Wisdom appeal!!

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

I was aware of that thread, but perhaps not up to date with it, and did not connect this with that. A title change here might help others.

A silly question.

Are there any generally accepted team game rules?

My most recent disaster had 3000 points of allies, vs 3000 of allied Chaos, the problem being that the Chaos army had two Lords where as our 3 x 1000 point armies could/did not? Two Bloodthirsters slaughtered everything.

I assume that Lords are out. What about multiple magic items, like the Warbanner or SoM?

I'm tempted to suggest at about 1000 points each, EVERY ally army should be configured to support a 1000 point Sethayla brigade.

[Azaireal]

Just a suggestion: instead of concentrating resources on number crunching for numbers games, it would be more effective if players brought their intimate knowledge of specific armies and suggested why that army is the ally.

AKA, sell your choice ally to the community.

For Example, Dwarfs.

Dwarfs are the ally you are looking for. They have all the necessary static combat resolution you could possible shake a stick at, and heavy weaponry to smash the walls of any keep. Our cavalry can be summarized as flaming pitch and 30 pound shot which travels more quickly to enemy positions and infantry, and levels more individuals without putting the knights at risk of lengthy combat. Unfortunately, without good protection or poor deployment, we are only able to attack two or three times before being over run.

Have we the dwarfs mention, Runes can solve almost any problem? Big scary lord chopping through the ranks, well, two runes later I can assure you, he will stop. You are one Oath stone away from being completely secure in the center. Our lines of Iron Breaks can hold a tide still, beat down nasty cavalry, and absorb a lot of shooting. A few Runesmiths for protection, and we'll hold out against most if not all spell casters, especially those dress wearing elves with their pointy hats.

Did we mention 9 point rocks that march six inches per turn, completely ignoring march blockers? That is one more inch than an elf who is march blocked!

Minotaurs and scary beasts giving you grief, do we ever have the response for you. Good Old Slayers will bring it to them. Shaved as they are, they have nothing to live for except bringing down the nastiest of the nasties. Give us some cover, and we'll cleave the path to victory!


Yeah... I'm not hiding I have a thing for fluff at all here.

[Scion of Fangor]

Just a suggestion: instead of concentrating resources on number crunching for numbers games, it would be more effective if players brought their intimate knowledge of specific armies and suggested why that army is the ally.

AKA, sell your choice ally to the community.

Yes please everyone do this!!

[Tethlis]

Dark Elves.

Treesurf a Hydra + Rending Star Assassin, and you have a fearsome jack-in-the-box combat and shooting presence that can obliterate any nearby regiments ranged attacks, or charge out at exposed flanks while simultaneously Terror bombing while sitting safe in the trees. Support that with bolt throwers, and short-range Glade Guard shooting for anything that gets close. Cauldron of Blood? Hello 4-Attack Wardancers. Tired of losing your Ward Save to magical attacks? The Cauldron will fix that for you. Killing blow too unreliable? Charge a 5-frontage regiment with Cauldron-buffed Wardancers and a Master on Manticore for twenty-five Killing Blow Attacks made at Weapon Skill 5+. Dreadlord on Black Dragon, with the standard Alter and Warbanner Wild Riders for the ultimate Turn 2 charge. Treeman and ASF Black Guard out front, Cold One Chariots and Wardancers waiting behind will anchor and shred any Horde battle line without worrying about Fear, Terror or Panic.

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

In allied games, locals do not allow Treesurfing unless only WE are in a wood how are things elsewhere?

[Beithir Seun]

The spell says the wood can contain friendly units. Allied units are friendly.

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

No, they are allies. You cannot use their general's leadership, they cannot join your units, you gain no direct benefit from their BSB or other magic items. On that basis, Treesinging was limited to units with only WE in them.

[Beithir Seun]

Have it your way then. But in that case, why does the spell specify "friendly units" rather than "Wood Elf units"?

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

I'm only saying how the rules are played locally. 'Friendly' is interpreted as under the command of the same general, so includes DoW, but not allies under the command of their own generals.

I don't think that the rules or army books are written with allied armies in mind.

Do you allow multiple warbanners, is each contingent bound to be a complete army, is the entire allied force limited by the organization rules? Answers to these questions are important when considering advice.

[Shankey]

I recently played an allies match to introduce two new players to the game. My asrai were allied with the dwarves, facing a vampire-chaos mortal team, and I really have to agree with what's already been said about the dwarves as an ally. My teammate maximized his magic defense and shooting power, while I went the disruption and close assault route. Landing a pair of eagles, two units of glade riders and 3 warhawks behind skeletons and chaos warriors while they're facing down a thunderer gunline is wicked, and the runelord on his anvil of doom kept me safe from all those nasty magic missiles and even let my infantry get easy charges on cavalry. The synergy is brutal.

