the beginnings of my raider fleet

HQ
Pirate lord Kheru'gal (counts as sliscus)
Troops
9x warriors in a raider w/ nightshield
10x warriors /w splinter cannon
9x wytches w/ Hekatrix packing a pgl and venom blade in a raider w/ night shield
Elites
2 squads of 4 man blasterborne
1 squad of 3 trueborne w/ 2 darklances
Fast Attack
3x Reavers w/ champ blaster and caltrops

FIRST POST!

To Mushkilla: I plan on adding many more bikes.

I'm certainly interested in critiques, take into consideration that this is every model I own so far. I'm mostly interested in where I should take my army from here. My bits pile is limited enough that I'm planning on using bike blasters to fill out my blasterborne... Any advice regarding my current list, where to take it from here, conversions, or... anything will be much appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

I would say some Venoms for your blasterborn and wyches would be a good move. Also Ravagers are rarely a bad idea and would fit in with the aesthetic of the fleet.

As for conversions it depends on the look you are going for, there have been discussions on here about making Raiders more pirate-y.

So should I split up the wytches into venoms? Should I take two hekatrixes then or are they just suicide tank hunters at that point?

Well opinions differ but I like squads of 5 wyches or bloodbrides with haywire grenades so you can either fritz a tank or tarpit a unit in close combat. The venom gives a nice bit of support as you can pop out of cover, disembark your wyches and hammer the target with splinter cannons before charging home. I think the hekatrix is only worth it if you have spare points to burn or you have an IC to protect from challenges (I often run with Lelith as an HQ and 4 bloodbrides in a venom just for fun).

Thanks for the advice, do you find 5 wytches to be enough for an effective tarpit?

I'm having difficulty finding the piratey raider stuff, any links? I'm actually writing fluff for my craftworlders and my dark eldar armies for nanowrimo so inspiration is greatly appreciated.

Ok, bumping (sorry) in hopes that at least one more person will put out an opinion on what is required for a raiding party. Once again I am painting for mostly fluffy reasons but within that I would like to have an actual functional army. I'll post pictures of my army if I get some kind of interest.

I agree with skyboard surfer, I find smaller groups of wyches to be more effective. Because for some reason, even a 10 man... woman... whatever squad tends to just tarpit whatever it's fighting. They don't have any punch, so to actually kill units in assault you're relying on failed armor saves. Yes a 5 wych squad is a good tarpit unit because of the 4+ invul. And they get haywire grenades at 2 points a model, which are hands down our most consistent AT. 3+ to hit, 2+ to glance. Which should strip 2-3 hullpoints off anything.

3 trueborn with darklances aren't bad... per se. As a sort of sniper unit. But they are very immobile. Lances in my opinion are better left on platforms, so they can move and shoot. I get a lot more mileage out of 3 trueborn with two splintercannons.

I like the list so far. Where to go? You could probably use another pack of reavers. Also, I don't see any venoms. I'm not going to say you need them... but, they won't disappoint you. They're one of the best units in the codex, and they're cheap to field, and they'll get your small units where they need to go. Also a ravager isn't a bad option either.

A great rule of thumb for DE is redundancy in unit purpose. What this means is that every unit is able to threaten every type of unit on the board. We accomplish this through putting anti troop units in transports with antitank guns and antitank units in transports with anti infantry guns.
That's the main reason that people put haywire wyches in venoms, so the unit can threaten both armor and infantry.
Follow that rule with all of your troops and elite and it's hard to go wrong.

As for piracy... some sweet hats from WHF Empire? Flags with skulls and crossbones? Deck out the sails on raiders perhaps? Perhaps convert your ravengers into ships with broadside guns?

Bibitybopitybacon (great name by the way!), I'd disagree: loading units up for both roles is expensive and wasteful; half your equipment is unused at any point.
Redundancy is better served in more units, so multiple anti-tank, multiple anti-infantry, rather than multi-task units.

Personally I find Wyches need to have 7-10 girls before they can tarpit with confidence; 5 do the job, but I always lose a few to transport explosions, overwatch, and PMT before they reach their target!

