• (5x) Scourges (four haywire blasters, splinter carbine)

I played against Ed, who was piloting Vin's (of Attic Wars fame) Blood Angels. Ed's been out of the 40k game for a little while, but as a Dark Elder player himself, wanted to see how they performed. They did well.

In a nutshell: deepstriking trueborn are awesome, reavers are awesomer, scourges are awesomest. It was a bit of a landslide, but we both wanted to see what the dark kin were capable of, so Ed took it like a champ, and we still managed to have a fun game. 

I'm not sure exactly what Ed's list consisted of, but one of us will add it when we get a chance.

I played a second game against Jason's Eldar that was very similar, but we didn't take any pictures. He was running two wraithknights, a couple wave serpents, at least one fire prism, some wraithguard... and the Dark Eldar managed to take their lunch money too. A big part of that one was Jason's lack of familiarity to the new book. Also Scourges. Scourges with haywire blasters give exactly zero shits about the serpent shield's ability to block penetrating hits. They killed one wave serpent and did some hull points on turn 1 (for first blood). Things continued along those lines for the rest of the game. I'll try to get his list up here as well. 

Also, thanks to Mark for taking the photos.