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My dear brothers and sisters of Commorragh, as our kin threw back the lap dogs of the Imperium from the heart of the Dark City, so must I prepare to do battle today and once more invite the astartes to our great feast.

I call upon your collective wisdom. The goal is simple. We kill the batman Space Marines.

Well, what points level are you playing, and what models do you have available? Without that information, I can offer some generic advice on things to do.

First, get some darklight weapons. A lot of darklight weapons. About 1 for every 100 points is a good rule of thumb, give or take a few. These babies are going to be your bread and butter for dealing with all your astartes armor, centurions, terminators, thunderfire cannons, characters and other unique snowflakes the space marines throw at you. Heavy armor such as predators, vindicators and land raiders are negated to Av12 by the lance rule, and S8 ap2 makes quick work of the rhino chassis. You also force the invul saves of terminators, and will instagib T4 models.
Primary sources:Ravagers, fliers, raiders, trueborn. Auxilary sources:Scourges, reavers, kabalite warriors, blast pistols.

Next up, you want long ranged poison dakka aka splinter cannons. Wounding on 4+ negates the bonus of bikes or thunderfire cannons, and forces wounds on regular marines. You want to stay out of bolter range as bolters will kill almost everything you can field(including raiders) If you get close, pump mass amounts of poison into a squad to drop it. You get splinter cannons from venoms and maybe kabalite warriors, but almost every unit in your army carries a poisoned firearm. Venoms full of whatever, and raiders full of kabbies+splinter racks on the raider.

For durable troops, you need coven units. Kabbies and wytches evaporate under bolter fire, and burn like christmas trees when exposed to flame. Wracks are durable with T4 and FNP to negate these issues. They are also decent fighters in assault, and carry another great weapon, the liquifier gun. This template has a 50% chance of melting marine armor, and a 33.34% chance to cut terminator/artificer armor. They are dirt cheap and deadly, so if you take wracks take these. They also go nice on the hamey you need to make your wracks score. Wracks also unlock raiders/venoms as needed.

If you want assault units, you have a few things to consider. Incubi are dead lethal hard counters to everything but THSS terminators. Expensive, and dead lethal, they require some finesse to pull off. Any marine player who sees these will make them priority targets. A beastpack is another option, combining durability, speed and lethality. A good mix of khymerae and razorwings can mulch most units. The beastpack is also a good home for baron saythonyx(one of the best HQ units in the game) as the baron and beasts go hand in glove. As stated, wracks can be decent in CC but this is not a primary job. You can also use a talos to decent effect, but it is slow and easily gunned down. Grotesques are an option if you like the idea of a big, tough to kill unit that will drown an opponent in dice. Great HQ escort.

Wytches are best used for haywire suicide bombers in a venom, if at all. Reavers and scourges are also decent niche units for infantry killing with AT support.

On your mech, you need defensive upgrades, primarily night shields. Reducing the distance of bolters, meltas, assault cannons and other short/mid range weapons that dominate the astartes can give your skimmers extra life. Even 1 more turn before getting shot to ribbons can make or break the game. Flickerfields are OK, but not as important(except on fliers). Everything else is situational/optional/bad for mech.

As stated previously, astartes can easily trash the armor of the dark city, so use range, cunning and speed as your defense. If the soldiers of Commorragh get out of these mechanical monsters, watch out for fire, bolters, or any blast/template weapons. With no means of psychic defense, kill psykers ASAP, as their ability to boost other marines is very dangerous. Run from assault unless your unit is dedicated to it, and even then pick your battles. Thunderfire cannons must die, no exceptions.

Thank you for your response, friend.

I should have given more information.

I currently possess a small force of 4 raiders, 30 kabalite warriors, and 10 wyches, and an archon. I'm planning to expand my fleet considerably in the near future with the goal to compete in 1500-1850 games. I'll be running a 1500 game here this weekend.

I hate to say it, but your probably screwed in a 1500 point game. With what you have, it is not even possible to field 1500 points, and that is taking any and all upgrades possible. You are stressed to field 1250 before you have to start kitting every unit with all upgrades, and the most expensive upgrades.

Honestly, you should play a 1k game, tops. Even there, your looking at kitting out units with some insane stuff.

To max out your force...
Archon with everything but djinn blade and webway portal. Huskblade and blast pistol for weapons.

