Ever fought against DE

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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Senluthan
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Ever fought against DE

Post by Senluthan »

Well, we have our nice topic "Extraordinary druchii gentlemen". And allways when people refer to other GW forums, they cry cheese to our Army book and our combinations we can field.
But have any of you ever tried playing against some broken DE combinations? Is it any worse/better than what the other armies can field?
Is it because DE generals are better? Or how come?
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Post by Malmorte »

I also play WoC. Lets just say dark elves can be made very nasty. Look at tournament results, especially non-ETC. They are top tier.

An army with a Lv.4 shadow sorceress and sac dagger, a second sorceress with shadow (to miscast with mindrazor), a cauldron, a good 30-40 man unit of spears to feed the lv.4, a couple of units of 14-15 witch elves, a units of either black guard or cold one knights for punching , a few harpies and the ubiquitous pair of hydras, and an unkillable pendant lord at 2.5 makes for a ferocious army.

Just think...we have +5 casting dice with the dagger. We can cast every shadow spell in each phase easily. Or use over 6 dice to ensure mindrazor gets through, and with witch elves they will dice up any foe. The hydras are too cheap, and are very dangerous with horrific damage and are hard to kill.
We have a very deadly army.
That being said, we aren't undefeatable, but yes we are very strong.
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Post by Saintofm »

I have, with mixed results.

Always take a hydra as they can do some real dammage (I've killed what paid for itself was flanking a unit of knights in a 1500 game, thuse tearing them adn their lord learder apart) but it has also taken out a unit of qualalers followed by a unit of thunderers in one game; a unit of rat ogres when it was with a chariot, and a Dwarf Lord followed by a organ gun in the last game i played.


However being a large target, I took his down with a couple well placed bolt thrower shots.

Pretty much exploit our weaknesses. We get flanked, we're screwed. Elves generally do not have much armor (between the three elf armies, it seems a 5+ is the most common) so repeater crossbows work wonders.

Against hydras, another option is a group of shades with an assassin with rending stars. and manbane, or just manbane in general as it makes the user's strength 1 higher then the enemies toughness, at a max of S6 (so your ASF fighter wounds him on a 3+ and since this also includes armor modifiers, you also get through the scaly skin). The rending stars add +1 strength to the users attack, and is added after the manbane effects, so for all intensive purposes your assassin has 3 strength 7 range attacks.
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Post by Noble korhedron »

No wonder you people love Manbane!! And of course I assume those throwing stars are poisoned?
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Post by Mrdark12 »

Me and my friend swapped armies for a few games and let me tell you fighting against my own list was pure hell.

The Unkillable Lord, wave after wave of crossbow shots and shades wiping out my war machines. The dwarf army I was using, the warriors and longbeards just bounced off off the 40 shots the Corsairs got for S&S and the Longbeards vs the BG, the BG might not be the toughest unit or most long lasting but 10 BG (I shot 10 out with handguns) they still held them long enough for the Knights to tear though them from the flank.

Unkillable Dreadlord vs Skaven Fellblade lord, best fight I've ever seen (Dreadlord won in case you want to know).

So yeah, the Dark Elves have some horrific combos.
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Post by Red... »

I've played DE versus DE a few times. I've found that:

- RxBs are nightmarish against us. S3 multishots with AP against our T3 and poor armour save troops = lots of casualties
- Dark Elf magic is very hard hitting and hard to stop. Power of Darkness with sacrificial daggers and rolling as many power dice as you want is very nasty.
- Malus Darkblade's attacks are horrible against Cold One Knights. Wounding on 2s, re-rolling failed wounds, with no armour save allowed. Ouch!

I've not played enough to see some of the other strengths out there, but I can imagine that a Dreadlord with Pendant and Crown would be a headache to deal with.

Noble Korhedron: manbane replaces the poison on the rending stars, so they cannot also be poisoned.
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Post by Saintofm »

Noble Korhedron wrote:No wonder you people love Manbane!! And of course I assume those throwing stars are poisoned?


Yeah, it has it's moments, but it has it's short comings.

Because it makes your strength +1 to their toughness, if you were already that (Assassins are S4, most man sized foes will be T3 such as elves) you are not going to get any bonuses. So Against battle ready lords and heros (99% of elves excluded) and against dwarves, orcs, and monstrous unit you can have some fun, but in reality it is best used against monsters and warmachines.
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Post by Malmorte »

What does the OP mean here; have we fought druchii with our own druchii, or other armies against druchii? I think he means the latter...

I play other armies as well, and if druchii take every combo we have we are one the most broken armies around, with skaven
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Post by Omnichron »

malmorte wrote:Look at tournament results, especially non-ETC. They are top tier.


