Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Share your tactical prowess and learn new ways of beating your foes with all the might of the Asrai.

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Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

Following the pattern of other army-specific forums, this is my army blog for the new book. I haven't had a chance to sit with the entire tome and really digest it yet, so for now I'm just going to share some of the stuff I'm excited to try out. In no particular order:
  • Sisters of Twilight - much cheaper, more aggressive, and with better magic support and at HERO level
  • Glade Riders - a unit that will almost always be able to shoot what you want at short range
  • Warhawk Riders - so many versatile options from these guys now, and much more survivable
  • Mixed arms - Core options no longer dictate GG + Dryads, and the book seems to encourage very balanced lists
  • Lore choices - too many interesting things here, likely could have 20-30 battles without taking the same combinations and they'd all be good ones
  • Full-on Sethayla - Glade Riders, SotT, WR, WHR and all characters mounted. In fact, I think I can deploy all fliers! (GR wouldn't get deployed)
  • New Eagle noble builds - I have run them with entirely BRB equipment before, but Bow of Loren seems like an interesting choice here.
  • Drycha - no longer as restrictive as she was, she has some interesting options to force your opponents' hand. Feels similar to the Daemons' Portalglyph.
I should get 2-3 games per week in over the next month before doing the book review on the Dimensional Cascade podcast. Ricky (co-host) also plays Wood Elves and he also plays 2-3 games weekly, so between us we should have a good breadth to report on.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by SpanielBear »

Drycha+Acorn+Treemen/Durthu/Treekin+Moonstone+Abbysal Woods+Wild Wood Rangers.

:) :evil: :D

Drycha and The Sisters are fighting for my 'favourite hero' slot at the moment!
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by Malkrit »

Subscribed to this one too.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

The more I look at our core choices, the more I think that Eternal Guard will be a prime pick for units of 10 to redirect.

Here's my rationale.

Glade Riders are out due to Ambush.

Glade Guard are just as mobile, but not as functional when you move them vs when they are still. Likewise, you are more likely to buff their points and use them for purposes other than redirecting.

Dryads are arguably as good or better. Same points cost, higher toughness. However, they can't flee, have 1 less Ld and aren't stubborn on a larger frontage.

10 man EG for the same points, with Ld 9 stubborn is likely going to stay until the last man. They can also flee (and double flee), easily rally. The downside is they can't get the parry from the shield, making them much squishier. It would be a no brainer if they were 5+ 6++. WS 5 with ASF gives them similar survivability overall (if my mental math hammer is right).
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

Hmm. I wonder if Bow of Loren can be combined with Hawk-eyed archer's multi shot to give 4 sniper shots.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

I'm also liking the idea of Branchwraith in my Waywatchers. Maybe not in deployment, but she can give them regen and help them survive a bit better.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by Phil Rossiter »

Naked Branchwraith is very promising IMHO.

You can deploy her with whatever unit takes your fancy at the end of drops.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

Ok couple of interesting things I've noticed in the army book.

Wardancers on a model by model basis can trade out their two hand weapons for Asrai spears. How does that work?

Also, the entire wild rider model has frenzy, meaning the mount gets two attacks not one. Very specifically ASF and devastating charge are called out for the riders, but frenzy is not. More punch!
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by pip »

godswearhats wrote:Ok couple of interesting things I've noticed in the army book.

Wardancers on a model by model basis can trade out their two hand weapons for Asrai spears. How does that work?

Also, the entire wild rider model has frenzy, meaning the mount gets two attacks not one. Very specifically ASF and devastating charge are called out for the riders, but frenzy is not. More punch!
If what you are saying about wardancers is you don't have to equip the entire unit the same way. Then I would assume it means you could have 15 in 3 ranks and have all but 5 with the spears since you get 1 attack per model in ranks after the 1st. This way you get all 3 ranks attacking and all but the first rank get armour piercing. Or you could just equip 5 with spears so they can attack from the 3rd rank. It would be an interesting concept if it works that way, however as much as I adore wardancers I still don't think its enough to make them worth too much.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

My question would be: how do you remove casualties?
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

I think Wardancers will continue to fill the same role: 5 man units are a cheap way to blend most chaff.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by pip »

very good questions. I think technically you could choose which ones die. Either that or just remove from the back like usual.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by NonnoSte »

I would go with extra hand weapon just on the front rank, the support additional attacks are wasted anyway
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

I will probably just run a unit of 5-7 to start with anyway.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

OK, here's my first list. I'll be using this on Sunday vs Beastmen, Dwarfs (or maybe Chaos Dwarfs) and High Elves which is not a bad range of armies to start off against. Next week I'll try to get in Vampires, Ogres and anything with lots of armor :-) I should be able to take stop motion video to show how the battles go. If not, I'll write up battle reports.

