Wardancers Tactica
Posted: 10 Jul 2024, 21:50
Taken from my blog, in case you want it a bit prettier than forums allow. Forgot to cross-post, my bad.
When I first got the box of Skarloc’s Wood Elf archers, my instant favourite model was Glam. Here was this crazy guy who literally danced his way up and down the front line of battle and stabbed anyone who got too close. Armour? Pah! Armour is for slow people who can’t dodge.
I still have the command group from that box of archers, but sadly Glam went missing over the course of many years. However, my love of Wardancers did not diminish, and I’ve been running a small unit of them in my army on a regular basis. Let’s jump right in and take a look at their key characteristics.
Stats and Special Rules
Wardancers are one of a very small number of rank and file units who come with a base Weapon Skill of 6, which is equal to or higher than most characters! (The only other WS6 units I can think of are Grail Knights, Swordmasters of Hoeth … let me know if I missed any?). Aside from also having Initiative 6 (which will rarely come into play), they have the standard Wood Elf statline (which means they are both S3 and T3, which I’ll get to more later) and cost 16 points per model. In terms of formation, they can are both Open Order and Skirmisher, and like all other Wood Elves, they have Move Through Cover.
I6 will rarely come into play because Wardancers all have Strike First. What I’ve come to realize is that in this edition, Strike First is very strong and functions as an excellent deterrent against being charged–very few units will be at I10 when they charge, so Wardancers will almost always get to, uh, strike first and kill some of the incoming threat before they even get to attack. If given a choice, I’ve noticed my opponents all prefer to charge into something else (more on this later). Other special rules which help with survivability are Evasive (remember, this can be used against Magic Missiles!) and Talismanic Tattoos (a 6++ ward save).
Wardancers come with Motley Crew, something I’ve used only once because I was tight on points. You can equip Wardancers with either an Additional Hand Weapon for +1pt per model, or Throwing Spears for free. Contrary to what you might think, Throwing Spears are not missile weapons–you get to Fight in an Extra Rank on a turn you charged, and that’s it. If you’re taking a larger unit of Wardancers and/or running them as a ranked unit in Open Order, this may be marginally useful, but in general I’m taking Additional Hand Weapon every time for the extra attack (sadly, despite the models existing, Wardancers cannot take Great Weapons).
They also have Loner and Immune to Psychology, with the former meaning they can only be joined by Shadowdancer characters, and the latter mostly being beneficial but meaning they can’t flee as a charge reaction so you need to keep that in mind.
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, they have both Furious Charge to give an extra attack when charging 3″ or more and Dances of Loec which give them a number of different benefits in close combat. I’ll cover the Dances in more detail in the next section.
Tactics
The first thing to consider with Wardancers is their vulnerability. Outside of combat, they are very squishy at T3 with no Armour Save, and just a 6++ ward to save them. As with all squishy things, there are two broad schools of thought: take lots of them, or hide them. At 17pts each (including the extra hand weapon), taking lots in a single unit is a high risk strategy. It also doesn’t really do much for you by way of combat results unless you run them Open Order and try to get a rank bonus … even then, I think you’d get better combat results from having two smaller units that combo charged. So, my preferred option is to take them in small units, and try to protect them.
If you’re running them as Skirmishers, oponents will be at -1 to shoot at them with BS shooting. They definitely want to be accompanied by another unit and the prime candidate here are Dryads, who are the same speed but tougher, cheaper and Stubborn. As I mentioned, opponents will prefer to charge something else and Dryads are perfect for both taking a charge and providing that shield against shooting. When the Dryads Fall Back, they can provide that excellent flank charge for Wardancers. One thing I’ve done is position Wardancers right behind Dryads so there’s just no way to target the Elves directly even with Magic Missiles, although this is tricky. The best defence against Magic Missiles is the Oaken Stave, as I’ve written about before.
Remember also that they are Evasive, so you can even flee from a shooting attack through another unit and not cause panic (a benefit of being skirmishers) and end up on the other side and thus not be targetable at all.
