Topic: Tactics Discussion: New High Elves

[BAWTRM]

With the actual life expectancy those guys have shown in combat?

[Spiky]

Hi,

I played HE for the first time last week. I tweaked my normal list slightly, taking out the archer screens I use and having some handgunners instead, and dropping a couple of my combat detatchments for another unit of vanilla knights.

My main observations were that my Greatswords were very effective, taking the charge and tying a unit of 10 dragon princes in combat so I could hit the flank with Knights in my next turn.

I had a unit of knights supporting each of my 3 combat blocks and tried using these in place of combat detatchments. A Battle Standard was great for the above tactics, as I relyed on not being broken in the first turn - once the canons took out the RBT's the BSB popped out of the unit so wasn't directly at risk in combat.

I also did my best to force his spearelves units to charge me where possible, this was the only way I could reduce the number of attacks that the units dished out.

Regards,
Spiky

[Crimsonsphinx]

I don’t know, I would pay 24 points for a great weapon/shield armed chosen warrior over a 15pt swordsmaster on a smaller base, especially as I can only take 1 unit of these chosen, and they can have up to six units of whatever elite infantry they like.....


These being chosen, supposedly the hardest of the hard, causing whole armies to run in terror.  Or in reality, left behind unless they can find horses.

Tactics for Beating high elf’s, by Crimson:

1. Shoot.  Shoot with every model you can.  All characters must buy a gun or bow or pistol or dragon bow, even if on horseback.  Buy many war machines, even a steam tank, and use it for ambush impact hits.

2. Magic.  You will need magic defence, but attacking with correct spells is very handy.  Perhaps we need a magic tactica vs asur?  I would recommend dazzling brightness, this is virtually a must have spell now.  Anything hitting 2d6 s4 hits is clearly useful too.

3.  Do not charge unless you have lances.  Every unit should stay away from combat.  The less turns in combat, the more turns you have models alive, and the more you can shoot into the enemy units.  Unless possessing some almighty special rules or striking first items/impact hits, combat is simply not worth doing, apart from against archers, and warmachines, and probably lone mages.

4.  Flee all combats.  I repeat do not fight.  Most units in the game have no chance against them.  If you must stand, make sure you have at least 2 of the following. 1. ws4+, t4+, armour 4+.  If not, do not fight, you will die.

5.  Hope that turn 6 comes rather quickly, and your shooting, magic and cunning choices in what combats to not run from means you win.

[W0lf]

nice tactica.

Shame it highlights the fact i cant actually win.

[Crimsonsphinx]

W0lf, I shall work on beating asur with my chaos army too, and tell you how it goes.

I have access to....lots of asf stuff myself, rapturous standard, lots of units to flee, dragon ogres, giants, spawn and throwing axes!

I don't suppose you own a helcannon?  I don't but I have seen what they do.  I reckon a chosen knight unit with a flesh banner could do OK vs high elf's.  You have plenty of tzeench spells that can kill t3 elf's with ease too.  Screamers vs warmachines, they do not fight combat, so no asf there.

You also get flamers and horrors too, who can shoot/spell the enemy.

[W0lf]

hmmm.

Unfortunatly the only HE player in my current group fields the nicest list ive ever seen.

I doubt i could right a worse HE list if i just closed my eyes and randomly selected stuff.

He fields no Lions, masters, guard. Has no Dragon and only has 4 lvls of magic.

Its silly weak list.

[Gondarion]

Mages may cost 100 points each, which is quite excessive, but their (mostly) cheap items and banner of sorcery easily make up for it IMO .

[Fandir Nightshade]

Hmm jep with two mages the ruby of dawn, the ring of khaine and the banner of sorcery you have a quite strong magic phase...also the white magic is pretty good.

Hmm you can field a competetive army without lions, guard, masters or a dragon.

[Dendo Star]

Mages may cost 100 points each, which is quite excessive, but their (mostly) cheap items and banner of sorcery easily make up for it IMO .

100 points?  Try 135 for a (normal) Lv.2 Mage.  I'd have to laugh at the poor schmuck who thinks Lv.1 Elvish Casters can do anything against most armies in (standard) 2000-ish points games! 

