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I have played 40k for a while now and I am now just beginning to take an interest in fantasy. Straight away I was drawn to wood elves because of their stylish miniature range. The list I intend to use will likely include 2 units of glade riders, 10 glade guard, some dryads, a Wardancer noble, a spellsinger, some wardancers and some waywatchers. I am looking for ideas and tactics as to how more experienced wood elf players would equip and more importantly use this list. Thanks to anyone who can help!

Welcome to the world of fantasy.

Equipment depends on how many points but here are a few common ones.

wardancer noble - blades of loec. if highborn you add in annoyance of netlings as well.
glade riders - include a musician every time. 5 per unit is pretty common
dryads - units of 8 are usually best. no characters needed
wardancers - I take units of 7 with champion and muso

Lord choices are ancient, highborn and spellweaver. As I think offensive magic is weak for wood elves I never run a spellweaver. with the ancient there is a pretty standard setup which you can see in my army list below (murder of spites is optional by many others but not me). As for the highborn there are two common choices
1 - Alter highborn with arcane bodkins and bow of lorien. this gives him 5 S3 shots with no armour saves allowed
2 - Wardancer highborn with blades of loec and annoyance of netlings.

There are tonnes of other ways they can be equiped but these are pretty common. There are more spare points for magic items as well so you can customise a bit more that way.

One of my army lists is here along with a battle report. I am in the middle of writing up another report as well which will be posted shortly.
Gencon Warhammer Fantasy Write up

you can also check out asrai.org. It is a dedicated wood elf forum so has a lot of tactics already there.

Hop that helps

Treeman and wild riders also come in very handy.

Thanks to all for the advice. Anyone have any ideas how I would got about compiling the above into a 1k list? If you could post one it would be a big help. Also, why all the craze over tree singing? it doesn't look all that special on paper...

leighr3029 wrote:Welcome to the world of fantasy.

Equipment depends on how many points but here are a few common ones.

wardancer noble - blades of loec. if highborn you add in annoyance of netlings as well.
glade riders - include a musician every time. 5 per unit is pretty common
dryads - units of 8 are usually best. no characters needed
wardancers - I take units of 7 with champion and muso

Lord choices are ancient, highborn and spellweaver. As I think offensive magic is weak for wood elves I never run a spellweaver. with the ancient there is a pretty standard setup which you can see in my army list below (murder of spites is optional by many others but not me). As for the highborn there are two common choices
1 - Alter highborn with arcane bodkins and bow of lorien. this gives him 5 S3 shots with no armour saves allowed
2 - Wardancer highborn with blades of loec and annoyance of netlings.

Indeed, welcome to fantasy.

leighr3029 listed the standard configurations. As a WE player I have used them all at one time or another. Recently though I have been looking at some more of the unorthodox set ups so my opponents won’t anticipate what I will bring. For example, equipping an Alter Highborn with The hunter’s Talon and Arcane Bodkins, as opposed to the Bow of Loren. With his high movement rate I can use the Hunter’s Talon to pick out individual characters. The high BS will compensate for the minuses.

The Spirit Sword is another weapon I quickly dismissed, but now I am re-thinking how to use it. The reason I gave these examples is to encourage you to not lock yourself in the standard configurations. Being a new player you can provide an insight that others of us may have missed.

Mouse, you are absolutely correct. I know from my time playing 40K, that the most important factor of victory is surprising your opponent. The element of surprise is the basis of redundancy, why it is so important to mix things up in your list, so as not to present your opponents with obvious targets, thereby confusing him, leading to him/her making mistakes.

Back on the subject of wood elves, are a large number of wardancers viable? Their host of special rules mean that they seem quite deadly, and I love the models, but they seem very similar to Eldar Harlequins, and they are not too well regarded in 40k. What are your views?

Warboss Gutrip wrote:Back on the subject of wood elves, are a large number of wardancers viable? Their host of special rules mean that they seem quite deadly, and I love the models, but they seem very similar to Eldar Harlequins, and they are not too well regarded in 40k. What are your views?

In my opinion, Dryads are just better then Wardancers are. The Dryads are more survivable (T4, Forest Spirits Ward Save), have S4 in every round of combat (not just the first round when charging, like Wardancers), cause Fear and are a lot cheaper (points wise). Wardancers have Magic Resistance (1), have a WS6 and can use their Shadow Dances of Loec. The Shadows Coil is not that much better then the Forest Spirits Ward Save and The Woven Mist is useless (all your models will have S3, A1, so noone will care about them being ASF). The Storm of Blades can be useful on the charge, but anytime they do not charge, they will be using Whirling Death. This is the only Shadow Dance of Loec that gives Wardancers an advantage over Dryads, as they will be able to ignore Armour Saves (much like Rending in 40k), which Dryads aren't very good at.

