What is good about the Dark Elves?

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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What is good about the Dark Elves?

Post by Rork »

Perhaps it is time to depolarise this site...

For too long there have been negative vibes about the Dark Elves -

So the simple question is:

What is actually good about the army? Is it a bad army that just happens to win? Or a good army with unfulfilled potential?

Deep down, Is it *really* that bad?

Discuss.
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Post by Thanee »

This questions is asked quite often recently! ;)

It's only natural to point out the weaknesses and not the strengths, but if you take a look into the Tactics forum, you'll find a lot of posts covering the strengths of the Dark Elves.

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Ever onwards

Post by Rork »

Thanee wrote:This questions is asked quite often recently! ;)

It's only natural to point out the weaknesses and not the strengths, but if you take a look into the Tactics forum, you'll find a lot of posts covering the strengths of the Dark Elves.

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Hmmm...but Dark Elves are often criticised for having weak units (divorced from the issue of tactics, which should make most units excellent).

The whole case for change seems to revolve around the idea that certain units have something wrong about them, but what is right about them?

For example, executioners may drop like flies, but you get WS5 and killing blow for 11 pts...
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Re: Ever onwards

Post by Yeurl »

Rork wrote:Hmmm...but Dark Elves are often criticised for having weak units (divorced from the issue of tactics, which should make most units excellent).

The whole case for change seems to revolve around the idea that certain units have something wrong about them, but what is right about them?

For example, executioners may drop like flies, but you get WS5 and killing blow for 11 pts...


The problem is not that they're weak or not, but that they (troops) are too expensive for what they do, making the army difficult to handle against horde armies. It lacks against hvy armoured armies too.

Also, the list of magic items is not bad, but wrong priced for the most part. That's why some items are almost always seen in all the army lists.

About execs, I agree that they are good on paper, but light armour hurts them so much, and being the only hard hitting (for 2-handed weapons) unit, it is singled out to be shot too often. Also all the other armies's units which have two handed weapons have heavy armour, why not Execs? And killing blow is only useful against multiwound US1 models, so not that big a deal...

About good things, the DR come to mind; fast cavalry, core, shoots twice, fair points cost. I like them a lot!

Then comes the CO Chariot; a chariot with T5, S5, W4, for 95 points. Thanks I'll take them any day :). Pity stupidity, but I'll take them always before COKs, since they autohit, and have 4 S4 attacks to add up on top, much better than COKs, cheaper and easier to manoeuver.

The RBT, our only hope against enemy hvy cavalry, due to ours being unreliable. Wonderful multishot ability, may be taken in pairs.

Harpies, they assure you the enemy will have at most 2 turns of shooting with his warmachines before you kill them. Pity Ld6.
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Post by Grogsnotpowwabomba »

I agree with Yeurl.

We have good units, but just about every one of them is given some sort of achilles heel.

COK/Chariot = Stupid
Witch Elf = Frenzy (this can make them hard to control against a good opponent)
Executioner = Light Armor
Harpies = Leadership 6

The REAL problem, though, is that we simply pay too many points for what we get. Weapon Skill and Initiative are overrated and overpriced in this game. High Elves suffer from this just as much as Dark Elves do.

Dark Elves look good. I would say that is what is good about them. There is nothing they do that another army cannot do at least as well, if not better.
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Post by Lord Thalack »

Well we've got awesome models :D


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Post by Thanee »

We have quite a few good units...

Dark Riders and Corsairs are great Core units, for example.

Also the combination of units we got is pretty good (Core light cavalry, fear-causing heavy cavalry, Repeater Bolt Throwers, big scary monsters).

I don't think another army has the same cool combination.

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Post by Fallen angel »

A simple question, but one without a simple answer I'm afraid.... To be honest, to get a relly good understanding of how the Druchii perform and whether they measure up to other races, you would have t read pretty much the entirity of the forums here. There are simply so many facets to this, and so many opinions, that I don't think anyone can safely saay "DE are good" or "DE suck"; it would be a massive travesty of the whole community.

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Post by |seraphon| »

i think dark elves are not bad, they are quite good actually. I know they have bad Strenght and Toughness, but they are highly skilled with their weapons, we have very nice spells, we are very fast, we have dark riders (they rule), we have RBT.

So i think we are a very good race, but we do need alot of practicing about how to use our units.
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Post by Dark Alliance »

I have very strong feelings about the Druchii and their good points.

They have a lot of units which offer problems and difficulties but the overall concept is addictive. The Druchii are fast, very fast, they have excellent fluff and the potential to develop as a race far beyond any other in the WHFB world.