I do have a question for anyone else who has played in a team match: How do you handle the magic phase? Do the dice pools just add to each other, or do you resolve things separately? One of the reasons our armies were so effective is that combining pools allowed the dwarves to completely cover the wood elves magic weakness.

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

I'm not sure there is a single method.

We play two pool dice usable by anyone and separate pools for each army.
Only the target or unit directly affected can attempt to dispel. Buffs or spells with no target can be dispelled by anyone.

The problem with this method is that the enemy can quickly deplete the dispel pool of one ally and crisp them with magic, especially in games with 3+ players. The advantage is that the 'strong' magic player cannot use all the dice for the 'big' spells.

[Scion of Fangor]

AMA, ow do you do dispelling?

[The Virgin Forest]

The problem with this method is that the enemy can quickly deplete the dispel pool of one ally and crisp them with magic, especially in games with 3+ players. The advantage is that the 'strong' magic player cannot use all the dice for the 'big' spells.

We used to this, but quickly found it that it was a horrible idea - for the reasons you mention

Instead we just go with 2 pool dice for each coalition, individual casters have their own PD like normal. And the armies have one shared pool for DD, so its just like a normal 1vs1 game, with all options open for abuse - like a WE/HE coalition with +2 on all dispel attempts and re-rollable dice etc. I fail to see how this can be 'abused' by magic strong players to cast more 'big' spells, as there still only is two pool dice available.

The game is designed for 1vs1 battles, and a lot of the mechanics just don't work when adding additional sides/players.

Also a few things should be taken into consideration, when scaling the magic system. Spells like Winds of Undeath can become increasingly powerful for each unit slammed on the table, a single first turn irresistible force Winds can determine a game - or at least unbalance it wildly, compared to its effect in a standard 2K game.

[Cirenival]

I can see good snergy with skaven, spells 3,5 and 6 from the our lore are great with hard hitters like the furnace (that goes for all hard hitters) and a Death Frenzy (+2A each but D6 non-armoursave wounds a turn) + Ariels Blessing could turn units such as Stormvermin into Anvils that hit hard (3 S4 attacks each) and wont budge easily (5+4++ save) that has plenty of combat res.
The bears anger on a plague priest (6A at S6 and has T6 ) I think the combat res. provided by the rats would be invaluable.

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

The previous system was a single pool for each side and, in this case, the 'big spells' got nasty.

[QuMu]

My most recent disaster had 3000 points of allies, vs 3000 of allied Chaos, the problem being that the Chaos army had two Lords where as our 3 x 1000 point armies could/did not? Two Bloodthirsters slaughtered everything.

First off, this strikes me as very unsportsmanlike by the Chaos players...

It sounds as though the Chaos players fielded one single army, thus allowing themselves the two lords, whilst you guys fielded three separate armies of 1000 pts each, only allowing heroes?
I'd suggest you band together and use the restrictions at 3000pts as well, meaning you as a team get at least two lords, up to four heroes, at least four core units, up to five special and up to three rare... This would balance out the game substantially, especially against the Chaos forces that already have a head start, being able to field a complete army at the offset...

Better luck next time Archie..

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[ArchMagosAlchemys]

No, it was more an example of misunderstandings that can occur if both sides don't have the SAME clear idea of the rules of team games. My opponents fielded 1000 points each of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and since their entire army came from the same book, felt they were free to follow standard rules. We, on the other hand, were free to cherry=pick the best units from our three books, Dragon, treeman, steam-tank and also in compensation, we could field more Heroes and specials than out opponent.


The point I was trying to make what that before we can offer decent advice on how to configure allied armies in team games, we need to know what the rules of army composition and/or magic are, and whether there are any generally accepted rules.

Can you use allied general's leadership?
Can allied characters join other units?
Can allies use 'your' dispel dice and take advantage of benefits they have?
Is each ally organized as an independent legal force or is the whole army supposed to be legal, or both?
Can common magic items be duplicated (one Warbanner per ally)?

The answers to these questions would change my advice a lot.

Where YOU are, there may be general agreement on these things, but this is an international community and I would be very surprised to find general agrement across continents.

[QuMu]

No, it was more an example of misunderstandings that can occur if both sides don't have the SAME clear idea of the rules of team games. My opponents fielded 1000 points each of Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and since their entire army came from the same book, felt they were free to follow standard rules. We, on the other hand, were free to cherry=pick the best units from our three books, Dragon, treeman, steam-tank and also in compensation, we could field more Heroes and specials than out opponent.

