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.