Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Sorry if this has already been posted/discussed to death, I did run a search and didn't see anything, besides this is my first day!

I haven't read the new Book but from the snippets I've gleaned here and there the new rules seem really unfavourable to the tree huggers..

Woods no longer block LOS or slow down movement and might even turn round and bite you on the arse..

Stepping up/hordes etc means that ploughing Wardancers etc into a unit and being safe because all the strikers back were dead no longer works..

Magic is now tEh UbEr!!!11!!, sure we can get Dispell dice/scrolls etc but a few of the new SUPER spells getting through will be all she wrote....

I'm not just whining I'm genuinely interested if there are other rules which counter balance these points which I am not aware of? Anyone played in the new rules and done ok?
I'm fine with not being a top tier army anymore (I'm used to that) but with the incredible fragility (bar the ones made of tree) and high cost of our units I don't see a way of protecting them.

Do we just have to lump it and bring 2x6 Treekin to every fight?

Magic is being overated on these boards. For ever super spell you hear decimating an army, 10 more never actually got cast or the wizard blew himself up from the miscast...

Magic is not as boss as people are saying on these forums. Magic was 'uber' in tha last edition. now you roll 2d6 in the magic phase and thats how many power dice you have, you can also never have more then 12 power dice at a time. Also keep in mind when shooting through tress to hit a unit behind them its -2 to you BS because they are considered to be in hard cover.
WE magic defense is now better in 8th then what it was in 7th. With the ability to reroll failed dispell attempts, add extra dispell dice to the pool, and getting a free dispell dice when your oppenant rolls three or more dice to cast a spell. I've played my WE four times in 8th editon at all different point levels against so called top tier armies.

Dyrads are better in this edition then in the previous and Ive found out running them in squads of 14 works out wonderfully. Their high int of 6 and muiltiple attacks gives them a huge advantage over similar combaty core choices. I use them as support as I always have for my treekin and treemen and now charging is 2d6+movement they can get really out there, on average they're chargeing at least 11". I've also found good use for the branchnymph as her int is 8 and the only people hiting before her asf troops and heros pretty much.

Glade guard are also better being able to fire in two ranks and move and shoot where they like. these guys are still win in my book. Treemen are still as good as they have ever been, especially now with stomp. Fear and terror may have gotten nerfed but it really doesnt matter. Wardancers are still good with their int 6 and different dances, Im also running them in larger units to great effect, especially when they do the killing blow dance against knights. Larger blocks of infantry, 30+, will require muiltiple charges in order to break but thats the way Ive always played my WE. glade riders are actually better in 8th as well seeing how both ranks fire and they get the free move at the beging of the game.

There are some units just not worth taking anymore, wild riders, warhawk riders. Scouts and way watchers got nerfed because war machines are now more difficult to wound from shooting. you can still charge with them against war machines to a certain effect but thats not what they're designed for.

You're gonna have to find out what works for you and the new rules but WE are defiantely better in 8th then they were in 7th. Anyone telling you other wise doesnt play WE or hasnt played against someone that knows how to run them. I wouldnt consider them a top tier army but can be a competitive one.

WE i thought seemed better for the following reasons:

-Shooting in 2 ranks.
-Shoot through trees, although -2.
-People will go in trees more often so that spell of yours that the treeman has is awesome.
-Treeman: Big Stomp rule
-Treekin: Regular Stomp rule.
-As stated before, magic defense is still solid.
-Point %s allow you to stock up on as many special and rare so long as you stay within the point limits, so haveing 10 wardancers for flanking is viable. Just have a treeman take a charge and bam!
-With a Ld. test units can march when units are 8" away. So waywatchers can do some serious damage.

Basically, tree spirits for combat. Everything else for shooting/magic. This ed. does nerf their CC a bit, but in the end, their shooting got that much stronger.

Thanks for that, do your armies tend to be more Wood than Elf? I have never used Treekin as they don't really float my boat, I focus mainly on Archers backed up with the obligatory Treedude and Wardancers. I prefer to run magic light lists. Can one get away with that now or will you need a big mage to dispell everything, some of those spells seem pretty devastating....

