Unofficial fan reference · game data patch 9.0.4 (Oct 15, 2026)
Dark Riders unit card

Dark Riders

Melee cavalry· Shock Cavalry· Tier 1· 60 models at Ultra size

Duel it in the combat calculator →

Dark Riders are Dark Elves melee cavalry: 5,520 HP across 60 models, armour 30, melee attack 24, melee defence 24, weapon strength 28. It costs 450 in the campaign and in multiplayer. Unit key wh2_main_def_cav_dark_riders_0. Patch 9.0.4, from the game's data tables.

Health

92 per model

5,520

bottom 16% of class

Armour

30

bottom 20% of class

Leadership

55

bottom 13% of class

Speed

92

top 21% of class

Melee attack

24

bottom 11% of class

Melee defence

24

bottom 11% of class

Weapon strength

21 base + 7 armour-piercing

28

bottom 7% of class

Charge bonus

40

bottom 25% of class

Attributes

Abilities

  • Murderous ProwessAugment · +20% Armour-Piercing Missile Damage, +25% Charge Bonus…passive

Counters

Vulnerable to

Computed from base unit-card values (no skills, items or abilities), one rule per line; examples are units with the most of that trait. How counters are worked out · Try it in the combat calculator

Gold for gold

COMPUTEDAt equal gold it beats 71.9% of the game's 152 cavalry and chariots units in melee. Per 1,000 gold: 54.4 damage per second against Chaos Warriors; it lasts 34.6 s against one unit of them.

Beats, at a similar price: Corpse Cart (Balefire) (126.09× faster), Corpse Cart (Unholy Lodestone) (126.09× faster), Goblin Wolf Chariots (6.73× faster)

Loses to, at a similar price: Forest Goblin Spider Riders (1.56× slower), Peasant Horsemen (1.49× slower), Skeleton Horsemen (1.30× slower)

Equal gold, every model fighting at its weapon's attack interval, combat calculator formulas; no charge, mass, splash, leadership or abilities. “Similar price”: within 30% of its 450 multiplayer gold. Dark Elf units ranked.

Match-ups people search for: Dark Riders vs Doomfire Warlocks

Who can field it

  • Dark Elves · Naggarond

Custom Battle lists factions under each race; every faction of a race fields that race's units (units_custom_battle_permissions rows of any of its factions). The name after the race is the faction the army builder uses.

Where these numbers come from

Read from the game's database tables for patch 9.0.4 (main_units, land_units, battle_entities, melee_weapons, projectiles…) as published in the WH3-Dump export (commit 099796e8). Formulas that turn table values into card values are checked against known units before they are shown — how we verify.