Unit of the Week: Dark Eldar Voidraven Bomber

C Swizzy here with another weekly installment of the Unit of the Week. No, I'm not talking about the Batwing, I'm talking about the Voidraven Bomber. On a side note since there is no GW model for the Voidraven, this Revel Batwing model does the job for only $25 or so, so have at it! Mad props go out to Frosty from The Warhammer Forum http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/index.php who uncovered this gem.

I'll be up front with you guys, I'm not too familiar with the Dark Eldar codex but honestly none of us are. I skimmed through the book and I did find many things to be DISGUSTING but the Voidraven jumped out at me.

Basic cost is 145 and it's a Heavy Support. Front armor 11 so it is kind of paper thin but you can take Night Shields and Flicker Fields for 10 points each which will definitely help out with your survivability. The other thing that will help out with that armor 11 is the fact that the Voidraven is supersonic, which means you can turbo boots 36 inches. In other words this thing is fast fast FAST. Oh, it also deep strikes so this thing can almost do it all.

Weapon load out is where this thing shines. You get 2 Void Lances which are Str9 Lances. That extra point of Str help out a ton, especially if you're playing that jag off Black Templars player that has Blessed Hull (negates lance) on all of his Land Raiders... lol. Now you only need 3's to glance and 4's to penetrate, or if you are playing said jag off, you will actually pen on 6's. Add in the fact that the Voidraven has the Arial Assault rule, you can fire both of these off at cruising speed.

The Void Mine is my personal favorite though. Basically you can drop a mine over any unit you fly over, keeping in mind this vehicle is beyond fast so you can almost pick out whatever you want. The mine is also a Str9 lance but there is some scatter and it is a small blast so it can scatter off if you roll bad. With Arial Assault you can fly over a tank, drop a mine and still fire your Lances off if you only moved at cruising speed. Need to get out of harms way? Well now you can, and pop a tank all in the same movement!

The Voidraven can also take 4 different types of missiles. The Monoscythe is Str6 AP5 Large blast. Pretty good for horde hunting. The Necrotoxin Missile is Str X AP 5 with Poison 2+, large blast and pinning. A large blast wounding everything on a 2+ is pretty nasty and is basically effective against everything, especially high toughness units like Plague Marines. The Implosion Missile forces whatever you hit to make a characteristic test against their number of wounds (base, not current) and if they fail they die instantly. Cover and Invuln saves still apply though. The last missile we have is the Shatterfield Missile. This bad boy is Str7 AP - large blast that you get to reroll wounds with. Keep in mind all of these Missiles are one shot, so you only get one chance to bring the pain with each one. You can take up to 4 Missiles and you can mix and match between the 4 different types. I personally would like to go with 2 Shatterfield, 1 Necrotoxin and 1 Implosion just to get a nice balance and be ready for almost anything, but that gets expensive. All missiles are 10 points except for the Shatterfield which is 30.

My idea load out would be Flickershields, 1 Shatterfield Missile, 1 Necrotoxin Missile and 1 Implosion Missile bringing the total up to 205. Kind of pricey but it can handle almost anything and should be able to survive if you're good with positioning.

All in all this is a pretty damn good unit that will only run you about $25 or so. If I was playing Dark Eldar I'd always run 2 of them, because we all know that I think more than 2 is spam.