It's interesting than shooting woods through is hard cover at least, but that wouldn't affect cannons and such like?

Weren't your dancers nailed by return attacks, or are they only useful against small units (like knights as you mentioned)?

I'm glad to hear WE stand a chance at least

You can get away with magic light lists but in large games you'll want a lvl 4 and a lvl 2.

Ok example with the dyrads. Played against Warriors of Choas yesterday in a 2250 point game. He had a unit of 11 knights, one hero which was the BSB, and 10 other knights. I had a unit of 14 wardancers with a hero with the awsome blades. he had four attacks and went first. I attacked the unit only scoring two hits but got one killing blow in and another wound which was saved.. Then his heros and the rest of wardancers went at the same time. I had 20 attacks to his four at the same time. I got 14 hits to his one. Out of those 14 hits 4 were 6's when it cam to wound plus one more which was saved again. I lost one wardancer to his hero. Then the surviveing five knight got their attacks 11 in all. 5 hit 3 wounded and I saved 1, to my surprise. Then the horse's which had horrible luck and only managed to kill one more. Stomp did better killing two. So i did lose combat but only by two and my BSB was ready for the charge the nxt turn. I stayed and fought on. The next turn which was mine he ate it with my BSB lord on great eagle with the helm of the hunt and some dyrads from the other side.

I didnt expect him to pull the charge off because he needed 10" plus his movement to reach me, he roll ed three dice two of which were 5's and the other which was a 2. After I polished off the knights his flank was wide open to my dyrads, wardancers, and bsb on great eagle. On the other side I was dead lock with my treekin and treemen in a unit of 30 choas warriors which was really getting on my nerves.

I ended up wining the game because I beat his knights on the oppiste flank and slowly started to roll his army up in the middle of the table.

Interesting, thanks for your reply.

Do you find that your Archers (assuming you run then) were under more threat due to potential huge charge distances?

I would like to play some more fantasy again, even with 8th, as it was my first love. I did get pissed off at the Herohammer years however and I turned to the dark side (40k) and never really got back. All of my circle of players only play 40k which doesn't help.

Nice to see Chaos getting beaten under any circumstances, well done sir, show a 400lb walking pile of armour what can be achieved with a sharp stick and facepaint.

And dance dance revolution practice

Yeah its great cardio

Also keep in mind that skirmishers are auto stubborn in forests...

Lots of shots at range, if they are in woods, negatives to shoot them back. So on and so forth.

Overall the improvements to shooting have really improved the wood elf army in my opinion

Need to see how the FAQ will affect them though because I expect they will get even better

Yeah it's nice to have stubborn in woods but a unit of 8 wardancers/dryads doesn't have the survivability to really make that work, as they will probably be all dead if charged....
They are more likely to be charged as well as woods no longer mess with movement.
I'm sure it'll have uses in minor clashes between small units but I don't see it as game breaking.

We already could sit in a wood and shoot out with a penalty to be shot back, that's the same only now, as mentioned above, it's easier to be charged and the wood itself may start hitting us?! Yes it is better to be in 5x2 formation instead of a line but this is they only change to shooting I'm aware of (apart from the daft volley rule, great for night gobbos sure but WE cost too much to sit about not shooting).

I'm not being totally pessimistic it's just that most of these changes really seem negative, I'll look forward to playing it sometime soon hopefully and see how it all pans out.

I too look forward to the FAQ, maybe we'll get a few freebies.....

A WD update would be nice too!

Long and the short of it: everyone is screwed, and everyone is overpowered, the sky is falling, and everything is horrible.

Essentially everyone is panicking far too early, and we won't really know until the FAQs come out what impact the rules will truly have on the system. Even then, it's a few months until someone really breaks the system.

Valhallan42nd wrote:Long and the short of it: everyone is screwed, and everyone is overpowered, the sky is falling, and everything is horrible.