The models themselves are expertly sculptured and look fantastic when painted. For a general, tactics are paramount and lead to a rewarding gaming experience, IMHO, but they are great to play.

High weapon skill, high morale and initiative and elite. But they are so much more still. As someone pointed out recently here, the Druchii are almost like a cult. There is something about this race of beleagured elves which appeals on a grand scale to generals of all ages.

And this web site, Druchii.net, is the most addictive thing of all. How many other races have such devoted generals? How many other races have sites dedicated to their development, and the development of their generals?

And how many other races go into such indepth anaysis of their army, it's units, strengths and weaknesses?

Once Druchii is in your blood it will remain forever. You may doubt the faith for a while if you feel the gods are not gracing you. But you will be back.

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Post by Yeurl »

I see you play Lot5R, dark Alliance :).

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BTW, I play a Scorpion bushi character in Lot5R. :) so wicked...
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Post by Pokeme »

Basically, DEs have a fantastic fluff background, but the list simply isn't up to standard. A quick glance at the magic items section shows how bad they are screwed.
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Post by Langmann »

Dark Alliance wrote:I have very strong feelings about the Druchii and their good points.

They have a lot of units which offer problems and difficulties but the overall concept is addictive. The Druchii are fast, very fast, they have excellent fluff and the potential to develop as a race far beyond any other in the WHFB world.

The models themselves are expertly sculptured and look fantastic when painted. For a general, tactics are paramount and lead to a rewarding gaming experience, IMHO, but they are great to play.

High weapon skill, high morale and initiative and elite. But they are so much more still. As someone pointed out recently here, the Druchii are almost like a cult. There is something about this race of beleagured elves which appeals on a grand scale to generals of all ages.

And this web site, Druchii.net, is the most addictive thing of all. How many other races have such devoted generals? How many other races have sites dedicated to their development, and the development of their generals?

And how many other races go into such indepth anaysis of their army, it's units, strengths and weaknesses?

Once Druchii is in your blood it will remain forever. You may doubt the faith for a while if you feel the gods are not gracing you. But you will be back.

Druchii by birth
Druchii by nature


Yep. Well said.
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Post by Dungeon_god »

DA, as always, said some wonderful things. I would just like to say this.

I began playing warhammer about 4 months ago. I was attracted to DE by their fluff and look, not by the power of their army. When I began playing, I lost-a lot. In fact, I lost more than I won, and even now I only win about 45% of the time with my DE. I also play other armies as well.

The DE, in my opinion, are a good army. They are not powerful, they are not fantastic, but they are not a horrendous mistake either. They have their good units-Dark Riders, COKs, COCs, WE, Reapers, Corsairs. It is just, IMO, that the book was thrown together.

I own the books for Skaven, DE, Empire and VAmpire Counts. I have heavily perused my friends Chaos and High Elves books, and have seen parts of the new Khemri book. When I look at the books other than Dark Elves, I see books that loving care went into, that were taken apart, piece by piece, and were made into a coherent and strong force.

When I look at the DE book, I see a book that was half finished by one person, added to by another, and then thrown together to meet a deadline. As much as I like the DE, I am not pleased by their book. There were some very obviously bad choices made, and places where the army was not playtested nearly enough.

Again, these are just my opinions on this, and not everyone on Druchii.net will agree with me. In fact, I am sure there will be those on both sides of my little fence here, but what I am saying is that the DE has some things right with it. DR and Corsairs are, IMO, perfect and should not be changed at all. Everything else could use some work.
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Post by Langmann »

dungeon_god wrote:DA, as always, said some wonderful things. I would just like to say this.

I began playing warhammer about 4 months ago. I was attracted to DE by their fluff and look, not by the power of their army. When I began playing, I lost-a lot. In fact, I lost more than I won, and even now I only win about 45% of the time with my DE. I also play other armies as well.

The DE, in my opinion, are a good army. They are not powerful, they are not fantastic, but they are not a horrendous mistake either. They have their good units-Dark Riders, COKs, COCs, WE, Reapers, Corsairs. It is just, IMO, that the book was thrown together.

I own the books for Skaven, DE, Empire and VAmpire Counts. I have heavily perused my friends Chaos and High Elves books, and have seen parts of the new Khemri book. When I look at the books other than Dark Elves, I see books that loving care went into, that were taken apart, piece by piece, and were made into a coherent and strong force.

