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Enjoyed the game and did a few final minor tweaks to the list. I think I will be giving this one a shot a few times before altering things.

LIST 3.1

Lord:
Supreme Sorceress - Lv.4, Focus Familiar, Dark Pegasus - 335

Heroes:
Sorceress - Lv.2, Tome of Furion, Lifetaker, Dark Steed - 192
Sorceress - Lv.2, Darkstar Cloak, Dark Steed - 172
Death Hag - Cauldron of Blood, Battle Standard Bearer - 225

Core:
Assassin - Manbane, Rending Stars - 145 (Goes with Shades)
5x Dark Riders - Crossbows - 110
5x Dark Riders - Crossbows - 110
20x Warriors - Shields, Full Command - 155

Special:
5x Cold One Knights - 135
14x Black Guard - Standard of Hag Graef - 231
14x Witch Elves - Banner of Murder - 175
5x Shades - Great Weapons - 90

Rare:
War Hydra - 175

Total: 2250

I think eight levels of Druchii magic should be enough to get through most magic defenses. The Cauldron has a multitude of things to bless and each can benefit in a unique way.

Dark Riders: Put the crossbows back on them. I already have crossbows modeled and it adds a good deal of versatility for the unit.

Warriors: With the BSB nearby, these guys are a relatively inexpensive block of SCR that can pin something down.

Cold One Knights with additional attacks are just mean. Very mean.

Black Guard love Killing Blow to help handle heavy armor. It's not overly reliable, but it's something to help.

Witch Elves love it even more! Poison, Armor Piercing, and either more attacks or Killing Blow depending on what shows up to fight makes this a scary unit for not a huge investment.

I put the Stars/Manbane assassin over to a Shades unit where they typically reside.

Hydra does what it does best, scare people and eat them. The ward save can help against cannons in the early turns and 11 attacks with Killing Blow isn't too shabby!

Edit: After my first game with this list I learned a lot, most of which were my own mistakes. Here's hoping round 2 with this list isn't quite as fraught with poor decisions.

It looks good to me, even if it isn't full of monsters.

Your logic seems sound. What I really like is your highest point unit is your hiding general at 335 points so losing a unit is not going to hurt you. I would probably target the cauldron as fast as I could, since it can make any of your units great. I am not a big fan of depending on magic, but for a trial list it would be nice to see how effective it will be.

My only suggestion and I don't know where to get the points for it, is to pick up the banner of cold one for the warriors just to make sure they make that one test you need them to make. Dropping that steed on the sorceress would get you really close. Maybe switching rending stars to rune of khaine for the other points, rending stars may give away the assassin earlier than you want and you could get those 3 stand and shoot attacks from the rune of khaine.

I'm interested in how it does.

A guy on Druchii.net brought up the point that I am quite lacking in Crossbows overall. It's true, I'm missing the standard 24" pincushion nerf darts that Dark Elves are known for, but I don't think that will be too much of a hindrance. I think I have enough small units to threaten any would-be march blockers and such and I could always turn my RBTs into the multi-shot mode.

That is true about the crossbows, but you also have 6 levels of magic to help out with ranged attacks.

DE X-bows are overrated unless spammed. You have some great ideas flowing in your list but beware of chariots (especially Chaos Warrior Chariots), they tear my elves up.

All that magic and twin RBT's will kick some serious .

I edited the original post with a List 2! It has no Bolt Throwers, one less unit of Harpies, no Armor Piercing Standard on the Witches and significantly less Warriors due to a change in their role. It also has another Sorceress with Sacrificial Dagger, a second Assassin and some Great Weapon Shades!

Of course, now a thought occurs to me. That Sacrificial Dagger sorceress only has two spells. What if they aren't very good/useful, or if they are on the lower end where I wouldn't need nearly as many dice as she can put out? Seems like a pretty big investment for an iffy return.

Edit: On that line of thought, I could change it to Lv.2 with Darkstar Cloak and Dark Steed. Then, remove Warriors entirely, get a third set of bare Dark Riders, drop the set of Harpies and the extra hand weapon from the Stars assassin and put the Banner of Murder back on the Witches.

Sorry Kirb, I am having a hard time getting behind a magic based army.

