Dark Eldar Air Force

Greetings, fellow archons.

I bought three razorwing jetfighters today from my friend who would leave 40k. Now I can bring RWJs up to six (3 of mine + 3 of my game place) utilizing the realspace raid detachment. But honestly, I have no idea of utilizing the DE air force as I haven't used flyers so far.

I'm just considering bringing a splinter cannon, two lances, two monoscythe missiles, and two necrotoxin missiles. Not sure of nightshields.

Do you think 3-6 RWJs would work in a competitive game? And any advice for using them would be much appreciated!

Competitively speaking, the necrotoxins don't bring much over the monoscythes, unless you're facing a lot of T5+ stuff.

Similarly, the splinter cannon doesn't synergise greatly any more now that you can fire all four missiles at once (previously it was useful as you could fire two missiles and the splinter cannon, but there's little reason now not to fire all the missiles) though it is still quite handy against FMCs.

Night shields are more of a personal choice i think, since jink(evade) is basically the flyer's only defence. It does mean you might as well fly off the board the next turn if you evade though.

Personally I don't think they are worth spamming, there's more effective other choices in the FA slot, and whilst they do bring some nice stuff, ravagers do anti tank better for cheaper and we really don't struggle for AI.

6 Razorwings comes to 840 points- probably half your army in most games. With 2 HQ and Blaster Kabalites in Venoms you can go multiple Combined Arms detachment, keep Objective Secured, and have a bunch of small, easier to hide vehicles.
Reserve manipulation would be very important. My last game, I whiffed 9 consecutive reserve rolls trying to get 4 units on the table.

do you have 3 voidravens as well? at 2k points with with the detachment, you can get 9 flyers, and still have points for some troops and HQ.

1635 pts for 6 razorwings with dark lances, necrotoxin, night shields, and 3 void ravens with implosion missiles and nightshields. thats 365 pts left to play with. could easily get urien, 2x 10 warriors with splinter cannon, and a 10 man squad of wracks with 2 ossefactors for the remaining points. decent ranged troops that can stay within 12" of urien for feel no pain right away, and a lot of fire power from the flyers when they start to come in on turn two.

alternatively, you could drop the wrack squad and take a cronos with spirit probe. youd have 10 points to mess with, and as long as the cronos is within 6" of the squads,with urien within 12" of them, theyll start with 5+ FnP, and go to 4+ on turn two.

I usually run a few razorwings myself. Personally I've been keeping them with dissies and 2 necrotoxin and 2 monoscythe missiles each (so the stock 130 cost). I keep their focus on wiping out infantry units because they do a stellar job of it and I bring other elements to dedicate towards anti-armor. I wouldn't advise the cannons or the night shields though, I'd bring another whole unit for that cost instead.

The reason I run 2 and 2 on the missiles is because I typically fire the 2 dissies and then one pair of the missiles depending on who I'm targeting. That way, opponents still see them as a threat and put them high on the priority list for having 2 missiles left. The split pairs on missiles gives you a lot of options to threaten different units too.

Since you're looking at running so many, I could see running at least a couple with lances especially for shooting down flying vehicles, but running a crimson skyhunter could handle that for you just fine as well. I like the razorwings more than ravagers now because they're usually harder for opponents to bring down and they can threaten both infantry and vehicles alike for a very similar cost.

Agree with most of the above - stock are good. But if it's all flyers you'd need some lances in there.

Thank you for all those valuable comments. I've just come back from my first game with three RWJs.

Here's brief report. I had three games.

1. vs 2000-pt Blood Angels
- I used a RWJ (dissie, monoscythe).
- No reserve manipulation.
- RWJ came up in Turn 3, but was penetrated to death by quad-gun shot by Mephiston. It couldn't jink as he got psychic of ignoring cover.

2. vs 2000-pt Ultramarines & Inquisitors
- 3 RWJs (DL, necrotoxin)
- Reserve manipulation from Autarch
- All three came up in Turn 2 and killed two deva teams and one tactical squad. Good job.
- All RWJs survived till the end of the game as my opponent focused his fire on my Lynx (but he failed and surrendered in Turn 3)


3. vs 1000-pt Ultramarines
- 2 RWJs (DL, monoscythe)
- Reserve manipulation from Strategic Warlord Trait
- Came up in Turn 2 & 3, respectively. Blew out a razorback and wiped out a few units of marines. Another good job.
- All RWJs survived, though one of them lost 2 HPs. Instead, my opponent tried to grab objectives and the game was a tie.


Personally, it was very impressive that the missiles could kill the marines so effectively in spite of AP-.