Starting Dark Eldar Raider Spam

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**ThunderFury 2575**

Hello fellow soul stealers!

Dark Eldar are one of the many armies i look at undertaking in this fine life of mine, and i've always loved raiders, especially the voice acting of theirs in dawn of war, but regardless i'm curious as to how a heavily shooty, raider spamming list would go, and what units/loadouts would you recommend? Basically i'm looking at spamming the living hell out of warriors because i love them, with a shooty HQ, (Haemonculus maybe? ) and as much raiders as possible, backed up by the common 3 ravager with dark lance trend to snipe.

Speaking of which....How to Dark Lances fare against AV14??

**Ascalam**

Warriors are good stuffing for raiders. Splinter racks and night shields .

Consider Sliscus as your hq, as he goes well with the kind of list you are looking at.

Expect your vehicles to get mauled. Av 10 skiffs are not sturdy.

**Sir Blayse**

Raiders are not bad when you put warriors in them and just keep moving around the board. But, don't depend on them to really kill a lot with the single Dark Lance shot. Most people put Trueborn with blasters in Venoms to blow up vehicles. Let the warriors kill what comes out.

Lances do just fine since they drop the armor down to 12.

**Ascalam**

Dark lances are great at AV 14, but get less impressive at av 13 and 12

**ThunderFury 2575**

Alright well trueborn are on the list then, i always fancied modelling some, but not sure if they were too expensive or not in terms of points ._.

And what would be the go to for taking out av 13 and 12 reliably? Haywire grenades or heat lances perhaps? And why do dark lances not fare that well against 13 and 12?

**Ascalam**

Still Dark Lances, pretty much,

Haywire works on anything

They are less effective vs AV 12 and 13 because there is likely to be more AV 12 and 13 out there for the points. Against av 12-14 they are penning on the same numbers, but if they didn't take a LR they probably took several of something else.

Mathwise DL are awesome against AV 14 (eq to S 10 weapons), then falling to S 9 for 13 and S 8 for 12. They are still out go-to weapon for ranged tank killing, as the other options are rare (Heat lances are only on 3 units) or require getting in very close (haywire, blasters etc).

**ThunderFury 2575**

I've started the list, if anyone wants to take a peek, Heres the link! thanks for the helpz!

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/557166.page

**Likan Wolfsheim**

Always good to see someone interested in starting Dark Eldar! A day or two ago I made a post on a thread in which someone was musing about Dark Eldar that I think might be helpful, so I'll quote it below (apologies if it seems long-winded). It's most about playing the army in general. I'll look at your list and comment on that in a moment.

Likan Wolfsheim wrote:
Dark Eldar is one of the most fun armies in the game, imo. Hell, half my troops are still Wyches and Hellions and they're doing better than ever, despite the changes to CC. As has been stated they are extremely unforgiving and the moment you make a single, slight mistake (in any phase, from an unwise usage of your Dark Lances to moving a little bit in the wrong direction in the movement phase) it may very well cost you the game. There are probably going to be points repeated from previous posts, but I'll give my rundown of what DE is like:

-You need to win the game during the first and second turn.
Now I don't mean that the game needs to literally be over by turn 2, but you damn well need to have the enemy's fate sealed. Deployment, and the first two turns are when you need to lash out at the enemy. Go right for the throat and keep them on the defensive for the rest of the game. In particular it's the early movement phases that'll decide the game: with all the mobility of DE you can easily pick where the firefights happen and where the assaults occur.

Your best defence is a defence-ignoring offence
It's been stated to death here: DE are glass cannons and have very little defensive ability. Never get put on the defensive. We have the skills of Space Marines with the defences of guardsmen (and we don't have the numbers to take the horrific number of casualties that IG can take). Furthermore our vehicles are made out of paper. There is nobody who plays the defensive game worse than us. When things go bad other armies can castle up and weather the storm, but DE cannot. However, pretty much every weapon DE brings to the table ignores the enemy's defences in one way or another. Be it the 4+ poison of splinter weapons, the AP2 of disintegration cannons, or Lances. AV14 is never a problem, nor high Toughness, and even 3+/2+ armour saves are easy to ignore with the right weapons--or we can simply drown them in shots. All those defensive measure that the opponent pays a premium for go to waste against DE's insidious tools.

Your objective is to kill.
Most of the games are objective based, sure. Do you know who's really bad at camping in one place and holding back the enemy? Pretty much every Dark Eldar unit. Abandon any notion of taking and holding objectives early in the game. Every last unit in your army must be brought to bear against the enemy and be entirely focused on gutting the opposition. A tabled enemy army can't score, after all. If the enemy is not tabled but crippled then it will be an easy matter to zoom a few troops to some objectives and ensure victory. If the enemy isn't even crippled at that point then you've probably lost--their firepower will be blowing the last of your boats off the table and your frail troops' bodies will be ground 'neath ceramite boots.

