Dark Eldar Airforce vs Bike Spam?

So I'll be playing against our Dark Angels player next during our campaign, and knowing that he'll field a Bike Spam army I thought I might as well get a bit of a head start as from what I can tell, he's the most experienced player in our group (and also brought the most competitive list in my opinion).

I've read somewhere that an airforce list is somewhat of a hard counter to biker spam, so my question is - is bringing 3 Razorwings to 2000 Pts putting too many eggs in 1 basket?

His list is somewhat like this: Sammael, Darkshroud Landspeeder, 3 more Landspeeders, 2 squads of Black Knights, 3 Trikes, tons of Bikes. He'll also probably bring Deathwing Terminators against me.

Last test game my lone Razorwing blew up 2 Trikes and 3 Bikes with its' first salvo, so... What are your experiences?

Plus, any tipps going against such a list would be appreciated, thanks!

I'd be wary of spending that many points on units that are vulnerable to massed small-arms fire - which bike spam has in spades (twin-linked to boot!).

I'd definitely agree with what Count says there - as someone who uses a lot of bikes in my normal marine list - the one thing i really don't want to see on the other side of the table is poison. Bikes pay a premium (quite a large one in the case of DA bikes) for having T5, which really doesn't matter at all to the humble splinter rifle.

Pleasantly too, with landspeeders you actually won't have the most fragile vehicles on the table (well, technically you will, but at least your opponent's are just as fragile)

Venomspam hard is hard counter to bike lists. Pack as much poison as you can get. Have some counter charge for the inevitable bike chapter master.

Dizzys are your best friend, multi shot ap3 destroys bikes.

They will just jink. And your wounding on 4+. So thats basically upgrade from splinter rifle that will roll 4+ on save, not a 3+.

They will jink and snap fire all those shiny mounted guns. Now they really cannot fire back while you pepper them with normal splinters. The dizzys will force them to jink, The splinters wont.

Wow so much great info in such a short timespan!!

So, since I know that he'll bring only 3 landspeeders and the darkshroud, how about turning my blasterborn into "splinterborn", dropping 1 Razorwing for some Sslyth, putting dissies on the last Razorwing and on my Ravager? That would only leave one unit of scourges with haywire as AV.

Even jinking won't be too effective against such an amount of shots.

Alternatively I could also bring Incubi in a Venom from my available models, would that be of any use? Counter assault I guess, the Venom would be good though.

Nah, incubi won't really help much. You're killing on 5s, he's wounding on 3s, and he's fast enough to pick the battles he fights. Take a venom in a FA slot to pump out the splinter fire. For the cost of your incubi in a venom, you could just take two venoms...

Venom spam will beat it.

Count Adhemar wrote:

I'd be wary of spending that many points on units that are vulnerable to massed small-arms fire - which bike spam has in spades (twin-linked to boot!).

I've just read some mathhammer that it takes on average 108 bolter snap shots to do 3 hullpoints to a AV10 flyer, before any jink saves. Even twin-linked that doesn't sound so bad, or is that calculation off?

Bear in mind though that shots from bikes are twin-linked, which makes a difference when snap-firing. Each shot has ~5% chance of inflicting a HP, so roughly 20 shots per HP, 60 shots in total. If the target Jinks then that doubles but a Jinking Razorwing is effectively useless as it can't fire any missiles and is very unlikely to hit with it's other weapons.

In any case, as has been mentioned above, poison is far more effective against bikes than our flyers are.

ravenwing also all have hit and run so he can usually leave at will, i would also keep the blasterborn as is because darkshrouds can be annoying to take down and as long as that is up so will the other landspeeders be a pain to deal with.

Quote :

They will jink and snap fire all those shiny mounted guns.

Guns are not the real problem. MSU Bike units are horrible because of their devastating charge.
White Scars HoW has S5 and all Marines have S6 Grenades.