2k Starter List

So here's my first list to get started with my dark eldar. Hardly optimal, mostly based off of two starter kits plus a couple other things I picked up, but I still have a small budget for a couple more units to switch things up so I'm looking for suggestions on what else I should add to my force.

Battalion detachment-6 cps

Archon-67pts
huskblade, splinter pistol, phantasm grenade launcher

Succubus-76pts
archite glaive, agoniser

10 Kabalite warriors-108pts
sybarite w/ phantasm grenade launcher, blaster, dark lance

10 Kabalite warriors-112pts
sybarite w/ phantasm grenade launcher, blaster, dark lance

10 wytches-102pts
hekatrix w/agoniser, 2x hydra gauntlets

Lhamean-18pts

Ssylth-31pts

Ssylth-31pts

Kabalite Trueborn-115pts
4x blasters

Kabalite Trueborn-115pts
4x blasters

Reavers-224pts
arena champion w/agoniser, 2x blasters, 2x grav talons

Ravager-185pts
3x disintigrator cannons

razorwing fighter-170pts
2x dark lances, splinter cannon

raider-116pts
shock prow, dark lance

raider-116pts
shock prow, dark lance

Venom-95pts
2x splinter cannons

Venom-95pts
2x splinter cannons

Venom-95pts
2x splinter cannons


Technically leaves me at 1871pts, but I could certainly drop a few things to make a few pts. Most of the characters ride a venom, wytches and maybe the succubus wwp in. Currently I'm thinking of using the last pts for 5 scourges with dark lances, but I'm very open to suggestions, maybe remove something else so I can take a larger unit with my remaining pts.

If you used superglue you should tear off your Archon's Huskblade and replace it with an Agoniser. Honestly our HQs are taxes and you should take the cheapest melee option, because you don't really expect him to get very much done.

The court of the Archon aren't really ideal, since the archon himself is so bad. You're just making his vehicle an even higher priority to kill, and they won't save him if he does get into trouble. There are better ways to spend those points.

If you want the Dark Lances from the Warrior units drop them down to 5 man units with blasters, and add the Dark Lances to the units of trueborn in raiders instead of venoms. 10 Trueborn can have 4 blasters and 2 dark Lances 33 is less points of tax for them than the 56 points for 8 extra warriors in bringing up the warrior units to 10. Put the warriors in Venoms, because blaster range is the same as splinter cannon rapidfire, so you can try to kite around with 18" range and make charging difficult if the opponent is kinda slow.

The WWP for wyches and Succubus is really expensive on CPs. Might be worth putting them in a raider, then bringing that raider to the Trueborn unit of 10 once it drops the wyches off. Their transport is going to be a high priority target for your enemy, and you'll want another raider to pick them up if theirs gets destroyed. You can put the Succubus in a venom with the Archon.

The Reavers are gorgeous models, but will hold you back because you're spending so much on their higher toughness and wounds than the rest of the army. They don't get as many guns/point as basically anything else, and for a hard hitting army like Drukhari that can be an issue. Use them for now but think about removing them later on once you're more comfortable.

Scourges are awesome, but I'd advise against Dark Lances on them. They're easy to kill and they have to shoot at -1 if they move. Every wound against them loses a gun. It's too expensive for such a risk. I like them with stock Shard Carbines, because assault 3 poison for 14 points is awesome. It gives you some mobile units to contest objectives with without making any super high priority target since a unit of 5 is so cheap, so you generally don't need to be as careful about kiting around with them as you would with venoms with blasters so you can actually use them to sit on some objectives or push off infantry the enemy is trying to hold objectives with. They won't remove tanks, but you have other stuff for that.

I'm not sure wyches are worth it, but they're definitely cool. Might as well play with them until you decide if you'd rather just have more venoms of warriors.

If you have spare points you can never go wrong with more ravagers/razorwing Jetfighters. I would suggest Dark Lances for any future Ravagers though. They're cheaper and more consistent. I like how you built the Jetfighter.

It might be worth it to drop the warriors with dark lances all together, and drop the tax warriors/trueborn it'd take to get them, and use the points on a Ravager with 3 DLs as it'd serve you better as a mobile gun platform.

Play a few games with the trueborn and let me know how it goes. I'm always scared people will just pop those venoms first and then my blasterborn would just be stranded in the middle of the table with no way to get to good positions.

