Glade riders

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Wargaming93
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Glade riders

Post by Wargaming93 »

Hello everyone.

Just sitting here on my lunch break and I thought...how would an army of mainly glade riders fair on the battlefield? Like I know they aren't the best but maybe if they were in larger quantities. With a noble and/or spell weaver on elven steed etc. According to the fluff these guys are meant to be the best most skilled horsemen in the old world...if only this reflected better on the battlefield. Maybe a new army book might boost their uses and stats haha.

Obviously this is just a question to spark a discussion. I don't like painting horses so I doubt I'd play this army haha.
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Re: Glade riders

Post by Blackcat »

Its an army style called sethalya or something like that. It works really well at smaller points games where you can easily out move your opponent and stay out of charge arcs while destroying chaff units and picking off units. The higher points you go the harder it is to play and the more support units you need. The big problem at higher point games is that glade riders are very expensive with almost no armour and can only be taken in units of 10. So no hordes of fast cav :(

It is also hard to play with blood and glory or watch tower missions.

It suffers against shooting armies such as dwarves and empire gun lines but excels against combat armies.

I have enough glade riders and wild riders to run up to 1250 and I have found that beyond this point limit running all cav just doesnt work. All cav empire does though ;)
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Re: Glade riders

Post by valmir »

Blackcat wrote:Its an army style called sethalya or something like that. It works really well at smaller points games where you can easily out move your opponent and stay out of charge arcs while destroying chaff units and picking off units.
And it's really difficult even at small points levels. The difficulties basically stem from the interaction between these two problems:

1. you're bringing an army with very few wounds, and no armour.
2. S3 bows don't really do any damage, because there simply aren't enough of them to do a significant amount of damage.

Think of it this way:
Let's say you're playing 1k points. Let's say you're pumping 50% of your points into core (coz you also want a character or two, an eagle, and maybe something special).
So you've got 500 points of Glade Riders. Which is only 20.
Each turn, they put out 20 shots. Of which 14 hit (I'll round up). Which means that 7 or 5 wound (T3+4 respectively). There's then armour saves (no penalties) and ward saves (increasingly common) to get through. So let's say you're taking down 4 or 3 guys a turn. With half of your army.

Ironically, they're actually much better on the charge, where they are capable of very efficiently dealing with chaff, as long as they can deal with it in a single turn.

But Every Single Wound you suffer is a major blow. And things like Ruby Ring of Ruin - basically the same cost as one guy - have the capacity to wipe entire units off the board. Magic and shooting can be absolutely disastrous for this army.

Furthermore, there are a lot of units that you simply don't have an answer for.

I've been experimenting a lot with all-cav lists (essentially totally made up of Glade Riders and Wild Riders), and I'm increasingly of the opinion that they need further support from other unit types. There are certain match ups (e.g. certain dwarf builds) that you will just absolutely massacre, but these are few and far between. I haven't had a single match-up where my life wouldn't have been made exponentially easier with even just one unit of Glade Guard.

On the plus side, it's an army that forces you to think a lot, and once you're thinking, it also forces your opponent to think a lot. I've lost a lot of games with my light cav, but there was really only one that was a wholesale, unavoidable massacre. Played well, it's possible - I think - to at least force a draw on most armies I've played against, and win against less-than-canny opponents, but you really need to know what you're doing, and know the enemy army as well, because even the slightest error basically results in total annihilation.

In other words, it's an army that really forces you to learn to play an error-free game.

Also, it's fantastically fun! :D
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thesustainablecenter
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Re: Glade riders

Post by thesustainablecenter »

If you watch youtube my friend malorian has about 45 glade riders in his army and foes very well with them! Though they hardly see action and his opponents in these games aren't gt players nor do they have gt lists.
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valmir
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Re: Glade riders

Post by valmir »

Yeah, but Malorian's list also has a lot of other stuff in it, too.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trashing them as a unit. But an army that is basically entirely made up of GR is a more difficult sell than one that simply has "a lot" of GR among other things.

(But, I think the most I've seen him use was around 25-30, I'll do a quick search now and see if I can find a 45-GR army...)

EDIT: okay, just found this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amnwuUrvh30. Not finished watching it yet. The list is pretty manic, though!
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Re: Glade riders

Post by thesustainablecenter »

Regardless I'm just using it as an instance. I don't think GR are viable as being the entire army. They can fill basic roles like war machine hunting (though way watchers and war hawk riders do it better) and the all important double flee. The fact there plastic and a decent value $ wise by GW standards also makes them more appealing. But even if you put icing on a s*** cake it still tastes like s*** and IMO that's what glade riders are.
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Re: Glade riders

Post by Drstrangelove »

They are just too expensive for what they are.
Compare them to Dark riders: not only are DR better at nearly everything (moving and shooting is our ONLY advantage) but they are vastly cheaper.
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