Friday, July 24, 2009

The value of the Raider

So after my post about the quality of the Dark Eldar Warrior, I figured I'd follow it up with a post about the Raider.

Now it's an oft scoffed at vehicle, but I'm not sure why. Yes it's lightly armoured, but it's a fast skimmer, open topped, and mounts a heavy weapon, not just a glorified pistol. All for a mere 55 points. If you were to add that heavy weapon to a squad, it would cost you between 10 and 25 points. So when you look at it as an upgraded weapon for a unit, that reduces the cost to a far more amazing 45 points. Granted, most Dark Eldar players feel it's almost manditory to upgrade the Raider with a Horrorfex for it's ridiculously effective pinning capabilities, so we'll call it 50 points to account for the horrorfex.

Now in most cases, anything inside a Raider is going to be no slouch in close combat, if it's a Wych, a Warrior, or and Incubi, it will see great benefit from the open topped rules for the Raider. This means a turn one or two assault for some squads, or the freedom to disembark, shoot and assault for other units. Think about your standard deployments, two of the 3 deployments see you a minimum of 24" apart, with a fleeting unit coming out of a Raider, they will make close combat with an average fleet roll of 3, that doesn't even take into account the 12" assault from combat drugs.

The recent trend has been for the fast moving last minute grabs, and the Raider is just as good at it as anyone. As a fast skimmer it gets a flat out move of 24" and a 4+ cover save for it's efforts. This means that all the fun tricks you can play with rapid re-deployment work great in these cases. A Raider may be an easy target to some, but that's only if it's still where you set up those weapons that were going to kill it.

Overall, the Raider is a steal at the 60 points I'm paying for it with the horrorfex. If the codex ever gets re-done, it's likely looking at a reduction to the 40-50 point range and will be obscene.

3 comments:

  1. I just picked up a ridiculous amount of Dark Eldar for super cheap and have been mulling over list ideas for weeks. I want to say thank you for your two posts so far as I am using them to load out my own warrior/raider squads who until now I thought where terrible units. Now if only I could figure out what to do with the rest of this stuff!

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  2. Gimme an idea what you have and I'll try and help.

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  3. My first thought with 16 Jetbikes was to make a badass dark Saim Hann list, but then… no “troop” jetbike options, no crazy seer council… so now I am at a loss. I have been leafing through the codex for ideas on a build, but it is not the easiest thing to read. Army Builder shows I can add jetbike transports to most of the HQ choices (Archon, Dracon, Haemonculi, Dracite) but I have no idea if this is an effective idea to pursue.

    I want to use these because If I had this many regular Eldar Jetbikes they wouldn't just sit on a shelf and collect dust.

    I think the Asdrubael Vect model/fluff/idea looks cool so I may just build something out of this collection to go with that. Any ideas on a jetbike list or should I just give the idea up altogether? I plan on buying more stuff, maybe beef up the Wyches, add some Incubi, and Scourges, but honestly I have no idea what to do with all of this stuff.

    1 Dracon
    1 Haemonculus with Stinger
    2 syrabites, whip, etc
    10 Wyches
    8 grotesques
    1 Beastmaster and 5 Warp Beast
    3 Raiders
    16 Reaver Jetbikes
    1 Talos
    120 Warriors with various weapon load outs, dark lances, splinters, etc

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