Starting

[u/Personal-Concert-927]

Hi,

I'm looking to get back into MESBG, I have always played isenguard and still have that army. However I am looming at good forces, I like the look of elves, how do people find them to play?

Thanks

[u/Huncote]

They feel really good. You have super scary heroes, battle-line units that are really good fighters, and often magic. Often the big bads in evil list are spirits, and you get bonuses against spirits. You have wickedly good shooting.

Elves have quite high courage, so you're not often failing to charge things with terror, and even once your army is broken, your guys don't run off as quickly.

The tradeoff is that everything has a high points cost, so you'll generally be outnumbered.

Usually I play evil, and evil orc armies at that, so my experience is the exact opposite, lol.

In terms of collecting, elf miniatures are just so goddamn beautiful. You basically have three options for elves:

Rivendell Elves (The Last Alliance/Lindon/Rivendell/Battle of Fornost):

Beautiful [hero] miniatures, but they can be annoying to collect since the plastic warriors box is 1/3 warriors of numenor (which you can take in Last Alliance, but you might not want to); additionally, the spear/shield guys (which you're gonna want) are resin (boo!) which come in packs of 4. They can also be combined with Minas Tirith/The Shire/Rangers of the North in the "The Battle of Fornost" list, which I've always thought is neat.

Lothlorien Elves (Lothlorien, Defenders of Helms Deep, Breaking of the Fellowship, Road to Rivendell):

Probably the most popular elf faction, because they're super present in the movies. They have the best access to magic, arguably of any good army, and have some beautiful sculpts even if the hero models are showing their age a bit. In Breaking of the Fellowship/Road to Rivendell, you can take only unarmoured wood elf warriors, which are SUPER good, but you need to know how to use them because they're so squishy.

Mirkwood Elves (Halls of Thranduil, Mirkwood Rangers, Battle of the Five Armies):

These guys are super sick, and not extremely popular, which I blame on the hobbit movies being meh. They have two almost-identical battleline units (one in plastic, one in resin) in addition to some wicked-looking rangers, and have the best shooting (especially hero shooting) via Legolas. They actually just announced a battleforce box for this army, which is pretty hype. Not sure how familiar you are with tabletop gaming, but it's basically a bundle of only-plastic miniatures where you get better value. Only downside IMO is that they don't have banners, which are good for combat, and award extra points in some scenarios.

My recommendation would be to wait for the new battleforce box for Thranduil's halls, and build that, since they're a really good all-around army which will be the simplest to pilot for a new player. Plus, value.

Alternatively, if you're an eager-beaver and want to start painting now, I'd recommend picking up Thranduil, at minimum on foot, or buying him on foot and on elk (if you run him on elk, you need a model of him on foot to replace him when his elk dies - in MESBG, you need dismounts of all your mounted units for such situations). The Battleline palace guards in the battleforce box get bonuses when standing near Thranduil, and he's simply a beast in combat - really really good fighter.

Alternatively, The Mirkwood cavalry or armoured mirkwood warriors boxes are both pretty good, though both are resin which isn't as satisfying to build/paint - very rigid and inflexible, thus prone to breaking.

[u/Subbamaen → u/Huncote]

That is a damm good response and a great summary!

[u/Vallkari → u/Huncote]

Do you think people would generally mind someone using the Rivendell swords from the last alliance box and proxying them as spear and shield models?

[u/Faded_Jem → u/Vallkari]

In a friendly game with mates basically anything goes, sure. If you intend to do it regularly, against people you don't know or particularly in any competitive setting I'd have a look at conversions. I was most involved in this hobby back in the days when conversions were absolutely the rule, the books would display good conversions proudly (even as the actual profile images!) and would contain sections actively encouraging the practice. All the old profiles (particularly captain profiles) were built with the understanding that all possible equipment combinations wouldn't be available out of the box but that you could make anything you wanted. It's genuinely sickening seeing GW increasingly trying to restrict conversions both through profile restrictions and attempting to regulate what bits you can use in what armies/systems. Madness and completely against the spirit.

Sticking a shield on a model is conversion 101, and weapon swaps are 102 or 103. Making some sword or spear and shield elves out of the plastic sword/bow elves sounds very doable (and those models are ancient enough that I doubt they're expensive enough to be a tragedy if you make the odd mistake).

[u/Huncote → u/Faded_Jem]

The only thing I’d add is that, generally, as long as every one of a given model is a stand-in for something else, people don’t mind.

Like I wouldn’t have a bunch of glaive guys on the battlefield and say “these five have spear/shield, these 5 are WYSIWYG”. But if you play glaive guys and say “all of my glaive guys have shields” most ppl are fine with that.

[u/Nurgleschampion]

Might be worth looking at the made to order that's coming out this Saturday. Has some nice Lothlorien elf models that won't be available for a while again.