I must disagree that their Magic Items are effective.  Their old Virtues are mixed in wit their Magic Items, limiting what Mages can take. 

The +D3 Magic Dice Banner is grand, but not terribly powerful combined with to simple Lv.2 Mages.  And the Banner does not allow you to generate extra Dispel Dice.  4 Dispel Dice with +1 ToDispel is not terribly powerful. 

The Ring Of Fury is fine and dandy - but for 40 points!  You can only take the Silver Wand on your Mage at that point.  And giving the Ring to a non-caster Character prevents Ward Saves, Magic Armour, Magic Weapons, etc.

And that's even before thinking about adding Dispel Scrolls in there...!

[Hochland Hero]

ive played them just a week ago 1000 points and i have to emphasise the fleeing point that crimsonsphinxmade. Send out archer screens to the front. and when they charge just flee and then blast with handgunners. The only bad thing about the elves that i noticed was that they all have fairly average armour saves. i dealt with not one but 2 units of swordsmasters in 1000 points and i just killed them with fire magica and handgunners. You have to remember that if he has a ton of elite units. then that is just points that you can make in shooting. I dont promote gunlines but shooting is a major part of empire , and it is a part we need to cash in on to get a good fight.

[dabber]

Mages may cost 100 points each, which is quite excessive, but their (mostly) cheap items and banner of sorcery easily make up for it IMO.

In the old book they certainly did.  I don't think so in the new book.  HE can make a more powerful magic phase than Empire, but they have to spend a lot more to do it.  Making Seer arcane (plus taking out Channeller and nerfing Ring of Corin) eliminated the best combinations.

On a simple comparison level, HE take an Archmage with miscast protection, scroll and personal protection; Mage with Ring of Fury and extra spell; Banner of Sorcery.  They spend 550-595 pts for that, having 9-11 power dice plus a powerful bound item.
Empire takes Wizard Lord with Luckstone, scroll, Doomfire Ring, and protection; plus Wizard with Rod of Power and Ring of Volans.  Generates 10 power dice (2 from rod for offense), plus a weak bound spell and a one-use bound spell for under 450 pts.

For 100 pts more, the High Elves are getting ... a better bound spell and +1 to dispel.

[Mark Perry]

Outriders are the way to go. I use 7 with champion all with repeating rifle - thats 21 shots per turn they just rip through the small elite units. Combined with 10 x-bows and the usual artillery (cannon and HRL) and the elves just dont have enough numbers to do much damage.

It comes down to target prioritisation, shoot the stuff that will hit your lines first or that will do the most damage.

I use 5 Nilla knights to ride shot gun for the Outriders, they ride in front for the first turn to use their 1+AS to shield the Outriders in turn 2 move out the way to threaten chariots or war machines and let the Outriders do their thing.

[phillyt]

I'm going to say my normal recipe of 2 cannon, 8 outriders, 8 pistoleers, and a pair of helstorm rockets (or a helblaster and another cannon) oughtto take care of our HE buddys.

Phil

[Gabrin Hale]

I'm going to say my normal recipe of 2 cannon, 8 outriders, 8 pistoleers, and a pair of helstorm rockets (or a helblaster and another cannon) oughtto take care of our HE buddys.

Phil

And if that does not work try the kitchen sink 
That really seems like the best way to beat em, soften em up with shots from Warmachines/gun powder and just let the Empire troops tie em down while you flank em with Knights. Easier said then done of course. In my one game with HE I found Spearmen to do well against elite infantry. They at least give you some attacks back unless they kill 10 of your men, and then the static CR might be able to at least even up a fight till help can arrive.

[Samuel Bishop]

Hi don't about you all but pistoliers suck against HE, because for there archers you can't ride(move) past their 45^o arc of shooting and then in your shooting phase shoot them. Well you can but they just move round and shot you and you end up with nothing. And if you do this to any of their other units you'll just get shot at by their archers and RBT.

So i think that you should not take pistoliers but outriders

gtg sorry this is rushed

[phillyt]

Err.. I don't know what you just said...