Ahh, gotcha... apologies to the powers of chaos for my misunderstanding.. =)

The point I was trying to make what that before we can offer decent advice on how to configure allied armies in team games, we need to know what the rules of army composition and/or magic are, and whether there are any generally accepted rules.

Can you use allied general's leadership?
Can allied characters join other units?
Can allies use 'your' dispel dice and take advantage of benefits they have?
Is each ally organized as an independent legal force or is the whole army supposed to be legal, or both?
Can common magic items be duplicated (one Warbanner per ally)?

The answers to these questions would change my advice a lot.

Where YOU are, there may be general agreement on these things, but this is an international community and I would be very surprised to find general agrement across continents.

I'd be surprised as well to find any general ruleset, since the game in itself really isn't ment for teamups.. Personally have not heard of any tournies where they allow teamups, and the few friendly games I've heard of have decided on the rules of combat beforehand so as to avoid confusion..

It all boils down to which type of game you want, really.. Herohammer if you play with the teampool of 3000pts where you follow the normal restrictions..
Unithammer if you go by 1000pts each and follow those restrictions..

Me and my friends generally build our armies separately to the specified points limit, and then randomly team up.. This is a nice way to do it since you have to build your army quite generalized as you don't know exactly who you'll meet.
This also means we keep separate magic and dispel dice, separate generals and so forth...

That's how we do it, but to each his own I suppose.

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*Edit*: Typos caused by that blasted typo-sprite..

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

Don't apologize to Chaos, I am certain I was conned and the person who suggested the game anticipated the 'misunderstanding'. Him and his sons vs me and my two students.

[QuMu]

Don't apologize to Chaos, I am certain I was conned and the person who suggested the game anticipated the 'misunderstanding'. Him and his sons vs me and my two students.

Aaaaand we're back to unsportsmanlike conduct again... LOL

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[Scion of Fangor]

Go on back on topic. Pick your ally!!

[Beithir Seun]

AMA still feels he needs more information. Although I agree that the answers to the questions asked would change my advice, I do not think that they have any impact on which armies make good allies.


We are not trying to construct specific armies to match Wood Elves. We are simply discussing which armies make good allies. You don't need to know anything about using the allied general's Leadership or characters joining allied units to give advice on what armies work well with Wood Elves.

[ArchMagosAlchemys]

I think we do. If your allies can use our general's leadership, then O&G and other low leadership troops become a lot more useful. How magic works can make a big difference, even how the armies are organized matters, if we can mix WE core with DE rares, for example. Some books say that a magic itme affects and friendly unit, where as others say any friendly (Specific Race) unit. Is this how things are intended?

As an absolute minimum, state the rules at the start of the article and then go from there.

Every force must be a legal army?
Allies can/cannot use others' Leadership.
Common magic items can/cannot be duplicated.
Allied Characters can/cannot join allied units.
Dispelling works....
Casting works.....

In general, optimal allies should be synergistic, where each covers the other's weaknesses and enhances the strengths but the answers to these questions determine what these may be.

Maybe I should just shut up and go away from this.

[Beithir Seun]

But you said yourself that there is no set of generally accepted rules, and so to ask for a set of accepted rules for you to base your advice on is entirely counterintuitive. If you base your advice on a set of rules we give you, your advice would still be just as useless to anyone using a different set of rules as it would be if we hadn't given you the rules to start with.

The purpose of this thread isn't to decide on a set of generally accepted rules; it is to examine the virtues and drawbacks of each 'ally' race in such a way as to encompass all rulesets. Giving advice based on any particular set of rules is simply going to become void if any other set of rules is used which would entirely defeat the purpose of this article.

Honestly AMA, I think you're overcomplicating the question. We do not need to give advice on exactly what units, magic items and characters to take. We simply need to give a general overview of the advantages and disadvantages of each race when combined with Wood Elves, so that the reader can best determine what allies would work best with their own set of rules.

[QuMu]

Ok then... My reply to the question in that case would have to be... WE/Dwarfs...

Discounting the "I join forces with Daemons/VC/Warriors of Chaos for teh WIN!" mentality, I've had the best success in teaming up with stunties..
Dwarfs are shooty with some nice cannons and the lovely organ gun.. Place dwarfs on gunline, Thunderers/Crossbows next to them... Then deathstar a unit of say hammerers or mebbe ironbreakers as CC support in front of them..

WE bring the flanks in with lots of fast cav, skirmishers and some eagles or warhawks, harassing the foes trying to get at the gunline.. Make sure not to get into close combat with the elves, but keep chargebaiting and threatening whilst the dwarfs lob all sorts of ammo on them..

Brilliant combo, at least for me...

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