In the aftermath of the tournament and such I have come to some observations of the list as well as play in general..
My army:
60 glade guard can devastate armies.. (Good)
Flesh to stone supplemented with an occassional dwellers is great (Good)
A level 4 is enough to guard against most agressive magic armies, though the dispel scroll is crucial was worried about not being able to stop some magic phases. (Good)
Monsters or multi wound models that have T6 or more are bad... cos even at close range my shots are wounding on 6's I do have the shots to pour out and you only need 5-6 6's. However, if they have an armour save this gets a lot worse.. The flaming banner is a godsend for the inevitable Hellpit abomination/hydras/regenerating frothy monster of choice..
The doom wheel is a particularly bad monster to fight cos. A. it's only 150pts so theres 2 of them, but critically it moves in the remaining moves phase so I cannot flee from it.. I have to confess to feeling a bit miffed at HAVING to stand there with no running away.. I was playing a game against ogres today and I found myself fleeing 5-6 times in one game... the inability to run away is devastating..
HOWEVER
Conclusion: I need to have something that can combat the monsters.. The treeman is a solid choice as he outstats most monsters with a ward save and a solid 3+ armour and as shown he was more than man enough for the job to take out one wheel... So the obvious consideration would be to take a treeman ancient.. I am having to build a 2000pt list for the GT's and a consideration is to drop the spell weaver in exchange for 2 lvl 2's with a dispel scroll and a staff of sorcery. Thus giving me an effective lvl 3 dispeller but no lords choice lost. I have aeriels blessing which grants regeneration which is a solid buff, as well as call of the hunt which is one of the few spells in the game that lets me charge into combat! +1 attack as the secondly use of call of the hunt creates 3 attack dryads.. Fear the humble spellsinger.. I ramble back to the point..
The second option for anti monster is the humble spirit sword.. for anyone who doesn't know it's a 55 pt magic weapon that auto wounds (doesn't ignore saves sadly) but for each wound it does, we both make a roll and add our ld (his is 10) loser loses that many wounds..
Thoughts:
- Give him long enough HE WILL KILL HIMSELF
- Auto wounding is GREAT as the main problem with monsters is their T6+
- most things arn't ld 10.. and they use their unmodified ld.. lets do a quick check
- Aracknarock: 5 Steamtank: 10 Doomwheel: 7 Hydra:6 hellpit abomination: 8 dragon: 7-9 Daemon Prince: 8 greater Daemon: 9, stegadon 5
- Okay.. so it's looking pretty encouraging, not liking the steam tank.. but I'm always going to struggle with that one so we'll ignore it for a minute.
Now.. I can fit a spirit lord AND a lvl 4 into 2k..
Idea's.. do I have him in a unit.. I can't have him in a dryad unit as the only way to make him a forest spirit gives him a mount.. so he'd have to be in either a treekin unit.. or a glade guard unit.
Eagle? or Alter Kindred.. I'm inclined towards alter kindred as the extra attack is useful however more critically do I want him to be my general.. he's probably going to die sooner or later so I don't want to give up the 100pts.. but saying no to ld 10 is silly especially when playing the stubborn treeman game.. I'm inclined to keep the spellweaver as the general at ld 9 and save myself some pts 25 in fact..
Dragonflame gem or dragon helm.. 5 pts for a 2+ ward vs. flaming attacks, if I have to face a deamon prince or bloodthirster with flaming axe will be worth it.. it also limits the offensive magic in the deamon match up.. as well as anyone who takes fire.. not always useful but for 5pts I'm inclined to like it..
So 500pts to spend
Spellweaver: lvl 4, + dispel scroll 275pts
Highborn: spirit sword, alter kindred, 225pts..
hmm that doesn't leave him very much.. and he's sitting there with no saves and open to everything and their mum to shoot him..
Right, so let's drop alter kindred and stick him on foot in a unit with 25pts to play with.. dragonhelm, light armour and a shield later.. he has a 4+ armour save... wow that is just depressing.. can't really afford any of the 3+ ward items.. hmm but if I dropped the dispel scroll for another arcane item i could afford the 3+ ward that breaks.. or the one that doesnt' work vs. magic.. hmm
We will come back to that one!!
TO THE PLAY TEST TABLE:
Game vs. Ogres.. sadly his monsters were both giants so I didn't really want to go near them as giants are ld 10 :(.. however he did kill his way through 2 gorgors which was 180pts back for a 225pt unit.. his ld 10 bolstering my lines was a godsend.. NEEDS more playtesting..
If I was to go against the skaven again.. I'd have him on one flank with the treeman on the other to defend against the wheels.. do a quick bit of maths.. after impact hits and magical death.. all resolved on the glade guard unit.. highborn goes first 4 attacks. 2.6 hits all auto wounding.. he gets a 5+ save so a probable 2 wounds getting through. with a 3 ld advantage 'on average' the wheel goes down.. or as On average as you can with a spirit sword..
Against a lizardmen stegadon army the sword is invaluable as I doubt my army would be able to stop 2, 1 would be pushing it.. I can flee then counter charge possibly overrunning into another lizard dropping 2..
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Right.. other considerations I have been thinking is I want to playtest the twilight sisters.. without opening the can of worms of whether their eagle is a monster or a monstrous creature.. (i will contact tournament organisers before hand in this case) the ability that intrigues me the most is that on a hit (with bs 6) that unit has to take a str test or cannot move.. if they are using a screening unit of gnoblars I can paralyse the str 2 blockers so they can't get out of the way.. against most units it's a 1/2 chance of stopping it and even against a block of chaos warriors having a 1/3 chance of stopping them is great..
