40k Rules Conundrum / New Dark Eldar Meta?
Posted by
Rob Baer at 10/13/2014
The Dark Eldar book seems to have been universally panned by the Internets, but it's possible that we're just doing it wrong! They may have a SECRET RULES WEAPON!
Has something been staring us in the face this whole time and we just missed it?
I only say this because all of the Dark Eldar skimmers have the Deep Strike ability, and in nearly every story in all the books where they fight against outsiders it talks about them emerging out of a Webway Portal to fall on top of their surprised prey. But we can't seem to play them like that in the game, because you can only take so many Webways as equipment, and deep striking a line of skimmers in front of the enemy is just too risky... or is it?
The basic rules for Deep Striking models (BRB pg. 162 ) really haven't changed from 6th Edition, however checkout these lines of text in that section;
Deep Striking units may not move any further, other than to disembark from a Deep Striking Transport Vehicle if they are in one.
Further down the page under shooting for Deep Striking units we have;
They count as having moved in the previous movement phase, and vehicles count as having moved at Combat Speed.
So it seems that by these two statements, in the same section, that both during the movement phase and shooting phase, Deep Striking units preformed movement. Now lets take a look a Deep Strike Mishaps (BRB pg. 162 as well) reads;
If any of the models in a Deep Striking unit cannot be deployed.... something has gone wrong (consult the Mishap chart).
From that I think the argument can be made that the act of deploying via deep strike is a form of movement, as it has two separate supporting statements to that effect under it's Universal Special Rules sections and occurs during the Movement Phase itself.
Even more curious is a line of rules for Skimmers that is very tantalizing when inserted into this line of thought. On page 89 of the BRB at the end of the text about skimmers' movement there is this;
If a skimmer is forced to end it's move over friendly of enemy models, move the skimmer the minimum distance so that no models are left underneath it.
Wow so lets think about that for a second. According to this whole train of thought, if you Deep Strike a Skimmer and it's forced to end it's move over friendly of enemy models, you would just "move the skimmer the minimum distance so that no models are left underneath it" as it can "now be deployed" and will no longer trigger a mishap?
Rules as written the only spot for debate here may just be if a unit deep strikes closer than 1" and
not over friendly of enemy models, then it seems like it would then indeed suffer a mishap. So is it now viable perhaps to deep strike a line of Dark Eldar skimmers point blank into the enemy? Thinking a little bigger you can even make the same argument perhaps for Necron Monoliths as well.
