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I've got a buddy who plays DE and they are ridiculous.

Hydras? WTF? Unstoppable AND I'm told its impossible to hurt the crew.

Assassins? Seriously? You can kill everybody with that guy?

You get to reroll what? Everything? Is that all?

You have a guy that's difficult to hit, and then you give him an item that makes him harder to hit the stronger the weapon you use is? So what do you hurt him with?

You have an item that makes spells that originate or target anything within 12 inches of you if you roll doubles, effectively blocking 25-30% of the used table space. Right....

So how do you stop DE? Or do High Elves, Wood Elves, Chaos, and Orc & Goblins not have a chance?

It's funny, I was just this evening thinking about the DE book and musing how IMO it's the single best fantasy book GeeDub has written. And that it's a shame that you see so little variety amongst most high end DE armies, as so many of the options are viable and affordable - vs say the DoC book, where the good options are mind-numbingly obvious and the 'other' options are just as obviously overcosted and underwhelming.

CitizenPrime wrote:Assassins? Seriously? You can kill everybody with that guy?

A DE assassin can literally kill my entire ogre army by himself, given enough turns to make it happen. Easily the most infuriating unit for me in the book, followed quickly by the drunkenly undercosted hydra ...

I guess if you're looking for advice on how to beat DE I'm not too much help. My record is about even vs DE, but that's no fault of mine, more a combination of match up, luck, opponent skill, luck, and so on. My proudest moment was beating a monstermash list (black dragon + 2 hydras) with my old skaven, while a low point was facing the Hellebron + ASF black guard deathstar with my ogres and, despite knowing EXACTLY where Hellebron's star was and what it wanted to do, forgot it charged 10" and lost my own deathstar to it. Shame.

- Salvage

I stumbled in here to ask advice about starting a fantasy army. A toss up between Skaven and DE. I guess I have made my decision. Thanks guys

How do you beat Dark Elves? Easy, shoot them. Cannons, Bolt Throwers and Doomwheels destroy our monsters so quickly it's humiliating. We have no way to mitigate miscasts at all. Yes, the Ring of Hotek is awesome, but once you kill that one guy (usually just a unit champion, you really can't kill those?) it's gone and there goes a big chunk of most lists' magic defense, not to mention we can't use it with our own magic or we'll blow our own wizards up.

Magic missiles, war machines and shooting wreck DE in a big way. Heavy armor is also a big pain for most DE lists. A unit of Chaos Knights will crush pretty much anything you throw them at. Have multiple sets of those? Pain city. A lance charge from Brets? Good-bye whatever was in front of them.

Now, to be fair if your attempts are using High Elves, Wood Elves and O&G you're going to have a rough time against most armies, not just Dark Elves. You're also T3 with no armor, and we hit harder and often faster and can bring more mobile shooting and since you're only T3 with a 5+ save, those Crossbows add up quickly.

I think high elves could do great against DE? I've only owned them briefly, but I got the impression from that (and tha interwebs11...) that they're viable. If nothing else, you can always use Teclis and a banner of sorcery...

With wood elves, you're obviously going to have to try to outmanuever him to get more favorable combats for your units.

With O&G... hmmmmmmm.... . It does sound Salvage has done alright with Chaos, though! Be it luck or not

Oh, don't get me wrong. High Elves can be a very viable army, but is often done so through Teclis with supporting wizards or double Dragons. The people who rely on Swordmasters to stab everything dead before they get hit have a sad time with ASF Black Guard. Swordmasters are WS6 I5. Black Guard are WS5 I6 with Hatred always turned on. Swordmasters don't win that one.

Kirbinator, I think your assessment is a bit skewed there.
The Pendant of Kaleth is also a very overpowered magic item, it's not a joke that hydras are both more powerful and more durable than most for their points, shades are very good at what they do, and those great weapons are intensely annoying, re-rolls to hit for everyone in round one means your charges are very reliable.

Not saying Dark Elves are unbeatable, certainly my Dwarves give them a run for their money, but they are a powerful army in the top end of the vastly disparate power spectrum for WFB and acknowledging that is only rational.

Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to come off as "Dark Elves are not powerful and don't have any underpriced anythings!" The Hydra might be a good 25pts underpriced, but go too much further from 200pts and the Skaven's HPA is insane. Further, a 150pt Doomwheel or 90pt WLC will murder Hydras all day long. Granted, looking at my buddy's Skaven probably isn't the best measure of anti-monsters in the grand scheme of Warhammer.

Shades are indeed good at what they do, but so are Swordmasters. So are Chaos Knights. So are <insert good units here>. I guess that's why I don't feel DE are broken (outside of those underpriced items). No single unit (Hydra excluded) is full-stop amazing, but almost every unit is very good at what it does.

I agree, army-wide Hatred is pretty crazy but army-wide ASF was also considered crazy. Army-wide ItP, Fear-causing, etc. etc...

But when I think broken, I can't help but look at Daemons. The level of their underpriced special characters, standard units, etc. and so forth blows DE out of the water on that scale. Obviously they aren't unbeatable, but they have way more going for them than any other army including Dark Elves.

Kirbinator wrote:Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to come off as "Dark Elves are not powerful and don't have any underpriced anythings!" The Hydra might be a good 25pts underpriced, but go too much further from 200pts and the Skaven's HPA is insane. Further, a 150pt Doomwheel or 90pt WLC will murder Hydras all day long. Granted, looking at my buddy's Skaven probably isn't the best measure of anti-monsters in the grand scheme of Warhammer.

Shades are indeed good at what they do, but so are Swordmasters. So are Chaos Knights. So are <insert good units here>. I guess that's why I don't feel DE are broken (outside of those underpriced items). No single unit (Hydra excluded) is full-stop amazing, but almost every unit is very good at what it does.

I agree, army-wide Hatred is pretty crazy but army-wide ASF was also considered crazy. Army-wide ItP, Fear-causing, etc. etc...

But when I think broken, I can't help but look at Daemons. The level of their underpriced special characters, standard units, etc. and so forth blows DE out of the water on that scale. Obviously they aren't unbeatable, but they have way more going for them than any other army including Dark Elves.

I'm mostly with Kirbinator on this one. Really, the only particularly overly powerful things in the list are the Hydra (probably should be 200 pts even), Pendant of Khaeleth(should be limited to Lords), Ring of Hotek (should be priced so that unit champs can't get them, or have the radius of effect halved, or both), and (imo) Assassins to a lesser extent (MUCH better stats than an equivalent DE/HE Hero and only marginally more expensive. No armor, but that rarely is an issue).

The main issue of HE vs. DE games is that Eternal Hatred ends up being significantly more powerful than Valour of Ages. Even with ASF, DE have great counters against it (Assassins, Hag Graef on Executioners) and will always do better when stuck in protracted combats. Added to that that they have more effective light shooting and access to a lot more brutal magic. Despite having similar stats, the HE come out over-priced compared to their Drucchi counter-parts.

Still, the Daemons take it to another level.

I actually agree as well, I misinterpreted the tone of his post.
I think the game would be in better shape if every book was as good as the Dark Elf book. Undercosted magic item or two and too-good hydra aside, I think it's the point of balance the game should be aiming for.

Daemons have broken WFB, pure and simple.

I have to agree that the other books should all be as strong as the Dark Elf book. The Dark Elves have lots of options for making good stong lists, where many other armies really only have one or two.

Seems like everyone is in agreement. And my findings are, for the most part, correct.

Thanks for the insight, folks.

I've just started playing WHFB for the first time in almost a decade. I used to play Dark Elves back then and I'm starting them up again. I have to say that my first game in almost 10 years I won using Dark Elves against Lizardmen (which don't exactly suck). There isn't anything Dark Elves can't do and they can do everything quite well. I haven't had a chance to keep playing them due to the league that I'm currently in, but I am very much looking forward to playing them some more.

And on the Daemon note, only the absolute cheese dicks in our FLGS hint at playing them. Everyone else who has even a shred of decency just dosen't play them. Pretty much the same for Vampires.

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