So, assuming you’ve kept them alive and they’ve been able to get into combat, what’s happening now? Now it’s time to dance, baby!
Dances of Loec
There are four Dances of Loec to choose from. Who’s Loec? He’s the Elven trickster god–in my mind, he’s the love child of Loki and Michael Flatley–and his worshippers tell stories with, yep, cool dances. Give the cast of Riverdance some swords, I tell ya …
Anyhoo, back in the Old World: you have four dances to choose from. Each one grants a specific bonus in combat, and you must choose one in each combat for them all to follow (including any Shadowdancer that’s joined the unit–more on DJ Shadowdancer later). Unlike in previous editions, you can choose the same dance every combat if you like–there’s no requirement to change dance between combats. In brief, there are two dances that are more defensive, and two that are more offensive:
Whirling Death: AP -2
Shadows Coil: 4++ ward save
Storm of Blades: +1 Attack
Woven Mist: Enemies get -1 to hit
I’ve listed them here in order of how likely you are to use them, but I’ll go through the offensive ones first and then the defensive ones and I’ll try to give rules of thumb for using each one.
Storm of Blades
To kick us off, against 6+ or no armour save, use Storm of Blades, because getting an extra attack is great–hitting and killing more things is what combat is all about! It means that when charging, you have 4 attacks: 1 base, 1 for Additional Hand Weapon, 1 for Furious Charge and 1 for Storm of Blades. 5 Wardancers with a champion thus puts out 21 attacks!
I don’t have a lot extra to say about it – extra attacks kind of speak for themselves. However, they are only S3 attacks, so their effectiveness really depends on your targets.
Whirling Death
Whirling Death is probably the one I’ll use most often, but it really depends on the armour save of the unit I’m attacking. TL;DR: use Whirling Death if the Armour Save is 5+ or better. However, if you want to see the math read on…
To keep the numbers easy to read, let’s assume I have a unit of 9 Wardancers who have not charged (so they have 2 attacks each). Storm of Blades thus gives me 9 extra attacks for a total of 27, which I’ll be (usually) hitting on 3s, resulting in an average of 18 hits. If I’m wounding on 4s (because my opponent is T3), that’s an average of 9 wounds. If my opponent has a 5+ save, then 3 wounds will be saved, resulting in 6 wounds. If instead of the Storm of Blades, I choose Whirling Death I’ll have the base 18 attacks, of which 12 will get through. Of those 12 hits, 6 will be wounds and there will be no save, so still 6 wounds. Where the math changes is when it’s not a 5+ save. If it’s a 6+ save or higher, I’m doing more wounds with the extra attacks, so stick with Storm of Blades. If it’s a 4+ save or lower, the Whirling Death will get more wounds through the armour. If our example above was against a unit with a 3+ save (like most Knights have), Storm of Blades would get only 3 wounds past the Armour on average, whereas Whirling Death would do 4. When the save is exactly 5+, I’m still recommending Whirling Death over Storm of Blades because there’s a marginal benefit for it if you also have a champion in the unit–that extra attack changes the math!
For the full spreadsheet, if you’re a data nerd like me, take a look here. Bear in mind that it’s hard to get all Wardancers into the Fighting Rank.
The Shadow’s Coil
Still with me? Great! Let’s talk about the more defensive dances. Sometimes you’re not one doing the charging, maybe because your opponent has caught you off-guard or with a sneaky overrun. This happens (to me) more frequently with cavalry, and cavalry usually get all their best damage results on the first round of combat. So, when charged by heavy cavalry or anything you’ll struggle to wound, use Shadow’s Coil. In this way, the enemy is doing a lot less damage in that first round of combat. Keeping it really simple: you get to save half the wounds done on average, and that’s a good thing.
