2000 pts Turn two Alpha Strike army

@HQ [ 3 ]

Archon (170pt.) Plasma grenades; Kabalite armour; Huskblade; Splinter pistol; Shadow field; Combat drugs; Soul-trap; Phantasm grenade launcher;

Duke Sliscus the Serpent (150pt.)

Haemonculus (65pt.)Venom blade; Splinter pistol; Liquefier gun;

@Elites [ 5 ]

4x - Incubi (163pt.)
1x - Venom (75pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield; Night shields;

4x - Incubi (163pt.)
1x - Venom (75pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield; Night shields;

9x - Kabalite Trueborn (198pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn; Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 7x - Kabalite Trueborn; Kabalite armour; Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Raider (70pt.); Disintegrator cannon; Splinter racks;

3x - Kabalite Trueborn (121pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Kabalite armour; Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

3x - Kabalite Trueborn (121pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn (22pt.); Kabalite armour; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Kabalite Trueborn (12pt.); Kabalite armour; Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

@Troops [ 5 ]

3x - Wracks (30pt.) Poisoned weapon (x6);

3x - Wracks (30pt.) Poisoned weapon (x6);

3x - Wracks (30pt.) Poisoned weapon (x6);

3x - Wracks (30pt.) Poisoned weapon (x6);

3x - Wracks (30pt.) Poisoned weapon (x6);

@Heavy support [ 5 ]

Voidraven bomber (155pt.) Void lance (x2); Void mine; Flickerfield;

Voidraven bomber (155pt.) Void lance (x2); Void mine; Flickerfield;

Ravager (105pt.) Dark Lance (x3);

Ravager (105pt.) Dark Lance (x3);

Ravager (105pt.) Dark Lance (x3);

@Fortification [ 1 ]

Aegis Defense Line (70pt.) Comms relay;

Quoth greetings my fellow denizens of the Dark City, am quite frankly new here and would love some C&C for my list.

Tactics: Archon and Haemy run with the Incubi and are actually the only unit which starts on the board apart from the wracks which will be predominantly used to hold the aegis during the first two turns. I gave their vehicles night shields  to aid in the effort of keeping them alive although they should hide behind cover.

Everything else sticks to reserve and deepstrikes on turn two, using the aegis re-roll to make sure almost everything comes in, trying to cause as much mayhem as possible because retaliation would prove deadly.

The Duke runs with the full raider to give the squad some nice poison benefits, he might join a combat later on though.

Apologies for making spelling mistakes, on the phone at the moment and typing can prove to be harsh sometimes.

Im no expert, but i can point out a few things that caught my eye and which i can give some feedback on.

Only one of your incubi units has grenades as far as i can see this will cripple em if charging through cover.

I would get the razerwing instead of the voidraven since its a bit cheaper and generally considered a better flyer.

Your wracks are on foot. In an objective based game they will be very hard pressed to get to any objective and certanly wont be hard to kill with...well anything before they get there.

Ive never been much of a fan of trueborns in raiders with 2x cannons, racks and sliscus. It becomes a fire magnet. Also since the cannons dont benefit from racks and you will most likely be moving around or lose the 5+ Jink since you dont have FF, which means you only get to use their assault profile for a total of 15 shots, 7 of which reroll to hit, costing 198 points. For 141 points you get 9 warriors in the same raider with 9 shots , all of which reroll to hit. The extra points i would spend on your troops, which i certainly would change to kabalites and try to give some of em a venom to ride around in, which would more than make up for the lost splinter shots from ditching the trueborns.

Some people prefer deepstriking while others like to field the entire army on turn 1. Im a fan of the latter, which means i always prefer my movement phase to get me where im going. With a 12" move plus an 18" flatout move i tend to get to where i need to on turn 1 anyway. If i use a deepstrike army i always leave my assault units at home and focus on shooting, since i dont get to assault on the turn i deepstrike, more dakka means more dead enemy units before he gets to retaliate, for a true alpha strike. I would probably swap the incubi for two more units of 3x trueborn w/ 2xcannons in a venom w/ extra cannon and get some larger units of kabalites w/ a blaster in venoms or raiders for my troop choices instead of the wracks. Just remember you can only reserve 50% of the army.

