Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Discuss the art of war for the Dark Elves and the inferior races that dare to oppose them here.

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Ramza1987
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Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Hello guys.

After a really long break due to being poor and life itself, im finally able to come back to fight wars, win battles and get slaves for my black arks.

I already started checking for army models on the internet (For me are quite expensive as taxes for imported stuff is stupid high) and got a few things with decent prices; but before i continue to get more stuff i want to get some advices so i dont get models that dont go with the playing "strategy" i have in mind.

My idea is to use mostly mobile models either with shooting capabilities or heavy hitters, although some infantry is welcome too as sometimes it will be needed.

Is Getting D. Riders, shades, Warlocks, CoK and CoC, Hydras and Kbeasts a good idea?
Would i need something else, besides this, in order to have something that works? If that is the case. What is reccomended?

Thanks in advance for the help, advice and general wisdom. :D
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

Before committing scarce money to expensive models, check with your gaming community (which I may assume would be likely to face similar concerns).
The issue is to determine which rules you're playing.

1. Warhammer has progressed until 8th edition. But last year, GW abruptly abandoned that version of the game.
If you play WH 8th with your gaming community, be aware that even if models are likely to remain available, rules (rulebook, army books) are no longer sold nor supported; it gets real hard to expand to new armies, to get answers to rule requests, tactics advice...
Also, 8th ed was not greatly balanced. Under 8th edition, some units did work better than others; you might invest in models only to find them sub-par on the battlefield.

2. When GW abandoned 8th edition, some infuriated tournament players decided to created their own 9th edition. The name is 9th Age.
They are achieveing impressive quality in making the rules error-free, and in balancing the game between armies and internally for each units within armies.
They will make sure all models available are playable. However, they have not stabilized their rules, so it is too early to give any advice.
In particular, under 9th Age, some units might perform well with specific settings (I mean, such infantry might perform well only in numbers 30 to 40 and with the help of such or such boost).

3. GW created a totally new game, Age of Sigmar.
Rules are downloadable for free, and that includes army books describing all former WH units.
The rules are made much more simple than before, and require much less models to get some fun.
Your gaming community might find easier to start AoS rather than the more demanding 8th or 9th Age.
Good news, most units are better balanced than 8th army books (except a couple of named characters), so you can play really what you wish.
Bad (?) news, the game has no balance on its own, so you may play only casual games with friends, not competitive games against opponents.
Bad news, the associated fluff has become high fantasy, we lost the depth of the world-that-was. Well, no big deal, we still recall most of WH setting, and 9th age is preparing a new setting, in a slightly different world (no more Druchii because this is GW's TM) but looking like the old setting.


In any case, all the models you have bought are very likely to be playable.
It is just prudent not to invest too much before you and your gaming community have stabilized in which direction you will go, the three main possibilities being described above.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Ok, my bad, i forgot to mention that my gaming group plays under 8th edition rules at the moment, so i will build the army based on that.
I was digging a little on the forum and saw that 8th was abandoned, and some players were creating their own set of rules, also checked on some army lists and battle reports (really like what Lord Drakon has on that matter).

I have a copy of the rules i need and my gaming group has the rules needed to play, so no worries on that matter.

Thanks for the feedback :D
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

In that light,
D. Riders, shades, Warlocks make a very fluid game. Take small units of 5, muso and shields on DR.
CoK and CoC, Hydras and Kbeasts add lots of strength. As CoK is the only large hitting unit, I may suggest to make it large, full command, and add characters (BSB) in order to make that unit work better.

The remaining issue will be the 25% core.
If you take WE, then it is recommanded to take a CoB too, with the unpleasant results to increase the rare % and losing the mobile feeling.
Core infantrymen do not perform that well, and they are not in light with your style.
Instead, you could take a couple of units of RXBmen. It is useful to have units to make good use of buildings, and to be able to garrison the tower if you play that scenario.
You might consider either small units of 10, muso, which are disposable.
Or you could take a larger unit of 20, FC, shields, able to defend their pennant when you play the scenario with fortitude.

As for characters, probably a CO-mounted BSB and possibly dreadlord;
and a sorceress in complement to your warlocks, which could be mobile on steed, or on foot with RXBmen, casting at distance.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

That is more or less in line with the idea i had, i know from reading this forum, that going magic heavy is not such a good idea, but. Is it too risky to go Shooting heavy, with RXBmen, RBT, hydras, shades or DRs, helped by a couple of sorceresses and warlocks?

Getting a Unit of WE with Cauldron was something i thought about mostly after reading some of Drakon's Battle reports, i know WE are not very mobile, or tough, but they offer quite a punch against a lot of things and Cauldron makes them even better at that, i also thought of getting some sisters too, for those Battles that require less mobility and more punch or something to hold a unit in place.