Being able to place a small blast on a 2+ even at str 3 is cool too at maximum against small base models it's a 21 hit.. so 10.5 wounds on t3 would have helped in the horde match up incredibly..
Would be fun to have vs. the 200 marauder outflanking army too as they are only str 3 being able to paralyse them would be useful..
Other thought is that they cannot be killed unless both are killed in a phase.. meaning they are quite good at holding units up especially against a monster with 5 attacks.. sadly I have to worry about things like ld tests.. but it would be a good option to hold up the scary stuff.. again it depends if the eagle is a monstrous cav making them 3 wounds each.. having to take 6 wounds of them would be tricky.. Then again I am getting 9 str 4 attacks too which allows me to at-least contest combat
The twins are something that look okay on paper, and I think can massively change the way the game is played.. cos no-one will use them, people will have certainly not playtested against the twilight twins so will have to think on the spot which is good.. my problem is if you get a bit unlucky with a few rolls the 325 pts you spent on them to stop a few units moving won't happen if he passes all his str tests.. and you get to the point where your very luck reliant ;(
order of lord choices at the moment:
Spellweaver + spirit sword
Treeman Ancient + 1 dispel dice and possibly nettlings
Twins
both the bottom two would have a lvl 2 singer with staff of sorcery for magic defense..
stay tuned for more mindless ramblings on lore of beasts vs. lore of life and of course the dwarf battle report with colour photo's!!
As ever, subscribe and comment :D
Ben
Hmm, not sure I follow the thinking here. at 2,000 points the big hordes are going to be (slightly) bigger, probably 40+ as standard. This means you're going to want to keep all 60 archers in the list, and possibly add an extra unit, not go spending huge swathes of points on a lord who don't add much to your shooting.
ReplyDeleteI agree that a mobile unit to counter monsters is the way to go, but if it were me I'd be trying to do it on a hero budget. A great eagle gives him the speed he needs, and also makes him immune to having his squishy T3 self stomped. A potion of strength, helm of the hunt, light armour, shield and spear gives him 4 S8 attacks on the charge. As you observed, most big nasties have poor leadership, so if you can win the first round then you'll probably send them packing. Fimbulwinter shard, helm of the hunt, potion of foolhardiness and a greatweapon might also work, meaning the enemy will most likely hit on 5+, so is unlikely to do 3 wounds (so long as they don't have a breath weapon), whilst you'd be ItPsy on the charge, and be throwing 5 S6 attacks on the charge. Either of these comes in at under 200 points.
Of course, you're kinda stuck against the stank, but that's what dwellers is for!
I'm not convinced that the same amount of archers would be effective in 2000pts, just because the army relies on being able to redirect and maneuver long enough to stop everything from reaching you.. which just about worked in the games -the skaven game, but at 2k as you say there will be larger hordes.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm going to try a game with a large unit of treekin as a block taking one flank, with forty glade guard on the other protected by the treeman and dryads.
This way, I have a unit that can dish out in combat, adequately protect the spellweaver, who will be going beasts and the glade guard have another half of the board to move too relatively protected as the treekin deter from moving onto that side.. (I have no idea.. if this makes any sense at all.. but I'l see how it goes.
List will be something like;
Spellweaver: beasts, dispel scroll, rhymers harp, glamourweave, horse
Battlestandard, wild rider, obsidian lodestone
4x 10 glade guard, with fire banner in one
treeman,
10-15 dryads
I'm torn between life and beasts for the list, the life has the advantage of being able to regrowth + life lore to keep treekin alive, but the problem I was having was a lot of the spells you just don't want to cast, throne of vines + stone to flesh + regrowth, as a lvl 4 you normally only get 2/3 of those.
Beasts, you are guaranteed to get the spell you want as it's the signature spell, amber spear boosted seems a really good anti monster spell, curse of anraheir.. -1 to hit in combat.. would cripple a unit taking on the tree's.. sadly no transformation as he's on a horse.. but I just replace that with the signature spell.. hmm playtesting will have to tell..
I'm interested to see how the tree deathstar plays out, as I think with the harp + MR 3, it could actually be very solid, as the only thing it really doesn't want to see is flaming cannons or pit of shade/purple suns and even then it gets 2+ ward vs. Magic missiles is good, but you pay a premium for it.
Either way.. it will be nice to actually play the combat phase without having to pray each turn to draw combat..
How many are you thinking of having in the treestar?
ReplyDeleteEven flaming cannon aren't that great against treekin, if one doesn't die (about 50:50 chance) the ball stops dead.
Your archers would have to give pretty high target priority to any unit trying to tarpit the trees, but you probably knew that already.
Also the only place your characters can go is the forest spirit units, and won't get a 2+ LoS as they're a different troop type, putting their lives in great peril.
I think with wood elves even more than most armies you need to have a pretty tight idea in mind of what you're building your list to do. Your 1.5k list was clearly designed to shoot, with a couple of units working towards that by running interference. The 2k list outlined above seems to be all about the deathstar, and I'm not convinced it's a powerful enough star to make that work. Still, playtesting will determine that much better than any amount of mathhammer, so I guess you'll find out over the next few weeks.