So to summarize:
-Dryads have T4.
-Dryads get a better Ward Save.
-Dryads are S4 in all rounds of combat.
-Dryads cause Fear.
-Dryads are a lot cheaper (points wise).
-Wardancers have Magic Resistance (1).
-Wardancers have WS6.
-Wardancers have Shadow Dances of Loec (which will mean either +1A, or Killing Blow).

Warboss Gutrip wrote:Anyone have any ideas how I would got about compiling the above into a 1k list?

A 1000 points list could look something like this:

Noble (Alter Kindred, Hail of Doom Arrow, Helm of the Hunt, Great Weapon) - 158
Spellsinger (Level 2, Calaingor's Stave) - 150

Glade Guard (10) - 120
Dryads (8) - 96
Glade Riders (5) (Musician) - 129

Wild Riders (6) (Musician) - 156

Way Watchers (8) - 192

Total Points: 1001


The above army includes a variety of units, which is a good way for a new player to learn which units he/she thinks, function well.

Thanks to Airmaniac for the list. Your argument makes complete sense, but I must ask, what makes wild riders so good? It is just, I didn't mention them before, and you included them in the list, so I assume that they must have some tactical benefit to a wood elf army. Would it be viable to switch them out for either glade guard, more glade riders or wardancers? Better or not, I really do like the Wardancer models. They convey the stylishness, connection to the forest, and speed of the Asrai perfectly. Finally, after yet another browse through the wood elf book, I would appreciate it if readers would share their views on tree kin. Thanks!

Wild Riders fit the Wood Elves theme very well, as they are an excellent flanking unit. They are Fast Cavalry, so getting into position for a flank charge shouldn't be too difficult. Unlike most other Cavalry, Wild Riders also get a decent amount of attacks (at S4) when not charging, which makes them less dependant on breaking the enemy the turn they charge (which they are pretty good at when flanking, due to them causing Fear the turn they charge).
Wild Riders can't really be replaced by anything in the Wood Elves army. The choice is really either having a great flanking unit, or not having it in favor of other units.

If you really like the Wardancer models, then you should find a place for them in your army. The game is still about fun, and it's not like Wardancers are absolute garbage either.

Tree Kin are overcosted in my opinion. They cost 260 points for a decent unit. However, they do fill a role that no other Wood Elves unit can fill, which is taking (or making) frontal charges. A lot of people play their Wood Elves as a 'Ghost' army though, meaning guerilla warfare. Tree Kin really don't fit this play style and since they are overcosted for what they do anyway, not that many people field them in their armies.

Wardancers +1A or Killing Blow dance combined with a smaller base size makes them more powerful offensively than Dryads on the charge.

They work better as a 'hammer' unit, especially against heavy armoured units. Just make sure you get the charge with them.

Treemen work really well as anvils, but can't hold everything. Watch out for Bloodthirsters or real big hitters (like Bloodknights) and anything with Flaming attacks.

Combined with a BSB, Treemen stick around a lot (Stubborn reroll).

I think wardancers are better than dryads as well. on the charge they are better than dryads (3S4, WS6) and 4+ ward is actually far better than 5+. All their dances do have their uses however ASF is less useful than the others (can come in handy).

Here is a rough 1000pt army I use

noble - hoda, helm of the hunt, gw, sheild, light armour
2*10 archers
2*8 dryads
5 Glade riders with muso
7 wardancers with muso and champ
5 Wild riders

I would not go for an alter in 1000pts as you need a general and another character just chews up too many points. a Lv2 wizard won´t be doing much in 2000pts as if the opponent has a wizard you only have 4 dice vs their 3 and even then there is at least 2 dice vs your 4. The noble choice above bolsters the wardancers and gives you access to the helm of doom arrow. annoyance of netlings can also work on him however but in 1000pts the hail of doom arrow can easily do 100pts of damage.

Loving leighr3029's list. Thanks very much for posting, it has pretty much everything I want in it, I will likely use that list. Just out of interest, do you guys have a way of converting or buying cheap wild riders? I am a tad stingy and don't particularly fancy paying the full price..

It's a good list.

I don't know of a cheap way to do Wild Riders. There are EXPENSIVE ways to do
Wild Riders, but I can't imagine how you'd do it cheaply.

If you have enough random bits lying around, and have a bit of skill with Green Stuff/Milliput, you can convert Glade Riders into Wild Riders.

Make sure you arm each with a spear and hand weapons, cut off the quiver on the cloaks and model fur onto it. Then add feral bits, horns, skulls, spites to the model.

Another thing people have done is make centaurs, though this might end up costing more as you need two boxes of plastic kits in general.