The idea here is to make full use of the 2-4 Forests that I'll get at deployment. I'm taking Trueflight on the GG so they can avoid combat and still be useful at shooting. Glade Riders can arrive and eliminate War Machines, and Wild Riders, Twins and Sisters to harass. Waywatchers for armor. I don't have a lot of confidence that this is a very effective list - I'm mostly using it to get a feel for how the units play.

Wizard and BSB go in the Sisters. I'm not sure what lore I'm going with yet. Probably Beasts just to minimize the amount of new stuff my brain has to handle :-)

Spellweaver: Acorns of the Ages; Elven Steed

Naestra & Arahan (on Gwindalor)
Glade Captain: Hail of Doom Arrow; Enchanted Shield; Dragonbane Gem; Hagbane tips; Battle Standard; Asrai spear; Elven Steed

10 Glade Riders: Hagbane tips; Musician
3x 10 Glade Guard: Trueflight arrows; Musician

10 Wild Riders: Lichebone Pennant; Shield; Full command
10 Sisters of the Thorn: Champion

2x Great Eagle
2x 8 Waywatchers

Total 2,495
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by Malkrit »

Do you think the acorn of ages is worth the Spellweaver's entire magic item allowance? There's quite a bit of nice items your missing out on because of it and since the mage is your general..

In the middle of writing that I just wondered, can the sisters now be your general(s)?
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

Sisters can be the general, and probably will be in my case. They seem like they are more survivable than anything else :-)

I don't know about the Acorns. I want to try them out and see how much of an advantage they end up being. I know that the free Wood was often essential in protecting a flank in the old book, but then I usually had Dryads to skirmish in them. Hmmm, I took out Wardancers from this list so the Woods might not be the best choice. Heh, a Dispel Scroll + 5 Wardancers might be better than the Acorns.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by SpanielBear »

I think the acorns can be killer, but need to be buit around- moonstone or drycha, for example.

Against dwarfs, a real vicious tactic might be to drop d3 wild-woods in his deployment half. See him castle up when his units take d6 S4 hits each turn!
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

OK, I got two battles played - vs Beastmen and Chaos Dwarfs. I'll post battle reports shortly.
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Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow vs Beastmen (Battle Report)

Post by godswearhats »

Game 1 vs Beastmen, 2500 points. List was built as 'all-comers' not tailored to Beastmen. Just realized that the list was actually 2509 not 2499 as I had originally thought (I had missed the steed on the L2 wizard), but given that the 10 point items on the Captain were never used, it's kind of a wash :-)

My list:

Characters (697)
Spellweaver, L4 on Dark Magic, Unicorn, Acorns of the Ages
Glade Captain on Elven Steed, BSB, HoDA, (Enchanted Shield, Dragonbane Gem)
Spellsinger, L2 on Shadow, Elven Steed, Moonstone of the Hidden Ways

Core (744)
2x 6 Glade Riders, Hagbane Tips
3x 10 Glade Guard, Trueflight arrows, Musician

Special (648)
2x 6 Wild Riders, Shields
12x Sisters of the Thorn

Rare (420)
2x Great Eagle
2x 8 Waywatchers

My erstwhile opponent was Tom, my co-host from the podcast. As a way to provide a good basis for testing, he brought his tournament winning all-comers list. This army (we calculated after) was on at least a 15-game winning streak, across two tournaments, a campaign and a series of friendly games. The typical strategy with this army is to use the chaff to control the flow of the battle, castle up at the herdstone and wait for the opponent to come and get off good counter charges with the hordes.

