Comparing Dark elves and Daemons

I got a new army of dark elves at christmas and now I got small 2-3k band of elves next to my massive daemon collections. This new army is not the reason I have been off from these forums lately though, I have been really busy with my job, studies and organizing big convention animecon for next summer. But to the topic!

I have played few games with my new elves now and noticed some intresting things about them. Mainly that they are insanely powerful, more powerful than daemons in most parts and cost helluva lot less. This post will be just my musings about dark elves and daemons in general, their fight power and way of fighting.

As usual I started out making some -oh so lovely- mathhammering about the elves. I have always liked idea of gunlines, so naturally I checked all those repeater crossbows first. Against T3 6+ save models 21 crossbows deal 10,50 kills while flamers deal 9,33 kills. Both cost the same amount, but crossbows have better range and bit better static resolution in combat while Flamers hit harder in melee and have fear, instability and wards that surely help more than crossbowmens 6+ save. The thing that really sounded quite strange to me was that flamers are comped in almost every tournament here while crossbowmen are core choice and have little to no comps at all while they are still more powerful and get much better benefits from buff spells.

Moving on, I checked some more shooting possibilities and found out that Shades are quite nice. Scouting unit that is unlimited in size and shoots even better than crossbowmen. 14 Shades will cost 4pts more than Flamers, but have superior BS of 5! and deal exactly the same number of kills than flamers, 9,33 against T3 As6+. Quite a treat to deploy to opponents flank and throw ~9 kills per round at them unless they reform and start attacking them directly. Last night I tried an insane shade deathstar for a first time and got 50 shades with great weapons and moved characters with ASF banner and all sorts of buffing items in the unit. They shot 100 shots per turn, got rerolls to hit once in game and hit abour 20 times with S5 before opponent in melee. Only one unit got in combat against them in whole game and every one of it got pulverized, such was the shooting power of the unit. I am getting out of the topic, but I think you see my point; Delfs have 2 superior shooting units and neither of them is limited like flamers are even though they do the shooting thing much better and can be customized more with additional hand weapons, shields, banners, 2h weapons, assasins...and stuff like that according to the scenario and opponent that you might face.

And speaking of Assasins. It costs 146pts to have an assasin that hits 4+D3 attacks on Ws9 ASF I10 and hatred and adjusts his strenght to maximum of 6 according to opponents toughness. So to make make it simple, delfs get assasin that hits hard as Keeper of Secrets / Bloodthirster at 146pts and can position this character on any normal unit too. Having 3 Similar assasins is cheaper than greater and hits 3 times as hard as one and will surely annihilate every monster or character that nears the unit they are in. Oh yes, and assasins do not take any points from characters or anything, so you could go all nuts with them. Sure, they are not as durable as greaters are, but with offensive power like that they usually do not need to be.

And now that I mentioned Greater daemons, I could also mention Dreadlords. Spirit swallower can make up a nice anvil that can hold pretty much anything in place, but delfs get stubborn pegasus lord with 1+ save and reverse ward that is pretty much invulnerable and can hold anything with ridiculous ease! And again, pendant of Khaleth is not banned or restricted in ETC for or any other tournaments, but daemons every gift is limited to 1, LoC is nerfed (wtf?!) as are khorne heralds and unit sizes and stuff like that. And now that I think of it, neither is ring of Hotek any way penaltized. What about the killpower then? Well, Dragonrider is actually stronger than bloodletter. Standard set would be something like S6 for lord and invulnerability from armours. Result is 4S6 hatred hits from lord and 5S6 hatred hits from dragon followed by breath weapon. And again, Dreadlord has tons more customisation options than greaters. And again, the lord himself is pretty much invulnerable.

Now how are the troops then? Well first of all I got to say that flee as a charge reaction is freaking awesome. Dark riders and harpies can bait and tease opponent to the ends of the world if needed and thats something no daemon can do. Anyone who says that having no flee option on daemons isnt a bad drawback hasnt really used this to the fullest. Core options are pretty solid and against unarmoured Ws3 T3 models or similar they get very strong cost effectiveness like 0,063 from warriors and 0,066 from corsairs with frenzy banner (0,051 for letters with herald). I will make comparisons to letters frequently in this post since letters have pretty much the best cost effectiveness against everything on our book. This is balanced much by a fact that delfs dont do well against High T and big armour foes. For example against Ws4 T4 As5+ Dwarves warriors get cost effectiveness of 0,024 (basic cost effeciveness for almost all units in game) and 0,025 for corsairs (0,041 with letters). So overall core units do bit better against unarmoured models than daemons do, but strong armour gives them trouble, sounds all fair.