Cheers

Thanks for the tips man, appreciate the feedback.

I got in two games yesterday, one game against an all scions deep striking list where I got crushed, and another against a blood angels list which went well. Most of my units' performance reflected pretty much everything you said. Archon and his court were pretty useless, I ran the succubus in their venom as well and she was the only one of the group to carry her weight. It was amusing to watch the archon suck up a ton of plasma fire with his invul save, but that was about all he did. Huskblade was pointless so I'll switch that out for an agoniser, probably drop the court as well.

I see what you're saying about giving trueborn the dark lances over the warriors, but puttin 4 blasters and 2 dark lances in a raider makes it a huge priority target, I don't see that raider even surviving to get the trueborn into blaster range, wasting all four blasters. Also the venom trueborn worked very well, venoms were small enough to hide in my own deployment zone then zip up the board and hide in more terrain where they did a fair amount of damage pretty consistently. My opponent also just might not have been too use to facing dark eldar since he focused on the raiders over the venoms despite the raiders just carrying warriors.

You're right about the WWP, I didn't take the succubus with the wytches in either game. Wyches were really a toss up, one game they failed their charge even with rerolls and died horribly to gunfire, second game they made their charge and murdered a reasonable number of marines. I think I'll keep them for now, see how they perform in a few more games. My main reason for keeping them is a feel DE shooting in general suffers when dealing with anti horde, and wyches with the extra attack drug can deal with horde a little better, plus keep them locked in combat. Might switch them out for more warriors though eventually.

You know I did like the reavers but man were they overpriced for what they did. I gave them extra toughness which their drug which meant they sucked up a decent amount of fire, but that's pretty much all they did. As you mentioned they firepower is just so lacking when you consider for about half their price you're getting a unit of blasterborn. After the court they are probably the next unit to be replaced.

I proxied dark lance scourges in both games, their shots really whiffed on the turn they showed up but that was just from bad rolls. They did however drop into an excellent high up position in the second game and stayed there all game providing extra anti tank firepower. That being said the carbines seem nice, and I do need more anti infantry firepower which they aren't bad at, may take your suggestion and go for just stock carbines. It's too bad none of our anti-infantry weapons are worth it, if the shredder was just straight up 3 shots or if the splinter cannon was decently priced I'd consider both on scourges.

I liked the dissie ravager but dark lances definetly seem like the better pick, I'll either get a second ravager or magnetize the one I have as one dissie is definetly plenty. Really the only reason for keeping warriors in is eventually once the codex is out I'll probably want to run battalion for the extra cp as I am now, otherwise currently I think I'd just run vanguard and load up all on trueborn.

So for now the court is going, probably the reavers as well which leaves me with about 450pts of more models to buy, plenty for now so I don't want to take anything else out. Adding scourges seems very likely, maybe two units of ten with carbines, but that's only 140pts so need to think about what else to add. I've heard a fair number of people being excited by hellions and I love their models but I just don't see the appeal, even with their damage output they are still only t3 or 4 at best with a poor save. Do you think they are any good?

2 Squads of 10 scourges is 280 points. You probably want them in units of 5 though because you don't want to be losing them to morale, and it's not like you're really trying to stuff as much as possible into fast attack. Our best units are troops, heavy support, and flyers. If you want more DLs you should just bring more ravagers/jetfighters so you don't lose 34 points/wound from your scourges when people decide to shoot them. I'm kind of glad the anti-infantry special weapons suck, because it just lets you buy more scourges and who doesn't love having more scourges?

I suggested the 4 blasters and 2 DL trueborn knowing it was a huge target. They're already a huge target. Blasterborn in a venom with Cannons is 210 points, compared to a unit of warriors with a blaster in a venom being 145. I know it's less firepower, but it lets you almost get 50% more venoms on the table, and they're awesome.

Not being able to get trueborn into blaster range is why I don't particularly like trueborn. They're too expensive to risk that happening. If they pop your raider/venom turn one and just stay away from you you basically lose 115 points for no good reason as they're never going to get anything done. I prefer saturating the table with more venoms so no single loss is too great. Also all your venoms having -1 to hit REALLY adds to your survivability.

I don't think you need Dark Lance Warriors. I just don't think it's worth the tax for one more Dark Lance that you could get other ways, and probably don't need since you're talking about lacking anti-horde, not anti-tank.

