dekay

Stock decoration looks identical to 40k skitarii weapons, the rest of the gun fits as well. I'd be willing to bet it's something for them.

Yeah, I know. Poor drakespawn in current form will never be an optimal choice, I only wonder if they can can be elevated anywhere beyond 'utterly useless'.

Arright, now that it's confirmed that battleline behemoths don't count towards the limit, and continuing my trend of creating ridiculous lists,I thought of this: Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar- City: Anvilgard (Illicit Dealings: Black Market Bounty)Mortal Realm: AqshyLuminark of Hysh With White Battlemage (270)- Artefact: Drakescale CloakCelestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (280)- Artefact: Ignax's ScalesSorceress (90)- General- Trait: Blackfang CrimelordSorceress (90)- City Role: General's Adjutant (Must be 6 wounds or less)10 x Bleakswords (90)- City Role: Honoured Retinue (Must be 5-20 models)War Hydra (170)- Drakeblood Curse: Acidic Blood (Anvilgard)War Hydra (170)War Hydra (170) War Hydra (170)Kharibdyss (170)- Drakeblood Curse: Fell Gaze (Anvilgard)Kharibdyss (170)Chronomantic Cogs (80)Emerald Lifeswarm (50)Total: 1970 / 2000 Everything just blobs up and runs forward, hopefully under cogs. Lifeswarm regenerates monsters, luminark boosts their toughness even further. Honored retinue is purely sacrificial so Sorcresses can launch endless spells.

Alright, so, thinking in hypothetical, especially that dreadlord dragon's bite apparently got buffed to 1+. 10 drakespawn, dreadlord, cogs/wildform, aura of glory. Does +1A spell help them in any meaningful way? Plus, if they have access to it they also get 2+ save and +3 move 1st turn. Or is it still just simply better to take and buff demigryphs instead?

Well, we have the artifact to ignore battleshock, too ; ). If I was running a 40 strong roadblock I'd probably take it to maximise their survivability... We have some strong competition in our artifacts lot, but luckily, battalion is relatively useful and not overly expensive to field, so it's quite easy to have an extra one. Losing 10 per phase is of course oversimplification, but, honestly, black guard or greatswords die nearly as fast while costing way more. If something is able to kill more than 20 corsairs in one phase, it's probably more expensive than them, so they performed as screen pretty well... And, yeah, I don't have any of them too and thought of painting the entire horde is terrifying

I assume we're stuck with their badness untill GHB 2020 where, if anyone playtests those things at all, they'll get a massive price drop...

We are pretty good at generating CP, though. Up to 3 a turn. And I did my calculations assuming that 20 corsairs max will get in range, with other 20 serving just as ablative wounds. They still sound quite effective that way...

Flesheaters had this ruling for ages, I think. We might be safe. I guess we should've known that 'if you take unit of 1 it immediately becomes better for free' thing was a mistake. Now let's treat it like this: If we take 3 of this already solid unit, it becomes cheaper AND 1 of them becomes better. Plus, less drops that way. ; )

Alright, so, calculations (which, as usual, might be wrong ; )): At first glance it looks like handbow corsairs perform better. However, I'm not entirely convinced. Let's look at the numbers for a 40 strong corsair unit with all availible support: 2 weapons, At them, Aura of glory, Hurricanum, Azyros, 20 corsairs in melee range: 48 saves forced. Blade and Crossbow, At them, Aura of glory, Hurricanum, Azyros, Hawk Eyed, 20 in melee range, all 40 in shooting range: 19 melee saves, 41 shooting saves. So it would seem that handbow version is better... but! First of all, it also requires a warlord trait to operate properly, and it could probably be utilised better somewhere else. Let's remove that. Shooting output falls to 31. Still better than dual weapon configuration, But wait, there's more! Every killed crossbow corsair reduces that output by 0,78 wound caused. And the CC version has to take 20 wounds before it starts losing effectivenes (considering it's hard to get more than 20 of them into range - and if we counted it for all 40 in melee, however improbable it is, 2 weapon version does 97 wounds, while shooty ones only 69/79 with hawk eyed). Plus, shooty ones don't work in enemy's combat phase. So let's do a test for proponged combat: Version one: Shooty corsairs shoot. They do 31 wounds. They charge, and do 19 (50 in total) more. Enemy retaliates, kills 10 (arbitrary number, but will work for the test) Next turn, enemy kills 10 more, corsairs attack back, do 19 (69 in total) more wounds. Next shooting phase they do 15 (84) wounds. Then they attack and do 19 more. 103. Then, if enemy attacks again, corsair effectiveness starts rapidly dropping, so we may stop here. If they didn't kill their target with 103 wounds, they are clearly fighting way outside their league Version two: Corsairs charge, 20 get to cc, they do 48 wounds. Enemy kills 10. Next turn, enemy kills 10 more, corsairs attack and do 48 wounds (96). Next turn, corsairs do 48 wounds (144). If corsairs *get* charged, melee guys fare even better, as there in all likeness won't be an opening salvo. And as they're primarily a screen unit with no speed buffs compared to, say, darklings, they probably will get charged. Conclusion: If we have a steady stream of CP to pump into them, and are able to get them into combat in reasonable numbers, double weapon corsairs do ungodly amounts of damage. Shooty ones might seem better, but if we want to shoot, why not use any of our, well, shooting units. With range and firepower.

