Dark Eldar: My Current 1850

Hey Guys! Miraculously I've actually been able to get in a few games recently in between my busy schedule and I wanted to share with all of you some of the results of my testing so far. Again, I apologize for being MIA for a while, but I'm graduating college this year so I've had to figure out my fair share of real life things the past couple months.

With that being said, I have still been engrossed in the community and keeping up to date on all the latest tech and now that I've finally had a chance to breath, it's about time I share with all of you what I've been brewing!

So, before I get into it, here's the list I've been testing:

Dark Eldar Primary, Eldar Secondary 1850pts

Dark Eldar
HQ:
Duke Sliscus the Serpent

Troops:
10x Warriors w/ splinter cannon in a raider w/ splinter racks and disintegrator
9x warriors in a raider w/ splinter racks and disintegrator

Elites:
3x Trueborn w/ 2x splinter cannons in a venom with dual splinter cannons
3x Trueborn w/ 2x splinter cannons in a venom with dual splinter cannons
3x Trueborn w/ 2x splinter cannons in a venom with dual splinter cannons

Heavy Support
Ravager w/ 3x Dark Lances
Ravager w/ 3x Dark Lances
Ravager w/ 3x Dark Lances

Eldar Allies
HQ:
Farseer on a jetbike

Troops:
5x Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent with scatter lasers
5x Dire Avengers in a Wave Serpent with scatter lasers

Heavy Support
3x War Walkers with 2x Scatter Lasers each


And there you have it. As much pure firepower as I could possibly pack into 1850pts while still staying true to my play style and having a good time in the process. There are still many decisions to be made about this list that require further play testing, but let me go over some tactics before I get into all that.



First of all, I love the Duke. His background is completely badass and he actually provides a lot to my army. While most people are all aboard the Vect or Baron train, my goal is to stay innovative while still being competitive. Vect and Baron are both incredibly powerful HQ choices, don't get me wrong. They are beatsticks in combat, incredibly resilient and provide useful buffs to the army (especially increasing your odds to go first, which Dark Eldar desperately need). Now helping to ensure first turn alpha strikes against the myriad of death stars before they are allowed to set up is a key component to Dark Eldar victory. However, Asdrubal Vect is much to expensive for my taste, and Baron doesn't really do anything else in my army, seeing don't really have any hard-hitting close combat unit for him to join. Paying 105pts just for an increased chance to go first hardly seems worth it unless he's going to be tanking wounds for a fortuned death star as well. Duke, however, provides plenty of utility for the way my army wants to play. Giving his squad 3+ poisoned coupled with his ability to allow my warrior units to deepstrike can put down an insane amount of hurt. Not to mention he often gives one of the units feel no pain with his combat drug rolls and he's good enough in combat where I can split him off from the squad if the situation calls for it. I really feel that the nature of my army allows the Duke to thrive, giving both increased damage output, a strong close combat character, and the invaluable opportunity to deepstrike. His synergy with my army makes up for the power difference he may have compared to other characters in the book, and thus I will defend this choice to the grave.

While I'm a little light on troops, the Dire avengers are very well protected in their wave serpents and the warriors are often reserved first turn or don't have a high enough priority for my opponent to shoot at them. Again, I feel that being able to deepstrike my warrior squads, especially the Duke's squad let's me pick apart my opponent's backfield or single out isolated units (particularly monstrous creatures) and put something in my opponent's face that they just have to deal with. the disintegrator cannons on the raiders allow me even more anti-infantry firepower and help me push through the last few wounds to wipe out entire units. Plus, deep striking these squads also allows me much more liberty when placing objectives, as the speed capabilities of my army ensure I won't have any problems reaching far-off objectives. Granted, I won't always deep strike these units, particularly against highly aggressive lists that want to get in my deployment zone as quickly as possible, such as white scars of flying circus lists. In that case, it's not worth risking limited fire power or deep strike mishaps on turn two if my reserves fail me, and armies like that should be in range of my shooting relatively quickly.

The next unique units in the list are the triple trueborn venoms. For very little points these mobile firing platforms unload an incredible amount of firepower (24 shots each standing still, 20 on the move) at an almost untouchable range. Having this much poisoned firepower is invaluable against many popular targets in the game, including but not limited to riptides, wraithknights, broadsides, flying monstrous creatures, and bikes. The fact that I can disembark the guys inside to fire at different targets or increase my odds to force grounding checks should not be underestimated either. My biggest issue with this unit, however, is that they desperately want night shields (which I am currently not running). Night shields drastically increase their survivability as they can safely engage broadsides, fire warriors, flying Demon princes, and many other common threats. I've strongly considered getting the 30 points by swapping out one scatter laser for a shurkien cannon on each of my war walkers. This would obviously require extensive play testing, as it decreases the range and fire power of my war walkers (although battle focus helps mitigate this) but also does give my psuedo-rending in the form of bladestorm to help push through extra wounds (the range loss is really the biggest concern). Another option would be to drop the war walkers entirely and replace them with a squad of 10 warp spiders, freeing up the points for the much-needed night shields. I'm open to any suggestions anyone may have on this matter, as these sorts of small tweaks are really difficult to make!

Finally, I've tooled around with replacing a dark lance ravager with a disintegrator ravager. I've found that often times in the current gaming environment that the dark lance doesn't have any great targets. However, against certain matchups I really need the extra anti-tank firepower (particularly against wave serpents or imperial guard) and I do already have a tremendous amount of anti-infantry firepower on the table. However, the disentegrator ravager is often a much better target for guide from my farseer, and is invaluable against riptides. With that being said, the dark lances are still great against riptides and other monstrous creatures, so for right now I'm keeping all the dark lances. Please, let me know what you think and if you've had success either way!

Well that's just about it for this list, I think I've exhausted  just about every aspect of the army that I could, and I'm sure you're all sick of hearing me ramble on at this point. I would absolutely love some feedback on the army and suggestions/comments/questions keep me engaged, and it's just fun to talk about lists!

Once again, thanks for reading! I hope you've found this insightful and hopefully I've inspired some fellow archons out there to expirement and try out new things! Please remember to follow the blog, we have a battle report featuring this list coming out soon where you can see it in action. Until next time!