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I'm starting wood elves. Just wanna know what the good (fun to paint and fun to play) and the odd (waste of money)
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Well, just to warn you, Wood Elves are currently the weakest army in Fantesy. It will be very difficult to win games. Experienced players often play Wood Elves as a Challenge.

So with that as a fact to consider, no unit will make your army worse than it already is so pick the units you like.


If you want to be competitive, focusing on Forest Spirits with as few Elves as possable is one of the more competitive builds. Another is taking a large unit of GG as a character bunker backed up by a couple units of Treekin.

And its still like playing Call of Duty on the "You will not Survive" setting.


They should be getting a new book sometime soon, although noting solid yet, so all hope is not lost. Just use the models you like, having a "bad" army does give you freedom to be a fluffbunny and have fun with your army. Then when your army does get updated it feels like Heaven. Thats what happened with my Ogres.

I knew the book was old but i didnt know the wood elves was so bad. I want to start a good core and wait until the new book come.

If you are willing to endure it, go for it. Pick the models you like more than anything.

Wood Elves aren't bad per se. They are more rigid in terms of what works. Whereas something like ogres has multiple 'strategies' that work, wood elves have one. That one is shoot.

A big block of 20 flaming glade guard, 60-70 blocks of 10, couple of minimal units of dryads, BSB with the HoD arrow, and warhawks/glade riders to taste. For redirecting.

Some people take life and some people take beasts, but Athel Loren is always skipped for good reasons.

+1 to Wood Elves not being bad in their own right (we have some excellent choices that other books would love to have), however we just have massive issues with the current metagame- we really struggle to kill anything with armour.

Overall, there are 2 main ways to play that I have found to work.

The first (and my own favourite) it to load up on as many Glade Guard as you can get. They're easily one of the best shooting units in the game, and 60-70 of them is a goodly number that will let you hand out some damage. The rest of the list is made up of a couple of Dryad units, a couple of eagles and some Waywatchers (otherwise Scar-Vets or DE Pegs will amble over the army without breaking stride) with characters to suit (I personally think a Beasts level 4 is strongest with this sort of list).

The aim here is to constantly avoid combat and keep shooting the enemy, and trade efficiently. Essentially you keep away for so long, and each unit that he catches is worth very few points, that you don't need to kill that much in order to win/draw the game. You'll usually pick off all of their small units and redirect their big units before ganging up on something towards the end.

The second method is much like the first (shooting stuff a lot), but then instead of trying to dance around and avoid the enemy you have 2 rare Treemen, and maybe a third Ancient, that run into the stuff you can't shoot off and hold it up for the game by merit of just not dying. This lets you focus your shooting on the things you can kill. In this list, Life magic is better in my opinion because you need to keep the big trees alive, and Dwellers becomes useful for thinning out units so the Treemen get punched less and have a chance of grinding through units. The biggest thing to do here is to keep everything localised and within range of the BSB and general- Stubborn is awesome on the Treemen, but ld8 is decidedly less so. The difference between being ld8, or ld9 with a re-roll, will often win or lose games on its own as if one of those Treemen gets felled and you're not ready for it you're in a world of trouble. Every now and then you'll fail the ld9 re-rollable after taking no wounds in the combat, but such is the way of dice games.

Each has their merits, each has their downsides- the big trees let you actually fight something in combat, but mean you have less rare chaff/tools to deal with mounted characters that can ruin WE, but the big trees make you much more vulnerable to common magic lores (Light, Metal, Shadow) and war machines. Overall, I think the 2nd style is stronger, if a bit more rock paper scissors, but I personally find the first much more fun to play.

Cool... I need to focus on a lot of glad guards for shooting everyone. Some great eagles agains the war machine. treemen and dryades to block fast cavaleries and troops and wardancers because they like to dance....

hellpato wrote:
Cool... I need to focus on a lot of glad guards for shooting everyone. Some great eagles agains the war machine. treemen and dryades to block fast cavaleries and troops and wardancers because they like to dance....

I have tried taking little units of 6 wardancers as a suicide unit, they just hide behind dryads wait for the dryads to charge something else to make room for them and then slam them into an enemy wizard,bsb or lord and pray for sixes on the wound roll.

It works ok against shooting light armies but I stopped fielding them when my meta filled up with bloody DEs (I hate shades so bloody much it makes me weep)

I found some wood elf models from probably 10 years ago, the old stupid looking dryads, the cartoony wardancers etc that I guess I painted when I was about 14. In any case been playing them against my night gobbos to "teach" myself the rules bit by bit.


