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Well, it serves a purpose in that often new people are just getting into fantasy and don't want to play a somewhat neglected army for several years (and no guarantee they won't be neglected in next ed either.)

True - but no army should be neglected.

DE executioners appeared in most 7e DE armys in tournaments where I was. All armies have some metal. My point was that it was usually the armies with more metal minis that did well (DoC? VC special/rare units? with minimal plastic. Thankfully this is changing.

It's not mandatory to play competitively. That doesn't mean it is wrong to play competitively either. You could field an army of nothing but skeletons and necromancers if you have the most fun that way, all the power to you. I certainly wouldn't try to trash someone if they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on an army which will be at disadvantage against their friends army for a long time.

Being weak in one edition doesn't guarantee you'll be one of the scary armies on the next edition either.

If you think all armies are exactly equal in power, then I don't see why you need to post in a thread where people are trying to find what the scary armies in 8th currently are, because you're not into competitive tweaking. It's fine if you aren't, that doesn't make people different from you bad.

I just think the level of competitiveness around is a bit wrong and offputting considering its a game that's not balanced.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Well, it serves a purpose in that often new people are just getting into fantasy and don't want to play a somewhat neglected army for several years (and no guarantee they won't be neglected in next ed either.)

True - but no army should be neglected.

DE executioners appeared in most 7e DE armys in tournaments where I was. All armies have some metal. My point was that it was usually the armies with more metal minis that did well (DoC? VC special/rare units? with minimal plastic. Thankfully this is changing.

It's not mandatory to play competitively. That doesn't mean it is wrong to play competitively either. You could field an army of nothing but skeletons and necromancers if you have the most fun that way, all the power to you. I certainly wouldn't try to trash someone if they don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on an army which will be at disadvantage against their friends army for a long time.

Being weak in one edition doesn't guarantee you'll be one of the scary armies on the next edition either.

If you think all armies are exactly equal in power, then I don't see why you need to post in a thread where people are trying to find what the scary armies in 8th currently are, because you're not into competitive tweaking. It's fine if you aren't, that doesn't make people different from you bad.

I just think the level of competitiveness around is a bit wrong and offputting considering its a game that's not balanced.

Really executioners saw a lot of tourny play in your area?

They are one of those units (at least in 7th) that was a waste of points.

Funny how the last Warpcon last year a DE player came 2nd fielding executioners... Most other Delf players in Ireland (addmited we're a bit backward) used to use them too. Can't say about 8th edition though.

why we're they bad in 7th?
They get the charge, Go first with Great weapons. Murder everyone. Win combat.

Its now in 8th with the ASL they are not so good.
If they came out in plastic i'd take them

They were a great hammer unit, however if they didnt break the combat they were losing next turn

TheBloodGod wrote:
And again, for all the talk everyone keeps on making about how blatantly obvious the imbalances are, no one will put together a list to prove it. So this is all gum-flapping

Well a hard and fast ruling is hard to come by.

But its fairly obvious some armies are more effective than others.

Consider for example the following three armys

Bretonnians, their only effective units are knights and those are now close to useless without the infantry support Bretonnian Armys don't have..... Wood Elves, they rely upon woods bogging down the enemy and using small elite units to break them through combat res, except of cource woods only slow down (the damn near useless) cavalry and small elite (and very squishy) units can't break large units through combat res anymore. Dark Elves, casualy have some of the most effective infantry in the game, some of the most dangerous cavalry, monsters, charecters and magic. They get all this despite most of their models being cheaper than an equivilent Wood Elf and comparing well to the massively inferior Bretonnian infantry.
Now given the above, can it be reasonable said that a Bretonnian or Wood Elf Army is even in the same league as a Dark Elf one?

Thats not to say its impossible to win with Brets or Wood Elves against Dark Elves, but its going to be an uphill struggle the whole way, which rather suggest a lack of balance.

Challenger

woot! debate!

DukeRustfield wrote:This isn't 40k. I think 8th went a LOOONG way to make almost every army have a pretty solid chance at competing.

