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My buddy has a ton of HE we were looking at them he has spearmen, archers and seaguard. My feeling is that even though seaguard are the most expensive they are probably worth it since they get a bow and a spear.

We were looking at their core choices as a whole and we think that Spearmen are probably the best and archers are the worst since you can get seaguard for one point more.

A question came up does elf fight in extra ranks stack with the regular spear fight in extra ranks meaning that horde elfs can fight with spears in 5 ranks?

The way to view core with High Elves (which will hopefully change next month) is not what is BEST, but what is the LEAST BAD. HE core is, by default, very underwhelming, and, although they can do stuff, kill things, whatever, they are very pricey for what you get. So when you build a HE list, you want to invest as little as possible in Core, i.e. 25%. In a standard 2400 point game, you should try and spend as little over 600 as you can.

As for the individual units, Spearmen are the way to go. They're the cheapest for what you get and a horde of about 50 is often all the core that people take. Indeed, a horde of 50 with FC and the Banner of Arcane Protection is not a bad unit and is 500 points on the nose, which is very convenient for a 2000 points list. Archers are not bad, but their shooting, despite the nice range, is generally mediocre.
The only thing they can really take out is fragile stuff with little or no armour and at least they can do this from range. Stuff like Dark Elf Shades are good pickings for an Archer Unit. The other usefulness of Archers is a Mage Bunker, if you're not willing to invest the points in Pheonix Guard and/or would prefer to take Swordmasters and/or White Lions. Sea Guard aren't great, but are, my no means, bad. What you said does make them sound a little better, but, since you'll be needing shields, they're really 2 points more. The extra shooting is nice but, since they're primarily a combat unit, you'll be moving ir marching most of the time which minimizes (or removes completely) the effect of your shooting. Bearing in mind that this is the mediocre High Elf Shooting I was on about and Sea Guard, being equipped with only standard bows, don't get the benefit of the range.

tgf wrote:

A question came up does elf fight in extra ranks stack with the regular spear fight in extra ranks meaning that horde elfs can fight with spears in 5 ranks?

Yes, this is possible, one other reason why a horde of 50 Spearmen is a popular choice. Remember that it's only units with Marital Prowess that have the benefit of this rule. As cool as it would be, you can't have Swordmasters fighting in 3 ranks. At least, not yet. There are rumours of army-wide Martial Prowess in the new book...

thanks

Wait for next month.
New high elves on the way.

Just to chime in here, yes, the Spearmen can fight in 5 ranks, which is pretty crazy when combined with "Always Strikes First." In terms of Seaguard, I had a friend that used a giant Horde block of THEM for his entire core 25%. The bows can shoot in "Volley" for the back rows, getting half the shots, so you are still putting out 30+ shots a turn--that can thin down some advancing units even if they have decent armour and so on.

So, that's a thought.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just to chime in here, yes, the Spearmen can fight in 5 ranks, which is pretty crazy when combined with "Always Strikes First." In terms of Seaguard, I had a friend that used a giant Horde block of THEM for his entire core 25%. The bows can shoot in "Volley" for the back rows, getting half the shots, so you are still putting out 30+ shots a turn--that can thin down some advancing units even if they have decent armour and so on.

So, that's a thought.

That's a pretty damn expensive unit then with very little actual threat. I'd just ignore it and go for the threatening units such as Swordmasters. Plus: get a few Stone Throwers at it and watch them melt.

 Sigvatr wrote:
That's a pretty damn expensive unit then with very little actual threat. I'd just ignore it and go for the threatening units such as Swordmasters. Plus: get a few Stone Throwers at it and watch them melt.

If he's doing it properly, said unit will fill as little of his core as possible and therefore will be pretty much exactly the same cost as an equivalent spearmen unit. Expense is not the issue. The issue is that Volley Fire can't be used after moving and ideally, such a unit wants to get into combat at some point. Because it is, actually, fairly threatening, at least not much less as threatening as most other armies' core units.

 The Shadow wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
That's a pretty damn expensive unit then with very little actual threat. I'd just ignore it and go for the threatening units such as Swordmasters. Plus: get a few Stone Throwers at it and watch them melt.

