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Hey, this is my first ever WHFB List, and I'm wondering what you guys think of it? I want to start Dark Elves seeing as I love their range and fluff, so here's a quickie 2000pt list I want to make up.


Lords

Dreadlord w/ Black Dragon, Heartseeker, Armour of Darkness - 520

Characters

Sorceress w/ Lv.2, Dispel Scroll, Dispel Scroll - 185

Core

20 Dark Elf Warriors - 174
Shields, Musician, Standard (Banner of Murder)

10 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen - 110
Shields

10 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen - 110
Shields

10 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen - 110
Shields


Special

5 Shades - 95
Great Weapons, Light Armour

15 Black Guard - 244
Standard of Hag Graef

Rare

2 Reaper Bolt Throwers - 200

Currently the Total adds up to 1748, and I'm not sure what to get with the extra points. Do I buy another Sorceress with two Dispel Scrolls for more magical defense? Do I buy two more bolt throwers? Do I buy a couple more units of crossbowmen, or some warriors?

In other words, I want your opinions on the list as a whole and opinions of what to buy with my remaining points.

Regards,

Ok, so for the black guard you want champion, musician, std and give the champion a crimson death. With the std of hag graef this is kinda the cookie cutter set up for black guard and usually works very very well.

You have one hero slot open, you dont really want to get another sorcs just for magic defense, however you could toss something like Lokhir Fellhart into your black guard as they have a really good synergy together.

For the black dragon, i usually go the captain scarlet route to annoy my friends which is Lord with Deathpiercer, Armor of Eternal Servitude and Pendant of Kaelath. This makes the lord himself really hard to kill. Pretty much you want to set this unit up for flank and rear charges because it really needs to smash through units in one round of combat to get the best use out of it.

Id maybe toss in a squad of 5 Harpies in there for warmachine killing or as a fanatic lure.

You got more than enough crossbowmen for that army, I would look at adding maybe a hydra or a unit of cold one knights in there for some extra kick.

My suggestions for now are to go with the cookie cutter dreadlord on a dragon (pendant, armor of eternal servitude, and deathpiercer), switch out a unit of rxbowmen for 5x dark riders w/ rxb, drop the banner of murder, and drop your guard down to 14. Oh and drop the shields from the rxbowmen and the LA from the shades.

In most cases, DE do well with MSU and "cutting the fat" so to speak from the units. Trimming the fat is like dropping the shields, light armor, and the banner. Doing all that will more than make up for the extra points you will sink into your dreadlord on the dragon.

Now you have to decide which direction you want to go with your army. More fighty or more magic.

If you want a more combat oriented army I would just drop the caddy down to level 1 because she isn't going to be able to cast anything without it getting dispelled anyway. I would probably pick up the rending stars/ manbane assassin and stick him in the shades unit. After that, I think you would still have enough points to pick up that unit of 5x naked cold one knights (135)

If you want more magic, then pick up another level 2 and split up your dispel scrolls and give one the tome of furion and the other the darkstar cloak. You might be able to figure out better builds for them as I am not a big magic guy and not sure what would be best.

The other thing I would try to find room for is a unit of harpies. Just not sure if you would have the 55 points in either case. Right now you really don't have anything to harass, hunt, or manipulate the opponent's movement (march block or redirect). That is why I suggested at least one unit of dark riders, but a second unit of harpies would be nice.

That is all I can come up with for now. You might want to let us know what your playstyle is too. Hopefully, this helped a little.

Okay, thank you very very much for your input. I've taken all your advice in and come up with a different list, that I feel will do well. Clocks in at under my 200GBP budget, too. I know what you're going to say when I give you a list without Harpies, but I really dislike their fluff and models...

Characters

Dreadlord - 580
Black Dragon, Heavy Armour, SDC, Armour of Eternal Servitude, Pendant of Khaeleth, Crimson Death

Sorceress - 185
Lv.2, Dispel Scroll, Darkstar Cloak

Sorceress - 150
Dispel Scroll, Pearl of Infinite Bleakness

Assassin (I couldn't resist) - 145
Rending Stars, Manbane

Core

20 Dark Elf Warriors - 171
Shields, Standard Bearer, Banner of Murder

10 Repeater Crossbowmen - 110
Shields

5 Dark Riders - 115
Repeater Crossbows

Special

5 Shades - 90
Great Weapons

14 Black Guard - 270
Std. Bearer, Standar of Hag Graef, Tower Master, Ring of Hotek

Rare

War Hydra - 175

Total - 1991

Total Price - 191.30 GBP

Swapped out the Reaper Bolt Throwers in favor of the Hydra mainly because I love the model and the threat of having a huge monster on the field other than the dragon that causes Terror. I'm a 40k Tyranid player, so I like my biggies.

As you can see I have 9 points left to spend; I know they can be utilised - I just don't know what on.

9points!

Give the assassin an additional hand weapon for 6!

Characters

Dreadlord - 580
Black Dragon, Heavy Armour, SDC, Armour of Eternal Servitude, Pendant of Khaeleth, Crimson Death

Sorceress - 185
Lv.2, Dispel Scroll, Darkstar Cloak

Sorceress - 150
Dispel Scroll, Pearl of Infinite Bleakness

Assassin (I couldn't resist) - 151
Rending Stars, Manbane, additional hand weapon

Core

20 Dark Elf Warriors - 171
Shields, Standard Bearer, Banner of Murder

10 Repeater Crossbowmen - 110
Shields

5 Dark Riders - 115
Repeater Crossbows

Special

5 Shades - 90
Great Weapons

14 Black Guard - 270
Std. Bearer, Standar of Hag Graef, Tower Master, Ring of Hotek

Rare

War Hydra - 175

Total - 1997

Total Price - 191.30 GBP

Thank you!