Special units are something different though. Even against highly armoured dwarves, witch elves would get cost effectiveness of 0,051 (0,104 against Ws4 T3), Shades would boast 0,033 melee with 0,022 shooting power, Executioners 0,062 Cold ones 0,039 and Black guards 0,043. So only shades that are not exatly the melee unit would lose to bloodletters badly in killpower against those tough dwarves. Cold ones would also lose barely but they are much much more durable than letters on the other hand and strike at S6 at the charge.

Now you might think that all of these units have their own restrictions that makes them somehow worse than Bloodletters. Well yes, Witch elves do not have ward and they can lose their ITP, but they can get ward save from cauldron, similar to bloodletters getting a hatred with their herald. For example 30 witch elves with cauldron cost 500pts. 30 Bloodletters with herald cost 475pts. Thats not much of a difference when you think that witch elves have over double the killpower of Bloodletters and if needed, cauldron can provide them +1A each or killing blow instead of wards. Executioners have ASL due to their weapons, but again with ASF BSB 30 exes would cost 500pts and then compared to Letters they would have 1 higher S, I and Ld than letters but no Ward if cauldron did not buff them. Both of the units would be stubborn if 12" away from cauldron which imo is much better than instability.

Cold ones lose in killpower to letters, but in survivability beat them hands up. 30S3 Ws3 hits will deal only 1,25 wounds to cold ones while letters suffer 5 wounds. Cold ones also have higher movement and better strenght to compensate more to this. Then there is ofcourse Black guard, who have better cost effectiveness than letters without any buffs, but could be buffed with cauldron. They are ITP, always reroll misses and can bring big variety of magical standards with them. And worth to mention is that all champions of previously mentioned units can carry magic items worth of 25pts which can make any unit ITP for example if needed.

And then ofcourse there is Hydras. These fellows have cost effectiveness of 0,031 against Dwarves and they have a great breath weapon too that can hit even with insane S5! On top of that hydras are great anvils with 4+ save and regeneration. Well, what can be said, everyone knows they are tough and they are atleast limited in many tournaments to single choice.

There is also plenty of other fun stuff, like every sorceres knows "boon of Tzeentch" spell regardless of what lore they have. They can also get sacrificial dagger that will add +D6 to casting of spells by killing one model from the unit. They can get very similar ability to lore master to the level 4 sorcerers by 15pts (one extra spell) and focus familiar that you can use to cast spells even from combat.

...Well, thats pretty much it. A quick comparison between some units and differences between delfs and daemons. Having done all the math and written this little post I again keep wondering: WHY IN THE WORLD are daemons comped so harshly but there is nearly no comps at all to delfs?! Delfs always seemed like the toughest foe to me and I had most problems on beating them, but now that I have played few games with them I have realized that they would need comping tons more than daemons ever needed. I have won every match so far, even against daemons and with some rotten luck on dice rolls. Time will show how they will turn out and will our gaming group learn to fight them, but for now they seem to be absolutely unbalanced and horrible book. And no, I am not abandoning my babies and lovely Nurglings and other daemons. And definately NO, I am not painting my delfs with those "we are so goth that we fart bats" theme, I use lots of white and red on the theme and will remove all extra spikes and weirdings that they have =P

You've pretty much nailed my opinions on DE.

Whenever I face a well-built DE army with my daemons, I know I have the following to work with:

- They will outfight me (hatred on their elite infantry is nuts. I'm particularly looking at khainite units here, but even on base infantry it's incredible)
- They will outshoot me (Flamers are great and all, but points in Rares are limited. xbows arrive in core)
- they will outmagic me. (daemons have poor magic defence and struggle to fit in a level 4 wizard. DE with a dagger and caster power of darkness generate an ever stronger magic phase than a Slann...)
- I will outmanouver them (Siren banner and Siren Song are still game-winners)

That's not a great deal to work with. (Incidentally, while the assassin is pretty hard-hitting, he's still only woundingon a 3+ most the time, and struggles to dent really big armour saves. I'mnot saying he isn't scary, but he really isn't a greater deamon's worth of hitting power...)

-und_ed

You summarized my long post quite well and I definately do agree with that. Against dark elves you NEED those siren songs and fast units. While assasin isnt that tough against Daemons, it definately is a threat to almost every other character in game. Massive 6 hatred attacks that wound on 3+ will really make a dent on most characters. On my last game it killed Ogre Bsb in one round only!