I swear by Caltrops, as I have my Reavers zooming all the time, for fly-bys, hide-and-seek, and late objective contesting/Linebreaker. As such, there is no point in putting better guns on them, especially short range ones, or even a Champ. I plan to try 9-bike gangs with guns and champ at some point, but small Caltrop teams are better stripped down.

If you like pirates, check out Hasslefree minis, I have a few of their models.
http://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=andreah-%28resin%29~hfsf112b&category=miniatures~%2Aresin-figures%2A

Just wanted to thank you guys for commenting real quick. I am on my phone currently but will edit with a more thought out response when I am at my computer.

Still on phone so short post but @ commandersasha, are you suggesting that a splinter boat raider should be equipped with a disintegrator? I understand the idea of using points efficiently by making single purpose squads but isn't it pretty common/effective to use a raider w/ a dark lance to deploy your kabalites to an objective the have it act as a mini ravager (albeit with a smaller threat bubble and fewer guns) until late game?

Sorry for the long wait all, been busy with nanowrimo and life in general.

@Explitive Deleted:  I'm probably going to trade out my lanceborne for splinterborne for a few reasons. One being that I do plan on adding a ravager or two and the other being that my current opponent is a tau player who doesn't field any mech at all since he doesn't actually own any... yet. I plan on adding around 4 venoms (2 for wytches and 2 for blasterborn) but currently don't have any. My wytches will probably roll as a 10 man in a raider for now then be broken into two venoms. Is there ever really a reason to have a dark lance on trueborne?

@ Bibitybopitybacon: I cant really see a reason to put a dissie cannon on raiders. Someone should verbally chastise me for my arrogance if I am mistaken but it would seem much more effective to have another dark lance on the board, especially with raiders generally being full of anti infantry dudes (or dudettes) anyways and venoms being seemingly all around better in an anti infantry role.

So with the limitations of having only two raiders to field and one of them being Sliscus' drive-by ride, is the wytch squad I have (9x wytches w/ Hekatrix packing a pgl and venom blade in a raider w/ night shield) good or am I packing to many points into upgrades and models there? I cannot imagine having footslogging wytches is ever really a tenable strategy.

Also I am going on a painting frenzy over the next two days so I will start posting pics.

Kheru'gal wrote:

Sorry for the long wait all, been busy with nanowrimo and life in general.

@Explitive Deleted:  I'm probably going to trade out my lanceborne for splinterborne for a few reasons. One being that I do plan on adding a ravager or two and the other being that my current opponent is a tau player who doesn't field any mech at all since he doesn't actually own any... yet. I plan on adding around 4 venoms (2 for wytches and 2 for blasterborn) but currently don't have any. My wytches will probably roll as a 10 man in a raider for now then be broken into two venoms. Is there ever really a reason to have a dark lance on trueborne?

@ Bibitybopitybacon: I cant really see a reason to put a dissie cannon on raiders. Someone should verbally chastise me for my arrogance if I am mistaken but it would seem much more effective to have another dark lance on the board, especially with raiders generally being full of anti infantry dudes (or dudettes) anyways and venoms being seemingly all around better in an anti infantry role.

So with the limitations of having only two raiders to field and one of them being Sliscus' drive-by ride, is the wytch squad I have (9x wytches w/ Hekatrix packing a pgl and venom blade in a raider w/ night shield) good or am I packing to many points into upgrades and models there? I cannot imagine having footslogging wytches is ever really a tenable strategy.

Also I am going on a painting frenzy over the next two days so I will start posting pics.

Oh I agree with you. Stick with the dark lance because the Wych squad is a larger squad meaning that they are still a viable threat to infantry. you should keep the darklance because the primary roles of the transport and the squad inside are still reversed.

@ commandersasha You don't have to do it, but it's the conventional wisdom and it helps your army stay a viable threat to everything in his army even as you take casualties, and you WILL take casualties. But heck, if you've found success in another method more power to you man.

Kheru'gal wrote:

Sorry for the long wait all, been busy with nanowrimo and life in general.

