Trying out hellions and the duke, 1500 pts

hq

Baron= 105 pts

Troops

10 hellions= 160 pts
x3 10 warriors /w splinter cannons= 100 pts each
raider /w flicker field, splinter racks and aether sails (to burn 5 pts)= 85 pts
x2 raiders /w flicker field and splinter racks= 80 pts each

HS

x2 ravagers /w flickerfields and night shields, 3 dl's= 125 pts each
voidraven bomber /w shatterfield missles and flickerfield= 195 pts

Elites

3 trueborn /w 2 splinter cannons and plasma grenades= 59 pts
3 trueborn /w 2 splinter cannons= 56 pts
x2 venoms /w extra splinter cannons= 65 pts each

Not sure if I should change the bomber to a fighter or another ravager and take upgrades and or more hellions. The plasma grenades on the trueborn and the aethersails on the raider are just filler points. If my group let's me be 2 over, I'll take them away and add night shields to the flyer.

You say the aethersails are to burn five points, but they're not so bad actually - I use them on certain things I want to move up into the enemy deployment as quickly as possible, like Wych Raiders, and they usually work pretty well for me  

In your position I'd be tempted to drop the Voidraven and add another Ravager, of either flavour. With the points left over, bumping the size of the Hellion unit up a bit probably couldn't hurt. Our flyers are nice, but don't seem to have a high enough damage output to make people really scared of them.

Splinterborn certainly seem to have increased in popularity recently, I must give them a try myself! Lord knows I'm sick of having all those shots on a Venom and not doing anything with them - a round 20 would be nice... The only thing I'd worry about there is that taking them sacrifices lance shots elsewhere - maybe dropping the splinter cannons on the warrior squads and getting some cheeky blasters in there might help. It's also useful to have an AP2 assault weapon in the squad for those characters in decent armour leading squads, such as Wolf Guard - because you decide what order wounds are allocated in, you can scythe through the squad they're with using splinter fire before making them eat a darklight shot  

Taking your advice, how does this look?

hq

Baron= 105 pts

Troops

12 hellions= 192 pts
x3 10 warriors /w splinter cannons, blasters= 115 pts each
x3 raiders /w flicker field and splinter racks= 80 pts each

HS

x3 ravagers /w flickerfields and night shields, 3 dl's= 125 pts each


Elites

x2 3 trueborn /w 2 splinter cannons= 56 pts each
x2 venoms /w extra splinter cannons= 65 pts each

It's one point under, but I doubt anyone will care.

Better a point under than over, that's my thinking (rough mental arithmetic led me to think that might be the case). That list looks stronger to me - just a few more Hellions can make quite a difference wit the amount of shots they put out, and blasters are a cheap way to make Raiders slightly more viable as anti-tank. Just be careful how you move your Raiders, ie don't move them the 6" to fire nine re-rolllable non rapid-fire shots at a target that you won't kill or do enough damage to - boost over them to get into a better position. Sometimes it's worth sacrificing a turn of shooting to get a better position and put more fire on your opponent