3 raiders with everything but sails and jets. Inside 10 kabbies with a dark lance, blaster, syrabite with agonizer, blast pistol and phantasm.

9 wytches in a raider with everything but jets. Wytches get haywire grenades and shardnet/impaler. One is a hekatrix with agonizer, blast pistol and phantasm.

This is short of 1500, and loaded with needless upgrades. You could proxy a wytch as a succbus to get some more oomph and take away a few pointless upgrades, but with what you have its about as good as it gets.

 Dr. Serling wrote:
I hate to say it, but your probably screwed in a 1500 point game. With what you have, it is not even possible to field 1500 points, and that is taking any and all upgrades possible. You are stressed to field 1250 before you have to start kitting every unit with all upgrades, and the most expensive upgrades.

Honestly, you should play a 1k game, tops. Even there, your looking at kitting out units with some insane stuff.

To max out your force...
Archon with everything but djinn blade and webway portal. Huskblade and blast pistol for weapons.

3 raiders with everything but sails and jets. Inside 10 kabbies with a dark lance, blaster, syrabite with agonizer, blast pistol and phantasm.

9 wytches in a raider with everything but jets. Wytches get haywire grenades and shardnet/impaler. One is a hekatrix with agonizer, blast pistol and phantasm.

This is short of 1500, and loaded with needless upgrades. You could proxy a wytch as a succbus to get some more oomph and take away a few pointless upgrades, but with what you have its about as good as it gets.

Should have been more clear:

I currently have the four boats as the core of my force, and I'm trying to figure out what to buy to round out / scale up said army. So in building the list here, I'm working out what I need to pick up in the next few days. heh

OOOOOHHH

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

Grab a couple of ravagers and a venom. Maybe a hamey and some wracks. Then you can run 2-3 kabbie raiders, a wytch/wrack venom, ravagers, and archon a la carte somewhere. Should make 1500 easy enough.

Second the ravagers and haemo/wracks! The venom, I would personally hold off on unless you're planning to buy multiples. People (opponents) hate them, and they crash and burn pretty frequently, so one (or even two) alone on the field won't contribute much but a small fireball and a few dead troops (often your own!). Other things to strongly consider -> beastpack (painfully expensive to do right - 10 khymera and 4 plus razorwing flocks, and then the four plus beastmasters, yikes) reaver jetbikes (dont stop at one box, but they are an incredible swiss-army knife of a unit) and if you are that focused on killing Space Marines specifically, consider a Cronos, they have (admittedly low-str) ap3 large blasts AND templates available.

You could look at getting a box or two of scourges,

Gorgeous models, and they pack a serious punch.

I like heat lances or blasters on mine for anti-tank work, but they can also be used as poison hose with four Splinter Cannons and six Shardcarbines.

Razorwing with disintegrators, splinter cannon and Flickerfields/Night Shields can cause MEQ misery. Good vs regular termies and small MEQ squads like devastators. Dissies can also glancekill light vehicles in a pinch.

Voidravens are theoretically good, but i always seem to miss with mine.

You could proxy the archon as Vect or Sliscus. I'm a big fan of both.

If you can get them there, Incubi are good at anti-meq also, at least for me. Strikes-at-DE-Initiative AP 2, S4 weapons, decent armour (3+), Sarge can take an AP 3 flamer upgrade..

Liquifier guns are fun vs marines also, Pretty good odds on ignoring the armour as it is Ap D6.

Looking for advice on rounding out a list here here. Also, two important questions come to mind:

How do you generally handle reserves as a dark eldar player (always do, never do, always some?) and which Warlord table do you generally prefer?

I look at your list in a moment, but to answer your reserve question; I reserve as little as possible, you need to overwhelm your opponent. Dark Eldar can not win wars of attrition.

Apart from any manditory flyer the only unit I would consider reserving is a min wrack squad without a venom.

Rathstar

A full unit of Reavers with three caltrops will remove a minimized marine squad per turn with their bladevein attacks. Awesome unit to use against min/maxed marine squads. Also T4 and 3+ cover save is pretty durable. Even if they bring grav guns for the ignore cover, they are wounding on 5+ due to the armor save of the bike.

Three heat lances also are useful if you find yourself having to shoot at stuff.