Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Maybe someone can explain to me better. In the past, the elves were a finesse army that won with combined charges, or lots of magic and shooting. Of course, that theory struggles against cheap hordes and things that fight better than you in hth.

With steadfast in place..combined charges are dead. People tell me..."this unit in hth will win combat!"
Well it won't win on the charge and will cost more points. Then I get flanked in return and lose. I just don't see it.

Maybe one of top fantasy players can explain this to me.

If you can combined charge front and flank, don't they lose their steadfast? That would seem to be the advantage to playing MSU against large horde blocks, to me. And aren't blocks able to turn and reform more easily?

You don't allow steadfast if you cause disruption. So attack the flank or rear with at least enough guys to leave 2 ranks of 5 after you've taken causalties.

Units do not lose steadfast for being disrupted, for some strange reason (BRB p55)

What Kind of Elves do you play?

Dark Elves, I do not relly have much advice.

High elves, getting to re-roll to hit vs almost anything, allows them to do nasty things.

Wood Elves... I do not think that it is possible.

Sadly (or happily) disruption does not affect steadfast. Disruption removes rank bonuses, but steadfast only cares about ranks. In this way, a single rank of 5 models will be steadfast against a chariot or monster usually.

Elves win by killing massive amounts of models. The unit might not break, but they can still combined charge and kill a ton. Hitting before opponents + rerolls is very nice.

As others have said, depends on the race.

Dark elves, probably shooting combined with magic and hydras on the side.

High Elves, its all about teclis or BoH to take full advantage of the increadible magic spells.

dont ever face or play wood elves

My friends teclis and 50 pheonix guard seem to do alright.
combined with another 50 seaguard for Volley fire and a few bolt throwers. sorted.

Dark elves lost alot of combat superiority and now Need the heavy backup from magic and ranged attacks.
Otherwise still fine.

While for wood elves it is slightly more difficult to win but its not impossible
Tree-choices are all amazing.
And still have awesome ranged.
Just everything they have apart from Dryads is very overpriced.
Can still get a pretty good magic defense but magic without a lvl 3/4 lord is pretty poor in comparison to others. Though some of the athel loren spells are pretty good

pay 17pts for a shade, gets 2 attacks and re-roll to hit. His crossbow is AP and x2 shots.
17pt for glade scout. Just a standard elf with longbow...
16pt for shadow warrior. Just an elf with longbow but ASF.
Dark riders, 22 for crossbow, has hatred etc, ellyrion reaver 21 with bow, ASF, Gladerider. 24. Elf with longbow, Nothing special also has to pay more for command models.

I think that is the Wood elves major weakness. They are just too expensive for what they can do.

I don't see how hitting before opponents helps. Your expensive elf units would have to completely clear all the back ranks to prevent return attacks.

The way I see High Elves at the moment the best way to do it is to let the enemy come to you while you shoot and magic them into the ground. Both spearelves and Seaguard fight in four ranks without having to be in a horde and the seaguard have the added bonus of being able to shoot and them reform before they get charged.

Plus sword masters are essentially a very fragile blender so position them where they are going to do the most damage.
I really believe that High elves don't need to worry about getting the charge any more ASF combined with high initiative means that against a lot of things they will reroll misses against a lot of things. your basic infantry block can make the opponent make enough saves their going to fail some of them, plus if your bolt throwers, bows and most importantly magic that should be enough to at least win the combat. Then you can follow up with something in the flanks (even archers could have a stab, same strength and skill afterall).

But its probably best to have some things like white lions, reavers or ideally eagles to take care of the warmachines that are going to mess with your plans.

On paper, it also looks like you can get a lot of mileage out of Life buffs on Swordmasters- T5, or T7 and they suddenly are quite a bit more resilient...

RZ

As Red_Zeke said:

Now, more then ever, you need to rely on Magic buffs to reliably stick around and make life more difficult for the opponent. Basically, a Mage/Archmage with lore of Life is pretty crucial, IMO, to a successful HE list.

Red_Zeke wrote:On paper, it also looks like you can get a lot of mileage out of Life buffs on Swordmasters- T5, or T7 and they suddenly are quite a bit more resilient...

RZ

This also works a bit with beasts (t4) or even light (ws10 to make them hard to hit, pha's protection to make them even harder to hit). Shadow can nerf your foes down to s1, etc.

