1000 points: 1st list / 1st effort at 40k

Hi all. Lots of firsts: first post, first DE list, first go at 40k (play dwarfs in WFB and fancied a very different style when branching into 40k). Anyway, 1000 points 1st list - please feel free to critique and feedback - I'd appreciate it.

HQ:

Archon with blaster and haywire grenades (145)
In a Venom (by herself) with splinter-cannon (65)

Troops:

2 x squads of 5 Kabalite Warriors in Venoms with splinter-cannons

Fast Attack:

Razorwing Jetfighter - 2 dark lances + 4 monoscythe missiles + twin-linked splinter rifle (140)

Scourges: 4 x Haywire blasters, 1 with normal shardcarbine (125)

Heavy support:

Ravager - 3 x Dark Lances (125)

2 x Talos with Ichor Injectors & twin linked splinter cannons (260)

..................

The fluff theme is Kabal of the obsidian rose, for those who are interested - so paint scheme is black with red trim throughout.

Concept: Talos units go front and middle, ideally starting behind cover as a big area denial unit - also pumping out lots of AI shots. Ravager alpha strikes any tanks, scourges finish off the armour with haywire. Razorwing uses lances to support & hit infantry with missiles. Venoms pump out lots of AI. Archon holds back along with main troops, but can support later on.

Any thoughts or feedback? For what it's worth the lads I would likely start by playing field Grey Knights and Necrons respectively. Any thoughts on tackling them would also be appreciated.

That archon is way overpriced for what you're giving her.
Should be 80 points with that loadout. (unless you're just adding the venom's cost to her, but then listing the venom's cost a second time) Which puts you at 1005 with the archon's points being corrected.

The rest looks good, I'd say the weak link in the list are the 2 Taloi - as they'll find it difficult to keep up with the army.

They do bring some decent sustain to the list though. However, they perform best when in close combat and it'll take them a while to get there and its not that difficult to just keep avoiding them. However, you do want to use them as area denial anyway, so that may play into your favour.

The new necron codex is pretty crazy against our shooting though (especially our splinterfire). You'll find that razorwing's 4 missiles might barely even kill anything after all those armour and rerollable RP saves are made.

I played a game against the new codex recently and I think the only unit I managed to fully wipe out was one tomb blade squad to regular shooting. I then got a unit of reavers to surround and glance a ghost ark to death and wipe out the warriors inside as they couldnt be placed on the board.

Otherwise I just tried to stay away from him and go for objectives, they are almost as fast as us now, and the new wraiths are brutal. Their ranges are still worse than ours at least, being a mostly mid range army. But a big Veil of Darkness deepstriking Immortal's unit is pretty crazy.

You can't even tie them down in combat because they can just deepstrike out of it. You have to hope for a really bad scatter to be able to stay away from them. I've seen that unit with an overlord to tank the shots as well as a cryptek, both carrying a res orb - so two phases of rerollable 4+ RP saves after their 3+ armour and the overlord's 2+

Thanks for this. I clearly wrote that wrong. To take it down from 1005 to 1000, I think I'll just lose the haywire grenades.

Yeah, his necron force looks troubling, but we're not hyper competitive. I might play test the Talos and see how they do - although I love the scourge models, so might invest in more of them. I've still to build this whole army up yet.

Would you think the Voidraven might have more joy than a razorwing against necrons, or even grey knights, with both armies having good saves?

I think the razorwing is definitely better imo, especially for its cost. Also, against grey knights it will work fairly well as they go down to massed wounds like any terminator/marine styled army. The only reason necrons can weather this is due to the rerollable RP saves.

But the voidraven wouldn't do this any better (the S9 could count as instant death against T4 warriors/immortals etc though, which means it knocks his RP down to a 5+ instead of 4+ essentially due to ID attacks subtracting 1 from the RP roll)

But I will confess I barely know grey knights other than triple dreadknights and centurionstars etc.

You could try the voidraven if you want, but it costs way more and is as survivable as the razorwing. I think if you're taking a single flyer I'd go with the razorwing, and you could then include the voidraven if you're bringing multiple flyers.

Scourges are great - I'm actually looking forward to trying something with them with an allied harlequin detachment, sticking a shadowseer with them for veil of tears. but that's another story xD