Betray's First 7e List - 1850 Null Deployment Option

2 Combined Arms Detachments

HQs:
Archon w/ Agonizer, Shadow Field, Webway Portal, Soul Trap, Parasite's Kiss & dual cannon venom
Archon w/ Agonizer, Shadow Field, Webway Portal, Soul Trap, Armor of Misery & dual cannon venom
1 Lhamaean w/ dual cannon venom


Troops:
4x 5-man Kabalite Warriors in dual cannon venoms

Elites:
2x 3-man mandrakes

Fast Attack:
2x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 heat lances
3x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 haywire blasters
1 dual cannon venom

Fortification:
1 Bastion w/ Comms Relay & Void Shield

TOTAL: 1847

How it plays:
So the basic premise is that everything in this army can be held in reserve. You use the bastion as a base for 1 or 2 units for null deployment. If the enemy doesn't have any ignores cover weapons, you just throw a unit of 3 mandrakes on the bastion's battlements with the comms relay. This forces the opponent to take down a 14AV shield before it can target your mandrakes that have a 2+ cover save. Place a unit of Kabalite warriors inside the bastion in this case, just as an extra precaution.

If your opponent is playing a very fast army, or an army with lots of 1st turn alpha strike potential, you can place all of the venoms/warriors/mandrakes on the table during deployment if you so choose. It's ultimately going to rely on your ability to recognize the short-term threat level of your opponent when deciding what to deploy, but this army offers tons of flexibility.

In a null deployment scenario, where you only place the 2 bastion units, the rest of the army can deep strike or flank. You'll primarily use low-risk deep striking as everything has 18"-36" ranged weapons. The heat-lance scourges will be accompanied by the WWP archons for surgical, non-scatter deep strikes to the rear armor of high priority targets. Mandrakes that are held in reserve may be used to flank to capture objectives. Between the venoms and the warriors, this list has 8 Obsec units.

Null deployment and deep striking plays well to the strengths of dark eldar, as the majority of your army is protected until they start developing their "power from pain" ability. Against many "balanced" armies, this sort of list gives you a very potent "Beta Strike", in which you can cripple your opponent on the same turn that your forces arrive, severely hampering his/her ability to respond in kind.

Obvious Weakness: This list only has 19 anti-armor shots to begin with. It's extremely important that this list takes out the biggest vehicle threats ASAP before they start taking casualties to your anti-vehicle units. Fortunately, the anti-vehicle weapons in question are VERY reliable at taking out vehicles, so if used correctly, they should carry the day. Further, archons that charge up their soul trap a couple ticks should be able to melee vehicles in later rounds of the game with furious charge.

You never know unless you try! I'd say play a game with it first and tell us how it went.

Why put heat lances on the scourges and loose the Archon with them when you can instead use HWB and not have to worry about scatter given the 24" range.

Its_Rumble wrote:

Why put heat lances on the scourges and loose the Archon with them when you can instead use HWB and not have to worry about scatter given the 24" range.

I don't intend to lose them, and heat lances will be better for popping a high priority target's rear armor. Further, when all vehicles are popped, the heat lances are simply better against infantry and TEQ in particular, so against an army with fewer overall vehicles, heat lances are superior.

Again, I don't intend to lose them. It isn't like you pop a transport with no idea what may be coming out of it. Tactics, my friend.

Quote :

Again, I don't intend to lose them. It isn't like you pop a transport with no idea what may be coming out of it. Tactics, my friend.

LOL

Good luck with that.

HERO wrote:

Quote :

Again, I don't intend to lose them. It isn't like you pop a transport with no idea what may be coming out of it. Tactics, my friend.

LOL

Good luck with that.

No thanks. I try to push as much luck out of my game as possible. Thanks for the sentiment, however.

I don't know what you think is so LOL-worthy. Is it that difficult to understand? Just HAVING deep strike that doesn't scatter doesn't mean you HAVE to come down behind an enemy transport, come hell or high water. It's a tactical option. If an enemy vehicle is out of position or trying to push a flank, BAM, do it. If all of his vehicles are together in a blitzkreig line with heavy CC support, obviously you don't throw your warlord and 5 4+ armor guys down right next to his whole army by themselves.

If you can't keep a jump unit with a 2+ invuln and non-scatter deep strike alive, I don't know what to tell you.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

2 Combined Arms Detachments

1 Lhamaean w/ dual cannon venom
1 Lhamaean w/ dual cannon venom

Fast Attack:
2x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 heat lances
2x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 haywire blasters
1x 5-man scourge squad w/ 3 haywire blasters

I assume the Lhamaens are basically there to open up extra deepstriking venoms. You have 5 FA slots used, you could drop one Lhamaen, put that Venom into fast attack and get that fourth haywire blaster for the last Scourge squad.

ST

Stwess wrote:

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

2 Combined Arms Detachments

1 Lhamaean w/ dual cannon venom
1 Lhamaean w/ dual cannon venom

Fast Attack:
2x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 heat lances
2x 5-man scourge squads w/ 4 haywire blasters
1x 5-man scourge squad w/ 3 haywire blasters

I assume the Lhamaens are basically there to open up extra deepstriking venoms. You have 5 FA slots used, you could drop one Lhamaen, put that Venom into fast attack and get that fourth haywire blaster for the last Scourge squad.

ST

Excellent catch. I will definitely make that adjustment to the list now. Thanks for the feedback!