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Just my thoughts about HE's so far... If you see anything blatantly wrong, or if I'm missing something, feel free to jump in! (posted multiple places, trying to gather as much info as possible.)

-- Stuff I love so far:

Lord with: The White Sword (+2 str, Killing blow) Talisman of Loec (may re-roll all hits, wounds, and opp must re-roll all successful saves, bearer takes 1 wound after use) -- Crazy good combo. Especially when you read the erratta about killing blow in challenges. Where if you do 2 killing blows to a 4 wound model, it counts as 8 wounds in a challenge for overkill. The trick is to re-roll all your missed hits, and then re-roll all your non 6 wounds. getting one killing blow was average, and getting 2 happening around 50% of the time.

Dragon Mage with +1 spell and the Ring of Firey doom (bound 2d6 str 4 hits on a 3). The hope is to get the the 2d6 str 4 spell 2 times, and the Burning head. The way I envision a dragon mage being played is that he's really never in combat unless it's turn 6. Land next to a unit, magic it, breathe on it, fly on to the next unit magic it, breathe on it.. etc etc. The only units I'd like to be in combat with are war-machines or heavily diminished units. That way I'm relying on my superior active combat res to finish off my opponents, rather than perhaps taking down one unit and then spending an entire turn resetting. In fact, I'd go so far as to say, that giving the dragon mage the sword of hoeth as a trade in spell was to nerf him, not to make him more "flavorfull"

Lord on an Eagle, with the Bolt-thrower bow, and a 5+ ward-save. I've loved the portable bolt thower combo since it's heavy use in WE armies.

Alith Anar.-- If you take a Prince, and give him 100 points of items to try to match Alith Anar's skill set (scout, bolt thrower for a bow, hatred) You spend 5 more points, and end up short a few skills (250 for the prince, 245 for Alith Anar). Literally Alith Anar is better than a Prince for cheaper. A scouting BS 7 Bolt Thrower is right up there with a flying bolt thrower.. which is to say.. AWESOME.

The same argument sort of applies to Teclis as Alith Anar. You can't put together a character that does the same for the same amount of points.. He's cheaper. I'm playing with the idea of 2250 points having Teclis alone, or Teclis and a single hero. 475 is awful expensive, though.

Spearmen at 9 points a pop.. yes please. Used well these guys are scary good.

Mage with the 40 point +1 to dispell staff. +2 to dispell on all spells.. yeah.. that's awesome.. bonus goodness if you're stealing a powerdice too.

--Stuff I'm not so crazy about.

I like the fact that I have a cool one use magic item that tells my opponent that he can't have a magic phase. I wish it were a tad cheaper, because it's so situational. Like if I'm gearing for an opponent, like Tomb Kings, it's an absolute catastrophe to have that item go off at the wrong time. But a Brettonain super lance army would have me banging my head against the wall.

The best weapon they have is +3A... I mean It could be argued that the Star Lance is their best weapon, but this is the most expensive... and any time you see the top weapon on the list, you expect something super flavorfull and a game changer...

No Scythes on my chariots? Really?

I'm not crazy about the fact that I want to blow 3 of my special slots on my typical flank buster (Chariot, Heavy Cav, Light cav) Although it sounds like a Great Eagle is in order instead of the Light cav.

Lion Chariots seem.... prohibitively expensive. Not that they aren't worth the points as a chariot, I just hate to spend that many points on something that can be instagibbed with 1 str 7 hit, AND that only has t4.

Shadow warriors. As ablative wounds for Alith Anar, they are.... serviceable. As any other type of role, I'm just not happy with them. March Blocking is nice... but at their expense again is prohibitive for having 1 str 3 shot per turn being their most common offensive output. Perhaps going after a war-machine is nice, but they fall in that "special slot" that 3/4ths of a HE army tends to come out of...

--What I keep seeing out there.

Dakka, and YTTH both seem to be in love with mage spam lists. Sure, HE magic is nice, but Jive Professor and Stelek are pretty mentally slowed about Hammy. They get 40k pretty well from what I understand... but wow, they just can't put together a fantasy list to save their lives. Dakka on the other hand, typically has a more refined view, and much stronger players directing the metathought about fantasy, and 4 mage lists absolutely pervade that site too.

At this point I'm more apt to believe that the top tier HE players have simply given up trying to redirect any thought processes about Magic spam and how terribly inefficient it is. Mostly because the counter argument happens to be: "Zomg! U SUCK! If I get 4 Flames of the Pheonix my opponent is Doomed, DOOOOOOMED!." It's pretty easy for a good player to get tired of lending their support to another player when the other guys flat don't listen, or provide such horrible counters...

