New Player 1000p List

Hello everyone!
I have been lurking for some time now, and decided to break the ice to my wife that I am buying another army... (joy...)
I LOVED the new Dark Eldar models when they came out but have not really had the chance to play 40k too much as my group is primarily a fantasy and Death Squads group of players. I played 40k from the start of 3rd up to about halfway into 5th. Enough about me for now...

I love skimmers (i built a skimmer necron army just because it looked great, only 2 games of 6th) so I would like to keep anything and everything off the ground if possible (some exceptions im sure can be made). On top of that, the Venoms are some of my favorite models. The raiders and ravagers are extremely appealing as well. They certainly fit the raiding force I feel Dark Eldar should embody. This is a list I came up with that sorta fits my style and my idea of how DE work, a fast moving shooty raiding force. My primary opponents will be Death Korps (nicely built army my brother has invested a great deal of time into), Daemons, and Space Marines (not very often).

HQ
*70* Succubus, Venom Blade
Troops
*125* 5xWarriors, Blaster
Venom 2x SC
*125* 5xWarriors, Blaster
Venom 2x SC
*120* 5xWyches, HWG
Venom 2x SC
*170* 10xWarriors
Raider Spinter Racks Night Shields
*159* 7xWyches HWG Hekatrix w/Venom Blade
Raider
Heavy
*115* Ravager Night Shields
*115* Ravager Disintegrators Night Shields

My VERY ROUGH plan of action is to:
-keep the ravagers outside of threat range (try to at least)
-use the venoms to force my opponent to respond to me rather than the other way around
-use the venoms to eliminate infantry and respond as AT if necessary
-Small group of wyches will be there to claim an objective in cover in midfield or to respond as AT if necessary. Im also not opposed to changing them over to warriors if needed or use them as blasterborn. Just not sure how that effects the venom and its purpose.
- The succubus with the bigger unit of wyches will move up to engage a hopefully depleted foe or help with objective holding
- The warriors in the raider will provide supporting fire to either wych squad or as an objective claimer if necessary.

Overall I would like to keep at least 3 venoms 2 raiders and 2 ravagers in the list. mostly because I like the models and that is important to me. I am open to altering it as I have not finished purchasing the models and I am sure there will be a great deal of expert advice. Were not a very competitive group of people but we like to have fluff or battle influenced grudges against one another's armies. This makes it an extremely fun atmosphere for us. As always, i would love to here criticisms and recommendations from the community. I plan to increase to 1500 pts in the coming months so any recommendations for that would be great. I was thinking Incubi with an archon with some transport, some reavers, a third ravager, and sprinkle some upgrades where necessary.

I apologize for the long winded post and look forward to hearing from you!

-E

Hiya! To begin this reply, i have to say, i am not by any standards a competitive player, but i do like to win games when i play.

Your list sums up alot of the good stuff DE can bring to the tabletop:)

it's has a lot of mobility like DE really should have, and at 1k points i think you'd be hard pressed to fit in something better than this.

Reavers are good as long as they don't go unsupported, Ravagers are awesome, but i think that if you play against lots of Armoured vehicles, the Lance ravager is better. if you play against lots of MEQ with litte in the vehicle section, the Disintegrator cannons are of course better because you having lots of AP2 shots

Incubi are good to hunt MEQ/TEQ units, High I, high WS and pretty many attacks, the best armour save that DE can offer and so on. I like them even though they are a bit pricey, they still do very good in assault.

Can't really go wrong with three ravagers as they are the best heavy unit in the codex for only 105(115)Pts with upgrades.

I personally don't like the ravagers myself, because i don't like the model that much and want to field something i think is cooler looking, so i guess it's a matter of opinion really.

What i can say beforehand about your list is that it will be fast as hell, and will force your opponent to to deal with your threats one by one if you play it well. As you probably know our weakness is our fragility, so just keep that in mind and play to the mission and make it hard for your opponent to play by the mission and this list should work out great

Sorry for the long reply

Archon Thrax.

Thanks for he response! Glad to hear you think it looks decent enough! I think it will be a lot of fun to play and very different to my usual play style which is a lot of the reason I like it. I guarantee I will lose at least a few games learning dark eldar as a whole, but that's the best way to learn I think. I'll hopefully get a game in this weekend, if not within the next few weeks. We have our weekend split into various game systems so it all depends on what everyone else is feeling that day. I'll try to remember to get some pictures and a play by play to do a bat rep that way very one can point out the things I'm doing wrong and the blatant breaking of any rules we forgot! ;-) banks again for your reply!!

No Problem mate, the advice i've given you is what i have learned so far in the games i've played with my DE army. I'm no expert of course, but some things you learn, i've mostly been losing myself with DE but then again i know my list isn't competitive and i don't play with unpainted miniatures.

Looking forward to seeing those pictures and stuff

Right now my list is: http://www.thedarkcity.net/t5700-1500-pts-dark-eldar

I love how the codex have so many units that can work together and how many combinations that is possible if you just play around. (btw, my list seriously lacks Anti-Tank options.)

The list looks decent for a starting army. The only thing I would change is drop the splinter racks on the raider squad and give them a splinter cannon. You will find more use out of that 36" range than you will out of the re-rolls

Thanks everyone for the replies! I think I may actually be able to get up to the store and buy all the models! I expect to lose quite frequently at first until I get the hang of things. My brother is a bit vicious with his death korps... Uncanny ability to keep artillery on target!