I'd consider buying another Razorwing or 2, since they're the cheaper flyer to buy from GW, and arguably the better one. They're ridiculously awesome. Also more Ravagers can never hurt.

Definitely don't feel bad about dropping the Reavers.

As far as Hellions go? I love them. But I don't think they're good. I do think they have a place, like if you're playing against someone with a lot of infantry or light vehicles with FNP (like another DE player or death guard) because the low strength but 2 damage is really good for that, but it's not consistent enough for me to recommend taking them in a TAC list.

Honestly I'd probably drop the wyches. Like you said, it's a toss up, and with DE we can't really afford the chance that they won't get into combat. I'd rather have something consistent than something that MIGHT be amazing, so I stick mostly to warriors, scourges, venoms, jetfighters, and ravagers in my list building.

To sum up my list thoughts. I think blaster warriors in venoms are better than blasterborn, because it doesn't hurt you so much for the vehicle to get popped, and you can bring more units and more venoms means more anti infantry firepower, which you're already struggling with. I think warriors are the best troop choice because Wyches are inconsistent.
I think scourges are best used as cheap MSU anti infantry and objective control units, because their carbines are awesome for the points.
I think you should bring as many ravagers and jetfighters as you're comfortable with. You'll find a balance that works for you with Ravagers:Venom units and how many jetfighters you bring will be based on how much your meta favours Alphastrike, because you don't want to put 700 points in the sky if your opponent can shoot 1300 points off the table in 2 turns.

As far as your 2 games went, yeah Militarum Tempestus can hit like a truck. I actually don't think it's a terrible match for us though because they spend so much on their plasma's high strength and AP that really isn't necessary for killing us. Our vehicles have invuln saves and our infantry die to anything. The trick is just to keep them away from important stuff as they drop in.
You can place your Ravagers and Jetfighters together, and set up your Venoms around them about 18" away to deter the deep strike, and then just eat the deepstrike with your venoms. Sure, you'll lose some, but they have to shoot through the -1 to hit for the Venoms and the Invuln save which makes them deceptively hard to kill, and when they do die they leave your warriors in good positions to shoot at the scions at rapidfire range anyway. Your Ravagers should be more than capable of clearing a few Taurox Primes off the table without any issues, and Jetfighters absolutely mulch MSU infantry, which Scions are. With your list as is, I'd probably have tried to use the Wyches and Kabalite warriors as a screen, and then hit back on your turn, but you'd lose a lot more models that way. I do think you need at least 1 more ravager to help you remove important vehicles and monsters on turn 1, or at least cripple them. I really like Scions. They're like the imperium version of Drukhari. The only difference is when they drop in to kill you, if they can't kill everything they're not really capable of kiting you away, and they just kind of die to your returning fire. Drukhari don't have that problem with all the vehicles with fly and such. You should be crushing your Scion friend in no time if you keep developing your list

As far as the blood angels game goes? Seems like you actually did well so I won't bother writing a bunch of crap out.

Cheers.

Right I meant two units of 5 scourges. Leaning towards going stock carbines but I still find the dark lances or blasters as a tempting option to get in a little more heavy firepower.

You're not wrong about venoms, in my limited experience I found they were pumping out more firepower than kabal squads simply because they are tougher and can get into position faster. That idea might have to wait though until I have a chance to grab a bunch more venoms.

I will definetly get one more ravager or a razorwing in the near future, it pretty much just comes down to which one. Dark lance ravager is a bit cheaper pts wise so I'm leaning towards that, but on the other hand razorwing models are easier to pick up these days with the ravager out of stock.

Your suggestion on hellions is basically what I was thinking of with them. They seem cool but still only t3, or maybe t4 at best but not great. I think I'll hold off on them for now.

You're right about wyches, but man do I like the models. They will probably be something I'd see myself taking out of the list when I have more stuff to take their place, though the reavers and court of the archon are higher priority for removal.

Good tips for dealing with scions. Good news is about deep strike though is I picked up a nice cheap box of those zombicide crows, so I now have 15 razorwing flocks to play around with adding into the list, and I figure a whole bunch of little 3 man units will be excellent for blocking deep strike. It will be awhile before I face that opponent again, my next match is likely against ad-mech, guard or marines of some variety.

Thanks again for the pointers.