If you want more deatil, let’s take a look at some numbers. It’s important to remember that you’re going to attack first, so you will obviously reduce the amount of damage you’re taking by killing models! For this example, I’ll use a unit of 6 Chaos Knights charging into a unit of 6 Wardancers. The key stats for Chaos Knights: WS5, S4 (6 on the charge), T4 and a 3+ Armour Save. If we use Storm of Blades, we’ll do 0.7 unsaved wounds. If we use Whirling Death, we’ll do 0.96 unsaved wounds. And for Shadow’s Coil or Woven Mist, it’ll be 0.47 unsaved wounds. None of these look great in terms of actually doing damage to the knights … clearly this is a poor matchup for us, and we are not expecting to win this combat, so it becomes about survivability while we bring in some support from other units.
OK, so now we know how many Knights are actually attacking us–it’s likely to be all 6. I’ll keep the decimals in for the purposes of calculating averages, but obviously in a real game it’ll only be whole numbers of attacks – we’ll need to be lucky to have killed a knight before taking the hit).
The Diff column shows the difference between wounds dealt by the Wardancers and wounds taken.
There are some other situations where The Shaow’s Coil is beneficial, but they are all similar to this one: you’re not going to do much damage to the enemy, so focus on surviving.
Woven Mist
You can also see from this table that Woven Mist will mean that a lot fewer attacks actually hit. Against most things, Shadow’s Coil is usually better, because a -1 to hit is less good than straight up canceling half the wounds. However, there is one main exception, and it’s when you’re enemy is already naturally hitting on 5s, so I’ll recommend that you use Woven Mist against large blocks of WS2 troops. Going from being hit on 5s to being hit on 6s is a 50% reduction in hits on average (3s to 4s is 25%, 4s to 5s is 33%), and you’ll still have your 6++ Talisman Tattoos save, so you’ll end up taking the least amount of damage possible with Woven Mist in those circumstances.
In the natural course of things, you’ll be hit on 4s by everything unless it is WS2 or lower. Anything WS2 or lower in the game is generally not very tough or well armoured (think Goblins), so likely you’d be choosing a dance like Storm of Blades to just kill the fighting rank of Goblins and not take very much damage back anyways. That being said, there are two ways to lower the enemy WS or reduce their chances to hit in other ways which can sometimes mean that this is the right approach.
The two possibilities open to the Asrai are: Glittering Robe (-1 to hit), Befuddlement of Mischiefs (-1 to WS and I), both of which are only available to characters, which of course leads to discussion of the Shadowdancer and her role in the unit and in the army. She can be a L1 Illusion Wizard and take Glittering Robe, but as an L1, she’s not likely to be able to cast that spell very often. Here’s my casting spreadsheet in case you want to be able to see the odds for yourself. It’s only 23%, or just under 1 in 4.
Not amazing odds, and it only really pays off vs WS3, dropping them to WS2. So, we’re left with Befuddlement, which as I’ve said in several places before, I much prefer to take on one of my Great Stag characters. Sometimes that character will get to be in a combo attack with Wardancers, and that might be another time to use this Dance. However, usually one of the other dances is more appropriate, because you’re trying to wipe out the fighting rank of the enemy rather than worry about saving lives.
Shadowdancer
This seems like a good time to talk about the Shadowdancer now. This character can only really be in a unit of Wardancers. Sure, theoretically they could run solo but then they don’t get to use any of the dances (thanks to their Troubadour of Loec special rule–they can only dance when they’ve got buddies) and their Loner special rule means that they can’t join any other unit in the army. So, really they are in a unit of Wardancers or not at all. Other than the Dances of Loec special rule, they have all the same special rules as Wardancers. At 85 points you get a WS8 S4 character, with 3 attacks base, rising to 4 on charge from Furious Charge, and possibly to 5 (with Storm of Blades).
