For the love of Meta: If you have to do Dark Eldar MSU Raider-spam...here it is

Hey all Kevin here again chiming in about those sadistic space pirates that I am into right now also known as Dark Eldar. Now most people play or at least have played a MEQ at some point in their hobby career. There is a trend in the meta these days to take what people say is good on the Internet and bring it to their own army. now giving and asking advice is not a bad thing. Also bringing a new concept in the game to you're plastic crack is a good thing....Anyway before I trail off let me get to the point. MSU Razorspam is a good concept with a lot of good lists. It is a proven effective concept and this has translated into many tournament wins for many a player. When Dark Eldar came out a lot of people tried to take this concept a little too far with a sole focus on putting as many Raiders on the field as possible with a blind eye to everything else in the book...most of these lists have turned out to do poorly on the competitive level so a sink in popularity for the army ensued. So first off for those that have read my posts before and know the list I run it is a mech list. I preach that mech is the way for DE to play competitively but there is a distinct difference between Mech DE and MSU Raider Spam. Mech lists only ever run a few Raiders that are fully optimized. The Raider spam you ee a lot of people preaching is a MSU Wrack build utilizing the cheap cost and minimum unit size wracks have in order to put out as many Raiders as possible. The problem with these lists is that they run bare bones raiders that when they are destroyed you have a useless small Wrack unit inside. If you roll up kill points you might as well concede. Im trying to design a list that utilizes the advantages of a MSU build trying to put out as many Vehicles as possible while still utilizing at least a semi-effective unit inside of these Raiders. The first thing we have to replace is the troops selections for our army. Small, ineffective 3 model Wrack units are out. Since the point is putting out an effective Raider build Hellions are also out. This leaves us with Wyches and Warriors. Now Wyches in small enough units to be considered MSU are too ineffective for what their purpose is. They also dont give us any threat potential in the list. This leaves us with warriors. To get the most effective build out of a small warrior unit we need to add in a blaster (I know, very typical). Right now with 5 Warriors with a blaster it will cost us a decent 60 points. Also since we can move 12" in a Raider and shoot two darklight weapons at two different targets we just optimized the Raider unit. Now for the Raiders themselves I am a preacher of the Night shields/flickerfield mandatory build. On paper these do not seem so good but the Dice Gods are fickle and the actual battlefield experience I have had points to these being worthy expenses with the way it nerfs melta/rapid fire weapons as well as having at least a save for your vehicles always. For the ability to use the Kamakaze Raider tactic, which is always fun, I like to add, for only 10 points, a shock prow and advanced aethersails. FYI the Kamikaze Raider tactic is using the Raider to Ram an enemy vehicle at 24+" range so that you can get off a S10 no cover saves allowed attack at an enemy vehicle that you could possibley pull off unscathed due to the flickerfield. Still its nice to use this effectively 90 point model to take down 200-250 point models....With the Raider and warriors each unit costs a good solid 150 points....lets take 6 of these and get up to 900 points with 6 Raiders and 30 footsloggers and 12 different target able darklight shots....not that bad of numbers... So next up for an effective Vehicle spam list for DE has to be elites....now I know these are not Raiders but its too useful a unit to ignore...Trueborn in a Venom...First of all since we have a lot of anti-mech in the list already lets focus on some anti-infantry/horde ability. So the ever more popular x4 Blaster unit that people spam needs to be only used once to allow some room....it is also very expensive coming in at 108 points for the four blaster models and 75 points for the Venom with a Night shield and the bonus splinter cannon....The other two slots should be filled up with x5 Trueborn in a similar venom each with 2 splinter cannons and 3 shardcarbines. The Trueborn themselves only cost 95 points with a signifigant ammount of fire power. So our list so far looks like this.

Troops

1. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
2. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
3. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
4. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
5. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
6. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150

Elites

1. x4 Trueborn, x4 Blasters, Venom, Nigh Shields, splinter cannon- 183
2. x5 Trueborn, x2 Splinter cannons, x3 sharcarbines, venom, splinter cannon, N shields-170
3. x5 Trueborn, x2 Splinter cannons, x3 sharcarbines, venom, splinter cannon, N shields-170

Total- 1423

So with a half decent HQ you could play this list at 1500....and thats a lot at that level. But a good DE list wouldn't be without Ravagers so since the list calls for Mech lets have 3 of those with Night Shields and a Flickerfield at 125 points a piece....Yet since most of the list can deal with vehicles lets modify one of them to have x3 Disintigrater Cannons, for free might I add, for 9 S5 AP2! shots.....this thing is a Terminators horrible nightmare and a monsterous creatures bane.....This brings us up to1898 in points and we are only missing one key component....an HQ

So with a lack of points available in a 2000 point list for one of the special characters this leaves us with either an archon or a Haemonculus. Now neither of these will have any real game impact and probably sould just chill with the trueborn to be in the best spot for effectiveness.....We can take 2 bare bones haemonculi for 100 points in one slot....or an archon with a blaster and a clonefield for some cobat punch in one of the trueborn units since they will be effectivley out front first.....A good army will want FNP on both of the shooty trueborn units so a cool Archon is gonna get left out....Heres the list

total....1998 (A fine year I might add...)

HQ

1. x2 Haemonculi- 100

Troops

1. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
2. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
3. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
4. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
5. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150
6. x5 Warriors, Blaster, Raider, N shields, flickerfield, shock prow and adv. aethersails- 150

Elites

1. x4 Trueborn, x4 Blasters, Venom, Nigh Shields, splinter cannon- 183
2. x5 Trueborn, x2 Splinter cannons, x3 sharcarbines, venom, splinter cannon, N shields-170
3. x5 Trueborn, x2 Splinter cannons, x3 sharcarbines, venom, splinter cannon, N shields-170

Heavy Support

1. Ravager, N Shields, Flickerfield -125
2. Ravager, N Shields, Flickerfield -125
3. Ravager, N Shields, Flickerfield, x3 Disintigrater cannons- 125

So in total we get 12 vehicles, 22 darklight weapons, 46 foot sloggers, and a whole mess of AP-2 and anti-infantry capability....This list is decent and would be very effective while not saxrificing a lot of the effective choices in the book.....I am not a fan of it necessarilly since it lacks a great assault threat like I believe all good DE lists need but I can respect a list like this and would run it due to its ability to just wreck armies via shooting.... so more on this later...