Dark Elves are one of, if not the, strongest vanilla NAF style tournament teams. They have a unique blend of speed, armour, and starting skills that elevates them to the top of the Elven pack. There are essential positionals and most Dark Elf rosters have the same core, however there are more than a few nuances to Dark Elf builds that can be interesting to readers. I’m going to take a look at what coaches took to both the 2022 Eurobowl and the 2023 World Cup to give you a primer on what your roster might look like when you take Dark Elves to a forthcoming tournament.
Top Devotees to Khaine in Malta and Alicante
Both Malta and Alicante had essentially identical builds for the Dark Elves with 6 primary or 4 Primary and 1 secondary as your main options. This is pretty close to what you will see in most tournaments with Dark Elves in Tier 1. Let’s take a look at what the best performing coaches from those tournaments took.
First up is Eurobowl 2022. Cdassak of team Greece was the highest placed Dark Elf coach on 10 points good for 7th overall after tiebreakers. Cdassak went for 12 players, 2 rerolls with Leader on the Runner, Dodge on 3 Blitzers and wrestle on both Witch Elves.
Nynox is next with a 5th overall finish at the 2023 World Cup with 16 pts and an Opponent score of 97. Nynox went for 11 players plus the apo. Only 2 rerolls and no leader. With all four blitzers taking dodge and both witches taking wrestle. Nynox also took no assassins or runners to put 3 assistant coaches on the roster.
Shout out to Khamul as well who finished in 11th overall with 15 pts and an opponent score of 108. There were six coaches on 15 pts with lower opponent scores who could feature as well Jimjimany, Helborg, Crupi, Goldarck and SirSebstar. Khamul took 11 players, 3 rerolls, 2 Assassins with four blodge blitzers and block on both witches.
Positional Choice
At the World Cup 209 coaches took Dark Elves and the choice of positionals might surprise some.
Eurobowl
With no surprise, nearly every single Dark Elf coach took both Witch Elves to the World Cup and Eurobowl (we were short just 11 combined). They are in competition for one of the top 5 positionals in Blood bowl and are an important reason to even take Dark Elves. Nearly every single coach also took all 4 blitzers to the World Cup (we are short 15 blitzers combined). They form the beating heart of the team, doing all of the dirty work, the Witch Elves are your hammer, the Blitzers are your knife. Together these positionals are the core of the team that you build around, at 620k, they also cost more than half your budget for a standard tournament!
Costing is key in filling out the rest of your roster, with at least 2 rerolls you are up to 720k and to fill out the roster to 11 with lineman costs another 350k bringing you to 1070k. With most tournaments coming in at 1.1 to 1.15 million gold, you are only left with 30 to 80k to flex with to buy more players, upgrade linemen to positionals, get an apo or a 3rd roll. This is a costing problem that coaches do vary on. For positional upgrades at the World Cup, more than half of the coaches went for an Assassin and a Runner. Runners cost 10k more than a lineman and Assassins 15k more. With 30k you can directly upgrade two linemen to one of these positionals. That leaves 50k to purchase an apo or 3rd reroll, or alternatively you can ignore the runner, assassin, apo or reroll to just add one more linemen for a 12th player.
Runners are an interesting positional that gives you limited additional throwing ability on the team (3+ passing versus 4+ at best on Blitzers and Linemen). I do include the runner on my rosters but I do not carry on him typically. Your ball carrier doesn’t need block and dodge traditionally as you should be looking to avoid having him be hit. When you do need block and dodge on your ball carrier is to get them through the gaps and potentially, he/she sometimes needs to be the one to open the gap with a blitz. Having blodge is key in those scenarios. I include the Runner on the team for the scenarios when the chips are down and I need to make a pass to stretch the field or score quickly because I’m receiving and only have 1-3 turns left in the half to make it work. The one better PA can make a big mathematical difference in making it happen. The additional movement can also be useful at times but you are trading a point of armour from the lineman to get these bonuses for just 10k more (plus if you want leader you need them. Read more in the skill section below).
