My 1750 list vs. the metagame

So I'm pretty satisfied with this list I'm building.  The theme of the army will be a mix between the Archon's Kabal and the Duke's horny drugged-up wyches.  That in itself is motive to go this army.

1746

HQ:

Archon (SF, Husk Blade, Drugs, Soul Trap, Haywire) = 150

Duke Sliscus the Serpent = 150

TROOP:

9x Warriors (Raider NS/AS/SR, Blaster) = 181

9x Wyches (Raider NS/AS, Hekatrix/Agnoizer, Shardnet) = 205

10x Wyches (Raider NS/AS, Hekatrix/Agnoizer, Shardnet) = 215

10x Wyches (Raider NS/AS, Hekatrix/Agnoizer, Shardnet) = 215

ELITE:

10x Trueborn (Raider NS/AS, 4x Blaster) = 255

HEAVY:

Ravager (FF, NS) = 125

Ravager (FF, NS) = 125

Ravager (FF, NS) = 125

Like I said before, I find the Duke to be one of the best buys in the book.  To recap, the guy's 150 points and comes with a Shadow Field and Blast Pistol.  In addition to this, he gives the entire army Contraband that allows you to roll 2 dice for your combat drugs and pick one.  He also provides the entire army with the option to Deep Strike your Raiders, Venoms and Ravagers.  Sure, you might not want to do this, but the option being there is always a good thing.  Even though he's not as beastly in combat as the Archon, he can still wound things on 2+ and on 5 and 6s, he ignores armor saves.  Besides, he'll be riding shotgun in the Warrior squad with Splinter Racks.  This allows them to re-roll their poisoned shots and wound on 3s.  MCs beware.


I built my Archon to be a combat beast.  The Husk Blade and Drug Dispenser gives me pretty good options to what I want him with.  Best case scenario he gets a 5 on the chart, which allows him to re-roll wounds.  Otherwise, the +1S is something nice to have since with Soul Trap, killing an IC or MC will immediately bump me up to S8 instead of S6.  He'll be traveling with his 9-woman escort of Wyches and will want to get in combat ASAP.

The rest of the army is basically Wyches, Trueborn and Ravagers.  I tried to keep the Wyches as cheap as possible and gave them Shardnets.  I'm still unsure whether Hydra Gaunts, Razorflails or Shardnets are better, so I'll be experimenting with all of them.  I can even give 5 of them Haywire Grenades and just call it a day.  I mean they're just going to be there to charge the contents of the transports I pop and I don't really expect them to do much.  Unfortunately, they don't have any poisoned attacks but they do have the Duke's Contraband to help them pick +1S or re-roll to wound.  I think those two will be the greatest benefit to the Wyches.

As for anti-tank, the Trueborn with 4x Blasters and 3x Ravagers will be all that I need to take down the heaviest vehicles.  Each Ravager is packed with Flickerfields and Night Shields to make them slightly more resilient and still keep them cheaper than the Razorwing or the Voidraven.  I'm getting pretty lazy with conversions so I'll probably just run the Ravagers because the models are amazing there's actually models for them.  The Raider holding the Trueborn will happily scoot up into position (without Aethersails) on turn 1 and be in position to pour out 5x Dark Lances while advancing every 6".  Very cool.  At 2k points, I'll be adding another squad of these guys.

So how does this list fair against the current metagame?  I know a lot of you hate this word, but guess what, tough luck.  RTS gamers use it, TCG players use it and most competitive gamers know and respect this word. The metagame how you should build for an all-comers list because nothing effects your game more than the players you're playing with.  So lets see now.. according to my recent article on Bell of Lost Souls, here are some of the armies I have to be able to defeat in order for this list to be competitive.  Keep in mind that a truly competitive list should be able to tackle at least 90% of these lists with most outcomes being favorable.

I will denote each with favored, unfavored or neutral.  Favored is in Dark Eldar's favor.

• Leafblower IG lists and all its mech variants - unfavored
• Space Wolf Long Fang RB spam lists - unfavored 
• Space Wolf Thunderwolf Cavalry herohammer style lists - favored
• Vulkanator lists with TH/SS Termies and Melta/Flamer spam - favored
• Blood Angels 3/3 list variants with Mephiston/Baals/Vindies/Preds - neutral
• CSM Dual Lash Plague Marines w/ max Obliterators - favored
• Mech Eldar, flying Circus style lists - neutral
• Council Eldar with Seer Councils, Saim-Hann style lists - neutral
• Temple Eldar lists with Wraithguard, Avatar, 3x Wraithlords - favored
• Ork Battle Wagon spam, Speed Freakz or Nob Bikerz - favored
• Tau Crisis Suit spam with Hammerheads/Boadsides - neutral
• Tyranid 3-Trygon lists with mass Hive Guard/Zoans - favored

Let's talk briefly about the unfavored match-ups really quickly.  As you can see, anything that has an extensive amount of firepower that can go across the board is not a good match-up for a DE list with Raiders.  My best bet against such things is probably DS in at mid-board and shoot as much as I can.  Any IG list with Chimera spam and Hydras is going to cause serious problems for DE trying to get up the board so it heavily depends on deployment.  No Raider list should be comfortable fighting max Long Fangs and RBs with Lascannon/TL Plasma Gun because 15 rockets per turn is just sadface.  I'm going to need a lot of cover, a lot of board denial of some sort and I need to play heavily with Night Shields to avoid certain destruction.  Otherwise, I need a crap ton of good reserve rolls and I can tell you right now, that's not something you should depend on.

Even borderline neutral shooting lists like the Tau Crisis Suits and BA 3/3 can cause serious issues.  The only reason why they're neutral is because I can pop a good amount of suits per turn with Dark Lances and the same applies to counter-shooting their Broadsides.  BA's 3/3 formation with Baals and AC/LC Preds can pose a serious threat if they get the jump on me since they can move and shoot with their Fast vehicles.  Good thing I can do the same and with Aethersails, I can hold my stuff in reserve and arrive on Turn 2 to pop their vehicles if they advance.  Flying Mechdar and more mobile Eldar lists with Vypers will pose a problem for DE.  Eldar have a ton of S6 mobile shooting and S6 is the magic number that poses a threat on everything space-elf related.  S6 ignores the FNP granted by Pain Tokens and its just strong enough to do serious damage to AV10 open-top.  Seer Councils will also be a bitch to handle but I think with enough focused shooting and mass assaults, they're going to go down.  Neutral lists for me basically mean its up to deployment, generalship and how the dice rolls go.  It can go either way and that's perfectly fine with me.

Now, the favored match-ups should be a no brainer.  As you can see, anything that relies on big awesome units to win the day is going to get kicked in the face by Dark Eldar.  Poisoned shooting, a lot of Dark Lances and a lot of maneuverability is going to be the key to winning against these lists.  No matter how much you like your Wraithlords and Trygons, high toughness is not going to cut it anymore.  The same applies to elite Thunderwolf Cav and Hamminators.  Not because they're tough, but because they're really elite and thus sports a smaller number of targets for the army as a whole.  Wound saturation means everything and when I throw my entire army where I want, how I want and when I want like a precision-edged dagger, the "heavier" lists tend to fall apart.  I think these are the kind of lists that Dark Eldar will prey upon the most.  Every Dark Eldar Raider needs a Trygon head mounted on their prow.

Alright, let it roll.  What do you guys think?