My first two games with WE

Moderator: Council of Elders

Locked
Jinxed
Newcomer
Newcomer
Posts: 3
Joined: 27 Mar 2014, 09:27

My first two games with WE

Post by Jinxed »

Hi all,

I've just had the pleasure of finishing off my first two games with my new Wood Elves army. I guess I'll just get on with it, there won't be fancy pictures or anything, just a small summary of what happened.

Game 1, 500 points, Wood Elves VS Skaven
------------
Noble, HoDA, LA, Shield, Spear, Horse
10xGG, Mus
10xGG, Mus
5xGR

Warlord, stuff
30-40ish Clanrats, FC
4xJezzails
Warp-lightning Cannon

We cut the table in half and played this game. I deployed my GRs first on one side of a house, he put his Jezzails down opposite, my other stuff went on the right hand side, GRs vanguarded over to the right.
Turn 1: I shot down his WLC and he shot down 2 GRs.
Turn 2: I ran up like a crazy person, HoDA took out the Jezzails and I started working on the Clanrats. (I think I should have only moved the Noble, used the HoDA to take them out and the GRs to get in the way of the Clanrats)
Turn 3: Shot Clanrats, he failed his charge.
Turn 4: Shot clanrats, fled his charge. Sadly I had done the mistake of having both my GG units in his line of sight, so he chased them both off.
It was pretty much over here, I rallied, took stand and shoot and shot his stuff alot.

Game 2, 750 points, Wood Elves VS Dark Elves
------------
Noble, HoDA, LA, Shield, Spear, Horse
10xGG, Mus
10xGG, Mus
10xGG, Mus
10xDryads
5xGR

Lvl 2 Sorc, Light
10xRXB
2x5 Dark Riders
5xWarlocks
2xBolt Thrower

We played full table this game. I saved my GR+Noble for last to set them up favourbly towards his Warlocks, kind of cut off his Vanguard move (he'd put the Warlocks behind 5 DRs and they were boxed in). 10xGG went on the far right and were accompanied by the other 5 DRs. His shooting was waaay back at the board edge more or less. I won first turn.

Turn 1: Right hand side GG move up into a forest and kill 3 of the 5 Dark Riders. Dryads move up into a forest accompanied by 10 GG. Other 10 GG sat behind a wall. My GRs move so they can see the Warlocks without penalty. Sadly they only killed 2 of them even with the HoDA. Those Warlocks are so freakishly strong! He moves up a little, IFs off a Doombolt and blows my GRs to bits, the explosion kills 1 Warlock. (Noble too, we played this wrong we've checked now but rolled a dice in the game). Nothing much else happens, all my things have so good cover he can barely hit them.

Turn 2: Right hand side GG kill the final DRs. Another unit kills the other DRs. My third unit puts 10 more arrows in the Warlocks killing 1, leaving the unit with 1 fella and it's killing potential is still as strong as it was with 5 guys in there! Dryads move up to the side taking abit of cover from a building. He has a bad magic phase and can't get Doombolt off. His shooting plucks away one dryad.

Turn 3: I put another 20 arrows into that single Warlock and finally it dies. Other stuff moves up. He shoots my Dryads and kill 1 more I think.

Turn 4: I fail a charge at one of the BTs. Move up, can't hurt the other BT. He shoots with his RXB killing a few GG, he tosses a spell and kills a few more.

Turn 5: Charge!, I move up a little to shoot his bunker, he's got Pha's on them and in a forest, so it doesn't go too well. He kills off a unit of GG with a spell and shoots some more RXB. My Dryads fail to kill the stupid BT in my combat phase, however I kill it in his and reform to face his other one.

Turn 6: I fail to charge his other BT but I manage to shoot it down this turn. Somewhere along the way he's IFed a spell with his Sorc and put a wound on her, he IFs again blowing up the Sorc and 4 RXB and we call it quits there.

Some details are fuzzy, or we played more than 6 turns, because I'm positive he killed abit more of my stuff, we had a look when we called it quits and I won the game, but only by a margin of like..110-120 points.


Evaluation:
---------------
Noble - I like this fella, especially on a horse with the Fast Cav rule! I kind of flubbed his HoDA rolls, I got 7 hits both times, but I can see the potential in that item, very nice!

GG - Super dangerous on 15" line, really like em. Just have to learn how to position myself, deploy, move, pick targets and...and...and....and........