A highly mobile army shooting/magic heavy was the idea i have when i stopped playing, i think 7th was the edition at that point, unfortunately i see that that on 8th edition it is no longer that good of an idea. Which is making me think how to change my original idea with the new rules and units
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

Overall, DE have easy access to many S3 attacks, and struggle to get higher S attacks.
Too strong an emphasis on shooting, and you get only S3. Too many core troops and you get only S3.
If you manage to enhance your many weak attacks somehow, or to soften the targets, then you win. That's what magic may achieve.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Yeah, that was in fact my whole idea with my first army build concept. To use highly mobile units and shooting along with magic users that debuff enemiesso they are easy prey for my shooting and for my damaging magic too (obviously a few charges every now and then, as you cant probably win a battle just with shooting and running around; unless killing opponent player out of boredom counts XD)
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Ramza1987
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Sorry for double post, but this needs a little bump/update.

I plan on having enough types of models, so i can play varied armies with different strategies and/or purposes, but more or less focusing on two ideas.
1- The highly mobile shooty army, supported by a decent amount of spell casters.
2- More infantry based army, with an anvil or two that can also punch a hole in enemy hordes/units, and a few Hard hitting hammers to flank charge into oblivion anything that is in combat; also supported by a decent amount of spell casters (yeah, i love spellcasters).

Any suggestions, as to what would be a good idea to have?
I already have close to 20 warriors (spears), 10-12 Dark Riders and 10 Executioners (maybe a few more i cant remember).

Im up to suggestions, advices, or anything the collective wisdom of the forum can provide.
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

We discussed about the shooty army already.
For the infantry part, the general idea I remember from batreps read here in D.net resumes in:
- 25-30 WE supported by CoB deliver an insane number of attacks; so many that being S3 is no longer an issue.
- 25-30 Execs supported by CoB cut anything like a hot knife into warm butter.
- A single COB suffices; you place it in whichever unit requires it most.
As for magic, Mindrazor with WE = :killed: :killed: :killed: :killed: :killed:
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

I will need to check on the rest of the battle magic lores, but Shadow seems to be incredibly awesome.
And Okkam's Mindrazor is fantastic for Dark Elves; as it allows you to 1- Hit incredibly hard or 2- Use other useful spells as that will be probably the one dispelled xD
The idea of.. stupid amounts of attacks coupled with Okkam's Mindrazor, is seriously tempting indeed.

So the best idea then is to; use WE as Anvil to get an enemy unit stuck in place and obliterate it between the WE blending and Executioners high str and Killing blow attacks?
The only problem i see with that tactic is that it would be REALLY obvious to any player but the most newbies (like me xD)

What other units should be taken in any of the two army ideas in order to have a 2000-2500 army completed?
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

These advice sprung from memories.
You might get some more precise advice by digging from the batrep sub-forum.

Back to your question,
the skill is indeed to get your large unit to fight the appropriate foe.
To achieve that, deployment is key: a good practice is to have many drops, so that when your opponent is done, you are still in position to chose where to drop your large block.
To get these drops, the best is to get many units of 5 harpies or DR. Furthermore, they will serve you to hamper the opponent's maneuver so that you may get the fight you wish.
Easier said than done, and against a clever opponent, the WE will be lured by a frenzy-bait unit to chase butterflies around the battlefield. For that reason, some people privileged Execs, boosted by the CoB only at appropriate time.

Another possibility is to have two large units, and the CoB in the middle able to join whichever will get the hardest fight.
Avoiding one large unit may be feasible without too much difficulty, avoiding two of them gets harder.

In any case, DE win by winning the chaff war: kill opponent's chaff with magic and shooting, then you may use your chaff to control the enemy's maneuver and not be bothered by the opponent's.

<talking from what I've read here, myself I cannot claim much result..>
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

This makes me realize i need to start learning the words like Chaff, because i have no idea what that is yet. !lol! !lol! !lol!
Learning the vocabulary should be one of the basics :P
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Calisson »

Chaff is a small, expandable unit.
Used to get after weak, annoying targets such as warmachines, and more importantly, to control enemy's maneuvre.
Winds never stop blowing, Oceans are borderless. Get a ship and a crew, so the World will be ours! Today the World, tomorrow Nagg! {--|oBrotherhood of the Coast!o|--}
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Thanks! i will try to get the full glossary of words xD
Tell the rest of the people in the forum to come and say hi or any advice (i dont bite (too much) ).
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Amboadine »

Ramza1987 wrote:Thanks! i will try to get the full glossary of words xD
Tell the rest of the people in the forum to come and say hi or any advice (i dont bite (too much) ).


We do come and say hi. Calisson pretty much covered your questions on this one though :)
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Amboadine wrote:
Ramza1987 wrote:Thanks! i will try to get the full glossary of words xD
Tell the rest of the people in the forum to come and say hi or any advice (i dont bite (too much) ).


We do come and say hi. Calisson pretty much covered your questions on this one though :)


I knew i had to say something that hits the population here in order to make them say something !lol! !lol! !lol!
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Darkprincess »

Many of the people I've spoken to are of the opinion that WFB peaked with 7th edition (personally, I prefer 6th for myself) and are still playing it. 8th edition needs pretty big units in order to work properly (9th Age seems to be similar in that respect, which isn't so great for MSU players like myself). The question of which version you want to play is going to be determined by a number of factors.

