Dark Eldar 1850pt Army for Blog Wars 4

Blog Wars 4 is a little over 7 weeks away and tickets are still available if you'd like to come. For those of you who haven't heard of it, Blog Wars is a tournament that I run where the blogging community can come together and throw a few dice together. Whilst it started off as mainly bloggers the last couple of events saw more people who don't blog coming along. The event is of course open to anyone and at £15 for a 3-game tournament (including lunch) I think it's pretty good value especially when there's a sizable prize pot too!

The aim of Blog Wars 4 is to continue in the friendly spirit of the first 3 events whilst also trying out everything 6th edition has to offer. With the first 6th codex in the mits of the Dark Gods' followers I'm hoping to see some Chaos armies on the table. Blog Wars 4 will allow for most of the aspects of the new rules. The only thing that won't be included is random terrain placement (although I'd like to try it at BW5). Everything else is in from flyers to fortifications, allies to mysterious terrain. I share Natfka's (from Faeit212) opinion that 6th is here so there's no point playing 40k 5.5 and picking which rules you want to play.

Being Blog Wars there's a single restriction in that each army MUST include a special character. The missions are slightly themed around these special characters and there is a prize for the best painted SC as well as the best painted overall army. Anyway, advert over, here's what I'll be taking to Blog Wars 4:

1,850pts of Dark Eldar
Duke Sliscus
2 Haemonculi

9 Kabalite Trueborn (5 shard, 2 blaster, 2 cannon, haywires) in Raider

3x 5 Kabalite Warriors (blaster) in Venoms (2 cannons)
2x 9 Wyches (haywires) in Raiders

2x 6 Reaver Jetbikes (2 heat lance)

3 Ravagers

Nothing too complicated. With the rules changing about assaulting from webways I had to ditch my list from BW3. I've was a big fan of Baron Sathonyx but I fancied a change and Duke seems to be an interesting alternative. The haemonculi will join the wyches in the raiders and blast forwards to make the most of the haywires against enemy vehicles. The venoms will sit at maximum range and hopefully torrent down some infantry, later on in the game they can get into 24" or even 12" and the squads inside can rapid fire too. When they inevitably get destroyed the warriors will hug objectives.

The reavers will be used for harassment purposes either by bladevaning smaller units or trying to pick off vehicles with their heat lances before darting away. The aim is to keep them turbo-boosting as much as possible. In some games I might keep them in reserve. The ravagers are pretty self explanatory but they'll be my best chance of scoring First Blood points.

Finally, Duke's unit of trueborn are my shooty death star unit. Granted they're pretty flimsy but there isn't anything they can't take on. Hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s against everything means they'll have no problem taking down high toughness targets and the pair of blasters (coupled with Duke's pistol) will give vehicles something to worry about. Not to mention that haywire grenades make them a threat to all vehicles.

Now, I'm not naive enough to think they won't be targetted pretty early on by savvy opponents but hopefully by that point I'll have gotten them into a position where they can do some damage. If I fail to get first turn I'll have to make sure Duke's raider is getting a cover save but that isn't as hard as it used to be and at least I'll be able to position him near to the best target.

Duke also gives me the advantage of rolling twice on the combat drugs table. This did tempt me to swap the warriors for more wyches to take full advantage but the danger there is that you waste the venoms as you try and get the wyches into combat. To be honest it's all a bit experimental for me as I haven't really run this type of DE list much but I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun trying. That's assuming I get to play of course as I'm sure people will remember that that's been in doubt up until the day before all 3 previous Blog Wars!!

Anyway, my current problem is getting the army ready for the day. I had planned on having it all fully painted but I'm now being more realistic and aiming for 3 colours. The wyches, warriors and reavers are already at this point but the vehicles and Duke's unit need some work. I'll post up my progress in the coming weeks but suffice to say I'm already getting bored of line highlighting!!