When I look at the DE book, I see a book that was half finished by one person, added to by another, and then thrown together to meet a deadline. As much as I like the DE, I am not pleased by their book. There were some very obviously bad choices made, and places where the army was not playtested nearly enough.

Again, these are just my opinions on this, and not everyone on Druchii.net will agree with me. In fact, I am sure there will be those on both sides of my little fence here, but what I am saying is that the DE has some things right with it. DR and Corsairs are, IMO, perfect and should not be changed at all. Everything else could use some work.


Well said. Indeed I felt the same way.

Could you please add a post in the petitions section for what changes you'd like? I am interested in hearing them.
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Post by Dungeon_god »

Langmann, I would be delighted. Let me get through this next week and a half, and after Thanksgiving here in the states, I will give you something. k? :)
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Post by Evilelf »

When I was learning how to play WHFB last year (ahem, newbie) I was intent on playing High Elves when their army was released. However a friend of mine (and long time Dwarf player) would let me borrow his son's Druchii so that I could learn the game.

Well, the Druchii are an odd mixture of so much fun. The minis are brilliant (for the most part), they reward the thoughtful and thus, give a great sense of satisfaction when your plans come together on the battlefield, their fluff meshes very well with their rules, and like any love affair they have frustrating idiosyncracies that make us go crazy.

For me, it isn't one or two facets of the Druchii that I think are just awesome--it's the complete army. No matter how much I'd like to fight in three ranks with spears, have cheap, useful, and interesting magic items, and have swordsmen in heavy armor the Druchii are where it's at.
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Re: Ever onwards

Post by Rork »

Yeurl wrote: The problem is not that they're weak or not, but that they (troops) are too expensive for what they do, making the army difficult to handle against horde armies. It lacks against hvy armoured armies too.


I was under the impression that was the objective in designing the elves in this edition. I think that horde armies will always be a problem for any elite army, but the RXB is an excellent weapon for the task...

And against the heavy armoured brigade, you have black horror and dominion - two very, very nasty spells (the second one really annoys my Chaos knights...).

Yeurl wrote: Also, the list of magic items is not bad, but wrong priced for the most part. That's why some items are almost always seen in all the army lists.

About execs, I agree that they are good on paper, but light armour hurts them so much, and being the only hard hitting (for 2-handed weapons) unit, it is singled out to be shot too often. Also all the other armies's units which have two handed weapons have heavy armour, why not Execs? And killing blow is only useful against multiwound US1 models, so not that big a deal...


Singling them out does mean that your "better" units will not be getting the attention. But KB does have it's uses against 1 wound models - especially those with a high armour save. Get these boys into a unit of knights and the fun begins!

Yeurl wrote: About good things, the DR come to mind; fast cavalry, core, shoots twice, fair points cost. I like them a lot!

Then comes the CO Chariot; a chariot with T5, S5, W4, for 95 points. Thanks I'll take them any day :). Pity stupidity, but I'll take them always before COKs, since they autohit, and have 4 S4 attacks to add up on top, much better than COKs, cheaper and easier to manoeuver.


That's interesting. Chariots always seem to be panned by a lot of people, as the knights are "better" - it's good to see this.

Yeurl wrote: The RBT, our only hope against enemy hvy cavalry, due to ours being unreliable. Wonderful multishot ability, may be taken in pairs.

Harpies, they assure you the enemy will have at most 2 turns of shooting with his warmachines before you kill them. Pity Ld6.


Now, I think skirmishers and fast cavalry *always* achieve their objectives. These guys generally go war machine hunting, so your opponent has two options:

Ignore them, and have your war machines killed.

Kill them by diverting firepower to take them on.

In my mind they always do what they should, because either way, something is not shooting at the really nasty stuff in your army.
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Post by Scuddman »

Really, Rork? That's a surprise.
Most of the players I talk to dont' like cold one knights, such as Jeff Leong, he has a post about it somewhere when I asked him. You can look it up by searching for posts written by me.
Chariots are a 95 point investment for a hard hitting unit that does wounds.
CoK are 300+ points, but I feel stupidity relegates them to the role of a chariot...support doing wounds.
If a chariot is stupid...so what? You still have rank and file. Honestly no big deal, as long as there are no cannons.
If cold one knights are stupid, you're sunk.

