Could use some feedback.

Hey All.

  So as the title says I recently got into Dark Eldar when the new codex came out.  I have been working on a 2000 point list and I'm looking to get a bit of feed back.

My current list is as follows

Dark Artisan Formation

Cronos
   Spirit probe
Talos
    None
Haemonculus
    Web way

Real Space Raiders

HQ

Court of the archon
     Lhameans X 1

Troops

Kabalite warriors X 10
      Raider
      Dark lance
      Splinter racks

Kabalite warriors X 10
      Raider
      Dark Lance
      Splinter racks

Elites

Kabalite Trueborn X 5
      Blasters X 4
      Venom
      Splinter cannon X 2

Kabalite Trueborn X 5
      Blasters X 4
      Venom
      Splinter cannon X 2

Fast Attack

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Scourge
       Haywire Blasters X 4

Scourge
       Haywire Blasters X 4

Heavy Support


Voidraven Bomber
       Void lances

Voidraven Bomber
       Void Lances

This comes out to be 2000 points exactly.   So far I have played about 4 games with it.  All of them except for one I got pretty stomped.

The first game I played against a demon of tzeentch army. 3 big blobs of horrors, 2 soulgrinders, daemon prince, greater daemon of change.  Almost everything in his army had a 3 up ward and could reroll ones I ended up killing about 20 horrors the entire game and got wrecked.  I was doing about 40-60 wounds per round with all of my shooting but his saves were just too good and he rarely failed any and just slowly ground me down.  On the plus side my dark artisan formation stood toe to toe with a daemon prince and soul grinder for about 3 full rounds of close combat.

Game two was against some Orcs he was using some formation where he had 5 trucks 3 with mega nobs and 2 with a meganob and 10 rocket orks (don't remember the names) he also had two buggies with 3 rockets each full of grots.  It was a tactical objective game.  I brought most of my army in via deep strike.  I was able to pop 4 of his trucks but in doing so I left myself open to counter charges from the mega nobs and they were able to clean house.  By turn 4 I mostly just had my flyers left they were able to do some work but I couldn't really score many objectives and he was able to score a few so I ended up losing via points.

The third game was against the same orc player this time he had 3 trucks with 20 ardboyz each, 2 units of defcopters, and a blitzbomba.  This senario was kill points and there was a special rule which flyers could roll reserve rolls to come in turn one.  I was able to bring all my flyers in turn one and pop two of his transports which pretty much won me the game since he had to footslog towards me giving me 3 more turns of shooting at him.  One razorwing was able to score 42 wounds on a big blob of 20 ardboyz after the transports got popped I thought that was pretty funny.  Never seen a single model put so many wounds out before.

My fourth game was against an Iron Hands space marine list.  He had a knight, 2 vindicators, 2 razorbacks with 5 assault marines each, 3 landspeeders with 5 scouts in each a librarian and chapter master that were able to get up to a +2 armor +3 invuln +2 feel no pain each on bikes.  
I went for a turn two alpha strike starting with only the dark artisan on the board.  I got lucky and was able to bring everything in turn two. I proceeded to dump all my scourges both voidravens, and two razorwings into the knight dealing a grand total of 2 hullpoints..... yay!  My two trueborn squads both shot at the vindicators dealing a grand total of 0 hullpoints....again yay! I dumped all of my gun boats and both venoms into his chapter master librarian unit dealing a grand total of 43 wounds that he proceeded to save all of but one......super YAY!  He then proceeded to nearly table me his next turn.

So here I am asking you all for some help.  Things I have been having trouble with are massed armor.  I would think with 18 darklance shots and 8 haywires a turn I wouldn't have much of a problem.  However my scourges and trueborn usually always get shot down to one or two models after their first turn of shooting.  That usually just leaves me with my flyers after that if I don't kill them in that alpha I'm SOL it seems.  I don't have any issues dealing with troops I have anti infantry in spades.

