Tactics vs Dark Elves

[thisisavampire111]

What would be the best way to take down a dark elf army that is using something like 40 spearmen, some corsairs, blood cauldron, and a hydra or bolt throwers? While glancing through the VC army book, I have yet to find suitable units to go up against a dark elf army like that for 1000 points.

 

[Crypt Keeper]

I play both, as a Dark Elf player I hate to see multiple large units, it's a nightmare, Druchii HAVE to focus on a few units, they don't have the survivability to take on more than a few. So I'd take big units of Skeletons and Zombies, they NEED to break units quick, in battle of attrition they can't win, they simply do not have the armour to do so.

At 1k I'd throw Zombies at the Hydra, take it out of the game with a unit of 30 that you ION, tie the Corsairs and Spearmen up with Skeletons with Vampires/Wright Kings/Cairn Wraiths to whittle them down. Dire Wolves/Fell bats will wipe out the Harpies/Shades/Bolt Throwers, (p.s. if he's using Bolt Throwers over Shades your already on a winner, BT NEVER hit anything, I've used 6 in 1 game and only hit like 3 targets in a whole 6 turn game, 3/36 shots... And Shades are Druchii's biggest threat.)

Hordes will ruin his day.

 

[MadLarkin]

A single spirit host will make his hydra cry. I'm not familiar with a blood cauldron but your infantry should be able to outlast his if you start at 40 and keep a strong magic phase. After their hatred run out they're nothing special

 

[Jacques Dauger De Cavoye]

I would use an ethereal unit or two to wreck his hydra. And I agree with zombies, they will just get in the way of everything, eventually dealing some wounds. Survive the first couple rounds of combat and he will have lost enough units as well as hatred. A tooled up Vampire could do some damage as well.

 

[thisisavampire111]

Ok thanks but should I be worried about magic? In his theory hammer magic would be destroying my units before even getting into combat.

 

[Cobra7]

Ok thanks but should I be worried about magic? In his theory hammer magic would be destroying my units before even getting into combat.

What lore is he useing?

From my experence Dark Elves mostly use shadow. However all casters have the spell to get more power dice. Myself, I focus on stoping this spell and mindrazor.

Both Hexwraiths and Spirit Swarms will do well and are in every one of my lists.

I would bet on my magic supported zombies on holding up the spearmen while GG can focus on corsairs and spirit host goes on a date with the hydra. This will give the rest of your army a chance to tear up everything else. Do not put your zombies into horde formation and don't be supprised if he does wipe them out after a couple turns, by then something else should be available to finish what the zombies started, use redirects if not.

Lets do some MatherHammer! Spearmen will be doing 29 attacks, needing 3+ to hit and rerolls for the first round. Thats about 26 hits and 13 wounds. After that they should be doing about 20 hits, 10 wounds. Zombies should be hitting on 5+ with 10 attacks and should be doing 2 wounds, with CR you will loose about 24 first round of combat, 18 after that.

With a level 4, corpse cart+reroll upgrade, you should be getting 13 zombies back a turn. *ponders* Maybe skellies would be better after all. They will take 14 wounds first round and 10 after that (with CR). Necro should be able to bring back 8 per turn.

The mathhammer part was just me thinking out loud. Anyway let us know what lore he uses.

EDIT: Ok, so I was doing some looking into your opponents list. If he has a cauldron, that uses up most of his hero points, thus can't take anything else. The lord level caster takes up the majority of the lord points without a magic level upgrade. Point is, these two characters take up close to half the army list. If you could get me more details I would love to see whats going on.

 

[thisisavampire111]

This is for 1000 pt as thats how much i'm working towards. I don't know anything concrete about his list other than the models he has but he has enough to create some variety among his lists.

My universal list will probably be:

2x (21 skeletons w/ musician and banner)
3 Vargheist
Mortis Engine
Necromancer
Corpse Cart balefire + spear
Master Necromancer- Lvl 4/ Master of the Dead
with enough zombies and skeletons on the side to raise more units

For the first couple of turns, I'm thinking of holding back pretty much everything to beef up the skeletons and wait for the mortis engine to become effective maybe even raise some zombies. The vargheists will try for any war machines he might try to take or targets of opportunity.

 

[konradhilton]

I'd run with a couple of huge zombie units, 2 smaller ones of skeletons, a couple of Spirit Hosts, a Master Necromancer, a Necromancer, and Konrad. Tie things up with the zombies/spirits, and just go to town on his army with Konrad. As long as he has enough skeletons to back him up he's almost unkillable.

 

[eggsPR]

Bat Swarms and Vargheists make mincemeat out of his Black Guard. Duel charge (put the bats in the front rank, won't matter) with them.

The CC phase will be incredibly lopsided in your favor it'll look like a play from the original NES Tecmo Bowl when you guess the opponent's offensive play and your defensive play just decimates the line.

 

[Pladvoncarstein]

As a De player myself I see people taking the DE lore , bladewind will make mincemeat of hexwraiths,spirit hosts,bat swarms. Hordes of zombies will be a mistake IMHO, if they meet a horde of corsairs you are looking at taking 30 wounds and possibly not causing any in return. Thats alot of crumbling. Dont get me wrong De should be a push over for all VC now.