First Army (500pt)

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woggy
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First Army (500pt)

Post by woggy »

As it says - 500 points. Gearing up to play my first game next Wednesday (against Skaven, if it matters), and I figured I'd run the list by y'all before I started assembling and painting. On an 'assembling things' note, is there anything intended on the models to differentiate the Noble from a Lord's Bowman? I will eventually be building a much larger list that will have a Spellweaver and probably an Eagle Noble, so the footbound Noble is mostly for this small list, and I'd like to reuse him as a LB in the future if possible. I'm also not sure whether to put him with the large unit or the small one, not that there's much difference at this points level. The list is 495 as written, but I didn't see anything (sensible) to spend the last five points on.

Wood Elf Noble (Light Armour; Enchanted Shield; Luckstone; HODA)
12x Glade Guard (10 R&F; Lord's Bowman; Musician)
10x Glade Guard (9 R&F; Musician)
8x Dryads
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by godswearhats »

Actually your list is exactly 500 because Enchanted Shield costs Wood Elves 10pts not 5pts. Consider dropping the Luck Stone and giving the GG unit the Gleaming Pennant instead.

A Lord's Bowman will look very similar to other Glade Guard, whereas Nobles tend to look grander, with more detail and different equipment. However, it's very possible to use a character as a champion and vice versa. For instance, I run a Glade Guard Standard Bearer as my BSB because I like the model and the paint job I did.

This list seems like a good 500 pt list. Some (very brief) advice:
  • Deploy on one half of the board, with the board edge protecting one flank, and the Dryads protecting the other
  • Deploy the Dryads first, more or less centrally
  • Push forward with all your guys, to get into close range with the Glade Guard
  • When your Glade Guard are charged, you probably want to flee
  • Use the Hail of Doom Arrow at long range - it's still S4 and the Noble still hits on 2s so you can panic his units on turn 1
  • Concentrate fire on a unit until it is destroyed or runs away in panic
  • When the Noble is in a unit, he must fire at the same target as the unit, so bear that in mind when you use the HoDA
  • Get a different colored dice for the champion and for the noble so you can roll all the shots at once
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woggy
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by woggy »

Army Builder was listing the Shield as five points; I'm guessing the mixup came from it being listed in our book as 10 and the BRB as 5? Works out, in any case. What does the Gleaming Pennant do? (And I don't actually have any standard bearers at the moment, so wouldn't I need to buy one of those to have someone to hold it?)

I might paint the 'Noble' a bit differently and just be sure to explain which is which to my opponent. Maybe magnetize a shield to put on the model, though I'd have to get creative as I imagine there aren't any shields on the Glade Guard sprues.

I appreciate the tactical advice; makes a lot of sense. We'll probably be playing on a 4x4 table, but still. Avoiding flank charges is of the good.

Fortunately I have a multitude of differently-colored dice, as a result of similar different-model/different-weapon needs in my 40k army.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by godswearhats »

Pennant gives you 1 Ld reroll (the first failed one). And yes you'd need a standard bearer so never mind!
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by woggy »

Definitely something to keep in mind for larger armies, though. :) at least, the units that aren't rocking a Banner of Eternal Flame. Rerolled Ld test is nice, especially if I'm voluntarily fleeing.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by woggy »

Had the battle. Oye, what a clusterfun. Ended up being against High Elves instead of Skaven, and... I have the vague suspicion that my opponent was...bending the rules with regards to points cost and also maybe magic? Still a little fuzzy on the magic rules, as I wasn't expecting to actually need them for this fight, but I'll get to that.

I don't actually know the High Elf codex, so these en't the official names. His army: one mage with ludicrously effective spellcasting, two groups of ten infantry, and five cavalry. I'm vaguely suspicious mostly on account of it was, more or less, the same number of models as I had on the table, but they were all Way Better At Doing Things (5+ armor save for them, vs No Save At All for me, to take but one example).

The HODA would have been awesome except for the fact that it caused a single wound, after all the rolls were said and done. The normal GG shooting that round did more damage.

I suspect I'm missing something important about shooting rolls and modifiers thereto, or /something/, because I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and he was taking huge chunks out of the Asrai lines with every single shooting phase. I mean, yes my dice hate me, but this was unreal.

