Dark Eldar Webway Portal List (1750pts)

I'm hopefully taking Dark Eldar to Blog Wars 3 after failing to get them ready for BW2 and taking my SW as a back up. I've not had a ton of games with them but the first few I played were the usual raider-spam kind of thing. However, with Blog Wars being a bit more laid back I thought I'd take something different. I really want to try out a dual webway list. Now obviously it isn't the most competitive build for DE but it's certainly a lot of fun.

Here's what I'm currently planning on taking. Very little of it is painted at the moment though so it might be a bit of a rush to get it all done. Anyway, here goes:

1,750pts of Dark Eldar

Baron Sathonyx
2x Haemonculi w/ WWP

2x 3 Blaster Trueborn in Venoms (2x Splinter Cannon, Night Shields)

8x Hellions
4x Wracks
3x 10 Wyches w/ Haywires and Agoniser Hekatrix

2x 6 Reavers w/ 2 Heat Lances

Talos w/ Chain Flails & T-L Heat Lance
Cronos w/ Spirit probe and vortex

The premise is pretty straightforward. The only things I deploy are the venoms with the haemos and trueborn inside. The haemos get out and launch the webways and the trueborn have a pop at a couple of vehicles to help out the reinforcements when they arrive through the webway.

I'd considered giving the haemos some upgrades like a shattershard and/or liquifier gun but frankly in the games I've had they basically drop the webway then die! As I've mentioned before I don't want to include ravagers as I think it spoils the theme of the army. Therefore my anti-tank/de-mech firepower has to come out of the webway. This comes in the form of the talos and reavers. However, with the exception of the wracks everything else can always charge a vehicle if they get desperate.

Baron is useful as not only does he make the hellions troops, meaning they're far more useful coming out of the webway than normal hellions, but also he gives +1 to the roll for going first. As any DE player knows first turn can be pretty vital. Of the 9 units coming out of the webway 3 of them can still come out of a blocked portal. This gives me some options for clearing any unit that's preventing me from using the webway. These units also have the options of coming on from my board edge if I prefer.

The webways allow you to get into your enemies face with your assault units without worrying about them getting cut down before you get there. The problem is that if you can't get those portals far enough forward there's a chance your opponent will be out of range. However, with jump infantry/jet bikes and fleeting wyches that isn't usually a problem. I'd never normally take the pain engines but they're fun out of a webway and since the cronos can potentially generate 3 pain tokens a turn he's a real force multiplier.

The main problem (as is the problem with any reserve army) is that you a quite dependent on your reserve rolls for success. If you get all the wyches straight away before you've got any anti-tank out there to bust open tin cans then you're likely to lose them. This shouldn't happen too oftern though with about half of the units being capable of ranged anti-tank. This means you should get a couple of units on turn 2.

The most difficult mission at Blog Wars 3 will be the last one with Dawn of War. The trouble here is that you can't get both your webways forwards very easily. However, this is where the wracks come in. Since they're troops thanks to the haemos they can be deployed with him in the centre of the board and hopefully get that webway down in the middle. The other one can blast on 24" from the table edge in turn 1 and deploy in turn 2. A shrewd opponent will respond by trying to deploy out of the way of the first webway but the second can then be directly in front of him. By having a webway in the centre for the third mission I've got a good chance of being able to claim/contest most of the objectives with stuff from the webways. The wracks will be hard to shift if I get them in cover and go to ground.

I've considered a lot of options for this list. Harlequins could be pretty nasty coming from a webway. With Veil of Tears, Rending and melta pistols they're always nice but being able to get into range quickly will really help them out. However, I don't own the models and a decent squad is about 200pts. Other things I've considered are Beastmasters (again pretty expensive in £s and points) and scourges, which lost out to reavers in my mind. The list can be pretty fun to play though so I don't think I need to change very much.

I'll post up a few battle reports I've had with this list over the next few days.