Army Review: Dark Elves

Hey Guys, Just got back from a 2000 pt fantasy battle between dark elves (me) and Skaven. I won, not losing a single unit. The battle was good. I got to try out a black dragon riding Dreadlord (not the model sadly, just the profile, I just used a base). It performed top tier. Defiantly getting one when I get a few commissions under-way.

So Today, Ive decided to do a quick review on Dark Elves, mostly their strength's and weakness's and what there like in different phases (Move, Magic, shoot and combat)

This may even become a weekly thing but on to the review.

Overall:


Dark Elves aren't an army where you could drop a unit without a plan, or an army with multi purpose units. Everything has one task and you need to know what your doing with it to win, if you just put a unit of witch elves in your army just to eat points, your not going to do well. Everything has a specific purpose and one thing their good at. another thing of note is the pts cost, some things are really cheap (War hydra or witch elves for example) while some are really expensive (Sorceress's, black guard and I suppose that Crossbowmen could fall under this).

Movement:


Dark Elves armies have a slightly higher movement characteristic than normal. As far as I can see, the slowest guys are move 5. However, as cold one knights, they have move 7, 1 pt less than most calvary, but their attack compensates this nicely.

Magic:


Dark elves are very powerful magically. No question. The Dark elves will always be able to cast spells thanks to power of darkness (+D3+1 power dice) which is brilliant in normal game and invaluable in storm of magic. The only 2 downsides are that A) the sorceress's are very expensive (100 pts for a level 1 sorceress) and B) we only have fire, metal, shadow, death and our own lore (sadly no lore of life, our elves stay death) but those aren't too bad.

Shooting:


Dark elves can have lots shooting. The Crossbow regiments can loose 2 bolts instead of just 1 and are also armour piercing. The Corsair regiments can have hand bows (an Uzi Crossbow), even our Bolt throwers can choose to loose 6 shots instead of just 1. They are able to drop lots of shooting on the opponents army. In short, they can kill lots of enemies from range very easily.

Combat:


Now, like I said, its a case of picking the right units. Units like the Hydra, Dreadlord on Black Dragon, Witch elves, Executioners, Black Guard and even dual hand weapon corsairs, they will all turn units to red mist. And, thanks to our Eternal hatred, we are at least getting good hits and in the cases of the witch elves, we get more 6s and so more poisoned attacks.