Tomb Kings can be very nasty. The real trick to them is learning how to get best use from the Charriots. Oh and use LOTS of archers. Arrows of the asp may not look much on paper. Always hits on 5+, well woop de doo. Ok but always hitting on a 5+ at long range against a skrimishing enemy in heavy cover while your archers are moving? Thats a whole different KIND of useful.
And the Casket of Souls IS that powerful. I dont think its OVERpowered as some people claim but it is still very VERY good. Especially against low leadership forces like Skaven or even middling ones like Empire (probably not worth it vs Dwarves or, to a lesser extent, Elves and Lizardmen).
As for Darkelves. Well Darkelves are, I will grany you a very tricky army to REALLY master, but if you DO they can be very nasty. The key is mobility and firepower. Repeater Crossbows and Bolthrowers can be deadly but you really need to, when playing them make the best possible use of your excellent fast cavalry to harras and hit weaker units. Dark Elves dont do well if you try to wipe your opponents army out, but as with Wood Elves, they utterly EXCEL if you play a sort of 'guerrila warfare' and take out a few choice targets and deny the fight to the rest of the army.
But I digress. This is an ACTA forum, not a Warhammer forum, I (as you may have guessed from this and my last post) am something of an avid WFB player and would be more than happy to discuss tactics with anyone but this isnt really the place
. So anyway back on topic:
Its that whole, tactical play, not tactical army selection thing I really want to see in ACTA as a whole (and in 2nd Ed). Its there already more than alot of games but theres still a bit of 'Ive got a better fleet, Im going to win and theres nothing you can do about it' at times (the main culprits at the moment are the Centauri Beam team and NBS, though Vorolons can be a bit iffy sometimes (Except against shadows where the problem is more or less the other way round (less so now since the Vorlons firepower went up but its still far from perfect).
That's not to say I don't want proper fleet selection to be an important part of the game, I would just like to avoid there being fleet selectiions that are essentially 'I win buttons' that are virtually impossible to counter. To go with 2 examples:
Example One: Stealth. Stealth as it stands now is actually pretty good. Yes its nasty and the Minbari player can stand off and fire away, but theres plenty of things you can do ingame to counter it so its not such an issue any more.
Example Two: The beam team. This is less good. How do you counter being so heavily outgunned that half your fleet is generally wiped out before you can get into firing range? Sure you can use terrain or hyperspace but Im sure I dont need to point out that this isnt always an option and careful deployement by the Centauri can mittigate alot of these counters. Im not going to point fingers at any one ship as, really I dont have a problem with individual Centauri ships (especially the larger ones) having that kind of firepower. Its the fact that you can build fleets of things like Sullusts (which from their fluff are supposed to be few and far between operating as escorts for main line ships) and Prefects that, while good on their own, are HORRIFIC en masse.
But hey, I still have high hopes for 2nd Ed. Time will tell. Sooner or later..... Time will tell. (sorry been playing Red Alert
)
ps. One minor thing, though I woundnt base any evaluation on the GW tournament circuit, you will never find a more wretched hive of cheese and powergaming (and Tomb Kings and Dark Elves dont lend themselves to munchkiney play, they require a certain degree of finesses and can lose very easily if you make a few little mistakes, hence they dont do well in tourneys, but they are certainly capable!)
just joking. Usefull unit but I don't think it's their scariest asset) What really makes tomb kings scary is the insane amount of automaticly cast spells. Sure they are easy to dispel but they will simply batter through your defence by sheer numbers and then you'll find unit charging into your flank with magic power...Not fun when unit of charriots charges into your flank. Oh dear...
:x 
