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Dissies are better on raiders. Why would you ever put a dark lance on it...

Do the math again with dissies...

Jimsolo wrote:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this also ignore the number of troops being transported?

You missed a bit

Ketara wrote:In a nutshell Daly, the answer is not that they're bad necessarily. It's simply that they tend to have a very clearly defined role in min/maxed competitive play (aka, for when you need 6 men + transported for whatever reason).

And given both the fragility of DE troops as well as the Open-Topped vehicles, isn't it fairly safe to assume the vehicle is ALSO firing a packload of shots from its passengers?

It's true, one does need to consider to a slight extent the value of the passengers riding within the vehicle. The problem is that then you have to look at the optimal loadout for each of those units, in mix/max configuration, and for anything that isn't a large combat squad, the Venom usually wins again. For example:-

With regards to Incubi/Combat Archon, you're rarely going to be carrying enough of them to merit a Raider.

With Trueborn, if you're carrying them kitted out with Blasters/Splinter Cannon configurations, they will be less than 5, meaning a Venom is the most cost-efficient option. If they're carrying Dark Lances, than a Raider with a Night Shield is usually best, because it'll be squatting at the rear of the board dealing out anti-tank shots.

If it's Wyches, the most optimal configuration these days involves small units of 5 with Haywire Grenades. A Raider would cost more points, and the unit is something of a suicide/throwaway unit, so the cheaper Venom wins again.

With Warriors, they tend to come in blocks of 20 on foot with fortifications(no raider needed), or units of 5 with a blaster for 125 points (so the Venom takes the role again).


To conclude in TL;DR format, there are very few instances in which the capacity of ten comes into play, or in which the unit will necessarily perform better in a Raider than in a Ravager. Considering the min/max scenario as well, the fact that the Venom is one of the most economical(cheapest) ways to get access to splinter cannons, and a Raider is one of the lesser economical ways to get access to anti-tank, you promote Venom use simply so that you can squeeze more units in.

Remember, DE are horribly fragile. You want to have as many units as possible, so that if you lose first turn and have a few shot down, you still have a large enough concentration of firepower left to overwhelm the opponent. Compare.

A squad of ten warriors with a blaster and a splinter cannon loaded into a Raider with a Night Shield and Flicker Field costs 195 points. Conversely, a squad of five warriors with a single Blaster in a Venom with a second Splinter Cannon purchased is a mere 125 points. This means that for less than the cost of two gunboats,I can get three Blastboats.

Firstly, that gives me survivability of numbers in terms of tanks. I have three instead of two. In a large army? That means that I have six instead of four. In terms of firepower, I might lose five warriors in taking three Blastboats instead of two Gunboats. But I gain an extra four Splinter Cannons, replacing their 5 24" range poisoned shots with a nasty 24 36" range poisoned shots. Admittedly, I lose two dark lances as well, but I bring in another Blaster to partially replace one, and by relying primarily on other FOC slots for my anti-tank I'll actually save points overall by utilising more economical choices for anti-tank overall.

Shingen wrote:
Dissies are better on raiders. Why would you ever put a dark lance on it...

Do the math again with dissies...

With pleasure.

Against a Marine:
The Dark lance scored 0.55 dead marines per turn. The Venom scored 1.33 marines per turn.
A Disentegrator shoots three times, hitting twice. Being Strength 5, the Dissy wounds on a 3+ leaving me with 1.33 recurring dead marines per turn. Drawing a tie with the Splinter Cannon.

Against a Terminator:
The Dark Lance scored 0.36 dead terminators a turn, and the Venom 0.66 dead terminators.
The Disentegrator will get two hits and 1.33 wounds per turn again, but the Terminator benefits from a 5+ Invulnerable save. That leaves the Dissy doing roughly 0.89 wounds per turn, leaving the Dissy the overall Winner.

Against a Centurion:
The Venom maxed out at 0.66 wounds, and the Dark Lance at 0.55 wounds.
The Dissy on the other hand, comes in swinging twice, of which only a single one will be a wound. But with no Armour save, that leaves the Dissy doing 1.0 wounds compared to 0.66 & 0.55 wounds respectively, taking the field a second time.


So logically, we should all plump for the Dissy, right? Right? Wrong.

