Speed-raid tactics.

I generally try to play about 1500 pts, using tactics of target saturation (4 raiders, a Razorwing and 2 ravagers) and attempting to bring as many dark lances as possible in hopes of either alpha-striking the opponents big guns, or at least making certain I have enough lances left on my turn to deal with priority targets.

General stats for the army are:

• 10 Dark Lances (2 ravagers and 2 units of 3 true born with 2 lances)
  
• 2 raiders of wyches
  
• 1 raider of warriors
  
• Archon and 6 incubi in a raider
  
• Razorwing has disintigrators, flickerfields and monoscythes
  

All raiders have disintigrators, and one of the wych squads has haywire grenades.

I generally move the raiders in semi-close formation, keeping them in support, but not in danger of being beamed or blasted. So far I've found that the army has enough firepower to knock out important tanks after a turn of shooting, using the disinigrators to take the teeth out of units prior to charging. I try to get my archon to independent characters to boost up his soul trap.

Trouble is, this army and tactics have yet to see play against serious competitors, or armies with more than about 4 vehicles, and I'm wondering if it might run into trouble there.

I haven't had any experience using lances as AT this edition, other then a few pot shots from raiders before I came to the conclusion Dissies were better. I used a few blasters at one point but felt they were mostly ineffective.

On the other hand I run nine heat lances and buckets of haywire, and having played two mech lists so far in 6th I have found them to be adequate. Considering the heatlance is a far more potent weapon at close range, three dark lances have a 22.6% chance of making a vehicle explode/wreck against AV12 and above, three heatlances in melta range have a 50.7% chance of making a vehicle explode/wreck (see this thread for more stats). Taking this into account and the fact that my heatlances are normally firing from T2 onwards, I would be inclined to say 10 lances might not be enough against a mechanized list.

Hope that helps.

fair point, but a heat lance requires you to take a specialized unit such as scourges or reavers, which while certainly potent may not synch well with my list. The entire army starts mechanised (bar the trueborn, who can hide with surprising efficiency) and I'm concerned that an infantry/jetbike unit may be too easy to single out? Add in the fact that long range DLs can be firing from turn one.
Certainly still worth considering dusting off my 10 scourges though...

Maugarath D'harq wrote:

fair point, but a heat lance requires you to take a specialized unit such as scourges or reavers, which while certainly potent may not synch well with my list.

I didn't mean it in a:

"You should take heatlances!" way

I was just trying to work out whether you have enough AT to deal with a mechanised list, using the only real comparison and experience I have. The two mechanised lists I played against at 1500 points were:

Mech IG List

Spoiler:

Mech GK List

Spoiler:

Do you feel your current list can deal with that? I felt I only won because my opponents made mistakes. Just food for though.

Ah. My apologies.
I think I'll up the number of dark lances somehow, or maybe swap out the warriors for some form of anti-tank, as I have troubles making back their points. Is Investing in Haywire grenades worthwhile? I understand that the things are brutal, but every turn not attacking infantry means less pain tokens and more dead wyches.
Having thought through 2 groups of 5 scourges would synch very well, as if they deep strike I can get in at the same time as the rest of my army, and still use them as shooty mop-up like the warriors. I'll probably swap them in in place of warriors. Thanks for the advice!

Your list does not have enough AT to take on mech lists.

I'm going to assume that the goal is a balanced take all comers list.

I played this list at a couple of tournaments in 5th and did pretty well with it (dark lances are no better now than they were in 5th and even with the hull point change in 6th you still need a lot to make a dent in a mech list).

Haemonculus: venom blade + liquifyer gun

3 Trueborn + 1 blaster + 2 splinter cannons
Raider + FF + shock prow

3 Trueborn + 1 blaster + 2 splinter cannons
Raider + FF + shock prow

5 Warriors + blaster
Venom + extra splinter cannon

5 Warriors + blaster
Venom + extra splinter cannon

5 Warriors + blaster
Venom + extra splinter cannon

5 Warriors + blaster
Venom + extra splinter cannon

5 Scourges + solarite + power weapon + 2 heat lances (I would switch to haywire blasters in 6th)
5 Scourges + solarite + power weapon + 2 heat lances (I would switch to haywire blasters in 6th)

Ravager + FF
Ravager + FF
Ravager + FF

1500 points.

17 Dark light shots
4 heat lances
110 Splinter shots (not counting solarite pistols)

And I still struggled with full mech...!

You have wyches and with the changes in 6th where mech has hull points they are good at grenading a tank to pieces in one go. Problem is you need to get them in range first and right now I can only see one thing that might distract the enemy from targeting the wyches as the first priority target. A single raider with incubi and archon.

Ask yourself "what would I kill if I played the deadliest IG/GK/necron whatever list from hell vs. my own army".

I would splash your wych carriers first. Archon and incubi second because they will have a much harder time destroying vehicles.

Scourges do mesh well with a DE skimmer/shooty list, I recommend haywire blasters - but you still need something to take the attention away from your wyches.

Beasts: 4 Beast masters + 5 khymerae + 6 razorwing flocks ... proxy this unit, push them into midfield, you have to be super aggressive with beasts - and let them soak up fire.
Scourges, wyches and archon behind the beasts to pounce on anything that might charge them.

I would also arm your razorwing jetfighter with dark lances instead of disintegrators as you don't have any real AA in your list.