Assassins have been given a bit more life in this edition of Blood bowl but not a lot. They gained a point of movement, but shadowing is now worse than in previous editions. The stab is still their best trait. It’s not amazing but as the team doesn’t get a lot of skills it gives you an interesting piece for dealing with low armour teams, particularly blodging low armour players. Against a Wardancer he has a 42% chance of stunning them. It is better than attempting to block them with two die block but not amazingly so. He is also nearly useless in matches against high armour teams and the stab trait just doesn’t do good math against them. Particularly as they tend to be pretty bashy and he has to stay beside his target and doesn’t have any defensive skills. I tend to include one for the fun factor and for the matchups against the lower armour teams. Not that I think that it is in any way an obvious choice that you should include them.
Skill Choice
Eurobowl skills.
World Cup skill choices.
Above you will see all the skill choices from both the World Cup 2024 and Eurobowl 2023. The very clear choices for your 6 skills is Dodge on the Blitzers and Block/Wrestle on the Witch Elves. The only other major skill point is Leader on the Runner and more than a few coaches put tackle on a blitzer.
As much as my opponents and I often joke about blodge being a fake skill, having six AG2+ MV 7 blodge/wodgers on the pitch is very good. They all can hit and they can all pretty reliably reposition themselves on the pitch. With so many of them, no part of the pitch is safe from them flying in to at least one die something with a combat skill (particularly with the jump up on the witch elves). This gives you great starting control, your opponent must always close their cage and they can’t forget the frenzy along the sidelines. This gives you real strength in the positioning battle.
Other skills taken are interesting. Notably, there were a couple of coaches who sacrificed two primary skills to take Guard. I’m a firm believer that giving Elves easy access to guard is a mistake as it really opens up their options to make holes in their opponent’s defence. However, sacrificing two blodgers to take guard is pretty costly in my opinion. Tackle was clearly a choice more than a few coaches made for the World Cup. Tackle can be interesting in the agility matchups but does nothing for you if you come up against the many teams that have no dodge. The frenzy on the witch elves gives you something to deal with dodgers and the assassin can also be useful in that matchup. Without dodge it can also be more risky to reposition that tackle piece so its usefulness can be limited by a strong coach.
Other notable points are that some coaches were tempted into putting dodge on their runner and assassins. It makes sense but the power of blodge is hard to pass up. Leader is the other reason to include the Runner to get you that 3rd reroll and save you 50k of cash. This will get you an apo or another linemen with the other money left over. It is certainly a logical route to take.
Top Rosters
After you have taken your 4 Blitzers, 2 Witch Elves and 2 rerolls there are a couple of decisions to make. First off, how aggressively are you going to play your Dark Elves? Are you going to hit the cage nearly every turn and force your opponent to either dodge their ball carrier every turn or spend the blitz on your piece? Or are you going to play conservatively with column defence and give them limited space to progress. Both are valid strategies but your strategy will determine what roster you want. I’m going to present you with three rosters, two more aggressive ones and a single conservative one. These largely mirror the rosters seen from the top players at Eurobowl and the World Cup.
Aggressive 1: No Apo or Spare Players and Max Positionals (Rosters generated on bbtc.pl)
Aggressive 2: Apo and No Fluff Nonsense
Conservative: Who wants to roll dice? Not Me
Conclusions
As you can see from the top finishing Dark Elf coaches at the World Cup and Eurobowl, the team can be successful built in all 3 ways above. The team is very adaptable and has lots of the two best skills in the game, block and dodge. Add 2+ agility and average armour into the mix and the team is very strong. To maximise Dark Elves you need to put your opponent in a position where they can’t cage effectively or position properly and that gives you a strong chance of winning the game. A good Dark Elf coach thinks at the next level of how to make positional problems for their opponent. Their tools are 6 Blodge/Wodgers and it is my favourite way to play.
I hope you got something out of this write-up. Dark Elves finished 2023 only behind Underworld in win percentage at 54.5%. They are good in most tournaments you are going to go to so it shouldn’t be hard for you to find time to play them!
As always, a big thanks to Mike Davies and the work he puts into his tableau site. It forms the basis of the data used in this post. Have a look for yourself here: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/mike.sann0638.davies/viz/NAFWCVStandings/RaceWin