The problem is that whilst mathshammer can break things down, it fails to show the ultimate context of things. In this particular case, that context is how well the gun does against armies other than Marines. If you perform the mathhammer against Imperial Guard, Tau, Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, and so on, the Splinter Cannon very much comes into its own.

Yes, the Disentegrator cannon is better than the Splinter Cannon against the most heavily armoured of troops. But that's primarily because the splinter cannon is an anti-infantry weapon, and those types of troops are incredibly heavily armoured and designed to shrug off light firepower. Whilst it can do against termies and centurions at a pinch, ideally you'd be levelling your dark lances and blasters and everything else you have at such troops as well.

TL;DR? The Venom ties with the disentegrator equipped Raider on the basic Marine, costs less points, is better for more optimized units to gain a numerical supremacy, does more damage when monstrous creatures come into play, and does far more damage against troops with a less hardy baseline than Marines.

That's why I take 3 venoms and 3 dissie raiders. Covers all bases.

Shingen wrote:
That's why I take 3 venoms and 3 dissie raiders. Covers all bases.

I could be persuaded that one or two Raiders with Dissies would be competitively viable, assuming that they're loaded only with 5 warriors and a blaster to keep that price increase as low as possible.

That's how mine are, don't even have blasters though, those points I spend on other stuff.

Would something like this be viable and mostly competitive?

Vect's Black Heart Kabal:

HQ:

Vect (In the raider with the witches)


Troops:

9 Wyches w/ Haywires, 1 Shardnet, Hekatrix w/ Agoniser; Raider w/ Flickerfields, Shock Prow

10 Warriors w/ Blaster, Splinter Cannon; Raider w/ Flickerfields, Splinter Racks

10 Warriors w/ Blaster, Splinter Cannon; Raider w/ Flickerfields, Splinter Racks

10 Warriors w/ Blaster, Splinter Cannon; Raider w/ Flickerfields, Splinter Racks

5 Kabalite warriors ; Venom Dual splinter cannons

5 Kabalite Warriors ; Venom Dual Splinter cannons

Elites

3 Trueborn, 2 splinter cannons; Venom dual splinter cannons
3 Trueborn 2 splinter cannons; Venom dual splinter cannons


Dedicated transports (all accounted for above)

4 Venom
4 Raiders


Heavy Support:
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance

How many points is this?

 Ketara wrote:
How many points is this?

Don't have the codex in front of me, but it's about 1850-ish

Typically that's how I field my army, Shin. Venoms are anti-infantry-in-bulk and MCs and raiders have Dissies for the 2+ guys which my group has a bunch of. FA and HS are my main AT slots although I have warriors with blasters as backup.Except for the Archon's squad I use base numbers of troops in each squad so no heavy weapons there.

I don't really bother with dark lances and my group has agreed with each other about no flyers so we are a micro-bubble in that respect.

We have lots of flyers in mine.

I run 3 venom, 3 dissie raider, 5 guys in each, 2 ravagers, 1nightwing, 3 war walkers and a crimson hunter. Plus jetbikes and an Autarch with the baron.

So... Kinda just reiterating my last post, would this list be good against space marines and daemons and the more competitive armies out there?

What is your plan vs air? Just use movement to avoid them?

ravagers 9 lance shots a turn. bound to get a 6 or two that and movement..

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
ravagers 9 lance shots a turn. bound to get a 6 or two that and movement..

You're honestly probably better off firing at ground targets. The number of lance shots it takes to reliably kill AV12 is surprisingly high.

Against flyers, you will hit 1/6 of the time and penetrate with 1/3 of those. If the flyer doesn't jink, you're going to need 20 shots just to reliably penetrate. To "guarantee" a kill (i.e., add probabilities up to 1...yes I know the math is faulted but for the sake of argument...) through a single penetrating hit you're going to need about 150 Dark Lance shots if the thing jinks or has a save (i.e., Heldrake).


