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I'm looking to get into WHFB to have a change of pace from 40k. I do have quite a lot of Chaos Demon models from 40k, but I really cbf rebasing them to square bases and it gives me an excuse to get MOAR MODELS.

I played quite a bit of Warhammer Online, and my favourite classes were a Sorceress and a Blackguard so I'm pretty keen on the Dark Elf faction as a whole. I really have no idea about how things work in Fantasy, so I was just wondering what kind of list I would want to work towards for a 1500-2000pt army. I definitely want to include some Sorcs, Blackguard and Cold One Knights so if I could get some ideas on what else to include that would be awesome. Anyone got some suggestions?

Pretty much 90% of the dark elves book is good, so pick what you like and try to see how those units can fit into a larger battle plan.
A sorceress is a no brainer, but apart from the general, I'd start by buying the core troops like crossbowmen or dark riders, so that you can play smaller games with a decent number of models from the get go, familiarize with the army, and of course spread out the money cost cover time.

This box is an amazing start to a Dark Elf army. The contents are $299 AUD individually but the box is $240 AUD, so you save enough that you can get yourself the plastic Sorceress blister or something of that nature.

It nets you:
20 Warriors(can be built as Crossbowmen, Swordsmen, or Spearmen) and 20 Black Ark Corsairs
5 Cold One Knights
A Scourgerunner/Cold One Chariot
A Black Ark Fleetmaster(this one is a wash IMO as the character sculpt is amazing but the rules are less than spectacular)

 GoonBandito wrote:
I'm looking to get into WHFB to have a change of pace from 40k. I do have quite a lot of Chaos Demon models from 40k, but I really cbf rebasing them to square bases and it gives me an excuse to get MOAR MODELS.

I played quite a bit of Warhammer Online, and my favourite classes were a Sorceress and a Blackguard so I'm pretty keen on the Dark Elf faction as a whole. I really have no idea about how things work in Fantasy, so I was just wondering what kind of list I would want to work towards for a 1500-2000pt army. I definitely want to include some Sorcs, Blackguard and Cold One Knights so if I could get some ideas on what else to include that would be awesome. Anyone got some suggestions?

Let's start with the standard 40k fallacies.

I really have no idea about how things work in Fantasy, so I was just wondering what kind of list I would want to work towards for a 1500-2000pt army
No. That is not what you should be wondering. What you should be wondering is how fantasy works. You can't netlist fantasy to anywhere near the extend you can in 40k. Fantasy is a game about movement & positioning. About feigns, traps & setting up for 3 turns from now. You cannot just say "give me a basic list" because there isn't one. Especially with dark elves.

Let me put it this way. I have had a 120 point unit of skeletons destroy a 400 point unit of dragon princes (elite heavy cavalry) in ONE round of combat. I sacrificed a unit of 40 point zombie dogs to draw these guys out of formation. Then I charged them in the flank. This means I have a STATIC (before any attacks) combat resolution of 6. I charged for +1, in the flank for +1, with 3 extra ranks of troops for +3 and a banner for an additional +1. He had a static resolution of +1 for a banner. He had 2 elves in base contact meaning those only 2 could fight (you don't get supporting attacks to the flank or rear). He had to do 5 wounds with 4 elf attacks & 2 horse attacks just to NOT LOSE that combat against a unit less than 1/3 of his point cost. He only killed 2, I got lucky & killed one. He lost combat by 4, took a break test at -4ld and ran. I rolled high & caught up with him destroying the unit.

The moral of that story is WHAT you take doesn't matter nearly as much as HOW you use it.

Dark elves can run a gunline, fast cavalry avoidance, witch horde, MSU, BCB (Big combat blocks), magic heavy, flying circus or a mix of any. So there is no good list to start as it will really depend on how you play. For one list you need a lot of witches for your core. However other lists don't run any. Some don't run any infantry at all & use dark riders for all their core.