Hurricanum and Azyros for hits, Hawk Eyed for wounds (shooting only). Sadly, both fleetmaster and aura of glory work on melee attacks only.

Idea: Black ark corsairs with two melee weapons get +2 attacks from the fleetmaster. It can be increased by further +2 with aura of glory, giving them 6 attacks each. *bad* attacks, but, well, still. I have a feeling that, combined with their very low cost, this can make them useful. It's a cheap screen, but left alone they suddenly start throwing around buckets of dice. And they get 3+ against shooting in the first round, making clearing them out not particularily cost effective. Has anyone thought of this or tested them in practice?

And here we absolutly agree. We can argue about unit effectiveness and viability of different army compositions, but the truth is - those are all incredibly efficient units (well except drakespawn. drakespawn are terrible :D) and the differences in their effectiveness are miniscule. And, what is great about this book, it reflects fluff perfectly by making dwarves, elves and men work torgether while arguing about their superiority all the way

In general, yes, I agree. Hard to argue with numbers. However - to count bonuses for standing still into this equation, we assume the unit is shooting in range that can be easily moved, ran, and charged through (damn, some things in this game have insane speed). Those units have 16-24 range. In case of crossbowmen it might be a bit of a challenge, but charging irondrakes without giving them a chance to shoot is not particularily hard. Sisters will get their reaction shot at least, so they get a bit of a pass here ; ) So, if they get an opportunity to fire its either because they're screened (thus we need to factor the cost of the screen in), opponent made a mistake (and that's not something we can count on) or, as you said, we're using the bridge - which can just fail, leaving huge chunk of our force either useless or, at best, forced to lose their bonuses and move. And it hinges on one casting roll. I'm personally not willing to bet effectiveness of 500+ points of my force on a single roll. And, because I don't trust the bridge, I'd go darkshards route ; ) Darkshards are solid. They will move, get in range and shoot. Might burn some CP to make that move further. There's not much enemy can do about it, and it can't really fail (same with arkanaut skyhooks with similar results) . Skyhooks are great and arkanaut horde will be your friend then ; ). Or, if you're a gambling man - soulscream bridge shenanigans ; )

It's worth reminding that in firepower alone, buffed darkshards outperform, point for point, all of previously mentioned except arkanauts. Well, arkanauts too, unless they're unless in pistol range. And they're cheaper both by themselves and to fully buff. For firepower you technically need just a hurricanum (with hawk-eyed) and knight azyros. Add sorceress if you want mobility as well, it's still cheaper then arkanauts. Arkanauts require a khemist, hurricanum and azyros for optimal performance. It gets even more visible if you double the numbers - you could, with some bunching up, fit 80 darkshards under hurricanum's double aura, while arkanauts would require a second khemist at this point. Is it worth it to take 80 of either? Likely not, but it's worth mentioning ; ) Yes, I will defend darkshards with all my honour, they might be the best shooting unit we have. You can't plan based on that, though. Not reliably anyway - even in repeated tests you can get very unlikely results, while statistics are the most reliable tool we have. I understand the need to roll it out in practice, I do that too sometimes ; )

Regardless of how I like their concept, I'd probably only consider them in a list designed for lowest possible number of drops, where putting as much as possible into a battalion is a perk. They are a bit too unreliable to build a tactic around them. But, still, not tested, might actualy be better than they look on paper.

No, only 1/4. I don't think Stormcast are even on our allies list.

I hope dual celestial visions with +2 to cast will be enough, but yeah, swapping the cloak for the seerstone might be necessary if it's not enough. Slower hurricanum would need to suffice.

I have some of those and planned to use them as prosecutors - better fit for the profile in my opinion, gyrobomber has both toughness and firepower of a bit greater scale than what you'd expect from a guy on a bird ; ) Also, a question to Living City players: has anyone tried using a horde of 20 dark riders for the ambush-shoot-move-charge tactic yet?

Another approach: One of those batalion-less lists. I don't like not having an extra artifact and reduced drop number but well. It might work anyway. Flying hurricanum is here to keep up with everything else, but honestly I'm not entirely certain if it's worth my only artifact slot. However, It would be a perfect use for a skycutter model... Infantry blobs up and marches forward, sorceresses burn their retinue to get extra command points - this gives blackguard reasonable chance of 1st turn charge and darkshards guaranteed targets. everything is being kept close to maximise aura effectiveness. Pistoliers just rush forward, possibly buffed by wildform. They are also a secondary target [after blackguard] for aura of glory. Blackguard don't really need a hurricanum aura to operate, so they can run forward freely. With that many drop there's of course a high risk I'm not getting the first turn [except for situations where opponent clearly underetimates this army's speed], but well, darkshards and bleakswords have secondary role of being meatshields if necessary. Opinions, fellow citizens?

