Mega-dump of info

Right, so, I've got my codex, I've got a few units of Dark Eldar already (archon + 30 kaballites).

And I want to know what I should do with everything I plan to get. I'm wanting to have coven, kabal, and cult.

What weapons should I give further archons? How many archons should I get?

Should I get more kaballites?

How many raiders should I get? Dark lance or Disintegrator cannon?

How many ravagers? Same weapon question.

Scourges? What weapons if so?

Mandrakes? Are they worth it?

One or two haemonculi? More? I plan to get urien to run alongside, and the vexator mask looks great.
What weapons should my haemonculi have?

How many squads of wracks? Five or ten per squad? Liquifier guns or hex rifles? Ossefactors?

How many grotesques? What weapons for them? I plan to kitbash them with crypt flayers and spare talos parts.

How many talos? I've already received recommendations of haywire + chains-flails + scalpels, is that agreed with?

How many succubus? What weapons? I had plans to run a red-grief detachment and give one the red-grief artifact.

How many wych squads? Ten seems to give the most special weapons, is it worth it? What weapons? Taking at least one shard-net and impaler could be very funny.

Reavers look interesting. Are they good? If so, again, what weapons?

Finally, unit-wise, voidravens and razorwings? Are they useful? Same weapon question as always.

Tactics-wise, what kabals or wych cults are best? I'm definitely going PoF, the invul is too good to give up from the looks of it.

Red-grief looked good simply from both the warlord trait and advance+charge.

Kabal-wise, I was wanting to head a black-heart archon in the back-ish to farm CP. But from there I was mixing up between obsidian rose and black-heart detachments.

What artifacts? Vexator mask is defintely a must, but from there I ask. Djin blade looks useful for an archon that is on the front-line.

Any other advice? Any other recommended units?

take a breath, then spend a week looking over the forums. most if not all of your questions have been asked and answered already.

what you are asking here is for someone to explain every facet of the entire army, just so you dont have to spend time reading it yourself.

start reading, you will learn far more that way, then having some one spoon feed you.

Nogrim wrote:

take a breath, then spend a week looking over the forums. most if not all of your questions have been asked and answered already.

what you are asking here is for someone to explain every facet of the entire army, just so you dont have to spend time reading it yourself.

start reading, you will learn far more that way, then having some one spoon feed you.

That is probably a good idea. I will immediately do so.

Okay, I'm going to assume that you're looking for advice for competitive/tournament play. If not, then ignore my advice entirely and just use whichever you like best.  

Sarcron wrote:

Right, so, I've got my codex, I've got a few units of Dark Eldar already (archon + 30 kaballites).

And I want to know what I should do with everything I plan to get. I'm wanting to have coven, kabal, and cult.

What weapons should I give further archons? How many archons should I get? If you're desperate to use your Kabalites then get a 2nd Archon. If not, stick with one. They're absolute garbage and are only ever taken to fill out mandatory HQ slots.

Should I get more kaballites? From a competitive standpoint? Definitely not.

How many raiders should I get? Dark lance or Disintegrator cannon? If you want to use your Kabalites, then 3. If you want to be as competitive as possible, then 0. Always Disintegrators.

How many ravagers? Same weapon question. 3 Ravagers with Disintegrators.

Scourges? What weapons if so? If you get them at all, take Haywire for cheap anti-vehicle. However, they're extremely fragile and currently can't come in until turn 2. There are generally better options.

Mandrakes? Are they worth it? They're okay if you need to fill a mandatory Elite slot (e.g. in a Vanguard detachment), but otherwise there's no particular reason to take them.

One or two haemonculi? More? I plan to get urien to run alongside, and the vexator mask looks great. If you're planning to run Urien, then 1 Haemonculus should be fine. That will give you enough HQs to run a Battalion (First Rule of Dark Eldar: Never, under any circumstances, take more HQs than you need for mandatory slots).

What weapons should my haemonculi have? Electrocorrosive Whip for melee (everything else is garbage), anything other than the Liquifier Gun for ranged (they're all garbage but the Liquifier Gun is also more expensive).

How many squads of wracks? Five or ten per squad? Liquifier guns or hex rifles? Ossefactors? 3 units of 3 is enough to fill out a Battalion. I'd run units of 5 unless you particularly want to use Black Cornucopians. Ossefactor is the only weapon worth taking. Liquifier Gun is worthless with S3 and the Hexrifle is a joke.

How many grotesques? What weapons for them? I plan to kitbash them with crypt flayers and spare talos parts. Lots. If you want to focus on Coven, then you'd ideally want about 20 of them. Don't bother with any weapons outside of the stock ones.

How many talos? I've already received recommendations of haywire + chains-flails + scalpels, is that agreed with? As with Grotesques, as many as you can. Probably 6 at least. Personally I think Chain Flails are an utter waste but taking them doesn't make a huge difference either way, do so what you want here.

How many succubus? What weapons? I had plans to run a red-grief detachment and give one the red-grief artifact. As with all DE HQs, use the minimum number you can get away with.

How many wych squads? Ten seems to give the most special weapons, is it worth it? What weapons? Taking at least one shard-net and impaler could be very funny. Personally, I don't see the point in running Wych squads of more than 5. You can fit 2 of them in a Raider and it gives you an extra Hekatrix and Agoniser. Shardnets and Impailers are the weapons you really want to take. As for how many Wych squads, 0 in a competitive list. Otherwise, it's up to you.

