Dark Eldar: Obscure characters.

Happy new year, everyone! For my first post of the year, I would like to look at some of the Dark Eldar characters who are getting overlooked with all the scary stuff like Haemonculi and Lelith.

Lady Aurelia Malys:

At first glance, she looks decent, with an Archon's statline and a less dangerous Djinn blade. But it's when you compare her to a basic Archon that you see the magic. Firstly, she and her unit are immune to psychic powers. Personally, I would take her for just that. With all of the scary Lash of Submission and, even worse, Murderous Hurricane psychic powers that are floating around out there, she can lead her unit through all of those purple glowing whips and tropical storms. The regular Archon doesn't even have an option like that.

Then you come to the 4++ invulnerable save. Quite honestly, I almost like this more than the Shadow Field, seeing as I always fail that 2++ as soon as I possibly can. Add this to the fact that you can redeploy up to three units before the game, even putting them in reserve, you can really bait an enemy and leave them stranded.

So to compare her to an archon:

Archon w/ Djinn blade, Ghostplate armor - 90 points

Yeah, for 40 points more you can get the Lady? I'm going for that.

Baron Sathonyx:

A little less impressive than the Lady, still very good for only costing just over 100 points. He even has a shadowfield! The way I see it, he's sort of like Belial, in the fact that he, in himself, isn't terribly amazing, but for his points he's great, and he makes already good units troops, that being Hellions in the case of the Baron.

So, what does he have? Well, he gives his unit at least a 6++ cover save at all times, though for the baron himself, he has his shadowfield. On the charge, he will also have 4 strength 6 attacks, not including combat drugs, so he will be rather effective against vehicles as well as light infantry.

Also, a note on the Bones of the Seer: Choosing deployment zones isn't great, but it can help, if you want your wolfpack of fast vehicles some extra cover.

Finally, we come to Kheradruakh the Decapitator. At ten more points than Lady Malys, he isn't as good of a choice, not in the same way, at least. He is meant to be a character hunter, and no mistake, but he may actually be better used to destroy MSU armies, with a power weapon and Strength 5. Another thing that helps him is that he has the Baleblast and starts out with a pain token, so that's 2 strength 4 shots per turn already.

A word on deployment: Kheradruakh must always be kept in reserve. However, he can deploy anywhere on the battlefield, at least one inch away from an enemy model. I would personally put him in cover, and then fleet out and kill an unwary small unit, before shrinking back into cover again. This is especially good if you want to take down that Manticore in the enemy's backfield, or the long fangs, and so on.

So, that's all for today! What do you think?