You must equip them with one of Spear of Loec (for Killing Blow, AP -1, AB (2) and S+1) or Tricksters Blades which Requires Two Hands (pointless, but there you go) and grants D3 extra attacks. S4 attacks with no AP are not amazing, no matter how many you have, so my preference is for the Spear of Loec, which is like a better Headsman’s Axe, for 0 points. It’s almost like the Shadowdancer is only costing you 40 points? Against infantry or cavalry, which I’m sure you’ve realized now are the best targets for Wardancers, the Killing Blow will kick in every now and again … remember that those pesky Bretonnian Dukes on Royal Pegasus are cavalry and can die to this! No armour or Regen, so just whatever ward save they have. (In case you’re wondering, and I was, the Armour Bane kicks in when you’re fighting something that isn’t Infantry or Cavalry, so it’s still a nice to have). The threat of Killing Blow is usually scarier than the reality, so use the threat of it to your advantage! Remind your opponent that they have it any time they’re about to declare a charge
You can turn the Shadowdancer into a L1 Wizard for 35 points, and give either Battle Magic or Illusion. As noted before, you’ve only a 23% chance of casting the Glittering Robe or a 24% chance of Hammerhand, assuming your opponent has a L4 nearby. Even if their L4 is dead or in combat, assuming they have a Fated Dispel, your chances of success are only 31% and 38% respectively. On the whole, I think it’s not worth the points for the Wizard upgrade. The randomness of spell generation means that relying on getting any spell other than the signature is kinda pointless, and the Lore of Athel Loren doesn’t really have any spells that synergize well with the Shadowdancer.
So this leaves magic items. What can we give our Boogie Knight that will make them do their job better than what we get for free with the Spear of Loec? Clearly our eye is drawn to the Blades of Loec, as the name suggests they are tailor-made for a Wardancer, no? Blades of Loec work the same as Tricksters Blades except they are Magical Attacks, cost 45 points, and let you reroll failed rolls to wound. See my previous comment about S4 attacks with no AP–this is a bit of a fail from a design perspective in my opinion. I think the Monster Slaying sword is not great because you really don’t want to have this unit fighting monsters in general. None of the other magic weapons seem worth the points compared to the free Spear of Loec. The Shadowdancer can’t take any armour, so that is out. Looking at Talismans, the Paymaster’s Coin is expensive for what it does. Obsidian Lodestone is not bad as a defensive item for this unit, but in general I think you want to avoid them being targeted and use Evasive rather than try to rely on MR to keep them safe. Merciw’s Locus doesn’t seem useful for a model that’s T3. Glamourweave is meh, the Ld test is too easy for most models to pass unless you lean into anti-Ld stuff. Which really just leaves us with Enchanted Items. The one that appeals to me the most is the Potion of Strength (and you can actually take two of these). No matter what you roll, you’ll get at least S6 attacks, which can really help against T4 troops, something that Wardancers struggle against. It can also act as a deterrent … if your opponent knows you might suddenly become S8, they may act differently! Again, the threat is often better than the reality. I think if you have 25 points to spend, this is not a bad option for the Shadowdancer, but now you’be got a 130 point character who only has 2 wounds and a 6++ ward save … so, my personal preference is to just run the Shadowdancer with Spear of Loec and no upgrades.
On the Battlefield
OK, final thoughts here on how I’m using Wardancers on the battlefield. They are backline troops, not frontline. They protect archers and wizards who want to be staying back and fighting from afar, but are generally very squishy. They pair really well with Dryads, who can take the first hit and allow a good countercharge from the ‘dancers. They work very effectively against T3 troops, including heavy cavalry such as Knights of the Realm. I run a unit of 5, with extra hand weapons and a champion, to really maximize the ability to get into base contact with whatever you’re charging, and with a low point cost of 91. They will struggle against T4+ with a good armour save, unless you also give them magical support (e.g. Plague of Rust). They are not heavy hitters, but they can often catch opponents off guard with their versatility. Too many points invested in the unit will likely mean that you will not get your points back. If you’re bringing a Shadowdancer, make sure and keep more Dryads around to ensure the character can’t be targeted, and maybe take a potion of Strength if you’re seeing a lot of T4 high armour folks get into your back lines.
How are you using your Wardancers? Have you had much success with them? Any builds for Shadowdancer I didn’t consider? Would love to hear ideas and war stories.
