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When I look at both of these units they both have their benefits, but I need a little advice as to which is better. If the answer is situational, then what is the situation where one is better then the other?

Thanks.

On gut instinct, I'd say the White Lions. The extra durability at range, high strength, stubborn seem more useful in an all-purpose role.

The swordmasters are going to be better buzzing through chaff, though...


P.S. I see you're in Dallas. Any chance you'll be at Lonewolf in a few weeks?

No, I'm too new to fantasy to go this year, but by next year I'll be there.

Also the added protection from missile fire the WLs cloaks give them is very nice.

I hope others join in this as I'm working on my new HEs for the 2nd half of the year (2500pts) and a unit of 40 WLs or 40SMs is the last remainining decision to make.

They're both good units, honestly, though as Red_Zeke comments, Swordmasters are a lot better at plowing through block infantry (mostly from having 50% extra attacks).

While both of them provide High Strength attacks, I'd say that the Strength and Attack characteristics lend the WLs and SM's to different tasks:

WL's I see as preferable in dealing with big monsters, cav and heavily armored units while SM's are better at taking out the enemy's non-elite units.

If I HAD to make a choice between the two, I think I'd opt for the White Lions, however, owing to their increased durability (that +2 vs. Shooting is great) and Stubborn.

@W_G: What else were you planning on taking?

Teclis with lore of life to make this unit a tank

Lvl 2 Mage with lore of light to give them Bironas Timewarp so they can move quickly into combat

Seaguard to follow and engage.

Maybe some eagles for anti- artillery

To be honest, I wouldn't guage the effectiveness of any High Elf army when your running Teclis. There's a reason he's banned from about every tournament outside 'Ard Boyz - he dominates the magic phase in a way you can't counter and doesn't exactly make for a fun gaming experience.

I would throw my lot in for the Swordmasters, as long as you either move them up into combat quickly or get in some good cover to protect against shooting. Squishy, but man can they hit hard. White Lions have the higher str attack, but have 50% less attacks than the Swordmasters - unless your going up against a heavily armored opponent, Str 5 is plenty good.

39 Swordmasters with Korhil. Now they are stubborn.

White Loins are more useful all around, but swordmasters do look pretty cool.

Bat Manuel wrote:White Loins are more useful all around,

I do love me some white loins.

White Lions.

Swordmasters who get out of position can get flanked and lose combat and break.
White Lions are free to move out of position, because they can take the flank charge.
1 less attack isn't a big deal, and against T4 and/or 4+ armor it's more or less a wash in kills.


-Matt

I'll chime in for the white lions with what's been pointed out- lion cloaks are great- and also with what hasn't: stubborn! You're going to lose a combat sooner or later, whether it's going up against some crazy t8 toadstar or whether you got shadow-debuffed down to s3 or whether you're facing halberd-wielding khornedogs or whatever. In such a situation, white lions have a better chance of hanging around to wear down whatever it is.

I also don't think the strength difference is getting enough attention here. If you're going up against lightly armored, low-toughness enemies, swordmasters are more effective. However, there are a lot of other things in the elf list that deal with such targets much more cheaply. Shoot them with arrows, stab them with spear elves, heck, even cast great big fireballs at them. White lions fill a niche that not much else in the list does: hammering high-armored low-model-count items such as empire, chaos, or bret knights, or chaos warriors, or ironbreakers, etc etc. For best results, run them with the razor standard if your metagame contains lots of tin-canned jerks.

When I look at WL compared to SM i see it like this:

WS: SM > WL

However this advantage only marginally makes a difference. Both are virtually the same to any opponent WS 1-4, and 6-10, only WS 5 gives SM an advantage.

STRENGHT: WL>SM

There's significant difference in the strenght depart here. WL only begin to struggle against Toughness 7 which makes them really good at hunting big creatures, and the -3 to Armor gives even 1+ armor units something to think about. SM are better then average against T4, with -2 to Armor, whereas WL wound on 2+ against the same opponent, with a -3 to armor.

Attacks: SM > WL

Twice the attacks is nice.

Suvivability: WL > SM

with a 2+ Armor against shooting, and stubborn, WL are going to get more bodies into combat then SM, and will run a lot less. Once in combat their suvivability is pretty much the same, in respect to taking hits.

