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I've purchased a Dark Eldar Battle Force, 2 Venoms and a Ravager to begin with. This is the 800 point army that I'll start with, and slowly expand to 2000 points (I have the progression planned out). I know my HQ is points heavy, but I'd prefer not to paint up another HQ when I plan on using Sliscus in my eventual 2000 point army. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions to improve it, I'm still int he assembly stage on most of this.

HQ:
Duke Sliscus - 150

Troops:
9x Kabalite Warriors, Raider, Splinter Racks - 151
4x Wyches, 1 Hekatrix w/ Agoniser, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Splinter Cannon - 155
4x Wyches, 1 Hekatrix w/ Agoniser, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Splinter Cannon - 155

Fast Attack:
3x Reavers - 66

Heavy:
1x Ravager, Night Shields - 115

My plan is to put the Duke with the warriors, giving them the poison bonus. I'll be able to roll twice for the combat drugs for the Wyches and Reavers. When I expand I'll be adding Trueborn and such.

Not too bad to be honest, but a few things:

Your duke, from the look of it, will be going along with the warriors on the raider, I assume. Remember that if you do move into double-tap range(12"), your gunboat raider(which is like 1 - 3 VP worth depending on mission) will be right in assault/melta/any S4 rapid fire double tap range... I'm saying at 12", you're gonna be eating a lot of shots, and your raider won't last, neither will that 300 points of a team. Alternatively, you could stay at 24" range, still isn't all that much safer(IMO), and you're only getting 9 twin-linked shots, which would give you about 8 hits before wounds and saves are done. May be you could see about squeezing in a trueborn on venom unit for the duke instead? Either with shardcarbines(up to 4 trueborns) or splinter cannons(keep it at 3 if you're only buying the 2 SCs), they may not get as many hits in without twin-linked buff, but at least they're a teensy bit further away from death.

Your wyches, even with the addition of double drugs rolls, aren't gonna be terrifically good at assault(at that size and thanks 6th ed), and going by DE players much better than myself, the difference between venom blade and agoniser is negligible at best(they did the mathsing!), so, what I'm saying is if you absolutely have to give them the assault upgrade, perhaps venom blade would be better, saves you some points as well. Though to be honest, since they're dead after the AT haywiring anyway, you might as well keep them cheap, I mean, your opponent would most likely slaughter them simply out of vengeance, I would if I just watched my mech being taken down by 5 skimpy wyches tossing magic nades at it.

Reavers aren't worth taking if you aren't gonna give them either gun upgrade, bladevane upgrade or both. And I'd say NS on ravager is "spare points only", most heavy AT have better range than our DLs anyway, but of course, I'm not saying NS is useless... just situational.

I agree with most of the above and would add:

Shardnet is brilliant on haywire watches. Chuck them at dreads and laugh.

Night shields need to go on the Ravaged. In most cases the weapons that are a threat to you out range the DL so if you're in range so are they but you've just wasted 10 extra points.

With DE the trick is to accept anything attacking your units will kill them. So make those units as cheap as possible so you do maximum damage and give away as small a unit as possible to return fire. Force your opponent to waste points by over killing your units.

My next purchase was going to be another Venom with 4 Trueborn with carbines, then move the Duke in with them. I know the popular thing seems to be blasters, but if the Duke is going to be with them, I think the carbines make more sense.

I wasn't sure about the Wyches, because I've read a lot of conflicting stuff about the agoniser/venom blade argument. I always see the Venom/Wyche combo, but I'm not sure why. It seems like 5 Wyches are going to die before they can assault and the Venom seems to be anti-infantry. Do you assault the vehicle, hopefully pop it and then use the Venom to attack the passengers?

I wanted to add a heat lance, but I was shy on points. My concern with the heat lance is that you have to get pretty close to your target. The cluster caltrops are more expensive, but I think you'd mostly be boosting over stuff so you'd get more use out of it. If I swap the agonisers for venom blades, that will free up the points for the cluster caltrops.

