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Hello,

My wife has decided to give Age of Sigmar a shot, and is going to give High Elves a try as I had the Island of blood starter set already. Having never played them, I wanted to get a second opinion on the lists I was making for her. So far I have purchased the Island of Blood set, a Sisters of Averlorn box, and a repeater bolt thrower. My shop has a battalion box set that I was going to nab. We will be doing point games mostly, so this is what I had in mind.

500 point list

High Elf Prince on Griffin
5 Ellyrean Reavers
10 Lothern Sea Guard

Add these to get to 1,000

10 Sisters of Avelorn
5 Silver helms
Repeater bolt thrower

The idea is that they will use their range to soften things up, and then charge in with Silver Helms and the Prince to finish them off. Does this sound viable? Will there be sufficient ranged output, or will she need some cheap units like spearmen to tie things up? I could use some advice on what this army should focus on, and where to build up her collection next. She also wants a Flamespyre Pheonix eventually. In the mean time I was going to try and focus on range and speed, with a couple hammer units to mop things up. Any advice oils be appreciated.

Overall, I think your list is fairly viable for casual games. You have a lot of shooting that can be powerful, however your melee seems to be a bit lacking. Rend also only comes from your Prince and the RBT so high armour enemies might be a problem. If you play in a hyper competitive min-max environment, it will probably perform around average tier at most.

The Prince on Griffon can be very powerful in combat. However, it is not as tough as some other lord options. Keep it supported.

The Reavers have good maneuverability that can be good for objective grabbing, and shooting for sniping heroes and warmachines. Also fulfills battleline if you care about army composition rules.

The Sea Guard are jack of all trades but master of none. They are versatile but aren't great at anything. An all around support unit

The sisters now belong to the wanderers faction, but if you don't mind mixing armies (they're still under order anyway) or using older warscrolls, they form a very solid shooting unit. They are a rather defensive in nature, however.

The silver helms can do decent damage if they get the charge, however their damage output is lacking when combat comes to a grind. They have good armor saves, so they can probably take a lot of hits.

The RBT is great fire support, but be careful of return fire as warmachines are rather easy to shoot off the table now.

If you have the Island of Blood set, I highly recommend using the swordmasters as they are probably the best melee unit from the High Elves army right now. The Mage will also help your silver helms and prince have more staying power.

I'm not sure which version of battalion box you are getting, but most likely you will have spearmen and archers. Spearmen can be a much cheaper battleline unit if you want to fit in more of the special units. Archers have a one time alpha strike ability that can be devastating.

Also, the viability of the list depends on what kind of scenarios you will play. If it's just straight up kill points, this list can probably do modestly well. If it involves objectives and such I think the list is good as it has a lot of mobility and defensive units that can sit on objectives while still contributing to combat from a distance.

Thank you for your considered response. We will be playing pitched battles, mostly at 1,000 points playing pitched battle with GHB battle plans. We are using the High Elves war scrolls, hence the Sisters of Avelorn being part of the list instead of being Sisters of the Watch in a Wanderers army.

Yeah, Silver Helms are not that great, but they are mobile and a battle line unit. They and the prince are there to mop up units that are softened up by the army's shooting. Once we move up from 1,000 points, we will add in more units such as sword masters and other units. I was looking at a Prince on a Dragon, but the model is so dated, my wife is looking at an anointed on a firepyre Pheonix instead.

Again I appreciate the feed back!

If you are using the compendium scrolls, the prince on dragon is best used for 2000 pts or more as you can take advantage of its command ability better. Otherwise, the anointed on phoenix is a really nice looking model and has great abilities, but I personally prefer the frostheart. You might want to get phoenix guard to gowith it.

Yeah, the Dragon Prince would be nearly half of her list at 1k. The frost Phoenix is nice, and we will probably get her one at some point, but she likes the look of the fire one instead, plus the tie in to the Sisters flaming bows. Plus it's a source of mortal wounds which this list is lacking. Again I appreciate the advice.

I think I am going to revise the 1k list a little. Now I am going to go with;

High Elf Prince on Griffin
10 Sisters of Avelorn
5 Ellyrean Reavers
5 Ellyrean Reavers
10 High elf archers
Repeater bolt thrower
Total: 1,000

After thinking about it, the Silver Helms didn't bring anything to the table that the Reavers didn't, plus the Reavers are very shooty and great hit and run units. To make room I replaced the Sea Guard with archers. The archers are worse in combat, but better at range and 20 points cheaper. Now everything but the prince can be a ranged threat. I like it a lot better. It's slightly worse at hand to hand, but Much better at range. Plus I found what I needed on e-bay, so she will be all set to play at the 1k level. I appreciate all the feedback!

You are going to be in trouble if you ever play objectives with that list. The Reavers can be decent because you can move them fairly nice, but if they ever get caught in combat they are screwed. I would just run 5 of them. If you have the island of blood set run the Swordmasters of Hoeth ... those guys are fantastic... especially if you play against a shooty army.

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
You are going to be in trouble if you ever play objectives with that list. The Reavers can be decent because you can move them fairly nice, but if they ever get caught in combat they are screwed. I would just run 5 of them. If you have the island of blood set run the Swordmasters of Hoeth ... those guys are fantastic... especially if you play against a shooty army.

Sword masters are nice. The question is, are they worth dropping the repeater and the Archers for? My Wife loves the Sisters, so they are in, as is the prince and 2 battle line units. So it pretty much comes down to that choice.

Swordmasters are awesome at killing things but are a little on the squishy side for elite melee units in AoS of comparable points cost.
They put out wounds like Tomb Guard or Grave Guard equipped with one handed weapons but don't last as long.

I would back them up with a High Elf Mage (Archmage in Generals Handbook) casting Shield of Saphery (Elemental Shield on the Archmage Warscroll) to give them and any other model from your army within 18" of the mage a second 6+ check (not a save) to ignore any wound or mortal wound they suffer.

I think they are a little expensive in 1000pt games myself but I have not seen a bolt thrower used so I am not sure which would be better.
If you have both I would try both and see which ends up working better for you.

 arclance wrote:
Swordmasters are awesome at killing things but are a little on the squishy side for elite melee units in AoS of comparable points cost.
They put out wounds like Tomb Guard or Grave Guard equipped with one handed weapons but don't last as long.

I would back them up with a High Elf Mage (Archmage in Generals Handbook) casting Shield of Saphery (Elemental Shield on the Archmage Warscroll) to give them and any other model from your army within 18" of the mage a second 6+ check (not a save) to ignore any wound or mortal wound they suffer.

I think they are a little expensive in 1000pt games myself but I have not seen a bolt thrower used so I am not sure which would be better.
If you have both I would try both and see which ends up working better for you.

The bolt thrower does fill an important role in the list. It's a nice source of -2 rends for hard to crack targets. Mortal Wounds are in short supply in this army. Having a good rend characteristic is the next best thing. This is mainly why I've been trying to keep it in. It's one of the most cost effective ways to achieve it.