Dark eldar starter list and continuation

I recently picked up DE as a second army after collecting about 3.5k CSM since i wanted to paint something without power armor, and play something that is different from my Emperors Children. DE feels like the perfect choice since they have a similar concept with all the rock n roll stuff.
I have only played like 10-15 games and still want to play more CSM, but since it will take some time to get the DE painted, i thought i'd start now.

So at the moment i have

Archon
Haemonoculus
10 DE warriors, 1 Splinter Cannon.
10 DE kabalite warriors being built.

My thought was to get 5 Incubi, 1-2 Raiders and/or 1-2 Venom to get some 500-700 point games running.
Does this sound like a good start?

My thought was something like this:
Archon with venom blade, Shadow Field, Combat Drugs and Ghost Plate, PGL.
Haemonoculus with Hexrifle OR Venom Blade and Liquifire gun.

3-4 Incubi with a Venom.
5 Trueborn with 2 Dark Lances.

5 Warriors with a Venom.
10 Warriors with a Splinter cannon and with a Raider.

This gets me up to about 750 points with a 5 man unit that can hold backfield objectives, a 10 man unit to go up midfield to get any objectives there. I have 1 unit that can help the raider handle armor and the Incubi to and contest the opponents objectives.
My thought was to either let the Haemonoculus go with the Incubi and the Archon to give them FnP and make them a bit harder to get off the board, or keep him with the Trueborn, giving them a bit more staying power and sniping characters.

Any thoughts?

Welcome and here is to you for picking up DE. DE are a ton of fun, but require alot of attention. When things work, well they really work, but the wheels can fall off the buss pretty fast. Here is what works in our dex (Dont forget you can ally with CSM):

Venoms en mass, for 120 points youcan have 12 poison shots with both FF and NS. Toss in another 15 for a blaster on the warrior squad and its a pretty solid bet when you have 4-5 of them.

Trueborn. Stapple unit in most lists. Pop three in a venom for 4 Splinter canons. Three of these units will cost you about 450 points and it puts out an impressive number of wounds per turn. You can also get some blaster born (true born can have 4 blasters) and its pretty great to pop a transport, and then spray them with DE poison goo from the venom.

Beastpack (with Barron and a Farseer or two) Incredibly fast and with Hit and Run off the Barron. The Beastpack is winning alot of tourneys but is pretty high on the skill level to use correctly.

Ravengers.....get three. These things are pure win.

As much as Incubi look great on paper, they are very hard to field. Our transports are open topped and 10/10/10. The only way I have gotten them to work is with Vect in his Dias. But then you are commiting 620 or so points on a single unit....a unit that wrecks face.

Oh and reavers, I have done pretty good with these guys lately. But you have to use them right (theme of the DE army), never stop turboing, and NEVER assault until you need to contest. Blade vane away with them. The key is that with 6th ed wound allocation people tend to put the more valuable units in the back and you start wounds from where the reavers land, so you can potentially snipe those models with clever placement.

All in all you have some great components there. Presently what is working are warriors/trueborn and ravengers with a very fast CC unit. ALso eldar BB is not to be ignored.

Thank you for the great reply.
My plan was acctually to try to combine the DE with my CSM to be able to better handle MCs. But my first goal is to have a legal and fun DE army that so i can try out the feel before i try to mix it with my CSM.

I have read that Incubi are hard to get to work, but i really like the models. Maybe i will go for Wracks/Grotesques or Wyches/Bloodbrides in a raider instead of the Incubi then and see how that goes.
Only problem with that plan is that to get 3-6 Grotesques or Wyches (i was planning to go with Sisters of Slaughter/Witch elf "count-as") i would have to sell my firstborn, and that will require some sweet talking and at least 9 months.

As for heavy support i am going to get ravagers, but me and the person i play with kind of have this "honor code" when it comes to fielding too much heavy support at low point levels. One Ravager and a Pain/parasite engine will probably be a thing pretty soon though.

The issue isnt the incubi, they have a decent save, its the transports get shot out from under them in a heartbeat. Your best bet is to focus on a shooting DE core and then build out into a CC machine. It really sucks because they are great models. If you are hell bent on a CC army, go Heamy and wracks, you will loose a few on the way in but they can really put the hurt on.

Hell bent is a bit much maybe, hah.
How should i build my Archon then? Because he really seems like he wants to be in melee, and i guess he wants support for getting there. My thought was that the Incubi can provide some sort of meaty shield for him. Maybe call him Sliscus and be done with it?

Good to hear that Wracks and Haemonoculus kinda works though, those models are awesome.

