Been Given a Ton of Stuff Now What?

[JonnyTheKing]

So a friend very generously has given me a ton of unbuilt dark elf kits from back in his old warhammer fantasy days that he never got round to, I have:

- 2 boxes of Executioners

- 4 boxes of Dreadspears

- 1 box of Drakespawn

I have no idea if any of this is competitively viable as I was planning on Cities being my tournament army in the future, thoughts guys?

[dekay]

We're talking about the current, multipart kits, right?

If so, it's a solid start. 

Bad news is - Drakespawn were commonly considered terrible, and now, after their cost has been FAQ'd so they're a bit cheaper, they're still kinda bad.

Executioners are a dual kit with the Black Guard, who are generally considered a good unit. Executioners themselves.. we thought them to be bad, but I'm not so confident about it as I used to be - in some matchups, executioners are better. You do your own mathhammering on those two units before assembling them, and if they are already built as executioners, you'll do best by buying a third box. They get a realy good point discount when you take 30 of them and get way cheaper than our other elite infantry.

Dreadspears... They show up quite often, usually as unit of 10-20 as a retinue (and sacrifice material) for a sorceress. But, the shooty option from the same box, darkshards, they are good. They have mobility, range and firepower to be one of our best shooting units, points considered, and full unit of 40 is actually a good thing to have.

Things you need to buy now: A sorceress. Both infantry units you have require a sorceress to work properly. Go get yourself one ; )

Apart from that, a lot depends on a city you choose, but those guys you have will definitely have their use (except for drakespawn. Drakespawn should probably wait for a next ddiscount in GHB ;)).

[Zeblasky]

Executioners - they are not considered great, but they can be assembled as Black guard, and Black Guard is pretty good on their own and awesome with Sorceress on a Black Dragon. I want 2 boxes of them as well.

 

Dreadspears- just a decent chaff, nothing special. Darkshards - good shooters, very mobile with Sorceress, but then again, not too special.

Drakespawn - they are considered bad, and, well, they are pretty much a mobile tarpit. Low DPS for their cost, but 3+ save on a cavalry is not bad. Still, I would only use them only if you really need cav batteline in Living City together with Dreadlord on a Black dragon general with Shield and Ironoak Artisan command trait. Because dreadlord with 2+ save and +1 to wound is pretty damn great, but there is not a lot of other reasons to take them.

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Zeblasky

[readercolin]

Assuming that these are the current kits (and not really old ones) you can purchase a sorceress ($15 on the GW site) and build the units as the following:

Executioners as Black Guard (multi-part kit, you should have the instructions to do this in there)

Dreadspears as 40 Darkshards (again, multipart kit as part of the same box)

Drakespawn as... drakespawn (prepare to be underwhelmed)

Put together, you have the following force:

Sorceress (90 points)
20 Black Guard (280 points)
40 Darkshards or 2x 20 Darkshards (400 points)
5 Drakespawn Knights (150 points)

Which all comes out to... 920 points.  Cool.  Grab an endless spell, or drop the knights for some other models and you have a cool 1000 point list right there.  Run it as is, and I would recommend running Tempest Eye as your army to maximize your mobility and your shooting.  If you drop the drakespawn for something else, you have 230 points to fill with something, and if its a hero you could even make it your general if you have the 2 blocks of darkshards instead of just 1.  Some options to think about there would be even more darkshards (3x 20 darkshards is a LOT of shooting, and really good in tempest eye), or you can grab another pair of sorceress's and have 50 points left over for either a command point or an endless spell - and with 3 sorceress's, then Hallowheart looks like a fun city.  If you want bling, you can grab 3 units of Scourgerunner Chariots for more fast shooting.  Or you can get a Hurricanum (with no wizard) to buff your army's attack rolls.

If you REALLY don't like the idea of a sorceress, then you can skip her because dark shards are generic battleline, and run them in 2 blocks of 20.  This then gives you 320 points for something if you also drop the drakespawn knights.  A few options there could be a Sorceress on Black dragon, or a Griffon, or a Wizard on Celestial Hurricanum, or a steam tank w/ commander.  Ok, that last one is probably the worst option there, but as long as you have a hero in those 320 points, you have a solid 1000 point list.  Then, if you want to go for 2000 points later, go for it, but you don't even need to continue the dark elf theme if you do so.

[zilberfrid]

If you go for the Celestial Hurricanum, you could strap in Drakespawn instead of those horses.

Just to theme it more Dark Elf, not because you get a benefit from it.

[Myrdin]

If you are unsure what to build there is always the option to magnetize heads and hands.

This way you could swap in between the different weapon load outs without the need to buy more to get the "other option" and you`d have to do that onlyu to increase numbers rather than different units. 

Its lot of work thats for sure, but just throwing it out there as something worth to consider especially with dual/tripple kits like these.

[Overread]

7 hours ago, Myrdin said:

If you are unsure what to build there is always the option to magnetize heads and hands.

This way you could swap in between the different weapon load outs without the need to buy more to get the "other option" and you`d have to do that onlyu to increase numbers rather than different units. 

Its lot of work thats for sure, but just throwing it out there as something worth to consider especially with dual/tripple kits like these.

Honestly whilst magnets are fantastic I draw a line at magnetizing regular infantry like those the OP has got. The contact areas for arms and heads on them is tiny which means working with small magnets and a lot of hours of fiddly work to get it to look good. Yes it can be done, but honestly I've never actually seen anyone do infantry models like those with magnets to any great degree. In general many gamers would rather build and paint them once, and just add more boxes and models steadily over time rather than work with such fiddly magnets. Esp when AoS models are pretty fixed in terms of what they are armed with one built. 

 

It's not like 40K armies such as Tyranids where there are a lot of big arm sockets that are fairly easily magnetized on monsters and warriors; and where those models change drastically based on their weapon loadouts and some can even shift in and out of legality between codex editions. So it becomes far more advantageous and less difficult to magnetize such models. 

[Myrdin]

18 minutes ago, Overread said:

Honestly whilst magnets are fantastic I draw a line at magnetizing regular infantry like those the OP has got. The contact areas for arms and heads on them is tiny which means working with small magnets and a lot of hours of fiddly work to get it to look good. Yes it can be done, but honestly I've never actually seen anyone do infantry models like those with magnets to any great degree. In general many gamers would rather build and paint them once, and just add more boxes and models steadily over time rather than work with such fiddly magnets. Esp when AoS models are pretty fixed in terms of what they are armed with one built. 

 

It's not like 40K armies such as Tyranids where there are a lot of big arm sockets that are fairly easily magnetized on monsters and warriors; and where those models change drastically based on their weapon loadouts and some can even shift in and out of legality between codex editions. So it becomes far more advantageous and less difficult to magnetize such models. 

I completely agree with you on this.

But considering I know a crazy hobbyist friend of mine who magnetizes everything and anything miniatures related, even regular infantry that has swappable load outs, I thought I`d just throw it out there as a "possibility"