Essentially everyone is panicking far too early, and we won't really know until the FAQs come out what impact the rules will truly have on the system. Even then, it's a few months until someone really breaks the system.

Point of order: Skaven have had nothing screw them over, and have gotten even better. Hell, we even get to strike back at elite units before they break us! Lulz will be had.

Point of order: Skaven have had nothing screw them over, and have gotten even better

They just weren't that incredible to begin with and something that was already better than them might've become even better.

Not that Skaven wouldn't be good in 8th. We just don't know how good though untill the strength in numbers + steadfast issue becomes clarified in the upcoming PDFs.

Wood Elves should go with a Treeman Ancient, a BSB, a level 2 wizard, a ton of Glade Guard, Dryads and 2 Treemen. Enemy units with banners will now have combat resolution of 4 instead of 5 (Treemen win combats more often) and it's not like a ton of S3 enemy attacks will wound them too often and they received a bonus of D6 stomp hits every phase. Sure flammable still sucks, but I don't think Wood Elves are any worse than before.

That's more wood than I'm comfortable with (and that's saying something....)

/innuendo

Seriously that's nearly 1k worth of Treedude, whilst I love em, that can't be the only way to be a non walkover.

Therion: Three armies were 'better' than Skaven in this last edition, and they all have had significant things hit them:

1) VC - Cast volume reduction and their reliance of fear and terror.
2) Daemons - No longer produce eight billion power dice per phase and their Lords/Heroes cost too much to stack.
3) Dark Elves - Dark Elves now get struck back in combat. T3 is still T3 and they never had that much on the table to begin with. A ring of hotek will only carry you so far... Also, no more Terror-bombing.

Skaven have been hurt by the skirmish rule basically making the Censor Bearers less silly. I'm fine with that, I just will no longer bring them along. An all-skirmishers army is boned.

Fearspect wrote:Therion: Three armies were 'better' than Skaven in this last edition, and they all have had significant things hit them:

1) VC - Cast volume reduction and their reliance of fear and terror.
2) Daemons - No longer produce eight billion power dice per phase and their Lords/Heroes cost too much to stack.
3) Dark Elves - Dark Elves now get struck back in combat. T3 is still T3 and they never had that much on the table to begin with. A ring of hotek will only carry you so far... Also, no more Terror-bombing.

Skaven have been hurt by the skirmish rule basically making the Censor Bearers less silly. I'm fine with that, I just will no longer bring them along. An all-skirmishers army is boned.

I beg to differ. Now a Wood Elf player must really work his units togther as a cohesive group. I've had much luck running my Dyrads 14+ with the new rule set. ive noticed alot more larger blocks of infantry on the table and it's actually made it easier for me to get muiliple charges off against one unit. I will admit though if you're not running any treekin, or treemen, you're going to get screwed in a bad way. The role of skimish units is now strictly a support for bigger and better things but it works really well. A unit of 14 dyrads and a unit of 12 wardancers in support of each other works great, especially if str 3, tou 3, critters charge the dyrads.

I also play DE's and actually I think they've gotten better. I really dont care that much about strike backs as it is with all good postioning. Hoards of slaves and night goblins are nice but are still kinda expensive units when you see what you're getting. Those units take up tons of room and are really hard to move around. In other words its easy to get to their flanks. I've found out that four hydras in 3000 point games are rock solid and practicaly impossable to stop. Supported by a group of cold one knights they simply run amock in armies back fields once they get going, the key is not going up against a large amount of good str attacks. As long as the hydra survives the first round of hits it on like donkey kong.

Finally the new rule set is making people rethink how their armies are played, so fricken what if the so called top tier armies are no longer on top. To me this just makes the tournament circuit that much more exciting. I've already come up muiliple lists for all three of my main armies that may make some oppenants cringe. I still cant decide on what I like better the four hydras or the 7 reaper blot throwers at 3000 pt games. Also look at it like this if treeman ancients now only take a lord slot you can have four treemen on the table, somthing you couldnt do in 7th. Only the errtas and faq's will tell us what we want to know.