Long story short, the odds are not at all in your favor of killing flyers. Better to shoot at ground targets. In fact, Dark Lances really aren't all that great at killing anything. For their points, they might be kind of tits for killing AV14 but still...meh.

the debate between raiders and venoms comes down to how you want to play.

if your going with a shooting force, then venoms win. a single venom loaded with 5 warriors. give one a blaster. that unit is something like 175pts total, vehicle included. 6 of those can put downfield a STAGGERING amount of poison fire. ive seen venoms take down 10 man terminator squads in one shooting phase. force enough wounds on that 2+ armor, and they will fail enough to go away, the free flicker field is nice as well, since its an invun save, and thus cant be ignored by tau markerlight or buffmanders.

if you want to instead go for close combat, i think the raider is better, simply because it has a troop cap of 10, and if you are charging wyches into combat, you want as many boots going as possible to mitigate overwatch damage.

either way you go, make sure you tailor your other FOC slots to support your chosen attack path. for combat lists i like beasts and jetbikes, alongside bloodbrides or incubi in the elite bracket, rolling with a tooled up archon. for the shootier end of things, the beasts are still nice, and the baron makes them better. trueborn with blasters on a venom is also pretty sweet, and of course razorwings or ravagers for support.

as said before the trick to DE is the movment phase, wich you can own. the goal being to hit with your entire army onto a smaller section of his, and do so all at once. if you get there in little bits over 3 turns, you are gonna have a bad day. hit that same spot, all at once on turn 2, and suddenly the game changes. learn to own the movment phase, and dont dismay when you lose 1, 2 or even 3 vehicles in the first turn. ideally your list should have that thought in mind, and a way to get around or compensate.

As a Non-DE player I'll just throw in a use for Raiders: transporting Grotesques.

Wait a few turns to whittle down the opponent with your Venoms and Ravangers and finish up with Grots on turn 3 or 4.

this is all great advice guys. question about wyches. people say run them for the haywire grenades. wouldn't it be more point efficient to just run a ravager for that? I was under the impression they're good in combat too

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
this is all great advice guys. question about wyches. people say run them for the haywire grenades. wouldn't it be more point efficient to just run a ravager for that? I was under the impression they're good in combat too

its all up to you really.

I did bump into the ladies with haywires with my Tau but they only got so far before getting shot off the board, as Tau do

I'm a bit old school in that I go for 'lance spam' on raiders and the venoms do the other dirty work, ravagers take a lot of heat so more lances on raiders causes threat overload. They might not seem that good but whenever I hit something it usually goes boom!

Though a blaster shot over the side of a venom is excellent target trolling, not only does the opponent whine about the amount of shots you get, they get stung twice when that cosy transport is blown up. Usually meaning a stream of splinter shots is not too far behind.

As others have said its all about the movement phase, and trying to ensure that you receive as little return fire as possible, which depends upon your opponent.

Overall you either do CC or not, I prefer to shoot as It allows more control of the battle (always important) moreover it creates a stink when you remove units from the table in short order and not taking any hits yourself. I lost a tourney game once to bugs thanks to me being one venom short those 12 shots would have tipped things I think, it was a fun game either way.

DE punch above their weight in many respects because most do not face them at all, and then wonder what hit them when they get shot to bits in spectacular fashion

I can say they are the only army I fell comfortable with using 5 man unit spam the horror!

 Art_of_war wrote:

Dalymiddleboro wrote:
this is all great advice guys. question about wyches. people say run them for the haywire grenades. wouldn't it be more point efficient to just run a ravager for that? I was under the impression they're good in combat too

its all up to you really.

I did bump into the ladies with haywires with my Tau but they only got so far before getting shot off the board, as Tau do

I'm a bit old school in that I go for 'lance spam' on raiders and the venoms do the other dirty work, ravagers take a lot of heat so more lances on raiders causes threat overload. They might not seem that good but whenever I hit something it usually goes boom!

Though a blaster shot over the side of a venom is excellent target trolling, not only does the opponent whine about the amount of shots you get, they get stung twice when that cosy transport is blown up. Usually meaning a stream of splinter shots is not too far behind.

As others have said its all about the movement phase, and trying to ensure that you receive as little return fire as possible, which depends upon your opponent.

Overall you either do CC or not, I prefer to shoot as It allows more control of the battle (always important) moreover it creates a stink when you remove units from the table in short order and not taking any hits yourself. I lost a tourney game once to bugs thanks to me being one venom short those 12 shots would have tipped things I think, it was a fun game either way.

DE punch above their weight in many respects because most do not face them at all, and then wonder what hit them when they get shot to bits in spectacular fashion

I can say they are the only army I fell comfortable with using 5 man unit spam the horror!

