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I'm really stuck fighting skaven with my wood elves. Against other opponents I often feel and I have chance and win quite regularly. However every time i face skaven my heart sinks.

Firstly their Storm Banner (or whatever it's called). It grounds my eagles and cuts my shooting hugely for at least one of my turns, if not more (on a 50% chance) and it barely effects the skaven player. They rarely take shooting and can't take flyers. Nothing i can do about this except rely less on shooting, which the rest of the time is good against skaven, so I'm stuck.

Next, the sheer number of models they can put on the board is scary. The Dwellers below can take maybe 10-20 rats a turn. Shooting with Glade Guard, less. But that's barely a dent in units of 50 clanrats and plague monks.

Not to mention the 13th! That really did me in last game, taking out a squad of glade guard and attached noble with Hail of Doom Arrow in the first turn and leave 13 rats behind my lines. It went off irresistibly so my wand of witch elm could do nothing and the miscast barely scratched his army. Skaven seem to be able to bring so many wizards to the table it's really tough to out channel them or have enough dispell dice to defend against everything. This player had a lvl 4 and two lvl 2s in 1500. All I could fit was one lvl 4.

Finally, and my biggest problem, is the warmachines. Screaming Bell, Plague Furnace... and also the Doom Wheel or HPA. I have absolutely no idea how to touch these guys. I think both the big ones are T6 W6, both very strong in CC and guarded by 50 rats to act as ablative wounds. They're stubborn, frenzied and all manner of nasty things. Treeman, well he'll be Krak's Called before he's even close. Treekin, scorch or the Furnace's flaming attack. Even if both those units got the charge safely that'd be 14 attacks. Maybe 10 rats if I'm lucky. Hardly a dent in what's guarding that thing. And the Doomwheel, well it's lightning bolts are magical, so fried forest spirit right there. It's toughness 6, got a high armour save. And is hard to get the charge on until it's crashed into my army, tearing a huge chunk out of it.

Has anyone got any tips for a wood elf player dealing with these problems?

Thankyou

Lunarman


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My list in this latest loss went something like:

Lvl 4 spellweaver with Wand of Witch Elm and lore of life
Noble with hail of doom arrow
3 treekin
1 treeman
two units of 12 glade guard
14 dryads
1 eagle

and he had:
1 doomwheel
30 clanrats with lvl 4 grey seer
30 clanrats with BSB
1 plague furnace with 20 plague monks
4 rat ogres
Warlock engineer
some wizard on the plague furnace

no dice? no advice!

I like your list! Perhaps you could squeeze in another treekin (maybe by chopping down the glade guard to 10 apiece) to make that unit hit a bit harder? If they lose one now, they don't pack a lot of punch.

Don't forget stomp / thunderstomp when counting the attacks your treekin / treeman are going to put out! They can rock.

I think skaven are a really tough match-up for us, I've never had success against them (at least so far!). So I don't have many tips to overcome them... but I'd love to hear it if others do

Haha, so the reason no one had any advice is not because they don't care, but because we're all as stuck as each other.

Well, here's some thoughts I had.

Possibly an alter-noble zipping around the huge skaven units and challenging their powerful leaders. I'm not too familiar with how challenges work. But against skaven I'm sure an alter noble could be very effective in killing them one-to-one. The thing that makes skaven blocks effective is what they're guarding, not the clanrats themselves. So, a his block of 40 without his Grey Seer isn't a problem. It's slow, and a flank charge from dryads would do the trick I feel.

Storm banner is a no go. There's nothing we can do against it. However, we have to just hope that it doesn't last long and that our eagles have done their work by then. I'm guessing most skaven players will call it on their first turn or second turn and so you can predict your downtime that way.

Skaven can decline challenges with no disadvantage. The hero you can send to the back rank but they can still use his LD.

And if neither declares a challenge, you can probably still kill their hero from base contact but might be swamped by Rat attacks!

If your facing Grey seers on bell or Plague priests on furnances, You probably dont stand a chance of charging and killing them. Especially with the amount of Toughness tests you need to take for standing infront of the Plague furnace. Grey seer gets 4+ ward on the bell.
Plague priests are toughness 5 too. So unless you got a nice magic weapon, only wounding on 5's.
But then if they aren't mounted go for it!

Killing off a grey seer for the loss of an alter noble is probably worth it anyway.

Seon came up with a good idea in the "wood elf ploys" thread- giving a noble the item that forces all enemy units in range to charge you. Given that you can pre-measure, you can position him perfectly at the mark where your opponent would need to roll an 11 or 12 to charge him. Might help you redirect that nasty plague furnace / screaming bell away from your line!

Given the point level, it seems like it must be a furnace, not a bell, for him not to go over 25% with his lord.

Edit: Also, doesn't the spirit sword own against a furnace / bell? I need to check the rules for it again, but I thought this was so...

Pass a leadership test or charge though...

And a group of skaven would have ld 10 in ranks.

But... the spirit sword. Yes that could do it!

If you could direct attacks against the furnace (can you?) then it would die so easily.

Hits on 3s
Wounds all
For each wound the Furnace rolls d6 added to 5
I roll d6 added to 10
Furnace falls apart like kindling.

But wouldn't the Furnace be allowed to take the General's leadership? so its more likely to be around.. 10?
General can be affected by skaven ranks and pass on his ld of 10?

It's a leadership test not a panic check. So, as far I know it works like any other characteristic test. You must use your base stats.

lunarman wrote:It's a leadership test not a panic check. So, as far I know it works like any other characteristic test. You must use your base stats.

To clarify. Leadership tests are NOT identical to characteristic tests. They're a completely different subject matter. Leadership tests do not require base stats either, unless the magic spell or whatever specifies base stats.

And yes, Skaven use their leadership + rank bonus for any leadership tests. So even basic clanrats are Ld8. With general nearby, Ld10. They can reroll any Leadership tests if nearby the BSB. So that ploy will fail quite often. I haven't read the specifics on the bell/plague engine, so a skaven player would have to give you advice on that.

Well i was thinking that the furnace probably does not get the Skaven ranks thing.
But the general would be base ld 7 or 8, And he will increase his LD to 10 because of the skaven ranks rule and how it is written.
Then he will pass his LD 10 to everyone?

Skaven are hard :O

I was lucky against skaven as my friend failed at dice rolling (and only took 1 warmachine) and my treekin and wardancers just cut through the giant blocks of clanrats. Stormvermin are dangerous though :(

You really need to be tactical with the terrain, and if you catch them in combat there they have no ranks! so set up traps everywhere! so your opponent has to spend more time moving around obstacles etc.
Might give us a little more time to shoot

Also dont forget your spells! i had the STR 4 Shield of thorns in play on a unit of dryads who were stuck in combat for about 3 turns.
I only rolled the damage once out of about 4/5+ chances... Would of wiped out the clanrat unit if i had remembered to do it

In regard to Alter Nobles, they could be strong for warmachine destruction.

I have one question though. The standard build equips them with a great weapon? Doesn't this mean he'll go last in combat? How on earth will a T3 W2 elf with a 5+ armour save survive being hit by anything at all?

I'd give mine either one of the Common expensive weapons or go for DAITH'S REAPER!

I think the Greatweapons were for back in 7th as he was likely to get the charge.