What I might say is some armies have fewer options to build competitive lists because they have fewer choices or outdated rules or are difficult to use or whatever. Tomb Kings comes to mind. Ogres have very few lords and not a whole lot of viable models, but I still consider them very effective--you just might run into trouble if your enemy knows he's facing you and tailors his army.

I've got maybe 6-7 army books and I feel very confident any of those armies could beat the crap out of any of the other ones. A lot comes down to what happens on the battlefield and dice rolls.

Like if you're magic-heavy, you're placing a lot of power in the hands of the dice gods. 8th ed. Wizards are like massive black powder war machines.

What you mean is 8th ed made the WHFB situation like 40K. The comment you have about 6-7 army books that can win perfectly applies to 40K for quite some time now (when was the last time 40k tourneys HAD to be comped?). The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....there ARE tiers, but the gradations between them are such that even older codexes (ex eldar, orks, and even dark eldar) can be still be very competitive.

8th ed is in this situation right now, which is great for the WHFB environment. The last time WHFB environment was "balanced" was from 6th ed right until the release of the unholy 3 books in 7th ed...

freddieyu1 wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:This isn't 40k. I think 8th went a LOOONG way to make almost every army have a pretty solid chance at competing.

What I might say is some armies have fewer options to build competitive lists because they have fewer choices or outdated rules or are difficult to use or whatever. Tomb Kings comes to mind. Ogres have very few lords and not a whole lot of viable models, but I still consider them very effective--you just might run into trouble if your enemy knows he's facing you and tailors his army.

I've got maybe 6-7 army books and I feel very confident any of those armies could beat the crap out of any of the other ones. A lot comes down to what happens on the battlefield and dice rolls.

Like if you're magic-heavy, you're placing a lot of power in the hands of the dice gods. 8th ed. Wizards are like massive black powder war machines.

What you mean is 8th ed made the WHFB situation like 40K. The comment you have about 6-7 army books that can win perfectly applies to 40K for quite some time now (when was the last time 40k tourneys HAD to be comped?). The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....there ARE tiers, but the gradations between them are such that even older codexes (ex eldar, orks, and even dark eldar) can be still be very competitive.

8th ed is in this situation right now, which is great for the WHFB environment. The last time WHFB environment was "balanced" was from 6th ed right until the release of the unholy 3 books in 7th ed...

OH god! Warhammer 40k is such tier based right now its not even funny. Just look at the nova open last week.... 4 Space Wolf players all made the finals and Space Wolf player won. BTW he goes to my store, very awesome dude and totally chill.

I would have to argue that the tier system is dead. The addition of the new missions means that the rating of armies in a tiered system (in accordance to one mission only) is a matter of the past because armies will perform very differently in the different missions available.

Generalian wrote:

freddieyu1 wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:This isn't 40k. I think 8th went a LOOONG way to make almost every army have a pretty solid chance at competing.

What I might say is some armies have fewer options to build competitive lists because they have fewer choices or outdated rules or are difficult to use or whatever. Tomb Kings comes to mind. Ogres have very few lords and not a whole lot of viable models, but I still consider them very effective--you just might run into trouble if your enemy knows he's facing you and tailors his army.

I've got maybe 6-7 army books and I feel very confident any of those armies could beat the crap out of any of the other ones. A lot comes down to what happens on the battlefield and dice rolls.

Like if you're magic-heavy, you're placing a lot of power in the hands of the dice gods. 8th ed. Wizards are like massive black powder war machines.

What you mean is 8th ed made the WHFB situation like 40K. The comment you have about 6-7 army books that can win perfectly applies to 40K for quite some time now (when was the last time 40k tourneys HAD to be comped?). The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....there ARE tiers, but the gradations between them are such that even older codexes (ex eldar, orks, and even dark eldar) can be still be very competitive.

8th ed is in this situation right now, which is great for the WHFB environment. The last time WHFB environment was "balanced" was from 6th ed right until the release of the unholy 3 books in 7th ed...

OH god! Warhammer 40k is such tier based right now its not even funny. Just look at the nova open last week.... 4 Space Wolf players all made the finals and Space Wolf player won. BTW he goes to my store, very awesome dude and totally chill.