Horde of 50 Gor, with L4 on Death, and BSB
Horde of 50 Bestigor, with Beastlord, Crown of Command, Standard of Discipline
3 L1 Death Wizards around a big Herdstone Shard, one of which had Ruby Ring of Ruin
2x 5 Harpies
2x 5 Ungor Raiders
2x Razorgors
2x Chariots

Here's the set up. All the characters are in the Sisters unit. There was one wood mostly in the middle of the battlefield already, and I rolled two with the Acorns. They ended up scattering 7" each, into more or less a straight line up the middle, so I deployed my free forest on the left flank as an emergency escape with the Moonstone. I think he had an extra unit of Ungor Raiders that were also behind the Herdstone that I didn't represent here.

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Wood Elves vs Beastmen by godswearhats, on Flickr

Turn 1
I vanguard both Wild Rider units more or less straight up the flanks. With fewer drops due to Scouts and Ambushers, I get the +1 for first turn and win the roll-off. First major difference - even playing MSU, I had fewer drops than my opponent, although granted he plays with a lot of chaff. I push forward with the Eagles and the Wild Riders, putting the WR on the right behind the Waywatchers so I don't inadvertently charge. I move the Sisters partially into the wood so that my casters get the Blessing, and put one unit of Glade Guard into the building and move the others up for purely aesthetic reasons :-) The Waywatchers ping a couple of wounds off each chariot, while the Trueflight arrows of the GG pick out the unit hiding behind the Herdstone - at long range, moved and behind cover, hitting on 3s - and take out half the bunker unit. Magic was fairly uneventful, due to the long range, taking out a five Gor with a Doombolt. However, this turns out to be vital later ...

His Turn 1 saw him rotate the Gor 90 degrees on my left to face the Waywatchers (and get in the front arc of the Wild Riders) and move back. His Razorgors moved into more threatening positions, and his Chariot on my right turned to face the Wild Riders. One unit of Harpies flew to the far right corner, threatening a flank charge on the Waywatchers there. He got 12 dice for the magic phase (pretty common with this army) and killed three of my Waywatchers on the left flank with a Fireball, but was unable to kill my Great Eagle on the same flank. His Spirit Leech failed to wound my general.

Turn 2
One unit of Glade Riders comes in Ambush, behind the Herdstone. This was probably a mistake - I had hoped to get into the unit with the 3 Shamen in it on Turn 3, but as you'll see this didn't work out. My Wild Rider unit passes its Ld test and doesn't charge, instead moving out to the flank of the Gor unit, and putting itself in the charge arc of the chariot. The other Wild Riders move to flank the Bestigor, and the Waywatchers move back to behind the impassable terrain to avoid a charge from the Razorgor. The Sisters move entirely into that central wood, bringing everything into range of my general's spellcasting abilities. My magic phase did nothing. The Waywatchers failed to kill the chariot on the left, but the Captain's HoDA deleted it with 16 shots out of 18 :-) Two units of Glade Guard killed the Razorgor that was threatening them, and the remaining unit, along with the Glade Riders, plinked the last few wounds off the Wizard bunker behind the Herdstone, and took a wound off one of the Wizards. The Waywatchers on the right flank succeed in killing the chariot on that side.

Tom's turn 2 saw him charge the Glade Riders with one unit of Harpies and the Waywatchers with the other. He rotated his Gor forward again, to face the Wild Rider unit, but then cast a couple of spells on my Riders, wiping out 5 of the 6. He failed to do anything else of note in the magic phase, despite having 12 dice again. The Glade Riders were flanked and only did 1 wound while taking 3, so they fled and were run down. The Waywatchers killed 3 Harpies with some magnificent rolling to wound, and took a wound in return, giving a tied combat on that side of the board.

Turn 3
At this point, I'd killed most of Tom's chaff, but not his wizards nor his two big blocks. I charged my general (the L4 on the Unicorn) out of the Sisters and into the Shamen behind the Herdstone - I could just see them peaking out and had a big enough gap to slip through. He wasn't expecting it at all, so hadn't protected against it - he was more worried about the Sisters unit combo charging with the Wild Riders into his Bestigor - although again not that worried as he had 50 bodies and lots of S6 attacks and the Sisters/Wizards would be in the front not the flank. I charged the Wild Riders into the flank of those Bestigor, and moved the Sisters within close range of the Gor. I rolled a 7 for Winds, with no channels, and this is where everything changes ...

