@Wyddr I love the idea of grotesques in a raider, but it might break the pocket book at the moment and I have yet to assemble a model, let alone play a game, I think I'm going to try a piece together a bodyguard from what I have available. Would you take them with a WWP, if I do happen to find something inexpensive to substitute? I only have 3 raiders at the moment and a WWP would save on the $ cost.
@Cavalier Thanks for the tips. I think I'm going to go with your suggestion on the True Born. They fit nicely with the theme of Death by a Thousand Cuts and I really haven't used any of the blasters I've acquired on anything. Luckily nothing is modeled up or, if I purchased it that way, is easy enough to change. I'm not sure on running solely haywire blasters on both units of scourges. I do see what you mean on having enough anti-infantry. I do like the idea of heat lances. Great AP and melta to boot. They are also relatively cheap points wise. Here's what I've come up with using both your suggestions.
Archon (agonizer, shadow field, parasite kiss, WWP) [165]
True Born x4 (x4 Blaster) and Dracon (agonizer, haywire grenade, blast pistol) [170]
Kabalite Warriors x10 [80]
Raider (dark lance, splinter racks) [75]
Kabalite Warriors x10 [80]
Raider (dark lance, splinter racks) [75]
Kabalite Warriors x10 [80]
Raider (dark lance, splinter racks) [75]
Scourge x5 (haywire blaster x4) [120]
Scourge x5 (heat lance x4) [120]
Reavers x3 (blaster) [58]
Talos (TL splinter cannon) [120]
Talos (TL splinter cannon) [120]
Talos (TL splinter cannon) [120]
1458
As for painting, I cannot wait to try out my new airbrush and compressor. A nice xmas present to myself and I figured I needed a new army to break it in. Hopefully the learning curve isn't too steep, but I figured with Dark Eldar you only really need about 2 or 3 base colours to concentrate on.
This isn't bad for casual games, but I'd still like to throw in my two cents.
Heatlances are interesting. They're priced about right for what you get, but they're (oddly enough) kind of a generalist weapon instead of a specialist weapon. Haywire blasters do a better job of hunting vehicles, and blasters can insta-gib T4 and wound MCs more reliably (albeit at a slightly higher price). The heat lance is in a weird middle ground where it's worse at popping most vehicles, requires you get dangerously close to get the most out of, and yet lacks the raw power of a blaster. Personally, I always run my scourges as pure haywire blasters, pure splinter carbines, or pure blasters, and then sprinkle in solarite upgrades to taste. Given the relatively low amount of ranged anti tank in your army, I'd lean towards either blasters or haywire blasters. Your Talos are what you'll want to kill most 2+ saves with. Heat lances aren't really a bad choice, they're just a generalist pick that is worse at most of the jobs you probably want them to do than the other gun options. Also, you should probably never run shredders.
Trueborn are a good unit, but I wouldn't run them with your archon as you have him. "Blasterborn" as they're commonly known are a shooty anti-tank unit. They want to shoot at vehicles, MCs, or TEQs, from the safety of their transports and then never leave. They're squishy and expensive meaning you're bleeding points when you let your opponent shoot at them out in the open. The webwayportal archon with the blasterborn will give you a half-decent anti-tank punch, and then you'll be evaporated in a hail of lowly bolter fire. I'm not a huge fan of dracons with lots of toys (even though they're really cool conceptually), and I generally advise against sticking them in the same squad as your archon. Too squishy and too expensive. I'd only even really consider it if I were building a trueborn melee squad (all double melee weapons), and I don't really recommend that either.
Now, let's talk about your archon. The archon you've built wants to go the melee route meaning you want to stick him in a melee squad. If you're on a budget and like the idea of the archon's court, you might consider a purely lhamean court in a venom or raider. If you drop a single talos or if you drop the webwayportal and the reavers, you'll be close to having enough points for a venom or raider and some lhameans to ride inside it. Lhameans hit almost as hard as grotesques, but they're much squishier. Your shadowfield can help offset that a bit, and it gives you a fast melee unit to balance out the slowness of your taloi. Lhamean models are expensive, but you can convert some easily with wyches OR you can look into using some dark elf fantasy minis as proxies. I went the former route recently because the pricetag was daunting and because monopose squads can be irksome.
All that said, you might also consider going the "shooty" route with the archon. Since you seem to favor raiders over venoms, you could fit the archon in the raider with them after all (despite what I said above) and give your archon a blaster and not much else. This makes for an expensive single shot blaster, but it also means your HQ choice is relatively inexpensive overall. Not lhamean cheap, but cheap. It lets him help out the trueborn dakka, and it might just push their firepower over the edge to kill a target instead of just softening it up. If you go this route, I still advise against going sans transport, and I still don't love spending lots of points on melee gear for a pair of characters in a squad that mostly wants to sit back and shoot.
No matter what direction you go,
consider giving that archon some haywire grenades! They're one of the best ways to spend 5 points in the game. If you're going tank hunting, they give you a way to glance a vehicle to death instead of exploding it and are more likely to hurt high AV targets than a blaster (despite the lance rule). If you ever get charged by a walker, they can save your life, especially when paired with a shadow field. The parasite's kiss is fun, but I find my archon usually goes from 3 wounds to 0 in a single round of violence (especially if you're trying to tank with him), so I rarely benefit from it. Even if I do benefit from it, I've already lost the shadow field at that point meaning its usefulness is limited. What I'm saying is that, if you really can't find the points for haywires anywhere else, consider dropping the kiss for them unless you're really in love with the kiss.
Oh, and have fun raiding the galaxy!