And oh those Khainites. Excited about math I made some quick calculations and got following:

30 Witch elves against 30 Bloodletters with herald:
Elves kill 18,52 letters and letters follow with 11,11 kills
Elves kill 8,67 daemons and remaining daemons deal 4,44 wounds
If Daemons didnt melt yet, rest of them will now die.

And thats without cauldron buffs, so we are talking 300pts vs 427pts now. With cauldrons buffs results would be like this:
Elves kill 22,22 letters and letters follow with 8,15 kills
If daemons didnt melt because of instability, rest of them will die now.

Well, thats witch elves for you. Luckily they can be shot down pretty easily with flamers and magic.

You really want to get high on a power-rush?

Consider the following:

1) Always take at least two Khainite units, three if you're feeling vicious.
2) Always take a cauldron, with BSB.
3) in most games, only one unit will commit to fighting a Khainite unit each turn (unless the enemy is suicidal)
4) Fighting unit gets the 5+ Ward.
5) all are stubborn with your cauldron / BSB.
6) Just for the hell of it, you can (if needed) give killing blow to your Hydra from the cauldron, giving it 13 killing blow attacks with hatred (7 Hydra, +6 from handlers)

by Khainite, I'm also including Executioners, who in 8th became one of the most ruthless units in the game. The reason I mention that there is usually only one meaningful combat in every turn is that your comparisons of value-for-points usually entail cauldron + X versus Herald + X. By noting that you're going to have one combat at a time, you get redundancy out of the cauldron, effectively splitting its cost between three units.

You really want to lose friends? include the dagger-sorc and go Shadows. You will probably be giggling insanely for a good half an hour after math-hammering 40 witch-elves under occam's mind-razor versus pretty much anything (make it chaos warriors, just for kicks)

-und_ed

Yep, DE are king of the hill, that book is insanely powerful and hideously undercosted. Absolute bargain for the power gamer.

I was more shocked than happy when I noticed the huge balance issues of the book to be honest, so more than giggling I facepalmed when I inserted the values and noticed that 30 witch elves with razor would deal 37 kills on one turn against pretty much anything and 44 with cauldron buff added to it. Sure thats awesome, but having breaking power like that is plain insanely undercosted. Only thing that gets me more sad is to see how little tournament organizers care =P

It is absolutely insane how everyone is so willing to bag on Daemons yet ignore the insanity that is DE. There should never be a complaint with them running amok. Visually I like em, fluff wise I like em, but game play they are just over the damn top.
I know people who claim that HoK locus is OP but realistically its 100+ to get it! If they made a standard of hatred and charged that much who the **** would take it. I know HE have re-rolls and none of the drawbacks but they lack units that can pump out the punishment like DE's.
So what is the general consensus for whooping these racist elves back to their homelands around here?
I have never played DE with Daemons, generally going into a tournament how paranoid should I be?

yup. The sickening thing is that it's reliable under DE - with the stupid number of power dice they can generate, your opponent pretty much has to choose one spell to stop - this means he might stop Occam's, but then you're dropping his WS/Init/whatever by D3, dropping his T by D3, and just for kicks dropping a pit of shades onto another unit. Possibly also getting your repeaters xbows +1 to hit with a level 2 Metal wizard... (DE are one of the very few armies that actually makes use of a low-level wizard in addition to their Lord-level, owing to the aforementioned silly amount of bonus power dice)

The good news is DE hate Slanns even more than daemons do. A couple of well-placed Dwellers can really wreck a DE-player's day. Sadly, this is small comfort to daemons who really struggle against both armies...

-und_ed

To Bonesaw: Like und_ed said earlier, siren song and fast movement is the key against dark elves. So with that in mind I would suggest having daemonettes with siren song, flamers to reduce their numbers and Nurgle magic since they all have low T of 3. Flesh hounds would also be nice idea, since they are bit tougher and can advance fast. Big block of fiends works well too, but in the end, good delf player wins equally good daemon player in most cases if dice roll equally for both.

It's really tough, bonesaw.

Siren Song is a great start, letting you mess around with his battle-plan. You'll often have to get creative to make it really stick, though. I'm really fond of getting near his wizard-bunker and siren-songing that one, either assassinating the silly dagger-sorc or getting a round free of her tricks as she chooses to flee.

Flamers are always good, and since only one of his units has a 5+ Ward, you can shoot do the others with impunity.