If he's doing it properly, said unit will fill as little of his core as possible and therefore will be pretty much exactly the same cost as an equivalent spearmen unit. Expense is not the issue. The issue is that Volley Fire can't be used after moving and ideally, such a unit wants to get into combat at some point. Because it is, actually, fairly threatening, at least not much less as threatening as most other armies' core units.

Why is it threatening? They cannot take down tarpits, they cannot take down dedicated cc units (Chaos Warriors will blend right through) and they are highly vulnerable to any sort of template weapon...drop two rocks on them and the unit's a goner...or a Warp Cannon template...or a few Bolt Thrower shots...a lot of things take it down with ease :/

 Sigvatr wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
That's a pretty damn expensive unit then with very little actual threat. I'd just ignore it and go for the threatening units such as Swordmasters. Plus: get a few Stone Throwers at it and watch them melt.

If he's doing it properly, said unit will fill as little of his core as possible and therefore will be pretty much exactly the same cost as an equivalent spearmen unit. Expense is not the issue. The issue is that Volley Fire can't be used after moving and ideally, such a unit wants to get into combat at some point. Because it is, actually, fairly threatening, at least not much less as threatening as most other armies' core units.

Why is it threatening? They cannot take down tarpits, they cannot take down dedicated cc units (Chaos Warriors will blend right through) and they are highly vulnerable to any sort of template weapon...drop two rocks on them and the unit's a goner...or a Warp Cannon template...or a few Bolt Thrower shots...a lot of things take it down with ease :/

Because it's 51 ASF WS 4 (with re-rolls, most likely) S3 Attacks. Against a scary unit of Khorne Warriors with AHWs or Halberds, that's 8 or 9 nine down before they can even move. The WoC may well steam through them afterwards, but I wouldn't consider such damage output unthreatening. And that's against fairly elite, combat core. Against Orc Boys with AHWs, that's 12 or 13. Not bad for a unit HE players only take because they have to. And that's not factoring in the Magic support they may be getting from the 4-6 Magic Levels they have supporting them. And yes, they are vulnerable to templates, but if my opponent is firing his warmachines at my spearmen, and not my Mage bunkers, swordmasters or white lions, I will be a very happy general indeed.

 The Shadow wrote:


Why is it threatening? They cannot take down tarpits, they cannot take down dedicated cc units (Chaos Warriors will blend right through) and they are highly vulnerable to any sort of template weapon...drop two rocks on them and the unit's a goner...or a Warp Cannon template...or a few Bolt Thrower shots...a lot of things take it down with ease :/

Because it's 51 ASF WS 4 (with re-rolls, most likely) S3 Attacks. Against a scary unit of Khorne Warriors with AHWs or Halberds, that's 8 or 9 nine down before they can even move. The WoC may well steam through them afterwards, but I wouldn't consider such damage output unthreatening. And that's against fairly elite, combat core. Against Orc Boys with AHWs, that's 12 or 13. Not bad for a unit HE players only take because they have to. And that's not factoring in the Magic support they may be getting from the 4-6 Magic Levels they have supporting them. And yes, they are vulnerable to templates, but if my opponent is firing his warmachines at my spearmen, and not my Mage bunkers, swordmasters or white lions, I will be a very happy general indeed.

Don't let S3 blind you. 51 attacks with re-rolls is a beat stick.
If the unit gets any type of buff, they are amazing.

Against a lot of units, they out hit Ironguts.

 Sigvatr wrote:

They can only move up to 8'' per turn, they need to be charged to come at full effect and are still at T3 / S3. And come at a huge price. They are vulnerable to everything that flies towards them and I could not see how they turn out to be effective at all.

- 10" a turn. That's actually faster than a lot of armies' standard infantry
- Like Matt said, don't let it blind you. The number 3 is the standard value for all standard troops' characteristics, save for M, A, W and Ld. Anything that has any of the others higher than 3 should really be grateful. S3 is still going to be wounding most equivalent units on a 4. If you're wounding on a 5+, never mind, because over 80% of your 51 attacks have just hit. Again, most of the attacks from equivalent units will be S3, so they're still only wounding on a 4. At the end of the day, Elves are Elves, so there's not much we can do about T3 or S3. Apart from the magical buffs and hexes we can throw around will relative ease.
- The price is huge, I won't deny that. It's widely agreed that HE Core is overcosted for what you get and it is one of the big failings of the HE army. That said, the Spearmen Horde is probably the most points effective unit you're gonna get out of the HE Army at the moment.

