Dark footdar horde

I wonder. How feasible is a Dark Footdar horde approach these days? So your options would be:

HQ: Sathonyx, Vect, Haemonculi
Elites: Grotesques
Troops: Wracks
Fast Attack: Jetbikes, Beastpack Squads

Allies:

HQ: Farseer, Eldrad, Karandras
Elites: Striking Scorpions
Troops: Rangers

Skip out on taking any Talos/Chronos or vehicles, so as to render expensive anti-tank weapons and vendettas relatively useless. Take 60 Wracks as troops for the basic setup with an aegis defense line. Beastpacks are a bit faster and can go after vehicles.

Striking Scorpions can Infiltrate. Rangers can objective hold. Farseer/Ulthran can buff your rolls.

If you want to do dark footdar I would go with a double foc, and take 6 Talos 18 t7 wounds would unnerve any opponent. Pair that with a solid 10 man squad of uber grotesques led by urien. A frightful karneval of pain

The two issues I see are this;

1. Wracks are hardly a good foot unit, they're actually painfully poor for being a foot horde. Functionally you're suggesting running foot Orks, but fielding a lot less of them, and taking away all their guns. A Foot Ork army would eat this one for breakfast.

2. Most of the rest of your suggestions are: take Eldar allies.

I think what you're actually doing is designing a Light Footdar list (a semi-reasonable build) and then trying to wedge in the DEldar, which are not really working well for it.

Dark Eldar are painfully bad as a foot army. We're more fragile than most armies, and those armies that are as fragile as our foot units either tend to have much more impressive gunline capabilities, or have cheaper base infantry units...or both.

DEldar do tend to be good at midrange shooting, and being maneuverable - both strategies are unable to be used well by a foot list, which generally makes a Dark Footdar list less than optimal. You can build it, but it will pretty much always be a low tier army.

I don't see it happening. I believe the current edition is unfriendly to inf based lists for the following reasons

1) Too many weapons simply remove infantry units too quick
2) Objective based games demand too much mobility for infantry to prosper
3) Denying yourself vehicles largely denies yourself the most points effective heavy weapon platforms
4) Infantry lists have to have the raw power to deal with units you might otherwise try and out-maneuvere, which is difficult

And I believe our codex is unfriendly to infantry, in that we are very fragile for our points cost and are very short on good infantry based heavy weapons units; without our vehicles, we lack raw power. Wracks might have resilience but talk to an Ork player about running foot combat hordes and you won't want to do it - and they do it far better than Wracks.

Mix it together, and, well...

A friend of mine runs a foot DE/E list and has done pretty well with it, winning or placing highly at a bunch of bigger tournaments. It looks like:

Vect
Baron
3 Trueborn, 2 SCs
3 Trueborn, 2 SCs
3 Trueborn, 2 SCs
20 Warriors, 2 SCs, Sybarite (maybe some gear)
15 Wyches, Haywires, Hekatrix (maybe some gear)
5 Beastmaster, 5 Khymera, 8 Razorwings
1 Beastmaster, 2 Razorwings
1 Beastmaster, 2 Razorwings
Talos
Talos

Eldrad
5 Fire dragons, Exarch, TH, CS
3 GJB
3 GJB

Aegis, Quad-gun

Edit: It's 2000 points

Interesting views gentlemen.

And yes, I've heard of the Vect/Eldrad/Beastpack style foot list.

I'm surprised why you consider a Dark Footdar list to limit your troops to Wracks. Wracks need to be in close combat, so ideally you want them close to the enemy, and a transport is the obvious option (though a WWP can also work). Warriors and Wyches at least have the option of running in unit sizes of 11+, which is some boost for doing without a transport.

60 wracks would cost here in Oz 660 dollars. that's a lot of wracks, that's a lot of coin......

Troops are our biggest issue with a foot list.

One of the better combinations I've brought was Grots, and an allied wraithguard troop squad and farseer. Add in a couple Taloi and my opponent just couldn't figure out what to try and kill first. The problem being that it was at 2k, and it doesn't scale down well at all.

That said, my DE troops were primarily warriors, moving around behind the vanguard units grabbing objectives, or dropping supporting fire where they could.

I do really want to find a spot to fit wracks back into my army, I loved them in 5th, deploy from a WWP, liquifiers, then assault(usually at I5 and re-rolling poison). I'm almost convinced that squads of 10 coming from a WWP could be effective to make a mid range control push, but I haven't found a way to consistently get the WWP deployed far enough up the field. The 3+ all the time reserve rules mean you are more than likely coming in turn 2, so you need that portal down turn 1.

Wracks are the most durable troops we have, setting aside the 10 man squad limit.
Each wrack gets a 0.4444 chance of making either his armor save or his FNP (if the weapon is AP-), and a 0.3333 chance of making his FNP if the weapon is AP5 or better.

Since most shooting weapons are at least AP5, wracks are more durable than kabalite or wyches.

Wracks are slow and contribute very little if they don't have a transport, that's the biggest problem.

How about taking large and/or lots of units of kabalites with splinter weapons (rifles & cannons) to come out of webway portals dropped in mid table on turn 1?

As I see it, our biggest issue with being on foot is being fragile, whereas the WWP's allow us to get up close and into rapid fire range without taking casualties. The main issue I can see with that is how to then claim objectives, you'd probably need to take raiders with other units to then pick up any troops units that can claim objectives late in the game.

Can't see it being the greatest of plans though, as in my opinion Dark Eldar work best when you have that inherent mobility from the start.

I think that numbers are pretty important if you're going around on foot. I used to run two 15 wyche squads in 5th and they did pretty great.

The WWP is a tool we have access to, but it's a right pain in the arse to use effectively now-a-days.

I think that a Unit of 10 Wracks with a Haemy coming in from a portal could wreck many units handily. Three flamers are pretty nasty, especially when the AP is random. Trouble is, Wracks hold objectives best when they can go to ground, so you'll want to detach that haemy asap to avoid having fearless.

the list isn't great, but isn't bad. All I have to say