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With news of Creative Assembly getting the Fantasy license, I'm thinking now might be a good time to give fantasy a try. I've played some test games with the IoB set and have thus far enjoyed the High Elf experience and am gonna run with it (though the list I ended up with doesn't use much from the starter set).

Archmage, Level 4, Book of Ashura, Lore of Shadow (Goes with Phoenix Guard)
-The war gear options are painful cause there are a lot of really nice looking ones.

Mage, Level 2, Channeling Staff, Crown of Command (Goes with the Spearmen)
-Not sure on this lore. Beast, Fire, Life? Beast I like for him since he can cast the basic augment on the spearmen boosting them to S4 and T4.

Spearmen x30, Standard Bearer, Musician
Archers x15 Musician
Archers x15 Musician

Phoenix Guard x20, Full Command, Banner of Sorcery
White Lions x20, Full Command
White Lions x20, Full Command

Bolt Thrower
Bolt Thrower
Great Eagle
Great Eagle

~12 points left over.

Basic plan as I envision it is to run the archers in front either as screens for the guard and the lions. Don't really care if they die. Anything that hits them isn't hitting the special choices and I'll just leave them off set to be in the way of any enemy charges. Eagles I'll have to play to figure them out but I hear they're awesome for redirecting charges and killing war machines (which I assume I'm really going to want dead with T3 models out the wazoo). I really want to dominate the game's magic phase as best I can, so any advice on that would be nice.

Bolt throwers are something I'm unsure of. What's the viability comparative of dropping them and getting another mage with fireball? In my test games my fire mage got some pretty harsh spells off on infantry but with magic dice caped at 12 (which on average I should get 11) I don't want there to be too much competition between my mages for dice.

I could just drop the second 20 man unit of white lions and use the Swordmasters I already have though, save 150 points and pick up another mage with that and keep the throwers but then I'm afraid of not having enough boots on the ground who can really hurt.

And just so I know if anyone can tell me, what kinds of enemy units do I really need to watch out for in terms of slaughtering me in close combat (as in don't run the white lions into these guys, they'll die kind of units)?

I guess the first question is what are you going to do when the OG player sets a unit of snipers up in front of your spear block. Then they open fire on your mage and or AM killing him out right because he is not protected. The book is really not worth it imo, because your only adding in one point for the cost of an arcane slot item. I would go back and dig some more to find out what you really want. I run my AM with the annullian staff and foraliath robe. Then mix him up between my archer core and spear block. I know a lot of people do not really care for our core but to me they are key on moving characters around. That way the characters can better perform and options can be used to tackle issue. Nasty flank, etc....

Mage lvl 2, pick up an arcane item for him instead of the crown.

BSB you really need this guy because he is the one thats going to keep that ld 8-9 rolling turn after turn.

You have the first amoung equals option to select a banner for your core. Almost everybody I know and or have read there army list selects banner of enteral flame. This would be a great added bonus for one of your archer units. If your looking at a unit with regen, smack it with the banner unit first, then finish it off with the other unit...

I myself am not a fan of PG but everybody has an idea of how they want to run there list, and they fit it in because of that.

If I had the money, ie before the new codex drops and a few years before it dropped. I would of invested heavily in white lions. One of my list that I run for fun has 3x20 white lions, well sorta,, 2x(3x6) and a unit of 21(3x7) with gleaming penant for flanking duty. These guys backed up with life will wreck face and then some. I dont know how many times I have just chopped my way threw unit while slowly restoring them back to full str.

To each his own on bolt throwers because personally they are a hit or miss item. At 100 points I find that I can not fit them into my list because of what I really need. As noted you really need a BSB......

2x eagles are perfect. Over the corse of a year of playing fantasy and 20 years in GW. I have found that at 2500 points for a standard list 2 eagles is about all you need. Any more than that and your just watching an extra 50 points fly around for a few turns before its shoot down.