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Any ideas on what to do with Wood Elves against Skaven lists running:
-A doomwheel
-An Abomination
-Vermin Lord
and
-2 Level 2 mages

?

Mock him.

The main advantage skaven have against wood elves is they can cover the entire board and advance in such a way that the wood elves superior movement gains nothing. 25 clanrats will kill most elves when engaged from the front.

With that many expensive things he should be a cake walk. Shoot the vermin lord (cannot hide in units) first. Then shoot the abom, I know its tough, keep shooting. Assassinate the mages with dryads. Should give you more than enough points for an easy win.

I don't think it would exactly be that easy of a win. Your really only going to get about 1 or 2 rounds of shooting in before the Vermin Lord gets in there with you, while your taking several terror checks from multiple terror causers. The doomwheel can wreck your skirmishers as it autohits with the lightning and you can't run circles around it or the HPA as they have a 360 charge.

Warp Lightning from the Engineers will hurt too.

Unless you have ALOT of wooded terrain, it'll be tough. Don't know what list your running, but hopefully it isn't a forest spirits army and your trying to get lots of tree-kin, dryads and treemen into combat. It would be hard enough to win with the static combat res generally of +5. Warpfire throwers also will really make you have a bad day.

It's not going to be easy at all. I play WE, and Skaven make me nauseous.

Skaven are the new hotness at my FLGS. There are several people that have had Skaven armies grow... like they were breeding like rats?... Anyways, I have yet to beat them. I don't play Wood Elves, I mostly borrow Empire, but I have yet to pull a V against the cheese eating horde. Now I am far from an experienced player, I've played about half a dozen games in the last few weeks, but this is a question that has been passed around my FLGS. There are a couple of Wood Elf generals and we have all had a very hard time coming up with an answer. Wood Elves shoot in a game where shooting isn't all that scary and they have little to no H2H. Obviously there are the wood spirits, but they are going to be easily overrun by even just clan rats. I've charged units of clan rats with Empire Knights and ran away, Dryads aren't going to fair much better. One benefit you have is all the scary armor ignoring shooting Skaven has means nothing to you? I honestly don't know how Wood Elves beat a competitive Skaven list.

the real trick with beating skaven is break their rank bonus, for some people this means killing the hell out of some rats, for most though its hitting them in the side with something kinda big. Woodies i think excel at this quite well and i think wild riders can take out most units without a bell or furnace in it.

Unfortunately, i think Skaven magic is going to punish most armies. Even if the greyseer ONLY kills 4d6 models a turn, there are other guys casting ridiculous plague spells everywhere. So....Target them casters! Go ahead, fire your hail of doom arrow at the bell and watch a greyseer die, roll well enough and maybe see a bell die and a large brick of rats become much less scary. In combat with the bell? try not to declare a challenge and just direct a ton of attacks up at him.

The plague furnace i think hurts more, but is easier to kill as it lacks the ward save. After all that, the only units i can think of that should give any WE player issues is that stoopid doomwheel, the abomination and the plague censer bearers. All three of those are jerks and i think the best solution to all three of them is the treeman.

Yeah I wouldn't exactly get a Treeman near any of the 3 (well maybe PCB), as the HPA will enjoy it's D3 wound attacks, while the doomwheel will blast the crap out of it and do D6 wounds each shot! Ran a doomwheel up right next to a Stegadon War-Spear Skink Chief the other night and 3 Str 10 shots said goodbye to Mr. Steg!

WE are really faced with a dilemma against Skaven - they're shooting can't deal with hordes as it's only Str 3, while any of the few CC troops that they have can't take on static combat res 5 ranked up units. You can try to get flank shots on these units, but decent Skaven players will screen with Slaves or PCB or whatever, which will either do more damage to you from the "Cornered Rat" rule or decimate you with toughness tests.

Add in weapons teams having 360 LOS for shooting, the same for charging for the HPA and Doomwheel, frenzied skirmishers like the PCBs - WE mobility suffers.

