Wood Elf shooty

[ChaosSquat79]

I am looking into blacking out the skies with the hail of arrows. Wood Elves glade guardians just are so fragile in hand to hand you will just have to hope you can kill enough of the enemy to keep them at bay. Plus I am going to have a couple tree Men and some tree Kin to keep the enemy away from the glade guard.

[ikbuh]

Not sure what you're goal of this post was, but I'll give my input on wood elves and shooting. My lists usually include around 60 Glade Guard in 6 blocks of 10 (5x2). Why? I feel this is not only the most mobile, but the most effective way to shoot because it gives your opponent (many of which tend to run a single horde unit) more targets he has to worry about and his massive charge will have less of an impact. Let's face it, 9/10 times if a block of 40 GG gets rushed, the fight is going to end the same as if it charged into a group of 10, so why give your opponent the satisfaction? Next is magic. Most wood elf players tend to take the Lore of Life, which is by no means a bad school, but with a shooty heavy list I find that it doesn't do as well as beasts. What do I mean? Yes, it seems like it should be the other way around, but in fact the lore of life has a lot of spells that wind up helping melee more than ranged. Beasts have several spells that assist when it comes to shooting. One of the spells is actually a ballista bolt that can reach S10, and the other is the Curse of Anraheir, which really puts a damper on the enemies movement plans because it means all terrain (even open) is dangerous and they will fail their tests on a 1 or 2, which means they will loose 1/3rd of their unit on average just for moving forward.

[jgascoine011]

except that open ground is not terrain
and i know what you are going to say
"but the BRB says that open ground is terrain"
however it also says that you ignore open ground for the perpouse of the game

If they ment it so that it affected open ground as well then they would have said that is a unit moves they take dangerous terrain (like in the Tomb kings book) and not if they move through terrain

[Quothcraft]

If your going to have a large block of GG, get the Standard that lets you stand & shoot. Nothing like seening a unit of heavt cavery cut down mid charge!

Tree kin are also amazing! Iv seen units of 3 take on armies! (not exsactly, but easily 3X-5X their points cost worth of kills)

And building. 360* line of sight, decent protection and if they do get charged, the limitations on how many can fight per turn gives you ample time to get a flanking charge on those enemy units.

Waywatchers are a great shooty unit as well. With the ability to deploy litterally INCHES away from your enemy (so long as your not in LoS and more than 1inch away, you can deploy) with the killing bow at half range, they are amazing for taking out enemy spell casters and warmachine crew. There not too shabby in melee either! I had a unit of 6 take out a unit of 10-14 Grave Guard and the Master Necromancer with 2 vollys of arrows and then being charged. (though this was the first time that I had used them and they hadnt run off the table first turn (lesson learnt in deployment there!))

Hope that helps!

Oh! Scouts are also great for baiting the enemy into positions for Glade Rider charges or away from your main line giving you presious time to wittle them down. Can drow a good few enemies in the mean while as well!

[Sidewinder]

Waywatchers are a great shooty unit as well. With the ability to deploy litterally INCHES away from your enemy...

I realize I am bringing this topic back from the dead but I believe that deployment advantage mentioned above has been taken away by the amendments section of the Wood Elf FAQ. Is there a definitive answer to this?

By the way, is this thread in the correct category? It seems out of place.
Sidewinder

[Blackadder]

First let me congratulate you on picking one of the best armies in Fantasy! - as Wood Elves are really really cool.

A couple of suggestions though from a fellow WE player, YOU CAN NOT have an exclusively Glade Guard army to defeat the enemy. Despite our (debatable) superiority in shooting, we simply can't bring enough of it accurately enough onto the enemy in order to defeat them - close combat troops are essential, even if the only purpose of your close combat is to buy time for more shooting from your Glade Guard.

My suggestion for Close combat would be dryads - with an enourmous I6, they are going to go first against pretty much anything (bar Elven heroes, some special characters, and slaaneshi stuff), with multiple attacks and a decent S & T, they're also pretty tough against your average S 3 enemy. - To illustrate the point, I've had a depleted unit of these things (maybe...6-7) hold up an entire unit of about 20 empire swordsmen for about 3-4 turns, and even then they came out on top in the end.

With that out of the way, my suggestion for your shooting units is to never ever ever let the enemy charge them - make your default charge reaction be to run away if you're not going to run off the table or if the enemy is small enough to destroy with stand and shoot.

lastly, seriously consider the Hail of Doom Arrow - for 35pts you get a potential of 18 S4 shots (it's 3D6 str 4 shots) from one guy at BS6 - that's something which will tear up any lightly armour unit or enemy archer unit, either causing panic checks or simply wiping it out. At a pinch (if you're lucky) it can also fillet an enemy horde unit too.


- this is all working around a tiny points bracket mind you - 500-750pts, so stuff like Tree-kin and tree-men do come into the equation later on, but my advice would be to always base your army around Glade Guard & dryads.

- as a potential alternative to a Wood Elf list for blackening the sky with arrows, might I also suggest taking a look at the Dark Elf Book? - Dark Elf Crossbowmen may well be inferior to Wood Elves in some respects (they're practically equal really) but if you base your entire army around the things, you can literally throw out hundreds of shots a turn. A unit of 20 for e.g., will throw out 40 shots a turn - thats for about...200pts I think - have 3 of those and focus your fire on a single unit and you're bound to cause a good number of casualties from the sheer weight of fire... - they're also 2pts cheaper than Glade Guard too - with light armour as standard and the option for shields (giving them a 5+ save, and also a parry save in CC). - you can also equip your noble with an equally nasty ranged weapon, the Life-taker, which is also a pretty good thing. - bear in mind though that if you're always moving your Crossbowmen around (which you may have to, to get in the 24' range) you're to hit rolls are initially going to be fairly high.

Hope I helped.