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Hey guys, I'm just starting to get into fantasy and I'm making a decent sized purchase of high elves. I set myself a price limit and have enough left to buy one box of White Lions or Phoenix Guard. Any ideas which one I should buy?

Well do you have any other white lions or phoenix guard? 10 is a little light for a single unit. What other models do you have?

Thanks for the reply. I don't have any Lions or Guard; I have the island of blood models, another 10 Swordmasters, 2 boxes of spearmen, 5 dragon princes, and a noble on foot and horseback.

It really depends on the points you play. PG are usually best for bunkers with larger model counts than the 10 you get in one box, and come into their own around 1.5k+ fielded in units of 20+ models.

At anything over 1000pts, 10 models for either PG or WL won't be any good. Around 1000pts or less, WL will probably be best.

Sound advice Avatar. If you do feel you need more and only have $40 to work with a box of archers would probably be more useful then only 10 of WL/PG or you can get the WL and PG and proxy them as swordmasters until you get a 2nd box of them. 2 units of 15 swordmasters as small hitman groups I hear are effective.

If they're just hitman units, then two units of 14 might work better running 7x2. Unless you really don't have 30pts to spend elsewhere, 15 is usually unnecessary, as you should be running them as wide as necessary to maximise frontage, so you can take advantage of the 2 attacks of each swordsman and get more supporting him.

I'd go with the PG over the WL because you already have the swordmasters, who are designed for dealing damage. You will want a bunker unit for your wizard.

Or what you could do, which I plan on doing next time I play my HE, is run a horde of 50 spearmen, with the MR (2) banner, led by a Life Archmage and have another horde of 30 Swordmasters. Put a noble/mage in the unit with the amulet that gives the unit a 2+ ward against spells and you can have a fairly tough pair of units. Add an eagle, some reavers and you have a pretty solid army.

That would probably be a cheaper option for you as far as spending real world money.

Good point Turalon for the same price as a box of PG or WL you can get an IoB High Elf army on ebay, this increases your sword masters to 30, gets you 52 seaguard/spearmen, 5 more reavers and a POS prince on chicken you can sell on ebay or a bazaar for $10 easy.

I'm assuming he intends to expand the unit later, in which case I'd get a new box just to have some painting variation. I'd go with Phoenix Guard. As said, Lions and Swordmasters cover much the same ground while PG make a nasty defensive unit, which the others don't do as effectively.