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I am looking at building a High Elf army, and I wanted to get people's thoughts on the differences between these two core units. I am planning on running my archers in a unit 5*4, as shown below. With the "Volley" rule, they will be able to fire 16 shots, with only 4 archers unable to fire.

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My logic for doing this is to make the archers more robust vs. fast moving assault units -- such as a war eagle or chariot. The steadfast rule will help to prevent them from being driven off the board by a lone unit.

My questions to everyone are the following

1) Are Lothern Sea Guard worth the 1 extra point? Do archers get charged/shot that often to justify it?
2) If you buy Lothern Sea Guard, do you spend the extra point on shields?
3) Is this even a good idea?

Everyone in my area does Seaguard because they're so versatile. Kit them out fully and they can play the shooting game or take a charge VERY well. You have to take some Core so why not take one that can work against any opponent? Stand and Shoot with a respectable number of good WS, ASF attacks will wear down anything short of heavy cavalry/infantry.

Thanks!

1 point gets you the ability to fight in 2 extra ranks and gives you a 6+ armor save. You lose 6" of range.

I think it is definitly worth it.

The shield is the only sticking point in my opinion because you can't choose to use hw + shield if you have a spear unfortunately. it still isn't bad I am just not sure one way or the other.

I'd probably go with the Shield. It's good against return fire from other bows and lighter warmachines (Stone Thrower) and you always want the Spear in CC anyways.

I agree the seaguard are a much better buy; for an extra 2 ppm you're getting spears (doubling your attacks), a 5+ save against both shooting and cc (mostly only good against other S3 attacks, but still worth noting) and all you're losing is 6" of range on your bows. Considering most armies start about 24" apart anyway, it's not a big loss.

The way I see seaguard run best is a small block of 20; you get 15 shots a turn, hitting on 4s or better in most circumstances, then when you get charged you stand and shoot with 10 shots, then spear with another 20 S3 attacks that reroll to hit almost everyone. Most games you'll get 1 shot at max range (enemy marches up from deployment zone, you volley), 1 at short range (they march again to fairly close, you volley again) then you get charged.

At the end of the day, that is a rediculous amount of low strength attacks; usually in the neighbourhood of 50 or 60 before enemies even swing in melee. 20 with shields and command is pricey at 285 points, but they're so versatile it's very difficult to catch them out of their element. They're obviously going to have a very tough time with T4+ in good armour like dwarves and chaos warriors, but that's why we bring white lions and swordmasters!

If it were last edition I would say don't take sea guard, take archers only. (and don't take spears at all) This edition Its a bit harder to choose, since you have % based core requirements rather than just FOC ones. Sea guard still don't pass my stink test, since I don't like units that confuse their roles. I personally don't like the idea of a unit I'm paying for shooting being deployed in a CC formation (and all the unit upgrades needed to make them viable in that role) So I would just take the points saved on not taking sea, and just get more archers. IMHO HE have much better CC ability to waste space with mediocre S3 hybrid units.

I think the point is, while not a combat heavy block, they can fight, where Archers get run over by anything. In CC formation they can still Volley, or you can deploy archer wide and Swift Reform with a Musician, Ld9+ and a BSB. They aren't confused on their role, the job is to shoot until you need them to fight, if ever.

Spear elves are 9 points per model for a WS4 S3 T3 5+ save. Archers are WS4, BS 4, S3, T3 with 30" bows and cost 11points per model. Sea guard are the same as these units in the stat line, but get the normal bow, cost 4 points per model more than spears and 2 more than archers (assuming you get the shield).

So much more costly for shooting ability than the standard CC unit, worse shooting ability than a dedicated unit, and a premium in unit cost? How is this not a confused role unit? Its not like spear elves are a good combat unit, so why would you pay so much for it, and archers aren't exactly the best shooting unit, so why would you pay extra for less range? Versatility? Meh, I personally would just take more archers, and leave the fighting to units that are actually good at (and those units aren't found in the core section of the book).

I guess it's how the rest of your list is built. I've never found versatility confusing, it's just useful. It's not like you'd drop the block and not know what to do, you take stock of what's against you and either use the Spears or use the Bows.

Archers aren't good against every army and Spearmen aren't good against every army, Seaguard are much more balanced. You pay for that balance and you should. Having a few units you know will be an effective part of your plan goes along way, especially against an unfamiliar army/opponent.

The shorter distance on the bow almost isn't worth mentioning, both armies will have units deployed up so you're in range and 3" will rarely make or break you as far as modifiers. They're also a little more resistant to other missile troops with a 5+ and being able to occupy a woods or obstacle as well as anyone else.