I don't really have a problem with the dark elf book. Yes, it's thrown together and written by two people who didn't work on it together. But that's liveable. My problem is with the newer armies being built. Dark elves are very in line with sixth edition. There aren't a bunch of rule exceptions and what not, and the army is actually well balanced. You look at the newer army books, they get all these weird and new abilities, but don't seem to pay for them. Exceptions to rules mess up the armies that don't have these exceptions...so I think it's not the dark elf book at fault, but the other books at fault. Skaven being able to shoot into hand to hand? Combined with the ranks and leadership thing, what's not to like? They're supposed to be low leadership, but they're not.
And then the beastmen...they're kind of everything I wanted in the dark elf army except without the leadership and bolt throwers. And I don't use bolt throwers. Skirmishers that can form up?
It's both good and bad. But beastmen have regular rank and file too, it's not like the entire army is restricted to a type of trooper. That gives the beastmen hand to hand versatility that few armies can match.
It's not that dark elves are underpowered, it's that other armies are overpowered.
I mean really, what's the disability of the beastman army? Low leadership? 7's is no worse than human leadership. There is no one stat that is worse than humans.
At what cost? 4 points? for movement 5? What a joke.

As for dark elves being an elite army, I don't think they're that elite. Corsairs and warriors aren't on the whole better than say...beastmen troopers, chaos marauders, or empire swordsman. In a one up fight corsairs won't dominate, despite the point difference. It's pretty much true for every unit the dark elves have, that's why it looks like an underpowered list.
If you want elite, look at elite hand to hand: chaos warriors or saurus warriors. Or Bretonnian knights. Or swordmasters. Dark elves can't compare.
If you want elite in a different way, look at elite shooting: Dwarves, empire, wood elves...dark elves don't really measure up.
The real strength of the dark elves is somewhere inbetween.
I don't think it's fair that dark elves have elite troops that are specialized/unreliable and that other armies with elite troops have improved variants of their normal trooper.
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Post by Scuddman »

That was a little off topic...now on to the topic.
First off, weak army or not you can still do well if you're a good general. In real life, the points are not fair and your troops may well be outnumbered. That's the way it goes. It's not so bad that the army is unwinnable. You just need to outplay your opponent, or have the terrain stacked in your favor or something. There are little ways around it.

If you look at each unit individually, yeah, it's not a great list. But as a combined effect, you actually have something stronger than the sum of it's parts.
Corsairs are good, but they're an average trooper kind of unit. You give them a chariot and use them with the chariot, and now they'll crush lizardmen sauruses in hand to hand on the charge. Of course, other armies can do this too. You can have a chariot with chaos warriors. The difference is, I can beat your chaos warriors and chariot with my corsairs and chariot.
However, if you normally compare chaos warriors with the corsairs, it's no contest.

That's pretty much the biggest trick to dark elves.

The biggest asset of the dark elves is the fast stuff. Harpies, scouts, and dark riders are among the best of the fast. If you're clever you can win with an army of all fast stuff, troopers, and tooled up characters. Add in a few hitty units like the chariot or a shooty thing like the bolt thrower and you have an army that's annoyingly difficult to deal with. Even if you start losing you can just fight for the draw.

There are actually quite a few posts about dark elf strengths. There's the war hydra thread I made, several executioner threads, one about using black guard...
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Post by Dralor »

Rork. I hope you wont spam and start flame wars here like you do on the GW forums.

In answer to your question, witch elves and corsairs are good.[/u]
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Post by Binky »

Yeah, I hope you don't noone here is a spammer, Dralor has proven himself a valuable member of the community here (Well reasonably so... j/king Dralor :D)
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Post by Sureal »

The reason I started ti colect dark elves was for their cool fluff and models as well as dark colours.
The army list is one thing amonst many :D.
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Post by Rork »

scuddman wrote:Really, Rork? That's a surprise.
Most of the players I talk to dont' like cold one knights, such as Jeff Leong, he has a post about it somewhere when I asked him. You can look it up by searching for posts written by me.
Chariots are a 95 point investment for a hard hitting unit that does wounds.
CoK are 300+ points, but I feel stupidity relegates them to the role of a chariot...support doing wounds.
If a chariot is stupid...so what? You still have rank and file. Honestly no big deal, as long as there are no cannons.
If cold one knights are stupid, you're sunk.


Are they really sunk? That view is far too pessimistic. I have seen COK's fail stupidity checks, but it still didn't lose them the battle.

scuddman wrote:I don't really have a problem with the dark elf book. Yes, it's thrown together and written by two people who didn't work on it together. But that's liveable. My problem is with the newer armies being built. Dark elves are very in line with sixth edition. There aren't a bunch of rule exceptions and what not, and the army is actually well balanced. You look at the newer army books, they get all these weird and new abilities, but don't seem to pay for them. Exceptions to rules mess up the armies that don't have these exceptions...so I think it's not the dark elf book at fault, but the other books at fault. Skaven being able to shoot into hand to hand? Combined with the ranks and leadership thing, what's not to like? They're supposed to be low leadership, but they're not.


