+ TIME FOR A NEW FLEET: XENOS SCUM +

I've wanted a second fleet for some time, less because I need a break from chaos and more so I can demo the game against people. I sold or traded my imperial stuff some time ago, as I have no desire to play or paint them, but looking at the other races available I'm kinda struck by how ... less good they are. Maybe simply less straight forward? Still many of them suffer in various ways:

Dark Eldar: weak, undergunned, poor & expensive model support
Eldar: weak, funky solar wind speed, don't like the models
Necron: neat models overall, but odd rules and either broken or flawed depending on who you talk to
Orks: meh models, tough but short-ranged and slow
Tau: beautiful FW models, interesting SG models, have almost done them in the past
Tyranids: very cheap fleet using 40k bitz + green stuff, but I'm not sure I can even play them with the way instinctive behavior works

I've been tempted by Tau in the past, but I want to do something really different ... So giving serious thought to Dark Eldar, of all things! I dig the models and don't mind if things look samey bar an extra spike here or there, and their plethora of special rules are pretty nifty. 0 turrets and 0 defense against batteries is a bit frightening, and the 30cm max range on ALL weapons is unfortunate, but it would certainly be different from my chaos fleet!

For now, my 1500 list looks like this, though it's regrettably quite repetitive:

Dread Archon
Torture - launch bays
Torture - launch bays
Torture - launch bays
4 Corsair - weapon batteries
3 Corsair - phantom lances
3 Corsair - phantom lances
3 Corsair - phantom lances
----
1500

DE ordnance is easily the most impressive thing they've got going on, at least in my mind, though I wonder at putting so many points into a tepid 12 bays worth. And then having to spend orders reloading continually. Given the other options though I'm not convinced that launchers aren't the best use of the tortures - 2 lance / 1 impaler / some torpedoes being the other ones. Also, no points sunk into mimic engines, even if they do seem to offer possibilities. I'd consider dropping a corsair to mimic up a torture for first turn ordnance strikes, but really I think that just puts that torture up into the enemy guns all the faster.

All the same a DE fleet would be fun to paint up, almost totally unique, and certainly take some time to get my head around.

- EDIT -

Here's a tweak of the above list, trying for some variety:


Dread Archon
Torture - launch bays
Torture - launch bays
Torture - impaler
3 Corsair - phantom lances, mimic engines
3 Corsair - phantom lances
3 Corsair - phantom lances
3 Corsair - weapon batteries
----
1490

A little more interesting this way, and mimic engines on those escorts could mean a mad dash lock on run with lances into something first turn.