so anyone can join in helping me turn all their tactics against them
here is what they put and what you need to look out for
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DARK ELVES
DE are elves and as such have high point costs for units etc, a bit comparable to Lizardmen. So even a 3000pts battle has a relatively overseeable amount of units in it. They were revised on some points, but generally stayed the same a the army goes. DE have nasty magic and some nasty HtH units, combined with nasty shooting. XBows with multishots, RBTs manned by high BS crew are some things to worry about. DE need to dictate the manouvering in the battle, so they can pick their fights. Needless to say: don't let them! You can gain the edge by keeping a solid battle line and using your superior HtH abilities.
DE Characters:
Chances are your opponent will be using a lord level character with LD10. This means most Ld test with him around will be easily passed. Since most units have LD8, even units out the range of the general will be hard to scare. So don't count on your fearcausers to get any fearchecks failed. DE will have to be killed the hard way most of the time. Because the magic can be quite nasty and is characterfull for DE, expect at least 2 sorceresses sometimes even combined with a High Sorceress. Magic defense is known for Lizardmen, use marks of Tepok or go Magic Heavy yourself. Use the usual Wizardhunters to kill them asap, terradons, FSoD JSoD or Chameleons are your friends here. I haven't yet met the Assassin yet, but mostly his characters are no match for the Saurus characters in HtH.
Core Troops:
DE are the typical T3 troops, with spears or those annoying Xbows. Saurus Warriors with their S4 T4 should win out on them in HtH, but first soften them a bit with your Salamanders. The S3 -1 AS hits are very effective against all his troops, taking out troops a rank at a time. Try to get all his blocks of down below Rank Bonus 3. Because the low T, direct damage magic is also very usefull, some of the S3 spells can have a nasty effect. Remember that with their M of 5 they will outmanouver your Saurus Warriors. Using screens of skinks will be usefull to keep the initiative on your side.
Of course there are also the really annoying fast cavalry DEs. These run around with 18" movement, using march and shoot doubleshot Xbows. Since the only unit that has more flexibility are our terradons, count on being outmanouvered/flank by a unit such as this. They take away our precious Rank Bonusses, so it's no shame to dedicate a unit of 2 to protect you against this. We have poisoned doubleshot skinks as well, we have terradons, magic and salamanders that can hurt those really bad. They are a prime target, right after those pesky sorceresses.
Special Troops:
DE has Shades which will battle for the prime spots to hide scouts in. Skirmishing, good BS again with Xbow will mean twice the amount of shots as there are scouts. These guys can really mess up your marching movement. Being skirmishers, they are most easily hit by your salamanders, but they might have other prime targets. Using skinks against them might be a very tactical battle on manouvring, which DEs must be good at. So use your wits wisely. Getting them to flee is hard with their LD8 and they're very likely to rally, unlike skinks. So another annoying unit you have to plan against.
Next up: Witch Elves led by a Hag: My opponent used lots of them. They're frenzied, have 2 handweapons, are pothe hag has an extra attack. Needless to say, don't get attacked by these if you can help it, especially not while fully ranked or worse, in your flank! As long as they are frenzied, they're tough, so you will have to win combat against these asap. Then they loose frenzy and become more easy prey. Before they get into combat is the best time to limit their ranks. They are very vulnerable to Salamander poison or any other shooting/magic. Take off as many ranks as you can before they're in HtH, less Combat Resolution is good. You can even try and get some terradons to be charged, they will have to because of frenzy. Flee and get them out of position on the edge of the table.
DE also have ColdOnes and a coldone chariot as well. These are not as expensive as ours and they might not be played because of the stupidity. Unreliable troops aren't a DEs thing really. Prime targets for Kroxigors or GW wielding Saurus characters. Attacks negating AS are also good, magical or otherwise, as are Salamander hits to some extend. Your Coldone knights will kick their asses as well.
Harpies: Another annoying unit! These however are easy prey for your skinks with blowpipes, shoot them down! Your terradons might kick their asses as well. Likely for us, we have no warmachines that are not also scary monsters, so just be carefull with your Skink Priests.
Rare Troops:
Most DEs will take the Black Guard. Stubborn with LD9, almost as good as Stubborn LD8. Don't count on these guys running away any time soon. You'll probably have to kill them all. Luckily most of your HtH troops are quite capable of doing this. They're still T3, so S4 or S5 hits will certainly cause some damage. Killing some ranks before HtH will also help.
A War Hydra is DE terror causing monster. It is a large target, so it's especially vulnerable to Skinks poison. Too bad it has a breath template shooting attack, that discounts the Skirmishers -1 to hit. If you decide to attack the monster with skinks, you will have to get up pretty close. be sure to spread out your models as much as possible, such that the breath template can only cover 2 model max. It has a 4+ save and 6W, so it will take a while to take it down this way. But it's usually worth it to spend a Skinks unit of it. 60 pts holding up 220 pts is a good trade-off. The Skinks pose a thread he might not be able to ignore and he might not get rid off easily. With M6 the model can move pretty quickly and then shoot. Getting this charged in your flank is not a good thing.
