Dark Elves
Today, we're continuing our look at the armies of Warhammer and how to get the most out of them in the new edition. Chris Pritchard's Dark Elves have been glaring menacingly at me from the office cabinet for some time now, so I thought I'd take some pictures of them and ask Chris what the new edition has meant for his Druchii. Over to Chris:
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I've always fielded several units of 10 Dark Elf Warriors with repeater crossbows. With two shots each and a Ballistic Skill of 4 they can throw out a lot of firepower, even with a small frontage. Now that warriors can fire in two ranks, I've upped my unit sizes to 20 for a total of 40 shots per unit. This also allows me to reform them into 3 ranks if they look likely to be charged.
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Dark Elf Warriors with spears are cheap and are great against enemy infantry. Their high Weapon Skill normally ensures they hit on a 3+, while Hatred allows them to re-roll any attacks that do miss their mark. This unit will be even more effective once I get enough of them painted to form a horde - they'll be able to kick out 40 attacks - more than enough to chop up an enemy horde. You better believe that more spear-toting Warriors will be the next thing I'll be painting!
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Dark Riders, as with the repeater crossbow wielding Warriors, can now fire in two ranks, and with the Vanguard rule they can get into position early and deliver death to venerable enemy units that are skulking at the back. The other benefit of having two ranks of Dark Riders is that they can deliver a flank charge and remove an enemy's rank bonus - devastating if you also charge a unit of spear-armed Warriors into the enemy's front.
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Dark Elf magic is horribly effective. With the Power of Darkness spell all of your Sorceresses can get extra power dice and easily overwhelm your opponent's magical defences. I use the Hag Queen model as a Sorceress armed with the Sacrificial Dagger. Like all of my Dark Elves, her skin was basecoated with Shadow Grey, washed with Badab Black, and then highlighted with a 1:1 mix of Shadow Grey and Space Wolves Grey. I then applied a final highlight of Space Wolves Grey.
In the new edition the amount of power dice you have access to is very random so anything that guarantees you extra power dice is a real bonus. Fortunately for us Dark Elf players, we've got a spell that just does that (Power of Darkness), which means we can pretty much guarantee casting a fair number of spells each magic phase. To make the most of this, I'd recommended including several magic users in your army, and as there's quite a few to choose you needn't have the same one twice.