That is absolutely not true...Nova open is 1 result, adepticon is another, the recent ETC tourney also, etc. etc. etc..Space wolves are strong, but in reality in many local tourney you find IG, BA, nids, orks, etc are also winners...

Like I said there ARE tiers in 40k, but to say space wolves or IG is an autowin is a fallacy, and in no way does 40k at this point represent the 7th ed disaster in WHFB, not even close.

What IS true in 40k though is the love of GW for Imperial armies, specifically marines and their variants. This is the reason a LOT of players play 1 kind of marine or the other....if you can spread that kind of love around the different 40k armies, and even a splatter of that to each WHFB army book, then things might be brighter...(but in reality all of us know better...nothing beats GW's poster boys, and number 1 money maker)...

Back to WHFB tiers...I'm sure you guys have noticed that GW has put in several things which many armies can use to nerf the old 7th ed builds...deathstar units? there's steadfast, as well as unit nuke spells. Powerful character armies? Lore of death, also some nuke spells, as well as the % based FOC system. Magic heavy? the entirely new revised magic system. This why it is difficult to rank most of the WHFB books now, since things seem nuked down to ground zero. Which is why the first few 8th ed army book releases will be important to see the direction of army book creep. Guaranteed, there WILL be creep, but the extent of it will be the important factor to see how the different armies go...

I note that while still claiming that the warhammer army books are balanced, you ignore examples showing to the contrary.

I still fail to see how it is possible to claim that Wood Elves and Bretonnians are balanced against Dark Elves?

Challenger

Even so its much better since now multiple armies have a chance of winning instead of just one, no amount of whyning is gonna change the fact GW did something right this time around.

IMOHO: there are only 2 tiers as 8th did a very good job of Equalizing all the armies.

Tier1: Empire, HE, Lizardmen, Dwarves, and DE.

Empire, DE and Dwarves can do very effective Gunlines. this is extrapolated by the addition of TLOS. Dwarves are more effective now that Charges are much larger for them. HE and lizardmen still have the best mages and can potentially avoid the nasty miscast table.

Tier2: everyone else.

even WE, who are arguably towards the bottom, can still be good in the hands of a skilled player. VCs are still good as well, not as good as they once were, but still fairly good.


the gap between these 2 tiers is pretty small however.

freddieyu1 wrote:The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....

Man, I almost choked on my spaghetti. But I wasn't eating spaghetti. The same races have been showing up at the tops of tourneys for years. 40K is an excercise in race-picking, list-building and to a much lesser extent, dice-rolling.

Dark Eldar were only competitive because of a few broken units which were massed. How about a fight between Space Wolves, Blood Angels, IG vs. Necrons, Tau, Orks? Hell, throw in Chaos Daemons, C:SM, and a bonobo monkey. I already know who won barring two of the players in the first team having cerebral hemorages--or the monkey eating the pieces.. That's more than just tiers, that's geographical landscapes.

My top 5 from what I have seen would be Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves and Skaven. Empire for their cannons, mortars and basically every thing else is good. Dwarfs for their cannons and grudge throwers and tough cheap infantry, handgunners and awesome magic defense. Skaven have so many routes for building a competitive army list, just pick stuff in the book that you like and I'm sure your going to do fine. personally I like the pestilens clan, they are a bunch of frenzied dudes bringing along the censers that kill you before combat even begins. But you can go shooty, combat, magic, whatever with skaven. Dark Elves with the repeater crossbows are so sick and the whole army has hatred?...nasty. being able to re-roll missed to-hits is huge since no matter your weapon skill your still hitting on 3+ to 5+. their basic troops are so cheap for how hard they hit. And whoever is saying High Elves aren't tops and cant stand up in CC needs to play against better high elf generals. Have you seen what a horde of 30 Sword Masters can do? Your getting ASF to start with 40 WS6, S5 attacks. Against Dwarf infantry for example that is going to be 27 hits, 18 wounds with about 5 successful armor saves (I accounted for Parry) if they have hand weapon and shield for 13 Dead. 13 dead! against a tough well armored opponent! Think what they are going to do against Empire troops. Yes the Sword Masters are weak against shooting but there is so much terrain now in 8th edition that they can do a fair job at staying out of harms way. The White Lions are nasty too.

