Board Control, and the Dark Eldar Webway Portal.
By Auretious Taak.
One of the elements which defines an exceptional player of Warhammer 40,000 is the ability to take control of the board. This board control consists of many elements and concepts such as blocking, suppression, Mobility, and Forward Planning (to name a few), all working together synergistically and concurrently to give you control of the battle. Taking control of the board and thus the battle forces your opponent onto the defensive, reacting to what you do whilst allowing you to dictate what your opponent will be doing such that you always have the advantage. In some cases, board control hands you the battle before a single casualty from either side occurs.
Curiously, many reviews and articles which I’ve read online on blogs and forums have dealt with many aspects of the Dark Eldar, but very few have looked at them as they once were widely – as the only TRUE Finesse Army in Warhammer 40,000. By a Finesse Army, I mean an army that is at once delicate on first appearance and indeed taste (like the characteristics of the wines whereby finesse is used primarily as a descriptor) yet which takes a subtle hand to make the most of. An army which isn’t easy to pick up and run straight away and allow even a new player to wargaming in general, and in particular warhammer 40,000, a good ratio’s of wins to losses because the experience, need for actual high end skills and an ability to think outside the box and adapt on the move at a moments heartbeat, is what I would term a Finesse Army. Sure there are the obvious builds within the dark eldar Codex – a bunch of raiders and venoms with a wych payload, killer archon, maybe some Haemonculii and a definite 3 ravagers with dark lancers, as the most obvious example – but the fragility of the army, and it’s need to capitalise on it’s light weight, fast hit and run style of play which hits like a hammer and withdraws to strike again and again in concentrated force, makes the Dark Eldar as an army what I would term a Finesse Army. But ignoring all the obvious skimmer/turbo boosting/supersonic shannanigans which people can and do abuse to play to these strengths, what can we do to REALLY abuse the Finesse way of thinking, and how can we then draw this in to dominate Board Control as only Dark Eldar can?
It’s simple really. Webway Portal Abuse.
Now, most people see a Webway Portal get dropped down and will use it to deploy their non-vehicle reserves to the board from the get go with a massive reach extending right across the board. This works such that you are in your skimmer transport at the edge of your 12” deployment zone, you move 12” forwards, disembark a further 2” ahead, and drop the Webway Portal in base to base contact with the carrier who has a 1” wide base, and with the 3” template size of the Webway Portal you can bring your reserves in 30” into the board. With Warp Beasts appearing out of that portal and their 19-24” assault range you have this fantastically awesome 54” range across the table, despite the fact that a 4’ wide table is 48” not 54”…the threat of fast, hard hitting reserve units appearing wherever the Dark Eldar player wants brings us the obvious use for a Webway Portal. Running 2 up opposite flanks mean that your opponent gets funnelled into the middle of overlapping exit points for your reserves, and as there are two portals you get to choose on arrival which one the units appear out of this is fantastic for you. Some opponents will try and out manouvre the Webway Portal entrance such that they can pick you apart as you arrive from reserve. But that’s the opponent reacting to you and your placement of the Webway Portal. That's you taking control of the board and the game. Count it as a win. This is the obvious use for the Webway Portal, bugger that, everyone writing articles around the world which touch on the webway portal will explain its’ uses in this way. However, not many will tell you how to truly abuse the Webway Portal.
The Dark Eldar Webway Portal is a piece of equipment which an Archon or Haemonculous (Ancient or otherwise) can use instead of firing a weapon in the shooting phase. A small blast marker sized template (released in limited numbers this week by GW worldwide - sold out of all GW's Australia-wide in 4-5 hours) is placed in base to base contact with the bearer when the portal is activated. This marker cannot be destroyed and remains in play from now till the end of the game. From then on any non-vehicle units arriving from reserve can move on from the edge of the Webway Portal template, no matter what they were intending to do in terms of arrival from reserve (i.e., outflanking, table edge, Deep Strike et al). The template counts as Impassable Terrain.
Some of you have read that last sentence and suddenly realised where I am going with this and are, indeed cackling right now. If you aren’t cackling in a most diabolic manner, I suggest you take a moment right now, at this instant, and do that. It’ll be so worth it.