Dryads - I love em! They look great and are pretty badass in CC, even if they failed to drag down two elves with 10 attacks :) I just have a hard time seeing how 8-10 of them are ever going to beat a unit and force them to flee, what with Steadfast and all :eek:

GR - If they would have had Glade Guard longbows, or if they were cheaper in points atleast, I think I'd be more inclined to like them.. They did good in these games, but they die from a stiff breeze and are fairly expensive for what they do. I assume though that I need to learn how to use them :>

Overall it was a fun two games, especially the last one as it went so much back and forth and could have ended either way. I've wanted to play Wood Elves ever since me and a few buddies started playing last year, people just told me they were so bad it would be a bad army to start with. I'm also thinking that these games are misleading in the way that the shooting is so powerful at these points levels, and the higher you go the more it'll start slacking? It was funny though that after the Skaven game my friend explicitly said "That wont work so well against a shooty, fast DE force with Dark Riders and Warlocks", to me it feels like the DRs are free points and almost the Warlocks aswell, even if they have a 4+ Ward. Even at long range Str 3 shooting VS Toughness 3, wounds will get through and there aren't that many wounds in a unit of DRs or WLs, but I don't know I could be wrong.

Fun stuff and fun times ahead!

/ Jinxed
User avatar
brechttomme
Horsemaster
Horsemaster
Posts: 265
Joined: 26 Mar 2013, 23:03
Armies I play: Tomb Kings, Wood Elves, Kislev
Location: Gent, Belgium

Re: My first two games with WE

Post by brechttomme »

Thanks for the battle reports! It's great to see Wood Elves doing well (though they do seem to be better in low-point games indeed).
Jinxed wrote:I just have a hard time seeing how 8-10 of them are ever going to beat a unit and force them to flee, what with Steadfast and all :eek:
I'd just like to point out that this is never going to happen. Well, the exception being if you can get the opposing unit into a forest, where he won't be Steadfast (and your Dryads will also be Stubborn). The way you beat big combat blocks is with a strong combat block of your own (e.g. Treekin) or by a combination of efforts. Focus fire GG on a unit and then charge it with the Dryads only once it's down to a manageable size. It shouldn't be that hard to set up these situations as we have probably the most mobile army in the game, and so we should be picking the combats.
Jinxed wrote:Fun stuff and fun times ahead!
I sure hope so! If you fight any more battles, it'd be great to see your evaluations on them too.
Coldpsyker
Newcomer
Newcomer
Posts: 66
Joined: 01 Feb 2014, 04:32

Re: My first two games with WE

Post by Coldpsyker »

Jinxed wrote: ---------------
Noble - I like this fella, especially on a horse with the Fast Cav rule! I kind of flubbed his HoDA rolls, I got 7 hits both times, but I can see the potential in that item, very nice!

GG - Super dangerous on 15" line, really like em. Just have to learn how to position myself, deploy, move, pick targets and...and...and....and........

Dryads - I love em! They look great and are pretty badass in CC, even if they failed to drag down two elves with 10 attacks :) I just have a hard time seeing how 8-10 of them are ever going to beat a unit and force them to flee, what with Steadfast and all :eek:

GR - If they would have had Glade Guard longbows, or if they were cheaper in points atleast, I think I'd be more inclined to like them.. They did good in these games, but they die from a stiff breeze and are fairly expensive for what they do. I assume though that I need to learn how to use them :>

Overall it was a fun two games, especially the last one as it went so much back and forth and could have ended either way. I've wanted to play Wood Elves ever since me and a few buddies started playing last year, people just told me they were so bad it would be a bad army to start with. I'm also thinking that these games are misleading in the way that the shooting is so powerful at these points levels, and the higher you go the more it'll start slacking? It was funny though that after the Skaven game my friend explicitly said "That wont work so well against a shooty, fast DE force with Dark Riders and Warlocks", to me it feels like the DRs are free points and almost the Warlocks aswell, even if they have a 4+ Ward. Even at long range Str 3 shooting VS Toughness 3, wounds will get through and there aren't that many wounds in a unit of DRs or WLs, but I don't know I could be wrong.

Fun stuff and fun times ahead!

/ Jinxed
Good to see another new player that isn't afraid whenever all the other people try to talk you out of playing wood elves! I am a relatively new player myself, and that happened to me too "blah blah balh they are a terrible army"

With my admittedly limited experience, I would recommend/have found:

Noble on Great Eagle, with a great weapon
2 different setups
-Armor of destiny, shield
-Amarathine brooch, dragonhelm, potion of foolhardiness, shield, light armor
Both setups work the same- being an excellent swiss army knife, difference is do you want a better ward but against non-magic, or a slightly worse "true" ward

Hail of Doom arrow is great. I have been running it on my BSB with twin-linked longbow

Dryads- units of 8 or 10 are excellent as re-directors, and possibly go slightly bigger if you need to hold something up (be in a wood of course). I have been using 2 units of 10 on my flanks- they trash pretty much anything the opponent would want to put on a flank

I keep getting dissapointed by both our Cav units (wild riders and glade riders). It seems like once the enemy realizes how expensive and fragile they are, I give away Victory points. I have had some success with fleeing with my Glade Riders through my dryads to try and draw the enemy in.

Glade Guard are awesome. I have so far which i use in a big unit of 19 (with flaming banner and BSB), and a unit of 10. both of them at short range= awesome
Locked