Ok, slow down here...woah. We can agree to disagree about the effectiveness of such a unit but saying that they are more points-effective than Swordmasters or White Lions is just wrong.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Ok, slow down here...woah. We can agree to disagree about the effectiveness of such a unit but saying that they are more points-effective than Swordmasters or White Lions is just wrong.

Aww, I was enjoying this thread... Best debate since that Teclis thread...

But yeah, I guess we can agree to disagree. And you are right there, most of the Special Choices, certainly the infantry ones, are more points effective than Spearmen. Spearmen are, sadly, just something we have to include at the moment.

Sort of on topic, I wonder if the new HE Army Book will perhaps say that you only have to have, say, 20% Core. It fits in with the theme of HE being an elite army, after all. Back in 7th Edition, we had that rule where our special choices were 0-2 instead of 0-1 or something like that. Now all it is is no "three of a unit" limit, which I don't think anyone would ever have broken really. Just a thought...

 Sigvatr wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:


Why is it threatening? They cannot take down tarpits, they cannot take down dedicated cc units (Chaos Warriors will blend right through) and they are highly vulnerable to any sort of template weapon...drop two rocks on them and the unit's a goner...or a Warp Cannon template...or a few Bolt Thrower shots...a lot of things take it down with ease :/

Because it's 51 ASF WS 4 (with re-rolls, most likely) S3 Attacks. Against a scary unit of Khorne Warriors with AHWs or Halberds, that's 8 or 9 nine down before they can even move. The WoC may well steam through them afterwards, but I wouldn't consider such damage output unthreatening. And that's against fairly elite, combat core. Against Orc Boys with AHWs, that's 12 or 13. Not bad for a unit HE players only take because they have to. And that's not factoring in the Magic support they may be getting from the 4-6 Magic Levels they have supporting them. And yes, they are vulnerable to templates, but if my opponent is firing his warmachines at my spearmen, and not my Mage bunkers, swordmasters or white lions, I will be a very happy general indeed.

They can only move up to 8'' per turn, they need to be charged to come at full effect and are still at T3 / S3. And come at a huge price. They are vulnerable to everything that flies towards them and I could not see how they turn out to be effective at all.

 The Shadow wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Ok, slow down here...woah. We can agree to disagree about the effectiveness of such a unit but saying that they are more points-effective than Swordmasters or White Lions is just wrong.

Aww, I was enjoying this thread... Best debate since that Teclis thread...

Oh, I was under the impression you did not desire to discussion but as it seems that I have been wrong, we can go on

Let's begin with a small comparison:

39 HE spearmen are as expensive as 100 Night Goblins with nets (can't make the unit larger than 100 models ). Let's assume you do not run these in horde formation but 7 models wide to maximize attacks vs. the goblins (that are, of course, 5 wide).

In the first turn of combat, the High Elves cannot make use of the Phalanx USR as they charged the enemy and thus, they strike first with 28 attacks. They hit at 3s and may re-roll missed hits, thus manage to get a total of 25 hits in. Due to the Net gitz, they hit at S2 and thus wound on 3s. Of 25 hits, they are thus able to achieve 8 wounds. The Goblins then get their 6+ armor save which reduces the number of wounds to 6,p7 and they get their parry save which finally makes the unit take about 6 casualties.

The Goblins got 10 attacks, hit at 4s, 5 hits, wound on 4s, 2.5 wounds, 5+ armor save => ~2 dead Elves per turn.

As a result, the High Elves will win every turn but the Goblins test on re-rollable LD 9 and thus tarpit the High Elves for the remainder of the game. Well, that's for equal points.

A common Goblin tarpit is about 60 models (12 ranks) - which is 245 points, a good whopping 120 pts less than the HE unit (5 ranks).

