So i find myself in a bind. An army of high elves and an army from the empire have banded together in a attempt to destroy me. And my only chance is allying with a dark elf. Yes it sounds gruesome and desperate. I was wondering if anyone experienced has any advice regarding this specific matchup. We are playing 1500 points.
1500 total points for each side, or 1500 total points for each player? This may be a job for Tetto and/or rippers..
My ally will be using: 2 × 10 witch elves 5 x dark riders 30x executioners 2x bolt thrower Morathi Bsb And either a chariot or 5-6 shades. I do not have a clue of what I'm going to use. I've got almost everything except for some of the heroes like... well, Tetto. I do have a slann which I could use. Its 1500 points per player. So each side has 3000 in total. And I am expecting a lot of artillery from the empire guy.
Lizardmen are good at this point level imo. Salamanders are good versus both HE and empire, due to their 20x20mm toughness 3 infantry units. Cowboys are good. Note that pairing up with Delfs makes for a desperate alliance, this means that you have to share the power dice generated from winds of magic as evenly as possible. This makes it very difficult to get off big spells, and means that your magic phase isn't going to be as effective. You might consider leaving the Slann at home and bring an old blood instead. If you bring an old blood you can play around with various kit-outs. I think you will be well off with the classic CO+GW+AoD+dawnstone setup, but look out sirs are essential vs empire cannons, so you might consider having him on foot unless you are running cavalry. Simply dropping the cold one leaves him at 2+ rerollable armour save, 4+ ward and 5 str 7 non-magical attacks. In this case the mundane weapon that a great weapon is will actually serve you better than a magical one, because of the banner of the world dragon, and that neither helfs nor empire has ethereal units. I don't know a whole lot about high elves, but I can give you a few pointers about the empire: Are you playing open lists? Beware of van horstmanns speculum. A 40 point enchanted item that allows you to swap strength, toughness, weapon skill, initiative and attacks value with your opponent in a duel. If this catches you unawares, your saurus lord/hero may sit in a duel with ws 4/5, s4, t4, i4/5 and a 2/3, facing a human opponent with a saurus character stat-line. Hellblaster volleyguns can ruin your day, 3 artillery dice worth of str 5 AP shots, firing at BS4 if the have an engineer attached. The best solution to this I find is to screen your juicy targets with skink skirmishers, providing hard cover for your important targets. The hellblaster volleygun only has a range of 24", something to consider aswell. Note that warrior priest/arch lector buffs (hatred and prayers) do not confer to warhorses or demigryphs. RAW say that they do, but the FAQ say that they don't. This is important if your opponent is unaware of the FAQ. I think you are at a disadvantage because of the fact that you are forced to split power dice between you, this will limit your flexibility in the magic phase a lot, and it forces both of you to bring casters. Maybe play around this by going (relatively) light on magic and play the other phases instead. Thats all I can think of ATM, good luck!
I actually played a similar (in nature at least) match up on Sunday. WE + Dwarves vs LM and Chaos Daemons. There are only three points worth considering: 1 - Magic, only take a priest scroll caddy, but make him a level 2. You should get enough dice each turn to get 1 spell off but you may have too many if you only have 1 spell available to you. You need a caster with two spells or you may end up wasting dice each turn, same goes for dispelling. Remember only you can dispel a spell that targets only your troops. 2 - General, figure out which one of you will benefit the most from the inspiring presence and BSB and then the other person save the points by not taking a BSB. It also potentially makes options available on a lord character that you wouldn't otherwise take on a general. 3 - The normal army composition stuff, but remember that you don't have to field something to deal with everything in each army, you can focus your units on specific tasks so long as your ally can focus their units on the tasks you haven't covered. BTW we won that match up, my salamander and skink skirmishers teamed up with a unit of harpies to roll up the WE flank and my Saurus inc OB and SV BSB proved too much of a handful for the big unit of hammerers although the Saurus paid a very very heavy price in doing so.
Thanks for all the advise. The battle will be starting in a few hours. I will march towards the battlefield with all the force from Lustria and knife protection vests so that the delfs wont put a dagger in my back.