Exodus2013 wrote:My top 5 from what I have seen would be Empire, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves and Skaven. Empire for their cannons, mortars and basically every thing else is good. Dwarfs for their cannons and grudge throwers and tough cheap infantry, handgunners and awesome magic defense. Skaven have so many routes for building a competitive army list, just pick stuff in the book that you like and I'm sure your going to do fine. personally I like the pestilens clan, they are a bunch of frenzied dudes bringing along the censers that kill you before combat even begins. But you can go shooty, combat, magic, whatever with skaven. Dark Elves with the repeater crossbows are so sick and the whole army has hatred?...nasty. being able to re-roll missed to-hits is huge since no matter your weapon skill your still hitting on 3+ to 5+. their basic troops are so cheap for how hard they hit. And whoever is saying High Elves aren't tops and cant stand up in CC needs to play against better high elf generals. Have you seen what a horde of 30 Sword Masters can do? Your getting ASF to start with 40 WS6, S5 attacks. Against Dwarf infantry for example that is going to be 27 hits, 18 wounds with about 5 successful armor saves (I accounted for Parry) if they have hand weapon and shield for 13 Dead. 13 dead! against a tough well armored opponent! Think what they are going to do against Empire troops. Yes the Sword Masters are weak against shooting but there is so much terrain now in 8th edition that they can do a fair job at staying out of harms way. The White Lions are nasty too.

nice job

So I would bump lizards down one notch and High Elves Up one even though the lizards are VERY tough I would put them right on the bubble. They have some tough units yes but their strongest phase is the magic and magic in 8th can be spotty.

Exodus2013 wrote:And whoever is saying High Elves aren't tops and cant stand up in CC needs to play against better high elf generals. Have you seen what a horde of 30 Sword Masters can do? Your getting ASF to start with 40 WS6, S5 attacks. Against Dwarf infantry for example that is going to be 27 hits, 18 wounds with about 5 successful armor saves (I accounted for Parry) if they have hand weapon and shield for 13 Dead. 13 dead! against a tough well armored opponent! Think what they are going to do against Empire troops. Yes the Sword Masters are weak against shooting but there is so much terrain now in 8th edition that they can do a fair job at staying out of harms way. The White Lions are nasty too.

That was me, and you've just suggested that a near 500 point does a lot of damage. Well damn, it should. Let's compare it to Orc Arrer Boyz, my new favorite core of the Orc & Goblin list. 450 points buys you 70 Orc Arrers with FC. Let's pretend the Arrers do zero damage to the incoming Swordmasters in shooting, the swordmasters will do 18 wounds to the Orcs. Goodbye ranks 6 and 7. Now it's 30 attacks, 15 hits, 10 wounds, and 8 or 9 kills. Steadfast Orcs probably stick around. Every new round is worse for the Swordmasters because every casualty is a loss of attacks. Let's pretend the opposing general was sane, and took his horde of choice in the the 50 man range (which can still take a round of swings from a 30 man Swordmaster Horde and fight back with full attacks). This frees up 120 points of Arrers, which is almost a chariot and a stone thrower for the Orcs. Let's look at 30 Swordmasters vs. 50 Arrers, a Stone Thrower, and a Chariot. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine the winner.

Of course this is mostly pointless, because armies play each other, not units, but it does show that Swordmasters against a mixed purpose horde unit come out the losers in equal points, assuming that the biggest weakness of the elf elite, shooting damage, isn't factored in. In any knock-down fight with hordes, the elf elite are hosed. Phoenix Guard are in much better shape thanks to their ward, but lose out a lot on damage.

Meh swordmasters scare me in close combat, but the fact that a unit of them has yet to get into combat against me tells you how squishy they are.

DukeRustfield wrote:

freddieyu1 wrote:The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....

Man, I almost choked on my spaghetti. But I wasn't eating spaghetti. The same races have been showing up at the tops of tourneys for years. 40K is an excercise in race-picking, list-building and to a much lesser extent, dice-rolling.

