Dark Eldar 1500pt. Horse and Carriage

Recently I made my primary Dark Eldar purchase and have therefore taken the time to consider what I could possibly buy next. I already had a list ready, but the weak anti-MEQ and TEQ capability kabalites have IMO made me shun them slightly. This is why I've tried developing a new 1500 point list which I think should be able to deal with most threats. I hope to be able to benefit from your expertise! Battle strategy is explained below.

+ Fortification + (100pts)
    Aegis Defense Line, Quad-Gun (100pts)

+ HQ + (120pts)
    2x Haemonculus, 2x Liquifier Gun (120pts)

+ Elites + (393pts)
    Cannonborn - Kabalite Trueborn (131pts)
       * 3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon (56pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)
 
    Cannonborn - Kabalite Trueborn (131pts)
       * 3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon (56pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)

    Cannonborn - Kabalite Trueborn (131pts)
       * 3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon (56pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)

+ Troops + (467pts)
    4x Wracks + Acothyst, Liquifier Gun (135pts)
       * Venom, Splinter Cannon (65pts)

    8x Wyches, Haywire Grenades (166pts)
       * Raider, Dark Lance, Flickerfield

    8x Wyches, Haywire Grenades (166pts)
       * Raider, Dark Lance, Flickerfield

+ Fast Attack + (210pts)
    Beastmasters (198pts)
       * 4x Beastmaster (48pts)
       * Khymerae Pack (60pts)
       * 3x Razorwing Flock (90pts)
 
    Quad-Gun Operator - Beastmaster (12pts)

+ Heavy Support + (210pts)
    Ravager, Dark Lance, 2x Disintergrator (105pts)
    Ravager, Dark Lance, 2x Disintergrator (105pts)
     
Strategy:
The battle strategy is relatively linear. The two wyches, three cannonborn and ravagers will attempt a devastating alpha strike, mostly focusing on anything with long range or fast attack capability. The cannonborn will attempt laying waste to everything in sight since they get about 24 shots each (I believe). Wracks and beastmasters will get in position for a turn two assault.

Based on the opponent's turn, the turn two strategy may be slightly altered. Assuming though that Tzeentch has allowed everything to go just as planned, turn two will see a beastmaster assault with their 30 rending attacks and the wracks will be having fun with any unit that looks tasty enough to be charged, or they would serve as back-up for the wyches if these happen to get in trouble.

If the opponent dares bring any drop pods or air units, the quad-gun beastmaster will show them what his big four cannon metal beasty can do.

I hope this sounds viable, and I'd be glad to take any advice!

Beastmaster on the quad? Really? Mixing weapons on raiders? That is a no-no. Flickerfields on raiders? Not what I would use. Truborn in venoms need blasters. Not splinter Cannons ... you have splinter cannons on your venoms already.

I am also confused by your setup. You do not have much in the way of troops and most of your troops are intended to be locked in combat. There isn't anything wrong with that but you only have three such units at 1500 points. The single Beastmaster is an extremely easy way to give away a Kill Point or First Blood. You also have three Dark Lances, and a bunch of Haywire Grenades, and a Quad-Gun for your anti-tank....which seems light. For a comparison, my typical 1500 point list has 16 Dark Lances/Blasters and 8 HWGs.

The problem is giving advice that won't completely destroy the list's core concepts. At an absolute bare minimum, I think that the Ravagers need their Dark Lances back or you need to take blasters instead of Splinter Cannons with the Trueborn. In addition, you need more troops. Finally, I do not think that the Aegis Defense Line adds much, if anything, to your army. I have a negative view of taking fortifications with Dark Eldar. However, if you absolutely want a fortification, I think the Bastion is a better option because (1) it is tall, (2) blocks line of sight, (3) has other guns, and (4) is comparably price.

Your army is similar to mine when I started, and I got rolled over by armies in transports. Although there will always be arguments over how many Dark Lances or equivalents you need, you certainly need more than you have listed.

2x3 DL Ravagers will help a lot.

I have just dumped my Aegis, after a string of games where I gained nothing from it but the gun; I will be trying out a Bastion instead, on the recommendation of others.

I find haywire Wyches to be very useful for popping vehicles(and not much else...), and 5 in a Venom is just as good as 10 in a Raider if that's all they're for.

I will not second posters above about trueborn manner. Trueborn are useable in all variants. It's a miss statement, that trueborn dont need cannons, and they need blasters. I used such unit, with great success. Immense alphastrike potential, but, its anti infantry only. You need to open transports, and kill long ranged targets. In that regard, you could sacrifice single cannonborn, for blasterborns, which would serve you just as well.