When I first got the box of Skarloc’s Wood Elf archers, my instant favourite model was Glam. Here was this crazy guy who literally danced his way up and down the front line of battle and stabbed anyone who got too close. Armour? Pah! Armour is for slow people who can’t dodge.
I still have the command group from that box of archers, but sadly Glam went missing over the course of many years. However, my love of Wardancers did not diminish, and I’ve been running a small unit of them in my army on a regular basis. Let’s jump right in and take a look at their key characteristics.
Stats and Special Rules
Wardancers are one of a very small number of rank and file units who come with a base Weapon Skill of 6, which is equal to or higher than most characters! (The only other WS6 units I can think of are Grail Knights, Swordmasters of Hoeth … let me know if I missed any?). Aside from also having Initiative 6 (which will rarely come into play), they have the standard Wood Elf statline (which means they are both S3 and T3, which I’ll get to more later) and cost 16 points per model. In terms of formation, they can are both Open Order and Skirmisher, and like all other Wood Elves, they have Move Through Cover.
I6 will rarely come into play because Wardancers all have Strike First. What I’ve come to realize is that in this edition, Strike First is very strong and functions as an excellent deterrent against being charged–very few units will be at I10 when they charge, so Wardancers will almost always get to, uh, strike first and kill some of the incoming threat before they even get to attack. If given a choice, I’ve noticed my opponents all prefer to charge into something else (more on this later). Other special rules which help with survivability are Evasive (remember, this can be used against Magic Missiles!) and Talismanic Tattoos (a 6++ ward save).
Wardancers come with Motley Crew, something I’ve used only once because I was tight on points. You can equip Wardancers with either an Additional Hand Weapon for +1pt per model, or Throwing Spears for free. Contrary to what you might think, Throwing Spears are not missile weapons–you get to Fight in an Extra Rank on a turn you charged, and that’s it. If you’re taking a larger unit of Wardancers and/or running them as a ranked unit in Open Order, this may be marginally useful, but in general I’m taking Additional Hand Weapon every time for the extra attack (sadly, despite the models existing, Wardancers cannot take Great Weapons).
They also have Loner and Immune to Psychology, with the former meaning they can only be joined by Shadowdancer characters, and the latter mostly being beneficial but meaning they can’t flee as a charge reaction so you need to keep that in mind.
Lastly, but certainly not leastly, they have both Furious Charge to give an extra attack when charging 3″ or more and Dances of Loec which give them a number of different benefits in close combat. I’ll cover the Dances in more detail in the next section.
Tactics
The first thing to consider with Wardancers is their vulnerability. Outside of combat, they are very squishy at T3 with no Armour Save, and just a 6++ ward to save them. As with all squishy things, there are two broad schools of thought: take lots of them, or hide them. At 17pts each (including the extra hand weapon), taking lots in a single unit is a high risk strategy. It also doesn’t really do much for you by way of combat results unless you run them Open Order and try to get a rank bonus … even then, I think you’d get better combat results from having two smaller units that combo charged. So, my preferred option is to take them in small units, and try to protect them.
If you’re running them as Skirmishers, oponents will be at -1 to shoot at them with BS shooting. They definitely want to be accompanied by another unit and the prime candidate here are Dryads, who are the same speed but tougher, cheaper and Stubborn. As I mentioned, opponents will prefer to charge something else and Dryads are perfect for both taking a charge and providing that shield against shooting. When the Dryads Fall Back, they can provide that excellent flank charge for Wardancers. One thing I’ve done is position Wardancers right behind Dryads so there’s just no way to target the Elves directly even with Magic Missiles, although this is tricky. The best defence against Magic Missiles is the Oaken Stave, as I’ve written about before.
Remember also that they are Evasive, so you can even flee from a shooting attack through another unit and not cause panic (a benefit of being skirmishers) and end up on the other side and thus not be targetable at all.
So, assuming you’ve kept them alive and they’ve been able to get into combat, what’s happening now? Now it’s time to dance, baby!