I wasn't sure how useful the NS would be on the ravager, but since it represented the majority of my dark lances, I wanted to try to keep it safe.

That information was extremely helpful, thanks.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'd have to buy another Venom, Ravager and make 4 Trueborn, but what about this at 1000 points?

HQ:
Duke Sliscus - 150

Troops:
10x Kabalite Warriors, Splinter Cannon, Raider, Splinter Racks - 170
5x Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Splinter Cannon - 125
5x Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Venom, Splinter Cannon - 125

Elite:
4x Trueborn with Carbines, Venom, Splinter Cannon - 133

Fast Attack:
3x Reavers with Cluster Caltrops - 86

Heavy:
1x Ravager - 105
1x Ravager - 105

Total: 999

 fenshysa wrote:
My next purchase was going to be another Venom with 4 Trueborn with carbines, then move the Duke in with them. I know the popular thing seems to be blasters, but if the Duke is going to be with them, I think the carbines make more sense.

Shardcarbines on trueborns are actually good, the problem is just that, as with all our splinter weapons, they're useless on mechs, and since we have a kinda limited selection on AT, most people prefer blasterborn over splinterborn.

 fenshysa wrote:
I wasn't sure about the Wyches, because I've read a lot of conflicting stuff about the agoniser/venom blade argument. I always see the Venom/Wyche combo, but I'm not sure why. It seems like 5 Wyches are going to die before they can assault and the Venom seems to be anti-infantry. Do you assault the vehicle, hopefully pop it and then use the Venom to attack the passengers?

Well, you were the one who gave them agonisers! Agoniser only works on infantry as well, so you... kinda answered yourself? If venom is a waste of point, agoniser is an even bigger waste of points. I personally run 5 HWG wyches plain, on a venom, since I see little point in wasting more point on a suicide squad. Though I do like FlingitNow's shardnet idea... Now to convince my gaming group to go all dreads on me.

But if done well, giving your wyches the ability to AI(hekatrix w/special weapons) could help the battle, so I'm not saying "don't ever do it because I don't", but... I definitely wouldn't take an agoniser unless it's a good size team.

 fenshysa wrote:
I wanted to add a heat lance, but I was shy on points. My concern with the heat lance is that you have to get pretty close to your target. The cluster caltrops are more expensive, but I think you'd mostly be boosting over stuff so you'd get more use out of it. If I swap the agonisers for venom blades, that will free up the points for the cluster caltrops.

On heat lance, yeah, to effectively use the melta special rule, you'd have to move in too close; though not a compulsory, against AV10/11, I'd think you should be able to do some good damage at 18"; even with the additional assault phase retreat and our amazing jink save, you'd still be in quite a bit too close for comfort... However, we are back to the same problem with the trueborns I mentioned earlier, guns upgrade means more AT, bladevanes upgrade means more AI, it all depends on what your list needs. Though I'm not a reaver expert here, or a DE expert(just a friendly DE player trying to help!), so you may have to wait/ask someone more wise in the art of reavers to learn how to effectively use them. I do plan on running 6 of them w/blasters eventually, but no field experience yet, sorry.

 fenshysa wrote:
I wasn't sure how useful the NS would be on the ravager, but since it represented the majority of my dark lances, I wanted to try to keep it safe.

It can, and it will give your ravager the extra defence, but it really is highly dependant on who you're fighting, against eldar/DE for example, that NS will render most, if not all, of their heavy gunnery useless on your ravager. You may be able to avoid some of the pulse rifle spam from Tau, though I haven't seen their newer codex in action, but from the sound of it, I think any attempt to outshoot them as DE is futile... Oh and necrons would probably struggle as they try to hit a NS ravager. On the other hand, against any MEQ army out there, they all have a decent amount of 48" weapons that can take our measly AV11 vehicle down, so a NS is entirely pointless against them.

 fenshysa wrote:
That information was extremely helpful, thanks.

Welcome, glad I could be of some help.

