600pt slow grow league

[David Shawn Ongley]

I am about to begin in a 600pt slow grow league, and have never played wood elves before. I decided to start a new army, and would love some pointers for a place to start.

Currently I am fascinated by the Dryad idea, and would love to build an army around that concept.

We are starting with 600pts, and each month increasing the cost by 200pts till we get to 1000. Afterwards, we will increase by 250pts till 2000, and finally 500pts till 3000. A total of 9-10 months.

Where is a good place to start?

[waddywoos]

The problem with Wood Elves is a lack of that cheapish combat unit that you can rank up and form a battle line around. Personally I take an Eternal Kindred Highborn to make Eternal Guard core, and take a unit of 28 and throw a BSB in - but thats because I find I can't play without that one solid unit, its not what most people do.

Dryads are awesome fun. However remember that they're skirmishers so in combat they aren't going to be getting that rank bonus. T4 foot units in an Elf army are always welcome! 2 attacks each is useful too.

Treekin are definitely something to invest in. Strength and Toughness 5 with multiple wounds and attacks is awesome, especially with their decent armour save and the ward save too. Just be careful of flaming attacks! Treemen are pretty much covered by this point as well, with differences in statistics.

Another unit that has the forest spirit rule (5+ ward) are wild riders. Yes they look like elves on horses and can be fragile, but with a character and maybe a lore of life spell on them they can be awesome too. You have to be a bit more sneaky with how you use them than with say, Empire knights, because of the reduced armour and increased point cost. I've always wanted to get a Noble on a great stag to lead them, need to get around to it!

I've never played with Drycha because I don't physically own enough forest spirit units, but she's a Lord level special character (like a better Branchwraith) that gives you a few bonuses, but forces you to play with only forest spirits. So thats Dryads, Treekin, Wild Riders and Treemen. I personally think that would be a little bland, quick to paint though!

As far as regular elf units, Wardancers are awesome. Never take Waywatchers in units bigger than 5. I like Warhawk Riders in units of 3 for warmachine and character hunting but you can certainly do without them. Avoid glade riders and don't take glade guard in units bigger than 10.

With characters, the spellcasters are a bit overpriced. I still take a Lv.4 at 2500 points to go with a BSB and a Highborn, but any more than 3 characters and you'll start feeling like you're not deploying many units. If you're playing Warriors of Chaos regularly then make sure to take a hero with an annoyance of netlings - as WoC have to challenge and then they'll only be hitting you on 6's! Also, most of the magic bows and the arrows for them are way over priced and not worth it.

[David Shawn Ongley]

Thank you for all the advice, it was thorough. Now I run into a core problem. To be able to field 600 pts of wood elves, I still have to abide by creation rules. It wasn't a big issue, except getting 3 units in. The most recent list I ran put me at 595 pts with the following. I was happy to run this.

Brachwraith - lvl 1 wiz + Murder of Spites
20x Dryads - Branch Nymph
3x Treekin

I was happy with that until I realized I didn't have three units.

My current solution is to break up the unit into 2 separate units. Is there a better solution? This includes me moving away from an entire forest spirits army if need be.

Thanks.

[waddywoos]

Splitting the dryads into two units of 10 isn't a problem at all. If anything it would have been better like that anyway, as you don't get a rank bonus so more units is better from a tactical standpoint.

For perspective, I played a couple of 500 point games last week using a Noble, 1 unit of glade guard, 8 dryads and 3 treekin. We found that the treekin were horribly overpowered at this points level, practically nothing could touch them in his dark elf army (no executioners or hydra, yay!). So they're a great initial choice. I ended up swapping them for a unit of wardancers for a third game to balance it up! (and still won ).

But yes, an all forest spirit army is totally possible, I just question whether it is varied enough to be interesting to collect for yourself?