The beasts are an interesting option too though, but they suffer from the same problem as the Grotesques, they cost a lot if i want say 5 Khymeras, 3 Beastmasters and a Razorwing flock or something like that. I guess this would require me to take the Baron though

Wracks and Haemonculi are awesome, All I play are footslogging covens and win over half my games.

Ya, if you commit to a coven, they rock house. You are starting out with FNP and will have fearless on several units.

The best way to think about CC in this edition in general and DE in paticular is that those units that seem like dedicated CC units are best used in late game objective shenanagains. Take the archon for example. Lets say there are seven firewarriors sitting on that 3 point scouring objective. You set up a charge for turn five. The archon has a very good shot at doing 3-4 wounds and cause those bastards to flee and get run down. A crafty fellow can have him in a unit of trueborn or what have you and multi charge that riptide as well....causing it to run and get cut down.

If you charge full bore and have only one or two CC units, you are going to have some wasted points. Back to the beast pack. They are beasts (move thru cover and 12 inches) and for about 160-180 points can have a very solid unit. Check out the footprint of 7 dogs, 3 masters and 2 flocks. They are multicharging champs with a nasty threat range. Most people do not exspect how fast they can move and how soon they can cause problems. With fleet you have an average charge distance of 9 inches; thats 21 inches in a single round that isnt getting slowed down by cover.

The key thing to CC in 6th ed is opportunity; both creating and exploiting it. What I do is basically shoot a ton of stuff the first few rounds while I am setting up for charges. As too the Archon, take either the Duke or Vect. In either case pop them in with some trueborn. Some people tailor make archons but our named guys have a lot of bang for their buck. Vect stealing on a 4 up is huge. The duke making splinterborn wound on 3+ is huge. Some people balk at Vect's price tag, but he can seriously preform. Anything with a 3+ armor save dies....anything. He can and will dump wraithknights in a turn. Whole squads of marines fall to his badassery in a single turn. The duke is no slouch either and comes up in points very close to what a nilla archon coasts with a similar gear profile. Those few points become meaningless with you figure in his force multiplier rules. Deep Striking blasterborn in a venom is pricless.

Take a look at those two guys.

Vect seems a bit expensive for the point level I am aiming for at the moment, he will probably be a thing when i reach higher points though. Sliscus is something i will look into asap though, he feels like a great guy, someone i wish i met in High School. Anyhow, does he provide combat drugs for his unit or are they only for him?

I looked around at GWs website and found that i can get Chaos War Hounds for like 1/5th of the price of Khymeras, so maybe i can go with a count as from fantasy with those too.

So basicly i could just use the list posted above that is about 750 points and swap the Incubi for 2 Beastmasters and 10 Khymeras or 3 Wracks with an Acothyst in a Venom.
For the first choice i guess i want a Baron model, so i can grant Stealth to the Beasties. As for the Wracks: Is it a good idea to run an Acothyst with a Liquifier or is that too much points for the fun of rolling 6s against Termies and 1s against Guardsmen?

The more I look at the Incubi, the more hell bent i become to try and run a Drazhar/Incubi list, but i guess that is something that i will try out later when i have a working Core.

I would avoid Drazh, but working in an Incubi boat to a larger army is hardly impossible, especially if you're not planning to attend major tournies, you can easily make them work on a local level.

Nice. Drazh seems like such a powerhouse if you get him to melee, maybe something i will look in to then.

Honestly, this DE army will probably be facing Guard, SoB and maybe my own CSM from time to time, at least until it reaches 1500-2k, i will run QA on it for some time before bringing it down to the club and revealing that something sinister is moving in the web way, hah. (At the moment i am turning our league in to a story campaign, hee hee)

Hannibal.Lictor wrote:

Beastpack (with Barron and a Farseer or two) Incredibly fast and with Hit and Run off the Barron. The Beastpack is winning alot of tourneys but is pretty high on the skill level to use correctly.

There is a point, I wanted to know for a long time now. Why a Farseer? Why not go with Spiritseer and Wraithblades?
In my point of view, that would be an awesome combo. Longrange Splinter- and Lancefire and Close Combat
with S6 AP3 and T6. I think, they even can get Serpents (sorry, Codex not here...).

I can answer the Eldar question. If I run blades (you want the axes) then you need to run a shadow council from the iyanden suplement. It gets exspensive, but that unit wrecks face in a way the that is not exspected. When I run it, its with Eldrad (he gets fortune almost every game), 4 spiritseers and 6-8 blades with axes. You have to dump points into a CC unit or not do it at all. Dawn of War deployments are harsh though. If one where to go the route of Wraiths, you go a seer with VoT from Iyanden and 5 d-scythes. Battlefocus+Voice of Twighlight+Disembarking+S4/AP2 flamers=lots of models removed from the board.