My Dryads ended up doing nothing all game; while they held a decent enough tactical position in the central forest, he completely ignored them in favor of making my elves into pincushions instead, and never got close enough for them to charge usefully.

There was...something hinky going on with magic, I think, because his (level 2, I think?) wizard cast every single spell he attempted, and I didn't have anywhere /near/ the amount of dispel dice to do anything useful about it. There were a couple of Irresistable Force rolls, but he never quite managed to eat himself with them, and all the long-distance/cover modifiers in the world don't help when the spell in question causes 'd3 hits per rank' (Lore of Fire, the flaming arrows one)

All the fancy spiffy defensive stuff I put on my Noble ended up not meaning a thing; his unit got chewed up in combat and forced him to run away. (Which he did. Not far enough.)

Movement capacity on his cavalry was amazing; if the Glade Riders are anything like that I may need to get some.

All in all, annoyed at this particular opponent, and rather glad that I'm building Asrai for reasons other than battlefield effectiveness, because getting tabled on turn 4 is just humiliating.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by brechttomme »

woggy wrote:I'm vaguely suspicious mostly on account of it was, more or less, the same number of models as I had on the table, but they were all Way Better At Doing Things (5+ armor save for them, vs No Save At All for me, to take but one example).
This is probably nothing to be suspicious about, it's just our book being out of date and the High Elves having more updated rules. Though the units you took, Dryads and GG are actually quite correctly costed. Maybe you just didn't use your units to their fullest (shooting at short range, actually getting into combat with your Dryads)?
woggy wrote:I suspect I'm missing something important about shooting rolls and modifiers thereto, or /something/, because I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and he was taking huge chunks out of the Asrai lines with every single shooting phase. I mean, yes my dice hate me, but this was unreal.

Wait, did you just get outshot by High Elves? I mean, it's certainly possible now but from a fluff perspective that shouldn't be allowed! :p You're hitting on 4s at long range, 3s at short range, both before modifiers. Then you take modifiers for cover. Not for moving. Did you do it right? Then S3 at long range, S4 at short. That should utterly obliterate High Elf units. Make sure you also prioritize your own shooting on his shooting. If you'd had some better luck with the HoDA and a decent shooting phase, I'm sure you could have taken out at least a unit of 10 archers. Possibly with his Wizard? Either way, killing his shooting is the best way to reduce counter-fire. The other good thing to do is to position your units in cover (like our free forest) which helps a lot against BS-based shooting or your archers behind Dryads. That way the archers will get hard cover, and the Dryads are still -1 to Hit due to Skirmishing shenanigans. During your turn, if you have to shoot something and don't want to shoot through your Dryads you have the luxury of being able to move 5" and still shoot without penalty.
woggy wrote:There was...something hinky going on with magic, I think, because his (level 2, I think?) wizard cast every single spell he attempted, and I didn't have anywhere /near/ the amount of dispel dice to do anything useful about it. There were a couple of Irresistable Force rolls, but he never quite managed to eat himself with them, and all the long-distance/cover modifiers in the world don't help when the spell in question causes 'd3 hits per rank' (Lore of Fire, the flaming arrows one).
When you say every single spell, it means at maximum 2 per phase right? Because I don't see how he could know more than two. He should have +2 to cast as he's not using High Magic (otherwise it would be +3!), so dispelling should still be possible. It's often hard but you'll likely have to decide to stop a single spell with all your dice and let the other one go through. And that Lore of Fire spell doesn't seem so bad actually... I mean, an average of 4 hits against GG and 2 against Dryads can do some damage, but hardly seem game-breaking. Fireball would likely be much more dangerous (really, we DO NOT LIKE the Lore of Fire...)
woggy wrote:Movement capacity on his cavalry was amazing; if the Glade Riders are anything like that I may need to get some.
I'm guessing they were Ellyrian Reavers and I don't know the High Elf rules by heart, but I'm quite confident that they have the exact same movement as Glade Riders, i.e. M9 and Fast Cavalry. The thing is though, that they probably don't hit as hard as Ellyrian Reavers. But still, if you like the mobility, go for it!
woggy wrote:rather glad that I'm building Asrai for reasons other than battlefield effectiveness, because getting tabled on turn 4 is just humiliating.
Well, we all have those games... But then, when you do win, it feels really good because you know you've done it because you were the better general (or were insanely lucky ;)). Either way, there's plenty more games ahead!
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Re: First Army (500pt)

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My shooting managed to kill...9/10 of a single infantry unit and all of the cavalry, over the entire game. The second unit of infantry and his mage remained untouched. I only got one turn of short-range shooting, and at that point I'd already lost half my archers (and rolled a bunch of 2s to wound anyway, so.)