EDIT

That 1k list looks nice, though it may be a little light on AT, I'd still say it should do well against most not heavily mechanised armies out there.

Interesting 1k list, but I'm trying to understand how you see it working.

Wyches appear to be on AT duty, while the venoms are there to try and get the insides. The SC *may* not have much to shoot at until the vehicles are cracked. On the other hand any troops without a vehicle are completely screwed. Nice.
Duke and trueborn hunting troops. check.
What do you see the warriors doing, claim objectives? Hopefully you can keep that group in cover.
Ravagers: Probably overkill considering the wyches. These guys aren't any good against fliers (6's for zooming ones); which should be a concern.
Reavers: Harassment?

If this were me:
I'd drop the reavers and at least 1 ravager, possibly both and get another unit of warriors in the raider and potentially wyches in a venom. This would help on objective games and I'm not sure if the bladvanes and 3 DL's on the ravager would make a difference with games at that size.

Of course, this pretty much eliminates your DL capability. Which is fine, unless you run into flyers... Tough call.

BTW, when I take reavers I don't do it in units less than 6, and usually 9. The problem with 3 is that when you lose 1 to shooting you have to take a leadership. Makes them even more fragile and likely to bolt. The key to them is popping out to shoot and then diving back into cover.

**edit**
Another thought is drop both of the ravagers and the upgrade on the reavers. Take an ADL, another group of wyches in a venom. Use the non-upgraded reavers to harrass / worry your opponent. Put duke on the ADL, with warriors around him near an objective on your side of the board. That'll get a cover save the warriors desperately need and give you something to kill fliers with. This also frees the truborn to go after troops; while duke sits further back (and hence not so easy a victory point). I think I'll play this list this weekend. My wyches have had too much shelf time.

The reason I have the Reavers is because I purchased a Battleforce, so I'm trying to use everything in the box. The same goes for the Wyches. Maybe it would be easier to list what I have and ask for suggestions as to how I should set them up?

1 Ravager
1 Raider
2 Venoms
3 Reavers
10 Kabalite Warriors
10 Wyches
1 Duke Sliscus (counts as)

I can always proxy the Duke as an Archon or Succubus if needs be.

I've only finished one Venom and began assembling the other vehicles, so I haven't modeled the troops with any special weapons yet.

If the reavers can't be upgraded, you may as well not bring them, and try to use those points elsewhere. There are 2 mission types where your reavers will be worth a VP, so you really shouldn't put them in because you have them. I was the same when I first started, I fielded my reavers simply because they're there, and they were of no use almost all the time, I even gave them the blaster upgrade...!

As for modelling, as shredder and blast pistols are useless, I'd suggest converting them into another blaster, as extra blaster arms are very hard to come by. Unless, of course, you have plans for shredder/blast pistols, latter of which however, you should have at least 2 of them in the battleforce(can't recall if reavers sprue has a blast pistol arm).

For a sample list, it really isn't much different from your original, and I know, myself and others, have said not to field 3 reavers, but I really can't come up with better option without having you go out and buy more models:

HQ
Archon - Combat drugs, shadow field, huskblade, soultrap

Elite
3 x Blasterborns
Venom w/ 2 SCs

Troops
5 x Kabalite - blaster
Venom w/ 2 SCs

8 x Wyches - Hekatrix w/ venom blade + PGL, wych with wych weapon(take your pick)
Raider w/ NS (Archon goes here)

FA
3 x Reavers - blaster

Heavy
DL Ravager - NS

797pts

Though, if extra purchase isn't out of question, I'd say drop the reavers and trueborns in that list, bring another warriors-venom and another ravager. Alternatively since you got your eyes on Duke, I'd have 2 HWG wyches venoms, 2 ravagers, then a trueborn gunboat: 7 trueborns w/shardcarbines on raider w/NS, you'd only be losing, on average, 1 saveable wound as compared with a splinter racks gunboat(9 plain warriors), but at 18". with NS, your Duke's gunboat should last a little longer.