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Alright, so I just got a couple boxes of dark elf warriors, and I'm going to go up against Skaven, Lizardmen and maybe Demons. I've never played Warhammer, but I've played 40k for about two years now.
I've looked at corsairs. I don't know if they're good. I've assembled my first unit of warriors as spearmen, and I'm thinking of using some crossbowmen to shoot the enemy from far away, while my spearmen (or corsairs)
engage them head on. For the special units, maybe some kind of sneaky guys going around killing behind the lines.
No idea if cold one riders are any good. However, I have heard hydras are beast. Big monsters make me happy >. For lords and heroes, I have no idea at all. Zero.

Dark Elf Army

Lords and Heroes:

No idea 0.0

Core

20 Warriors (Spears, Shields)?

20 Warriors (Spears, Shields) (Might replace these with corsairs, not sure if they're worth it)?

10 Crossbowmen (shields)

Special:

Unit of shades (No idea here either)

Rare:

War Hydra

Out of all these, I have bought two units of 16 warriors. 1 unit has spears, the other one hasn't had its wrapper taken off yet.
I was thinking of maybe replacing a spear unit with some corsairs. I'm also not sure about what's a good amount of people in a
single spear unit.

Note: the warriors may take some kind of banner or musician.

Dark Elves really hit their sweet spot at 1500+, as that way you can get specials as well as decent core. The best core unit in the Dark Elf book is corsairs, by a mile.

Special wise, the units that deserve special mentions (No Pun intended) Are Black Guard and Shades. Combat wise, Black Guard are simply amazing. Stubborn on a 9 and 2 attacks apiece mean that they will take their opponents down and not run away. HOWEVER, they are best used with the razor standard/banner of murder to go into a unit and just kill a tonne and get killed. This sounds bad, but as I mentioned earlier, the best core in the book is corsairs. They simply put out so much attacks, that they'll be your best combat block.(You take 30 with full command and the sea serpent standard) These guys are your main shadow magic target.

But if I were to run 1000 points of dark elves, I would go:

Level 3 with an extra spell.

29 Corsairs with full command and the sea serpent standard.

10 Crossbowmen with a musician.

20 Black Guard with a standard, musician and the banner of murder.

This way, you have some shooting, and shadow magic to deal with armour, and black guard to hold things up and corsairs to shred low toughness/armour things on their own, or high toughness/armour things with shadow magic support.