Raising an army for real-space

Well, as the title says I am attempting to raise an army for realspace AKA beat the pants off my friends in our gaming circle.
Typically I play either Eldar or Orkz, and while these are fun armies... neither the haughty elves nor down syndrome orkz really fit my persona.

Their armies generally consist of: Blood Angels, Dark Angels, IG, Chaos SM (Khorne/Slaanesh), Orkz, Tau, Grey Knights, and Necrons.

I'm shooting for a utilitarian army, something that can hold it's own in most situations with aforementioned armies, also, this is my first attempt at DE.

HQ: The Duke

Elites: Trueborn x5 w/ blasters & venom
Trueborn x5 w/ blasters & venom

Troops: Wyches x10 w/shardnet, haywire, & raider
Wyches x10 w/shardnet, haywire, & raider

That far i'm certain I want and is pretty "set" , the next part I have a hard time deciding .

Fast: Scourges x5 w/ Haywire
Scourges x5 w/ Haywire

Or

Fast: Reaver x3 w/ heatlance, cluster caltrops
Reaver x3 w/ heatlance, cluster caltrops


Also, whether to put DL's or disi on the raiders is another decision i'm fretting over.

And for my heavy slot, the choice was easy.

Heavy: Ravager x3 w/DL's, NS,FF



As you can no doubt tell, it's a small army.
The second part to this post would be what would you suggest I add?

I would suggest two squads of warriors with Splinter Cannons and either a Shredder or a Blaster, depending on if you are fighting Orks or not. I would not have Agonisers or any type of choppy weapon for the Sybarite as it would just be a waste of points.

If you are against Dark Angels then I would use one of the Trueeborn squads just to have Splinter Weapons. Shardcarbines and Splinter Cannons should cause a good few wounds and tear your power armoured foe to ribbons. They could be deployed with or without the Duke, whether or not you want them to be 3+ poisoned hits. It's your call on that.

If you are facing Deathwing then I would suggest a reliable unit Ihave found to cut them open:
Archon, Shadowfield, Huskblade, the pistol doesn't matter as he is meant for CC, Combat drugs.
4 Incubi should accompany him, one of thm baing a Klaivex for the nice upgrades he canprovide. They should be mounted in a Venom and Deep Striked very close to the Deathwing, preferably in cover so they can charge up and get to hacking.
Those Incubi usually end up being extra wound saves, but they have proved themselves on numerous occassios. You cannot rely on the Archon's shield forever.

I would probably suggest some Hellions for Fast brutal hits on Orks, altough your Scourge idea is very nice.

I hope I was of some help.

Hey man maybe I can offer a little help, there are people far more qualified to help you than me but i know a couple of things which will help you out.

The first thing is you need to drop both trueborn squads down to 4 as you can only take that many blaster in the squad, thus the extra guy is redundant. With their venoms give both a second splinter cannon. That gives you two solid squads to tank hunt with and also allows you to cram a bit of AI into your force with 24 splinter cannon shots.

I assume the duke is going in one of the two trueborn squads?

The wyches could benefit from a hekatrix w/ agoniser as that's where you'll cause the most wounds in CC. My suggestion for at least one of the squads is change it to the following

8 Wyches + Hekatrix - haywires - agoniser - shardnet
- Raider w/ flickerfield

The above will cost you 206pts and if you chuck in a cheap and cheerful haemo you've got a unit which has a good amount of survivability.

I'd keep the DL's on your raiders depending on how mechanised your gaming circle is.




Before anyone can help you add significantly, could you list what you have at the moment and the points you'll be playing at, it'll make suggestions far easier to make knowing the points level

At this point in time I have:
Archon, which I proxy as duke or w/e I need for HQ
20 wyches
10 warriors/trueborn
10 scourge
2 raiders
2 ravagers

and I'll be adding
2 venoms
1 ravager
and whatever else I can get to fit/fill the list.

Typically our games range from 1k to 2k points,
sometimes there are mech armies but my IG buddy has surprised me by fielding over 200 units of foot troops (mostly to agitate our Tau player ) and our other ork player often fields the can screen with some kff's and blobs behind them

First off, I'm a fan of your IG player , secondly if Mech isn't such a big deal then what your army needs is some anti infantry, like i said, give the venoms a second splinter cannon and you're well on the way.
If the lists aren't optimised for ultra competetive play then you could take 9 trueborn with shard carbines and 2 splinter cannons in a raider. Add in the duke and then laugh maniacally when you put out 33 poisoned shots

A haemi for at least one of the wych squads is a good idea and if you can find the money, maybe a small unit of warriors in a venom with a blaster would be a good addition. It gives you another anti tank weapon and another 12 splinter cannon shots.

My suggestion to you, is use the advice on the forum to construct a really hard hitting 1000pts which will form the core of your force and then add what you think will be fun if the regular gamer your playing against hasn't gone for an optimised approach either. This should see you stand a good chance of winning most games and still not be the one person nobody wants to play

Yeah, our IG player is quite the capable opponent, although I do play him most frequently he has so many variants to his IG, dark angel, t-sons armies that it gets a bit overwhelming.
I also have to account for the rest of the guys/gals, with all of the aforementioned armies.
The great thing to being apart of this group is that proxying models is not an issue, with that being said I'm trying to get the models I need first and tool them up via list or magnetic weapons, and approach it that way.
like I said utilitarian is my motif as of now.
But I sincerely and greatly appreciate all of the suggestions, so keep 'em coming if you have them.

I suggest that you make a 1500 PTS list, at 1000 PTS you cant grab everything which makes us so overwhelming in force thus you do not get a taste of the whole army before you decided what you want to really play.

IG is the worst match-up a DE player can have. Dont take that into account when you are just begining to play, im serious ) most IG mech lists will smash your face until you get a feeling for the army and its playstyle AND even then it will be a pain in the ass.

On elite slots most people choose 3x4 trueborn with blasters in venoms (you can drop down to 3 boys per squad if you really are lacking the points but its not recomended).

Incubi be another elite unit, CC killing machines when put with an archon in a venom.

When it comes to heavy support Ravagers are your best option for you right now, 3 stable platforms which hunt tanks and termies relentlessly.

Some other players use 1 voidraven but this vehicle is quite tricky to play due to the lack of cover and crappy AV it normally gets blown out of the sky if on the table in the first turn (Most players leave it in reserve to come in and obliterate a squad, MEQ, blob, etc from the seond turn).

Troops.

If you prefer more CC intensive I suggest running 3-4 squads of wyches with haemonculi's. Wyches are our tarpit units which when needed keep a squad of terminators at bay while slowly chewing at them. When it comes to them assaulting a squad of 10 SPEESSSHH MARRINESSSH (be it GK,BA,vanilla), they still do their job of going in, holding them for a turn or two and then getting out of combat to devour more ladyboys.

Kabalite warriors for me are not what they used to be. I personally find that instead of having two squads of 5 kabalite warriors with a blaster in a venom Ide rather have two squads of wracks in venoms to sit on objectives (they being more resistant with FNP + T4).

HQ

The HQ can decide how you play your army in certain cases. But the HQ's which I personally use are The Baron, Archon and Haemonculi.

The Baron gives you the start which nearly all dark eldar armies need, be it a list that plays with WWP (Webway portal) or a normal gunboat list.

He normally goes with a Blob of Helions or a Beastmaster squad (I personally dont like helions).

The Archon is good in any CC unit, same goes for the Haemonculi.