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Sold off my dwarves early last year with the intent on starting a more fun army for Fantasy.

....however, I wound up spending all the money from the dwarves on 40k stuff....

So, I've been picking up the odd model every now and again for my Dark Elves, and after taking a quick inventory of the army peices I've got, I came up with this army list:

Lords and Heroes
LV 4 Sorc on Cold one, Blk Staff, DS Cloak, Power Stone (run with Smaller CoK unit)
Master on Cold one, Potion of Str, Sword of Battle, HA&S, SDC (run with Larger CoK unit)
LV 2 Scroll Caddy on foot (tag along with Spearmen)

Core
21x Spear Elves with Sheilds and Full Command w/War Banner
21x Spear Elves with Sheilds and Full Command w/Banner of Murder
Assassin w/ RoK, ToD, Black Lotus (runs with Armour Peircing Spearelves mostly)
10x RXB w/Sheilds and Musician
10x RXB w/Sheilds and Musician

Special
6xCold One Knights w/Full Command, Banner of Cold Blood, Ring of Hotek on champion
5xCold One Knights
Cold One Chariot
5x Shades

Rare
What else? A Hydra of course!

=2247


Look like fun to play against (my main point in fantasy is more to have fun than kick tail)? Seems like decent versatility to me, sort of like the army is a "battleforce" list but with 'some' teeth. Of course the LV 4 on the Cold One is asking for trouble but I just love the model so much....I also figure its a REALLY safe place to put a Spell-Shooter that might want to get close enough to use the really destructive spells, a unit of CoK's is a pretty safe place for her to be....plus there are many other threats to be shooting cannonballs at....like the hydra, Chariot, or other more scary unit of CoK's.

Anyway, I can have this army ready to go after just....

One more box of CoK's
One more box of Warriors (RXB's)
Hydra
Sorceress on foot

Suggestions? Jokes? Insults?

The SS isn't legal as written- 1 arcane item only, sorry. She can't have the DS cloak. Keep the staff, it's awesome. Personally I don't love paying big bucks to put a Sorc on a Cold One. It's still a crap armor save for a unit that will die in CC anyway. If you're ar hell bent on hiding her in CoKs, she can still be on a dark steed. Also if she splits off (which I would) a dark steed is faster- and dones't make her roll stupidity.

Scroll caddies are kind of a tough call in DE lists- they are super costly to just tote around scrolls. Shave some points, drop the level 2 and let it actually be a scroll caddy, or give it a magic item and get a little value out of your already costly caster- I recommend dagger and putting her in a spear block.

Also consider carefully how much you're paying for FC on CoKs. It's a LOT! It's points spent that stil don't make it into a frontline unit- it's job is still to slam into flanks and tip a big combat- and it can do that fine vanilla. Your Master can carry the ring instead of having it on a champion, and he can't get picked off in one turn by Lore of Metal or other snipe attack type things.

That's just my opinion, but it's a sentiment you'll see repeated on these forums, evaluate closely the cost of command on CoKs, it may not be giving you what you think you're paying for.

As for core choices, it's generally agreed that Dark Riders are Awesome and Harpies are useful and neccesary for Dark Elves. They both do similar things, and I'm not here to talk about how to use fast thigns in a game- but I'd look at including some. DRs are nice because they are a core fast cavalry, fast cavalry are useful and you can fill up a core slot with 5 models- meaning spending fewer points on core chocies that are lackluster (here's looking at YOU spearelves or even worse- corsairs) and freeing more points for sweet special troops. If your battle plan hinges on having some SCR, which based on the way you're set up your CoKs, having the SCR is probably important to you. In your shoes I'm might jsut try to scrounge the 110 points for two untis of Harpies, to march block, redirect frenzied units or war machine hunt. I've had at least 4 games where the harpies were the MVPs- and never made a single CC attack. They've kept huge Grail Knight Lances tied up in terrain, scared away enemy wizards and auto killed units forced to run through them many times for me.

In short, spear elves aren't BAD per se- but they aren't AWEOSME, and Dark Elves are generally AWESOME, so that's what I shoot for.

The xbows, I agree with, I always take 2 10 blocks. In my army their job is to hold my two home board quarters, never move, and shoot at things that are in the middle. They always put out a nice high volume of fire- but frankly their killing power sucks. Oh well. If you wanted a shooty army you picked hte wrong brand of elves. Set reasonable expectations for xbows and they'll perform, if at a slightly higher cost than I'd like. Shields are a waste of points, in my opinion.

I loveyour Assassin build. It's one you see less, and it's not the one I use, but I still love it. If I ran spear elves I'd run an assassin like that. Great synergy with itself, great meat grinder, good against bigger things like Hvy Cav too.

Consider a shooty one as well to hang out in your shades unit, Manbane and rending stars is all it needs. You can either get off a first turn charge with good deployment (exactly 10" away and 2 " into some woods, reveal assassin, displace a shade forward granting LoS, cahrge, everything that's 10" away gets into combat) or you can blast away at tough things like enemy monsters from a good covered position in the woods.

I like chariots - I use two. They get a bad rap sometimes, but T5 in a T3 army is nice and they are cheap for what they do. In my opinion they can do a lot of what a 5 man CoK squad can do at a discount.

One dirty little trick, if you are looking to cram a lot of special choices in is t take them as mounts for your masters. 10 points off the cost and frees up a special slot. Since Special is where all the DE hottness is anyway it's pretty useful.

I run my two chariots side by side, one with a marginal (at best) CC Master and one with a BSB with the standard of Slaughter. Their job is to simultaneously charge. If they bog down they can last 1 turn thanks to the BS rerolls and decent leadership. Tha'ts enough time to get something hot (like my dragon rider) into the flanks. Not everyone likes the Dragon. I like the dragon. Your CoK unit would do the job as well, just not from 20 inches away and through interposing units. Plan accordingly.

Hydras- can't go wrong. There's a little debate on Hydras vs. Reapers, but the general consensus is Hydras are awesome. Even if you like Reapers better, you still admit Hydras rock. I take 2. One of the best values for your points.

Here is a joke:

How many Cold One Knigths does it take to screw in a light bulb?

One, but at least once a game he's just going to turn it three inches and stand there staring at it.


BTW I have mild dyslexia so there's probably some pretty bad typos in there but it takes a level of concentration I'm not prepared to provide to go through and find them.

Those are some great hints for the future. Right now the army obviously isnt optimised and I like some of the ideas you put forward here.

Not too keen on 2 big units of Spearelves. They've always kind of been 'meh' in the games I've used them, but they provide some nice static CR.

faintpremonition has it down, so there's little else I can add, honestly.

Looks fun, and good luck!