D.R.A.I.C.H. For true beginners: Druchii for the Newbii

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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Calisson
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D.R.A.I.C.H. For true beginners: Druchii for the Newbii

Post by Calisson »

This thread is made for someone who is learning WarHammer, and is taking dark Elves as his/her first army.

Welcome in Druchii.net! :D
Welcome among Dark Elves players. :twisted:

In D.net, you will find a lot of advice to help you get the most of the DE.
First, you can ask some specific advice by crating a specific thread, there are usually a lot of friendly and useful answers.
Second, the D.R.A.I.C.H. is a collection of past helpful threads, including some well written comprehensive articles, in which you will find a lot of experience.

The information below was not written by me, but by several helpful D.netters, notably Irtehdar. I used to collect some intresting threads with sound advice for you. However, the collection started to get too long and too cumbersome, and the interesting information was sometimes lost among too many threads. Here below is the most useful of the information you need.


1. A learning process.
The important thing when you are learning is not to concentrate on getting the win. You need to concentrate on having a plan and trying to enact it. You will find this hard at first as things get in the way of your plan. However, gradually you will refine your tactics as you think after each game what could I have done differently. If you can see improvements in how well you are enacting your plan then you don't need to feel disheartened as you are getting better.

2. Getting all phases properly done.
Talk to yourself through the phase. Speak out the words: "Moving"...Start your turn by saing "Declare Charges!"...Do that and then say: "Rally fleeing troops". Take your time and go through your entire army. Fixing every unit...also that remote Harpy unit and hidden unit of Shades in the small wood by your opponents Cola. There is no shame in doing this or even bring a piece of paper as a mind jogger with the Turn written down. Yes, it may deem you as an in-experienced player, but so would forgetting a game winning charge or (speaking straight out of my own bunch of mistakes, trust me!) forget a magic phase! Forgetting has been a vital factor for me losing more than i should. Sometime it still is.

3. Guessing ranges.
About guessing ranges. Well, practice come to mind. Be a geek and carry your measure tape with you now and then. Fix two points on your breakfast table, guess and measure. Actually its great fun, but do pay attention to those people around you like friends and family... it might seem a little odd, haha.
A small trick: A piece of copy paper -A4- is exactly 12" long. We all very often have this kind of paper in our hands and therefor know the "feeling" of how long 12" is.

4. Fighting or fleeing.
1) Only fight the battles you KNOW you will win.
(so, don't throw your expensive units at the expensive units of the opponent unless you know your will win. The easy way to ensure a certain victory, is to flank them with dark riders. Don't gamble unless you really have to).

2) There is no word for coward in the Druchii language.
(so, if the enemy wanna slay your general with some buffed up character in a challenge? throw a lowly lordling at him instead. Meanwhile your general chops the enemy's unit to pieces, and you win the combat by 3 and they flee. If the enemy manages to charge your cold ones after you for example misjudged the distance to the enemy for a charge, you flee, if you think you risk loosing an expensive troop. that "honour" the bretonnian knights can keep to themselves. you can always claim that you are "advancing backwards to a tactically superior location" if your opponent makes a fuss )

3) Fleeing as a result of poor deployment is no good and it will not help you in the slightest. If you have made a mistake, make sure it is painful (for you) so you don't make it again. Don't flee as a charge reaction because you got yourself into a bad situation because then fleeing ain't gonna help. Only flee when you have planned to flee with that unit long before you moved it into the position from where it has to flee.

5. Challenges, the Druchii way.
Ze challenge. Where a fair one-on-one combat is fought to the death.

Thing is, Dark Elves don't like fair. Remember that you're not bound by honour to fight a general with yours and your Master will be happier killing rank and file troopers unless he has equipment to let him win those challenges (Pendant of Khaeleth, Armour of Eternal Servitude, Web of Shadows combined with the Cauldron of Blood's killing blow etc). To avoid challenges you can include a unit champion in your general's unit to answer it and although he'll most likely get killed, your general can do his thing against everyone around him.

6. Understand fast cavalry's agility.
Ill give you a small piece of advice. You can try out an experiment which will teach you a very neat trick.

What you do is set up 3 standard orc infantry units and 1 unit of 5 DR's. (if you dont have these models just imagine you do and use whatever standing you have),

You play both sides of the battle and you must do your best to ''win'' with whatever side your playing at the moment.

When you move the DR's you should try your best to stay within 8 inches of as many orc units as possible but beyond all else you must stay out of their charge arch. Thus you have to run closely around them.

When you move the orcs you should do your best attempt at forcing the DR's to a locked position where they cannot move out of the orc's charge arc.

Of you fiddle around a bit with this you will quickly realize that the DR's are in fact capable of staying out of harms way even though they are under 2 inches from orcs at all times. They just have to stay very close and constantly circle around. Once you got the technique down you will see it is in fact impossible for the orcs to catch your DR's and if the battle rolls on forever the DR's will win eventually with their shooting.

This trick alone wont win you the battle but the exercise will teach you how you can dominate the movement phase against any army. Dominating the movement is key to Dark Elf fighting.

7. Magic.
Magic is very tough to use at first because it requires an awful lot of practise to avoid it backfiring (in whichever way). Try to learn about the other phase of the game first and only concentrate on magical defence before you try offensive magic. Many games are lost to the fact that the player did not know how to properly use magic. It's power will be learned after learning how to take advantage of the other phases of the game.

8. An army for beginners.
I would say the first things you should buy was:
1 Army Book
1 Box of Warriors
1 Box of Wood Elf Glade Riders
1 Box of Corsairs
1 Character (your choice)

From this you build:
10 warriors with repeater crossbows (RxB's) give them shields but not command(this will make sense as soon as you've gone on the field with them a few times)
10 Corsairs with extra hand weapons and full command. (this is a unit you will want to add extra numbers to later on)
Finally you take the horses of glade riders and mix in some dark elf bits to build a unit of 5 Dark Riders with repeating crossbows.

With this you have built your first few units at a low cost and no matter how you evolve your playstyle over time these units will never grow obsolete. Don't go out and buy RBT's/Hydras/Dragons/etc just yet. What you want to have early on is a small working army you can take to the table and get some experience.

The army set-up of those 3 units have become my standard advice to novice players simply for the 5 reasons:
1. Its legal
2. Its cheap
3. None of it will go obsolete any time soon
4. Its a solid small scale army
5. It includes all the elements you want to learn as soon as possible (shooting/manoeuvring/combat/converting/etc.)

Once you have played a few battles you will get a feel for what you will need to move on to doing well in larger battles(this is always better if you discover it on your own as you also in that process discover your personal play style (The new Druchii is very versatile and there are not really any ''wrong'' play styles))

9. That's it!
Next, I strongly recommend you to meditate some wise thoughts, in the following hyperlinked thread => 101 Tips For Fantasy
Now get your army and start fighting!

I'll update this thread as necessary, either with copy/pastes from new threads, or from comments posted next. Please let me know if something was missing.
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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