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Ok, so my first ever RW is sat on my table, nearly assembled, and I've stopped to consult the brain trust to see if I perhaps need to adjust my thinking with it.

I'm collecting again for the first time in a decade, and slowly building and painting a DE army, with the promise that I will never field an unpainted unit again. That aside, I'm also collecting with a view to some variety, rather than simply what is most effective, so I bought the RW as an alternative to another Ravager, ie as an anti armour unit.

As I'm building though, I've started thinking that with 2 x Disentegrators, plus SC plus the selection of missiles available, is it actually a more effective anit-foot unit, or should I arm it with lances and treat it as more multi role?

Thoughts appreciated!

I would go for the Lances, personally. The S8 Ap2 is simply much better at the job. Also, you have to consider the fact that by taking a Razorwing, you lose a HS slot that could have gone to a Ravager, meaning that you lose a considerable amount of potential AT firepower. Therefore, I would recommend you keep the Lances, and load up with Necrotoxin Missiles for Infantry.

Played my first game with Razorwing last weekend. 4 necrotoxins, splinter cannon + 2 dark lances. It died on its first turn but I felt did it's job. Targeted a necron lord w destroyer body. It was hunkered up near 3x hvy destroyer and a necron warrior squad. It dropped 2 destroyers, 4 necron warriors and a heavy destroyer plus put one wound on the destroyer lord. It then proceeded to take most of the necron fire to drop it in his turn. End result was that the rest of my army was left intact. (3x raiders, 2 x ravagers and 3x venoms filled with troops)

I would agree though arm it with dark lances and make the enemy target it to do anything to it or suffer the consequences. If you survive, you want the range factor so that you are >30" away from the enemy and you force him to target you with some long range fire to kill you.

Thanks guys, kinda reinforced what I thought anyway.

One assumes that flickerfield is a good idea too, especially if you're using it in the method that DAaddict describe (which I have started to think of already as the "slap, woo-hoo! method)

I'd magnetize

But, given the choice of one or the other I'd go with lances. It is an anti-infantry unit though, regardless.

I tend to think of it as a multi-stage, multi-role unit. First turn, fire all the the missiles at a high priority infantry target and there after treat it as a 2 lance ravager with a splinter cannon or a venom with 2 lances

See, this is why I hate/love this game. Just walked away from the computer, all set for lances. Had a think while in the shower, and now I'm thinking, if the RW is truly anti foot, then surely 12 x anti infantry shots (2 x dissies plus the SC) plus necrotoxin missiles might be the way to go. I have blasterborn, scourges and reavers with lances, plus raiders with lances as anti armour (plus wyches with HwGs)

Against MEQ, surely the potential of 6 casualties with DC are better than the max of 2 with DLs? Admittedly, each shot is less likely of the kill, but only marginally..

Just playing devil's advocate, my gut said lances initially, but I'd be interested to hear the arguments against Disentegrators some more.

I'd say it comes down to which army you are fielding.

If you're going for a venom spam list, you could use the extra lances for AT purposes.

If you've going Raider spam, you've already got plenty of AT, and taking the Disintegrators would help maximize infantry casualties.

The caviat to this is that Dark Lances can instakill MEQs, so you can snipe characters with a lance razorwing. You cannot do that with a Disintegrator razorwing.

Lances probably are the better option in most cases, as they have broaden the razorwings role. However, if you really want to focus it into a line infantry eating powerhouse, the disintegrators are the way to go.

My point of view is that, in general, dark eldar don't really have much reason to concern themselves with most line infantry. Therefore, dedicating any unit completely to anti-infantry doesn't really make much sense, especially when Venoms do it so much more efficiently and from the troops slot. Couple that with a mech heavy metagame and you typically don't need something that tears up infantry like a fully tooled Razorwing. Just my opinion.

I run mine with the lances, and buy shatter field missiles if I have the points (only AP-, but has a better chance of doing something to a vehicle if it scatters, and has reroll to wound at S7). The lance is still good at anti infantry, it does a good job of dropping multi wound models and ICs, in addition to putting wounds on high toughness models like TMCs and wraithlord/wraithgaurd.

notabot187 wrote:I run mine with the lances, and buy shatter field missiles if I have the points (only AP-, but has a better chance of doing something to a vehicle if it scatters, and has reroll to wound at S7). The lance is still good at anti infantry, it does a good job of dropping multi wound models and ICs, in addition to putting wounds on high toughness models like TMCs and wraithlord/wraithgaurd.