Since you already invested heavily in the archon and perhaps dont need the haemy after all, i would consider bringing out Vect to play. With his 4+ to seize, he brings a power tool for the alpha strike and is a monster in his own, as long as the shadowfield holds up ofc.

The last suggestions would result in a lot of dakka, but perhaps also a quite boring msu list, but as long as you and tour m8's have a fun game who cares eh?

Love your response, but the Wracks are the thing that allows me to field so many units in reserve. They should be going to cover every time they get shot at, giving them a 3+ into fnp to endure the first turn.

Their only purpose aside from freeing up reserve units is holding the aegis, and should the enemy waste fire on them it's good for me. I see your point about the large Trueborn squad, I'll probably change things towards your suggestion.

I see the point of Vect but the idea is deerstalking with 3 venoms, the raider and the ravages rendering the enemy unable to respond before killing off his key units.

I've discussed the flier dilemma with loads of people and most people tend to go for the Razorwing who is better at killing infantry. The Voidraven kills off fliers though which is somewhat essential since I have very little anti-air otherwise.

Caveat; If you don't like a suggestion ignore it.

The wracks are too unimportant to your list such that on the first turn your incubi will be grounded by your opponents shooting. HQs and incubi are too expensive to play the part of a decoy.

Generally with a deep strike list, you have your long range shooters on the the board so they can take out high priority targets and interceptor units and your shorter range shooting and assault elements actually deep strike. Of particular note is the ravagers, due to their longer profile deep striking them is difficult and it is more likely to mishap or go into terrain. Sure its an individually rare event, but with three and over the course of multiple games immobilizing your ravagers on deep striking will happen enough to hurt the armies overall performance.

The key problem with the list the the lack of any actual scoring units that can realistically take an objective. Your best case scenario for wracks is unlikely because the wracks still need to get to objectives if you keep them self pinned odds are that you are not going to get any objectives. With just three, units that would typically never assault can and will assault because three wracks will not hold up in assault. Further, too many armys have some form ignore cover that will sweep the wracks away (smart missile systems and wave serpent shield comes to mind). Since your troops will not last, your basically playing to table your opponent..... it doesn't happen enough.

sephiroth081184 is right on the large truborn squad- its a lot of points that can go up in smoke by a vehicle explode result. For 2 additional points you can make it 20 Man warrior squad with 2 splinter cannons. Put the duke in that and start them on the board behind the aegis line (a tough bunch behind that aegis line; e.g., just over 40 bolter rounds at BS 4 needed to cause a morale check (6 unsaved wounds). It is a ton of shots, (12 at 36", 30 at 24", and 48 at 12"); (whereas for the trueborn which will be moving to give the raider its jink: 8 at 42", 15 at 30", and 22 at 18")*. Its a scoring unit and would count as two units on the board for reserve purposes. Either you keep that objective or they will move something into shooting distance in order to get you off the objective (and in the process they thin their army out making your T2 alpha (beta?) strike more effective).
*trueborn shots calculated at threat bubble ranges.

Splinter cannon trueborn make for some pretty depressing deep strike, because they don't need deep strike to be particularly effective. Whereas blasters on the trueborn are great for deep striking because deep striking mitigates the shorter range.

Some general notes; venoms are great for deeping striking raiders and ravagers not so much. As explained above the longer profile of the raider and ravager has greater risk when deep striking as compared to the smaller venom. Additionally, as the venoms come stock with the flicker field, they are a bit better protected from the dangers from deep striking as they flicker field save can be used to avoid immobilized result (see the FAQ.... should they be republished).

