Hunt the wizard guide

[Bluebell5476]

Imagine your tree huggers are making daisy chains in the safety of a forest. BAM! A fireball just hit them and reduced your tree huggers to ash. Most of our troops are glass cannons with T3 and have no armour so magic destroys them very easily. Unlike shooting we cannot hit it back due to magic users being mainly characters. This is a guide on how to shut down enemy magic.

When dealing with enemy magic we can fight it with avoidance or face the wizard head on.


Avoidance
To avoid getting hit by spell we will need magic protection. The best magic protection is from a wizard. Level 4 wizards do this the best. If you take a wizard i suggest taking "Oaken Stave" to really nullify the enemy magic.

Facing the mage head on
When facing the wizard head on our goal is to kill it. Wizards can be hard to kill due to targeting restrictions. For the purpose of this guide we will make the following assumption:

• The wizard is either on foot or horse.

• The wizard is WS5, T3 or T4, and has no armour.

• The wizard is in a unit or is a lone character next to a unit of more than 5 unit strength stopping us from targeting it.

Lone Character
Usually lone characters are placed beside a unit. The strategy i use for killing these wizards is to shoot them down. Usually your opponent will only give you this opening once so make sure to kill the wizard in that turn or you may not have another chance. There are couple of ways to do this. The following scenarios are listed below:

Example1.jpg (22.83 KiB) Viewed 2358 times

Example 1
In example 1 one we can kill the wizard with 2 different methods we will refer to these methods as method 1 and method 2. Both method involve finding ways to target the wizard with shooting.

Method 1
Use one of the following units:

• High movement characters with bow of loren.

• Your own mage (not this is very risky without being in a unit)

• Glade riders

• Sisters of thorn

• warhawk riders

Take the unit and move them to the side and shoot as the Wizard is now the closest target. See picture as an example:

Due to the wizard being a skirmisher and your unit moving you will have -2 hit penalty. Hagbane and trueflight are equally as good at this task. I would be using hagbane because of its usefulness elsewhere unlike true flight arrows where this is the only situation where they are any good. Refer to the table below as a guide on wounds to kill the wizard:

Method 2
Sometime it may happen that the wizard is wedged between a feature like impassable terrain or board edge and "unit A". This may mean there is not space to move your unit close to the wizard so instead we get ride of "unit A" being the closes target by charging charff into "unit A" so we can shoot the wizard. Since our best charff is a great eagle, ill be using it going forward. The great eagle may die in combat but what is 60pts if you kill a level 4 wizard.

Example 2
when a enemy wizard is between 2 units you can charge both with a great eagles allowing the wizard to be targeted with arrows as it is now the closest target.

The Wizard joins a unit
When a wizard has joined a unit we can use ranged attacks to focus on destroying it. If useing with the plague of rust you can achieve good results. To do spend one turn killing a few rank trying not to make it look too obvious that the mage was my target. The second turn i would wipe it down to less than 5 men and then direct all attacks at the wizard.

Wizards also make themselves open to be a casualty during battle. By charging the unit with the aim of killing the wizard rather than win the combat we can achieve this objective with out using significant points. If doing this stratergy charge something fast and small eg 5 glade riders, 3 war hawks or a pair of great eagles. If we lose this unit we will not be too worried about it. A pair of great eagles works best for this. Direct all attacks against the wizard and try to kill it in that combat as you wont be around for a second round of combat. During combat if you charged you will get to go first and try to kill the wizard. The return attacks may kill your unit but the sacrifice is worth it. Due to low unit strength you will break and flee after combat but swiftstride may be enough to get away. Bewarned you need 3 wounds to kill a level 3 or 4 wizards. Below is a table on units to attack the wizard:

[godswearhats]

One note: Wizards beside a unit don't benefit from Look Out, Sir! rules, so this is an area where the Waystalker can actually prove useful as they can just directly target the wizard.

[OvertninjaX]

the 'charge a closer unit with an eagle to make the charged unit ineligible as a shooting target, thus exposing the lone character' strategy is pretty clever, I like it!

[Dracos]

the 'charge a closer unit with an eagle to make the charged unit ineligible as a shooting target, thus exposing the lone character' strategy is pretty clever, I like it!

There is nothing in the Targeting Lone Character rules that would allow you to target the character as long as they are still within 3" of the 5+ man unit and not the closest character. Unless that 5+ unit was fleeing.

[Dracos]

One note: Wizards beside a unit don't benefit from Look Out, Sir! rules, so this is an area where the Waystalker can actually prove useful as they can just directly target the wizard.

Too bad the sucker only has 2 attacks makes the Bow of Loren less fun than on the Captain or Lord. Ruby Ring still works though

[Bluebell5476]

the 'charge a closer unit with an eagle to make the charged unit ineligible as a shooting target, thus exposing the lone character' strategy is pretty clever, I like it!

There is nothing in the Targeting Lone Character rules that would allow you to target the character as long as they are still within 3" of the 5+ man unit and not the closest character. Unless that 5+ unit was fleeing.

"A Lone character cannot be targeted by enemy shooting or by enemy spells whilst it is
within 3" of a friendly unit (that is not itself fleeing) that contains five or more models of
the same troop type as the character (i.e., ‘infantry’ or ‘cavalry’), unless the Lone character
is the closest target." -Rulebook page 206

As you can see we cannot target the lone character unless it is the closest target. A unit engaged in combat is not able to be targeted so the lone wizard becomes the closest target. Just make sure there are no other units that are closer.

[Dracos]

It doesn't say eligible or ineligible target in the ruling. The only qualifier in the ruling is whether the unit is fleeing or not, and I honestly could see logical arguments for either argument. Matter of fact until you brought it up it hadn't occurred to me the unit being an eligible target would matter. Nor has it come up in the few dozen games I've played. I'd be good either way a TO called it though.