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Alright guys and gals, here’s a light update. That translates to, I forgot to bring my camera and don’t want to write or subject you to a wall of text. I was going to skip it altogether, but as I know there’s a couple of regular Wood Elf readers, I thought I’d post highlights and lessons learned at least.

First game was against JR, who I’d played once before, at 1000 points. I don’t know his complete list, as we moved pretty quickly, so forgive the lack of clarity on some items:

Wardancer lord w/wardancer magic swords, moonstone, annoyance of nettlings
Waywatcher noble w/hail of doom
Spellsinger with tree-singing staff
Spellsinger with scrolls
2 x 8 Dryads
2 x 10 Gladeguard
5 Scouts
6 Wild riders w/war banner
3 Treekin
9 or 10 wardancers
Treeman
8 or so waywatchers

I experimented with leaving war machine sized gaps in between all my units, while still keeping tight enough to use Strollaz. He was spread across his entire deployment zone, with waywatchers and scouts in mine.

I was looking good after deployment, and I’m starting to love to see waywatchers come down. My blocks are so big that the shots don’t bother me, and being in my deployment zone means I’ve got something to do while I chase the rest of his stuff.

In this case, terrain and my organ gun meant both his scouting units were right near the board edge, which set up the MR of Challenge for success. A big unit of waywatchers is juicy anyhow, and adding a noble made it even better. I had to do some tricky maneuvering, running my lord into the back of the closest warrior unit (which popped him into the front) in time to pull the Waywatchers on to me, chop up their noble and run them down.
He tried to salvage the situation by moonstoning in his war dancers, but the positioning was difficult, and he ended up getting hit by the overrun and chased off the board. Elsewhere in the middle, I’d managed to knock down a treekin, and keep the treeman hiding from my bolt throwers long enough to clear off a unit of dryads and the treekin.

At the top of 3, he’d lost his lord, noble, waywatchers, wardancers, treekin and a unit of dryads in exchange for half my slayers, which led him to concede.

I can chalk this one up to some good luck (zero losses to shooting in his first turn), and a pair of mistakes costing him his most expensive units, his general, and his noble.


I think WE players sometimes get too enamored with the idea of putting Waywatchers into your deployment zone. As combat Dwarfs, I’m not march blocked, and with large blocks, the shooting is something I can shrug off on the way in. The organ gun helped me push him to the table edges, which allowed me to run him off the table when I won combats, (or forced him to charge when the MR of Challenge came into play). This saved me from hitting home, killing a couple, and having them rally and escape.


As the game was over so quickly, I hung around to see if I could sneak in another game, and came up against yet another Wood Elf list:

Lord, Forest Dragon, Killing Blow Spear, 3+ ward until failed, Helm of the Hunt
Spellsinger on horse, lvl 2, Treesinging stick
Alter noble with Hail of Doom, Sword of Might
4 x 10 Gladeguard
2 x 6 Glade riders
2 x Treemen

And that was it! I figured we’d probably be headed for a draw unless I dropped the ball and got combo charged by treemen and the dragon. I explained the MR of Challenge as we started, and he had some good advice from other players to be a little wary.

I pushed my blocks forward, while the bolt throwers kept his large targets ducking for cover. The organ gun rumbled up to make a kill zone behind my blocks. He played extremely cagey, literally backing two glade guard up until they were on his table edge. With my moving wall, I was able to corner one of the gladeguard and run it off with a warrior block, and pin a second with a gyro in the flank, and wipe it out with my longbeards. I picked up a third unit when it moved to the edge of a wooded hill to shoot. Mistake being that sitting on a hill meant my organ gun could blast over the heads of my blocks. 10 hits, 10 wounds later, they’d become a smoking crater.

In exchange, he’d managed to shred my longbeards down below half with glade guard and strangleroot, shoot all the slayers, and work glade riders around to kill off the burning bolt thrower. The organ gun took off both units of glade riders, and a risky surprise charge from my BSB out of the longbeards managed to smash up his alter noble, losing a wound in return.

He played extremely conservatively with the dragon, breathing off my miners, and trying for a last minute combination shooting, strangleroot, breathweapon attack to drop a warrior unit to half and panic them, but came up empty.

On the plus side, he’d managed to avoid the trap I set up. I attempted to show a vulnerable warrior unit, to get his dragon interested, but place my lord and hammerers on the far side, with enough space to land the dragon in between. Because of his large target vision, if he’d been in range, I could MR of Challenge him into the hammerers, win the combat, and break him right back through the warriors.

Unfortunately, he sussed it out, and stayed too far away. In the end, it was a game of the war machines keeping his big stuff under cover, and the MR of Challenge occupying the middle of the board to keep his dragon away.

On VPs, I took out 3 glade guard units, the spell singer, both glade riders, and the alter noble, losing all my slayers, the burning bolt thrower, half the longbeards, and half the BSB. He also had two table quarters to my one. This came out to roughly a 500 point victory, worth of a minor win.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. With the lack of pics, I thought it best to keep it short and to the highlights.

RZ

Nicely fought. Congratz on the victories. The second one shows a perfect example when those big blocks work better than the 10 man diverting/flanking units. Does the MR of challenge force your opponent to charge head on, or can he use his movement to still get a flank or rear charge on you?

MR of Challenge can only be used when he could legally declare a charge, and if the target isn't ItP. So, he'll have to charge whatever arc he's already in. There were a couple times when I considered trying to show a flank to see if he'd take the bait, but couldn't quite work out how to do it.

As cautious as he was, I don't know that it would've worked anyhow.

The thing I can't get past with the large blocks is that having them makes it look like I've actually got an army. The wave of armor is a lot of fun, and in that second game, I got first turn, putting me on the half way mark before he even moved. Pretty sweet.

Anyhow, thanks for reading.

RZ

Do you remember what the second guy targeted first with all his shots? I feel like he should have concentrated on your organ gun and bolt throwers to allow his dragon more freedom. He could have picked a perfect pounce on one of the war machines in turn 2 with the dragon to keep it from being challenged or shot at by the other machines, granted that would not have stopped it from getting flank charged by one of your other units.

Sorry, I like to think how I might have tried something different to help me become a better player. You usually have great strategies and tactics, so I feel like I can learn from your battles.

He pretty much poured everything into my longbeards and slayers. I'd placed the bolt throwers out of range, and he couldn't move forward to get them without letting my blocks engage early.

I covered the organ gun up with my blocks to prevent more than a unit shooting it at any one time.

In my opinion, he could have been more aggressive with the treemen and dragon. Revealing all three at the same time, might have lost him one, but realistically no more than that. And if the dragon set up to hop *over* my lines, it could have avoided the MR of Challenge altogether, since it would be facing away from my blocks.

RZ

I had trouble deciding when to come out and play with my big stuff (2 treeman and Orion) this past weekend, too. It's a tough call! I think for many wood elf players "avoid at all costs" is hard-wired in. I could probably use a bit more of that, sometimes... but it's hard to know when to commit your big guys. It was probably more psychological than anything, since you're right, if he had pulled them all out together, a few at least would have made it into something.

Great job handling both armies!