First of all, are you a competitive player that likes to play tournaments or in other organised events, or are you the sort of player (like myself) that has immersed themselves in the WFB world setting and the rich 30-year heritage of fluff that goes with it?

If you fall into the first category, then you'll probably find lots of gaming clubs that still play 8th edition (and maybe some that play 7th - because 7th edition was just fine - 8th edition (IMO) seems crappy by comparison). Or you could go and have a look at the 9th Age stuff which is coming along very well indeed and is also supported by an increasing number of clubs, particularly for tournament players.

Also, if the fluff is not important to you, then Age of Sigmar might be kind of OK, though to me it seems to be a very dumbed-down, kiddy-oriented system (WFB 7th Edition had a rulebook of something like 150 pages - age of Sigmar is just 4 pages (honestly), and IMO is a rubbish game system filled with stupid space marine look-alike models and craptastic 40K-ish rules, but ultimately that's just my opinion, and everybody should feel free to form their own).

On the other hand....

If you are interested in the fluff, then you can't really go further than 8th Edition - I'm not even going to give you my opinions of GW after the totally heinous hatchet-rape they have done with the fluff after 8th edition - don't even get me started on this! :evil: :evil:

I play the fluff more than I play the rules, so it's 6th/7th for me. I love what the 9th Age guys are doing and I really wish them well with the project but at this stage, they're more concerned with getting the rules balanced than they are with writing good fluff - having said that, they have released a complete (ie. with the fluff) army book for Undying Dynasties (That's Tomb Kings to you and I), which is really very good indeed so I'm watching this very closely.

But as far as Warhammer Fantasy is concerned, after 8th edition, it's not Warhammer Fantasy anymore, simple as that :(

GW have screwed the pooch in ways that may one day cost them very heavily...
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

I haven't seen much of 7th edition myself so i cant really say much about it, and 6th edition was the one i played the most. Rules wise it was really good and were it wasn't it was errata'ed to improve it. Fluff wise it was also cool enough for me to get me hooked with the Dark Elves, because it was the Fluff that made me want to play themas an army.
I also read a lot of the story behind WH in general but more so about DE and i really like how it was done, although i dont feel the same way about end times and that part of the story though.

The thing is that the gaming group i have (and there is no other choices in my country) is playing with 8th edition rules, so i have to use them when playing with them.

On another subject, you are totally right, GW screwed up with WHFB and, AoS seems like an over-simplified version of 40k to me and i really dislike that.
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Darkprincess »

Ramza1987 wrote:I haven't seen much of 7th edition myself so i cant really say much about it, and 6th edition was the one i played the most. Rules wise it was really good and were it wasn't it was errata'ed to improve it.


7th wasn't really a major change from 6th to be honest. There were a few relatively minor tweaks but it was more like a 6.1 edition really. The main things that come to mind immediately are the requirement to have your units at least 5 models wide (which most of our group ignored anyway as it would have meant building new movement trays for many of our units) and the inability to give beastmen Marks of the chaos gods (again, this rule was largely ignored by most of the players I knew at the time)

Ramza1987 wrote:On another subject, you are totally right, GW screwed up with WHFB and, AoS seems like an over-simplified version of 40k to me and i really dislike that.


Well if AoS continues brings people to this forum and helps increase peoples' activity here then that's fine by me, but I'm certainly not going to play it myself. Hopefully GW will realise the error of their ways and relaunch WFB one of these days. And no, contrary to what some people think, I'm not hating on GW (well no more than I always have done) but merely lamenting another of their ill-considered decisions (Just as I did when they stopped supporting Mordheim, for example)
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Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
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And sensual daydreams to treasure forever
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

Or because they are not giving more support to the cult of Slaanesh army theme... ¬¬ Damn you GW!!!
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by DarkSky »

Somewhere up the top, I read, that more members should write here :)

For 8th edition:
* Witch Elves also work very good in size of 12-14 (with musician). Thanks to frenzy they don't panic and if at least 6 models make it into combat you still have 18 attacks. More than enough to clear chaff and do serious hurt on low-armoured enemies.
* Most important thing is to get multiple Pegasi as heroes on Pegasus are just ridiculously strong

Regarding gaming system: The good thing is, that the real table tops (WHFB 8th and 9th Age) can be played with the same miniatures and your collection easily supports both. The main difference is the better (and improving) balance in 9th Age, which means you basically need everything your army book supports, as all models are valid. In WHFB 8th some options are so weak in comparison, that you easily ignore them.
My Blog containing battle reports and painting updates: https://bleaklegion.wordpress.com
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Re: Back in the (dark) Saddle! Need Suggestions for my army

Post by Ramza1987 »

That is good to know, will have it mind, just in case we do use 9th age.

I thought of multiple pegasi (i cant get the damned winged horses xD) and abut witches too; but thanks for the tips. :D
Killing is no fun, for me.
A dead person, feels no pain, no suffering.
Death is my gift, to enemies worth of my sword.
The rest will know the true definition of agony.
And i will make damn sure they live long enough to learn it.
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