I'm going to be real with you, boss.
Greenskin artillery seems to be doing….
Well, alright, they're doing.
I always just thought Mallus powder-tech just hadn't gone that far yet, compared to the several factions that don't use them (greenskins, Brettonia).
Like, mechanics excluded it definitely makes sense Elven artillery is mana-tech, but it definitely raises the question of why they're not flatly better than other faction's largely mundane non-powder artillery in games for reasons beyond having Elven crew and an anti-swarm fire mode.
The answer to that question is the same as "Why is Gromril armour not flatly better than steel full plate?" or "Why are the enchanted greatswords of the Swordmasters and the gromril greathammers of the Hammerers mechanically identical to a big club with some nails driven through it?", which is "Tabletop balance does not reflect lore."
And Greenskins and Bretonnia
are worse than, say, Empire or Dwarfs in regards to artillery, this comes up consistently as an advantage those other factions have over them. They just compensate in other ways, principally being giant superstrong mushroom people with nigh-unshakable morale, and having access to absurd amounts of highly skilled heavy cavalry with limited divine blessings. They also don't use blackpowder because they lack the technology for it and view it as dishonourable, respectively.
Elves, on the other hand, are the dominant naval power of Mallus despite many other navies having large-scale access to blackpowder weapons, including regularly defeating Chaos Dwarf naval incursions. Elven bolt throwers are also explicitly said to be, while not as destructive as cannons and mortars, good enough that their rate of fire, accuracy, armor-piercing and reliability allow them to remain competitive against other factions' artillery.
It also contains an explicit mention of a Vampire-Elf, which is rare.
True, although it is just in a sidebar as one possible plot hook for the GM to throw at the players.
I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea that elf vampires are possible in extremely rare cases, when converted against their will or if it's the choice between that and death. It also says that elves rarely
seek to become vampires or necromancers, which aligns well with my view that elves are simply bad at Necromancy because they are ageless and have a much more concrete idea of their own afterlife (Whether that is the canon waystone network or going to the realms of their gods), so they do not have the same kind of innate fear of death that humans have. But they
do still fear death of the violent kind, so I don't see it is inherently impossible like with, say, an orc or a dwarf. Likewise elves have less to gain from becoming a vampire than humans, being already nigh-immortal, magically adept and superhumanly fast.
Vampirism and Necromancy simply have much less to offer to elves, but it's a big world out there, maybe in vanishingly rare cases the stars align for an elf necromancer or vampire to come into being.
