First Dark Elves battle ever TOW

[Draereth]

Greetings fellow Druchii Lords/Ladies and Beastmasters.
Long time lurker, first time poster, however, after living up to my 12yr old dream of finally collecting a Dark Elf army (I'm 35, I got distracted) after seeing the 6th edition White Dwarf release of the DE AB in 2000? I finally decided to collect a DE army for TOW, a convenient excuse, but one I planned to capitalise on.

But enough of that, I had my first battle with Dark Elves last night, 1000pts, vs Empire of Man.

I had my first game of Dark Elves vs my friends empire army list yesterday, 1000pts.

We've both kept our massive empire armies from 8th edition and I stopped playing GW games after EoT.

First things first: my list.
Dreadlord on cold one, full plate, charmed shield, Ogre Blade.

Sorceress, lvl 2, ruby ring, battle magic.

10 repeater crossbows

18 warriors with spears and full command

5 cold one knights with full plate and full command

12 witch elves with full command.

My friend took
general on foot with white cloak,
capt. bsb on horse
5 inner circle knights w. command
3 demigryph knights w. command
20 spearmen with command
10 halberds detachement
10 handgunners detachement
5 outriders w unit champ.

Thoughts:

crossbows and sorc with ruby ring are amazing, very handily dominated the centre and left of the field, saw off the outriders and almost blew away the handgunners, but then the winds of magic blew poorly, where I only managed to cast fireball once more for the rest of the five turns. and failed to really do much damage afterwards.
Black horror was almost a non-issue, scattering back towards my own lines or not moving. It only killed 1 dark elf the entire game.

The spears did well, received a charge and fall back in good order charge from the inner circle and were looking to grind down the knights before a failed ld saw them run down.
My witch elves received the charge, but the initiative order general killed three before I could strike... they need to be charging I feel and, with no armour, will probably work better when there's a cauldron in the army to get better synergy.

The dreadlord and cold one knights hit like a tank, however my opponent was unbelievably lucky with his armour saves and only lost 5 wounds off the demigryph knights after all my attacks.
Even then he managed to kill 3 knights and bring the combat res back up to losing by one.
The dice then just decided to give up on me, and, while I did eventually break and run down the demigryphs, their 2+ save is very hard to get through.
I called it at the end of his turn 5 as I only had my dreadlord and one cold one knight left after his inner circle overran the spearmen into the sorceress and then on into the crossbows who, up till that point, were beating his general and spearment in combat.
Crushing loss on my end.

A learning experience to be sure. crossbows are going to be a big staple in my army moving forward, as will cold one knights.
The sorceress failing spells by 1 every cast was a little annoying, but, it's a dice game.
I feel black horror will be really good in larger games, or with a more mobile sorceress. However I'll probably swap it out for cursing word moving forward.
I think battle magic has potential, but I also want to try Dark Magic too (thematically and mechanically).

I also want to try corsairs as a harassing unit with repeater handbows. Deploy them in/behind cover and run them toward the enemy and position for just annoyance factor.

I'm limited by models at the moment, having picked up an army bundle from OzWargaming which included 20 corsairs, 20 spears, 24 xbows, 20 executioners, hydra, master w. bsb, sorc, 2nd sorc, 10 cold one knights, 33 witch elves, cold one chariot, and 2 bolt throwers.

All in all, I feel that the more I play the better I'll get with the synergy of the army.

[Daeron]

Welcome! Thanks for the report.

I quite agree on the Crossbows - they feel useful, especially against lightly armoured troops. I'm not sure that that larger units will prove effective since they need such a wide frontage. Maybe 1 or 2 small units will be popular.

Magic seems fickle, all around. One really needs to crank up the wizard levels to make it a reliable source of power. But perhaps, with the ruby ring AND the Tome of Furion, we can crank up a level 2 to a decent level of casting. I'll try that in a future game.

The Cold one Knights do seem powerful in this edition. With armour being more rare and valuable, their 2+ save and incredible attack stacks up nicely. I would recommend a unit of 6 - which for some reason seems to make a difference.

We'll also need a way to deal with such armour. The Ogre Blade seems like a good choice. I would be tempted to try it with a regular great weapon, relying on the initiative of it to get the first strike, and then maybe use the points to throw a magic banner on the cold ones. Either the banner of Har Ganeth or the Standard of Slaughter.

[Bobba Looba]

I agree on the Cold Ones being strong! I have played two games and so far they anihilated everything they charged, from kroxigors to a huge saurus block and cold one riders. However, in my second game they went stupid, got charged themselves by a necrosphinx and tomb scorpion and lost the fight. It's a shame the Cold Blooded banner is one use only, but could be useful to make sure you get that one charge off when you need it. The Rampaging banner (re-roll charge range) is also a good pick for them.

I also found Dark Riders are (still) good. Their manoeuvrability is amazing and they are fairly useful in combat with AP-1. I've taken them in a unit of 8 as a mobile bunker for a sorceress and a Pearl of Infinite Bleakness (immunity to psychology). This basically gives the sorceress 8 additional wounds without having to be scared that the unit fails any panic tests after heavy shooting. If needed, the unit can wipe out chaff in one turn too when they charge with S4, Ap-1 and Fight in extra ranks (just make sure you kill everything, before they can strike back at the sorceress.

I haven't used crossbows yet. Shooting seemed rather weak in this edition, so I hesitated on using them, but I will give them a try.

The Black horror spell should not kill your own units! Its rule says only enemy units take damage. (Just don't move over it, as it is considered dangerous terrain).

The Cursing Word spell is really good. Recommended

The sorceresses failing to cast is probably less of a problem when taking a level 3 or 4, even less so when taking the Black Staff. Upside is that you don't need to use it. You can skip risking the miscast when casting less important spells.
Also, does Hekarti's Blessing allow you to re-roll a miscast?