Adding Troops

Is there a general rule of thumb for how many Troops an army should have at a given points level? I want to build my army in 250pt increments, and cap the army at 1750pts - our dedicated transports are so cheap and so good that a part of me would be happy with 6 Troops plus 1-2 Troops from my Allied Eldar detachment.

Is this a good idea, or should I make more space for (more) Reavers or Elites? I want to have a predominantly shooty army with only a very small handful of dedicated CC units (Wracks).

Troops are your scoring units, meaning they are the only units you have that can hold objectives (which are often vital to winning the game) Elites are your hammers units, which are responsible for killing stuff. There is a balance between the two, as you want to be able to score while still being able to kill. Look at a few of the army lists on the site to see how other people do it. I personally prefer to have a few more troops, but you may prefer to have more killy stuff and fewer troops. Try some stuff out with proxy models and see what suits your playstyle.

I have seen this concept before and I know it kind of comes from the old Space Marine concept of 1 Troop every 500 points or so ideal.

The big difference is that Tac Marines basically kinda suck, and Space Marine Elites/Fast/Heavies are all really quite good on the whole.

Now, with DE, a lot of our other slots *do* do stuff better/different from our Troops. But there are two important points to remember.

1. Our Troops are actually quite good, point for point, versus most of our other stuff.
2. Our units are very fragile - so in an objective game if you only have two or three scoring units guess how hard it is for your opponent to wipe them?

I, personally, don't think there is a solid rule, per se', but tend to cringe at anything less than 4 Troop slots as a base minimum. I honestly tend to field 4 Troops at 1000 and 5-6 by the time I'm hitting 1750, so I'm a big believer in bringing lots of them.

If you want a rough rule of thumb, I'd say maybe...1 Troop every 333 points or so is probably a smart basic working principle for a minimalist. But, unlike Space Marines, I see no need to start thinking of how few Troops you can field, I usually begrudge being unable to field more.

iagree Thor at 1000 points im aiming for 4 troops and by 1500+ i pretty much always have 6+ troops, now the type of troops changes alot on the points level for example my 750 list is a wych cult but anything higher than 1k it is a kabal

Also, it may help to know that it also depends on the number of units are in each of your troop units. 4 MSU Venom Squads is only 20 scoring models where as 3 Warrior Raider Squads provide with 30 for about the same number of points. But otherwise I'd have to agree with whats already been said.

The individual number of models matters less for DE than most armies, in my opinion.

What kills 5 MEQ does not really kill 10.
What kills 5 DE can likely kill 10 just as easily.

I agree with others.  For anything under 1000 points, I'd say 3 are probably good, as that's about all you can afford without seriously losing out on other needed power.  

For 1000 and above, 4 are absolute minimum, with 5 or 6 preferred.  It's not really a scale where you can say "oh, I added 250 points, I need x troop guys."  Instead it's more along the lines of "5 of the 6 book missions are objective based.  How am I going to claim them?"

I'm pretty sure in the last several 1500 point games I played I had 5 troop choices on the board.  Be aware that one mission allows FA to score and another one allows Heavy.  So I tend to prefer FA/Heavy choices over elite ones for the simple reason of potentially getting a couple "free" objective grabbers.

I tend to play larger games 1750 - 2k so I don't think ive ever taken less than 5.

Our troops are fragile but quite useful (haywire wyches) and add more than just objective sitters to our armies potential.

I used to find squads of 10 warriors with SC holding objectives in my deployment zone from area terrain or behind an aegis to be quite resilient. That was before the new tau started dropping cover ignoring large blasts on them however.

Naked 5 man warrior squads coming on from reserve and grabbing my home obj, while wyches and wracks advance on his obj works quite well for me.

Tau, or thunderfire cannons ruin our scoring troops' day.
I'm with the above sentiments, lists above 1250 usually run 5+ troop choices. And I almost always bring at least a couple wracks to babysit.

I tend to play with fewer troops than 4, but that is mainly because I love hammer units, and I want a different playstyle with my DE than my Tau, which you don't get with a lot of warriors.