Quote :

Is Investing in Haywire grenades worthwhile? I understand that the things are brutal, but every turn not attacking infantry means less pain tokens and more dead wyches.

Haywire grenades are essential. If you don't have them and I have mech, your wyches will be nearly useless. Give them grenades and mech will be in trouble if it gets withing 18" of the wyches. Besides if I have a walker you can be sure it will advance straight towards your archon and incubi and if they get into cc with a walker their in trouble but walkers really don't like haywire grenades...

I agree that Haywire is essential. The cost increase is usually pretty slight (though it's true that it adds up in a list full of wyches) but the options it opens up for the units in question are staggering. Sometimes you just can't get your wyches into combat (especially if the targets are hiding inside the vehicles) or sometimes you just want that Leman Russ blown up. With Haywire that's not only an option, it's easy. More darklight can do the same and I'm not saying swap in more wyches just for the grenades but if you're going to take them anyway, I would consider Haywire to be standard.

For the price of 1 dark lance you get 12.5 haywire grenades. I see that as 12.5 shots for the same price as 1 ... I mean you buy the transports anyway no matter if it's for trueborn, warriors or wyches. Right?

Actually I've been using disintigrators on the transports. I found them insanely useful at pruning down elite units before an assault. So in order to bring in more anti tank and target saturation how would these go?

• Replace 1 raider of wyches for 2 venoms full of wyches with haywire grenades.
  
• bring in 2 squads of scourges with haywire blasters or heat lances. deepstrike.
  

I want to keep disintigrators on the razorwing because they make an excellent anti infantry that can effectively annihilate a squad of my choosing every turn. I don't really have the points for more units, so if I split them up to venom squads maybe taking them down would be more difficult. The question is whether that justifies the loss of anti-infantry assault power?

Also currently I solve the flyer problem by ignoring it completely. Itoyed with taking a void raven before deciding that against a dedicated flyer list such things would be useless, and against a list with 1 or 2 flyers dark lance weight of fire might achieve a better result. I haven't played in a tournament though, so my experience with how flyers live in armies is quite limited.

You should also be paying attention to your number of shooting platforms.

Yeah, you have 10 lances.

But you only have 4 shots in a given round (2 Ravagers and 2 Trueborn squads)

Meaning, in a magical and perfect world you kill 4 vehicles a turn.

If you faced off against one of my tourney DE armies with that; your army would be de-meched by round 2 regardless of if you went first or not (if you went first I suppose I would lose 2-3 vehicles...vaguely, but you would have no real anti-tank left on the board afterwards)

It's not just the type and range of shots, it's how many different targets you can shoot (and also how many targets your enemy has to shoot to stop your anti-mech shooting)

Maugarath D'harq wrote:

I want to keep disintigrators on the razorwing because they make an excellent anti infantry that can effectively annihilate a squad of my choosing every turn.

The one down side with anti-infantry vehicles is they don't benefit from pain tokens, so any unit they kills is an opportunity for a pain token wasted. Something to consider.

Thor665 wrote:

It's not just the type and range of shots, it's how many different targets you can shoot (and also how many targets your enemy has to shoot to stop your anti-mech shooting)

That makes a lot of sense, wise words indeed.

I would say the only exception would be against swarm armies like nids and orks, i've played against nids a few times and sometimes wyches just won't survive the raw numbers unless they are seriously thinned out from splinter fire or templates

The dissies help to pop bubblewrap around things you want your wyches to haywire. Just my two cents.

Bibitybopitybacon wrote:

The dissies help to pop bubblewrap around things you want your wyches to haywire. Just my two cents.

This too.

I'm now considering swapping out the razorwing for a third ravager. This would drop points and get another 3 lances on a fifth platform.

This does leave me with only one unit capable of reliably killing TEQ, but I can solve that problem by simply swapping the dark lances to disintigrators if I'm up against lots of TEQ. I'm making the assumption that trying to take both mech and TEQ in one army is difficult due to points, and in an emergency Dark lances can at least remove a couple of terminators. This gifts me with 40 extra points. If I cut down something (hekatrix) I can split one squad of wyches into 2 in venoms, each with haywire grenades. I'm gonna think this through, and then post a list up when I'm done.

Just to recap:

• 3 Ravagers
  
• 2 Trueborn sniper-squads
  
• 2 sets of 5 wyches in venoms, haywire
  
• 10 wyches, haywire
  
• 2 sets of 5 scourges, heat lances (I like the haywire blaster, but it has less chance of preventing a tank from firing)
  

Totals:
13 Dark lances (5 units)
20 Haywire Grenades (3 units)
4 heat lances (2 units)

Thor665 wrote:

You should also be paying attention to your number of shooting platforms.

Yeah, you have 10 lances.

But you only have 4 shots in a given round (2 Ravagers and 2 Trueborn squads)

Meaning, in a magical and perfect world you kill 4 vehicles a turn.

If you faced off against one of my tourney DE armies with that; your army would be de-meched by round 2 regardless of if you went first or not (if you went first I suppose I would lose 2-3 vehicles...vaguely, but you would have no real anti-tank left on the board afterwards)

It's not just the type and range of shots, it's how many different targets you can shoot (and also how many targets your enemy has to shoot to stop your anti-mech shooting)

Crap. I never even considered that when building my lists. Guess I'll be making an investment in the near future...