That said here are some things you will need:
A General - This will automatically be the character with the highest Ld, usually a lord. He allows any unit within 12" to use his Ld instead of their own.
A BSB - This will be a hero level character, the BSB FORCES (note FORCES not ALLOWS) any friendly unit to reroll any failed Ld test. This may also be your general but I don't recommend putting so many eggs in one basket.
A Wizard - Generally anything above 1200 you want a lvl 3 or 4. This may also be your general but I don't recommend putting so many eggs in one basket.

Things to look into:
A Bunker: Generally a tough unit or a unit that can sit back. This will probably be dark shards for DE. Essentially they stay out of harms way & act as extra shooting wounds for your mage.
An Anvil: This will usually be a combat block that is durable or hard to break. Black guard do this well with stubborn. You get this into combat in order to hold you enemy in place so you can deliver....
A Hammer: This will be a harder hitting but less durable combat unit. Think knights. They come in & hit the flank of whatever i fighting your anvil. This is USUALLY enough to win you the combat pretty heavily.
Shooting: Used to soften up enemy units before combat. Do not expect to delete units with pure shooting like in 40k unless you're shooting at...
Chaff: Weak cheap fast & disposable. The purpose of this unit is to screen your other units & bloack / redirect / bait charges. This is what my zombie dogs were in the above story.

Units you mentioned:
Sorcs, yeah you'll want at least 1 supreme sorc & 1 regular sorc. Generally on different lores (psychic disciplines). These are your wizards.
Black Guard: They work as a good anvil. Decent in combat with 2 Str 4 attacks, rerolling 1s to wound & rerolling all hits always. Immune to Psychology means they never take fear or panic checks and Stubborn means they always test on unmodified Ld (combat res doesn't affect them)
Cold One Knights: Generally sub-par btu I like them and have found them to be effective. The major downside is you want them within range of your general & BSB as they have the stupidity special rule.

What I recommend, before you buy anything else, buy & read the rulebook & watch some battle reports on youtube. Buying models without understanding how fantasy works is just going to result in wasted money & you not having a good first experience.


As a side note thanks to the end times book III : Khaine you can now field a combined army of HE/WE & DE but while it is heavily believed, it is still unconfirmed if they will stay unified. I recommend getting a full army before branching out unless it is officially confirmed they will stay unified. Again while it is heavily believed & implied it is still unconfirmed.

I'll echo the "almost can't go wrong in Dark Elves'. It's a super solid book.

First up: rule book. I'd recommend getting a mini one on ebay, as 9th is inbound, near as we can tell sometime in 2015. The 8th ed BRB is beautiful, but unless you want it for the fluff and splendor, don't shell out the dough.

Then get the Dark Elf Army book as a start.

Also, be aware the Elves in the last month just got unified. Meaning that there are now rules out that allow combined armies to be made of High, Wood, and Dark elves. You DO NOT have to play them unified, you can still 100% play them mono-elf if you want to. However, the option is out there, and ... built correctly, it's grossly powerful. There's some fairly popular belief that this is how elves will work in 9th, though its by no means a ubiquitous opinion (fwiw, i fall into this camp that unified elves is a thing that's here to stay. Just me. I also play unified elves with the new rules, with a previous to End Times: Khaine focus on high elves)

SO !

Sorceress is a typical lord choice, and i would say it would probably be nearly 100% recommended to take a level 4. Dark Magic is a nice lore, but they can also take any of the big red book lores too. Lots and lots of options here.

Cold One Knights : Solid non-core choice. HIt like a ton of bricks and their "drawback" (stupidity) rarely is an issue. Very very good choice. Most people (not all) tend to run them in either minimum sized unit of 5, or in buses (larger blocks, death star type unit). There might be other uses, honestly, i personally do not use them, as i gravitate towards High Elf special choices in unified elves.

Blackguard - again, solid non-core choice. Always stubborn is nice, it means they will flee from combat MUCH less frequently, eternal hatred is also quality. Finally the halberds give them a little bit more killy power over DE core.



