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So after having poor luck with warp beasts and a big jetbike squad, I'm thinking about restructuring my list to the following:


HQ

Archon - jetbike, tormentor helm, punisher, shadow field, combat drugs, plasma grenades
Dracon - splinter pistol, agonizer, combat drugs, plasma grenades
with 5 Incubi - plasma grenades
in a Raider w/ Slave Snares

ELITE

2x 8 Wyches - 2 blasters, wych weapons, plasma grenades, succubus with agonizer, Raider w/ Horrorfex

TROOPS

3x 10 Warriors - 2 Dark Lances
8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Shredder, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider
8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Blaster, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider

FAST ATTACK

3 Reavers - 2 Blasters

HEAVY

2x Ravager - 3 Disintegrators, Night Shields

TOTAL 1850

I plan on the reaver squad blasting up a flank with the Archon, and having the Archon split off while the squad busts tanks. The wyches will go after big scary CC units with power weapons, and the Dracon+Incubi hit troop units. I'll generally keep the 2 raider squads in reserve to either grab objectives or just not die in KP missions. Everything else sits back at range and shoots away, targeting enemy transports and heavy weapons first.

I've had some poor luck with the Dark Eldar recently (1-2 in both of my last two tourneys), so I'd appreciate any feedback.

afireinside13t wrote:So after having poor luck with warp beasts and a big jetbike squad…

No worries, either they fit your style or they don’t. I’ll be honest though, every new Dark Eldar player goes through a natural progression very similar to yours. Bikes and Incubi always attract people to the army, they put them in and discover they do not work as well as they thought. You will try more variations and discover the same thing – certain choices are really cool but in game they are below average. Looks as if you are still holding on to bikes and incubi albeit a little more refined but keep your eye on them, if they fail you again consider dropping them someday. Later, once you start racking in the wins, you can reintroduce them back in the lists and perhaps then you can make them work.

Archon - jetbike, tormentor helm, punisher, shadow field, combat drugs, plasma grenades

Now that jetbikes are reduced to a small tank hunting squad the Archon will not really fit in. The small jetbike squad will be a big liability to the Archon because of its size – be prepared to take morale checks if you lose one bike.

An option to consider would be to drop the bike and place him/her in with the wyches. I like the animus and a trophy rack on a lord like this but that’s purely optional.

Dracon - splinter pistol, agonizer, combat drugs, plasma grenades
with 5 Incubi - plasma grenades
in a Raider w/ Slave Snares

If I was playing with incubi then this is almost exactly how I would outfit them – I would probably add a trophy rack and drop the snares but the snares are cool.

2x 8 Wyches - 2 blasters, wych weapons, plasma grenades, succubus with agonizer, Raider w/ Horrorfex

I like as-is

3x 10 Warriors - 2 Dark Lances

8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Shredder, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider
8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Blaster, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider

Thanks for all the advice! You make a good point about the Archon. I'll probably put him on foot and stick him with one of the wych squads.

As for Raider squads, I'm definitely planning on switching over some of the sniper squads as I get some more Raiders. That's the tough part, as neither of the local stores stocks them and even some online retailers don't sell them.

Having two dissy ravagers has worked pretty well for me. As they are the only "tanks" in the army, one tends to fall pretty quickly even with night shields and clever deployment. I'll see how they perform in the future, and consider switching one to all lances.

Kwi's offering some very good advice here - so I'll just chime in with where I either disagree with him or at least feel a need to defend the other option.

Kwi wrote:Looks as if you are still holding on to bikes and incubi albeit a little more refined but keep your eye on them, if they fail you again consider dropping them someday. Later, once you start racking in the wins, you can reintroduce them back in the lists and perhaps then you can make them work.

Interesting way to look at it. I would suggest that the concept of bikes is a new player affection only insomuch as they often want to build a Deathstar Archon unit out of it but don't seem to understand the intricacies of the unit in accomplishing this. As currently designed, afireinside's list isn't quite fast enough to provide the target saturation he needs to make the bikes work the way he wants/needs them to. Keeping a minimized 2 Blaster squad to help distract from his Ravagers for a turn could be pretty functional for him though.

Dracon - splinter pistol, agonizer, combat drugs, plasma grenades
with 5 Incubi - plasma grenades
in a Raider w/ Slave Snares

If I was playing with incubi then this is almost exactly how I would outfit them – I would probably add a trophy rack and drop the snares but the snares are cool.

Slave Snares are conceptually cool but I just can't abide by them. Plus, by dropping them he could afford Horrorfexes for all his non-hoororfex Raiders at the moment, which would be tactically more effective overall. Trophy Rack isn't bad though, especially when paired with the Wych boats and their horrorfexes.

3x 10 Warriors - 2 Dark Lances
8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Shredder, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider
8 Raiders - Splinter Cannon, Blaster, Sybarite w/ Poisoned Blades, Raider

I like the idea of having 5 scoring units. I think the raider squads are better than the sniper squads and would love to see more raider squads.