Dark Eldar were only competitive because of a few broken units which were massed. How about a fight between Space Wolves, Blood Angels, IG vs. Necrons, Tau, Orks? Hell, throw in Chaos Daemons, C:SM, and a bonobo monkey. I already know who won barring two of the players in the first team having cerebral hemorages--or the monkey eating the pieces.. That's more than just tiers, that's geographical landscapes.

Well, this comment tells me that you really don't play 40k too much, or are used to the environment locally and have not been seeing what is happening across the board...and also that your "geographical landscape" is extremely limited...

Let me change the armies you mentioned..BA, SW, IG versus Orks, Eldar, and CSM, and chaos damons and tau?..it will be 1 hell of a fight, and I tell you the best players will win. 1 way to prove this is after 1 game let the same players swap sides, and you will see it is the GOOD players who win in 40k. After all, there is no Magic phase in 40k..no spells like Purple Sun and The Dwellers below, which many seem to be currently complaining about (I say meh to these complaints though...players who rely on too much magic will live and die on the winds of magic, which is much more random in 8th ed)...

The fact that the same "races" seem to predominate is again due to GW's love pf spesh muhrines....if there is 1 thing I like about WHFB until the 7th ed fiasco is that there was a great representation of army types in tourneys. In 8the it going back to this. In 40k half of the players play with imperial armies, hence the skew in what you see.

However, when you say that the same "races" are winning for years, and I would amount your word "race" to codexes, then I know you are just misinformed, or under the wrong impression. Space wolves have only just recently started to win within the last year, since their codex is new. 2 years ago, orks, eldar, and nidzilla were very powerful. Then came IG and regualr marines. Now we have space wolves, and blood angels. Chaos space marines and chaos daemons you also see winners. Case in point, this year's hard boyz had chaos space marines, chaos daemons, and IG as the winners. Yes, the nova open had a lot of SW, and that is good since SW is a great codex, but to say that the field is grossly imbalanced is definitely wrong, as most of the dexes can really still compete. There is no "autowin" in 40k folks. Getting the first turn in 40k, for example, is not an autowin since 40k now has so many excellent reserves options that many of us players actually decide to go second and reserve the majority of our units.

You can go look at a ton of other threads on tiers and balance, and you will see that WHFB was the system which had to redress the balance, not 40k. As mentioned in the last few posts, 40k basically has 2 tiers 2 (well, maybe 3, but with the new dexes of the necrons and DH coming up it be 2 tiers...the favorites, and the rest who can still win).

Anyway, this is not a 40k versus WHFB thread, and as a player of both systems for 12 years (since 5th ed WHFB, 3rd ed 40k) I belong to the camp that both are great and DIFFERENT games, with different sets of challenges.

what I find very encouraging are threads like this where players discuss who the top armies are. This means the playing field as of now has been redressed. Let us see who the Top Dawgs are 6 months from now, and I will bet this will certainly include the latest 8th ed army(ies) to be released.I just hope the top dawgs won't just be them.

freddieyu1 wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:

freddieyu1 wrote:The 5th ed 40k environment is extremely balanced....

Man, I almost choked on my spaghetti. But I wasn't eating spaghetti. The same races have been showing up at the tops of tourneys for years. 40K is an excercise in race-picking, list-building and to a much lesser extent, dice-rolling.

Dark Eldar were only competitive because of a few broken units which were massed. How about a fight between Space Wolves, Blood Angels, IG vs. Necrons, Tau, Orks? Hell, throw in Chaos Daemons, C:SM, and a bonobo monkey. I already know who won barring two of the players in the first team having cerebral hemorages--or the monkey eating the pieces.. That's more than just tiers, that's geographical landscapes.

Well, this comment tells me that you really don't play 40k too much, or are used to the environment locally and have not been seeing what is happening across the board...and also that your "geographical landscape" is extremely limited...

Let me change the armies you mentioned..BA, SW, IG versus Orks, Eldar, and CSM, and chaos damons and tau?..it will be 1 hell of a fight, and I tell you the best players will win. 1 way to prove this is after 1 game let the same players swap sides, and you will see it is the GOOD players who win in 40k. After all, there is no Magic phase in 40k..no spells like Purple Sun and The Dwellers below, which many seem to be currently complaining about (I say meh to these complaints though...players who rely on too much magic will live and die on the winds of magic, which is much more random in 8th ed)...