Given the fact that you will be able to charge the Goblins in turn 3, that means the HE unit is still tarpitted for the remainder of the game as they cannot strip off enough ranks to remove Steadfast.

That is, of course, because HE units are, for the most part, overpriced - and I don't know how you'd fit 20 ranks on the battlefield either

The point is that the unit is very points-ineffective and can be easily tarpitted while not being threatening in return - killing 6-8 Goblins per turn is pretty terrible for such an expensive unit and Goblins are pretty much bottom tier strength-wise. Let's not even begin with underpriced Skaven Slaves...

how do you get ld9 rerollable on NG? BlackOrk and BSB nearby?

tgf wrote:
how do you get ld9 rerollable on NG? BlackOrk and BSB nearby?

Standard build for Goblin armies is Goblin Waaaghboss w/ BSB + Banner of Discipline.

That being said, you are therefore comparing a plain, straight-up block of high elves with a goblin block that has support (gen and bsb). How does it fare with the Elves being supported too?

 japehlio wrote:
That being said, you are therefore comparing a plain, straight-up block of high elves with a goblin block that has support (gen and bsb). How does it fare with the Elves being supported too?

The major weakness of goblins being the need to drop the warboss and the BSB into the same unit.
It makes it pretty easy to take one or both out; 1 dwellers is forcing both of these critical models to test. The loss of either can cost you the game.

-Matt

 japehlio wrote:
That being said, you are therefore comparing a plain, straight-up block of high elves with a goblin block that has support (gen and bsb). How does it fare with the Elves being supported too?

Precisely the same. The BSB and General are not in the unit itself, they are in the "Commander block" behind the lines. The HE would profit from a re-rollable LD of 9 as well but that would never come into play because the Goblins are unable to win a fight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HawaiiMatt wrote:

 japehlio wrote:
That being said, you are therefore comparing a plain, straight-up block of high elves with a goblin block that has support (gen and bsb). How does it fare with the Elves being supported too?

The major weakness of goblins being the need to drop the warboss and the BSB into the same unit.
It makes it pretty easy to take one or both out; 1 dwellers is forcing both of these critical models to test. The loss of either can cost you the game.

-Matt

Depends. In competitive (read: balanced) play, they get LOS vs. Dwellers plus your enemy has to be pretty much in melee range to cast Dwellers at the Commander Unit - it's 8-12'' behind the front line and the front line itself is at least another good 7'' thick thus you're looking at a distance of about 16'' - and you'd stand right in front of the front line. And that's not where mages would feel comfortable

 Sigvatr wrote:

Depends. In competitive (read: balanced) play, they get LOS vs. Dwellers plus your enemy has to be pretty much in melee range to cast Dwellers at the Commander Unit - it's 8-12'' behind the front line and the front line itself is at least another good 7'' thick thus you're looking at a distance of about 16'' - and you'd stand right in front of the front line. And that's not where mages would feel comfortable

Having mages in a bunker behind a horde of spear elves is exactly where I'd want to be if facing goblins.
But you are 100% correct. If you change the rules so that goblins don't get sniped by life magic, it's totally cool. Of course, playing in that environment, I would take death magic, and use my LD10 to death snipe your BSB. Since he's got a magic banner, he has no save. Once he's dead, then just move on to the warboss, and the goblin army is left with their leadership 5 or 6.
It's why I stopped playing goblins. You need the standard of disciple, but you can only get it on a BSB as no goblin unit gets a magic banner.
It's also why I run big-uns and black orcs; they free up the BSB to take gear that can survive.

So back to the high elf core.
To make spearmen really dish it out, you need to be in horde formation. This means you won't be stripping steadfast. Since you aren't stripping steadfast, you'll need to target your opponents leadership.
If you go with spears, take lores that support character killing.
If not, archers are better IMO.