Amazing response. Would you be able to take a look at my 1850 list I posted in the army lists forum and let me know how you think I'd fare against space marines using bikes, drop pods w/ melta, and predators?

As a long time DE player (3rd), DE have generally fallen under the "More is Better" category of armies. You need a lot of venoms to make them worthwhile and you need a lot of anti-armor threats to take out the enemies armor before they start blowing up your paper airplaines.

Here is what my DE list currently looks like and I have had a number of tournament wins with this and missed best DE player by 2 points at ATC (to a DE player I nearly tabled in the first round, grumble grumble)

At 1850:

Baron Sathony
Haemonculus

x3 3 Trueborn - x3 blasters
x3 Venom + SC, Nightshields

x2 5 Warriors - blaster
x2 Venom + SC, Nightshields
x3 3 Wracks
x3 Venom + SC, Nightshields
5 Wyches - haywire grenades
Venom + SC, Nightshields

3 Beastmasters - 4 khymarae, 4 Razorwings

x3 Ravagers + Nightshields

Aegis Defense Line with Quad Gun

So to sum that up:
108 shots from venoms
9 lances and 11 blasters for 20 darklight weapons
5 wyches with haywire grenades (LOVE these ladies, they eat walkers alive)
Beast pack (for anit-infanty, armor, MC duty and to draw fire)
Baron for a little of everything
And a quad gun, usually manned by either baron or the haemonculus and an Aegis that allows my beastpack to get into the center of the table with a 3+ cover save

Outside of wave serpent or night scythe spam, there isnt a lot that this list is afraid of, thanks in large part to the night shields

And before anyone goes on about how fragile the troops are, they rarely get shot at until almost all the skimmers are gone, which almost never happens.

 gardeth wrote:
As a long time DE player (3rd), DE have generally fallen under the "More is Better" category of armies. You need a lot of venoms to make them worthwhile and you need a lot of anti-armor threats to take out the enemies armor before they start blowing up your paper airplaines.

Here is what my DE list currently looks like and I have had a number of tournament wins with this and missed best DE player by 2 points at ATC (to a DE player I nearly tabled in the first round, grumble grumble)

At 1850:

Baron Sathony
Haemonculus

x3 3 Trueborn - x3 blasters
x3 Venom + SC, Nightshields

x2 5 Warriors - blaster
x2 Venom + SC, Nightshields
x3 3 Wracks
x3 Venom + SC, Nightshields
5 Wyches - haywire grenades
Venom + SC, Nightshields

3 Beastmasters - 4 khymarae, 4 Razorwings

x3 Ravagers + Nightshields

Aegis Defense Line with Quad Gun

So to sum that up:
108 shots from venoms
9 lances and 11 blasters for 20 darklight weapons
5 wyches with haywire grenades (LOVE these ladies, they eat walkers alive)
Beast pack (for anit-infanty, armor, MC duty and to draw fire)
Baron for a little of everything
And a quad gun, usually manned by either baron or the haemonculus and an Aegis that allows my beastpack to get into the center of the table with a 3+ cover save

Outside of wave serpent or night scythe spam, there isnt a lot that this list is afraid of, thanks in large part to the night shields

And before anyone goes on about how fragile the troops are, they rarely get shot at until almost all the skimmers are gone, which almost never happens.

Thanks for the reply. I've definitely migrated to the more venom philosophy. I would however like to run a pair of raiders. Maybe one for wyches, and vect, and the other carrying 10 warriors. Gives me a couple more dark lances and what not. Can I be quasi competitive like this? With say something like 6 venoms and 3 raiders with triple ravager loadout?"

The problem with say 6 venoms and 3 raiders, you havent neccessarily added to the # of lances you have (or if you have you have added a LOT of points for 1 lance for the loss of the extra splinter fire. And at only 6 venoms you start losing the ability to reliably remove infantry threats with just the lose of 2 of those venoms, which is more likely to happen because you didn't have those extra venoms fireing in previous turns, removing said threats.

Its a kind of snowball effect. I used to run a mix, but after a lot of games I did not find the larger raiders squads worth the points and kept finding myself wishing those raiders where venoms.