The fact that the same "races" seem to predominate is again due to GW's love pf spesh muhrines....if there is 1 thing I like about WHFB until the 7th ed fiasco is that there was a great representation of army types in tourneys. In 8the it going back to this. In 40k half of the players play with imperial armies, hence the skew in what you see.

However, when you say that the same "races" are winning for years, and I would amount your word "race" to codexes, then I know you are just misinformed, or under the wrong impression. Space wolves have only just recently started to win within the last year, since their codex is new. 2 years ago, orks, eldar, and nidzilla were very powerful. Then came IG and regualr marines. Now we have space wolves, and blood angels. Chaos space marines and chaos daemons you also see winners. Case in point, this year's hard boyz had chaos space marines, chaos daemons, and IG as the winners. Yes, the nova open had a lot of SW, and that is good since SW is a great codex, but to say that the field is grossly imbalanced is definitely wrong, as most of the dexes can really still compete. There is no "autowin" in 40k folks. Getting the first turn in 40k, for example, is not an autowin since 40k now has so many excellent reserves options that many of us players actually decide to go second and reserve the majority of our units.

You can go look at a ton of other threads on tiers and balance, and you will see that WHFB was the system which had to redress the balance, not 40k. As mentioned in the last few posts, 40k basically has 2 tiers 2 (well, maybe 3, but with the new dexes of the necrons and DH coming up it be 2 tiers...the favorites, and the rest who can still win).

Anyway, this is not a 40k versus WHFB thread, and as a player of both systems for 12 years (since 5th ed WHFB, 3rd ed 40k) I belong to the camp that both are great and DIFFERENT games, with different sets of challenges.

what I find very encouraging are threads like this where players discuss who the top armies are. This means the playing field as of now has been redressed. Let us see who the Top Dawgs are 6 months from now, and I will bet this will certainly include the latest 8th ed army(ies) to be released.I just hope the top dawgs won't just be them.

this topic is about fantasy tiers, not 40k... but I appreciate the enthusiasm

Biophysical wrote:That was me, and you've just suggested that a near 500 point does a lot of damage. Well damn, it should. Let's compare it to Orc Arrer Boyz, my new favorite core of the Orc & Goblin list. 450 points buys you 70 Orc Arrers with FC. Let's pretend the Arrers do zero damage to the incoming Swordmasters in shooting, the swordmasters will do 18 wounds to the Orcs. Goodbye ranks 6 and 7. Now it's 30 attacks, 15 hits, 10 wounds, and 8 or 9 kills. Steadfast Orcs probably stick around. Every new round is worse for the Swordmasters because every casualty is a loss of attacks. Let's pretend the opposing general was sane, and took his horde of choice in the the 50 man range (which can still take a round of swings from a 30 man Swordmaster Horde and fight back with full attacks). This frees up 120 points of Arrers, which is almost a chariot and a stone thrower for the Orcs. Let's look at 30 Swordmasters vs. 50 Arrers, a Stone Thrower, and a Chariot. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine the winner.

Of course this is mostly pointless, because armies play each other, not units, but it does show that Swordmasters against a mixed purpose horde unit come out the losers in equal points, assuming that the biggest weakness of the elf elite, shooting damage, isn't factored in. In any knock-down fight with hordes, the elf elite are hosed. Phoenix Guard are in much better shape thanks to their ward, but lose out a lot on damage.

