"John and Kirbs-
I've been laid up over the last 3 months due to a series of foot surgeries that have seen me unable to go to school and work, so I've had a bit too much time to lay around painting and dreaming up lists. After finishing up some of my Chaos, I hopped on the Dark Eldar bandwagon, my first army that's not T4 with a 3+ in about 3 years. I've got a fair few Raiders painted up in a chrome-like paint scheme, now I just need to start on the grunts. Before I did I thought I'd run the list I plan on using for the next few months by whichever one of you can spare a few minutes. So anyways, the list:
Succubus w/Blast Pistol, Agoniser
Haemonculus w/Liquifier, Scissorhand
3x3x Trueborn w/3x Blasters w/Venom w/2x Cannon
8x Wyches w/Shardmnet, Heratrix w/Blast Pistol, Agoniser, PGL, Raider w/FF, shock prow
2x10x Warriors w/Splinter Cannon, Raider w/FF
2x5x Warriors w/Blaster, Sybarite w/Blast Pistol, Venom w/2x Cannon
3x Ravager w/NS, FF
Plan is to have the Ravager hang back to make the best use of their Night Shields, while the Raider Warriors advance to hold the midfield, while the Venom squads, Wyches and Wracks all advance forwards. With 13 Dark Lance and 9 Blaster shots on the first turn, it's done a good job keeping the enemy locked up in their deployment zone in the 12 or so games I've played so far (gotta love having my own table!). I think it's a solid list as long as everything goes according to plan. The only problem is, that when things go wrong, it goes horribly wrong. Is that just the nature of the list, or is there something I'm missing here?
Thanks for the help, I'm a huge fan of the blog too- the best one on the net for sure
-Blaine"
Hope the foot heals up nicely Blaine! I believe the list is 1750? Overall it's pretty solid but the 10 man Warrior squads and Wyches need work. Your Venom squads and Ravagers are providing good anti-tank and anti-infantry so we need to add to that and whilst these squads do, I'm sure we can do it better. My main issue with the Wyches is there's only a single squad of them and there's not other combat support. Yes they are generally a tarpit unit rather than a full-scale assault unit but you're asking a lot of them. So we either want to completely ignore combat or go with more combat units. Since you said you've got Raiders lying around painted I imagine you'd want to use those so rather than trying to cut back on Raiders and make a Wych/Beastmaster assault force we'll focus on things we can put in Raiders.
So we need to drop some things. For the moment let's take out the HQs and Raider Troops leaving us with 5 Venoms and 3 Ravagers at 1048 points. Let's add in two Wych squads with 9 each so we have room for HQs. Shardnet, Agoniser and Raider w/FF takes us to 200 per squad so we'll take two for the moment and add in two Haemons. 500 gone. This leaves us just enough points to add two more Raiders with min-sized Wrack squads in them giving us access to two more DLs and scoring options. This gives us:
2x Haemonculus
3x3x Trueborn w/3x Blasters, Venom w/2x Cannon
2x9x Wyches w/Shardnet, Heratrix w/Agoniser, Raider w/FF
2x3x Wracks w/Raider w/FF
2x5x Warriors w/Blaster, Sybarite w/Blast Pistol, Venom w/2x Cannon
3x Ravager w/FF, NS
Totals: 1748 points
12 vehicles
45 infantry
Couple options here. We can drop the Blast Pistols/Sybarites from the Warrior squads along with FF from the Ravagers (or NS) to give us some points to play with. Dropping the pistols alone allows us to up the Wrack squads to 5 each with a Liquifier or add upgrades like Shock Prows to the Wych Raiders, PGLs, or haemonculus wargear, etc. Choices are yours there really! What this force gives you is two decent combat units which will tear through lightly armored troops and tarpit other units. They aren't going to beat face in on tough units but will delay and distract your opponent whilst you can capitalise on your mobility. There are some issues with ranged anti-infantry (upping the Wracks to liquifiers can help) as you've really only got the Venoms but the Wyches can help with that in combat. Any serious changes to the list and I'd be aiming at increasing ranged anti-infantry.