@Explitive Deleted:  I'm probably going to trade out my lanceborne for splinterborne for a few reasons. One being that I do plan on adding a ravager or two and the other being that my current opponent is a tau player who doesn't field any mech at all since he doesn't actually own any... yet. I plan on adding around 4 venoms (2 for wytches and 2 for blasterborn) but currently don't have any. My wytches will probably roll as a 10 man in a raider for now then be broken into two venoms. Is there ever really a reason to have a dark lance on trueborne?

@ Bibitybopitybacon: I cant really see a reason to put a dissie cannon on raiders. Someone should verbally chastise me for my arrogance if I am mistaken but it would seem much more effective to have another dark lance on the board, especially with raiders generally being full of anti infantry dudes (or dudettes) anyways and venoms being seemingly all around better in an anti infantry role.

So with the limitations of having only two raiders to field and one of them being Sliscus' drive-by ride, is the wytch squad I have (9x wytches w/ Hekatrix packing a pgl and venom blade in a raider w/ night shield) good or am I packing to many points into upgrades and models there? I cannot imagine having footslogging wytches is ever really a tenable strategy.

Also I am going on a painting frenzy over the next two days so I will start posting pics.

Lanceborne do have a role, albeit not very dark eldar...y. If you feel you don't have enough lances and you can't field anymore ravagers with lances there you go. They're the second most cost effective way to field more dark lances. They're just a very stationary unit. You hold them up in a building and "snipe". You can put them behind an aegis defense line and have the non lance wielding dude man the quad gun. But no matter what, they're elves that generally stand in one place. They also don't look as threatening as a ravager. But it's always hard to justify using an elite slot for that. Not when you can field four blasters or 2 splinter cannons.

I take lances and dissies. They have different roles. Lances are almost strictly anti-heavy tanks. When you blow up a land raider in one shot you'll make you're opponent cry. But I also have haywire grenades and haywire blasters, and normal blasters. Splinter cannons? i have like... 13? I don't know, and they destroy infantry, but heavy infantry is always going to cause a problem. Sure I've wiped out a terminator squad with four splinter cannons because my opponent rolled poorly. But I've also wasted 30+ shots on a squad of terminators because he only has a 16% chance to fail a roll. Dissies can take out the guess work. Watch space marine players try to tell you a tree gives them a 4+ cover save because they don't want to lose their 230 point squad of terminators. And they can take out light vehicles.

After considering input from this thread and several others I have changed up my list. Here is the new and improved (I hope) list for discussion:

Dark Eldar 1K (999pts)

HQ (240pts)

Duke Sliscus the Serpent (150pts)

Succubus (90pts)
Haywire Grenades, Agoniser, Splinter Pistol

Elites (272pts)

Kabalite Trueborn (108pts)
 4x Trueborn, 4x Blaster

Kabalite Trueborn (108pts)
 4x Trueborn, 4x Blaster

Kabalite Trueborn
 3x Trueborn, 2x Splinter Cannon, Splinter Rifle

Troops (381pts)

Kabalite Warriors (151pts)
9x Kabalite Warrior, 9x Splinter Rifle
Raider
Dark Lance, Nightshield (Sliscus here)

Kabalite Warriors (100pts)
9x Kabalite Warrior, 9x Splinter Rifle, 1x Splinter Cannon

Wyches (150pts)
5x Wyches, hekatrix, PGL, 5x Haywire grenades
Raider (Succubus goes here, and possibly dissie cannon thanks to Explitive Deleted's input)
Dark Lance, Nightshield

Fast Attack (86pts)

Reaver Jetbikes
 Cluster catrops, 3x Jetbikes

Edit: Removed some sneaky upgrade costs that were there, also just realized this loses the pgl on my wytches..... worth it?

Edit Edit: pulled the blaster from my bikes to upgrade 1 wytch to a trix w/ a PGL. Nailed it.

I saw this earlier in the thread and wanted to share my oppinion.

I dont think a unit of 5 wyches is a tarpit at all. I would not expect them to survive past the first round of cc with pretty much anyone of note. That 4++ is no real help.