Dark Eldar

My second 500 point army design is for Dark Eldar. Dark Eldar offers more flexibility in terms of army design.

I came up a few options. My criteria was to avoid investing too many points in any one unit and to maintain some target diversity.

Option One (going for a balanced approach):

HQ: Archon with Agonizer, Shadow Field (or Ghostplate Armor and Clone Field), and drugs (120 pts)

Troop One: Kabalite Warriors x10 with Blaster and Dark Lance (125 pts)

Troop Two: Wyches x7 with Shardnet and Impaler (80 pts)

Transport: Raider with Disintegrator Cannon (60 pts)

Heavy Support: Ravager with 3x Dark Lance and Night Shields (115 pts)

Operations: Load Archon and Wyches in the raider and move them forward to get up close and personal with enemy infantry. Kabalite Warriors and Ravager hang back to offer fire support and deal with any armor.

Option 1.2

An interesting and fun variant might be to replace the Ravager with a unit of Reavers (3-5 Reavers for 66-110 points); replace the Raider's Disintegrator with a Dark Lance. The basic idea with this set-up is have the Reavers continually turbo-boosting and moving flat-out (36") and flying over enemy ground units using Bladevanes (d3 S4 attacks from each Reaver on each flyover of a unit) The Reavers maintain a 3+ cover saves. This would probably only work on a large board. It also seems like the only way to ever get the very cool looking Reavers into an army.

I think I would go for the following set-up: 3 Reavers (66 pts). That way I only need to buy one pack of three reavers, which $$$-wise is very desirable. This leaves 49 points to play with. I think equipping a Reaver with a Blaster Cannon (15 pts) is a good option. This frees up 34 points that could be spent to give the Archon a Blaster (15 points) and the Wyches Haywire Grenades (14 points). Alternatively, skip the Reaver's Blaster Cannon; get two more Wyches (20 pts) and give them and the Archon Haywire Grenades (23 pts). Or again: equip one Reavers with Grav-talon (10 pts; pinning) and one with Heat Lance (12 pts); one extra Wych (10 pts) plus Haywire grenades for Wyches (16 pts). This might be the better, more fun option.

Option Two (min/maxing for heavy support):

HQ: Haemonculus with Liquifer gun (60 points)

Troop One: 5 Kabalite Warriors (45 pts)

Troop Two: 5 Wyches with Hekatrix and Agonizer (80 pts)

Heavy Support: 3 Ravagers with Dark Lances (315 pts)

Operations: Hang back and blast everything that approaches with the Ravagers. Troops are the infantry screen for any deep strikes etc. Join Haemonculus with Wyches to give them the pain token and to make a reasonably tough CC unit. Another version of this approach could replace the 3 ravagers with 2 Razorwing Jetfighters with Night Shields (310 pts) if the models were available.

Option Three (Focusing on close combat but trying to retain a little anti-armor capability):

HQ: Archon with Agonizer, Shadow Field (or Ghostplate Armor and Clone Field), blaster pistol and PGL (140 pts)

Troop One: 5 Wyches with Hekatrix and Agonizer and Haywire Grenades and Raider with Dark Lance (150 pts)

Troop Two: 5 Wyches with Haywire Grenades (60 pts)

Elites: 4 Incubi and Raider with Dark Lance: (148 pts)

Operations: Put the Archon in a team with the Incubi. Move to CC as quickly as possible. This group feels weak against armor and ranged heavy armies. It will all depend on getting into CC fast. Does anybody have a better idea for a CC focused build?

I think some variant of option one is what I would go for. I think one of the Reaver variants, played on a large board, would be great fun. Buzzing enemy troops and drawing their fire while closing in with Wyches and the Archon would be awesome.