New 40k player. Just bought start collecting box. Need help with 500 pt list.

New player this is my first list and i want to know if it's any good, please criticize.
Raider 90 pts Enhanced Aether sails, Night Shields, and Splinter racks.

Archon 165 pts Husk blade, blaster pistol, armor of misery, shadowfield, and soul trap.

Kabalites X5 Sybarite, and blaster.

Kabalites X5 Sybarite , and blaster.

Reaver Jetbikes X3 Arena Champion, Cluster Caltrops , Heat Lance , and Agonizer.

Total 493 points.

I'm very new to DE and Warhammer any help would be very much appreciated

I am new too, but from what I have learnt...

you don't need so many upgrades on the archon (armour of misery,soul trap) and replace blast pistol with haywire grenades.

get rid of the raider and instead take a ravager (easy conversion, can even just do a a counts-as)

Don't take sybarites unless it's a blob or you plan on using haywire grenades. And don't take the arena champion, and swap the HL for a blaster.

swap archon for a lamean with a venom, and give a kabalite squad a venom if you can. I know this makes you buy a lot of venoms, but they are great stuff (some craft world players ally in US just for venoms!)

DE is also my first army, so take this with a grain of salt. when playing, you want to use your range and speed to keep away from short range armies. be aggressive against long ranged armies. play to kill until they are mostly dead, then go for objectives. don't worry about being near objectives so you can grab them, you can get most in one turn due to skimmers moving 30" and reavers going even further.

and relish in their screams and bring a bounty of souls to Commoragh!!!

Our troops don't have great saving throws and pretty much every weapon you will face is going to ignore our armour by way of being AP5 or better. To get around this, use transports for all infantry/Elite units.

Now, our transports are very very flimsy. AV10, open topped with 2 or 3 hull points does not equal durability so it's not wise to put points and upgrades into "paper plane" type transports. To get around this though, you need to bring many transports. Some call it spam, others call it redundancy. Your list has one Raider, I'd purchase 2 Venoms on top of the start collecting box (Archon and 1 Warrior squad dedicated transports)

Those are the basic tenants to how to build a Dark Eldar force. I like how youve gone with the start collecting box first up and i wouldnt change the formation just yet, lets just add to it (like the Venoms, Reavers, etc) and get used to the DE for a bit. Plenty of time to make competitive, hard tuned and smash face lists.

The next thing is to think about your opponents (your meta). Do you expect to face Walkers, high AV or perhaps swarms of little dudes, or elite marine forces. Then, work out what you need for the job.

Pretty much that's where I'd start with list building. From here, tactics and more highly specified builds and units grow from there. But don't forget, trial and error is how you learn the Dark Eldar. Be patient and stay it. We are a unique army and call for a unique style of play. Good luck and have fun taking slaves drinking the souls of those who stand in our way !!

I am going to retell a story from long ago when i first started D.E.

I spent a buttload of points on a raider with my archon kitted out nice (last codex but the point is still the same). a group or marines shot down my ship. pew pew. whereas a group of autogun cultists finished off my unit. complete with my kitted out archon...

with D.Eldar more than any other faction you need to focus on splitting your fire among your units (target saturation) more so than ever now with so many units having ignores cover.

Venoms may be nice, but blasterborn on top make a world of difference. 4 blaster born accompanying your archon could be fun. And you wont have to buy anything.

if at all possible do you think you can try out a box of scourge? they are cheap as chips and good.

Another cheap trick. Eldar vypers are cheaper to buy than venoms (and come in a box of three), both used and new. You just have to pull the gun off of the back and glue some spears there to make it work.

tldr: buy the new kit with 10 warriors and a long boat. win-win. scourge are cheap and good, free guys on raider. vyper is cheaper than venoms and basically the same model.

tip 2-----take the extra models off of your raider and you get 3 free guys. same goes for venoms if you buy them. I have never purposely payed for dark eldar warriors because eventually the pile of free guys starts to add up. (6 raiders=18-24 warriors)

Eldar Vypers are smaller. They would not pass at games around here, you should make certain they will with your gaming friends.

As for the list - I think Purge Coterie formation can make a great 500 pts list. Check it out.

General advice, then specific advice.

Resist the urge to spend points on upgrades to get to a certain point level. If you have to play at 400 instead of 500, that's okay! Just let a couple of the dudes know that's what you've got and see if they can trim down to 400. If you start putting willy-nilly upgrades on things just to get to a point level, you're going to inflate the point cost and not actually get anything for it, making your list comparatively weaker. The way to get to 500 is buying Venoms and another box of Warriors.

Troops always need to be in a transport. Always always. Not only do they deliver our relatively short-range badass weapons to their effective range, augment our awesome basic weapons(Splinter Racks on Raiders), and provide the mobility needed by our flimsy troops to get out of danger, but the transports are some of our best shooting.

Now, specific advice -

First, that Archon. That's a very expensive Archon that looks like it's footslogging, that will do basically nothing and be ignored all game. The Armor of Misery isn't great, and blaster Pistols are very short range. There are 2 ways that I like to build Archons that you may want to consider...

1. Blastchon. Give him a blaster, stick him in a Venom, and give him Haywire Grenades so you can zoom up and assassinate a hull point off a vehicle. Blasters are great.

2. Webway portal assassination. Load him up with an Agonizer and a Shadowfield (skip the soul trap, your opponent will just decline challenges), maybe still Haywire Grenades (they're 5 points, why not?) and you can Deep Strike to take out key enemy units, whether they're vehicle or infantry. If nothing else, it forces your opponent to shoot the Archon, instead of before when it was just trudging up the field and could be ignored until turn 3.