Biggest threat to us are generaly long ranged Mech targets. Autocan dreads, manticores, lemans, predators, wave serpents etc etc. Everything needs solid AT shots to take care of. Thats why your ravagers should be equiped in that role, with dark lances. Otherwise, your opponent will be able to easily dictate pace of battle (wyches will not land hit on 1st turn, and won't get to stuff that is behind troops, like Manticores behind blobs, fireprisms in eldar lists, etc etc.)

Mush was talking about one of the ways, when going with raiders over venoms. That was, to ignore all raider upgrades at all. I totaly agree with that statement, when they are carriers for warriors. On the other hand, I think I could risk a statement, that if they will carry CC unit, like wyches, they will be on the front. With that, and increasing numbers of ignore cover weapons, I find FF reasonable and properly thought out addition. Doesn't change the fact, that carrying wyches in raiders in such manner is risky in the first place.

The things I don't like: Haemonculi. I assume they will go with wyches, for FNP, and possible overwatch bullet? Two things. each homon, expecialy if with Liquifier, costs like 6 wyches extra. Just for their price, you could get extra venom with wyches. You don't need bullet catcher for wyches. They want to hunt vehicles, not realy troops. Especialy, if you have cannonborn in venoms in your list. Going into combat with such wyches, would mean, your cannonborn may not shoot at desired target. Beside, 8 wyches with HWG is overkill for vehicle, and bigger wych units encourage to run them into some units, that can be shot out. That may be a good reason, to go with wyches inside venoms, and warriors inside raiders, but hey, if everybody would do that, it would be pretty boring right?

I also don't like the beastmasters as they are for now. You get 4 beastmasters, and use the beast saturation for 2, and barely from 3rd beastmaster. Beastmasters, as for themselves are the worst possible units there are. Beasts are what make those units shine. You want as much beasts as possible, and the least ammount of beastmasters possible.

Contrary to popular belief, if beasts charge through DT, they strike at Initiative 1. Thats why they need granades, that Baron grants them. This guy not only boosts your beasts greatly, but also grants you +1 roll on going first, which is good to have in every alpha strike list. Hes a bargain HQ for 105 points.

As for quad-gun. Its meh. You'd end up better with VR bomber/razorwing in ravager place. You want your beasts on front, not behind ADL.

Two things that are nice to remember. If you run 5 khymerae, 4 flocks, 3 beastmasters and a baron, setup you can sacrifice beastmasters on front first. Not only they are useless in CC (its better to loose them rather than khymerae/flocks), but in that scenario, they will make your majority T4, which make the unit a bit harder to wound.

2nd, defence line don't grant cover to our skimmers. It's just not tall enough. It hardly even covers anything from our transports

First off, thanks for the plentiful advice, I can very much appreciate it. Alot of the things now mentioned were brought up in a conversation I had yesterday with some people in chat, which served to be enlightening. Doing further research on the web has yielded me loads of useful information, and taking note of that and your advice I have devised a hopefully more useful list. And yes, while I indeed I would love to take Baron Sathonyx, the local game club's tournaments do not allow named characters (for whatever stupid reason that may be). Thus I decided to equip my new 2000 point list with some additional Eldar and even more evil tormenting towards those poor Psykers called Grey Knights (I hope they die in warp fire). Strategy remains somewhat the same, but this is the new revised list which I have a pretty good feeling about:

Fortifications:
Imperial Bastion, Quad-Gun (125pts)

Dark Eldar Primary:

HQ (165pts)
   Haemonculus (165pts)
       * Haemonculus, Liquifier Gun, Shattershard, Venom Blade (80pts)
       * Haemonculus, Liquifier Gun, Crucible of Malediction, Venom Blade (85pts)

Elites (131pts)
   Cannonborn - Kabalite Trueborn (131pts)
       * 3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon (56pts)      
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)
         
Troops (620pts)
   8x Wracks, Liquifier Gun (175pts)
       * Raider, Disintergrator, Flickerfield, Nightshield, Torment Grenade Launcher (85pts)

 8x Wracks, Liquifier Gun (175pts)
       * Raider, Disintergrator, Flickerfield, Nightshield, Torment Grenade Launcher (85pts)

  Wyches, Haywire Grenades (135pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)

Wyches, Haywire Grenades (135pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)
 
Fast Attack (240pts)