In fact, if high elves have access to the loremaster ability (do they?) they could take Metal. Metal is a lousy lore because there are a lot of spells in it that are very situational, but if you can get the whole thing, not only can you make large enemy units go poof with the 6, but (more important for this conversation) you can get your swordmasters to a 3+ armor save, which is pretty sweet against s3 or s4 troopers you'll mainly be fighting. And you'll also be the only one who can do anything at all to a steam tank

Telics has the high lore master special rule which means he knows all the spells in his chosen lore, but then he is extremly expensive (talking a >2500 game to legaly field him)

If we're talking about High Elves, take advantage of the ASF with Great Weapons. A large block of White Lions or Swordmasters or both are extremely effective up close.

wizard12 wrote:Telics has the high lore master special rule which means he knows all the spells in his chosen lore, but then he is extremly expensive (talking a >2500 game to legaly field him)

Untrue.. You can take teclis in 2000 points

yeah teclis is 475 iirc. But I agree with the general sentiment that HE need magic to do well, fortunately they can bring a book or teclis to make sure that some of those nasty #6 spells go off (nothing like 20 s8 spearmen/large purple sun of death/pit of shades/dwellors below etc)

Kirasu wrote:

wizard12 wrote:Telics has the high lore master special rule which means he knows all the spells in his chosen lore, but then he is extremly expensive (talking a >2500 game to legaly field him)

Untrue.. You can take teclis in 2000 points

Opps , been away from school too long.

Magic, Reapers, Rxbs, Hydras, combining your charges so when the opponents finally get to hit, there isn't much left to roll dice with.

Thats working very nicely for me atm, playing WoC most of the time though, so might be a good army for me to be facing.

Magic augments HElves very well, and taking Teclis or the BoH allows them to get those needed spells off.
Take Mindrazor, for example. Casting it on a unit of 5*5 spearmen gives 20 str 8 attacks that ASF and reroll hits vs most opponents.

What about taking Teclis and a Lvl 4 mage with the Book of Hoeth? Then you'd have twice the magic going off with IF on any doubles?

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:What about taking Teclis and a Lvl 4 mage with the Book of Hoeth? Then you'd have twice the magic going off with IF on any doubles?

The challenge here is that there are only so many dice a turn. Even with Teclis, Banner of Sorcery, and a decent dice roll, there are only 12 power dice to use.
When your talking about using 4-6 dice on a spell to get the BoH edge of undipellable, then your only getting 2-3 spells a turn. Adding that extra ~325 mage for the extra lore is not worth the cost IMHO.

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Magic, Reapers, Rxbs, Hydras, combining your charges so when the opponents finally get to hit, there isn't much left to roll dice with.

Thats working very nicely for me atm, playing WoC most of the time though, so might be a good army for me to be facing.

Aye, Dark Elves have really, really nasty shooting and magic. I go easy on my friend because I want him to enjoy playing the game too.

As I see it, High Elves have taken a heavy hit (although some may disagree with me). The enemy will almost always be steadfast AND the slain models are practically able to hit back your precious Sword Masters.
However, all is not lost. I recently won a small (and friendly) tournament without any magic. And I must say that a small block (from 14 to maybe 20) of White Lions will make your day much happier. Shoot (or magic) enemy's biggest unit to reduce it's ranks, and then try to bait it to your Spearman unit (at least 25, preferred more, deployed 5 or 7 wide) with a Noble (or Prince) nearby. Because you do at least 20 hits first, you have big chances of reducing enemys ranks, and if for some reason they win, just flank them next turn with White Lions. WS 5, S6 attack (from two ranks!) with rerolls to hit (mostly) will make your opponent cry (as they can't make support attacks to flank or rear).

Just my 5 cents

I don't know why people keep on saying Wood Elves are so bad. Admitted I've only played 3 games under 8th, but I've won all three. Our forest spirits are excellent, war dancers still pack a punch. You've just got to make sure that you multi-charge into combat and use your archers to thin the bigger units out before you take them down.

I played one game of 8th against Wood Elves and they are still a tough nut to crack. Jeff from Podhammer was talking about taking a unit of 6 Treekin and a small unit of 3. That is a good combo and should see a lot of miliage. I think people will just need to reevaluate how they use their elves. I know that's a common sense notion, but people are in a mindset that success in 7th equals success in 8th.

