hmm, quite a few ways you could go here depending on what you want out of it...
The elves are a "faction" chock full of glass cannons: the sort where you will take losses as they arrive at the enemy, but if they can't destroy them all in time, you will start wrecking face: the fragile yet devastating Scorpion.
just looking at the artillery selections for skaven you get a nice and fun mixed bag of chaotic. the Randoomwheel can be a flexible platform for mortal wounds and unpredictably good or poor shooting/ CQC. Be advised that the Wheel of (Mis)Fortune will attract fire by confident opponents who realize how short range it is.
for the lightning cannon, don't roll
for the power level and you should be fine. It's dangerous, tough to kill, and long ranged in a boxed army with little of the sort. Be warned though: against High elves, if you don't kill what you were aiming at with the first volley (probably the reavers or chariot), you will get run down by the leftovers and the space laser will be rendered useless [protect the cannon or lose the flank].
The claw catapult is, mercifully, a source of consistent damage dealing in the skaven army. Looking at the stats it is also absolutely devastating to High elves due to long range and blatantly ignoring armour. It is, however, and all-or-nothing shot. Too many times have I seen a crucial die roll turn out wrong at the worst time, plus like all the above artillery pieces it will attract enemy fire like an asteroid to the White House in a Hollywood movie.
With relics it really depends on what playstyles you want to try out. That being said, all the relics for Order are geared towards turning your hero units in Dynasty Warriors while the command traits have more of a tactical focus/further bring Koei Tecmo onto the tabletop. the High warden would get bogged down fighting pretty much anything not-rat ogres, is fast moving, and is a Monster, so you can focus on either attack or defense. Be careful about mixing and matching equipment and command traits since he is still a bullet magnet (the phoenix stone may be useful if you disable all the ranged units early).
If the mage finds himself/herself in close combat, they will die, full stop. If you absolutely have to give them relics, it may serve to give them one of the one-use items to make your opponent work for every hit (amulet of flashbang grenades, silver potion, hoarfrost, or have a laugh with the relic blade). If relics are being given to the elf mage it helps to make them the defensive options.
The Daemon weapon relic is part of what I call the "hero grinder" loadout for a Slaanesh chaos Lord: a source of additional unblockable wounds regardless of whether or not you actually landed any damage in CQC with your "real" weapons. Putting this on the Skaven warlord makes an otherwise mediocre scrapper into a viable threat to wizards and heavily armored types alike. Furthermore, if he is the general he can already issue command abilities, leading to...
The warlock: can make use of the Crown to throw out an additional Presence to keep the clanrats from running away. If the warlord manages to get himself killed, you still have someone who can keep da ladz in line for a while.
Alternatively, since the Swifthawks are an order army, you could give both of them the talismans and enjoy a 5up save-before-save against pesky magic, arrows, and magic arrows. And griffons. And exploding lightning accumulators.
As starting points for larger armies, these are fairly alright. I've already planned out how many points both armies will cost once I field them at max strength (the skaven are 600 points cheaper at full squad cap), plus they have some groovy abilities that make them play interestingly/ mildly competitively. The ambushing could be funny if played on a deep striking Sigmarine army. The guardians can have 120 shots fly out of the reavers at full strength across one turn due to the battalion abilities while all the units have a good amount of flexibility - except the 30 man elven welsh-jedi-samurai-meatgrinder swordsmen, they're definitely supposed to turn scary things into KFC bucket meals.
The kind of fun you want to have is entirely up to you in the end. Enjoy!
and started building lists.
