Dark Elves

Titan - Kargoth

Click on Kargoth to hear him speak

The Dark Elves worship 2 Gods: Aranea, Mistress of Spiders, and her consort Kargoth the Destroyer. Every 1,000 years, Aranea mates with Kargoth and shortly after that she devours him. A new Kargoth is then chosen from amongst the most powerful Dark Elven Sorcerors, and he ascends to Godhood for the next millenium until he too is used and then destroyed by his cruel Mistress. On the occasions when he is summoned back from the Realms of the Gods, Kargoth appears as half-man & half-spider. He retains his ability to hurl black lightning, but now it is far more deadly than before.

Race

There’s one group of Elves that decided that they were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it any more. They weren’t going to be nice, and they were going to demand respect. And no more poetry!

The Dark Elves have tried hard to eradicate their happy shiny heritage, but the effort shows, especially compared to a race such as the Daemons, to whom evil comes naturally. Regardless of their inner motivation, a bunch of Dark Elves can still ruin your day as they poison, snip, hack, blast and assassinate their way to victory at your expense.

Pros: Balanced through all game stages, poison and assassination abilities can swing battle

Cons: Bases are large and hence hard to defend, require lots of micromanagement to extract best performance, large appetite for Crystal

To taunt a Dark Elf: Admire his manicure

To make friends with a Dark Elf: Give him the deeds to a Crystal Mine

Motto: Wisdom is Hogwash

Wisp:

You’ll have to part with some precious Crystal to make a Wisp, which is the Dark Elf builder. To make up for that, the Wisp is a fast floater, and these characteristics can make the job of building Towers in bandit country a much more practical proposition. Due to the fact that they would be horribly teased and picked on, you can’t put Wisps into mines. You can combine four Wisps though, and make one Ancient Wisp.

Ancient Wisp:

The Ancient Wisp is a quite capable missile unit, tougher than it looks. Its main drawback is the amount of Crystal it takes to put one together, being the costs of four ordinary Wisps. To make up for this, each Ancient Wisp creates 1 Crystal per second just sitting there, so a bunch of Ancient Wisps on base defense duties can actually turn a handsome profit in Crystal, which is worth far more than Gold to the Dark Elves. An Ancient Wisp is still a builder, making them even more versatile.

Dark Infantry:

The advantages of the Dark Infantry are that they’re cheap enough, and don’t require Crystal. However, they don’t have any upgrades, and there’s no way you still produce them once Assassins become available. The term Dark as used here refers to their mood as they contemplate their life expectancy in battle.

Dark Archers:

Dark Archers are weedier even than Dark Infantry. They compensate for this by hanging around at the back of battles and sniping at people, with no risk to themselves. To make sure that their targets die, they poison their arrows. At least that’s the plan, but their casualty rate matches those of the Infantry, and the Archers are definitely dark about that. The Dark Archers do get several upgrades, including Fire Arrows, which bring a little light into their life.

Dark Riders:

Dark Riders are a bit light on for Attack and Armor, but do better for HPs and Damage. A definite advantage is that they don’t need Crystal to produce. The riders don’t have a lot to be dark about, and if you can afford their increased price, they make a much better infantry type than the Dark Infantry, as they’ll definitely take longer to die, though perhaps the Dark Riders consider this to be a mixed blessing.

Sorceror:

Sorcerors are really just archers who wised up. Why hang around at the back of the battle flinging little pointed sticks at the enemy, when the smart move is to hang around at the back of the battle, harnessing the elemental forces of the universe to fling black lightning at your enemies. Sorcerors do this really well; especially after Darkbolt has been researched, which gives them a hefty +15 to their damage.
Unfortunately for the Sorcerors, they have been forced to conform to an ancient stereotype, and they can’t handle the rough stuff, being painfully vulnerable to Piercing, Slashing and Crushing. When opponents intrude on the Sorceror’s personal space, they respond with a Pillar of Fire, a polite but forceful way of drawing attention to the breach of etiquette.
When Sorcerors aren’t doing anything else, they can summon Zombies, who can be quickly ushered into the Mines (starting of course with the Crystal Mine), and put to work.