The Webway Portal is your ‘shaved knuckle in the hole’ to borrow a term from Steven Erickson. It is a piece of 3” diameter Impassable terrain which you can feasibly place 30” onto the board from the first turn. It has a Concaved Arc as the picture at the top of the article shows of the official template GW is releasing, and as such can provide some wonderful uses for LOS blocking and cover. The fact that the template is not opaque or clear where GW have the technology to make such a template (blast templates, One Ring wearing frodo baggins from a few years back, et al) yet chose not to and instead have this piece of terrain which oppens into a Dark realm itself and is indeed solid like a wall, allows us to use it as cover, but unfortunately blocks our Line of Sight past it at certain angles and vice versa. But that’s okay, it gives our Transport a cover save even if we were in the open at the end of the turn and if you have reserves, the threat of piled out reserves from that point next turn.
But that’s not all, the template is IMPASSABLE TERRAIN! This is key, because it allows us to take complete board control of entire sections of the battlefield. Walling off objectives that have been conveniently placed in niches which are only accessible if you walk into the defenders guns, using a pair of them as a typical yet absolutely permanent rhino blocking wall (see kirby’s article on blocking above for pictures there and explanation of that tactic in depth), or using them to quite literally make a wall that cannot be moved past by infantry and only around. This latter use can be abused. Which is rather fitting for the dark eldar. I’m going to call the strategy ‘The Great Wall of Commoragh’.
A Webway Portal is 3” wide and nothing without a special rule can move through/into it. Thus adding multiple Webway Portals down over open ground spaced 0.9” apart (a base is 1” wide on a small infantry model, so 0.9” apart means that you have convenient places to shoot between but with no chance of the enemy EVER being able to walk through as their base doesn’t fit between the impassable terrain which they cannot move through at all. So, with a full 6 Haemonculous with Warp Portals we can wall off…23.4” of the battle field (0.9” from the board edge, 3” portal, 0.9” gap, 3” portal, 0.9” gap, 3” portal, 0.9” gap, 3” portal, 0.9” gap, 3” portal, 0.9” gap, 3” portal = 23.4”), or just shy of 2 entire feet of battle field. Canny Dark Eldar Players will refuse flank deploy and hope their opponents mimic them so as on the first turn, 30” onto the field, right in front of the enemy deployment zone, you see a wall of Impassable terrain with the Dark eldar arrayed behind it ready to shoot at you and just have a good laugh.
Against combat orientated armies, this strategy hands you the win outright. The opponent has to walk all the way around it and then move up at you…at which point, you hop in your fast skimmers and jump to the other side of the wall and continue shooting them with glee. If they split forces, you can bring your whole army to bear on the split and push the advantage even further. Rinse and repeat. Try to look at the wall as you would a game of chess where you have a King and 2 or 3 Pawns left and the opponent has a few key pieces but no Rooks or Queens and so has to tread very carefully so as to not give you the Stalemate as you use the Pawns for cover, for if you can’t move any more you’ve drawn (and thus won in a way) and not been beaten. It’s a subtle hand needed to ensure this works well, and the same applies to the Dark Eldar Wall.
There are some interesting applications of Webway Portals though beyond the wall and some that need to be FAQ’ed. Quite a lot actually…this next section is going to be highly controversial, you have been warned.
So lets start:
Whilst models may never move or be placed in Impassable Terrain, there is no rule stating that a model can’t have Impassable Terrain placed on it.
Sitting a hardy FnP Troop choice on an objective and dropping a Webway Portal on top of them not only makes the Objective either impossible to capture outside of the unit camped right on top and trapped in the Impassable Terrain that has magically appeared quite literally out of thin air on top of them, but also means the unit inside this template can ONLY be shot at, not assaulted.
Further rules iffy’ness arises with where the troopers are placed, are they inside it or do you balance them precariously on the top of the portal template? Do the Troopers now get a cover save because they are inside cover and if so what does it count as? If you are inside a piece of terrain granting a cover save already and you drop that Webay Portal down in the terrain (not all battlefields are clear and open terrain for the unleashing of ‘The Great wall of Commoragh’ afterall) what save do you take? Do you take the original one or do you take the Webway Portal Impassable Terrain save or can you choose?
The Webway Portal rules do not say you can't drop the template marker on top of other models or vehicles, all it says is place the marker in base contact with the bearer when it is activated.
