Deep Striking Raiders... Don't laugh

After a fairly humiliating defeat a couple of nights ago (granted, my mind was elsewhere and tactically I was appalling) my opponent and I were discussing things I could have done that may have made life better for me during this game. He suggested that three deep striking raiders may have aided my cause somewhat, as I could have dumped them behind, or close to, his scoring units leaving him vulnerable and me with the advantage.

Now, knowing the inherent risks with deep striking, is this a viable tactic? For info, I play a predominantly warrior heavy list, with the Duke in charge and a boatload of trueborn, two void ravens and 6 reavers.

I am not sold, as I like to have everything available, and generally have really rubbish reserve rolls.

My problem with deep-striking a vehicle is the Mishaps that accompany it. I have not been sold either.

What point range are your usual matches?

big issue is that you can only take 50% of your army in reserves (with teh odd exception for flyers etc).
if you take 6 radiers for example, you have to deploy 3 of them. this leaves you wide open for disaster as every gun can concentrate on three av10 open topped transports and their squishy contents.
it could work in some scenarios (planetstrike for example) but on a terrain heavy standard 40k board, you'll probably mishap and lose your boys more often than it'd help.

Why not just put aethersails on the raiders you want in position, move 12 plus the 2D6 from the sails, then flat out 18 inches.
You will be surprised how far they can move as will your opponent, I regularly do this with squads of wyches with haywires and grotesques.
Your boats will also be getting a 4+ jink save for going flat out.

I just get cut to ribbons in pieces.
The only thing I would consider DSing are scourges, min sized squads with lances or H/Wblasters, but they cant!

I've done it before, keeping my raiders back and deploying ravagers, and venom on the board. The ravagers have night shields and deploy far back to minimise any shooting. If you reserve 3 raiders, you should get two of them on average (plus there's a warlord trait that helps with reserve rolls if you're worried and get lucky - remember though your warlord trait is determined before you have to decide what to deploy so if you don't get it you can still put everything on the table.

It may just be the amount of scenery that we have at my club, but I've not worried too much about mishaps, the raider should only deviate an average of 7" so there's usually a big enough space to put them in! Biggest problem I had in that game was busting open the transports they were all in, my damage rolls were appalling.

Edit: what do you mean scourges can't deep strike, they're jump infantry so they have the deep strike rule!

Point range is 1850 for the local tournaments. The tables are very terrain heavy at the local as well, making it a hazardous prospect. The downside with aethersails is that you can't shoot the next turn you use them, so that more or less removes their usefulness IMO. I generally run 5 boats, 3 x Kabalite warriors, 1 x wyches and 1 x Duke and trueborn. If they hit I think this could work, but if they miss or worse, come on piecemeal, the game may be over by turn 3.

Has anyone done it with success? Or, apart from a comms relay to ensure some degree of certainty, is there a way to ensure they hit or are we suffering a bit of codex creep? I see Tau can land DS troops within 6" of certain units now.

Why can't scourges DS? They are jump infantry so should be able to unless I have missed something.

The main advantages are being able to disembark and shoot, which with heavy terrain is to your advantage barring impassable or cover ignoring weaponry. I haven't had the balls to try to DS raiders yet but venoms work well for this. However it basically sets are fundamental turn back by 1 sometimes 2 and also dictates your list design pretty heavily due to reserves rules but also to avoid getting tabled.

Brom wrote:

it basically sets are fundamental turn back by 1 sometimes 2

Sorry not quite sure what you mean here. Yes, the reserve rules do make life difficult, meaning I would need to take some cheap junk units to hopefully hold for a couple of turns, maybe a comms relay and aegis (do you need aegis? Think so...) to improve my chances of arriving turn 2.

What I mean is with half the army in reserve the other half will usually be playing conservatively until they arrive.