I always try for a turn two alpha.  If I can find a spot where I know my Lhamean will be safe from shooting for a turn I just start with her on the table otherwise the Dark artisans start on the table.  They can soak up an entire armies worth of shooting usually.  

In my meta we are all fairly competitive and most of the scenarios we play are from our tournaments.  Also in our tournament rules we can just choose a warlord trait which we must use for the entire tournament rather than random rolling every game.  Same with psychic powers.  So in allot of our non-tournament games we play with the same rules as well.  So I almost always take labyrinthine cunning for the reserve manipulation.

Whats in the list is mostly all the DE I own.  I do however have 10 more warriors two more raiders, 10 wracks,  and two more pain engines, and a second haemonculus.

So now that I have filled you in on my entire life story as an Archon do you have any suggestions?
I would rather keep my army shooty if at all possible I have CSM for my choppy if I want to do that.  Also I have almost everything for CSM if you could think of anything that might go well with my list as far as allies go.

Thanks in advanced!

You're probably hurting yourself right off the bat not grabbing Ichor Injectors on the Talos. He's strong and tough, but he'll still want the extra help when dealing with the big trouble MCs out there, just to make his day a bit easier. The longer the unit stays engaged, the more likely they'll be taken out or your saves will start failing you. A Dark Artisan formation is too expensive to just be a Warlord bunker, so you need to get in there and start eating things up, and as quickly as possible. You don't want a Wraithknight tying you just for multiple rounds.

Don't go with Dark Lance on Warriors in Raiders. If you really want Warriors to have Dark Lances, then just sit them in cover as a bunker unit somewhere. You're immediately limiting your mobility by saying "I don't want to move this unit" in a relatively expensive transport. It's also not saving you from much damage, because a Raider is easy to kill and as soon as it blows up you'll be losing a lot of the Warriors inside. Switch to the cheaper Blaster and think about adding a Splinter Cannon.

You're a bit heavy on the flying, and that's dangerous. While the fliers are great, you still need to limit it a bit. You don't have a difficult to kill unit that starts on the board, so most of your stuff isn't expecting to Deep Strike on with a few exceptions. You're turn 1 isn't going to be happy when you're trying to hide Raiders and two venoms, all containing some pretty expensive cargo. Five fliers is also stopping you from claiming and contesting a lot of Objectives. If you want air superiority I'd imagine stick with two Razorwings, but add Splinter Cannons for anti-FMCs, and a Voidraven. Dropping a Razorwing and Voidraven frees up 300 points, so 280 points to toy with after adding those Splinter Cannons on the other Razorwings. That's x2 Ravagers with Dark Lances and should be enough points to upgrade those Warriors into units of scariness. Since you have two spare Raiders, I'd try proxying them for Ravagers if people in your area are fine with that so you can try them out.

Debate switching away from double Scourges with Haywire Blasters. I'd highly recommend a Haywire Blaster Scourge unit and a Heat Lance Scourge unit. Haywires fall flat against non-Vehicle armies, and you'll be hurting in the long run. Heat Lances are still great, and definitely better all around weapons (can't ever have enough AP 1/2). If Imperial Knights didn't exist, I don't think Haywire Blasters would make it into a lot of lists.

If you ever care to break away from Dark Artisan every now and then, I'd filter in some Reavers and another Ravager with Dark lances, and top it off with an Archon with a blaster and WWP to accompany whichever Scourge unit (if you opt to add some Heat Lance ones) will be better off with the extra punch.

Honestly, I really recommend Reavers. They are cheap, are great at being little gnats, and with proper outfitting (I suggest a Heat Lance and Cluster Caltrop per 3) they are the best way to deal with light armor without having to waste our big guns trying to glance down AV 11 or less (since AP2 is unreliable to explode vehicles in one shot). Small units of 3 are also very, very easy to hide in terrain for blocked LoS if you want to try some turn 2 Alpha striking ideas (like playing flier heavy, or wanting to deep strike your Raider and Venom units to avoid mass Ork shooting).

