Yes Bladedancer dies like flie yet you made us recruit him nontheless! Makes me mad but his stats are balanced for aggresive t2 indeed. In general to have good fighting stack I need to back darkelves with some tank. But its only my style of play. My GF for example is superaggresive and yet somehow allways more succesfull in fights, so I guess this dwelling will convince her to play with underground when polished

Yes, I made it a point to encourage a very aggressive combat style. The combination of the double strike on attack and Martial Arts to keep you alive when attacking should make this pretty clear.

If you're looking for tanks, you could perhaps try the Shade, or an Executioner, especially when you level it. The first is, well, incorporeal (and immune to blight, the most common element save physical), and the second is the only Armored unit as well as getting Life Drain on elite.

Of course, external tanks work fine as well.

Executioner fights well except vs pikes really, somehow there was color damage in every battle fought so shade was close to dying too, healing from creation or sorcerer makes them more durable and their supports are awesome for sorcerer style too. Used them with dreadnaught leader though with only synergy in +1 armor for executioner :-)

Yeah, the matriarchs are pretty useful. Be sure to take them along if you bring the dark elves to the surface - it'll help a lot to keep them happy.

Healing is an intended weak point as well. The only "healing" ability is life steal on the executioner and the shade's medal.