Dances of Loec
There are four Dances of Loec to choose from. Who’s Loec? He’s the Elven trickster god–in my mind, he’s the love child of Loki and Michael Flatley–and his worshippers tell stories with, yep, cool dances. Give the cast of Riverdance some swords, I tell ya …
Anyhoo, back in the Old World: you have four dances to choose from. Each one grants a specific bonus in combat, and you must choose one in each combat for them all to follow (including any Shadowdancer that’s joined the unit–more on DJ Shadowdancer later). Unlike in previous editions, you can choose the same dance every combat if you like–there’s no requirement to change dance between combats. In brief, there are two dances that are more defensive, and two that are more offensive:
Whirling Death: AP -2
Shadows Coil: 4++ ward save
Storm of Blades: +1 Attack
Woven Mist: Enemies get -1 to hit
I’ve listed them here in order of how likely you are to use them, but I’ll go through the offensive ones first and then the defensive ones and I’ll try to give rules of thumb for using each one.
Storm of Blades
To kick us off, against 6+ or no armour save, use Storm of Blades, because getting an extra attack is great–hitting and killing more things is what combat is all about! It means that when charging, you have 4 attacks: 1 base, 1 for Additional Hand Weapon, 1 for Furious Charge and 1 for Storm of Blades. 5 Wardancers with a champion thus puts out 21 attacks!
I don’t have a lot extra to say about it – extra attacks kind of speak for themselves. However, they are only S3 attacks, so their effectiveness really depends on your targets.
Whirling Death
Whirling Death is probably the one I’ll use most often, but it really depends on the armour save of the unit I’m attacking. TL;DR: use Whirling Death if the Armour Save is 5+ or better. However, if you want to see the math read on…
To keep the numbers easy to read, let’s assume I have a unit of 9 Wardancers who have not charged (so they have 2 attacks each). Storm of Blades thus gives me 9 extra attacks for a total of 27, which I’ll be (usually) hitting on 3s, resulting in an average of 18 hits. If I’m wounding on 4s (because my opponent is T3), that’s an average of 9 wounds. If my opponent has a 5+ save, then 3 wounds will be saved, resulting in 6 wounds. If instead of the Storm of Blades, I choose Whirling Death I’ll have the base 18 attacks, of which 12 will get through. Of those 12 hits, 6 will be wounds and there will be no save, so still 6 wounds. Where the math changes is when it’s not a 5+ save. If it’s a 6+ save or higher, I’m doing more wounds with the extra attacks, so stick with Storm of Blades. If it’s a 4+ save or lower, the Whirling Death will get more wounds through the armour. If our example above was against a unit with a 3+ save (like most Knights have), Storm of Blades would get only 3 wounds past the Armour on average, whereas Whirling Death would do 4. When the save is exactly 5+, I’m still recommending Whirling Death over Storm of Blades because there’s a marginal benefit for it if you also have a champion in the unit–that extra attack changes the math!
For the full spreadsheet, if you’re a data nerd like me, take a look here. Bear in mind that it’s hard to get all Wardancers into the Fighting Rank.
The Shadow’s Coil
Still with me? Great! Let’s talk about the more defensive dances. Sometimes you’re not one doing the charging, maybe because your opponent has caught you off-guard or with a sneaky overrun. This happens (to me) more frequently with cavalry, and cavalry usually get all their best damage results on the first round of combat. So, when charged by heavy cavalry or anything you’ll struggle to wound, use Shadow’s Coil. In this way, the enemy is doing a lot less damage in that first round of combat. Keeping it really simple: you get to save half the wounds done on average, and that’s a good thing.
If you want more deatil, let’s take a look at some numbers. It’s important to remember that you’re going to attack first, so you will obviously reduce the amount of damage you’re taking by killing models! For this example, I’ll use a unit of 6 Chaos Knights charging into a unit of 6 Wardancers. The key stats for Chaos Knights: WS5, S4 (6 on the charge), T4 and a 3+ Armour Save. If we use Storm of Blades, we’ll do 0.7 unsaved wounds. If we use Whirling Death, we’ll do 0.96 unsaved wounds. And for Shadow’s Coil or Woven Mist, it’ll be 0.47 unsaved wounds. None of these look great in terms of actually doing damage to the knights … clearly this is a poor matchup for us, and we are not expecting to win this combat, so it becomes about survivability while we bring in some support from other units.
