Blaznak -> Nicely written.
As for my first answer to you, I didnt mean it as bad as it may sound. English is not my native language so if such a sentence as i wrote is considered agresive, insulting or such, im sorry, didnt mean it that way.
As for ideas you wrote. Yeah i agree that tome or dagger are good items for your Supreme Lady. My only thought is if its not too "over the top".
As for the main topic, Sorry if i get it the wrong way and simply wrote roster to show you how it may be build instead of giving ideas and explaining why. On the contrary to MiniGrift i think that DE batalion is quite a lot to work with. HereĀ“s why:
You have 28 wariors. Those can be done as one big block of 28 spears, 28 xbows (lets say split them in blocks of 18 and 10) or simply 10 + 18 xbows + spears depends whether you want more shooting or more cheap bodys. Or block of 20 xbows and simply saving 8 wariors for later. As for command and stuff: depends whether you play scenarios, you are planning sticking character there,...
Musician is IMHO always good, relatively cheap, allows quick reform which for xbows is much needed and sometimes can help you if CC ends in a tie.
Standard: For fighty unit always. For a unit of crossbows i would say not unless you play scenarios (Blood and glory)
Champion: for xbows IMHO only good if you are planing sticking character there so the champ can accept chalenge and protect char from punishment. In a fighty unit i would say ok.
Corsairs: Im a big fan of FCG SSS AHW corsairs. relatively cheap, relatively well protected (for DE unit) LOTS of attacks so it can deal with lots of cheap bodys like skavens or goblins. There is a posibility to make them witch handbows but you have to ask someone else about this as im corsairs-AHW-SSS guy
. And theres a cherry on top because there is quite a simple conversion to make shades so you can have corsairs 15 man strong, as Blaznak suggested and make shades out of 5 guys.
Knights: I think that 5 vanilla knights are good. relatively cheap, heavy hitting. Musician can be usefull to allow them quick refom but IMHO they dont need it. Taking him for CC ties? I would rather take another warrior and leave CoKs as cheap as they can be. If you want to spend points here Minigrift gave you some good ideas how to spend them.
OR and thats one silly crazy idea, you can make 2 Co Chariots which will have a decent punch in such a small format using cold ones. lots of plastycard and 4 wariors. Only trouble here are wheels. On the top, this way you will have great parts to make great BSB using another wariors legs, knights body + corsair banner.
As for character choices. On 1000pts format you can get:
Dreadlord (perhaps on cold one) kitted out to be "unkillable" + BSB
Supreme sorceres + BSB
dreadlord + sorceres
It depends only whether you want "better" leadership (meaning having BSB) and/or having decent magic defense/ofense (I guess theres not much difference between lvl2 sorceres+tome of furion and lvl3 sorceres) and/or great fighty char. Personally i prefer BSB+sorceres since its a shame not using those precious power dices and i like to play it safe with the BSB Ld rerolls.