Army of unsuspecting headaches... 2000pt Throne of Skulls Wood Elves

[giant boob nipple gun]

Fantasy Army: Wood Elf

Hey all!

I am off to the Throne of Skulls Grand tourny in September and after taking several different armies over the years with mostly good results, (last 3 years i have taken dark elves, vampires and ogres, all winning 4 out of 5 games respectively) I have this year naturally decided to take wood elves.

I like a challenge as much as the next pointy ear loving bloke, but in a professional competition this is a steep tree to climb, so to speak.

Anyhoo, in all the research I've done, I figured that the only good way to take woodies in a 2k comp was in a MSU list.
I am very very miffed with GW for lowering the army limit back to 2000pts from 2400, despite most people I talked to last year preferring the extra 400pts.
So, onto the list.

Archmage, lv4, dispel scroll

Noble, eagle, great weapon, light arm, shield, dragon helm, aranthine brooch.
Noble, bsb, asyendis bane, hail of doom.

10 archers, standard
10 archers, standard
10 archers, standard
10 archers, standard, flame banner

8 dryads
8 dryads
8 dryads

5 wildriders, standard
5 wildriders, standard
5 wardancers
5 wardancers

Eagle
Eagle

The list would work for points denial, rather than all out annihilation.
I have just spent a week in hospital, mulling over the list and realising I didn't like it. So I came up with this instead.

Archmage lv4

Noble wildrider
Great stag
Moonstone
Dragon helm

Noble bsb
Asyendis bane and hail of doom

10 archers, standard
10 archers, standard
20 archers, standard

8 dryads
8 dryads
8 dryads

5 treekin

6 wildriders, standard

Eagle,
Eagle

Now this is smaller, but packs more of a whollop. Any other woodie players out there have and suggestions or comments? I would live to see anyone else do an MSU woodie list at 2k.

Cheers, Andy

[tmarichards]

I'm hoping to take my WE to ToS as well at some point this year, unfortunately the tickets always seem to sell out before I can guarantee I can make it >

Personally, I think the 2K limit helps WE more than it hinders us- we can still get everything we want in for an MSU list (Dryads, rares, characters, glade guard) whereas other armies have to make some sacrifices.

I have some thoughts on both lists, starting with list 1 (I'm predictable like that):

What Lore are you running on the level 4? At completely uncomped ToS Life can be very appealing purely for Dwellers sniping characters as well as killing units, but it basically comes down to a 6 dice per phase Dwellers every turn, every game. This gets pretty risky pretty fast with a 300pt mage who is also the general, giving away a ruckload of pts when she dies. Also, plan on playing against competent players- a lot of people will keep their tasty Dwellers targets back, forcing you to come to them if you want to get a worthwhile target for risk/reward, which draws you onto the rest of the army. Life has it's merits, but personally I am a huge fan of Lore of Beasts which is a very good and criminally under-rated Lore, especially for Wood Elves. It has better synergy at bigger pts levels, but it still works well at 2K.

The Eagle Noble worked well for me in the last tournament I took him to (I think he works better as the BSB but in uncomped events he can't take a shield which is a massive hit), I'd give him a shield and then Warrior Bane instead of the great weapon- it makes him more durable, and it also lets him hunt ethereals which can be a little bit of a pain.

I wouldn't bother with standard bearers on the Glade Guard units, other than the flaming unit. You'll only play B&G once, and with just the general, BSB and the flaming unit you have a Fortitude of 4, so you need to lose 2 before you auto-lose and chances are if you lose that much early on in the game you'll lose overall anyway. For me, this is a very reasonable risk to take but getting in another for a bit more of a safety net is fine. However, all those GG units need musicians- there will come a point when just wheeling will not be enough to get them into the right place at the right time.

If you can boost the flaming unit up to 15-16, that would be great. After armour saves, that does 0.67 wounds to the hydra at long rage which is a very good chance of getting the regen off, and also gives you some redundancy- I can guarantee that any DE or Skaven player worth their salt who brings regen monsters will target that unit first, and the last thing you want is to only have 5-6 left on the turn when you really need to get rid of that regen. I like to have a champion in mine to take any turn 6 charges long range charges off any characters that is still in there, but it's not essential.

One of the best things about MSU is being able to flee- ask any Lizardman player. As it stands you have 7 units, coming to 764pts, that cannot fun away if they get caught out of position. Redirecting is great, but with only 40 Glade Guard backing you up you can't really trade efficiently especially as none of those units really kill very much in combat. Instead, I think a better option would be to take more Glade Guard that can flee charges and also kill stuff. If you want them purely to redirect, 2 units of Dryads and 2 Eagles works fine. I started out with 4 units of Dryads, then cut down to 3, and then cut down to 2 as I found the third unit tends to get in the way a bit, and I've not looked back since.

I'm a big fan of Waywatchers, they're expensive but they add something that nothing else can do which is to semi-reliably threatn Dark Elf pegasus riders and Scar-Vets. Admittedly, most of the armies from ToS are a long way behind the current UK meta (last time I was there they were mostly running double hydra or 3 massive lizard blocks with Life Slann in Temple Guard), but if you run into someone who has DE pegasus riders or Scar-Vets there's very little you can do to stop them rolling over you.

Second list:

Same comments as before about the level 4, she could really do with having a Scroll this time though.

The Stag Rider won't really do much beyond dying, he's an expensive T3 model with 3 wounds and very little armour or ward.

