Hey all, I want to know what army in history best represents what? The reason is for army fluff. I like to build my armies around something, whether it be fictional, current events, historical, or something else. So for 40k and Warhammer armies put down what you think is the coolest representation of that army. This will help not only me, but any other person struggling with fluff as well.

In specific I'm looking for Dark Elf or High Elf fluff to run off of. A book, historical event, ect would be phenominal. Try to be sensative to the cultures of the world and don't say stuff like "the Chinese are Orks because there are so many." I want concrete backing of why you say what you do.

I would say look at Roman culture for the dark elves, not so much for the high elves.

With dark elves they are a highly refined civilisation but powered mostly by the hordes of slaves that they capture. They also have different factions vying for power under the total control of one king (obviously emperor in roman terms). The underlying cruelty of the dark elves seems to reflect roman culture as well, the attitude being that you will see the light and be like us or we will chop your ears off just to see how much you bleed.

The actual way the Romans and Dark Elves fight however has nothing to do with each other.

Well, I can think of quite a few similarities between fantasy armies and historical equivalents. I think a lot of them were designed with the historical civilisation in mind, with a few fairly obvious examples such as:

Lizardmen are based on the Aztecs/Mayans/Incas/other such civilisations,
Bretonnia is based on medieval France with a bit of Arthurian legend thrown in,
The Empire is based on the renaissance era Holy Roman Empire (modern day Germany. Nothing to do with the ancient Roman Empire),
Tomb Kings are based on ancient Egypt.
and so on.

I think I've seen somewhere that Orcs were inspired by the style of fighting of the Scottish Highlanders, and that High Elves have some influences from Ancient Greece (although I have to say I haven't actually thought about how they could have been influenced by the Greeks, I just read it somewhere). I also think that what Lurch said about Dark Elves and Roman culture works well, but I also think that with the elves links to historical civilisations are much more vague than with other armies which are obviously based on a particular civilisation. I would say this is because they are using a lot of the archetypal fantasy elf type background leaving less room for historical influences.

Remember that I am also looking for any stories or fables, ect that I can read to base an army on. In my eyes the Roman Empire kind of fits, and if one could name a more specific place in time then that would be great. You know a hero to base a Lord or something off of.

But also for other armies too. If you've ever read a book or something and thought, "Wow that would make a cool _________(insert army here) army!" and really have no trouble giving that idea up, it would be much appreciated.