Dark Elves II

This weekend I got the new White Dwarf magazine at the FLGS, and I have been fairly avidly paging through it when I have the time.  This issue is featuring the redone Dark Elves.  Specifically, there are new kits for the basic Dark Elf warrior, Witch Elves, Hydra, and the Cauldron of Blood.  Naturally each of those has alternate builds, yielding three types of warrior, two types of witch elves, a hydra or a new monster, a cauldron of blood, or a showcase vehicle for a Medusa type monster.   These kits join the earlier, and quite excellent corsairs and cold one knights, and the line will be added to next month with a chariot kit, dark rider kit, and a Executioner/Black Guard kit.

Now, as I mentioned in the last post about Dark Elves, I have long wanted a Dark Elf army, and while I am not about to rush out and get one (with several more remaining in boxes and on sprues, I think that my wife might kill me), I do like to list build and fantasize about such things, so I put together a "reasonable" list, and priced it out.  Let me preface this by saying that "reasonable" in my mind is heavy on infantry and other basic units, and is over 2000 points.  If it gets close to 100 or more figures, I think that is reasonable.  Anyway, for my "reasonable" army I got to to approximately 115 figures... and over $600.  For a plastic army. Yeah, nothing reasonable about that.

Picture from GW

Breaking down my imaginary, and now no longer reasonable list, I find that part of the problem is that Witch Elves are $0.50 a point (in the US, ~$0.46 in the UK and undoubtedly more elsewhere).  This is not helped by 40 regular warriors at $35 for a box of ten. (10 monopose fixed head figures too btw, which is a significant step back for humanoid figures).  Without a battalion box, there is no option to get core troops for less.

So no Dark elf army is in the offing, although I might keep an eye out for bitz that I like.