Play to Win
It doesn't matter if your list is casual, semi-competitive, or competitive--it cannot be played casually and have good results. Regardless of what list you're using and its competitiveness, success with DE requires an aggressive, cutthroat approach to the game. You need need to hit every pressure point, stab every weak point, and tear into the soft underbelly of the enemy army like a half-starved wolf rending apart a hapless squirrel in a crimson, visceral shower of predatory malevolence. Every dirty trick and every low blow must be taken (within the scope of the rules, of course). Any notions of honour, fairness, sporting chances, and the like have to be forgone. The DE army has to be a knife that rams right into the heart of the enemy and keeps on twisting. To play DE to its fullest you have to embrace the army's maligned character. This does not mean you have to be a jerk when you play DE, but you do need to be a sociopath: you are not at the table to give your opponent a glorious battle, you are there to (politely, to ensure future games) slaughter prey.

**schadenfreude**

I'm more worried about venoms. Splinter racks don't have double tap range on turn 1. They either have to advance 6 and single tap or snap shoot/flat out. Everytime I face raiders they underperform turn 1 and I get to shoot at them before they engage in splinter rack double tap brutality.

Venoms are also more mobile. They move 12/turn every turn and don't have to slow down for passengers to dakka.

**Mushkilla**

ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
Dark Eldar are one of the many armies i look at undertaking in this fine life of mine, and i've always loved raiders, especially the voice acting of theirs in dawn of war, but regardless i'm curious as to how a heavily shooty, raider spamming list would go, and what units/loadouts would you recommend?

Warriors in raiders are great. I don't run venoms and have had great success with raiders.

Personally I have found the trick with warrior raiders, is to only have your warriors embark on the raider when they really need too. You want your warriors spending as little time in that raider death trap as possible. It's also a good idea not to make a raider more expensive than it needs to be, they are fine without upgrades. When you realise they are going to be empty most of the game it make it a lot apparent that it's not worth spending extra points on them.

Area terrain also makes your warriors a real pain to deal with as they can go to ground for a 3+ cover save and still put out some decent snapshot fire thanks to their splinter cannon. Also an empty raider more often than not gets ignored, meaning It's far more likely to be around late game, giving you more mobility on turn 4+ when it really matters.

Warriors in area terrain with an empty raider near by are deceptively mobile. They can redeploy to an objective that is between 49-59" away in two turns (T4: 2d6 pick the highest + 2" embark range + 12" raider move + 18" flat out + T5: 6" raider move + 6" disembark + 1d6 re-rollable fleet run + 3" objective capture range). Perfect for capturing objectives in the late game.

When you consider the above I find upgrades to be a bit of a trap on raiders, as they are not cheap and encourage your warriors to stay in their raiders. This reduces your target saturation and lets your opponent kill two birds with one stone (suddenly not only is that autocannon destroying your raider but it's also killing 5-6 warriors).

@ Likan Wolfsheim: Nice summary.

In my opinion Dark Eldar are not necessarily about all out aggression, Dark Eldar are about being aggressive at the right time and place (for example in this game, aggressive play only really happens turn 4-5, had it happened earlier the dark eldar would have lost). As for defence, Dark Eldar have one of the most powerful defensive tools in the game, mobility. It doesn't matter if you have no armour save if you never get shot. Mobility lets you control how much fire your unites take, it lets you maximise outgoing fire whilst minimising incoming fire. Use your mobility to project fear and uncertainty. When your opponent makes a mistake use that mobility to capitalise on it. For example the simple fact of reserving a large squad of nine reavers gives you massive board control. If your opponent doesn't know where you will attack, he needs to defend many places, if he defends many places, you attack few.

Hope that helps.

**Dracos**

I think there is a way to reconcile the conflicting viewpoints of when to be aggressive with Dark Eldar.

This is how I decide when to be aggressive with my DE.

The question of engagement range. So taking into account both the range of effective firepower and the mobility of the platform, who has the best engagement range?

An example of an army who generally has the better engagement range is Eldar. Their serpents have superior range on their shields (which are good enough to threaten our vehicles) and similar movement option.

When you encounter an army whose engagement range surpasses your own, the Dark Eldar are forced to respond with aggression against targets who can dictate engagements.

By way of contrast, Tau often do not have a superior engagement range (caveat: Riptide spam/HRR broadsides change this). Most weapons, excluding the caveats, have a max 36" range but lower forward mobility. As such, you are normally best to delay engaging their gunline until late game when they don't have enough time to table you.

You really have to play this by determining which units can dictate engagements. DE can normally dictate this, but can be forced into engaging against targets who outrange them.

**ThunderFury 2575**

Wow, that's some great advice! I'll definitely take them on board when i start playing, thanks guys!