As for how I run my WE I still like to have at least 20 glade guard, two group of ten with banners now. Ive also discovered that they are also under more threat from infantry because people are running more of them. I always tak Hail of Doom arrow and use it on a shooty unit across the table. There are two things I go after right away in a game. My oppenants shooting, because that phase belongs to me, and casters of any type, because I hate getting magiced to death. This tactic always seems to work well for me and so far i working pretty well in 8th.

If anything can we say that their are no tiers? Every army has been placed in a tumbler and shaken up a bit. Give the armies (and players) at least 2 weeks under the new rules and let the tournaments decide the tiers.

nieto666 wrote: I will admit though if you're not running any treekin, or treemen, you're going to get screwed in a bad way.

It does appear monsterous infantry is the new black....

Pity, i never liked Treekin and the models are simply shocking..

Fearspect wrote:Therion: Three armies were 'better' than Skaven in this last edition, and they all have had significant things hit them:

1) VC - Cast volume reduction and their reliance of fear and terror.
2) Daemons - No longer produce eight billion power dice per phase and their Lords/Heroes cost too much to stack.
3) Dark Elves - Dark Elves now get struck back in combat. T3 is still T3 and they never had that much on the table to begin with. A ring of hotek will only carry you so far... Also, no more Terror-bombing.

Skaven have been hurt by the skirmish rule basically making the Censor Bearers less silly. I'm fine with that, I just will no longer bring them along. An all-skirmishers army is boned.

1) Cast volume reduction? WHAT? The VC magic has now become much stronger than before. What the VC do now, is take two Masters of Black Arts on otherwise purely totally fearsome combat characters, and then they have 2D6+4 power dice each magic phase. That's 11 dice on average and a lot of times the maximum 12. What's even more fun is the fact that when they roll 6 and 1 for dice, they have 11 power dice and you have 1 dispel dice. If they had a Black Periapt that's 12 vs 1 dice. They can give all the 12 dice to a dirt cheap Necromancer for re-casting Vanhel's or whatever. Their magic phase is the strongest in the game.

Fear and terror are now different, but nerfed overall. That's why VC will adapt and start playing combat lists that benefit tons from good VC synergy items like Helm of Commandment and spammable movement magic. VC will be fine.

2) Daemons are screwed. This is true. They'll probably end up a tier 2 army simply because of Flamers, Skulltaker and Masque. All of their core now is pretty terrible and their special is totally useless. I do have some ideas for Daemons though. Where you're being clueless though is the fact you cite power dice as something that Daemons even used in 7th edition. Probably 70% of all winning tournament DoC armies were lead by a Bloodthirster, and about 14.5% by the Siren Keeper and 14.5% Kairos Fateweaver. The last 1% was spread between GuO players and all-herald armies. Daemons never needed magic for anything, but had some nice support from the Heralds casting Beast Cowers, etc.

3) Dark Elves are still awesome. BS based missile fire isn't as accurate as it was, but it gets to shoot at everything now because of true los. Dark Elves still have one of the most underpriced infantry models in the game at their disposal, the 6 point Elf Spearman with hatred, and one of the best standard missile troops in the game, the 10 point armour piercing repeater crossbowman. They also have by far the best monster in the game, the Hydra, and a wide variety of lord and hero choices to choose from both because of awesome magic items and because of other options like mounts. The initiative order system benefits Dark Elves (and all Elves) because their missile troopers can both shoot from 2 ranks with 20 models total and then attack with the same 20 models in combat before chargers get to strike. Dark Elves will be fine.

New really good combinations will enter the fray, and I suspect Empire will be overall quite strong. They have access to troops that are point by point a match for anything in the game and a massive amount of template war machines that will completely ruin armies that try to beat Empire with large units. High Elves received incredible buffs in the shape of essentially gaining the 'Warrior Elite' rule from the Black Guard for their entire army, and because they were already a tier 2 army, might actually be able to keep their position or even improve a bit. Dwarfs are now a lot better than before because of warmachines and because their basic infantry is rather useful and because their entire army is much much faster compared to everyone else than before.