Now skaven have always had the Ld thing. And I think it suits them rather well - they are very confident until things go wrong.

Skaven do have big exceptions, but they also tend to kill themselves. I will come to beastmen in a second. Chaos pay for their abilities, and they pay heavily for it. A decent squad never comes in under 200 pts. 300 if you want it to keep the rank bonus.

scuddman wrote:And then the beastmen...they're kind of everything I wanted in the dark elf army except without the leadership and bolt throwers. And I don't use bolt throwers. Skirmishers that can form up?
It's both good and bad. But beastmen have regular rank and file too, it's not like the entire army is restricted to a type of trooper. That gives the beastmen hand to hand versatility that few armies can match.
It's not that dark elves are underpowered, it's that other armies are overpowered.
I mean really, what's the disability of the beastman army? Low leadership? 7's is no worse than human leadership. There is no one stat that is worse than humans.
At what cost? 4 points? for movement 5? What a joke.


Beastmen are something of a quandry. They may have Ld7, but that is generally going to be it - Empire have all sorts of stuff going on for them to help them out.

At the moment I compare Beastmen to the annual daemon list. It's fantastically good, and will scare lots of people - but when the book actually comes out it is going to be heavily watered down.

And if you want to break them, use magic. That is one area where dark elves are quite good.

scuddman wrote: As for dark elves being an elite army, I don't think they're that elite. Corsairs and warriors aren't on the whole better than say...beastmen troopers, chaos marauders, or empire swordsman. In a one up fight corsairs won't dominate, despite the point difference. It's pretty much true for every unit the dark elves have, that's why it looks like an underpowered list.


Woah. Corsairs have two attacks (which swordsmen and marauders don't get, beastmen can) and get a good save against shooting (less so in combat). You have a high I that can really give you the edge against your examples.

You have some exceptionally good units, I would love for my Chaos warriors to get something like black guard or witch elves.

scuddman wrote:
If you want elite, look at elite hand to hand: chaos warriors or saurus warriors. Or Bretonnian knights. Or swordmasters. Dark elves can't compare.


Which are all more expensive!

scuddman wrote:
If you want elite in a different way, look at elite shooting: Dwarves, empire, wood elves...dark elves don't really measure up.
The real strength of the dark elves is somewhere inbetween.
I don't think it's fair that dark elves have elite troops that are specialized/unreliable and that other armies with elite troops have improved variants of their normal trooper.


You can run rings around dwarfs, and chillwind is the *perfect* spell against empire. I have yet to see much WE on DE action.
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So, the army is useable...

Post by Rork »

scuddman wrote:That was a little off topic...now on to the topic.
First off, weak army or not you can still do well if you're a good general. In real life, the points are not fair and your troops may well be outnumbered. That's the way it goes. It's not so bad that the army is unwinnable. You just need to outplay your opponent, or have the terrain stacked in your favor or something. There are little ways around it.

If you look at each unit individually, yeah, it's not a great list. But as a combined effect, you actually have something stronger than the sum of it's parts.
Corsairs are good, but they're an average trooper kind of unit. You give them a chariot and use them with the chariot, and now they'll crush lizardmen sauruses in hand to hand on the charge. Of course, other armies can do this too. You can have a chariot with chaos warriors. The difference is, I can beat your chaos warriors and chariot with my corsairs and chariot.

However, if you normally compare chaos warriors with the corsairs, it's no contest.


Errr...no...comparing units is a very dangerous affair. Corsairs have numbers, ranks and more attacks over your average (same points value) unit of CW.

scuddman wrote:That's pretty much the biggest trick to dark elves.

The biggest asset of the dark elves is the fast stuff. Harpies, scouts, and dark riders are among the best of the fast. If you're clever you can win with an army of all fast stuff, troopers, and tooled up characters. Add in a few hitty units like the chariot or a shooty thing like the bolt thrower and you have an army that's annoyingly difficult to deal with. Even if you start losing you can just fight for the draw.

There are actually quite a few posts about dark elf strengths. There's the war hydra thread I made, several executioner threads, one about using black guard...


And there the nail is hit firmly on the head. If the army can be used, and used well - what is the problem?

Has the impetous for change taken over? You appear to have ways to make these units work...so that makes me think that in the heart of pro-change land there is hope.
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