Reavers - An Arena Champion plus an Agonizer makes them very very expensive. You lose minimal killing capacity if you just stick to non-area champ, and give one bike Cluster Caltrops, one a Heat Lance or Blaster, and leave the third vanilla (make it your first allocation for wounds).

Warriors/Raider - here's where you gotta decide what to do. If you load up your Archon and Reavers right, you've got enough anti-vehicle for 400 points. You can take 10 warriors in a single unit, give one a Splinter Cannon, give them a dedicated transport Raider with Splinter Racks and Nightshields, and jink it in cover til kingdom come - that gunboat build is super effective for killing infantry.

Alternatively, you can split the Warriors into units of 5 (no Sybarite, he's just not worth it at low points) with one blaster in each, and put them in Venoms. I don't know what models you have or have access to, so I was trying to build with what you listed, but that's really the way to go - Dark Eldar are most effective in the Multiple Small Units setup.

If you build it right, you can turn your start colleting box into a decent 350-400 points. Get another box of Warriors and a couple Venoms to get to 500.

You've brought the start collecting and your piling points to make it to 500. I did the same when i started them 5yr ago. People are telling you that things are over costed and to get this and get that, ignore them for now.

What can you get in the mean time with funds available? Can you ask your local GW if they have any models you can borrow for a game?

All good advice, but I am going to lean more towards Chippen's advice.

But you are trying to build a 500 pt army out of a single Get Started box, and that just isnt feasable. As Chippen said, I would down-grade your expectations to 400 pts.

This would give you a force looking like

1 Archon - Agonizer, Shadowfield - 125

5 Warriors - Blaster - 55 (hide in your backfield on an objective)
5 Warriors - Raider (with Night Shields) - 110 - (Archon goes here)

3 Reavers - Cluster Caltrops, Blaster - 78

Total - 368

You can use a few of the "extra" warriors from the Raider box to fill out the Archons squad if you want to increase the points a little.

Your next purchase should be a Venom (which will add 65 pts once you upgrade the Splinter Cannon) for your first warrior squad. Every squad that can take a transport NEEDS to. A squad on foot is either not participating in the game or is dead.

Have you managed to play any games in 40k? You have more than enough to make a decent 200 pt kill team!

I have played a few games of 40k, but not with DE. I bought a unit of scourges at my local game store recently.They were used and 15 bucks

Scourge are great units, and would be the way I personally pushed fisheyes' list to 500. 120 points gets you 5 Scourge, 4 with Heat Lances, which are very versatile.

Thanks i try that. Going to play my first game against an Eldar army this Saturday.

End Game wrote:

I am going to retell a story from long ago when i first started D.E.

I spent a buttload of points on a raider with my archon kitted out nice (last codex but the point is still the same). a group or marines shot down my ship. pew pew. whereas a group of autogun cultists finished off my unit. complete with my kitted out archon...

with D.Eldar more than any other faction you need to focus on splitting your fire among your units (target saturation) more so than ever now with so many units having ignores cover.

Venoms may be nice, but blasterborn on top make a world of difference. 4 blaster born accompanying your archon could be fun. And you wont have to buy anything.

If you really mean 4 BlasterBorn + Archon in a Venom, that would be illegal, minimum Trueborn squad size is 5, maximum Venom load is 5, so no place for the Archon.
You could do that with a Raider BUT that would be an even bigger load of points than in your story from long ago.
It would also be contradictory to your valid point of target saturation.
All eggs in one basket(bad) vs. Multiple Small Units(good).

Hi there,

You can do all sorts of interesting things with the Start Collecting box, but not @ 500 points sadly.

For 500pts I would next buy 2 x Venoms & 1 x Ravager box (not Raider - proxy it as a Raider without side guns) if you did you could run something like:

Purge Coterie 498

Archon, Cannon Venom - Yes, no upgrades
Lhamean, Cannon Venom
5 x Trueborn, 4 x Blasters, Lance Raider
Lance Raider
3 x Reavers, CC

AT is as always an issue, look to focus everything at the most important target, both Lances, then Blasters & Reavers if needed. Sadly @500 pts the Start Collecting formation starts to lose out to a standard CAD, in my opinion. With cheaper purchases, ie 3 x Venoms & some creative modelling:

DE CAD 500

Lhamean, Cannon Venom
2 x 5 Warriors, Incl. Syb, HWG, Cannon Venoms (WL)
3 x Reavers, CC
5 x Scourges, HWB
Triple Lance Ravager

He has asked us how to get to 500 pts with what he has, I think we have all screamed "BUY MOAR VENOMS!!1!!1!" enough now

If you have the scourges, either equip them with the heat lances or blasters. Both work the same vs T4 infantry, but as AT weapons the Heat Lances require you to get a lot closer (generally a suicide run), while the blasters can be shot at the full 18" range (but are much less reliable at destroying a tank).

With this new unit in the mix, your list would look something like:

DE CAD:
1 Archon - Agonizer, Shadowfield - 125

5 Warriors - Blaster - 55 (hide in your backfield on an objective)
6 Warriors - Raider (with Night Shields) - 110 - (Archon goes here)

3 Reavers - Cluster Caltrops, Blaster - 78
5 Scourges - 4 heat lances - 120

Total - 496

(note that that 6th warrior in the Archon squad is from the Raider "Extras")