So it can be quasi-competitive, but it won't hold up to the harder lists out there.

 gardeth wrote:
The problem with say 6 venoms and 3 raiders, you havent neccessarily added to the # of lances you have (or if you have you have added a LOT of points for 1 lance for the loss of the extra splinter fire. And at only 6 venoms you start losing the ability to reliably remove infantry threats with just the lose of 2 of those venoms, which is more likely to happen because you didn't have those extra venoms fireing in previous turns, removing said threats.

Its a kind of snowball effect. I used to run a mix, but after a lot of games I did not find the larger raiders squads worth the points and kept finding myself wishing those raiders where venoms.

So it can be quasi-competitive, but it won't hold up to the harder lists out there.

Thanks for the insight. I Guess I just liked the idea of larger kabalite squads. Fortunately, I've only purchased 1 Raider, So I can just use the raider for the 9x wyches with vect. So I can get up to 8 venoms 1 raider, and 3 ravagers. I suppose that gives me 10 lance shots a turn. Put a blaster on the 5 kabalite squads in the venoms, and splinter cannons on the trueborn in the venoms. How would a list like this hold up?


HQ:

Vect (in a raider with the wyches)


Troops:

9 wyches w/ haywire grenades (raider with vect)

5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Kabalite Warriors, 1 blaster (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)

Elites:

5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)
5 Trueborn 2 splinter cannon (in a venom with dual splinter cannons)


Transports: (all accounted for above)

Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons
Venom, dual splinter cannons

Raider, Flickerfields, dark lance


Heavy Support:

Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance
Ravager, Triple Dark Lance

Much better, I still prefer blasters on trueborn (9 extra lances, YEAH!) and I would rather have baron+beastpack for just 21 more points than Vect, but I think I've already covered that .

 gardeth wrote:
Much better, I still prefer blasters on trueborn (9 extra lances, YEAH!) and I would rather have baron+beastpack for just 21 more points than Vect, but I think I've already covered that .

Gotcha, I just like Vect. He's the reason I'm doing Kabal of the Black Heart. So he's gotta be an auto include for me... My super competitive army is Daemons. That's my go to tourney list. Don't get me wrong, I still want to kick ass and take names with my Dark Eldar. Do you think I'd win the majority of my games against Vanilla marines with this list? He's taking bikes, preds, drop pods etc...

Against marines, especially marines with pods, I would recommend replacing one of your warrior units with 5 wyches with haywire grenades (same points cost) this gives you almost guaranteed removal of pods in your deployment zone, they can handle any dreads that might drop in, and they can take out any armor that you really need gone but don't have the lances to spare AND don't want to expose vect to go after.

And if you happen to find the points, shard nets are great on those wyches with vect to reduce the # of attacks coming from MCs and the like.

*edit: and don't forget you can throw haywire and plasma grenades!

 gardeth wrote:
Against marines, especially marines with pods, I would recommend replacing one of your warrior units with 5 wyches with haywire grenades (same points cost) this gives you almost guaranteed removal of pods in your deployment zone, they can handle any dreads that might drop in, and they can take out any armor that you really need gone but don't have the lances to spare AND don't want to expose vect to go after.

And if you happen to find the points, shard nets are great on those wyches with vect to reduce the # of attacks coming from MCs and the like.

*edit: and don't forget you can throw haywire and plasma grenades!

Great info. I'll definitely consider more wyches. Maybe just have 5 with vect in the raider, and use 5 in a venom. One more question for you, if I chose to go 1 raider instead of the venom, with 10 warriors and splinter racks would that make much of a difference, dropping down to 7 venoms with 2 raiders and 3 ravagers?

It won't make a huge difference but it is still a net loss. You pay more points for a lance that shots farther, but for 2 few splinter shots at 12" less range on a platform that can only move 6" to fire at full effect. Obviously its better at short range, but I prefer stop things from getting that close.

 gardeth wrote:
It won't make a huge difference but it is still a net loss. You pay more points for a lance that shots farther, but for 2 few splinter shots at 12" less range on a platform that can only move 6" to fire at full effect. Obviously its better at short range, but I prefer stop things from getting that close.

Thanks for everything, and thanks to everyone for their replies. I definitely got a good gist of which direction to go with my army thanks to this thread! Appreciate it everyone.