So i think all your "must haves" are doable. However i'd really, really examine your core choices and see how you want to play. Dark Elf swordsmen, if delivered, are pretty sustainable due to parry save, and they are dirt cheap. Spearmen get to attack with more people. Darkshards have the singularly amazing repeater crossbow. I gravitate towards Darkshards myself, but that's me. Witch elves hit like a truck but suffer from survivability issues (they have none, unless they are with a cauldron), and are mid line in terms of point costs. Corsairs got better on their base stats, but no longer have the exquisite Sea Serpent banner from last edition. Still, with their base 4 up armor save, not a bad choice, and with dual hand weaposns, they can put out a good number of attacks.

Some people like to do dark riders too, and they are also very very good.


If you like playing magic heavy, I would suggest Warlocks (aka Brolocks). IF you are not playing end times magic, they come with a pair of good spells, and actually can hit pretty hard in combat believe it or not, and in addition have a 4 up ward vs anything that doesn't rhyme with "Fannesh". All for a very reasonable point cost for fast cav. Definitely would recommend them. If you are playing with end times magic, they go from "very good" to "how in god's name can i justify NOT taking these". Reason being is that with End Times magic, if you know any spell in a lore, you know all its spells. LIke most of the other things from End Times, people think this is a taste of how magic will work in 9th. Very strong camps of favor and opposition to this. I personally fall into the favor camp. ALso Dark Elves have Morathi, probably the most efficient spell caster in the entire game. This is becasue she's a level 4, that gets d3+1 on her casts for dark magic. When you read the magic rules you'll understand why getting and extra 4+2-4 on each roll is gross. It's like a normal wizard being a level 6-8, which is obscene. She's very, very good.

What else... Repeater Bolt Throwers are very good, though you may want to try to find the metal models and not Finecast if you can.

Hydra's are not as survivable as they used to be, but they are still pretty decent. I personally don't like the Kharibydyss myself. Not sure if others agree or disagree. About the only positive i can give it is that it has a very high strength.


I will stop there as i don't want to go through the whole book, but on the whole, you basically cannot go wrong with Dark Elves as long as you have your shooting, magic and melee vectors covered. You want some shooting to thin the ranks in early turns, you want at least a level 4 sorc, and consider some other magic user(s). You probably want a Battle Standard Bearer. Maybe look at an assassin (lots of fun to put a potion of strength on him, along with some other options). You want a good mix of high attack output to deal with infantry, but also some high strength attack output in melee to deal with high toughness stuff.


Again, for like the 4th time.... you almost can't go wrong with Dark Elves.

If you play unified Elves, you get access to two additional whole codexes worth of choices. High Elves bring their utterly incredibly special choices, and High magic (gross, in its own way, in tandem with some stuff DE have) to the table, and Wood Elves bring excellent shooting and Sisters of the Thorn (whom have one spell from beasts, and one from life, which in end times, means they know both whole lores!) / Riders of Kuronous to the table too. Also, Wood Elf mage lords are potentially the meanest vanilla, non-character casters in the game in terms of poential casting bonus, and have the single most varied spell lore choice - all BRB lores, High, and Dark at their fingertips. Not bad.


Hope all this helps, and Welcome to WHFB. It's a really fun game

 Haight wrote:
I'll echo the "almost can't go wrong in Dark Elves'. It's a super solid book.

First up: rule book. I'd recommend getting a mini one on ebay, as 9th is inbound, near as we can tell sometime in 2015. The 8th ed BRB is beautiful, but unless you want it for the fluff and splendor, don't shell out the dough.

Then get the Dark Elf Army book as a start.

Also, be aware the Elves in the last month just got unified. Meaning that there are now rules out that allow combined armies to be made of High, Wood, and Dark elves. You DO NOT have to play them unified, you can still 100% play them mono-elf if you want to. However, the option is out there, and ... built correctly, it's grossly powerful. There's some fairly popular belief that this is how elves will work in 9th, though its by no means a ubiquitous opinion (fwiw, i fall into this camp that unified elves is a thing that's here to stay. Just me. I also play unified elves with the new rules, with a previous to End Times: Khaine focus on high elves)

SO !