Personally, I like flexibility and units that aren't crap against some armies. Are HE Spears the best CC unit out there? No but ASF with solid I and two handfuls of dice does damage against similar units. They aren't meant to stop Chaos Warriors, you should have other units for those type of threats.

It really is a personal decision and based on your playstyle and what your list is geared to do. I wouldn't call any of the three units bad by any measure.

The 30 does matter. It is a difference of having to move if you go first, and not. That is a rather large change in how many hits you get on turn 1. The 3 inch difference on short range also matters, but games usually don't get this precise (but with measuring any time, it will play a role more often)

I personally came to the conclusion that versatile units are like Swiss army knifes. They can get any job done, but if its a tough job its not the right quality tool for it most of the time (that and they are clunky and expensive, like most Swiss army knifes). Dedicated units are like professional tools. Only good at one thing, but they can do that one thing no matter how tough the job.

Sure, sometimes it nice to have that one unit that can fill any hole in an army, sea guard can sorta fill that role. I personally would run just one unit if them. If my list is so unbalanced I need multiple units of sea guard to plug a hole in it, I messed up somewhere.

I'm thinking of running 50 seaguard + full cmd for the core of my army along with supporting special troops, etc. I think it's worth noting that 50 seaguard with command will get 51 ASF, (probably re-roll attacks) in CC, and 35 shots per volley. What do you guys think about that?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Disregard, I found a post that talks about High Elves with spears in hordes. Thanks!

For archer units usinging volley, it seems that 5 across in your front rank is the magic number.
As you round up the number of shots, 3 can fire while 2 cannot.
Instead of one squad of 50, 2 groups of 20 have 32 shots per round.

Having finally played some games of 8th, I think I'm leaning toward agreeing with notabot on this issue.

The shots are nice and all from the LSG, but a heavy round or two of shooting from the enemy will still take out lots of them at a time - which means a lot of lost 13pt models. I still have to playtest them out a bit more, but the shooting really isn't particularly spectacular if you have to have them on the move.

Conversely, if they're simply defending a space, they're pretty solid. Get them in a building and they'll probably occupy it for the rest of the game.

Again, I'll have to play around a bit more to really get a better feel for the two units, but given my more aggressive playstyle, I would lean toward taking Spears and archers.

Lothern Sea Guard, are some of the most useful units in the High Elf codex, I just played an 8th edition 3 round GT and massacred everyone I fought against, and although I only had one opponent that could have been remotely called a gun line, I have been beating Gun Lines dependably with my army. (Briora's Time Warp prevents more than 2 volleys of fire from gun lines.)

By themselves they will get beaten but when used properly with support you can trash any unit. I repeatedly forced a single unit to fight against a unit of Phoenix Guard, and a unit of LSG.

GT Foot Slogging Army List
Teclis
Noble BSB with Armor of Caledor
Dragon Mage Silver Wand (Was my biggest disappointment kept falling off the damn dragon, but I wanted all characters painted.)
20 LSG with full command
20 LSG with full command
14 Phoenix Guard with Full Command and Banner of Arcane Protection
14 Phoenix Guard with Full Command and Banner of Sorcery
Great Eagle (Used to draw fire, or march blocking)
Great Eagle (Used to draw fire, or march blocking)

I'll have to play around with both.

A multi-role unit certainly has downsides in that not 100% of the models shoot (while 100% of archers shoot.) and they're expensive but not impressive in combat.
Archers = cheaper. 6" more max range. 3" more +1 to hit mid-range. Deployed in 5x2 or 5x3 on a hill lets every model shoot 100%.

As some people mentioned, there might be some pluses to the multi-role unit. In that it can do combat unlike archers. I personally wonder if I'm doing a bad job as a general if I need even my archer units to gear for combat though.
It seems like Sea Guard shouldn't be compared to archers but to spearmen.

You could buy 36 spearmen or 25 spearmen with bows (sea guard.) Are the 24" S3 non-armor-piercing shots worth losing 11 spearmen? In some situations maybe. I might be a bit doubtful.

I think if possible I'd rather spend the points on buying extra White Lions or Swordmasters instead of buying Lothern Sea Guards. Replacing 25 Sea Guards with 25 Spears saves 100 points which is around 7 White Lions or 7 Swordmasters extra, a whole extra rank or enough to maybe make a normal squad into a horde.

1 WS5 S6 attack each (instead of 1 WS4 S3 attack.)
or
2 WS6 S5 attacks each (instead of 1 WS4 S3 attack.)

Spears lose a whole rank of attacks when they charge.

Plus, HE are the only army in the game where Great Weapons strike BEFORE even enemies with initiative 10.