Reavers look interesting. Are they good? If so, again, what weapons? They're not particularly good, I'm afraid. Cult doesn't have any outstanding units. Their sole gimmick is that they can be on the other side of the board from turn 1. However, aside from that, they have weak stats both offensively and defensively. As for weapons, some people like Blasters, some don't. Grav Talons are cheap but don't do much even when they work. Pick what you want but avoid Heat Lances and Cluster Caltrops at all costs.

Finally, unit-wise, voidravens and razorwings? Are they useful? Same weapon question as always. Both solid and it's probably worth using 3 fliers (up to you which). As always, Disintegrators on the Razorwing (not sure about the Voidraven). It might also be worth upgrading the Splinter Rifle on the Razorwing to a Splinter Cannon.

Tactics-wise, what kabals or wych cults are best? I'm definitely going PoF, the invul is too good to give up from the looks of it. Black Heart is the best Kabal. Run a Spearhead with an Archon and 3 Ravagers. In terms of Cults, Red Grief for Reavers and the Succubus, probably Strife for regular Wyches.

Red-grief looked good simply from both the warlord trait and advance+charge. As above, it's good for Succubi and Reavers. Less so for Wyches, who'd probably benefit more from a damage buff.

Kabal-wise, I was wanting to head a black-heart archon in the back-ish to farm CP. But from there I was mixing up between obsidian rose and black-heart detachments. Bear in mind that, outside of Air Wings (which probably want to be Black Heart anyway), each detachment requires another useless Archon to go with it, so it's best not to have multiples if you can possibly avoid it.

What artifacts? Vexator mask is defintely a must, but from there I ask. Djin blade looks useful for an archon that is on the front-line. Writ of the Living Muse lets an Archon sit back and hand out rerolls to 3 Ravagers. Is it fluffy? Not in the slightest. But it's the only thing that will make an Archon come even close to being worth his laughably high cost. The Blood Glaive is useful for making your melee HQ not awful in melee. Otherwise, the Helm of Spite can be useful against psykers, the Djin Blade is fun if you want to pretend that the Archon is worth a damn in melee.

Any other advice? Any other recommended units? Yes, get some Eldar Farseers and Warlocks so that you can actually have worthwhile support units. If you want to use 2 Battalions for CP, then you're almost certainly better off with an Eldar one than with a Kabal or Cult one. Kabal is best run as a Spearhead (1 Archon and 3 Ravagers) or an Air Wing with 3 fliers (both are good, take your pick). Cult are best not run at all, though if forced I'd use an Outrider with 3 units of Reavers.

Thank you very much

That's a boatload of questions, I think you need to take a step back, take a birds eye view and first the consider the really essential questions for any army. First off, how competitive do you want your dark eldar army to be? You want to win tournaments, just play narrative battles, or strike a balance somewhere in between? Then the other key question I'd ask yourself about DE is do you want to focus on any of the three subfactions-kabals, cults or covens, a mix of two of those or just all three. Once you have those questions answered you can go down a more specific path to begin your collection.

Yeah... I certainly realise now that I've asked a fair bit too much in one go. Props to Soulless Samurai for answering anyway.

Otherwise, I kind of want to be going for all three sub-factions, but probably a bit less of wych cult compared to kabal and coven.

Competitevly-wise, I do want to be able to play in tournaments and such well, but then I also do want to just sit back and relax in a casual game. So, probably mainly an army for competitive.

So sounds like you're going for what many of us go for, a reasonably balanced DE army that can compete well but isn't insanely competitive.

In that case, I would recommend starting with the basic units, with the goal to build up towards a 1k list. You can't ever really go wrong with kabalite warriors, they are solid troops and you'll likely want to fill out a kabalite battalion for the cps. So that's two boxes of warriors, enough for 3 units of 5. You'll then need 2 archons to finish off the battalion, and you'll definetly want some transports as dark eldar on foot die far too fast. Whether you want venoms, raiders or a mix of the two is kinda up to you, I'm a fan of both for different reasons. Once you have that solid core you can kinda go whichever direction you want, maybe fill out the kabal more with ravagers, or start a cult/coven detachment.

Sounds good, thanks.

First of all, do you want learn to play as a pro, or just playing something that works alone?

Homo+Urien, 2-2-2 Talos are a great Spearhead. It is competitive, it adds both high T wounds, haywire fire, good melee, fly, it is great. And 4++ of course.

Another good pack is Black Heart Spearhead. Archon, 3xDissy Ravagers.

The third one is a Black Heart AirWing Detatchment. Both Razor and Void are good, choose what you want.
These are solid choices that are super easy to use and they are fine even for dummies in competitive scenario. They works great, no one will blame you with those.


Then...if you wanna learn to play with tricks and skills...
Kabals are great, far for being useless. i will not lie, Kabal itself got a big boost from Doom psychic power, so keep in mind you will like to add some Craftworld splash in a full-Kabal list. The youtuber Almost Pro Gaming won a tournament with something like 10+ Venoms with Kabals and Craftworld psykers. You can kill even IKs wounding them at 6+, with Doom and Jynx on the target. Don't belive on haters, Kabals are competitive. They just don't play as their own..

Wychcult. This is the hardest way, but Wyches and Succubi are amazing for one thing: Shardnet and Impaler. Use them with Talos/Grotesques and the game is set. 5 Wyches units with 1 Shardnet, or a Succubus with Shardnet can both join any melee and tarpit down any enemy infantry if you know how to charge by side (avoiding a lot of hits back), and it works nice if you charged with a veichle before (soaking the overwatch and a lot of strikes from the enemy) or with Talos/Grotesques (for the same pourpose).


These are just for the extreme competitive way.