Yes, two per phase, every turn. Flaming Arrows and a buff spell that made his cavalry weapons more awesome (+1 to wound rolls, iirc). The ones that weren't IF'd I tried to stop but he was rolling five or six dice on every spell and trying to beat a 20 on three dice isn't happening. And yes, maybe it's not a lot of hits, but... no armor save, wounding on 3s, just take another half a squad off the table. It's everything I was told HODA should do, only not limited to one-use.

I definitely underutilized my Dryads, but I'm not sure what proper use is. They charged out on turn 4, when it was obvious I wasn't going to win anyway, and just got torn apart in close combat.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by godswearhats »

What beat them in close combat?

You say "infantry" so I'm guessing there were some of the Special infantry in there - maybe Swordmasters or White Lions, either of whom will chew up pretty much any unit in our army. White Lions have a 3+ Armor Save vs shooting which makes our bows a lot less beneficial.

High Elves cost less points per model than Wood Elves, it's a straight up fact, as brech pointed out. Do not be disheartened by your loss - it happens to us all out the gate :-)

Choosing your targets to shoot at and then focus firing on that target is critical. As a good rule of thumb, figure out what the biggest threats are to you, and then figure out the timeline for how threatening they will be. In this case, the Wizard is likely the biggest threat, and a threat from turn one, and so you need to figure out how to nullify him as quickly as possible.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by Sidewinder »

If I recall correctly, only one High Elf unit has bows with a range of 30 inches, the rest have a range of 24 inches.
Use our 30 inch range and the no penalty for movement in shooting phase to your advantage.
Deploy your GG unit with the second row 35 inches away from his archers. If you get the first turn, move your GG forward so that the second rank is just within 30 inches from the enemy archers. During your opponent's turn, he will have to move his unit to get your GG in range of his archers. So, without terrain, you are hitting on 4's and he his hitting on 5's.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by JAMOB »

To the above, the bases are slightly under an inch so if you position it right then he can't even shoot you the first turn, even if he does move up, because he will 24.5 inches away
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by woggy »

godswearhats wrote:What beat them in close combat?

You say "infantry" so I'm guessing there were some of the Special infantry in there - maybe Swordmasters or White Lions, either of whom will chew up pretty much any unit in our army. White Lions have a 3+ Armor Save vs shooting which makes our bows a lot less beneficial.
Definitely White Lions, which was part of the problem; couldn't whittle them down with shooting at all, so the Dryads were charging into a full-strength unit. Which ended messily.
Choosing your targets to shoot at and then focus firing on that target is critical. As a good rule of thumb, figure out what the biggest threats are to you, and then figure out the timeline for how threatening they will be. In this case, the Wizard is likely the biggest threat, and a threat from turn one, and so you need to figure out how to nullify him as quickly as possible.
A spectacularly ill-placed hill (or, I suppose, ill placement of my army /around/ the hill) meant that I didn't actually get to draw a bead on the wizard until much too late, and even then he was keeping the wizard WELL back from the front lines.

I've read through the rulebook again since the match, and have clarified a few points that had been overlooked (innocently; we're both moving over from 40k) in addition to realizing that the to-hit penalties never came up for his shooting (which...yes, I forgot to put the GG in cover, but -2 for long-range move&shoot matters...), there were some...convenient misunderstandings about how spellcasting die numbers work out.

In any case, it was a learning experience. I'm trying to get the rest of the army assembled for a larger battle (for one, having my own wizard would be AWFULLY useful), but life, so far, has intervened.
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Re: First Army (500pt)

Post by godswearhats »

Chalking it up to a learning experience is definitely good. Once you get the hang of Wood Elves, we have a lot of advantages that make other armies wince. No penalty for move and shoot is definitely one of those :-)
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