   Beastmasters (228pts)
       * 5x Beastmaster (60pts)
       * Khymerae Pack, 4x Khymerae (48pts)
       * 4x Razorwing Flock, 2x Razorwing Each (30pts)
       
Quad-Gun Operator - Beastmasters (12pts)
     
Heavy Support (250pts)
    * Ravager, 3x Dark Lance, Night Shield, Flickerfield (125pts)
     
  * Ravager, 3x Dark Lance, Night Shield, Flickerfield (125pts)

Eldar Allies:

HQ (165pts)
   Farseer, Eldar Jetbike, Ps: Doom, Ps: Eldritch Storm, Ps: Mind War, Runes of Warding (165pts)

Troops (304pts)
   Farseer Bodyguards - Guardian Jetbike Squadron (152pts)
       * 4x Guardian Jetbike, 2x Heavy Weapon (88pts)

   8x Rangers (152pts)

do you realy need rangers? What is their role in your army? Everytime, you insert a unit into your army, think, why you do it. Their price is just aww, you could get a flyer for that cost! Personaly I don't think, rangers can do anything better, than what our codex could do.

Also, farseer powers are illegal, you don't choose, they are randomly rolled. GJB are also illegal, becouse they can take special weap for every 3 models. if you want 2 cannons with them, you need 6 bikes. I think you picked them like they were in 5th ed? Well, they have 6th ed codex, so not realy worth to look back. Especialy, since runes of warding doesn't work as it used to.

Yet again you use beastmasters on bastion. Well, everybody will tell you not to do it. If you will insist on it, you will loose games for obvious reasons. Ppl just want you to avoid that step

Also Raiders have quite unnecessary upgrades in them. Same for homonculi. If you realy want to play it, well, your pick. But if you would calculate all those unnecessary aditions (unneeded extra beastmasters, raider ups, homon weaps) you could save up points for extra unit, like extra ravager/bomber or venom with troops.

Ah, I missed that about the jetbikes.

If you don't want to stray too far away from the core idea of your list, you could try this:

- Down jetbikes to 3 models, skip upgrades

- Put rangers on bastion, rangers can easily setup with the bastion from turn 1.

- Loose Crucible on heamy, maybe even shattershard. I'm not 100%, but I guess you have to choose betweehn shooting shattershard or Lqfier gun.

- Put farseer with beastpack

- Loose torment launchers, if you're not getting Mind War

- With the spare points (I count about 70pts?!), get another eldar jetbike squad? Or get more ranged AT. If you loose nightshields on all your venoms, you could cram in another venom with 3 wracks!

Following your statement about the outdated codex I looked it up and indeed, my battlescribe data wasn't up to date. I've had an interesting conversation in the chat aswell which gave me a new view on the list. I also looked up data about my local gaming club's tournament and it appears to have two "interesting" rules: 1. No named characters, therefore I can't take Sathonyx, but neither will I be facing a Draigowing any time soon. 2. 1700pt. lists, which appears to me as a strange number for a list. Aside from that I'll just find something to put on that bastion! I don't know when, how or what... But it should work out. All this info combined and your great suggestions has yielded the following:

1700/1700 Points precisely:

Dark Eldar Primary:

HQ (155pts)
   Haemonculus (165pts)
       * Haemonculus, Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun, Crucible of Malediction (85pts)
       * Haemonculus, Venom Blade, Liquifier Gun, Shattershard (80pts)

Elites (131pts)
   3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon (131pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)
         
Troops (572pts)
   6x Wracks, Liquifier Gun (135pts)
       * Raider, Torment Grenade Launcher, Disintergrator (65pts)

   6x Wracks, Liquifier Gun (135pts)
       * Raider, Torment Grenade Launcher, Disintergrator (65pts)

   Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Shardnet and Impaler (145pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)

   Wyches, Haywire Grenades, Shardnet and Impaler (145pts)
       * Venom, Nightshield, Splinter Cannon (75pts)

Fast Attack (213pts)
   Beastmasters (213pts)
       * 5x Beastmaster
       * 1x Khymerae Pack, 4 Khymerae Total
       * 4x Razorwing Flock, 7 Razorwings Total

Heavy Support (210pts)
   Ravager, 3x Dark Lance (105pts)

   Ravager, 3x Dark Lance (105pts)  

Fortifications:
   Imperial Bastion, Quad-Gun (125pts)

Eldar Allies:
HQ (115pts)
   Farseer, Jetbike, Singing Spear (120pts)

Troops (51pts)
   3x Guardian Jetbike (51pts)

Heavy Support (125pts)
   Fire Prism (125pts)