Yes, they are ontop of things in ETC too, where the DE have restrictions, and some of those considered weaker are buffed. There were two armies who got ontop last year by quite big margins. That was the Wood Elves on the top, with Dark Elves just behind. There was one WE player in the tournament who got to choose most of his matchups (I've heard), while the majority of players was Dark Elves. I'd say that Dark Elves armies were the best there by far.

It'll be interesting to see the result of this year though.

From the DE against DE perspective, I've personally started to use metal lore more to get an edge against some of the typical DE "cheese" (Against other armies too of course). Searing doom is perfect to snipe a flying pegasus lord as well as taking down a hydra over time. Also, that gives me the chance to increase my armor against the RxB's... I also use shadow so I can pit a CoB or hydra, and generally debuff my opponent. I've found Miasma and Enfeeblement to be particulary good against other DE foes, as it gives me the needed edge when the somewhat same units clash into eachother... of course, I expect to see shadow from my opponent as well, so I get that against myself too.

As for the DE player being better than the others, I don't really think that we are better... I think we'd like to think that we are, but the fact is most likely the opposite. I believe those with the old army book in 7th edition who managed to get high in the tournament rankings, were excellent players. Underdogs who won tournaments. Now we just use and abuse items and units that makes it easy for us to win (Sacrifical dagger, pendant, cheap hydras, mindrazor and so on).

I am somehow happy these days about the ETC rules in the tournaments I get into, as it means that my victories is based more on skill than those easy winning components. I still dislike some of those restritcions though, as I'd just rather ban the problematic items or combinations directly instead of limiting all of them. It's sad that a DE player who likes to run things outside the box, gets restricted as well.
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Post by Senluthan »

So basically what I hear people say is that our army is broken... And that we can probably field the most mean combinations!
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Post by Omnichron »

I'd rather say we have some broken combinations, while the army in general is alright... some parts of the army could even be improved and we should get some more choices when it comes to taking down monsters and heavy armor.
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
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Post by Malmorte »

a broken druchii army will beat anyone else's "broken" army. Its the pendant, double hydras and unstoppable magic that does it.
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Post by Mrdark12 »

Personally not so sure about the magic phase, my main opponents are vampires, High Elves (With Teclis) and beastmen and my magic phase just dies compared to any of those three.
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Post by Cold73 »

Personally i dont think DE are really broken...
sure we can put some mean combinations on the table..but can you name me an army that cannot do that?

2 Hydra's...sure nasty.....oh wait....Fire Mage or unit of archers with flaming banner and they will be gone before you can even reach the other half of the table. (which seems to happen to me a lot)

Unkillable Dread Lord....hmm...unkillabel indeed....last 2 times i used that one he got killed in the 2nd round....Death Magic and Metal magic are some things he is very weak against.
Looking at high elves who can field a unkillable archmage.....which can only be killed by magic...and could hold up our Dread Lord for ever.
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Post by Saintofm »

Also against dwarves, even if you get a full 12 power dice a couple turns ina row (i did that, still trying to figure that out) an enemy dwarf army can still own you pretty bad with rune smiths taking as mane runes of dispelling they can get their hand on, and a variety of other runes that make casting spells all the more fun to try and get off without a double 6.

But that's a different problem for another thread.

Knights and chariots also have their problems.

Even when tooled up, they both have basicly the same issue: Only good on the charge.

Chariots can't march, so are going to be relativly slow when compared to the rest of the army. Next you have to charge something to make use of it's impact hits and spears. After that, hatred, impact hits, and the +1 strength bonus to spears for charging have run their course, and if you are charged you only get the hatred for a turn. There is also the fact chariots will only win via combat resolution, so it is good to either have them teaming up with another unit if you have one, or have a couple charge the same unit, or both.

Even if you get 6/7 (scythed wheels give you+1 impact hit or +1 strength, I can't remember in 8th ed) and get some wounds in with the charioteers adn cold ones, that's 4 attacks + a D6, and a charge. You enemy will most likly be rank and file troops so they will have banners and ranks and a musician + what ever wounds they deal. Our chariots wont outrank em, so they get steadfast most of the time as well.


As for knights, lie all heavy cavalry they tend to get bogged down if they don't do enough dammage on the charge. While a high weapons skill, S4 attacks, and a higher I are enough for most battles, the fact is their beast on the charge as their lances give them just enough of a strenght bonus to deal some hurt on most monsters, much less enemy infantry and cavalry such as minatours or knights of the errent.


Like most cavalry, they are going to be pricy, s you probably wont' see more then 7-10, may be 12 in any given game, with maybe a little more in large games. Also like all cavalry, they large flanks, so getting a good side charge is like dropping a recking ball on a Shelby Cobra.

