Whats Better than Ravagers, A way too early theory

Ok so Ravagers have proved to be very point efficient. Consider for 310pts you got 6 D6 shots and that was considered a near mandatory pick. Now I would contend the following is even better:

For 280pts (subject to change when the full codex is visible):
raider with 1 dark lance
5 man kab squad with 1 blaster
5 man trueborn squad with 4 blaster

now you get 6 D6 AND 5-10 splinter shots for 30pts less
plus you add on some new abilities:
-1cp to deepstrike the raider and land it 9-18" from target
-reroll 1's to hit (flayed skull)
-ignore cover, because why not (flayed skull)

or you can go with 215 pts for more splinter fire:
raider with 1 dark lance
5 man kab squad with 1 blaster
5 man kab squad with 1 blaster
-3 D6 shots with 8-16 splinter

This brings up an early theoretical beta strike army list:
11 CP (3CP battle forge, 8CP from 6 patrols)

6 archons (all with agonizers, one with relic, 5 with blaster)
3 raiders with Kabsx5 and Blasterbornx5
3 raiders with Kabsx5 and Kabsx5

for an estimated 1902 pts you bring 32 D6 shots and 39-78 splinter shots, probably 79 splinter as you land your raiders within 12" of target.
BUT the best part of the list is for 6CP you deepstrike all raiders to protect your real fire power. You still have 5CP to use on strategems during the game. All the enemy gets to shoot if they go first is the 6 shadow field archons.

You can also charge your raiders into combat to lock up shooty things. However to shoot your guys the second round they would have to jump out, so you better hope two rounds of shooting will have severally crippled the return fire to the exposed troops.

So.... Thoughts? What have a missed here? My thinking is Beta Strike armies are so much more consistent as you don't have to go 'ahhh I think I just lost the game' after failing to seize the imitative.

I don't know if you took that into account but you only reroll ones on splinter fire since all you dark light is not rapid fire.

Why not Scourges? Sure they don't get the Kabal Trait, but 240 Points (Assuming they go down to 12PPM) gets you two squads.

8 Darklight shots, 6 Splinter. You don't get the durability of a vehicle, but innate deepstrike keeps them off the table (good for beta striking), and easy access to cover and LOS blocking terrain can make them surprisingly durable. Their use only scales up, at a comparable point level to your ravager example you get double the shots, plus splinters. To get to your 32 Lances in your example only requires 960 points, instead of 1902, or nearly a thousand points less.

Just some food for thought!

Good points. Scourge are much more point efficient for dropping the beta hammer and don't need the CP to deepstrike. You would still have to figure out how to get your patrol troop slots filled up. Maybe:

All out BetaStrike (11CP):

6 archons (on field before game)
3 raiders with (kabx5/kabx5) (9 D6 shots/48 splinter) (deepstrike)
3 groups of 10 scourge with a heavy dose of blasters (deepstrike)
plus points to spare for ???

I don't know, probably need to go back to the drawing board, not super excited about watching scourge fail leadership rolls due to the larger squad size. It may be harder (or just make less sense) than I thought to leave nothing on the table but archons turn one.

I don't think we should count out ravagers yet without seeing the full picture of stratagems/pts changes, even with blasters now being equal to dark lances. Even though it's easy for is to deliver blasters in rrange, still plenty or situations where double the range is handy.

And remember you can only deep strike half your units.

I think the double range for ravagers will be invaluable to our army, it forces the enemy big guns to go for them leaving our raiders, bikes and hellions free to race towards them first turn, or if not our ravagers will just take them out.

While DE are meant to be the fast army, some backfield support helps to pick enemies apart. (Plus I assume we will get a few cool stratagems for them, so let's wait and see!)

Yeah I don't think we know enough to be calling for the end of Ravagers. Rumor has it Archon will give re-roll to 1's (though admittedly it's most likely just for inf.) - but if there becomes *any* sort of re-roll, Strategems poohaps, Ravagers will be very deadly (still) with their good range and 10W 5++ shield.

At the very least you have a distraction carnifex that does work. I definitely don't play on taking out the Ravvies yet, but, now that Covens are looking good I we'll see what I need to rip out of my list or not.

Blasterborn are indeed looking scary af. I'm counting on a deepstriking, character sniping Reaper as my hammer, though 2 Blasterborn Venoms to go along with that... Holy crap that would stiiiiing (and then Ravagers in the back just to piss 'em off)

The point here is that we could still deepstrike effectively our while army which seems pretty awesome for anyone that doesn't like getting obliterated the first half of turn one.

With a couple archons we have access to basically unlimited court models, find the cheapest court model and set one of them down on the board for every Raider/Scourge Unit/Ravager/Venom you want to send into the sky.

Maybe in the end it will be too inefficient to pay the court and screaming jet CP taxes, but a guaranteed alpha/beta strike will at least have to be tested.