What if you went with list number one but dropped the warriors to 10 and a unit of harpies. You could then pick up a level 1 sorceress w/ sacrificial dagger and the tome. and give your level 2 the cloak.

Or even better drop all the magic pick up some monsters and run all over the place killing everything. Sorry don't know where that came from.

Final edit posted to original topic before I bring it to the table tomorrow! Let me know what you think!

I like this list the best too. I would keep the warriors.

My problem is with magic. You have to roll to see what spells you get, granted with 9 chances, I'm sure you will get the ones you want. Then you have about 700 points that can't shoot or fight and has to roll to see if their spells go off. You figure some will fail and some will be dispelled, so maybe only 50% will actually be cast, and then you have to roll to see how effective they are. It is just too much to leave to chance for me. Not to mention that they could always blow themselves up.

Sorry don't mean to dissuade you. I'm sure when they do go off, the fireworks are amazing and will devastate your enemy.

No worries boogeyman, I've had that long hard look at magic just the same wondering if it was worth using in the long run as opposed to pure combat killy things. I'll try out the magic tonight, maybe a second time, and then swap over to a more combat-laden list. Might even try out the Dragon + Manticore combo, who knows.

I've found with things that have a high randomness factor the more you take, the better it performs. That being said, I've had games where I spent 600+ points on magic that cast a whopping 3 spells the whole game and did very little (that WoC spell that causes miscasts) But since the spells I cast were the ones that mattered, it still was worth it even though it didn't quite get its points back (killing most of 2 chaos knight units is worth it, since they go through DE like a chainsaw through butter).

If nothing else, the magic defense that having a strong wizard group provides is almost worth it.

Personally I count on miscasting at least 2 times a game. The funny thing is, I usually do, and I rarely care. The chances of miscasting AND rolling the instant death result is pretty low, and the other ones aren't that bad either. What really hurts is when you give your opponent a free spell cast, and you miscast on the last spell... It happens, and you just suck it up.

My only issue with the list is the lack of RxB on the dark riders. Takes away quite a bit of their versatility. If I were to run them sans RXB, I would get them some shields (yeah, gives up fast cav, but they are being used as medium cav, so it it fits.)

What spells did you cast to take down Chaos Knights? I've been concerned with those guys (and similar big armor, big toughness units) a fair bit and figure the WS1/BS1 spell would be most beneficial combined with a Hydra or CoK charge. I just remembered the big metal spell does a good job of eating heavy armor, that'd be a nasty spell for things relying on their Toughness and Armor to save them. Combined with the hiding, flying Sorceress that's some dead units every turn.

I'm a little concerned about the lack of crossbows as well, they have often proved very useful for picking off small units of things. I can drop the War Banner for one set of Crossbows, but where would I get the second set? If I drop the Harpies I can go with both sets of Crossbows and keep the War Banner, or drop the War Banner and Harpies and get both sets of Crossbows and pick up a Dispel Scroll or some other 30pts or less item.

I like the idea of getting both units rxb and a dispel scroll. Your dark riders can still be used as missiles if necessary, just 25 point more expensive missiles, but this way you can still use them for other things. I guess you could get lifetaker for your tome sorceress instead of a dispel scroll.

I don't think you are going to miss the war banner, you will still have 4 or 5 scr, and with the rxb on your dark riders you will have more range than the harpies.

Let us know how it goes.

Pretty good list - Black guard are awesome, combined with having your BSB up in range to use the cauldron they'll be hard to move even if they lose combat.

I'm not a huge fan of the Cold One Knights, but still - very flexible, mobile list. Don't really have any "Hammer" units, but you have enough staying power in the black guard that you'll be able to outflank alot of opponents.

Couple armies you may have trouble with (dwarves, lizardmen, demons maybe), but still a solid tournament list.

So... I had the game tonight. I did not win. After looking over the list he brought, it's pretty clear that he went way over the 2250 mark based on models alone, not including any potential hidden upgrades. Honestly, I don't think this is why he won, though. It certainly helped, to be sure, but my own playing was abysmal. I did drop the Harpies and the War Banner, picked up crossbows for my Riders and a Lifetaker for my Tome Sorc.