I've gone off Treekin in a big way recently, if you do want to run them I've found 2x4 to work well with 2x3 also working as a cheaper, less good alternative that lets yout 10 more Glade Guard in. The only times I ever take them, however, are when I'm going to a comped tournament and I hit the shot cap with pts left over to burn.

I've not played many 2K games recently at all, but I've got a decent number of games in my battle reports thread (link in my signature) using MSU Wood Elves this year, with varying degrees of success.

Hopefully see you there

[giant boob nipple gun]

Mr Tom!

Let me be the first to say that I am a massive fan of the batreps, and they have gone a lonnnng way to solving the headache which is 2k woodies. I really hope to finally meet u in sept and put a face to the narration!

I agree completely with the points you made.
Beast lore all the way with me. Life is good if you can take the dedicated combat units for it to back up, but for wood elves the beast lore is such more suited to the boosting up unit game.

I know you have had some trouble with a certain rule recently, so I took the liberty of emailing the rules boys at Nottingham and asking; 1. Is open terrain counted as terrain?
And 2. Is eternal guard fighting style stack with other armour saves?
The answers were yes and yes, so open terrain counts for the beast spell the curse of arhaheir and eternal guard armour on Heros basically counts as a scaly skin save, meaning u can buy armour/mounts on top of it.
Also asked was these answers tourny legal, and again they said yes, just show the email ruling to the judge for it to be verified.
I shall PM you the emails if you so wish...

Anyhoo, I'd be interested to see what you would take in a 2k list...
Ben Curry posted this on his podcast today for a nominal 2k woody tourny list;


Spellweaver, Level 4;*Dispel Scroll; Lore of Beasts

Wood Elf Noble; Battle Standard Bearer,*Asyendi’s Bane,*Hail of Doom Arrow

3x 10 Glade Guard, Musician

3x 8 Dryads

5 Glade Riders

2x*3 Warhawk Riders

3x 5 Wild Riders of Kurnous

7 Wardancers, Musician

5 Wardancers, Musician

2x 5 Waywatchers

2x*Great Eagle

Your opinions?

Gilly x

[tmarichards]

I was actually talking about this earlier with my team mates, we reckon it might have some legs in it but personally I think it's got too little punch, and too much of it can't flee. Still, he's a very good player so it's more than possible that he's seeing something that I'm not.

For myself, my list would be:

Beasts level 4, Scroll, Moonstone

HoDA BSB with Asyendi's Bane

6x10 Glade Guard with musicians

15 Glade Guard with full command and flaming banner

2x8 dryads

2x6 Waywatchers

2 Eagles

It pretty much plays exactly like a Lizardman army- double flee every charge, and pick one unit a turn to put all 75 Glade Guard into.

Very glad to hear that they'll be playing Curse as per the rules, saves a lot of arguments

[giant boob nipple gun]

Indeed. Thought I'd better get the rules cleared up before I go...
I agree with including the moonstone, I love the fact that your opponent has to spend 3 turns wading through bowfire to get to your prize unit of archers with side orders of wizard and BSB, only to watch the Mage tap her chest and yell "site to site transport, NOW!" and have the unit whisked off to an unsuspecting wooded corner of the field... (to which will be a wildwood and WILL eat the rest of the unit... This had happened)

[cyberspite]

At first glance Ben's list looks a fair bit over 2k, more like 2400, but I can't be bothered doing the maths so I may be wrong.

Anyway, there's a lot of similarity between the lists, it just depends how you want to play, whether you prefer to 'take all the glade guard' or go for more of a combat list.

What you have to be careful of though, is getting stuck somewhere in the middle and finding out you've not got quite enough of either to do a proper job.

Personally I like your second list more, I agree that you could drop a unit of dryads for more glade guard though, and although I have fond memories of wild riders from 6th and 7th edition I can't really see them performing better than more glade guard, or even some warhawks. The stag noble certainly isn't the most competitive choice, but I quite like the idea of sending him into the treekin and moonstoning them across the board. Not something you could really rely on but would be a curveball for your opponent, provided you could keep him alive long enough!

[giant boob nipple gun]

You are right sir, I did the maths and it certainly is a 2400pt list. Hmm.
When trying to shave it down, I took off a unit of hawks, glade riders and one unit of wild riders, and both dancer units are at 5.
Will do some more tweaking.
Everyone I've played against has gone out the way to kill the wildriders, so as a distraction unit they are superb.

The main reason I took the stag hero (apart from the awesome convertion i done for one!) was to move the kin unit round the board... I love the idea but as u say it's very situational and will only work some of the time. Any opponent worth his salt playing against woodies can prepare for this.

Hmmm. I'll post another list later.

Gilly x

[giant boob nipple gun]

Ok.
I've redone the list and this is how it looks...

Spellweaver - 275
Lv 4
Dispel scroll

Noble BSB - 130
Asyendis bane
Hail of doom

10 archers - 132
Standard

10 archers - 132
Standard

18 archers - 238
Standard, banner of flame

8 dryads - 96

8 dryads - 96

5 wild riders - 130

5 wild riders - 130

3 warhawk riders - 120

5 wardancers - 90

5 wardancers - 90

5 waywatchers - 120

5 waywatchers - 120

Eagle - 50

Eagle - 50

= 1999pts
Fortitude 6, 13 drops, not inc waywatchers.

Anyone care to offer opinions/changes?

Gona have a game tomorrow and see how they do...