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Some friends and I have been recently considering giving AoS a try. I had played 8th for a very brief time, but eventually sold my small dark elf army to fund my 40K army. my 40K army is pretty much done (as done as they can be), and i'm looking for a new project. With the generals handbook out now, i had really wanted to try AOS. The rules look tight and uncomplicated (which is a nice break from 40K), but i'm a bit confused. I see that delves are order (for some reason?), but seem to be really split up into really small factions.
Can they be mixed together?
If so, is there any down side for not sticking to one subfaction?
how are dark elves currently?
where did malekith/morathi/all the characters go to? I can't seem to find any of them, except in the warscroll for when dark elves first came out.

With the 3 Ways to Play, anything goes in Open Play, and Narrative Play army construction is going to depend on the campaign you're playing. The most pertinent "way" to your questions would be Matched Play, so I'll address that:

There are two important terms to know when it comes to army building in AoS: Grand Alliance and Allegiance. As you noted, Dark Elves (Aelves) are part of Grand Alliance: Order. The biggest effect Grand Alliance has in the game right now is that in Matched Play (the organized play system set up in the GHB), all units in your army must be from the same Grand Alliance, and you can only summon units from your own Grand Alliance, so Dark Elves (Aelves) wouldn't be able to summon Daemons or Skeletons. There are many different factions that they fall into, but faction has very little bearing on the game right now, it's just sort of how GW organized the armies when AoS came out.

As far as mixing the factions together? Yes, you can. Armies in Matched Play gain bonuses for having the same Allegiance. This can be any keyword that appears on all warscrolls in your army. All Dark Elves will have the Order keyword regardless of faction, so the army would have the Order Allegiance and access to the Allegiance Abilities and Artifacts for Order in the GHB. Some factions have a more focused Allegiance, like Stormcast Eternals and Sylvaneth, so they can instead use the Stormcast Eternals or Sylvaneth Allegiance Abilities and Artifacts from the respective Battletomes.

This brings us to the current problem many factions, including Dark Elves, face: They have not yet received a Battletome to bring them up to speed in the game. Now, I don't play any Elf factions, nor have I seen any but Wanderers (Wood Elves) played, but I would estimate from tournament rankings I've seen that they fall into the "decent, but not competitive with updated factions" category. The good news is that a Dark Aelf faction is rumored to be coming soon, and some of the recent Rumor Machine previews have a definite Dark Aelf vibe, so their day may be coming soon.

I hope this answered most of your questions.

Yeah, if we pick it up, it'll be using mostly matched play.

I suppose i'll be holding off a few months then. It was likely to be a "within 6 months or so" project anyways.

So, from what i've seen of batreps, the army sizes look much smaller than 8th ed armies. where before, i would see several giant blocks of like orks, now i'm seeing like 3-4 5 man units, 2-3 boar squads, and some heroes. is this the case? (that's a solid pro in my book. army sizes in 8th were prohibitively huge. my store played nothing but 2k+ games)

I never played WHFB, but from what I hear, the scale is much smaller. A typical game is between 1000 and 2500 points, and for a sense of scale, a unit of Witch Aelves is 10 for 140 points.

You will use far less dark aelves than you would dark elves in fantasy! For instance they've been subdivided into numerous factions such as daughters of khaine, order serpentis etc....

Like my 1500 order serpentis army only has like 19 models in it

Drahken_40k wrote:
You will use far less dark aelves than you would dark elves in fantasy! For instance they've been subdivided into numerous factions such as daughters of khaine, order serpentis etc....

Like my 1500 order serpentis army only has like 19 models in it

Is that like mostly war hydras or something?

Also...why exactly are dark elves order? They're still very into murder and piracy, if what I've read is correct.

ancraig wrote:

Drahken_40k wrote:
You will use far less dark aelves than you would dark elves in fantasy! For instance they've been subdivided into numerous factions such as daughters of khaine, order serpentis etc....

Like my 1500 order serpentis army only has like 19 models in it

Is that like mostly war hydras or something?

List of Order Serpentis units.

ancraig wrote:
Also...why exactly are dark elves order? They're still very into murder and piracy, if what I've read is correct.

'Order' doesn't necessarily mean 'good'.

ancraig wrote:

Also...why exactly are dark elves order? They're still very into murder and piracy, if what I've read is correct.

Plenty of Sylvaneth still murder people and impale the bodies on their branches for committing the cool, cool crime of not being Sylvaneth.

The scope of the grand alliances are ultimately very, very broad. Dark Aelves don't collectively serve the chaos gods and they ultimately want to build and shape society, which pots them squarely in the Order camp. Even if their idea of what society should be is disturbing to others, the fact is that they don't want to tear down everything and beat each other to death with the bricks or sacrifice themselves to be dancing meat puppets to the relative few necromancer out there.

The armies aren't really that much smaller unless you want them to be. That is ... stacking up monster riding heroes and big things. That does seem to be something that a lot of people do that they couldn't do in the past.

My 2000 point dark elf list in fantasy is about roughly the same size as my 2000 point AOS dark elf army. (60-70 models in whfb to 55 - 65 models in AOS)

As to dark elves not supposed to be order, if you follow RPGs... order is "lawful".

Which encompasses lawful good, lawful neutral.... and lawful evil.

So, what sort of style are dark elves now? Are they more of a glass hammer? How do the differ from high elves play style wise? (The daughters of khaine stuff definitely seems that way, but that was a given.). I'm mostly interested in the darkling covens stuff + cold one knights.

I had sold my dark elves a couple years ago to fund my 40k army, but want to be sure before I rebuy them.

My 40k army is blood angels. I like to have a somewhat elite army without going really really small. I like my units to be capable of winning on their own without needing a bunch of support. "Middle of the road but good at close combat" I think would be what I'm trying to say. I'm currently trying to decide between d elves, iron jaws, nurgle daemons/rotbringers Or a death army (though I realize they're more hoardy). My main attraction to dark elves has always been the malus dark made books. I like the way their rank and file infantry looks, and they have some neat ways of changing it up from plain "elves with dark colors and some spikes" with "ninja babes," "pirates," and "monsters". I've had some difficulty finding any dark elves age of sigmar reports to watch to figure this out (which I attribute to their not being updated yet).

Sorry about the rambling, what do you guys think?

High/Dark elf player here. Elves in general are very much glass cannons. They move fast, hit hard, but die in droves. Dark elves are generally better in melee, but also have good shooting. Elves seem like a synergy dependent faction that suffers because they were written as such beforw their keywords got splintered. As such, you will generally find them overcosted for what they do. They probably would have fared better as a single exiles faction, as they existed in the compendium. Dont let that deter you, however. There was one crazy guy who played mono shadowblades who only had dark riders and assassins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, ironically aelves play more like an expensive horde army, where you want large infantry blocks for their number buffs.

aquietfrog wrote:
High/Dark elf player here. Elves in general are very much glass cannons. They move fast, hit hard, but die in droves. Dark elves are generally better in melee, but also have good shooting. Elves seem like a synergy dependent faction that suffers because they were written as such beforw their keywords got splintered. As such, you will generally find them overcosted for what they do. They probably would have fared better as a single exiles faction, as they existed in the compendium. Dont let that deter you, however. There was one crazy guy who played mono shadowblades who only had dark riders and assassins.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, ironically aelves play more like an expensive horde army, where you want large infantry blocks for their number buffs.

Those small weird factions in a full army is something I really like, which is why I'll have to do something really obscure for my next army