Well that's about it for DEs. Use whatever armylist you like, magic heavy or light, but be sure to at least have magic defense and wizardkillers. Salamanders are almost a must, they really rule against the T3 low AS DE infantry. Be sure to use the DEs own tactics of the manouvere game against him, try to set up charges 2 or 3 units to 1, getting so sure victories. Once you gain the upper hand, you have a high chance of wiping them of the board completely, since DEs are so expensive pointwise.
By hhouwaard
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they also have some stuff on the cos
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Overview:
A) What do they have?
Lord Choices: The Slannesh High Sorceres is slightly different from the normal Druchii one. The main difference is: She can take Slannesh Magic if she chooses to get the mark of Slannesh. However this makes her immune to psychology and thus inable to use flee as a charge reaction.
Keeper of Sercrets: Well, he is fast and he can take ranks, but he does cost an assload of points and can be killed with an Anti Demon Oldblood (Anti Demon blade + Bane head:P) and he cant run away to.
Anointed: This guy will propably ride something, the quesiton is his equipment.
A Combination of quikiening Blood and the Draich of Dark power seems to be the most apparent one.
However this Combo will leave him without much defense apart from WS8 T4 and a 5+ ward.
Note that a Saurus warrior would have a 1 out of nine chance to do a wound to the annointed compared to a 2 of 9 agaisnt a CoK. Allocating some attacks on him is quite an idea.
However, this guy is immune to psycholgy meaning that he cant run away.
The Thing is, 5 "WS8 S7 alwas strike first with Deadblow" attacks hurt a lot.
I would really recommend using some kind of magic support to eay this, Lore of Metal or Lore of Light come to mind.
Heroes:
Well, they can take on Aspriing Slannesh Champion. If they take him they will also take one unit of Chaos Warriors or Knights. This will ease your life a lot.
You rock Chaos warriors if you get the charge, they may be remotely usefull agasint other armies but are wasted agasint LZM.
Core:
Devoted of Slannesh:
Ok, they are bascially witchelfs who are immune to psychology, have no poison cannot hide assasins but they do get sopoforic music. I gues that somehting like -1 to your morale or somehting like that. If this is the -1 to hit thingy we propably have a problem. A Saurus would have a 4 out of 9 chance to kill a devoted, a Devoted would have a 3 out of 9 against the basic Saurus. However the Devoted are going first, turning the affair into somehting pretty risky.
If Sopoforic music is just some kind of the more basic -1 to LD stuff the odds are
6 out of 9 for the Saurus, more than enough to negate the I disadvantadge.
Shades: This means that they can fill up a part of their core slots with scouts, ensuring some serious nastiness. They also get Marauders of Chaos, who will propably replace the Spear or handweapon wielding DE warrior completely, giving them more nummber more hitting power but less speed.
I seriosly doubt to see much Daemonetes. Compared to Devoted ones they gain +1 S loose an attack get a wardsave and suffer from a big bunch of Daemon problems like instability.
In addition they do cost more points so I doubt that we are going to see much of them.
De Warriors: Normal warriors who can be made immune to psychology for an extra cost. Nothing to special.
Elites: This is were it gets tricky for the DE.
They have Dark Riders and CoK like every Druchii else has (Well, every other DE has the Riders in the core part) in Addition they have foot CKs and Daemonettes on steeds.
The CKs are a boon. If the DE takes them you have way less to worry about.
The Daemon steeds are another matter.
The rape every other light cav in CC. Even Southland Riders with the Mark of Sotek. They cause fear too, but cant flee as a charge reaction which is quite bad for fast cav. They are also extremly fast (Movement 10). They look pretty terrifying on paper, but you could get 4 Terradons with a brave for the same cost.
I would still rank the Terradons higher.
Rare:
Well, they get Chaos Spawns and Chaos knights in addition to the RBTs.
I would propably be thankfull to see them, less RBTs less really dangerous DE units.
What kind of army are we going to see?
The thing I came up first would be 2 units of Devoted (Size 18) 2 units of Marauders (size 10) 2 units of Shades (Size 5) a big CoK Block with the annointed and a nice standart bearer. The remainging qeusiton would be: 2 mages and 2x Dark Riders or 1 Mage and 2x Daemonettes on steeds.
As this Army should be quite easy to play (compared to MsU) a lot of ordinary DE generals will propably follow this route.
The Counters are the following:
I would definitly go for a Slann.
Magic is going to be invaluable in order to wreck the highly expensive T3 unarmoured Daemons in the enemys army.
A fully tooled Annointed cost 454 points on a Coldone, meaning that he wont have much Magic if he takes him.
Proceed to blast his Light cav and the main units to shreds.
Sallies, Chamskinks and many other kinds of shooting stuff will work very nice.
If you blast enough, he will go impatient and charge without infatry backup which should lead to his doom.
An imporant thing: The Annointed will have to take out the Slann in order to get his points in.
You should consider to use him as a bait.
Other Types of Armies:
He could also go for the MSU route.
Using blocks of Marauders supported by devoted ones as well as some serios shooting + Magic. However they dont have the ability to field a Dragon or a Manticore so an important part of the MSU concept is missing.
On the other hand they could use the greater Demon.
However this is quite risky agasint LZM armies as they can a shoot him kill him in CC or c) cast him to death.
However, I am goign to wait for the first games agasint this type of armies in order to get a clearer picture on how they play with the marauders.
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