Biggest trump card we have is a Spirit-swallower Kipper. DE don't have anything resilient enough to survive her, or to kill her, and Thunderstomp hurts something fierce. She will take wounds, but healing them up she'll be fine. (Just keep her away from the bloody Hydra - no thunderstomp, handlers annoy you, and with Regen and T5 the hydra can take a pounding without dying. Also, I'd avoid charging her into the cauldron - I've now lost an unhurt bloodthirster to the idiotic thing twice, and the kipper has one less attack and no armour)

I disagree with Kitsune about Nurgle magic, since htat means taking a GUO. Like I said above, the Kipper is a terrifying threat to DE, and if you're going nurgle-magic-heavy it means you're getting into a wizard's duel against a vastly superior foe. Not a prospect I fancy.

In short, you can make a solid game of it, just go in with your eyes open, knowing it's going to be an uphill battle.

-und_ed

To add a thing to what und_ed said, try to stay away from pegasus Dreadlord with double 2+ saves and stubborn. It can hold hordes and greaters quite well on its own.

To be fair I don't think the power of DE has been ignored by gamers at large, all though it is of course flabbergasting how Daemons are consistently comped into the ground in comparison. Especially in 7th DE were tough as nails in my experience. I probably had a 9/1 loss/win ratio against them with Daemons in 7th. 8th Edition - being the great equalizer this great Edition really is - at least my win/loss ratio is an even 50-50 (or actually a little better than that but I attribute that to playing bigger games than normal people where Daemons somehow grow a pair..)

The comparison between DE crossbows and Flamers is very true. I'd take crossbows any day if presened with the choice. Stubborn inverse ward lords. Double cauldrons. Sheesh.. Dark Elves just got everything and in each instance a little bit better than everyone else it seems.

As a pretty strict Daemon-player I worry less about the Hydra though. I am pretty used to facing two of them and of course they allocate a shooting-phase from my Flamers but that's about it. Against any other army though I can certainly understand how they are concidered pure filth.

As for the general 'mystery' of how the power of DE somehow evades the massive comps that Daemons are getting I think the explanation is two-fold and in both cases very subjective:

1. DE first came out with a really underpowered book from what I hear. So there was this whole whine-fest about how unplayable they were. GW did something quite unique and revamped the entire army mid-edition. After that alot of people just haven't been able to get into their thick heads how powerfull they really became.
Whereas Daemons, of course, came out pretty powerfull right off the bat from getting their last book. And Mat Ward even supposedly saying something along the lines of that Daemons should be powerfull because they're Daemons. So that made it open season for the whiners.
2. While insanely powerfull in many respects, Dark Elves still operate according to "normal" Warhammer rules (at least on paper). Daemons have the Gifts, the Instability, the army wide ward and are thus probably percieved as more "alien" compared to Dark Elves. And concequently easier to bash I guess.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with DE in their next book. Some things will be toned down for sure, I just hope they don't swing the nerfbat to liberally..

But yeah, DE always were and still are way nastier than Daemons. Thank god for 8th Ed (and game-sizes at double the tournemant-standard) or they'd be sucking alot of fun out of our meta.

Well the Tournament is 2200 so unless I ran a magicless Keeper then things don't look none too good...
To the Dread Lord I have experienced this with my VC, WoC etc and yeah it's filthy, if I have ever seen anything in need of a comp.
Unfortunately I have avoided the whole Siren Song in my list which is a shame, but on occasion it makes me feel a little guilty. I may have to revisit my list inane take another Hound or two to mess with the x-bow units...

it all depends on 2 things

first is the comp system that the tournament is using. do you already have one in mind? if there is no comp at all (or very light), prepare for the least amount of fun you've ever had playing warhammer. uncomped DE are mind-numbingly powerful. we are better equipped than most to handle them but be prepared to fight tooth and nail for every little gain and you'll need to run a tight ship because any mistake can instantly be pounced on and exploited.

if the comp is medium to heavy, you'll have the advantage. we can build much more competitive lists without our most powerful toys than they can.

next is the skill of the DE player (which you'll be able to discern as early as spell generation or deployment). if you have an inexperienced player, you'll be able to roll him because even though they are stupidly broken, they are still a "finesse" (using the term loosely) army of T3 models.

if you have an experienced DE tourney player, be prepared for a wild (and unpleasant) ride.

this quote actually sums it up very well-

here's a funny quote in someone's sig on druchii.net that i thought i'd share