The most impressive list I saw from a powergaming perspective was 6 units of 7 Swordmasters, 2 10 man units of archers, 3 bolt throwers, 1 eagles and the rest in characters. Couple of magic users, and a lord on an eagle with the bolt thrower bow. I don't intend to mimic that by any means, but egads that's a scary, scary list.

At this point the list is still very nebulous in my head... But it's quickly becoming concrete. More as I get there.

The problem with high elves is characters in general.

High elf combat characters are prety margional. They can be killed by most other chars with minimal effort. Even your awesome sauce killing blow dude isn't that good.
On the other end they cannot kill heavily armored chars like chaos warriors or khorn heralds, both of which are common. Said chars will eliminate any surplus combat resolution they get in combat. This failure also flows over to multiwound units like hounds of khorn.

Because of this and the prevalence of a few combat chars the units come off as being overpriced. If the elves don't kill it before it swings elves will die and die easily.

The only ray of sunshine is that their magic lore is actually good which leads to the 4 mage armies you mention. Everything else kinda blows. Kind depressing as I have some nicely painted elves just hanging around hoping for 8th edition and 25% chars (And swordmasters swinging in two ranks rerolling to hit, sting first even if they get charged).

Pretty much in agreement with most of your thoughts as well as cypher's thoughts on High Elf characters.


I think the main issue is that High Elf characters are hobbled by their T3 and usually have to spend a relatively inordinate amount of points to be survivable. Even then, their armor can be fairly easily negated by the usually high Strength attacks enemy characters have without having enough power themselves to effectively dish out damage outside of charging. This is made worse by the books that followed the High Elves that got a bit too happy with regard to giving out Ward Saves.

With regard to top tier HE lists, the homogeneity of all the lists is partially due to the underwhelming ability of HE combat heroes as well as the ease with which the top tier armies can generally bring out Power Dice in any given game.

Why are we, as High Elf players, trying to kill their hero or lord?

Sun Tzu teaches us that Water always chooses the easiest path to flow in, and uses the easiest path to cut the largest rivers, and destroy entire mountain faces. It takes the easiest path, and changes the way the earth looks from space Seems to me, that since the HElves are as fast as water, that we can always select the easiest path.

It's really becoming obvious to me, that we should put every attack we have into the most lightly armored element of our opponents list, and depend on active combat res to do our dirty work.

You hear about this mentality all the time. Build a deathstar and throw it at their toughest unit and see how it all washes out. Why not throw our watered-down equivalent at the most badass unit that you know has 0 chance of standing up to you, and then work your way down from there? That deathstar unit your opponent has? It can have a unit of reavers and a bolt-thrower, or something else cheap and expendable.

There are situations you try to put yourself into, to try to kill the opponents general. 1 killing blow wound that has to be re-rolled at every opportunity is huuuuge, and is something we can fall back on... I think though, that the most successfull players are going to use those added attacks to try to swing to a +1 for outnumber and as many easy kills as possible.

Because in fantasy you have a limited amount of turns to kill enough points from the enemy's army. And with mv 5 infantry you generally cannot avoid everything they throw at you.

High elves lack the bait units that most armies have. That deathstar unit cannot be forced to charge a bolt thrower and your reavers are way overpriced compared to anything of the sort from other armies.

And what if he doesn't have a deathstar unit??? Many armies don't. Say there are two tough units and two mediocre units with combat chars in them. Gonna avoid a wall 18 in wide?

I play highelves and it is a tough battle if you dont take the moronic heavy magic bunkered army (I find that army boring beyond belief).

cypher wrote:Because in fantasy you have a limited amount of turns to kill enough points from the enemy's army. And with mv 5 infantry you generally cannot avoid everything they throw at you.

High elves lack the bait units that most armies have. That deathstar unit cannot be forced to charge a bolt thrower and your reavers are way overpriced compared to anything of the sort from other armies.

And what if he doesn't have a deathstar unit??? Many armies don't. Say there are two tough units and two mediocre units with combat chars in them. Gonna avoid a wall 18 in wide?

I play highelves and it is a tough battle if you dont take the moronic heavy magic bunkered army (I find that army boring beyond belief).

@ Bold #1. They are the 2nd fastest light cav in the game, and they are more expensive than the slower ones, and less expensive than the faster ones. I'm failing to see how you have any sort of a leg to stand on when you declare them "overpriced". Sure the empire have Fast Cav that can really dish out the hurt, but you're comparing apples to oranges. Their role in an Empire is far different than the HE's Light Cav role. The most prohibitive factor about their cost is the fact that they use up a special slot, and I'm still thinking 2 units is in order just about 100% of the time.