Currently have

spellsinger on foot

noble on steed

22 glade guard (1 of which is a champ i think) w/ bows

10 Dryads

11 war dancers

I have been proxying some war dancers as musician/champ and splitting them into 2 squads of 5 and 6

I have been running 9 dryads and 1 as a branchwraith as I don't like the noble much. I don't have the codex so going solely off of army builder here. Probably not even applying wood elf army wide special rules. It's really been a long time. Back when I played wood elves our glade guard could take spears?

the war dancers seem to make good suicide units like others have been saying. I have been using them to flank whatever the dryads are fighting, and the second squad pushes into enemy archers?

I believe wood elves are a finess army, rather then a bad one. No, you carnt take hits, No your archers carnt strike before any untis in the game like some OTHER broken armies and No you cannont effectivly make hordes. Dont try, stick to what your good at.

Most people will say shooting and, while we are good at shooting we will get steamrolled by any good gunline of any other army (dam cannons). We also hit VERY hard in combat, every combat unit we have is one one of the BEST of its type. Treekin are one of the best MI in the game, if expensive. Wildriders are by far the best fast cav. in the game. Wardancers hit like a brick (then get knocked down like a pack of cards...).

So just take from this is you dont have to have a shooting army, just shooting elements. I have 40 archers in my 1750pt army and they do well to net me chaff units. Dryads are AMAZING, once again best skirmishers in the game with the stats of a Chaos Warrior and the I to match a lot of heroes, but they shine in a forested bored (how i usually play, and how all WE should play ) because they become stubborn. Then they can take a charge like a boss and really dish out the damage and even take it against str 3.

In short ill list good units and what kind of army they go with.

Spellweaver: Great force multiplyer. Wand of wych elm means we have great magic defense. Life for defensive for treekin + heavy armies. Beasts for offensive combat army.

Highborn: Good if you have a specific thing you want him to do, if not get the weaver. Dragon build is good, but build the army around him.

Ancient: Good for getting an extra treeman on the bored, thats it. Not usually worth the points unless vs a GD, then get annoyence of nettlings and lol as that ws10 BT hits you on 6's :lol:

Glade guard (gg): Good in any army. Best archers in the game but dont expect them to win games, they are an aspect of your army, not your whole army. If you build an army of just these you will get steamrolled by any army with cannons and any army with a good save and any army with cavalry. So, most?

Dryads: Great, put in a wood to get stubborn. Take in either small units of 8 for a counter charge unit or a unit of 12 for an assult unit. Once again they are an aspect, not an army list.

Glade riders: Over priced. They can work in a very mobile list with lots of warhawks and wildriders but they cost 2 glade guard. so ask yourself are these doing what 2 glade guard carnt? Use if they have a place in your list, dont just throw them in.

I'll continue later if i can be bothered

Hope it helps.

Thanks for the write up alex.

Very helpful.


I have been playing with my old WE against my night gobbos at 1k lately

last night I ran...


Spellweaver with 5+ ward, got regen, the heal spell, and 1d6 s4 hits or 2d6 s4 hits to things in woods

branchwraith

14 dryads

10 GG

12 GG including champ (spellweaver went here)

5 war dancers with command included

6 war dancers with command included

was mainly just using what I had from way back when, bar a few dryads i proxied.

vs.

ng great sham with 5+ ward
gobbo warboss hvy armor 5+ ward GW
3x NG big boss with GW (1 carries BSB)
NG sham lvl 1

38 NG spearmen full command nets 1x fanatic (bsb and gen went here)
23 ng spearmen full command 1x fanatic (2 vanilla gw bosses here)
20 ng archers (both shamans go here)

14 squigs +6 herders

mangler squig

using what I have yet again, didn't proxy any war machines

G1: Mangler squig moved out, all gobbos marched (large block had animoisty and rolled 6), squigs went around BLOS terrain to minimized arrow fire, mangler squig in font of it to provide it hard cover from what could see. gobbo magic results in buffed units that won't see combat most likely

W1: Wardancers move ahead of GG dryads move farther toward large block into forest. GG drop the mangler squig. other group kills 2 goblins from small block. all magic is dispelled

G2: small block charges 6 war dancers who flee just short of GG. NG fail LD don't redirect and roll forward a few inches. Shooting and magic results in 1-2 dead dryads. squigs move up torwards GG. Large block fails charge into woods on dryads.