Cybrid wrote:

Hey All.

  So as the title says I recently got into Dark Eldar when the new codex came out.  I have been working on a 2000 point list and I'm looking to get a bit of feed back.

Okay - well, first I'll go through your army unit by unit and then will discuss it as a whole;

Cybrid wrote:

Dark Artisan Formation

Cronos
   Spirit probe
Talos
    None
Haemonculus
    Web way

Very bare bones, but not bad - I tend to toss an ichor in on mine to help maul MCs.

Cybrid wrote:

Court of the archon
     Lhameans X 1

I'm surprised you're not taking a transport for her to add to your shooting capabilities.

Cybrid wrote:

Kabalite warriors X 10
      Raider
      Dark lance
      Splinter racks

Kabalite warriors X 10
      Raider
      Dark Lance
      Splinter racks

This is a mediocre amount of Troops - also, I'd note that 3x Venoms has better anti infantry output (and at safer distance) and some more Blasters might help your mech woes as I'm guessing you're probably pretty ink happy with these so the lances aren't helping much.

Cybrid wrote:

Kabalite Trueborn X 5
      Blasters X 4
      Venom
      Splinter cannon X 2

Kabalite Trueborn X 5
      Blasters X 4
      Venom
      Splinter cannon X 2

These are okay, though I will admit I'm starting to doubt the validity of Trueblasters nowadays.

Cybrid wrote:

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Razorwing Jetfighter
       Dark Lances

Good.

Cybrid wrote:

Scourge
       Haywire Blasters X 4

Scourge
       Haywire Blasters X 4

Fine.

Cybrid wrote:

Voidraven Bomber
       Void lances

Voidraven Bomber
       Void Lances

Eh...Voidravens are pretty lackluster in my opinion.

Cybrid wrote:

The first game I played against a demon of tzeentch army. 3 big blobs of horrors, 2 soulgrinders, daemon prince, greater daemon of change.  Almost everything in his army had a 3 up ward and could reroll ones I ended up killing about 20 horrors the entire game and got wrecked.  I was doing about 40-60 wounds per round with all of my shooting but his saves were just too good and he rarely failed any and just slowly ground me down.  On the plus side my dark artisan formation stood toe to toe with a daemon prince and soul grinder for about 3 full rounds of close combat.

For 'almost everything' to have a 3++ save, it would require him to be using Santic powers, which means he would have been risking perils on any double, the only other option he would have had was the Grimore, and that would only do one unit. He should have had a 4++ with the re-roll pretty easily though.

Optimal target would have been the DA jumping the Horrors and you shooting up everything else.
I'm honestly perplexed you had that much trouble with this list.

Cybrid wrote:

Game two was against some Orcs he was using some formation where he had 5 trucks 3 with mega nobs and 2 with a meganob and 10 rocket orks (don't remember the names) he also had two buggies with 3 rockets each full of grots.  It was a tactical objective game.  I brought most of my army in via deep strike.  I was able to pop 4 of his trucks but in doing so I left myself open to counter charges from the mega nobs and they were able to clean house.  By turn 4 I mostly just had my flyers left they were able to do some work but I couldn't really score many objectives and he was able to score a few so I ended up losing via points.

I really don't get why you had issues with this list - DA eats Meganobz pretty effectively.
You losing via points seems to strike me as an issue based on your lack of troops - though I always think people lack troops

Cybrid wrote:

My fourth game was against an Iron Hands space marine list.  He had a knight, 2 vindicators, 2 razorbacks with 5 assault marines each, 3 landspeeders with 5 scouts in each a librarian and chapter master that were able to get up to a +2 armor +3 invuln +2 feel no pain each on bikes.  
I went for a turn two alpha strike starting with only the dark artisan on the board.  I got lucky and was able to bring everything in turn two. I proceeded to dump all my scourges both voidravens, and two razorwings into the knight dealing a grand total of 2 hullpoints..... yay!  My two trueborn squads both shot at the vindicators dealing a grand total of 0 hullpoints....again yay! I dumped all of my gun boats and both venoms into his chapter master librarian unit dealing a grand total of 43 wounds that he proceeded to save all of but one......super YAY!  He then proceeded to nearly table me his next turn.