Oh, and the mounts are stupid, so the rider has to worry about when they can't control their mount.
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Post by Noble korhedron »

@cold73: Were you not able to give said Dreadlord the Dragonhelm? Confers a 2+ ward save versus flaming attacks - i.e. pretty much everything in the lores of fire and metal...
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Post by Flash29 »

Cold73 wrote:Personally i dont think DE are really broken...
sure we can put some mean combinations on the table..but can you name me an army that cannot do that?

2 Hydra's...sure nasty.....oh wait....Fire Mage or unit of archers with flaming banner and they will be gone before you can even reach the other half of the table. (which seems to happen to me a lot)

Unkillable Dread Lord....hmm...unkillabel indeed....last 2 times i used that one he got killed in the 2nd round....Death Magic and Metal magic are some things he is very weak against.
Looking at high elves who can field a unkillable archmage.....which can only be killed by magic...and could hold up our Dread Lord for ever.


yeah my dread carries soulrender, so he couldn't, but i get your point.

then again, greenskins have no access to flaming spells, and their archers can't take magic banners (exept for arrer boys, but, who wants arrer boys).

they also son't have death or metal magic, so the unkillable dread becomes unkillable. not all army's are high elves and dark elves, some really struggle with choice. keep that in mind.


saintofm wrote:Knights and chariots also have their problems.

Even when tooled up, they both have basicly the same issue: Only good on the charge.

Chariots can't march, so are going to be relativly slow when compared to the rest of the army. Next you have to charge something to make use of it's impact hits and spears. After that, hatred, impact hits, and the +1 strength bonus to spears for charging have run their course, and if you are charged you only get the hatred for a turn. There is also the fact chariots will only win via combat resolution, so it is good to either have them teaming up with another unit if you have one, or have a couple charge the same unit, or both.

Even if you get 6/7 (scythed wheels give you+1 impact hit or +1 strength, I can't remember in 8th ed) and get some wounds in with the charioteers adn cold ones, that's 4 attacks + a D6, and a charge. You enemy will most likly be rank and file troops so they will have banners and ranks and a musician + what ever wounds they deal. Our chariots wont outrank em, so they get steadfast most of the time as well.


As for knights, lie all heavy cavalry they tend to get bogged down if they don't do enough dammage on the charge. While a high weapons skill, S4 attacks, and a higher I are enough for most battles, the fact is their beast on the charge as their lances give them just enough of a strenght bonus to deal some hurt on most monsters, much less enemy infantry and cavalry such as minatours or knights of the errent.



thats not dark elf troops thats troop types, exept for the stupidity
chariots cost a 100 points are durable, and don't lose attacks with wounds, you can't expect them to destroy a unit of 20 on the charge much like you can't expect a unit of repeater crossbows to to do the same, chariots are support troops, with only tomb kings being the exeption afaik. there not bad, but they do require a main unit to tag allong.

as for knights, we have great knights. you're losing punch after the charge? banner of hag greaf will fix that for you. again its the troop type not the army.
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Post by Paksos »

I'm only now getting back into Druchii after a three year sabbatical (friends were getting fed up of playing me so I moved to Vampires and then my beloved Asrai).

With Vampires and Asrai I had great success against the Dark Elves though. Vampires simply have too many bodies for the Druchii elites to wade through and inevitably lost men to my unbreakable step up attacks. Meanwhile Asrai are, in my opinion, the only army who can take on - and beat - Druchii in the movement phase. Fighting a friend's Dark Elves I would lead him on a merry dance all around the board, all the while sniping off his many small units through blistering amounts of Str4 bow shots and finally jump a couple of his units on the last turn to give me a clear breathing spaceof victory points.

He didn't look like he enjoyed those games but then any man who brings two Hydras to a 1,500 pts tournament deserves whatever he gets! ;)
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Post by Sweeping death »

I´m of the opinion that DE have a good army with some broken combos, which is very different from having a broken army.

If you just take the points costs of several of our units and mathhammer them against the same points of enemy opposition, we loose more often than not. Of course, we can get the buffs etc. But so can every b.. army out there too.

That said, how is it there is so much hate specifically against DE because of that? While at non comp tournaments they are always top tier, they are not really THE most top army (as far as I have seen, DE are 3rd overall). Skaven, Lizardmen, HE, WOC, Ogres all have their own dosis of cheese. Comparing to HPAs, Slanns, Teklis and Mournfang cavalry, are Hydras really that much worse? Ward save spammed Chosen are soo much softer than COB Witches. There are really tons of examples.

I don´t like this whole "tier" thing very much, as I find the game balance quite acceptable, but if we have to always take the tournament results as a guide, let the armies that consistently score higher than DE get the most blame first.
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