I forgot to add in the fact that the High Elves get to re-roll missed to hits... so let me re-work the math for ya add Ill use the nearly unarmored orc boys who may or may not have squabbled this turn :p (like you said this is all in good fun and hypothetical because its army vs army but lets have a looksee). 30 Sword masters against 50 arrer boyz. For this demonstration I am assuming the High Elf player was smart enough to charge his 500pt unit into the flank of the orc horde and let his spearmen take the stand and shootyness. The Sword Masters strike first with their 41 WS6 attacks including the extra one for the champ against the WS3 of the Orcs that is and hit with 27.47. Re-roll the misses and thats 36.5 hits. S5 vs T4 and no armor saves = 24.5 Dead. Now I do not care to think about the sword masters charging the front of an orc arrer horde as this is complete suicide. Also remember I play Goblins and Skaven but I am just saying that Sword Masters can really dish out the hurt, if they were attacking Goblins they would have killed 31. Yes they are expensive at around 500pts for the unit, but to me all the best units are. Also I dont think you are insane for taking the unit of 70 arrer boyz. I like a unit of 50 Night Goblins with shortbows and a BSB in the unit with the spider banner personally but thats only cause I wasn't using orcs ever. Also I plan in my new Skaven army to take a unit of Plague Monks w/ Plague Furnace and plague priest that is 65 monks strong. With the 15 spots the Furnace takes up this will give me essentially a unit the size of 10x8. The Monks have two hand weapons naturally and are frenzied so this gives them 3 attacks each for only 7pts per model. The unit with magic items and all will cost 828pts but the Furnace makes the already frenzied unit Unbreakable and magic resistance (2) for a 5+ ward save against magic. The priest is no slouch in CC and has items that cause -1 to shoot the unit and -1 to enemy leadership if in base contact. A true death star unit ...but it will be fun! Backed up by a couple units of censer bearers there wont be much stopping it that I can imagine, as long as I get into CC fast.

I know oyu are theorycrafting but no one in there right mind would let 30 swordmasters walk across the board.

They would be fairly diminished after 2-3 rounds of shooting.

Not to mention dwellers below, loosing half your guys is the fails.

I agree with Exodus2013 that 500 point units can be good, and didn't mean to imply otherwise, but I don't think that a 500 point Swordmasters unit is good, because it can't stand toe-to-toe with similarly priced units, because it's just not tough enough. High Elves don't have the cheapness, toughness, or armor to fight on the line, and their huge damage potential is insufficient against large body counts because step-up lets the big units keep fighting despite casualties, something the cost of elves prevents them from doing.

I will also agree with Exodus2013 that the horded 30 man Swordmasters unit (~450 points) that flanks of Orc unit (330 points) will totally own in combat. In this allmost comically unlikely situation (zero casualties to the incoming swordmasters unit, unguarded flanks of a 50 man Orc Horde, having the table space to swing a horded unit into something's flank), Swordmaster's rule.

Against other elites, I think the High Elf troops stack up a lot better, but I think magic and archery is there only good option against Hordes.

ShivanAngel wrote:I know oyu are theorycrafting but no one in there right mind would let 30 swordmasters walk across the board.

They would be fairly diminished after 2-3 rounds of shooting.

I don't think any elf general in their right mind would charge 30 swordmasters into a horde of 70 orcs either.

Well ya take a couple units of archers, Teclis, Sword Masters and White Lions. The archers and Teclis rip ya up pretty bad then the elites come in and kill the half units your hordes once were in one CC turn. I can see where your coming from though its not hard to kill a unit of 30 low toughness low armored and highly expensive elites from a distance. This is the major downfall for all Elves.

Boss_Salvage wrote:Tier 4 Wood Elves

*O&G are especially hard for me to rank, as animosity still blows but they have some serious artillery support and some of the most worthwhile troops to horde up (night gobs w/ bows).

Hell, all of the lower brackets are fairly tough. I feel bad sticking WE down in the lowest of the low but there's really nothing I fear in that list, apart from treemen spam but even that is a bad idea competitively with all the flaming artillery.

- Salvage

You should feel bad, Mr. Salvage! Very, very bad... I keep saying that my "particular" brand of wood elves (forest spirits) seems to have gotten better, but nobody listens to me . Admittedly, I went 0-1-5 in two tourneys with it under 7th ed, so it wasn't great before- but it seems somewhat competitive to me now! I've had a few wins in friendly games and they've all been at the very least close (although 8th edition rules seem to be making that happen in a lot of games). So don't relegate us to the corner with the dunce hat just yet!!!

I'm glad that Warriors of Chaos are at least second tier.