Probably to just clarify on what Kwi was driving at here - you have 6 assault oriented things (2 Wych squads, Incubi, Bikes, and 2 Raider squads) that will be your forward thrust. All of those units are pretty much equally fragile (maybe bikes winning on fragility depending on the situation) and they also contain your most expensive stuff. As it stands your opponent will not have any problem trying to focus on the expensive bikes or that tasty Incubi Raider because he knows if he can blow those two away he will severely blunt the bite of your attack. Conversely, if you have, say, an additional 3 Raider squads he's in a bit more of a pickle because there will still be a lot of power hitting his lines even if he is able to gut one or two units. Plus, with more stuff rushing forward you can use more of it to help shield the expensive stuff (a pair of Warrior Raiders is as good as a solid building when trying to hide units).

To answer your concern for purchasing them I would direct you towards Maelstrom games - they still sell Raiders/Ravagers, do so at a fair price, and the shipping speed from over the pond to here in the states was quite good.

3 Reavers - 2 Blasters

I like them just like that. I would be very careful about putting the Archon with this squad as bikes are a natural distraction and will always get picked on first. I have tried running them in tandem with another tank hunting reaver squad and I find they can usually make it to their intended target – its one of those options that seem to do better when they work together.

Even one RJB squad without an Archon can be good for you - they are an optimal distraction unit because everyone can easily do the math of fragile + carrying two mini dark lances = priority kill. There's also something about bikers that always seems to push people's buttons and makes them wish to kill them early. I advocate a first round turboboost up one side to within clear threatening distance of some tasty armored targets, at the very least it will be one (and probably more) shots that won't be aimed at your Incubi/Wyches. If you want to run them with an Archon you really need more Raiders to help distract your opponent from them or a larger RJB squad or at least another RJB squad to help distract your opponent with (or a very terrain rich table).

I think Kwi's three lance Ravager discussion is worth considering (except the claim Ravagers kill infantry better than Incubi) - but you're not going to do bad with the 3 Dissie ones either. Considering how you're already paying for three 2-lance Warrior squads who will already be able to make a pretty solid anti-MEQ bubble on the field you can probably use the additional anti-horde tech.

Thor665 wrote:
Conversely, if you have, say, an additional 3 Raider squads he's in a bit more of a pickle because there will still be a lot of power hitting his lines even if he is able to gut one or two units. Plus, with more stuff rushing forward you can use more of it to help shield the expensive stuff (a pair of Warrior Raiders is as good as a solid building when trying to hide units).

I hadn't thought about using the Raiders as a screen. As a scoring unit, I was generally trying to hold them in reserve so they could late grab objectives. I'm starting to learn that Dark Eldar create a killing field across the board, and then sit on home objectives.

Thor665 wrote:
To answer your concern for purchasing them I would direct you towards Maelstrom games - they still sell Raiders/Ravagers, do so at a fair price, and the shipping speed from over the pond to here in the states was quite good.

I will be ordering from these folks tonight!

Thor665 wrote:
Even one RJB squad without an Archon can be good for you - they are an optimal distraction unit because everyone can easily do the math of fragile + carrying two mini dark lances = priority kill. There's also something about bikers that always seems to push people's buttons and makes them wish to kill them early. I advocate a first round turboboost up one side to within clear threatening distance of some tasty armored targets, at the very least it will be one (and probably more) shots that won't be aimed at your Incubi/Wyches. If you want to run them with an Archon you really need more Raiders to help distract your opponent from them or a larger RJB squad or at least another RJB squad to help distract your opponent with (or a very terrain rich table).

I had them running as a 5 man squad with the Archon (t helm and punisher on the succubus), but they would always get shot down turn 1. Like you say, there's something about bikes that scares people. Using them as a fast anti-tank shot seems worth a shot.

Thor665 wrote:
I think Kwi's three lance Ravager discussion is worth considering (except the claim Ravagers kill infantry better than Incubi) - but you're not going to do bad with the 3 Dissie ones either. Considering how you're already paying for three 2-lance Warrior squads who will already be able to make a pretty solid anti-MEQ bubble on the field you can probably use the additional anti-horde tech.

The triple dissy ones have been great so far, we'll see how things evolve in my next few games. Thanks for all the advice, you've been a tremendous help, both here and in other threads.

I'll hopefully be playing a couple times this week, so I'll tell everyone how it goes.

afireinside13t wrote:I hadn't thought about using the Raiders as a screen. As a scoring unit, I was generally trying to hold them in reserve so they could late grab objectives. I'm starting to learn that Dark Eldar create a killing field across the board, and then sit on home objectives.

Considering your 3X Warrior squads with two lances each this is not a bad strategy. However, DE can play the objective game in a variety of ways and I personally believe their best strategy is usually last turn claiming/contesting - but then I do run a very Raider/assault heavy force which lends itself to this strategy. If you favor more gunline but with some assault elements you tend to be more about killing fields and claiming local objectives while contesting others with your assaulters.

Thanks for all the advice, you've been a tremendous help, both here and in other threads.

Thank you, I do apparently manage to fake seeming to know what I'm talking about fairly well with DE. I look forward to hearing how your battles go, and I think once you get in new Raiders and mech up you'll see an improvement in your win/loss ratio as well since mech of some variety is really probably our best build in this edition (as it is with pretty much everyone else...)

Well, I tabled my friend's Thousand Sons last night with a 1750 pt version of this list, so things are looking good so far. I tried using the raider squads as a screen for the wyches and incubi, and it worked like a charm. They soaked up a lot of firepower and generally just forced his hand. Although if he hadn't failed so many psychic tests, it may have been a different story.