500pt List Critique

Ahoy fellow Kabalites!

I'm building my way to a (fairly) competitive 500pt dark eldar army, and wanted some general input on the following two lists. I've read around, and it seems that the general consensus is to stay mobile and shooty; taking opportune 'focus fire' shots with darklight weaponry when they present themselves (and hugging cover like a mad man while doing so). I'm completely new to dark eldar, so I don't have that much experience playing them!

List 1

HQ- heamie 50pts

3x wracks 30pts
Venom w/SC + NS 75pts

5 warriors w/Blaster 60pts
Venom w/SC + NS 75pts


Ravanger x 2 - 210pts


500pts


List 2

HQ- heamie w/Liquifier Gun 60pts


3x wracks 30pts
Venom w/SC 65pts

3x wracks 30pts
Venom w/SC 65pts

3 x Trueborn w/Blasters 81pts
Venom w/SC 65pts


Ravanger x 1 - 105pts


(501) 500pts


The group I play with would have no issue with the second list being 1pt over. I'm likely to be playing a mix of nids, tau, dark angels, necrons and csm.

Many thanks in advance!


feediz

Hey,

I'm going to start by saying that my experience is very limited, so take absolutely everything I say with a grain of salt.
However, I do love the challenge of 500 point lists, and I don't see many posted, so I'm going to chime in.

Personally I would tend towards your second list for the following reasons:
1: at 500 points you're not going to be seeing an enormous amount of enemy armour, so 6dl shots per turn may end up (assuming you're lucky with dice) being soaked into infantry.
2: a haemonculus without a liquifier is basically two ten point wracks and a thirty point pain token that gives away a victory point when it's killed in cc. I'm not convinced.. Better to hide it on a boat and drop templates.
3: if you're deploying outside of transports, list two gives you an extra units worth of target saturation first turn, you never know how useful that might be..

That said, I've been experimenting with 500pt combos recently, and there are a couple less commonplace ideas to play around with that I'm beginning to think could be particularly effective as they tackle some of our fragility issues. They work especially well if you're playing on a 4x4 rather than a 6x4 board.

First, I would consider a talos, rather than a ravager. It's a hell of a lot more durable (and smaller, so easier to hide), and so will pull fire away from your troops for longer. On a smaller board its lack of speed is less of an issue, and with luck it can offer short range AP1 (liquifier) and melee ST10 AP2 (smash). Plus, once the vehicles are gone, it can happily terrorize infantry and characters, something that ravagers are less good at. The sacrifice in T1 AT is admittedly painful, but I'm not convinced it's a list breaker..

Secondly, Beasts. And I may get dragged over the coals for this, but a single beastmaster with two razorwing flocks is 42 points. It has 11 wounds. It's a massive draw for st6 and above fire (but consequently may get instagibbed), and in cc has the potential to threaten light tanks with rending attacks. Sure, it may not be the most durable unit if a whole bunch of heavy fire is pointed at it, but it can go to ground, its small, so can hug cover, and its 42 points for 11 wounds and 11cc attacks! Three wracks are 30 points for 3W and 3A. How is that not a bargain? And again, even better for a small board. The only major downside i can see is the sacrifice of a potential venom, but I'm beginning to think it might be worth it..

This is all highly speculative, but hopefully it's food for thought..

I do agree you wont see many vehicles which drew me to list 2 but i thought with list 1 you can

Change the

5 warriors w/Blaster 60pts
Venom w/SC + NS 75pts

For 3 True borns with 2 SC , So you got a 4 SC unit ( drop a NS if needed) .. So you have mean anti armour ( 2 Ravengers , 6 shots at long range ) . And you have excellent anti foot with 6 SC ..

Just keep the venoms back until the ravengers take out his llong range guns and then use them at 36"

The Ravengers are also ok if brings a nasty single character

Cheers for the replies guys!

@Ollelta

Quote :

1: at 500 points you're not going to be seeing an enormous amount of enemy armour, so 6dl shots per turn may end up (assuming you're lucky with dice) being soaked into infantry.
2: a haemonculus without a liquifier is basically two ten point wracks and a thirty point pain token that gives away a victory point when it's killed in cc. I'm not convinced.. Better to hide it on a boat and drop templates.

I definitely appreciate that the ravagers would quickly become overkill once any large vehicles are dealt with... Perhaps I could swap the load out on one to Disintegrators? It would seem as though the general consensus is to keep them with the lances however.

My thoughts exactly with the heamie, without the liquifier gun he is basically just a couple of wracks and a pain token. yay. I'll drop the NS on the warrior venom to buy him a shiny new one.

@bklooste

Thanks for the input man, however swapping the warriors for trueborns means I don't fulfill my FoC requirements :-/

I also wonder if 6 DL shots are just simply overkill at the 500pt level- perhaps it would be better if your alteration took place on list 2 and replaced the warrior squad there with the trueborns like you suggested. (adding in a shardcarbine, and spending the rest of the points on NS for the heamie venom as it has to enter dangerous rapid fire range and a FF for the ravager making it more durable):

HQ- heamie w/Liquifier Gun 60pts


3x wracks 30pts
Venom w/SC + NS 75pts

3x wracks 30pts
Venom w/SC 65pts

3 x Trueborn w/2xSC 1xShardcarbine 61pts
Venom w/SC 65pts


Ravanger w/FF - 115pts

501pts


Perhaps this is too many eggs in one darklight basket however... thoughts?

I was also tempted to run a fun 500pt list built around a Chronos and two Talos (completely different play style than the list above, granted), what do you guys think?

heamie w/Venom blade + liquifier gun 65pts

wracks x 3 30pts
Venom w/SC 65pts

wracks x 3 30pts

talos w/TL liquifier 105
talos w/TL Liquifier 105

Cronos w/Spirit Vortex 100

500pts

Thanks again for the input! you guys are awesome

No worries, as I say, it's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, so it's good to talk over options.

A dissie loadout on one of the ravagers in your first list isn't necessarily a bad idea as you can make up the AT elsewhere and it would give you something to seriously threaten any 2+ saves. Not sure how many termie squads you can field at 500, but I wouldn't put it past a DA player to sneak one in somehow.

Double Talos would be very fun, but I'm not sure I can get behind the Chronos at 500 points. I can see an argument for it in larger battles where it can run around finishing off half dead squads and chucking pain tokens to assault troops, but at this scale I sort of think it'll end up pottering about while the Talos do the hard work, and you've already got three pain tokens just from your hq and troops.. I'd drop it and get a second transport and maybe a few more bodies.

As for the modified Trueborn list, I think I'd drop the fields for more bodies, but I can see the argument against doing so. Otherwise I think it could work. With all that splinter fire it should eat nids..

yeah i thought about the 2nd troop just after I posted

I do like the first list but worries me about 1 Ravenger is he goes first and pops it what do you do vs vehicles or 2+ armour

Options

1) Change 1 Wrack to a transport for the dark lance..
2) Drop the fields and change 1 wrack to 5 wyches with HW grenades ( not sure if you have the points but if you do its a much more balanced list .
3) put 3 Wracks on foot and get a 2nd Ravenger ( probably harder on points)

Also dont bother with the flicker filed Ravengers can get Jink from move and shoot ( and they get full shoot for a 12" move)