Sorceress is a typical lord choice, and i would say it would probably be nearly 100% recommended to take a level 4. Dark Magic is a nice lore, but they can also take any of the big red book lores too. Lots and lots of options here.

Cold One Knights : Solid non-core choice. HIt like a ton of bricks and their "drawback" (stupidity) rarely is an issue. Very very good choice. Most people (not all) tend to run them in either minimum sized unit of 5, or in buses (larger blocks, death star type unit). There might be other uses, honestly, i personally do not use them, as i gravitate towards High Elf special choices in unified elves.

Blackguard - again, solid non-core choice. Always stubborn is nice, it means they will flee from combat MUCH less frequently, eternal hatred is also quality. Finally the halberds give them a little bit more killy power over DE core.



So i think all your "must haves" are doable. However i'd really, really examine your core choices and see how you want to play. Dark Elf swordsmen, if delivered, are pretty sustainable due to parry save, and they are dirt cheap. Spearmen get to attack with more people. Darkshards have the singularly amazing repeater crossbow. I gravitate towards Darkshards myself, but that's me. Witch elves hit like a truck but suffer from survivability issues (they have none, unless they are with a cauldron), and are mid line in terms of point costs. Corsairs got better on their base stats, but no longer have the exquisite Sea Serpent banner from last edition. Still, with their base 4 up armor save, not a bad choice, and with dual hand weaposns, they can put out a good number of attacks.

Some people like to do dark riders too, and they are also very very good.


If you like playing magic heavy, I would suggest Warlocks (aka Brolocks). IF you are not playing end times magic, they come with a pair of good spells, and actually can hit pretty hard in combat believe it or not, and in addition have a 4 up ward vs anything that doesn't rhyme with "Fannesh". All for a very reasonable point cost for fast cav. Definitely would recommend them. If you are playing with end times magic, they go from "very good" to "how in god's name can i justify NOT taking these". Reason being is that with End Times magic, if you know any spell in a lore, you know all its spells. LIke most of the other things from End Times, people think this is a taste of how magic will work in 9th. Very strong camps of favor and opposition to this. I personally fall into the favor camp. ALso Dark Elves have Morathi, probably the most efficient spell caster in the entire game. This is becasue she's a level 4, that gets d3+1 on her casts for dark magic. When you read the magic rules you'll understand why getting and extra 4+2-4 on each roll is gross. It's like a normal wizard being a level 6-8, which is obscene. She's very, very good.

What else... Repeater Bolt Throwers are very good, though you may want to try to find the metal models and not Finecast if you can.

Hydra's are not as survivable as they used to be, but they are still pretty decent. I personally don't like the Kharibydyss myself. Not sure if others agree or disagree. About the only positive i can give it is that it has a very high strength.


I will stop there as i don't want to go through the whole book, but on the whole, you basically cannot go wrong with Dark Elves as long as you have your shooting, magic and melee vectors covered. You want some shooting to thin the ranks in early turns, you want at least a level 4 sorc, and consider some other magic user(s). You probably want a Battle Standard Bearer. Maybe look at an assassin (lots of fun to put a potion of strength on him, along with some other options). You want a good mix of high attack output to deal with infantry, but also some high strength attack output in melee to deal with high toughness stuff.


Again, for like the 4th time.... you almost can't go wrong with Dark Elves.

If you play unified Elves, you get access to two additional whole codexes worth of choices. High Elves bring their utterly incredibly special choices, and High magic (gross, in its own way, in tandem with some stuff DE have) to the table, and Wood Elves bring excellent shooting and Sisters of the Thorn (whom have one spell from beasts, and one from life, which in end times, means they know both whole lores!) / Riders of Kuronous to the table too. Also, Wood Elf mage lords are potentially the meanest vanilla, non-character casters in the game in terms of poential casting bonus, and have the single most varied spell lore choice - all BRB lores, High, and Dark at their fingertips. Not bad.