OK, so now we know how many Knights are actually attacking us–it’s likely to be all 6. I’ll keep the decimals in for the purposes of calculating averages, but obviously in a real game it’ll only be whole numbers of attacks – we’ll need to be lucky to have killed a knight before taking the hit).
Code: Select all
Dance Attacks Hits Wounds Unsaved Diff
Storm of Blades 5.3 2.65 2.21 1.84 1.14
Whirling Death 5.04 2.52 2.1 1.75 0.79
Shadow’s Coil 5.53 2.77 2.3 1.15 0.68
Woven Mist 5.53 1.84 1.54 1.28 0.81There are some other situations where The Shaow’s Coil is beneficial, but they are all similar to this one: you’re not going to do much damage to the enemy, so focus on surviving.
Woven Mist
You can also see from this table that Woven Mist will mean that a lot fewer attacks actually hit. Against most things, Shadow’s Coil is usually better, because a -1 to hit is less good than straight up canceling half the wounds. However, there is one main exception, and it’s when you’re enemy is already naturally hitting on 5s, so I’ll recommend that you use Woven Mist against large blocks of WS2 troops. Going from being hit on 5s to being hit on 6s is a 50% reduction in hits on average (3s to 4s is 25%, 4s to 5s is 33%), and you’ll still have your 6++ Talisman Tattoos save, so you’ll end up taking the least amount of damage possible with Woven Mist in those circumstances.
In the natural course of things, you’ll be hit on 4s by everything unless it is WS2 or lower. Anything WS2 or lower in the game is generally not very tough or well armoured (think Goblins), so likely you’d be choosing a dance like Storm of Blades to just kill the fighting rank of Goblins and not take very much damage back anyways. That being said, there are two ways to lower the enemy WS or reduce their chances to hit in other ways which can sometimes mean that this is the right approach.
The two possibilities open to the Asrai are: Glittering Robe (-1 to hit), Befuddlement of Mischiefs (-1 to WS and I), both of which are only available to characters, which of course leads to discussion of the Shadowdancer and her role in the unit and in the army. She can be a L1 Illusion Wizard and take Glittering Robe, but as an L1, she’s not likely to be able to cast that spell very often. Here’s my casting spreadsheet in case you want to be able to see the odds for yourself. It’s only 23%, or just under 1 in 4.
Not amazing odds, and it only really pays off vs WS3, dropping them to WS2. So, we’re left with Befuddlement, which as I’ve said in several places before, I much prefer to take on one of my Great Stag characters. Sometimes that character will get to be in a combo attack with Wardancers, and that might be another time to use this Dance. However, usually one of the other dances is more appropriate, because you’re trying to wipe out the fighting rank of the enemy rather than worry about saving lives.
Shadowdancer
This seems like a good time to talk about the Shadowdancer now. This character can only really be in a unit of Wardancers. Sure, theoretically they could run solo but then they don’t get to use any of the dances (thanks to their Troubadour of Loec special rule–they can only dance when they’ve got buddies) and their Loner special rule means that they can’t join any other unit in the army. So, really they are in a unit of Wardancers or not at all. Other than the Dances of Loec special rule, they have all the same special rules as Wardancers. At 85 points you get a WS8 S4 character, with 3 attacks base, rising to 4 on charge from Furious Charge, and possibly to 5 (with Storm of Blades).