His list:
Chaos Lord with Flail on Dragon
2x Chaos Sorcs with double scrolls
3x5 Chaos Knights
3x5 Khornate Marauder Horsemen
2x Shaggoths with GWs

Minimum total: 2319, assuming no magical upgrades that I didn't know about. So yeah, missed the mark quite a bit, but my mistakes were what did me in. I say this because his Dragon did a grand total of killing my Cold One Knights and that's it, so that point sink didn't accomplish anything.

Mistakes include:
*Including my mounted Sorceresses in Dark Rider units that was bait and fleeing, they failed to rally twice and flew off the board.
*Including my mounted Sorceresses in Dark Riders period, when the opposing list had no shooting outside of two Lv.1 Sorcerers that were hiding.
*Not going after the Sorcerers, when it was clear they were just there as anti-magic. He scrolled two Spirit of the Forge casts on his Knights. I would, too, but I should've killed the Scroll Caddies much sooner.
*Positioning myself poorly to allow overruns into vital units.
*Not making a proper way to deal with Dragons/Shaggoths/etc outside of the Manbane/Stars Assassin.
*Not making a proper way to deal with Chaos Knights.
*Not using the Word of Pain castings that I had available to me.
*Not exactly a mistake, but rolled a Miscast that shut down my magic phase early in Turn 3, so that hurt.

Sorry to hear that you lost. Was this in a league or just a friendly game? It seems your opponent thought it was a 2500pt game.

I would have made the same mistake of not going after his sorcerers too. I wouldn't have seen them as a threat to hurting me until I realized they were neutralizing my strength.

I am surprised you put your sorceresses in with the dark riders. I think it was you that advized someone else not to do it, as having a character in a unit that flees could be a waste.

What else could you have done to deal with dragons/shaggoths? At his points, you could have had another assassin.

We all make those other mistakes too. Probably even more often with a first time army.

It was just a friendly game, so no big deal. I was happy for the learning experience and now know about how much should fit into a 2250 army. There again, if he dropped the marks of Khorne on the Horsemen he would've been under 2250, and those horsemen bit the dust early without touching my army.

Yeah, when I look back at it I have no idea why I put my Sorcs with the Dark Riders. Like you said, I've advised against it in the past for that very reason.

The presence of monsters just makes me think I should drop a Sorceress and pick up a pair of RBTs instead, but if my magic wasn't being neutralized I could've focused more on things that would've helped me take out the monsters. Then again, most tourney lists are going to be neutralizing magic, so that's kind of a poor statement.

True. However, now you know killing the oppossing neutralizers is a priority.

What if you dropped the soceresses' steeds (you wont be tempted ) and lifetaker? You could get your harpies back. They could march block then and give you more time to take down the big stuff.

Or you could get those RBT back.

WoC knights/monster spam can be a tough matchup, since they are mobile and hit harder than DE do. He took a very unbalanced list, and it is a good example of when 3-4 bolt throwers is better than 1-2 hydras and other things.

Some anti armor spells: 1 and 6 from metal (and 3 is good against knights too, if you have a unit that can get S4, armor piercing, or better with decent number of attacks like black guard and knights) 2 and 6 from lore of shadows, though 6 is not as great against WoC since they have good to decent Initiative, and the models you care about are rather big so it doesn't do that well, plus the rest of the spells in the lore other than unseen lurker suck. 2 and 6 from lore of death are also great anti armor spells, plus the rest of the lore is really good. The options in lore of darkness aren't as good, but 5 and 6 can still do a good job on knights (but still only kill 1-2 with each cast on average, so other lores have better spells), with number 4 being high enough volume to occasionally kill a knight.

Thanks for the advice Notabot, I'll definitely keep that in mind.

I edited the original post with the semi-finalized list with the removed harpies/Warbanner and added crossbows/Lifetaker. I think I'll play with this list a few more times before trying a drastically different list. I'm thinking double Manticore, 4x RBT...

I'd like to hear how this does in your next battle... one bad matchup (with mistakes to boot) definitely doesn't say anything about it working overall!

About your sorcesses running off with the dark riders- I've been putting my spellsingers with wardancers, and now that I'm using branchwraiths, with units of dryads. They always end up in combat! I don't know why I don't leave them by themselves... I guess I'm worried about magic taking them out since they're their own unit (even though they're screened). I'll probably try running them on their own... it'll be hard for them to die any sooner than they are now