What is interesting is 2x archer horde. It's 25 shots each, and 30 ASF attacks. It puts you a bit over the bare minimum (25% core), but it's pretty decent. 60 points cheaper than a seaguard version, with 6" more range, only you've got no armor, instead of 5+ armor.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:


Having mages in a bunker behind a horde of spear elves is exactly where I'd want to be if facing goblins.
But you are 100% correct. If you change the rules so that goblins don't get sniped by life magic, it's totally cool. Of course, playing in that environment, I would take death magic, and use my LD10 to death snipe your BSB. Since he's got a magic banner, he has no save. Once he's dead, then just move on to the warboss, and the goblin army is left with their leadership 5 or 6.
It's why I stopped playing goblins. You need the standard of disciple, but you can only get it on a BSB as no goblin unit gets a magic banner.
It's also why I run big-uns and black orcs; they free up the BSB to take gear that can survive.

Pretty much, yes. Still, you need to be very close to the front line to be in range for the improved 1st Death spell. This helps but puts considerable pressure on you - if a wizard comes close, you have to immediately react to the threat. It's possible to avert the bad consequences, but it's a high risk. It certainly helps that you may only use max 4 dice on Lore of Death. It's one of the reasons why Goblins aren't competitive at all - they are like the inferior version of Skaven. But they are fun, random and green and that's why I love them

All in all, in regards to HE, they always seemed to be have a "core tax" on the army aka you just get minimum core in form of MSU archers and then fill up with elite / rare stuff. That's what I'd hope to see with the new codex. I would love to see High Elves in comp play again with balanced, very specialized units. I like their visuals and they are a perfect fluff match for my Goblinz

 Sigvatr wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:


Having mages in a bunker behind a horde of spear elves is exactly where I'd want to be if facing goblins.
But you are 100% correct. If you change the rules so that goblins don't get sniped by life magic, it's totally cool. Of course, playing in that environment, I would take death magic, and use my LD10 to death snipe your BSB. Since he's got a magic banner, he has no save. Once he's dead, then just move on to the warboss, and the goblin army is left with their leadership 5 or 6.
It's why I stopped playing goblins. You need the standard of disciple, but you can only get it on a BSB as no goblin unit gets a magic banner.
It's also why I run big-uns and black orcs; they free up the BSB to take gear that can survive.

Pretty much, yes. Still, you need to be very close to the front line to be in range for the improved 1st Death spell. This helps but puts considerable pressure on you - if a wizard comes close, you have to immediately react to the threat. It's possible to avert the bad consequences, but it's a high risk. It certainly helps that you may only use max 4 dice on Lore of Death. It's one of the reasons why Goblins aren't competitive at all - they are like the inferior version of Skaven. But they are fun, random and green and that's why I love them

All in all, in regards to HE, they always seemed to be have a "core tax" on the army aka you just get minimum core in form of MSU archers and then fill up with elite / rare stuff. That's what I'd hope to see with the new codex. I would love to see High Elves in comp play again with balanced, very specialized units. I like their visuals and they are a perfect fluff match for my Goblinz

Death Signature buffed is 24", more than enough for death sniping.
As for core tax, I'd say about half the armies fall into that category. Vampires, Tomb Kings, Orcs and Goblins, maybe daemons. Actually, out of all the 8th edition books released, I'd say that ogres and empire are the only two where I don't feel bad about spending ~35% to 50% in core.

-Matt

24'' means your wizard's unit is directly next to the front line (sth. like 6'') - more often than not, when people tried this, they found themselves dead in the next turn.

O&G do not have a core tax, imo, as they got very reliable and effective tarpits in form of Night Goblins.

 Sigvatr wrote:
24'' means your wizard's unit is directly next to the front line (sth. like 6'') - more often than not, when people tried this, they found themselves dead in the next turn.

O&G do not have a core tax, imo, as they got very reliable and effective tarpits in form of Night Goblins.

Leadership 5 makes for an unreliable tarpit.
I've seen small units of white lions bunker wizard very effectively behind spear hordes. It's not super easy to get around a 10 wide horde to hit a narrow lion bus. Even if you do get around it into the flank, you've got a few problems. It's stubborn. It's S6, and it's ASF. I was frequently going up against lions deployed 3 wide and 4 deep (11+wizard).
You just can't hit the wizard without either killing the spear horde, or killing all 11 white lions. Fast cav would take a beatdown from the 4 white lion attacks.