Assassin:

Tired of forever lurking behind the arras, or concealing themselves in laundry baskets, the Dark Elf Assassins have branched out. Now they bravely (more or less) stride the battlefield, openly seeking honorable combat with a foeman worthy of their steel (mostly). It’s true that they sometimes revert to type, skulking around looking to lodge some steel in the kidneys of an enemy blissfully unaware of the Assassin’s existence. It’s also true that this is when they’re most useful.
Assassins are cheaper than Dark Riders, with a better attack, but lesser damage. Their best point is the way they put the wind up players with expensive high level units and Heroes.

Blackguard:

The Blackguard are pretty smart guys who’ve figured out how to combine magic with really good armor. And they said it couldn’t be done. Admittedly, their magic is pretty simple, consisting of a spell allowing them to remain invisible until they attack. This has an obvious use as a base busting tactic, and with right sort of management could be devastating. Apart from the ability to cloud men/monster’s eyes, the Blackguard are a tough fighting unit, and though their requirement for Crystal is a drawback, their ability to poison is a definite plus. Blackguards are the Dark Elf Generals, and who would be silly enough to argue with that.

Skeletons:

If you need to take out archers, or Towers that do Piercing damage, then Skeletons are your ex-men. They’re cheap to produce and can be popped out of a Tomb, or after suitable research, a Gravestone, so there are times when they could be useful. Otherwise, one suspects that their main role is to bolster the Dark Elves’ slightly inadequate sense of their own wickedness.

Spiders:

Can you spot a Hero who can’t cure Poison? If so you’ve got the perfect target for Spiders, and their Poison ability. Actually, apart from their understandable lack of armor, Spiders make a great basic infantry unit, especially as they only require Stone to build.

Queen Spiders:

These improved Spiders promise a lot of fun for the dedicated poisoner. They have slightly improved Armor, but much better Attack, HP and Damage. Their habit of laying eggs, which subsequently hatch, in their victims is a charming example of the maternal instinct at work.

Phoenix:

The Phoenix, as deployed by the Dark Elves, is not a legendary monster. It’s pretty much a better looking Bat, apart from one singular ability. This Phoenix stays dead when killed, but while alive it can convert buildings. That can be so irritating to human opponents, that it’s almost always worth giving up a few precious slots in your army limit just to annoy them, or better still force them to put Towers next to every resource that they want to hang onto for any length of time.

Harpies:

Harpies are useful on your side, marked women on your opponents. If you’ve just spent a lot of time and trouble creating a sorcerous army, the last thing you want is some wrinkled hag turning up and draining all their mana. On the other hand, it seems only fair if you do it to them. Harpies can only fight ground troops with their regular attack, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for your defense against flyers.

Dragonliche:

Naturally, the Dark Elves are not going to have the same sort of dragon as their very distant elvish cousins, so the dragon spot goes to the Dragonliche, which does a damn fine job, looking spooky and breathing fire in a suitably devastating fashion.

Imps:

Almost as an afterthought, the Gate of Khargoth which summons the Dark Elf Titan also provides Imps. They can’t arrive until you get a Level Four Dark Tower, and may not be particularly useful by then.

Kargoth:

Gods are continually invoked on the battlefield, but results are almost universally disappointing. Not so with the Dark Elves. Build the right structure, spend the appropriate resources and Kargoth (or at least his avatar) will appear, regular as clockwork. Now that’s the sort of service that we’d all like to see from a deity.
And when Kargoth arrives, he doesn’t waste time accepting praise or swanning around while worshippers grovel and avert their eyes. Kargoth lays straight into the enemies of his people, flaying them with a powerful magic attack, and causing Terror in lesser beings. We’re not talking about the odd thunderbolt, tossed casually from the top of a mountain, but the sustained application of combat power. Once Kargoth arrives on the scene, conversions are the order of the day.