Tough unit choices in 500 point army roster

I'm having trouble deciding between several different choices for a Dark Eldar 500 point army roster:

Strategy: Drive up Wyches, disembark, kill, embark, repeat.

Total Points: 500
HQ: Succubus
Troops: 8x Wyches (3)
Dedicated Transport: Raider with Shock prow (3)



vs

Strategy: Drive up Wracks, disembark, kill, embark, repeat.

Total Points: 500
HQ: Haemonculus
Troops: 9x Wracks (3)
Dedicated Transport: Raider (3)



vs

Strategy: Drive just close enough for Venoms and/or Kabalite Warriors to shoot, flit out of range of enemy weapons.

Total Points: 500
HQ: Archon
Troops: 5x Kabalite Warriors (4)
Dedicated Transport: Venom with Night shields (4)



vs

Strategy: Focus-fire 9 Dark lances on a single target until the enemy threat is removed.

Total Points: 500
HQ: Haemonculus
Troops: 5x Kabalite Warriors (2)
Heavy Support: Ravager with Night shield and Shock prow (3)



I'm completely new to Dark Eldar, which army roster would you recommend for a new DE player? Which of these would be the most fun to play? Which are competitive, and which are weak? Would you recommend a completely different army roster at 500 points than one of than these lists?

If you haven't noticed, I like spammy lists, especially as a newbie. It's much easier to memorize stats for a more uniform army than one with many different types of units.

Spamming core units is good however spamming things like ravagers at low point levels will be bad for your play in the long run. Here is a quote from a similar topic that I thought might be helpful to you when considering smaller point lists. This my personal take on smaller games and building lists for them.

Mushkilla wrote:

Find out what your fundamentals are. It's like a secret ingredient. Then work out how much of that "ingredient" you want per 500 points (or any other value you want to use).

Building a list around modularisation is quite interesting if you like playing smaller games, as you will find it plays the same at different point levels as your "ingredient" scales up. It's also a good way to test stuff, as you will learn to play your army with a certain ratio of units.

Using my experience with the Buzzards as an example. I was originally using three squads of reavers at 1000 points, the problem with this was when I moved up to 1500 points I would still only have three squads of reavers. Suddenly at 1500 points the army would play very differently then it did at 1000 points as I would be going from playing an army that was 75% reavers to an army that was only 50% reavers. So I changed it so that I had 1 squad of reavers per 500 points (as tlronin mentioned). Now if I play a 500 point game my army is 50% reavers, if I play a 1000 point game my army is 50% reavers, if I play a 1500 point game my army is still 50% reavers. In short my army always feels the same regardless of the points level.

What does this have to do with the original question? Yes, I enjoy small games as much as I enjoy the larger ones. However my advice with smaller games is not to rely on something that doesn't scale, sure three ravagers at 500 points is going to be brutal, but at 1500 points you will still only have three ravagers so it won't work quite so well.

Hope that helps.

That helps, and I think you're right.

Do you have a specific nonspam 500 point army list in mind?

This would be my effort for a 500pt list:

HQ:
Haemonculus - liquifier gun

Troops:
3 x Wracks, venom with 2 x splinter cannons night sheilds
3 x Wracks, venom with 2 x splinter cannons night sheilds

Heavy:

Ravager, night shields 3xDL
Ravager, night shields 3xDC

I would start one unit of wrack out of the venom with the haemonculus on an objective in a ruin if they get shot at put them to ground (they not shooty anyway) this gives you 2 up cover plus 5 up feels no pain, the amount of shots needed to get them off that objective is alot!

Sit all vehicles outside their weapons range and shoot at them as them come at you if you do it right they should not be able to fire alot at you turn one.

If you fin 3 DL are not enough anti armour change out the DC for lances.

I run a similar 750pts list with 3 units of wracks 2 ravagers and a razor wing have had quite alot of success with it.