I cast Shroud of Despair on 5 dice and it went off irresistibly. My wizard rolled a Dimensional Cascade (my favorite!) and warped off the battlefield. All the remaining units in the backfield (except the Harpies who had chased off my Glade Riders) got hit by the Shroud. The plan had been to have the Wizard win combat against the Ungor Raiders and force them to take a break test, starting off the Leadership cascade, but with him dead I had to hope for a failed panic test on the unit I'd charged after they all took a S10 hit - they unfortunately passed the test and I had nothing left useful to cast.

So, I brought all of my firepower to bear on the Gor unit. Waywatchers, Sisters, Glade Guard 1, 2 and 3 and managed with the last GG unit to get to 12 wounds and force the panic test. They failed! Now everyone is at -1 Ld and they run off the board. The nearby Harpies and wizard unit also fail and panic off the board.

Now onto close combat, with the Bestigor unit now at -2 Ld due to the effects of the Shroud. The Wild Riders cause fear, and when the Bestigor fail that test they go to -3 Ld and WS 1. The WR do very well, killing 16 Bestigor (out of a possible 20) and take 1 wound in return (being in the flank - his Lord was afraid to make way, they only had to weather four attacks at WS 1). The Bestigor take a Ld test for their primal fury and fail, putting them at a further -1. I win combat by a ton, but he's Stubborn on Ld 10 - even with the -4, he manages to pass the break test, but then fails to reform and goes to a -5 penalty.

In his turn, the Bestigor fail another fear test and primal fury test and another dozen or so die. The Lord makes way and takes out a couple of Wild Riders but with his WS at 1, he's not able to make enough of a dent. They take a break test at -7 (all due to the Shroud) and of course fail and that's the game. His Razorgor charged my Waywatchers and I decided to stand and shoot, mostly to see how well the WW would do vs T5 - they got beat and run off the board, but that was pretty much my only casualty. The only model he had left on the table was the Razorgor (technically off the table, having chased the Waywatchers).

If you're interested, you can read Tom's notes on both our games. I'll get the Chaos Dwarf one written up as soon as I can - that was a solid learning experience, and a narrow loss for the WE.

Apologies for the complete images. I generated the starting image and then accidentally refreshed my browser - stupid software! What idiot wrote that? ... oh wait ...
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by pip »

now that is how you shroud!!!! down a hole for the win!

I'm interested in your taking acorn on the unicorn dark weaver. I've been teleporting around with my dark weaver so I would love to see the potentially easy to snipe fast dark weaver in action. Can't wait to read games where you don't just charge up and drop your mage into a magical pit.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

Yeah, I decided against the Acorns for game two, as I felt like they were a big point sink, especially considering that our local tournament scene tends to have two forests on every table anyway.

I have four boxes of Wild Riders / Sisters on order, which is enough for 3 units. I'll maybe be buying another couple of boxes - trading in my Treeman and Araloth that I pre-ordered because I'm unlikely to field more than 1 Treeman and I already have 3.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by Polycotton »

I enjoyed the asploding Dark Weaver at the end. I love using my Level 1 Necromancer as a Black Hole miscast bomb once I feel the game is going my way and it's time for fun.

Nice to see a battle where the trueflight arrows really shone. They are going to be a must versus these skirmish heavy chaff line ups.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by godswearhats »

This weekend sees the Dimensional Cascade Doubles Day friendly tournament. 3000 point 2-player team battles, with each member of the team having to take a legal 1,500pt army. I'm paired up with Bretonnians (nice and fluffy!) and he's bringing a bunch of knights and some Trebuchets, and leaving magic and shooting to me. For our games I'm bringing:

L4 on Shadow, Steed, Dispel Scroll, Talisman of Preservation
Waystalker, Bow of Loren, Charmed Shield
3x 10 Glade Guard with Mus, TFA
8 SotT, Standard, Lichebone Pennant
2x 9 Waywatchers

There's no BSB because I don't feel that I'll really need one - normally I'd put him in the back with my Glade Guard. However, I'm happy to just roll without one to see how it goes. I'm less reliant on the Glade Guard shooting than I used to be, given the dominance of Waywatchers. Will have three battles on Sunday.
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Re: Kinband of Ioreth's Hollow - an army blog

Post by pip »

that sounds pretty fun. I look forward to seeing reports of the games.
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