Could turn out decently shitty, decent or even pretty okay, too hard to tell purely on paper honestly. Dark Eldar also depends way more on terrain than most armies do, which adds other factors. Hey, again, I'm not saying they're amazing, they're really not, just arguing that they aren't really really shitty mate ;)

Lasguns are entirely different than poisoned guns Pups, you know that.

Yes, Scourges don't necessarily have to take haywire guns, blasters and heatlanes are options as well, heck they can even spam poison if wanted. Either way they are fast and deadly. Same with Reavers.

Basicly, you call them really really shitty. I'm saying that's likely to be not true. I'm not saying they're fucking awesome, some problems are still too much of a problem. (too little ways of diminishing getting alphastriked to oblivion basicly)

Except Mandrakes don't do shit. If you'd try that against me (infiltrating Mandrakes near me as a distraction), I'd use them to get additional movement by charging them lol.

No bu really, what's the point of iniltrating something which is hardly a threat to anything while it dies against a LOT of things very easily? People act like ignore cover is the only thing removing something with a 2+ cover save, well, newsflash: close combat ignores cover saves as well.

I know Puppy for some years now and he's not an unreasonable person. Sometimes though, he fucks up. I believe this is one of those times.

Dark Eldar got substantially improved as a primary army and maybe also as allies. (2nd is tough, because well, Baron)

Does it qualify as a good codex overall? No, for that they fucked up way too many units. Wyches, incubi, mandrakes, wracks are all pointless for example. They are per definition highly specialised by a lack of anti-tank and considering that their anti-infantry capabilities aren't spectacular, they suck. Ravager got *way* worse and that's dumb, because they weren't too good to start with. Fliers are still on the pricey side as well. However, this doesn't mean that Dark Eldar didn't get better, because they had a ton of units already which sucked. So let's look at the good things:

Warriors got improved by being cheaper and because you can take Venoms now even though you take 10 man squads. 10 man with a Dark Lance for 100 points is very acceptable. It's pitty that Heamonculus aren't Fearless, otherwise 20 man with 2 Lances and 2 specials could have been a thing.

Grotesques were okay and got better. They don't have a direct role and therefore are hard to qualify as being good right away in theory, but they are strong enough that I can see them being good when you play with them. (they are efficient) 3 - 5 man with Heamonculus with Portal or something.

Reavers are good! Blaster/Heatlance 10 points is good and so is rending HoW. (caltrops is a strong option as I see it) Basicly, it already was an effective unit before, just not efficient. Now they are both.

Scourges are effective. They are the DE equivalant of Haywire crypteks (worse though, which isn't a shame). 120 for 4 haywire shots with 36" range is really solid.

Talos are very usable now and I'd say the best Heavy Support. FnP effectively gives them at least another wound, giving them what they needed most. (3 wounds is not enough for an MC over 100 points) They are more reliable in CC now by having a set amount of attacks (4 attacks base with WS5 and S7 smash is not mediocre) and their TL weapon is still decent. I'd run a minimum of 3, maybe more in most builds I think.

Yes, that's pretty much all there is, but that is better than what you could do before. Do Wave Serpents and Annihilation Barges + Night Scythes still own you? Sure, but you shouldn't use those as benchmarks.

Verdict: If you didn't like Dark Eldar before, you wont now. If you liked the last codex, you should be able to enjoy this one more by virtue of having a little bit more options and having a little bit more strenght overall.

List which kicks ass? Fuck that, it wont kick ass, but it sure as hell is better than what you could do before:

Heamonculus; portal and some other shit 125
3 Grotesques; abb scissorhand 125
2x 10 warriors; DL, venom 330
3x5 sourges 360
3x6 reavers 390
2x Talos 260
2x Talos 260
Total: 1850

Alternatively you could take more Talos, like, I dunno, 9 lol.

Yay. Shitty, just not shitty as in really, really shitty and worse than GK.

Yawn. Extremely boring update. Then again, the previous one was just a very good codex so I'm not even sure if this is a bad thing or not. Depends on one his expectations I guess.

Misleading title, which tricked me into clicking and actually reading this early theoretical overview.

Bad Puppy.

Debris cloud tokens!

New ships are okay too.

"4) Unbound armies are therefore useless. Good."
I think the opposite. I don't give a fuck if I can't contest, I will have a much stronger army. 10 Annihilation Barges are only 900 points, that's just a tiny simple example. Think hyper MSU. Think spamming whatever efficient choices you want. Ton of single Broadsides to avoid Ld issues, overkill and to invite overkill? Sure. Army of only single Obliterators? No problem.

People spamming Knights and Russes in narrative games too?

Considering that a lot of MC's are characters and that you have to accept/issue challenges, yes it will happen. Especially considering your Palaquin Lords/Sorcerers are slow as fuck.

But sure, you can try to prevent fighting MC's, in which case... What's the point of having all those upgrades? You need it to fight what exactly?

Honestly, either you are able to fight MC's in this edition, or you might just as well not bother.

The chance alone that your expensive Lord gets instakilled by a Riptide just sucks dick. Yes, also I don't like that it can happen in the first place, I find it one of the worst rules in 6th edition.