The the hidden hitting power of spears is how fast they carve though buses. Against a 5 wide bus, they are getting 28 to 35 attacks (without any attached characters). A 5 deep bus is putting out ~12 wounds on the charge (only fighting in 4 ranks), and ~15 wounds when not charging. On the charge, that's breaking steadfast of an 8 deep bus.

Against horde models, spear hordes are killing about as many as 7 wide sword-masters. But the extra 2 ranks of spears is what makes the difference.

-Matt

Figured I would post an update. My buddy tried running a 50 man seaguard unit. I crashed into it with a 10 wide horde of gors with beast banner and two miasma on him, he dispelled one miasma and my wildform. I crushed him and ran him down first round of combat. He is very discouraged. His stand and shoot killed 2 gors and his ASF (no-reroll miasma) and hits on 5's miasma, it was bad. I think he killed 7 gors total with the stand and shoot and combat, and he rolled a little better than average I killed 21 elves with my BSB included in the fight. He was not stead fast losing 2 ranks we both had 3 ranks at that point. He broke I ran him down.

For the cost I don't think any of the HE core are good at this point. I hope they get a buff in the up coming codex because they got schooled by units that cost 2/3rds what they do. Of course the magic is a big help but even unbuffed I think my Gors would have beat them even without the aug/hex hammer. I will say it was an impressive site to see.

tgf wrote:
Figured I would post an update. My buddy tried running a 50 man seaguard unit. I crashed into it with a 10 wide horde of gors with beast banner and two miasma on him, he dispelled one miasma and my wildform. I crushed him and ran him down first round of combat. He is very discouraged. His stand and shoot killed 2 gors and his ASF (no-reroll miasma) and hits on 5's miasma, it was bad. I think he killed 7 gors total with the stand and shoot and combat, and he rolled a little better than average I killed 21 elves with my BSB included in the fight. He was not stead fast losing 2 ranks we both had 3 ranks at that point. He broke I ran him down.

For the cost I don't think any of the HE core are good at this point. I hope they get a buff in the up coming codex because they got schooled by units that cost 2/3rds what they do. Of course the magic is a big help but even unbuffed I think my Gors would have beat them even without the aug/hex hammer. I will say it was an impressive site to see.

With that many spells, I'm not surprised you won. Gnoblars could have won that.
As for unbuffed.... 50 attacks, 3/4 hit (4+ with re-roll), 5+ to wound = 12.5 dead gors. Stand and Fire, hits on 4's, wounds on 5's. 20 shots. 3.33 dead.
With just stand and fire and then normal swings, high elves net ~19 kills.
How many ranks of gors did you have?
If you had 3 ranks after taking 7 losses, I'm betting you started with 40.
That would leave you with 21 gors, 31 attacks (more likely with re-rolls to hit). 3/4 hit, 2/3rds wound, 5/6ths fail armor save. High elves lose 12.91 wounds. BSB is going to get a few extra kills, giving the beastmen an edge in the first round of combat.
After the first round, Gor and Seaguard are trading man for man (well, beast for elf). Due to shooting making the elves start with more men, in the end, they come out ahead.
More accurately, the battle will come down to support units.

From the sound of it, the problem was that the high elf player was outclassed in the magic phase, and didn't thin down the gor horde on the way in.
High elves do have the tools for this (1 to 2 shooting phases of volley fire will result in the gors bouncing on the charge), as well a bound Fury of Khaine. Flames of the Phoenix just erases that beast unit.



-Matt

I run a 50-55 man gor horde with xhw most games.

tgf wrote:
Figured I would post an update. My buddy tried running a 50 man seaguard unit. I crashed into it with a 10 wide horde of gors with beast banner and two miasma on him, he dispelled one miasma and my wildform. I crushed him and ran him down first round of combat. He is very discouraged. His stand and shoot killed 2 gors and his ASF (no-reroll miasma) and hits on 5's miasma, it was bad. I think he killed 7 gors total with the stand and shoot and combat, and he rolled a little better than average I killed 21 elves with my BSB included in the fight. He was not stead fast losing 2 ranks we both had 3 ranks at that point. He broke I ran him down.

My concern with this situation is not how you wiped out the sea guard unit, but rather how your opponent was so helpless against your magic... Please tell me he took a Level 4 and remembered his +1 to dispel...