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I'm giving fantasy another shot. I accidentally have about 2000ish points of elves (bought a large unsorted collection for next to nothing) and am wondering if it is worth keeping, or trading for another, more interesting army. I have 2 or 3 Island of Bloods, 3 horse drawn chariots, a horse lord, and some white lions. How much more would I have to put into this to get a decent list?

 AngryMarine wrote:
I'm giving fantasy another shot. I accidentally have about 2000ish points of elves (bought a large unsorted collection for next to nothing) and am wondering if it is worth keeping, or trading for another, more interesting army. I have 2 or 3 Island of Bloods, 3 horse drawn chariots, a horse lord, and some white lions. How much more would I have to put into this to get a decent list?

Depends how competitive you want. Here are some suggestions on the competitive end:

* Frost Phoenix
* Big unit of White Lions with World Dragon Banner. Mage can go in here for miscast protection.
* Big unit of Phoenix Guard w/ a small mage on high lore to buff their ward save.
* Large bus of silver Helms (15+)

The nice thing with High Elves is that most of your units are pretty good. The only things that stand out as poor choices are spearmen and seaguard. And even then you can use these choices and still have a decent game as long as you expect little from them. High Elves also really beneft from big units since they fight and shoot in an extra rank. So units of 20-30 elite infantry are the norm now (unless you're talking about small swordmaster chaff units) and you can also go 40ish elites if you want to go horde. I think it's a good army with a lot of options, but they've been my primary 8th army for the last year or so. You can go lots of different directions with it, and also build out slowly from a core of stuff since almost everything works well together. I would suggest staying away from the flying chariot, since it is expensive to get and probably the worst buy in the list.

With what you have, you can get a fun army fairly easily. You have enough from 3 IoB sets for a big unit of them (25-30), a modest seaguard unit (same size), and 3 small units of reavers. You need more core to bulk your army up, so either archers or silver helms there. If you're alright at conversions, get the phoenix kit and build the frost phoenix. The extra parts are enough to let you convert an annointed on flame phoenix out of the extras, plus a foot version if you get the bird killed or want an extra hero. If you have the book or army builder, start mocking up stuff using what you have as a core and see what you can do.

You have a decent start there. The Reavers and White Lions are great.

The Chariots and Seaguard won't help you much as honestly, they aren't very good and you'll probably find them very underwhelming.

With what you have you could go a few directions: Infantry, Cavalry or a combined approach.

I'd focus first on getting these as they're kinda staple units and you'll likely take them in every game you play:
4 Bolt Throwers (Or 3 and 1 unit of 5-10 sisters)
Frost Phoenix

After that, if you want Cavalry:
10 Silver Helms (In core, they're better than any other option aside from Reavers maybe)
or
10 Dragon Princes

If you want an Infantry Army:
20 Phoenix Guard

Hope this helps!

Guys I'm in a similar position with significantly less minis.

I have

10 Silver Helms (w/prince)
10 Reavers
1 Foot Prince
1 Prince on Gryphon (Isle of Blood)
1 Hand Maiden of the Everqueen counts as
1 Converted Mage/Prince
1 counts as Mage/Everqueen

(Counts as models are from the Avatars of War line)

Where should I go from here? I like lots of cavalry, and Seaguard see good if I need more Core, and I'd previously been considering an Everqueen deathstar focusing on a big blob of white lions.

Most of the High Elf book is usable so long as it's used in the right way. For example, Silver Helms and Dragon Princes are great units, but are better used alongside Phoenix Guard, as opposed to something like White Lions (both of which are also great units). The only things I'd completely steer clear of are most of the SCs, Characters mounted on Monsters, Seaguard and Shadow Warriors.

Most competitive lists though revolve around either a horde of White Lions and/or lots of shooting (Archer core/RBTs) with a Frostheart (or two) and an Archmage with Book of Hoeth in both lists. As I say though, they're certainly not the only ways to build a good HE army.