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 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.