Aaah, of course!

Was trying to figure out what the point of shatterfield was, and because it doesn't have a special anti-armour rule I completely missed that it was naturally quite good against light armour anyway! (Forgive me, I haven't played a game since very early third, or whichever edition came after the boxed set with all the minis, templates etc, a little rusty!)

So, thanks to the info and my own thinking, I''m now thinking that in order to give a degree of flexibility something like

2 x DL, 2 x Shatterfield Missle, 2 x Necro Missile

Thoughts?

I don't like the necro toxin. You pay for a missile that wounds on a 2+, when the other two missiles with their strength already wound on a 2+. You have no strength on it, so can't harm vehicles, even as a fluke. So what is the advantage? Pinning. You are paying 5 points for pinning, that rule that hardly ever comes up, and with a large blast that wounds on a 2, will probably wipe out or cripple any crappy unit actually prone to being pinned.

My suggestion is monoscythe, and/or shatterfield. Mono because its cheap, and shatterfield since it has a higher chance of having a result against vehicles (pens 1/6 more often, but its pens only destroy on a 6). Reroll to wound is kinda unneeded with S7, but it shows its worth if you like rolling lots of 1s.

Tbh I would never upgrade all the missiles because the default ones are already very good. S6 is plenty in most cases because there aren't that many T5-6 models in the game, let alone units of them (and you have to be slightly crazy to fire pie plates at Tervigons or other T6+ MCs). Essentially because none of the missiles get you S8 (which would be very nice for anti tank and ID purposes) or an improved AP (ignoring the Implosion, which is not a pie plate, Void Raven only and insanely expensive) you really don't need to upgrade more than a couple to deal with specific threats, and even then only if you haven't got it covered somewhere else.

Both the Shatterfield and Necrotoxin offer a bit more punch against such targets if you find you really need it, the Shatterfield is going to be 3+ with re-rolls even against T6 and gives you a bit more punch against vehicles but is noticeably worse against non MEQ targets. The Necrotoxin wounds everything on 2+ and the pinning is actually useful against TWC (one of the few targets you need more than S6 against anyway) and Pinning certainly isn't a complete writeoff against standard infantry. The Pinning ability is certainly less valuable depending on how you plan on firing the missiles off though, if you want to show up and fire all 4 at once then Necrotoxin isn't really that valuable because you pay the points to get Pinning but still only force a single test. However if you say take upgrade 2 missiles to Necrotoxin and take Disintegrators (and Night Shields, which is what makes this viable) then you can fire off 1 Monoscythe and 1 Necrotoxin per turn, ideally moving into 36" range in the second turn to do more damage against infantry targets. In theory this is clearly a better option, because you very rarely need to fire 4 pie plates at a single target (or 12 at 3 targets...) but its obviously quite a bit harder to do in practice because you have to stay alive for a turn to do it. Its certainly possible with Night Shields though, unlike Ravagers etc you can actually dodge all those Missile Launchers.

The default missiles is what you want as Powerguy already said.
One point is to make damage as much as possible with the Razorwing before the enemy has a chance to target it.
Its not open topped but its chances to survive is not too high when its getting targeted.

How about shooting one or two missiles the first turn and then as your opponent shakes in fear, you turbo-boost and make it a fire magnet, scince he doesent want that happening again, or is the terror simply not worth fireing two pie plates?

Lances and default missiles, flickerfield and night shields. Fire off all of the missiles on turn one from 48", and the night shields should protect you from most return fire. From this point on you aren't an anti-infantry unit anymore, you're an anti-tank unit. Use your mobility to go for side and rear shots.

This tank has an anti-infantry and an anti-tank role which diffuses its usage.
Getting rid of the anti-infantry role by shooting all missiles in the first turn is the way to go.

I actually love the Razorwing against Kan wall lists.

With a couple of Venoms and the missiles, you can easily torrent out the Big Mek on the first turn, leaving many kanz easy prey for your dark lances.