But back to the main question, why a farseer. DE, and I am talking most comp lists, are generally shootie. Without haveing to roll, the Farseer can grant Guide and prescience. thats a ton of twin linking, and thats why. Also alot of people are trying to get fortune. With fortune any 2++ becomes nigh on invincible, and that lets your CC unit like a Beastpack or incubi get into someones face. If you where to run a CC list I would take eldrad, and here is why: he has four powers and you roll and keep whatever until you roll a five. With keeping powers you have a dang good chance at fortune, and Easy E has an AP3 force weapon.

If you really want a CC beast then get lilith. My god she is hell in CC. Charge her into a termie unit and watch it leave the table before they can say, "Oh Sh...."

Well, I thought of a different way. Use a Spiritseer, stick him to a council of 4. Use a Falcon to transport them.
Use Wraithblades with 2 swords. I'm not a fan of axes, because of I1. T6 should help them, to survive without the 5++.
AP3 should be more than sufficient for most foes. In addition, you get 1 extra attack. With 2 Serpents for the blades,
this could be a most devestating CC squad. Also, it should take away attention from my Inccubi.

I'm not saying, that it is competitive, but it really sounds nice to me. Also, I really, really want to try this at least once.

edit: I don't like wyches, so Lelith is no option for me, regardless of her hellish stats.

If you have a few units of blades, get one with axes. That day where you are looking at a 10 man paladin squad you will rejoice. In my exo with the wraithblades, the lack of assault vehicles is a huge problem. That round you get out, a smart fellow will gun you down wilst you stand there doing the Harlem Shuffle. If Eldar had assault ramps....oh dear god, I would run my three squads of them without remorse.

Make an inchibi dude and just use lilith's stats on him.

I just reviewed what is in the Warrior kit and realized that i have to change my plans for what to buy next. Since there are only 1 dark lance and 1 Splinter cannon in each set and i want 2 of each for 2 trueborn squads, I will have to buy another Kabalite Box. I thought of the following list (That is within my budget for my next order (about €130 in GWs webstore)):

Sliscus or Archon.
Haemonoculus with Hexrifle
3 Trueborn with 2 Dark Lances
3 Trueborn with 2 Splinter Cannons
5-10 Warriors, with Raider (Night Shields, Splinter Racks)
10 Warriors, 1 Splinter Cannon, Raider as above.

Now after buying 2 Raiders and another pack of warriors i will have room for one box in the price range of a venom/raider, with the above list i have 80-160 points to spare for that box. Incubi seems like they need some dedication to work, ie, i need a bunch of them and a stable core before i start experimenting. I could get Wracks, but they would need a transport, which i cannot afford if i am to get transports for the Warriors, so my thoughts went to Scourges or Hellions, both fit well withing my budget and both feels like they might work well. Beasts unfortunately seems to be something that has to be collected slowly, has to be one of the most expensive squads to get in the game

Scourges are gorgeous models and not horrendous game-wise, but an absolute pain in the posterior to transport. They also give you a decent number of special weapons. What I would be inclined to do is grab a venom - that way you can run 3 trueborn with 2 lances on foot (stick the haemy in here), 3 with 2 cannons and your archon/sliscus in a venom, 10 warriors in a raider, 10 warriors in a raider. Fairly well rounded list, and I'd try and get some blasters into the warrior squad as with only 4 anti-armour weapons (trueborn lances/raider lances) you're in very real danger of folding to a rhino if it goes downhill.

Why are they a pain to transport? Are the wings prone to falling off?
I will get that third box of Warriors soon so that i can have 20 warriors with Splinter Rifles, 2 with Splinter Cannons, 2 With Dark Lances and 4 with Blasters, just for a bit of choice, and the ability to play them as trueborn with special weps. After that i will probably get 2 Raiders and a Venom as you guys have suggested. Maybe even something more to bust tanks (Talos or Scourges).

Bingo . Wings and everything else. Normal Dark Eldar are slender but fairly compact, with the scourges the models are all dynamically posed AND have the wings, makes them a lot more likely to break.

I might have gone over budget and bought 10 Hellions to make Sathonyx with his gang to complement my army, so at 500 points, this is what i have:

Sathonyx.
2x10 Kabalite Warriors with Dark Lances
Hellions with Helliarch and stunclaw.

Of course, i will be getting the double raider + Venom and probably some heavy support as soon as possible for a 750-1k variant.

Panic_Puppet wrote:

Bingo . Wings and everything else. Normal Dark Eldar are slender but fairly compact, with the scourges the models are all dynamically posed AND have the wings, makes them a lot more likely to break.

I stick them to the cover of a plastic-box with plasticine. Put the box upside down over the minis
and they are ready to get transported.