W2: Dryads fail charge thanks to -2 movement from spell. Small wardancer squad flanks the small spearman unit. they hold. War dancers continue to flee on LD 9 from gen... >.< flee thru GG but they don't panic. GG shoot up squigs some more. Wardancer champion and gobbo champ duke it out and both whiff. War dancers do 2-3 casualties due to poor rolling and the 4+ ward stance. gobbos strike back killing all but 1, who passes LD and holds. (ahem by that i mean the gobbos did 1 wound and some big bosses did 3 lol)

G3: large horde lands charge into dryads finally. squigs charge into GG. spider god blessing on large spear block. Gobbos cut down lone dancer and reform to face GG+general. after stand and shoot (I only played it as a -1 modifier to hit) I was left with 3 squig herders and a squig in combat with GG. who promptly killed 1 herder. all the gobbos and lone squig whiff, lose combat, flee and explode doing a measly 2 hits against GG (killing 1 >.< ) and killing 2 of the fleeing war dancers. Goblins net themselves, fail fear check, Dryads win combat by 1. They also killed BSB. Goblins faild break test, and are cut down. dryads stop short 6" from archer block (hoping to overrun into them)

W3: dryads charge archers and cut them down/reform, but not before goblins kill 2 via stand and shoot. war dancers rally. magic dispelled. shooting takes another 5 gobbos out of small spear unit.

G4: spear unit being all that is left charges into 12 GG w/ spell weaver, and GG lose combat by 2, but pass break test and hold.

W4: dryads march back torward homefield. GG wheel an back up from gobbos. Gobbos win combat, wood elves break and run off board, gobbos fail LD and pursue off board. (at this point does game end as no goblin models left on table??) I went to bed at this point.. Just put the goblins back on the table where they left from for beginning of their turn 5 but not sure if that actually happens when they are sole unit on board for goblin army?


Will post this over in WHFB bat reps for some tips as well... My war dancers really needed to get both units in combat at once to do anything. I split them up in 5/6 to hopefully get a rear/flank bonus?

Also, you can play a wood elves army very good against almost all "deathstar armies". Since you have no army center and is so mobile the death star really cannot do mutch damadge. Neather will you, and it will be very frustrating for both of you. It is not very agresive and not for all.

I'm not really too thrilled about wood elves but the whole hit and run aspect does sound interesting. How do waywatchers handle as a unit?

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I'm not really too thrilled about wood elves but the whole hit and run aspect does sound interesting. How do waywatchers handle as a unit?

As a dam good distraction. Place a unit of 6 directly behind his battleline/deathstar/war machine and watch as a full third of his army about faces to face them. Admittedly they can die (even when they are being hit on 5/6's) but what they give you is priceless. Either he ignores you and you get a charge off on a small unit (2 hand weapons make for a not bad combat unit, but not a good one) or get some shots of until you annoy him enough to get him to turn around. On the turn they turn around they carn't charge so with some nifty movement you can keep that unit out of the way for 3 turns by marching (and still shooting at no penalty ).

Keep them cheap but large enough to get a reaction from the opponent,a unit of 6 is great because you can really push that range killing blow psychologically and a lot of armies really dont like it. The killing blow is a gimmick really, dont count on it working...but they dont have to know that

They are what the say on the tin, super scouts which pop up an inche behind you and they have a large psychological effect. I once had an 600pt brett deathstar playing cat and mouse with my unit of 6 for 4 turns. He was dead pleased when they died, but less pleased when he saw i had massacred the rest of his army

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:


The killing blow is a gimmick really, dont count on it working...but they dont have to know that

I'm going to disagree here, I see Way watchers as a viable answer to Scar-Vets , Disc heroes and Pegasus heroes. With 2 units of 6 you have a good chance of getting at least one 6 through. They're also extremely handy for sniping out characters after your Glade Guard shoot them down to less than 5 rank and file.

Every gimmick has its uses but lets face it, buying the amount of waywatchers needed to ENSURE a killing blow is counter productive to them being a sacrifical unit as i play them. I have seen people use 8 with WW lord w/ arcane bodkins and BoL combo and a scout hero with HoDA but id say it never gets its points back but most importantly, its worth turning around for. The reason i take WW is to force you to turn around to face a unit not worth the time, but that units is worth the time and a HUGE heap of points.

I see the killing blow as a psychological boon, yes you CAN kill that lone hero, which is why you turn around. If you take that lone hero out with you, all the better. While they are a hard counter to the peg hero and disk these arn't prevelent enough to warrent a unit in a list to counter them. But if you do see them remember you dont have to deploy all fancy-y, deploy back on home turf and march into close range and see your opponent sweat.

Unfortunately, if people are turning around to try and chase down Waywatchers then I wouldn't suggest reading too much into those games, as it's an awful mistake to make.

tmarichards wrote:
Unfortunately, if people are turning around to try and chase down Waywatchers then I wouldn't suggest reading too much into those games, as it's an awful mistake to make.

Unless its the above situation with a hero in them. In which case the unit is worth a chunk of points.

I read in the News section that may be a new WE book in 2013... héhé, I can wait for the book

I've heard nothing about a wood elf book coming out this year...unless the rumoured new release of elves after daemons was mistaken to be high elves when in actuality its the Asrai.......would like that actually...I feel bad for the talented local wood elf player