"Hi there,
I was hoping to get your opinion on an army list. I am a long time Tau player though I have been playing 40k on and off for a bit. I have decided to finally branch out into a new army, Dark Eldar. As you can imagine the choice of Dark Eldar is a bit of philosophical adjustment from the Tau. What I have included is my first attempt at a list which has been adjusted over the few games I have tried it out. So far I have been relatively successful in the games I have tried it out against friends but I feel like I am missing something, though I am not sure what. I would appreciate any input you can provide.
Obviously this list is meant to move forward and assault. The archon goes with the incubi unit and the haemonculus either starts with the warriors or the incubi depending on whether it is an objective mission or not (Twenty warriors with feel no pain in cover are hard to move off an objective). Thank you for your time and (hopefully) any advice you can give.
An aggressive Dark Eldar list...what's not to love? I hesitate over Incubi + Archon + Haemonculus. The Incubi generally chop through whatever they meet and the Archon helps the choppy process (and survivability) to an extent where you are left wide out in the open. In the end do we want this or is just the Incubi unit okay? or the Archon can go elsewhere? Let's see what the list brings but something to think upon.
Regards,
Paul
Archon w/ Agonizer, Blast Pistol, Clone field, Ghost Armor,
Phantasm Launcher, Combat Drugs, Haywire Grenades -165pts
Haemonculus w/Venom Blade -55pts
4 Incubi with Klaivex (5 total)
Demiklavies
Onslaught
Raider, Flicker Field - 225pts
5 Trueborn
3 blasters
Venom – 170pts
19 Kabalite Warriors & Sybarte (20 Total)
2 Dark Lances - 240pts
9 wyches with 1 Hekatrix (10 total)
Venom Blade
Shardnet & Hydra gauntlets
Raider, Flicker Field - 205 pts
9 wyches with 1 Hekatrix (10 total)
Venom Blade
Shardnet & Hydra gauntlets
Raider, Flicker Field - 205 pts
5 Beast masters
5 Kkymerae
8 Razorwing Flocks - 240 pts
Ravager
Flicker Field – 115 pts
Ravager
Flicker Field – 115 pts
Ravager
Flicker Field – 115 pts
Total 1850"
As far as the list goes you've got all the components. I'd say you're a bit light on anti-tank but not too seriously. However, I think you're trying to do too much with too little and something has to give. Warriors and Wyches are generally a fine combination particularly when you are backing up the Wyches with Incubi and Beastmasters who can finish off units pinned in place by the Wyches. Unfortunately only having a single unit of each + 2 units of Wyches leaves you pretty vulnerable (Wyches outside of combat are easily shot down) to actually getting across the board. I'd rather see you double up the Beastmasters at a minimum. From there we'd want either another Incubi or Trueborn squad depending upon what we did with the Troops.
Personally, I'd re-work the whole Troops section. Wyches can work and if you kept them I'd be aiming for 3-4 squads backed up by small Wrack squads in Raiders. Points become an issue with this though but something like...
2x Haemonculus
2x4x Incubi w/Venom
3x Trueborn w/Blasters w/Venom
3x10x Wyches w/weapons, hekatrix, Raider w/FF
3x Wracks w/Raider
2x3x Beastmasters w/5x Khymera, 4x Razorwing
3x Ravager
and with some point tweaking gets you down to 1850 (I think that's around 1880). You lose the Archon but gain a bit more redundency across the board. You also lose the large foot squad. Whilst it is a great anchor and scoring unit in this list it doesn't really fit as everything else is hell-bent on getting close to your opponent. However, the glaring weakness of this list is the lack of anti-tank. You could change the Incubi Venoms to Raiders but you'll still have issues I feel. I think if you want to go the Wych route you need to drop either the Incubi or Beastmasters and then run more squads of either Trueborn w/blasters or Reavers w/heat lances. You lose a couple beater units to clean up after the Wyches but you gain in some much needed anti-tank.
The other option is of course to drop the Wyches and let the combat come from the beater units only. So let's drop the Wyches and see where we can go from there...
Without the Wyches we've got ~700 points to play with and we want to add some more anti-tank if possible whilst maintaing our aggressive assault units. I think the easiest way to do this is to add so MSU Wracks as backfield firepower and double blaster Venom squads with Warriors. Two wrack squads and three Warrior squads takes us to 650 points and basically uses this allocation but makes scoring quite thin. Let's take a look at what we have:
2x Hameonculus
2x4x Incubi w/Venom
3x Trueborn w/Blasters w/Venom
3x5x Warriors w/blaster, blast pistol, Venom
2x3x Wracks w/Raider w/FF
2x3x Beastmasters w/5x Khymera, 4x Razorwing
3x Ravager
for a total of 1979 points. Let's replace the Incubi Venoms with Raiders giving us two more anti-tank shots and leave this is our base. I'd rather see another Warrior squad but to do so you'd need to drop something like a Ravager which ultimately lowers your overall anti-tank. You could replace both of the Wrack squasd with Warrior Venoms but that also leaves a lot of your anti-tank as short-ranged so I'd leave them as is. As you take this to 2000 points obviously you can bring in the 4th Warrior Venom squad. You can also replace the Trueborn with a Reaver Heatlance squad but the Trueborn fit in nicely with the rest of the list and having 4 Venoms helps provide cover for the rest of your force.