Are you saying pistoleers can't get out of their 45?  Or that they can get around the pistoleers 45... which shouldn't matter.

I'm lost.

Phil

[Dendo Star]

Well!  All the tactics, book reading, strategy, equations, running things in my head and such I did guess what happened?

I just got a slight loss to a HE player (a very good one by the way!) due to bad dice rolling all game!  Hahah!

Oh my, I'm lucky it is funny otherwise I word cry.

[Hochland Hero]

Well!  All the tactics, book reading, strategy, equations, running things in my head and such I did guess what happened?

I just got a slight loss to a HE player (a very good one by the way!) due to bad dice rolling all game!  Hahah!

Oh my, I'm lucky it is funny otherwise I word cry.

ohh all you have to say to bad rolling is atleast its now and then sometime you can expect some good dice. i know what you mean btw i hit a boar chariot with my cannon 3 times and 3 times i roll 1 to wound!

but yeah what did you see was the High elves biggest weakness in that game because we may aswell exploit theres then try to cover all of ours 

[Dendo Star]

The fact they were so tiny.  Expensive troops make for one tiny ass army.  He even went with 4 Heroes rather than a Lord to cut costs.

Fairly ineffective Silver Helm Calvary - but he was just experimenting with his army composition.  He's new to Fantasy, you see. 

His list was not typical.  Not that he wasn't any good.  He's just throwing things to the wall to see what sticks.

For having 3 Lv.2 Battle Mages with the Sorcery Banner his Magic phase was not too terrible at all, really.  Granted, he had wonderful luck with his Shield Of Saphery spells!  So many 5+ War Saves rolled!  But, with a trio of Mages and an additional Power Dice generator things should have been much worse.  I was doing my best to sell him off on a BSB after the game.  Such points invested into such a Magic phase were somewhat wasted, I think.  With all those fairly expensive Mages with their Items and that Banner I should have been decimated.  I thought he overpaid for a Magic Phase that was not worth all those points.

Could be wrong though.

[Karl Voss of Averland]

I may be backtracking a bit but I was thinking today while I watched a battle at my local Hobbtown USA. The ASF rule seems a bit unbalanced (as most everyone attests too). I think the designers wanted to focus on the mastery elves have over everyone with swords. What if the ASF rule only applied to units in frontal combat? Do you think that would balance it?

Some of the HE units I saw moving across the field reminded me of a circular saw. Everything that charged them got ground to bits and ran away. I couldn't help but wonder if the ASF rule applied to forward facing attacks if your battle would have turned out differently?

[Dendo Star]

Anything that changes the present ASF to where it isn't the present ASF is an improvement.

Do you want to know the answer to why they made ASF?  I knew this some time ago, but Queek brought it up yesterday or the day before.

[Karl Voss of Averland]

Is that a Rhetorical way of telling me to use the search function? 

My belief was that the HE weren't getting much attention and GW wanted to make sufficent sales of the new models?

[Dendo Star]

Is that a Rhetorical way of telling me to use the search function? 

Oh, no lad.  Wasn't trying to be mean!

You know the first seen of the first LoTR movie, the battle at Mt. Doom?

...it's called Mt. Doom, right?

[Karl Voss of Averland]

Oh I know, you weren't being mean. 

I know the scene at the start where the Elfs with sword-staff whirl and twirl all cutesy like. Didn't seem to help them actualy as I recall in the battle for helms deep, the Elf captain was charged from the rear and didnt get to strike first. That's one thing I don't understand. If I manage to get ALL THE WAY behind you and CHARGE you still turn around and hit me first? 

Sorry for my delayed response, I was reading your argument about Drain Magic on the elf board. That post was oozing fustration through text

*sigh* Haughty Taughty elves...

[Dendo Star]

Didn't you hear?

Drain Magic, if successfully cast, means a High Elf player may take up to 8 miniatures of yours home with him per turn.  Also, not only do you lose the game, but any game thereafter your spells are always negated if your opponent clucks like a chicken.  And to top it all off Colin Powell shows up at your house the next day and kicks you in the balls!