I'd just spam blocks of 28 (7x4) point-ears with pointy sticks till the cows come home...maybe throw in some RBTs for goos measure. But with that setup, all 28 elves are guaranteed to get to fight (unless enemy frontage is somehow narrower than 5 models), versus the guarantee that 35 models get to fight if you take blocks of 50. 28/28 versus 35/50 is a no-brainer. Combine that with hitting first and rerolling misses, and even chaos warriors start dropping like flies. That's how high elves win in 8th. I don't know about welfs and delfs, though...haven't given them much thought.

Problem is, Only high elves get the additional rank. which is fine for them but not Dark elves and wood elves :(

Which High elves should be fine, i dont see how they have many problems with ASF and re-roll.

Get on the table with the new rules. Steadfast is a nice little buff for some unit types, but ultimately, it is a BIG red herring.

I've been playing with dark elves, and they just have an obscene amount of anti-light infantry shooting. Incidentally, light infantry is the only thing you really need to take seriously in terms of being steadfast. While its true that people are taking 40+ dwarf warriors. It is a point sink and for elves it is so easy to avoid its tragic.

Dark elves launch bucket loads of xbow shots, then hydra breath weapons and THEN engage with a chariot charge or two. When elves charge, it isn't to win combat, its to finish off a weakened unit.

For high elves, I have a little less experience with in 8th. It seems to me that its pretty dangerous to attempt to play the 'block' game against humans/orcs/dwarves/skaven/lizardmen. You are too expensive and they are too likely to not break, and then its your T3 and 5+ armor that gets featured. High elves don't quite hit as hard as dark elves, but with access to more flexible augment magic, as has been mentioned, you may be able to survive a very short grind. Again i think it comes down to bowfire from tiranoc chariots/ellyrian reavers/archers/shadow warriors and magic spells that start with "every model in the unit takes a..."

Make the 40 strong unit a 17 strong unit, then commit with something MSU and front loaded.

Wood elves i don't want to comment on. I'll be getting some games in soon against a good friend, I'll let you know then.

With all elves, its pretty clear that engaging large blocks early is a poor choice, maneuver, shoot, stall, shoot, and then come down on them with a convergence of fast, front loaded MSU units. Chariots and hydras not only contribute to finishing off enemy units that are teetering on the edge, they also can prove to be great tarpits if you need to buy one flank some more time. No big cheap unit is going to put up more combat resolution than a hydra is going to do wounds. So they'll be the ones hoping they pass their LD check. And likewise for cold one and lion chariots. Hordes don't really put out enough high strength attacks to add wounds to tough chariots, and so they need to hope their ranks and banner can beat flank and wounds of a monster chariot. It probably won't, or not by enough to break the chariot.

Stripping away the specifics, as an elf avoid getting drawn into a slogfest, but also don't be intimidated by big blocks. They die FAST to shooting, it takes a LONG time for them to pin you down, and once they have been properly peppered, they become combat inneffective to speed of asuryan or initiative 5 hatred having units.

I agree with Shep. It seems to me a lot of people are only metagaming (and not gaming) and talking about these massive units that MSU units on crack can't break because of steadfast. Get on the table with your army. You'll see that steadfast isn't all it's made out to be and there's plenty of counters to it in addition to simply outranking your enemy. You can reduce the enemy leadership value by spells or abilities and make that steadfast totally useless, or you can simply destroy the enemy unit altogether. You can assassinate enemy BSBs or generals very easily with spells too. There's very few armies that can spam cheap, huge units that it wouldn't be points efficient to just engage and destroy in the later turns of the game.

Many DE/HE units cause an absolutely obscene amount of casualties in enemy units. Yes, these are the combined charges that someone said wouldn't work in 8th. Are you saying that if the enemy has 50 Empire Halberdiers, and I charge them with a Hydra and two Cold One Chariots, the combined charge won't work because I am unranked? Do you have any idea how many Halberdiers will die in the first phase alone? The breath, thunderstomp, stomps and impacts alone will kill nearly 20 enemies, and I have 21 attacks with 3+ to hit with a re-roll (mostly S5 but a few S4 too) in addition to those. How many of these units will a competitive Empire army have? One? Two? Three? Zero is more likely. The only thing that steadfast has changed is that one chariot that rolls high on impacts won't go through that unit in one phase. Large units consisting of cheap or medium priced infantry models still win very few combats when it's all on the line but they can tarpit weak frontal charges ad infinatum.