However, as you mentioned, nothing in the rules makes Kharadrons allies to Tempest's Eye. They are, for all intents and purposes, standard units, albeit with limitations when it comes to their number. They're more akin to behemoths and warmachines (units within the faction but limited) than allies... So just to be safe I'd assume that battalion gunhaulers count towards the limit as normal. What needs clarification more is if Kharadrons and Stormcasts use the same 1/4 limit or two separate ones (in all likeness separate, but we've seen weirder clarifications before ;))

I was thinking about more or less the same thing, only with sorceress and blackguard instead of phoenix temple part. Less durability, but a lot more speed, plus extra caster. Yours might be better, though, i'm not sure how much I gain with speed buff alone.

Exactly, it makes sense. A question, though, if you're taking aetherguard, why sword and not lance on the general? If my math isn't wrong (and, admittedly, it might be ; )), ability to retreat/charge every turn makes the lance more killy against armoured targets, and that extra inch of range can be useful when fighting improperly screened heroes.

It's impossible to keep them from charge range anyway - 16 is something any reasonably mobile unit can do with no stress (our very own *infantry* can go up to 30, and that's before we even take magic into account :D). Hell, even 24 range shooters require a screen if you want them safe, because determined enemy will reach them in one turn. So yeah, as @Gwendar says - it's a matter of screening. And just deleting potential chargers, which Tempest's Eye darkshards can do (it's a shame there's no Hawk Eyed in this list, though, but given the general choice, current trait makes sense)

There's many ways to do this, so it won't be a list per se, just some ideas: first (and saddest) of all, it'd be in your best interest to avoid drakespawn knights. They might be the most overpriced unit we have. A shame. Second thing: Sorceresses, Darkshards, Scourgerunners and Dark Riders are your friends. Universally. Third: Executioners are quite literally 'greatswords but worse'. If you want pure dark elf, they'reprobably best avoided. Black guard are fast and hit hard, recommend those instead. Fourth: City choice dictates a lot when it comes to recommended units. So, cities that could be fun for Dark Aelf army and why: -Anvilgard: regarded as the weakest city, it still has some perks. Their battalion consists solely of DE units, Making it the only city where you can build a low-drop DE army. They make big monsters battleline, opening possibilites for some fun builds, PLUS they get unique upgrades for hydra, kharybdiss and dragon. Their battalion makes already good scourgerunners even better against monsters. Sorceress, with her casting bonus, is great for casting a spell removing enemy's armour save entirely. However. Anvilgard battalion relies on corsairs and fleetmasters which are, at best, a cheap chaff unit and can't be easily buffed. -Living City: solely for the fact that, using their deploy-shoot-move-charge skill they can install a dragon right into the opponents face, as long as the dreadlord has a crossbow. The same technique can also work with Dark Riders, that are reliable, very cheap in large units and easily delivered to the enemy. -Tempest's Eye: their speed and shooting bonuses make buffed darkshards a dangerous unit with great threat range. Dark Riders are even faster than usual, as are dragons and chariots. In *theory* it's the only city where I would even consider drakespawn, due to increased 1st turn survivability, greater chance of 1st turn charge [speed buff and access to the charge re-roll], and +1 Attack spell. Still wouldn't really recommend it, but it might be worth a try. -Hallowheart: Sorceresses are great. Hallowheart boosts wizards. Sorceress on dragon can't possibly kill herself with magical overload and is easily healable. Numerous buff that darkling units in particular can enjoy. You won't make any friends, though - Group of hallowheart sorceresses make your magic game utterly one sided. Bonus fifth: Shadow Warriors, while not technically old DE, now share a subfaction with Asassins and Dark Riders. And they're great and can operate without any support. Worth considering in any city. Bonus sixth: Celestial Hurricanum is one of the best things cities have, If you're feeling creative, go and convert one from Cauldron of Blood to fit DE theme. Not taking one is putting yourself at disadvantage, thing is just that useful.

Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar- City: Tempest's EyeMortal Realm: AqshyFreeguild General on Griffon (320)- General- Lance- Trait: Hawk-eyed- Artefact: Patrician's HelmFreeguild General on Griffon (320)- Lance- Artefact: Zephyrite BannerCelestial Hurricanum With Celestial Battlemage (280)- Artefact: Thermalrider Cloak10 x Freeguild Pistoliers (200)10 x Freeguild Pistoliers (200)5 x Freeguild Pistoliers (100)5 x Freeguild Pistoliers (100)5 x Freeguild Outriders (100)5 x Freeguild Outriders (100)Aetherguard Windrunners (120)Aetherguard Windrunners (120)Quicksilver Swords (30)Malevolent Maelstrom (10)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 2Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 117 Is this ridiculous? Yes. Is this a 3 drop alpha strike monstrosity? Also yes. Everything either flies, is extremely fast or both. Keeping close together, most units can be kept under +1 hit/+1 wound bubble. Almost everything can retreat and charge. I honestly wonder if it could work, relying on going first and eliminating as many buffing units as possible and charging into things relying on charge to do damage. Quicksilver swords are here for mortal wound output, maelstorm because it's 10 points.