Hope all this helps, and Welcome to WHFB. It's a really fun game

Exalted both you and Dorian, getting into High Elves I also found this information extremely useful.

P.S Dorian, you love that Skeleton archer/Dragon Princes story eh?! Haha its a good one, seen it like 3 times now

I love it for 2 reasons.

1.) It's true lol

2.) it illustrates the point well. Knowing nothing about fantasy you can imagine how gak "skeleton warriors" are and how awsome "dragon princes" are. They are a gak unit & an elite unit that even not knowing the stats it's recognizable.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I love it for 2 reasons.

1.) It's true lol

2.) it illustrates the point well. Knowing nothing about fantasy you can imagine how gak "skeleton warriors" are and how awsome "dragon princes" are. They are a gak unit & an elite unit that even not knowing the stats it's recognizable.

I've won so many games with skeleton warriors.

Best game was against Warriors of Chaos. His army was two hell cannons, a Throgg star with him and 9 trolls, a war altar, 2 packs of dogs, and a ~1,200 point festus deathstar with him, level 4 nurgle, battle standard bearer, and FIFTY greatweapon-wielding marauders.

My vampire gets sniped out turn 2 by the hellcannons. Terrorgheist drops to one wound. Vargheists failed frenzy and decide they want to fight a hellcannon on their own. Things are looking dire.

But then...SKELETONS TO THE RESCUE! They hit the festus star on each flank, pinning him in place. Tiny little unit of crypt horrors hits the front, just to tag the characters and keep them from making way into the skeletons.

He deals a couple wounds, I deal a couple wounds. Crypt horrors take a bunch from characters, but stomp a bunch of marauders in return.

In the end, I win by skeletons static combat res. +3 ranks, +1 flank, +1 banner, and +3 effective CR from disrupting my opponents' ranks. He's on LD4 with a reroll. Fails it. Skeletons catch him. Earn me 1,200 for the unit, 100 for the BSB, 100 for the general. ~1,400 point swing, courtesy of skeleton warriors.

I'd argue that wasn't so muh the skeletons that won it but the static CR from the flank charge.

Man hearing these stories makes me excited to start playing fantasy. My only friend who plays, and is starting with me is going skavens. So we go the elite versus the horde.. hope my shiny princes dont fail me!

A word of advice. Flank them. Skaven add their rank bonus to their Ld. If you take away their rank bonus you take away their Ld bonus.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
A word of advice. Flank them. Skaven add their rank bonus to their Ld. If you take away their rank bonus you take away their Ld bonus.

Disruption doesn't stop your rank bonus from taking effect. The exact wordng is "A unit dies not receive combat result points for extra ranks as long as it is disrupted." You'd still get the rank bonus, just not the combat res for it. So Strength in numbers still comes into play, as it's not combat res.

Thanks for the help guys. So if i were looking at something along the lines of the following to start me off at 1000pts:

Supreme Sorc - level4

5 Dark Riders with shields and xbows

10 Darkshards with shields

20 Blackguard

5 Cold One Knights

That should give a good foundation to build off?

Ah thought it said "Does not receive rank bonus"

Also lose those shields for a banner in the black guard. It's okish but you don't need a lvl 4 at 1,000 points. A lvl 2 will suffice. Use the extra points on a combat character. But list discussions go in another forum.

 GoonBandito wrote:
Thanks for the help guys. So if i were looking at something along the lines of the following to start me off at 1000pts:

Supreme Sorc - level4

5 Dark Riders with shields and xbows

10 Darkshards with shields

20 Blackguard

5 Cold One Knights

That should give a good foundation to build off?

Great foundation only change I would make is swap the CoK for Brolocks unless you are gonna eventually run a Cold One Knight Bus.