As far as I can tell you're describing a really weird series of dice rolls - this is not anything to base anything upon, it was very non-standard in what went down.

Cybrid wrote:

So here I am asking you all for some help.  Things I have been having trouble with are massed armor.  I would think with 18 darklance shots and 8 haywires a turn I wouldn't have much of a problem.

It's funny because - I would think you would. At 1850 I bring over 20 lance weapons, at 2000 I'd bring even more.

Cybrid wrote:

I don't have any issues dealing with troops I have anti infantry in spades.

Agreed, though I think you probably have too much - and I'm not sure why you couldn't handle those Meganobz either.

Okay, so let's start with the list - at the end of the day I think you're paying a premium on your anti-mech shooting and also are lacking in overall firepower.

I think your biggest gaff is the Voidravens - those are fairly ineffectual machines of war for their points. I also am not a fan of the Gunboats, which are basically semi-needless extra anti-infantry. I'll also admit to being pretty 'meh' on using RR and then also going beta strike, which invalidates much of the point of RR.

So, let's just do a bit of consideration - because I see you have some more Warriors and more Raiders.

Let's say you drop both the Voidravens and the Gunboats from your list - that's 630 points.
If you were to then take 4x Warriors w. Blaster in Raider it would equal - 170 remaining. Now, conventionally I'd then say something like 'add some Trueborn w. Blasters' and easily be able to argue that it was a vast improvement to your list, but you lack the transports. So...meh. I dunno, you could float back in a Voidraven and then also afford an Ichor Injector I suppose.

So what I suggest is;

- 2 dark Lances
- 2 Void lances
- 20 splinter rifles w. twin linked.
+ 2 additional units on the board for target saturation.
+4 lances
+4 blasters
+ 16 splinter rifles
+ Ichor Injector to allow Talos to instaglib MCs if lucky.

So, you end up with the same amount of long range firepower (arguably better because, again, I submit you're probably jinking with Gunboats) You have 2 Void Lances equaled by 2 regular lances and 4 blasters - which is a notably uptick to your anti-mech firepower. The Ichor Injector may help scare away MCs and some multi-wound models from giving your DA a whirl. Plus you get more functional boots on the ground All for basically the cost of - 4 s.rifles and twin linking. That seems like it will help your issue (anti mech) only very slightly impact your anti-infantry shooting, and also works within the models you have listed as owning.

That's my feedback.
I'd also advocate getting some other stuff in order to totally work the Voidravens out of the list, they are a point sink in my opinion.

Hey all!

Thanks for the great feed back so far.

There is a tad bit of confusion though about the list mostly my fault the two gun boats the dark lance is on the raider not in the squad the squad is bare bones all splinter rifles. I thought about adding a blaster to each of the units but if I'm using that blaster to shoot tanks then the rest of the unit is useless as I can't split fire. I see the value in taking the venoms though as it kind of helps fix that problem.

As far as the daemons game went he was using malefic so he had access to cursed earth. one larger unit of horrors had the book so they had +1 inv. His daemon prince and greater daemon had wargear that increased their inv by one. not to mention he can re roll failed inv of 1 since they were all daemons of tzeentch.

As far as the voidraven is concerned I'm not sure if the ravager is better. The ravager is still only armor 11 which isn't great at all. If it moves I can only shoot 2 of its dark lances (I might be reading those rules wrong) It can hide in runes to get a cover save though but if it can't its most likely jinking which makes it useless. While the Voidraven is only armor 10 it is at least a flyer so most things need 6s to hit. The +1 str on its lances in nice too and while it is only a onces a game use the bomb is pretty good. However if I do drop one that gives me points for some upgrades like you said Ill have to play around with some stuff.