This allows us to unleash the Biggest Dick Move in recent times:
'The Webway Portal Trap'
Because you can place the Webway Portal Marker over enemy units, and all you have to do is cover a fraction of a models base (so you can maximise what you trap) to affect it, you now strand them in Impassable Terrain for the rest of the Game. The Swarmlord is beinga bitch? Strand him where he can't actually do anything anymore. That unit of 10 Mega Nob Bikers giving you a hard time? Strand one of them and thus lock the entire unit up for the rest of the game...it can still shoot you but you ain't gonna charge it so why bother with it until the rest of the army is wiped out?
Lets extend this further - TH+SS Termies with multiple Characters in a LR giving you a hard time? Strand them by dropping 3 Webway Portals across the entry points to each of the Transport exits (Frontal Assault Ramp and 2 Side Access Ports). Sure the Land Raider can still shoot (with restricted arcs, lol) but that Hammer unit now can't do anything to you, at all.
This goes both ways of course. Don't position the Webway Portal marker over your base. Base to base contact is not inside the template marker and thus the terrain - as soon as you overlap it, you get your own model stranded, which is just stupid, but hilarious at the same time.
Suppression via Trapping, in a word, WIN.
Lets extend this, assuming it is viable (and right now everything suggests it is (FAQ it GW!): you can position traps on things such as dreadnoughts, expensive characters and the like simply by positioning the template to clip their bases so as their LOS is now blocked. Now you can't shoot me because the Impassable Template is solid and not see through. This is, lets be honest, funny and so much cooler then the weapons that remove models from the board outright which are available within the same codex in spades. Because you are on the other side of the template, you score a cover save or simply can't be seen (the template is taller then a standard sized infantry model after all), at the least your vehicles also get a cover save so that's nice.
More questions: How are skimmers affected by Webway Portal Trappings? Can they be affected at all? They can't land on the marker because it is Impassable Terrain and they can't stop their move on/over Impassable terrain, but also for the standard hover height off of a base, this is, from memory shorter then the apex of the Webway Portal Template so can you drop the template underneath a skimmer and catch it in the concaved area of effect at the tip to strand it?
In any case, The Webway Portal provides the Dark Eldar player with a weapon which no other army currently has - a means to Control the Board via blocking as well as potentially Suppression via Trapping (You better FAQ this GW, it's fucked up broken if you don't!). Unlike their contemporary compatriots in other armies who also use vehicles for blocking, those vehicles can be destroyed and the walls removed. 'The Wall of Commorragh' however, cannot be destroyed or removed, and as such it allows you to dictate the battle in a way unprecedented in Warhammer 40,000 previously. The real question is how many Webway Portals do you pack into a list to abuse blocking (and possibly trapping until FAQ'ed) in such a way to balance good list design? Below is my first attempt at a Dark Eldar army. It isn't as balanced as it needs to be for 1,500pts, but it is bloody amusing and has already earnt me many a cry of 'You're a Bad Man Luke!' alongside a few punches to the face. :p
Taak's Great Wall of Commorragh Dark Eldar Funsies 1500pts:
HQ: 3 Haemonculous with Splinter Pistol, CCW and Webway Portal (85x3) = 255pts
HQ: 3 Haemonculous with Splinter Pistol, CCW and Webway Portal (85x3) = 255pts
Elites: 3 Kabalite Trueborn, 2 Splinter Rifles, 1 Splinter Cannon
Dedicated Transport: Venom, 2x Splinter Cannons, Flickerfield = 111pts
Elites: 3 Kabalite Trueborn, 2 Splinter Rifles, 1 Splinter Cannon
Dedicated Transport: Venom, 2x Splinter Cannons, Flickerfield = 111pts
Troops: 3 Wracks, 2 poisoned weapons
Dedicated Transport: Raider w/Darklance = 90
Troops: 3 Wracks, 2 poisoned weapons
Dedicated Transport: Raider w/Darklance = 90
Troops: 3 Wracks, 2 poisoned weapons
Dedicated Transport: Raider w/Darklance = 90
Troops: 3 Wracks, 2 poisoned weapons
Dedicated Transport: Raider w/Darklance = 90
Troops: 3 Wracks, 2 poisoned weapons
Dedicated Transport: Raider w/Darklance = 90
Heavy Support: Ravager w/3 Darklances = 105pts
Heavy Support: Ravager w/3 Darklances = 105pts
Heavy Support: Ravager w/3 Darklances = 105pts
Total = 1,497pts.
And there you have it, much funsies to ensue.
Have at it boys and girls and have an awesome day today!
Auretious Taak.