You must equip them with one of Spear of Loec (for Killing Blow, AP -1, AB (2) and S+1) or Tricksters Blades which Requires Two Hands (pointless, but there you go) and grants D3 extra attacks. S4 attacks with no AP are not amazing, no matter how many you have, so my preference is for the Spear of Loec, which is like a better Headsman’s Axe, for 0 points. It’s almost like the Shadowdancer is only costing you 40 points? Against infantry or cavalry, which I’m sure you’ve realized now are the best targets for Wardancers, the Killing Blow will kick in every now and again … remember that those pesky Bretonnian Dukes on Royal Pegasus are cavalry and can die to this! No armour or Regen, so just whatever ward save they have. (In case you’re wondering, and I was, the Armour Bane kicks in when you’re fighting something that isn’t Infantry or Cavalry, so it’s still a nice to have). The threat of Killing Blow is usually scarier than the reality, so use the threat of it to your advantage! Remind your opponent that they have it any time they’re about to declare a charge
You can turn the Shadowdancer into a L1 Wizard for 35 points, and give either Battle Magic or Illusion. As noted before, you’ve only a 23% chance of casting the Glittering Robe or a 24% chance of Hammerhand, assuming your opponent has a L4 nearby. Even if their L4 is dead or in combat, assuming they have a Fated Dispel, your chances of success are only 31% and 38% respectively. On the whole, I think it’s not worth the points for the Wizard upgrade. The randomness of spell generation means that relying on getting any spell other than the signature is kinda pointless, and the Lore of Athel Loren doesn’t really have any spells that synergize well with the Shadowdancer.
So this leaves magic items. What can we give our Boogie Knight that will make them do their job better than what we get for free with the Spear of Loec? Clearly our eye is drawn to the Blades of Loec, as the name suggests they are tailor-made for a Wardancer, no? Blades of Loec work the same as Tricksters Blades except they are Magical Attacks, cost 45 points, and let you reroll failed rolls to wound. See my previous comment about S4 attacks with no AP–this is a bit of a fail from a design perspective in my opinion. I think the Monster Slaying sword is not great because you really don’t want to have this unit fighting monsters in general. None of the other magic weapons seem worth the points compared to the free Spear of Loec. The Shadowdancer can’t take any armour, so that is out. Looking at Talismans, the Paymaster’s Coin is expensive for what it does. Obsidian Lodestone is not bad as a defensive item for this unit, but in general I think you want to avoid them being targeted and use Evasive rather than try to rely on MR to keep them safe. Merciw’s Locus doesn’t seem useful for a model that’s T3. Glamourweave is meh, the Ld test is too easy for most models to pass unless you lean into anti-Ld stuff. Which really just leaves us with Enchanted Items. The one that appeals to me the most is the Potion of Strength (and you can actually take two of these). No matter what you roll, you’ll get at least S6 attacks, which can really help against T4 troops, something that Wardancers struggle against. It can also act as a deterrent … if your opponent knows you might suddenly become S8, they may act differently! Again, the threat is often better than the reality. I think if you have 25 points to spend, this is not a bad option for the Shadowdancer, but now you’be got a 130 point character who only has 2 wounds and a 6++ ward save … so, my personal preference is to just run the Shadowdancer with Spear of Loec and no upgrades.
On the Battlefield
OK, final thoughts here on how I’m using Wardancers on the battlefield. They are backline troops, not frontline. They protect archers and wizards who want to be staying back and fighting from afar, but are generally very squishy. They pair really well with Dryads, who can take the first hit and allow a good countercharge from the ‘dancers. They work very effectively against T3 troops, including heavy cavalry such as Knights of the Realm. I run a unit of 5, with extra hand weapons and a champion, to really maximize the ability to get into base contact with whatever you’re charging, and with a low point cost of 91. They will struggle against T4+ with a good armour save, unless you also give them magical support (e.g. Plague of Rust). They are not heavy hitters, but they can often catch opponents off guard with their versatility. Too many points invested in the unit will likely mean that you will not get your points back. If you’re bringing a Shadowdancer, make sure and keep more Dryads around to ensure the character can’t be targeted, and maybe take a potion of Strength if you’re seeing a lot of T4 high armour folks get into your back lines.
How are you using your Wardancers? Have you had much success with them? Any builds for Shadowdancer I didn’t consider? Would love to hear ideas and war stories.