Skaven used to be a good matchup for WE, unless they brought the heavy magic/shooting skryre list, because that gave them good counters to us. Warp Lightning rips through our units. Ratling Guns would auto-kit our skirmishers and ignore their ward saves with magical ammo. Jezzails would tear up Treemen. Even still, we could win by softening up the blocks with shooting, killing Jezzails with shooting or getting to them with skirmishers, and by setting up combined charges with our excellent-stat melee units (Dryads, Wardancers, Wild Riders). It was a pretty good matchup, as long as the WE player brought good magic defense.

I haven’t played against the new book yet with my WE, but the stuff it brings to the party looks/feels bad for WE. Of particular worry are the Doomwheel and Abomination, which can charge 360 degrees (so as to negate the benefit of outflanking and encircling, which are normally absolutely critical for Wood Elves), and on average charge as far as or farther than our main combat units. If WE get charged, they usually die. The new weapon team which does an artillery die of S4 AP auto-hits is also kind of terrifying, though at least we may be able to shoot it.

The one thing i notice with the abomination is that i have always gotten the charge off on it. Just put your guys a little ways back, and unless he rolls inedible on his movement he generally puts himself in somethings charge range. I tried out the beastmen weapon "mangelder" against an abom last night and it was hilarious. The beastlord himself dealt 4 wounds to it dropping it down to stubborn leadership 4! it actually ran around a few turns failing them before i ran him down with a chariot.

Man all is doom and gloom.
Assuming you have a wood elf army with the following
hail of doom arrow somewhere
alterkin with great weapon
20+ archers
some wardancers
a unit of wild riders
some glade guard
a treeman
2 mages with some geat
Other things

prety general stuff.


So, if facing a vermine lord shoot him with the hail of doom arrow turn 1. He will be a pincushion and take most of his wounds off. From that point he is easy to kill with a few more shots from the rest of your army. 500 pts solved.
The greyseer on the bell makes things a little worse.

If facing all the nasty monsters + bell you will have to flank the army which is a little more challenging.

I would send the treeman after the abomination. He will win in the long run generally.

Use the hail of doom to weaken whatever unit is guarding the flank of the bell's unit. Then blow through it and send the wild riders or war dancers in to that unit and meatgrinder it (wild riders are better cause they break ranks).

Dont bother shooting the bell, shoot the abomination instead. It is easier to wound and will help the treeman out when he gets there.

Take the alterkin and send him to help wherever he is needed (for the love of god dont charge the doomwheel though). He is particularly good at assassinating mages in units (not the greyseer, the 4+ is hard to get past)

Considering the abom has random movement it is easy to get the charge off on the guy. The problem is the doomwheel, it can slow down so has a decent chance of charging and does impact hits if you charge it. Add to that its shooting has a 30% chance of flattening the treeman. I would send dryads after it. They are cheep and once in combat it isn't that scary to them (shooting doesnt count for combat res).

Yes, magic is dangerous, but so is shooting and your combat is leaps and bounds beyond his.

With 1200 pts in 5 models the army will be prety small (by hoard standards) and easily killed in peices.

Abom (particularly with magic attacks, which it will always have) eats a treeman for breakfast. Actually it eats pretty much anything for breakfast.

Abom has three attack options
1) one str 6 attack does D3 wounds. Average is...1.25 wounds
2) 3D6 attacks, str 6 - 2 wounds
3) odd iniative thing - 3 wounds

Treeman has what, 5 attacks - 1.1 wound
Treeman has more wounds base and is more likely to stay over the long run (outnumber bonus means he wins majority of combats).

Assuming you pop a couple wounds off of the abom before you get there with archers the treeman will cleanup quick enough. Faster if you give him help from the wild riders.

Are you giving the Treeman ward saves on your math? The warpstone spikes will negate that...

RZ

I got pounded with my woodies against skaven... plague censer bearers are insane! I had a large unit of wardancers get wiped out charging a unit of censer bearers.

Wardancers wiped out on the charge!!!

He didn't have the items you listed above, so I'm not sure what to say... I have no idea what I would have done differently if I face him again. Run and hide in a corner I guess... (or obviously, if you have lots of shooting... shoot him and flee from charges...)

Yea, censer bearers are a nightmare for low toughness units. Espically ones who rely on active combat res and charging.

Elves can beat them with treemen or drydads (charge only). But they can guarantee the charge through the use of baiting with glade riders.