D'eldar players question

Does anyone actually use grotesques, beastmasters, razorwing flocks, chimeras, court of the archon, succubus, drazhar, the decapitator, or mandrakes? Just curious. Lately, I've been trying to "finish" my collection and rather than buying another army, I'd rather just collect the heck out of d'eldar. Theoretically I'm going to try and get 2 more talos engines and a bunch of grotesques and a urien.... anybody go that direction yet? How's it handle?

Pretty sure grotesques with a hormonculi attached would be cool. Mandrakes are kinda a waste in my opinion. Beastmasters with khemera, flocks, and clawed fiend makes for awesome shock troops. Drazhar is cool leading incubi to make fearless. Succubus is good as a poor mans archon. Court of the archon is good for a shocktroop that doesn't take up force organisation.
I've used Drazhar, Court of archon, succubus, and beastmasters unit before. All very good choices in my opinion. Grotesques are slow to me, but I can see their use in a webway portal list. Mandrakes and their decapitator character for an hq is kinda a waste unless 6th edition they may turn good.... I don't know that remains to be seen.

i use them before there good i put the gro in raider or portal its best to run rakarth with them get more bang for your buck and run wrack for troops to loosen the elite choses for your groes

A big part of the hobby for me is collecting up a complete army. Which is also why I like the older miniatures. Half the fun is hunting them down. With Dark Eldar, perhaps people will be unprepared for dealing with uncommon troops and not know how to fight them effectively.

Yeah, I just picked up another 2 Talos and extra hellions. I made some webways the other day and I plan on at least proxying some grotesques.... lol. I'm not sure I'm willing to shell out the cash per model for those.... dunno.

I have the opportunity to purchase the following:

Dark Eldar old style
 
Asdrubael Vect seated
Drazhar master of the blades
Lelith Hesperax
2 Archon 1 male 1 female
 Master haemonclas
2 Grotesques
1 Beast Master with 5 beasts
1 Raider
1 Ravager Vehicle
1 Raider or Ravager Vehicle
1 Reaver jet bike
5 Hellions on sky boards
16 Scourges Jump troops
1 Talos pain engine
35 Plastic Warriors
4 Metal warriors with heavy weapons
6 metal vehicle gunners
5 incubi
9 Wyches

Should I do it? I know nothing about Dark Eldar. If nothing else, it gives me some trade options.

Looks like a footslogging force for Dark Eldar. If you where planning on eventually playing them I would get them. How much is all this going to be for you is the question to see if it really is worth it. I'd like to trade some stuff if you where to get it, but I'm not going to force you into anything.

Waiting to hear back. I'll most likely get them just to have. If I don't ever play them, I can always trade them off for something I would use.

Dark Eldar old style

Asdrubael Vect seated - Vect is a great mini, I've never fielded him before he's like 240 points or something, his vehicle is non-competitive.
Drazhar master of the blades - Pretty cool in spirit, still ridiculously expensive, pretty good tho, lacks an invul save which is lame.
Lelith Hesperax - pretty awesome, I don't field wych cults so I probably won't use this one much, but competitve and tons of attacks.
2 Archon 1 male 1 female - Archons are great and customizable hq's, they aren't unique so you can field a few.
Master haemonclas - Haemonculus are the bread and butter of most of my lists, get at least 3 - 6 if you like melee or shooting.... or magic items, these are pretty much your only "psycher" type units, since we have no psychers.
2 Grotesques - haven't fielded them yet, the new models bases are bigger.
1 Beast Master with 5 beasts - warp beasts? I hear the beast master is great in conjunction with the Baron, I hear good things about the razorwing flocks, nothing on the beasts
1 Raider - Raiders are also your bread and butter, it would be hard to have an army without them unless it was all Wracks and Haemonculus, you will need at least (bare minimum IMO) 3 to have a chance on the battlefield. I prefer a mix of Venoms (better deal, but only anti-infantry and smaller capacity as transports)
1 Ravager Vehicle - these are awesome, but you will need more if you want to field a full set of heavies. My ravagers never dissapoint me.
1 Raider or Ravager Vehicle - I have no idea either, I guess you could proxy it either ways???
1 Reaver jet bike - Minimum squad size is 3, efficient squad size is also 3, unless you have a ton of points to blow. I love my bikes, but they are very situational, typically I leave mine in reserve so I can position them better, or deep strike them for some heatlance/blaster fun.
5 Hellions on sky boards - Hellions without the baron... not so great, Hellions with the Baron... AWESOME! Hellions zoom around and can even bust up some vehicles if you want to glance them to death. Plus they have the snatch ability to gank HQ's away from their units and they can hit and run, which is a cool ability. I'd suggest getting more, fielding 5 with the baron seems a bit wasteful.
16 Scourges Jump troops - Overly expensive to field, but I still drop them in when I need to fill the force org, really there's alot of other units that fill their role better, but they have their advantages. Very costly to play though, I've never wanted to field more than 5. 5 is the optimal group size IMO.
1 Talos pain engine - A bucket of awesome baddassness. Give him some chain flails, a haywire blaster, and an extra CCW and he's a mean tank killing machine. I will say that they are far more useful if you are using a haemonculus with a webway portal so that you can walk them in from the middle or opponents side, means they have more life when they start beating stuff down. Webway portal is one of those, win big or lose big strategies.
35 Plastic Warriors - Going to need alot of warriors, depending on the game I field them in groups of 10 or 5. A group of 5 can have 2 antitank weapons, with shortish range or you can grab the cannon and shoot at 36" with poison, easy to tailor, good units.
4 Metal warriors with heavy weapons - These would probably be what you use as Kabalite Trueborn, probably the best points for heavy weapons I've seen. Best when stuck in a venom so you can cruise around and pop vehicles. I almost always field some of these because of their utility.
6 metal vehicle gunners
5 incubi - these are great and the last 2 editions of this model look awesome. Incubi are probably our best melee unit. Throw a haemonculus with them for a pain token and these guys are pretty fun to play with, just separate the haemy so they get fleet.
9 Wyches - probably will need alot of these, I typically just use them to suicide bomb vehicles with haywire grenades or to get some extra cheap troop choices. I'm sure someone out there has made a good melee army with them, but with a 6+ save I'm not investing alot in their combat potential. But their grenades are awesome!


Hope that was what you were looking for. Overall, you need some raiders and/or venoms to make this more practical to field. Without transports, the fast and flighty army becomes a bloody smear on the pavement. Always buy flickerfields for your vehicles, always, lol.

Grots a different breed of player though. He likes campaigns and doesn't play in tournaments all that much which I respect. He likes variety and is more into collecting/modeling aspect of the game so the list that is posted there would probably fit him to a T. Plus it's old stuff and I've read somewhere else on the forum that he likes old models.... That's why I didn't advise him to get raiders or anymore transports or how to make it more competitive cause I knew the guys tastes and respected them.

Ah, then its probably a good set to get then. Its still very playable, I'm a mathhammer player.

I'm a competitive gamer, but also I like my fluffy lists as well.