Combat WL > SM

If you look at the numbers of combat using mathhammer using an average opponent with average stats (4's) for WS, and Iniative and you range the toughness from 3-8 the only time SM out wound WL is at Toughness 3, and Toughness 8+. The rest of the time WL do better in combat with an additional -1 to armor saves.

I'm new to Warhammer fantasy, but I've been play 40k for a while, so I'm use to the mathhammer.

I'd vote for WL for 8th, fighting in 2 ranks means they only have 33% less attacks than SM. S6 is great because you are now wounding T4 models on 2+ with -3 to armor. Even Chaos Warriors have to worry about that.

In the current metagame of 8th, White Lions will likely give you better mileage in most cases except when you're facing a goblin or skaven horde (this is, no Orcs with the goblins)
Even in those instances, White Lions will get more bodies into combat and be able to stand up to the large blocks where they will have steadfast prevented by the larger opponent numbers.
Swordmasters will chew through the ablative wounds, but have a higher chance to break due to either shooting casualties or possibly lost combat without stubborn.


I would put in a single small vote for Swordsmasters only because they have available CHEAP plastics... whereas Wihte Lions will cost you significantly more if you're on a budget.

White Lions are just more useful within the game.

White Lions

Fun fun fun, good solid unit. Swordmasters are good, but less durable/not as anvil-y.

However, I will say that Swordmasters are great if you want more offense than anything else, and with Shield of Saphery on them they can survive a little bit more shooting, though hardly anywhere near White Lions.

Yep WL are looking better and better.

mrfantastical wrote:If you look at the numbers of combat using mathhammer using an average opponent with average stats (4's) for WS, and Iniative and you range the toughness from 3-8 the only time SM out wound WL is at Toughness 3, and Toughness 8+. The rest of the time WL do better in combat with an additional -1 to armor saves.

That's not quite accurate, because it depends on the target's save. Where there's no save (so no more than 5+ save to begin with) Swordmasters will do better than White Lions against T3, T4, and T5, and break even against T6. When the target has 4+ armour the results are even for T3 opponents, and from there they get better for the White Lions as T and armour saves increase.

At which point it becomes an issue of the local metagame, and how many opponents build their lists around lightly armed troops, and how many focus on more heavily armed troops.



Mind you, either way I'd probably go for White Lions, because both units will dominate if they reach combat in good order, and White Lions are slightly more likely to do that.

I use both. A large block of SM's with an Archmage with Life, and a mid sized block of White Lions.

Both work well. The SM's properly buffed with Life have no durability issues, and there is no question about their ability to kill.

Large blocks of WL, small cheap units of SW. A unit of 7 SW puts out a large number of high quality attacks for very little cost. They can be used to knock crucial ranks off units before the Whitelions get there, etc, while not being enough points for the enemy to devote shooting to - and if they DO throw a lot that way, your WL are even more likely to survive.

Having seen the utter carnage that WL can do in horde formation, when the difference in number of attacks cf to SW is even smaller (25% more for SM), they are a scary unit. Given them the movement banner and they rocket across the field.

Swordmasters will do better than White Lions against T3, T4, and T5, and break even against T6. When the target has 4+ armour the results are even for T3 opponents, and from there they get better for the White Lions as T and armour saves increase.

Thank you, I had to recheck my numbers and they were a little off so I'm going to share them so that if anyone can see an error you can let me know.

Assuming you have an opponent that is WS 4, and I4, with a variable Toughness (from 3-8). Our SM, and WL are both in a 5x5 block, and lets assume the first rank make BTB contact, SM will get 15 attacks, and WL will get 10 attacks ( average out to 13 Hits, and 9 respectively).

Using that data I see this from the following "To Wound" rolls:

Toughness / SM / WL
3 / 11 / 8
4 / 9 / 8
5 / 7 / 6
6 / 4 / 5
7 / 2 / 3
8 / 2 / 1


This is all before armor, which WL give an additional -1 to Armor Penetration.

So with this SM are much better at clearing out T3 units, but only become one wound better then WL until you run into higher toughness opponents. It kind of goes back to quality vs quantity.