If retooling the list consider 5 man wracks with liquifier guns and 5 man wyche squads with hawire grenades for deep strike. With the Duke, they can disembark so the shorter ranges are not that bad and cover ignoring flamers that ignore meq armor 50% of the time are great at deep striking. With the Hammy in the army its all scoring so none of it can be be disregarded by your opponent.

I prefer the bombers so no problems there. An option to consider is to give both bombers 2 necro-toxin missiles. The Idea here is if you opponent is playing a dense non-mech list the missiles can soften them up. You don't disembark your own units after deep strike (if it is the same turn) to protect them from a bad scatter and a bad scatter won't hurt your deep striking vehicles as the necro-toxin missiles are just poison. (Fighters aren't bad, but their basic missiles can hurt/destroy your deep striking vehicles, switching out the missiles is a waste of points because against most units the fighters default missiles are just as effective against the enemy (without the pinning chance-- albeit the fighters stock missiles could hurt your opponents vehicles but not any more reliably than the ravagers in your list).

This is probably the most useful advice I got from all of the forums I asked for any.

I actually got home and managed to play a game against my friends 'nids yesterday and finally saw what needed to be replaced/redacted.

Incubi squad struck me as pretty useless as you said, the Archon especially struck me as a waste of points.

The Raider squad actually managed to be devastating, more or less killing two blokes of the Swarmlord's retinue and ridding him of 3-4 wounds. Ravagers didn't manage to get too much done, and I see your point about them deepstriking being a tidbit futile.

I'm still a bit undecided about the wracks, he didn't put a glimpse on them but I reckon against a more experienced enemy they won't last to hold an objective. The dilemma is we usually play on a fairly big board and I feel like the backfield troop isn't going to be doing a lot. After the second turn the Wracks usually go out to try and hold objectives if possible.

I just prefer the Trueborn squads over Wracks deepstriking I guess.
Still going to try two squads of Blasterborn in my next game and see how they perform.
Also two sqauds of Wychbombs, although against the 'nids they probably would've performed dismally.

I initially had planned on using necrotoxin/shatterfield rockets but decided they were too expensive on the fragile bombers. Probably going to try them tomorrow against his Eldar to see how they work.

Can't decide what I'm going to do with the Haemy now that the Incubi squads are gone, but I guess having him in the backfield will do.

Anyways, this is the list I have atm:

Dark Eldar (1996/2000pt.)


@HQ [ 2 ]

Duke Sliscus the Serpent (150pt.)

Haemonculus (50pt.)

@Elites [ 5 ]

9x - Kabalite Trueborn (198pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn ;Splinter cannon;
> 7x - Kabalite Trueborn ;Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Raider (70pt.); Disintegrator cannon; Splinter racks;

3x - Kabalite Trueborn (121pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

3x - Kabalite Trueborn (121pt.)
> 2x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Splinter cannon;
> 1x - Kabalite Trueborn ; Splinter rifle;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

4x - Kabalite Trueborn (173pt.)
> 4x - Kabalite Trueborn ; ; Blaster;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

4x - Kabalite Trueborn (173pt.)
> 4x - Kabalite Trueborn ; ; Blaster;
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

@Troops [ 6 ]

5x - Wyches (125pt.) Haywire grenades (x5);
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

5x - Wyches (125pt.) Haywire grenades (x5);
> 1x - Venom (65pt.); Splinter cannon (x2); Flickerfield;

3x - Wracks (30pt.)

3x - Wracks (30pt.)

3x - Wracks (30pt.)

3x - Wracks (30pt.)

@Heavy support [ 4 ]

Voidraven bomber (175pt.) Void lance (x2); Void mine; Flickerfield; Necrotoxin missile (x2);

Voidraven bomber (165pt.) Void lance (x2); Void mine; Flickerfield; Necrotoxin missile;

Ravager (115pt.) Dark Lance (x3); Night shields;

Ravager (115pt.) Dark Lance (x3); Night shields;

@Fortification [ 1 ]

Aegis Defense Line (70pt.) Comms relay;