Three points left!

I think your points might be off. It looks like your lord is messed up, he has HA and the armor of eternal servitude plus it looks like you spent more points on him then he is worth. Did you give shields to your dark riders? Shields will nullify their fast cavalry ability. Can you explain some of your strategy? What units are you sorceresses going in?

I am wondering if the ring of hotek is the best option? Your blocks might be too close together and I am assuming that the spearmen will have the pearl sorceress in it and you might be marching the crossbowmen up with the rest of the army. If your army is going to stay together than the ring is going to affect your sorceresses too. Maybe crimson death on your tower master and deathpiercer on your lord. Also if one of your sorceresses is going in the spearmen block, then I would get a champion in the unit too. Might as well get the musician too. Since that block relies on SCR, I would go with the war banner instead.

Double check your points, I could easily be wrong, and then repost your list. The other problem we might run into is the rumoured 8th ed rules, but the list would be good for a couple of months.

3 levels of magic and 6 power dice? Medium magic doesn't really work that well. With your current list you just won't get that much magic off. You probably would be better off with just a scroll caddy and a master with seal of ghrond. Give the master a mundane or magic great weapon, and stick him the black guard to give them some extra punch.

Warriors just don't kill enough to justify the banner of murder. They are meant for SCR, so give them war banner if anything (and bump them up to 25 so they can get outnumber more often). Full command isn't a bad idea for them since it is very cheap, and champs for block units can be very useful.

Take the shields off of the dark riders (you paid for them, but didn't list them). They lose the fast cavalry if you put them on. That means they can't rally and move, march and shoot, or reform as many times as they like. (as in they have to wheel and everything) Is +1 armor even close to being worth giving up the best special rules set in the game?

Shield on RxBs aren't worth it. Sure if you make even one save you got your points back... But lets look at that: Most shooting that matters is S4, armor piercing, or both. Your 5+ save is now a 6+ or none at all. S3 shooting when taken is either not a threat (since it is incidental to their list) or in such volume that no save is really going to matter. To make a save with just a minus one, on average, you will fail 5. Against S3, you lose 2 for every save made. If you are taking shots at that rate, your unit is going to be hash no matter what. So my reasoning is, in a worse case scenario they are screwed anyways, why even spend extra points on what is essentially a disposable support unit?

Not a big fan of giving the BG std bearer the ring. I've seen him snipe out with the spells that can target individual models way to often (those spells have low casting value quite often, and 2 dice on them isn't a big risk) I prefer giving him crimson death and letting a mater or lord carry the ring. In this list since one of your slots is taken by the dragon, I don't see much choice. Also I don't really like ring in lists where you are at least attempting a magic phase, it can come back to bite you.

Dreadlord: Dragon, SDC, Shield, armor of eternal servitude, pendant of Khaeleth, death piercer ~ 564
Master: heavy armor, shield, GW, seal of ghrond ~ 120
sorceress: 2x scrolls ~ 150

10 rxb ~ 100
5 dark riders: rxb ~ 110
25 warriors: FC, war banner ~ 215
5 harpies ~ 55

14 black guard: std, champ, hag graef, ring of hotek ~ 270
5 shades: GW ~ 90
Assassin: Manbane, rending stars, additional hand weapon ~ 151

hydra ~ 175

Not much in the way of changes, just a more focused list.

Notabot's list is better. Since you would only have a scroll caddy for defense then the ring isn't as bad for you as before. The only thing you would have to change is the harpies. You could pick up 3 more shades or one shade another rider and musician plus a sea dragon cloak for your master. It's up to you, harpies are really nice, but if you really hate them then get rid of them. Your riders and shades can fill their role to some extent. The problem is that riders and shades are more expensive.

I understand you dont like harpies for the fluff and what not, but im going to try to convince you otherwise.

Harpies have won me games. Frenzy baiting, charge baiting, war machine hunting. They arent enough of a threat for the war machines to fire at, but can normally charge them on turn 2. This ties them up and keeps other units safe for a while. That dragon is a huge BLOW ME UP target for cannons.

Personally i would give the master the ring of hotek instead of the seal, the champ in the BG the crimson death and just run the master with the BG unit.

It can go either way tbh.

Just a note to the original poster as well as any others not liking the current harpy range, Raging Heroes has the following listed on their front page under "Coming Soon":

Raging Heroes wrote:A massive Vampire / Demonic Lord.
Tree men, harpies, and succubettes...

I'm not a huge fan of the GameZone's versions and definitely not a fan of GW's Harpies. There's no release date for RH's on the site, but given the trend of over the top minis from RH, I'm willing to proxy with something more tolerable until they get theirs ready for order.

Regarding not liking the fluff... what fluff do you not like? They're Harpies. Feral creatures that bite and claw at things. The Hydra is a giant feral creature that bites and claws at things and you seem to like those just fine.

If you want to make awesome harpies, buy a box of demonettes and put gargoyle wings for arms. It's a great conversion, gives you lots of extra bits and only costs a bit more

I have to admit, I like mine. I attached the wings onto the backs of the demonettes though, so they could still have arms. About $50 for 10 of them is not too bad. You would pay $75 for 10 of the GW ones. That is if you payed full price for any of it.

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat1040009&prodId=prod1140245

And

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat340010a&prodId=prod460007a

Makes some cool Harpies for beastmen, well, that's what I'm doing with my leftover Gors.