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Okay, so I'm a 40k player who is looking into starting Fantasy up, and I'm seeking a bit of advice on which army to start up, I was hoping the kind people of Dakka could let me in on what the general tactics of an army is like, specifically, I'm thinking about either High or Dark Elves, but I'm totally open and don't have my heart set on anything.

A few things I'd like answered: are they horribly out-dated, what play-style do they have, and are they overpowered? The last one I'm asking because I don't want something that's broken, I'd like an army that's good but not stupidly overpowered (I've heard this takes Warriors of Chaos out of the list).

As it stands I don't think anyone here would seriously tell you there's an overpowered army. However, there are clearly overpowered builds, and Warriors of Chaos, High Elves, and Dark Elves have quite a few of those. I don't know much about Warriors of Chaos, but both Elves suffer from generally being brittle and not very resilient to enemy attacks.

High Elves have access to some of the most elite troops in the game, which synergies well with specific abilities. Swordsmen (using a great weapon that usually always strikes last) with a racial ability which lets them attack first, just for example. Expect to field small numbers of specialists with high leadership but poor toughness and just decent armour saves. They've got nice looking clean models. If anything is considered seriously broken in their army it's Teclis the special character. If you don't want people giving you dirty looks just don't pick him up.

Dark Elves aren't thaaaaat different. Super specialists, poor toughness, slightly worse armor (though they make up for it with some cool defensive abilities). They tend to have more of a ranged slant with some really impressive rank and file multiple shot crossbows, but that comes down to how you build the army, they've got good melee choices too. I think their magic tends to be more impressive than the High Elves, not just because they have their own lore but generally well supported spellcasters. The models i think look better (just an opinion), they're as clean but look malicious as hell. The only Dark Elf unit I've ever heard people call overpowered is the Hydra, people say it should be more expensive. I don't think anyone would call you cheesy for fielding one or two though, they're not ridiculous.

This should go without saying, but Dark Elves favour the offensive much more than High Elves, with a cavalry core, and all their units hate everything (only lasts for the first round of combat though of course). I think I may be a bad ambassador, because I don't really *get* High Elves, I think Dark Elves are much more interesting, but I'm sure someone will set me straight shortly.

Thanks for the response! The more I look into it, the more I like Dark Elves over High Elves. I love being bad guys, and evil Elves are much cooler than good ones in my opinion...

So now it's just down to deciding if I for sure want Dark Elves or if I'm going to spring for Daemons (love Slaanesh).

If you mean 'spring' in the economic sense, just a day or two ago I was surprised to discover Daemons really aren't more expensive than other armies. Having so many points invested in one or two lords/heroes models really cuts down on the costs. Their core is 12 points a pop, and with the exception of the nurglings you buy them in packs of 10 for 25 USD, and that's par for the course in the game.

If you mean 'spring' in the strategic sense, they've got a lot in common with Dark Elves. Super specialists, generally low survivability. You can pick one thing to be good at and aim your entire army at that. From what I hear the special characters are potentially broken, so I'd watch out for that.

the overall cheapness of an army will mostly depend on the exact build you go for.


HEs can be really cheap if you go for lots of Elite troops to make your army up. like Lothern Sea Guard bloacks as Core.

they can also be expensive. you could run massive blocks of cheap HE Spearmen and Archers.


DEs go the same way.




Hydra are good. their main problem is being about 50 points under costed and people will give you funny looks if you show up with more then 2. they are fairly easy to counter, but it does require being prepared.

Of course, i look at the DE supreme sorceress and think that the Hydra trade is fair as the Sorceress is woefully overpriced with the new edition rules(she pays for an ability that everyone has now)

The Fragile Breath wrote:
So now it's just down to deciding if I for sure want Dark Elves or if I'm going to spring for Daemons (love Slaanesh).

If you like Slaanesh, you can make it happen. A mono god theme is kind of hurting yourself, but daemon core choices are all strong, however Daemonettes are usually considered to be behind Bloodletters with their higher strength and killing blow. Having Tzeentch back you up is also nice for 2 things, a Herald of Tzeentch with Master of Sorcery (possibly the best hero choice in the game point for point), along with some horrors to use as a bunker (you get a 4+ ward save instead of a 5+ plus look out sir rolls) and also Flamers of Tzeentch are really really good units. If you wanted a quick starter Slaanesh only list I would run this for a 1k game:

Herald of Slaanesh
Herald of Slaanesh

Daemonettes x25
FC
Sirens Standard

Daemonettes x25
FC
Sirens Standard

Fiend of Slaanesh x2

A herald in each group of Daemonettes for Always Strikes First, with their naturally high initiative you will be rerolling most misses since you will have higher initiative then your opponents. Fiends stay in cover and work their way to enemy war machines or flank enemies once engaged with Daemonettes.

Yeah, sorry, I should have elaborated, I don't want a solo-Slaanesh army, but I would want to make my core of Daemonettes. I really like Seekers too (the model, no idea if they're actually good) but I'm glad to hear that Tzeentch makes good back-up, as that's who I was thinking. This would also help me be different from my friend who is going to start Daemons, as he likes Khorne and Nurgle.

We're going to do a proxy game soon with borrowed army books so we can make sure, it would probably be a good idea as none of us have played Fantasy and want to get our feet wet before buying all those models! I am very happy, in the beginning I wasn't sure what army I wanted, but now after looking through their books and their models, I can say it's a definite tie between Dark Elves and Daemons, maybe all that's left is to try a game with each?

Seekers are good if you field a lot of them for a storm of high I attacks. Tzeentch is the best support god, and that leaves you open to using Kairos, one of the best magic users in the game.

Ok if Tzeentch is considered then try this for your practice game:

Herald of Slaanesh 90
Herald of Tzeentch
-Master of Sorcery 140 - Life or Light are good here

Daemonettes x29
-FC
-Sirens Standard 412

Pink Horrors x20
-Musician
-Icon of Sorcery 261

Flamers x3 105
-or-
Fiend of Slaanesh x2 110 and drop a Pink Horror or Daemonette or Icon of Sorcery

I tried your second list out tonight, I was very excited to play my first game of Fantasy. I'm happy to say I had fun, but I'm sad to say that I lost, pretty bad too. All of my Tzeentchlings got wrecked and my Daemonettes, though in a huge block, slowly got whittled down from every side. Yeowch.

Edit: I should mention that I did love how Daemons play.

That's a bummer, a lot of it is the dice rolling too. Since you are kind of playing with the mono god theme you are taking a hit in being more competitive, like was stated before Bloodletters will perform better.

Try messing around, maybe make your herald a wizard. You could dump the Pink horrors all together and just roll the herald in with the flamers and fit in 2 daemonette units. You can try checking out this website/forum here for some tips. http://z7.invisionfree.com/wyrmling_x/index.php?

The only reason you lost is because I got a great roll on my magic and my Minitaurs got to the back of your Deamons

Thanks for posting that Egg. I was worried I gave some bad advice that Fragile may have spent money based on. The thing is it's a game of chance and in this game, unlike 40k, the game is won in the movement phase, not the combat or shooting phase.