I think assuming that you never face WS5 opponents is selling swordmasters short.

White lions do well against 4+ armor or 3+ armor. What infantry has that?
WS6/5 Chosen/chaos warriors, WS5/4 Dwaves, WS4 Great Swords, and WS4/3 Temple Guard/Saurus.

Also, your toughness to wounds chart hides rounding, which puts some of the math off.
Here's mine, Toughness, and advantage in wounding hits
T3, SM by 3.7 wounds
T4, SM by 1.5 wounds
T5, SM by .74 wounds
T6, No advantage in wounds
T7, WL by .74 wounds
T8+, SM by .74 wounds


All in all, both work, but I still think WL work better, due to survivable vs slight edge vs WS5 and/or T3 opponents.

-Matt

Not really an overall comment, but one to apply to particular meta-games:

Let's not forget Daemons. Against Bloodletters, the Swordmasters are definitely going to have the edge on White Lions. The extra attack and WS both come into play, and with no armor, but a ward save, the extra armor penetration from the lions is a non-issue.

Red_Zeke wrote:Not really an overall comment, but one to apply to particular meta-games:

Let's not forget Daemons. Against Bloodletters, the Swordmasters are definitely going to have the edge on White Lions. The extra attack and WS both come into play, and with no armor, but a ward save, the extra armor penetration from the lions is a non-issue.

Unless swordmasters can go wider than bloodletters, blood letters will beat both swordmasters and white lions.
That actually gives the edge to white lions, for stubborn when losing, holding out long enough for help to roll into a flank.
Add in fear test, and the chances of both being WS1 (instead of 6 or 5), and the WS advantage means slightly less.

-Matt

How are Bloodletters going to beat Swordmasters? Swordmasters hit 8/9 of their attacks against Bloodletters, while Bloodletters only hit with 1/2 of their attacks. Additionally, the Swordmasters have A2 instead of the A1 of Bloodletters (this may be nullified by the Bloodletters being in horde formation). Swordmasters also have a smaller base size, which could result in more Swordmasters than Bloodletters being able to strike. The only advantage the Bloodletters have is the 5+ ward save. However, the advantage of the Swordmasters' ability to hit is larger than the advantage the Bloodletters have with the 5+ ward save.

Example: (30 Bloodletters in horde formation against 21 Swordmasters in a 7x3 formation, both with full command)

Swordmasters strike with 22 attacks, hit 8/9, wound 5/6, unsaved 2/3. This means 10.86 unsaved wounds.

Bloodletters strike back with 15 attacks (only 7 of their front rank can be in base contact, the back rank has already been wiped out, so 14 Bloodletters get to strike, among which the Bloodreaper), hit 1/2, wound 5/6, no saves. This means 6.25 unsaved wounds.

Even if you make the unit of Bloodletters a unit of 40 (which is way more points than the unit of Swordmasters), they will kill less than the Swordmasters (9.17 unsaved wounds).

The Bloodletters need a Herald to be able to outdamage the Swordmasters, further adding to the points cost of the Bloodletter unit.

So to sum up, a massive Bloodletter unit in horde formation with a Khorne Herald can beat a unit of Swordmasters which costs about half as much as the unit of Bloodletters with Herald. However, Swordmasters will beat a Bloodletter unit that costs an equal amount of points.

Swordmasters should be modelled with lawnmowers because holy hell they can shred. As Jin said, they both have their place.

As an orc player I'd rather see WL than SM in the table, with the little shooting I usually field I'd rather prefer the Lions.

As an Empire player, send me SM so that I can handgun and mortar'em to pieces.

Either case, I always need to combo-charge/flank to break them in CC.

Airmaniac wrote:
So to sum up, a massive Bloodletter unit in horde formation with a Khorne Herald can beat a unit of Swordmasters which costs about half as much as the unit of Bloodletters with Herald. However, Swordmasters will beat a Bloodletter unit that costs an equal amount of points.

My bad, I was thinking a unit of bloodletter got 3 attacks per rank (because I always see them in hordes), and always re-roll to hit (because I always seem them with heralds).

-Matt

Yeah, Bloodletters are scary, but Swordmasters are more efficient for the points spend. I know, points efficiency in High Elves is anathema, but it's true.