Skaven? Well, I haven't really rated them that high before, and like I said, I want to see the PDFs about steadfast before I make any decisions about 8th. I like the Abominations and Doomwheels, but their template war machines didn't receive any real buffs because they were already balanced for 8th edition (low strength, small templates, but no partials), they don't have access to the incredible new rule book lores of magic, and still have pretty much all the same problems against all the same stuff as they had before. They did gain a ton from the infantry buffs, so that's definitely positive.

Yeaah, i don't own any treekin/treeman or any Hydras

all my elves are doomed :(

With my dark elves though, even in 7th it seemed like if you didn't have hydras then your pretty screwed, and now its even worse so. The hydra got better and everything else lost out because of strikes back.

With my dark elves though, even in 7th it seemed like if you didn't have hydras then your pretty screwed, and now its even worse so. The hydra got better and everything else lost out because of strikes back.

You have to understand that this change affects everyone. It's not a question of toughness or armour save, it's a question of points cost -- How much your model costs for the stats that it has. There isn't a single unit in the game that will go through combats destroying its enemies and being unscathed itself. Everyone will be severely weakened by every combat they engage in, not just Elves. Sure many Elf units are too expensive, ovepriced glass cannons, but they still have economical units as well. Orcs, Clanrats, Dark Elf Spearmen and Empire state troopers are all great value for the points, because now you're not just buying rank bonuses for 5 or 6 points per model -- You're buying a stubborn unit with a ton of attacks because of stepping up.

This is one of my main points, WEs can only get 12pt guys at best with a 5+ save and none for the archers obviously, DE getting 6pt warriors made me want to stick my foot through my army book and send GW the bill!

Even with blocks of spearmen, I play primarily against Even bigger blocks of Warriors of chaos as my friend only takes a single lord and spends all heros points on more warriors, they dont need heros because each warrior is just immense.

Blocks of Saurus. and the big ole Templeguard + slann + X amount of heros deathstar laser beam win block.
Also the engine of the broken :(

Dwarves! don't need to say anything about that.
So most things i face, shrug off Str 3 attacks and can destroy elves

While DE can take cheap block of spears. Empire can take cheap blocks of Str 4 Halberdiers. Skavern also lots of cheap models.
DE 6pts, 7 for a shield. T3 with 5/6+ save lol.

The only good thing i see is Magic still being awesome. hopefully getting off a few spell to weaken units so you can finish them off.

As for wood elves. I've only just got them before 8th came out and haven't even played a game yet, summer holidays suck. But i reckon i can do alot better with them then with Dark elves

Hopefully this errata will make a few things better but then, its only an errata to update rules that make no sense? its not like they are going to add entire new rule sets in just to buff armies.

nieto- I thought knights/cavalry didn't get "stomp"?

Cav does get stomp. One hit at their str just like monstrous infantry.

On the note of WE our codex is seriously outdated take for instance the light armor that gives you regeneration costs 50pts while the heavy armor tha gives you regeneration for DE costs 35pts. Something just doesn't add up there. We just have to make due until sometime next year, or the year after that.

hehe treeman ancients no longer take up a rare and a lord slot. Just the lord slot now. Guess Ill be needing to get two more treemen

So any one else notice the ruling on wood elf wardancers in the faq? If im not mistaken during your opponents phase he gets to call when you get to select your wardances.

Does this mean he can force us to choose after hes struck with his models provided he has a better int then us?

If so kind of makes the 4+ ward save dance fairly useless.

Tbh i don't think it was ment to be like that.

But if there are affects that happen before hitting each other like, some nurgley toughness test, the censorbearer toughness tests? Impact hits and such.

i think its a stupid ruling though and makes no sense >.<

Someone also said does it mean your opponent charges you and make you pick your dance after the combat has ended? its silly stuff lol