@ Bold #2. This statement makes me very sad. You're the master of strategy man, if you can't come up with something, I'm doomed!! I hate to think I picked up an army that only has one competitive build, and a cheesetarded one at that.

Not saying it cant be done, its just an uphill battle.

My high elf army usually goes something like the following
archmage (3x scroll, chose spells)
He can usually get a couple good things off and stops enemy spells
BSB (great weapon, 2+ save)
goes in white lions, ankers a flank

2x 15 spearmen full cmd
2x 12 swordmasters
1 has banner of sorcery to allow archmage the full power of high magic
2x5 dragon princes
1x15 white lions
immune to fear
2x eagle, 2x bolt thrower.

Its entertaining and has a lot of units to deal with.

I'm intrigued by your choice of only 2 Characters. It's rare to see.

Also nice to see larger blocks of Specials.

Archmage/bsb is a good character setup. The other option is Star Dragon/Beast cowers scroll caddy.

Spearelves are generally junk but you have to take some.

The only reason Alith Anir isn't more popular is that he missing a great weapon. Add that to him and he is a great buy.

Shadow Warriors are generally trash as meantioned. The lion chariot is nice but I have a hard time justifing its cost as well.

Teclis is great if you play with special characters. Teclis+BSB is probably the best combo in my opinion. Also the Amulet of Loec on a Swordmaster champion can be useful if you don't want to injury your Lord.

Sometimes I will toss in another char mounted on a horse with the star lance and loec as a killer of bad things (black coach is particularly dangerous as high elves). But generally he is only marginally better than another dragon prince.

cypher wrote:Not saying it cant be done, its just an uphill battle.

My high elf army usually goes something like the following
archmage (3x scroll, chose spells)
He can usually get a couple good things off and stops enemy spells
BSB (great weapon, 2+ save)
goes in white lions, ankers a flank

2x 15 spearmen full cmd
2x 12 swordmasters
1 has banner of sorcery to allow archmage the full power of high magic
2x5 dragon princes
1x15 white lions
immune to fear
2x eagle, 2x bolt thrower.

Its entertaining and has a lot of units to deal with.

I like this list a lot. I was considering something similar. Only 2 characters seems tricky, but I really know nothing about HE, and my other army is WoC...

xenite wrote:

cypher wrote:Not saying it cant be done, its just an uphill battle.

My high elf army usually goes something like the following
archmage (3x scroll, chose spells)
He can usually get a couple good things off and stops enemy spells
BSB (great weapon, 2+ save)
goes in white lions, ankers a flank

2x 15 spearmen full cmd
2x 12 swordmasters
1 has banner of sorcery to allow archmage the full power of high magic
2x5 dragon princes
1x15 white lions
immune to fear
2x eagle, 2x bolt thrower.

Its entertaining and has a lot of units to deal with.

I like this list a lot. I was considering something similar. Only 2 characters seems tricky, but I really know nothing about HE, and my other army is WoC...

If you are considering a list like this, you should definately consider bringing Teclis instead of the Archmage. A single Wizard (even if she has an average of 8 Power Dice at her disposal) is going to have a hard time breaking through the opponent's Magic Defense. Teclis on the other hand, will have an average of 10 Power Dice per turn, meaning you can attempt 2 Spells with 5 Power Dice each (having a 71% chance on every Spell cast to get Irresistable Force).

I'm ok with the archmage list, and while the Teclis list is certainly an entertaining idea, I really sit and wonder why people would blow so many points on dispell scrolls.

Has anyone actually sat down and done the math on that one spell you may be stopping and done a CBA? (Cost Benefit Analysis)

It's not like you don't know what spells your opponent has. So you'll never really be taken by utter surprise.

I mean your typical d6 str4 hits is going to kill 2 models on average. I mean for the elves, I guess for anything more expensive than a seaguard it's a +net, but wouldn't those points be better spent on ablative wounds anyway?

Why spend points to prevent the caster from casting, when you can simply go out and kill the caster and create a magical superiority through force, instead of a passive magical deadlock. I can understand spending some points on 1 scroll to knock off that one spell that's scary as all hell that an opponent might have, but comeon... 3 scrolls? That's enough scrolls to kill that mage and then eat a sandwich, and you'll still probably have one left over.

/rant

Anyway, other than that, I do like that list. I wonder if points could be found to take those spearmen units to 21 though.