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Ok, the new Swordmaster Lord is stupid.

He gets all 8 Signature spells.


And High Magic is actually good, stupid good.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Lolz @ stubborn being some kind of weakness for the banner. I'll counter that 50pt banner with a 300pt dragon!

I would not exactly call "Enemy dragons get Stubborn" an advantage when someone decides to throw a dragon at you.

I'm kind of annoyed that the High Elves got so many exclusive magic items. Its close to 20 including the Everqueen, I believe. I had thought that the 8th edition scheme on magic items was just a few themed items for the Army book, then use the extensive list in the BRB. All of the hardback books got maybe 5-6 items until now. I get that it fits the theme that High Elves are almost the best at making magic items, but its kind of lame for folks that lost some magic items that they liked. Not particularly game breaking, I think, but just annoying.

I'm tempted to search back in my post history where some of us discussed this very issue and predicted the small Magic item sections would only last 4 or so books and the power level of the newer items would increase.

Edit: Magic item count is 15 items, including Heirloom items.

Gotta say I'm intrigued by the Heirloom Item thing. Hopefully we see it pop up more.

Well guys, every 8th army book was incredibly well-balanced so far. Enter Mat Ward breaking this rule. Well played.

The Sisters of Avelorn are T3 elves with a 6+ armour save. Shoot them with anything and they'll fall over.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Well guys, every 8th army book was incredibly well-balanced so far. Enter Mat Ward breaking this rule. Well played.

The book has been out for a whopping one day. Would it hurt you too much to stop your bashing until people have had a chance to test the book and see how powerful it is here in real life?

Check my previous post, I said I did.

The HE army book, however, is the only 8th army book where even at first read, some things just get at your face.

And really, Mat f-ing Ward.

 NELS1031 wrote:
I'm kind of annoyed that the High Elves got so many exclusive magic items. Its close to 20 including the Everqueen, I believe. I had thought that the 8th edition scheme on magic items was just a few themed items for the Army book, then use the extensive list in the BRB. All of the hardback books got maybe 5-6 items until now. I get that it fits the theme that High Elves are almost the best at making magic items, but its kind of lame for folks that lost some magic items that they liked. Not particularly game breaking, I think, but just annoying.

I'm tempted to search back in my post history where some of us discussed this very issue and predicted the small Magic item sections would only last 4 or so books and the power level of the newer items would increase.

Edit: Magic item count is 15 items, including Heirloom items.

Gotta say I'm intrigued by the Heirloom Item thing. Hopefully we see it pop up more.

Yeah, that's totally different than the 9 items + 14 bloodlines that vampires got, and another 11 unique items on special characters.

15 doesn't seem that bad for high elves.

Experiment 626 wrote:
League/Campaign gaming isn't a tournament.

Yes, and this is my point. In any situation where you are not trying to WAAC (for prizes and the like) bringing the BotWD against a Daemon Army you know you will be playing is not a very nice thing to do at all. Sadly, I cannot do anything about this.

Niteware wrote:Possibly 30 would be overkill, but they should be at least mid 20 ppm for hits on 2s, -2 to AS

They're really not that good. Compare them to Dwarf Thunders. Dwarf Thunderers are the same amount of points with a S4 Armour Piercing Weapon with the same range. This weapon also gives them +1 to hit, so, effectively, they're on BS5 as well. Thunderers lose out on flaming and magical attacks but they gain the advantages of being T4 with a 5+ Save, not T3 with a 6+ save and they're Core, not Rare.

Grey Templar wrote:
And High Magic is actually good, stupid good.

Really?

The Lore Attribute is awesome, but that's where the complete awesomeness ends. Walk Between Worlds is pretty good but you can only wheel, not reform facing any way like you can with Hand of Gork, so it's not that good. Drain Magic and Arcane Unforging are all pretty good spells as well, and Soul Quench is a solid Magic Missile. Hand of Glory is underwhelming as HE tend to have those characteristics aplenty and why not take Shadow and be able to guarantee getting Melkoth's which has pretty much the same effect. Tempest is good, but S3 is underwhelming. Apotheosis is situational, though useful, and Fiery Convocation is just inferior to Dwellers in most respects.

It's a good lore, but certainly not "stupid good". I may still stick with Life/Shadow. Flesh to Stone or The Withering seem far more useful to me, though, that may be just how I like to play.

Fiery Convocation doesn't do the same thing as Dwellers though. It's vastly superior against stuff like slaves. Dwellers kill 50% and is then done. Fiery Convocation kills 66% of the block AND sticks around. It's a really powerful, albeit expensive, spell that doubles as magic defense, just like Flames of the Phoenix in the current book.

Can I repeat my question to those who have the book...

Do Eltharion and Stormwing still fit into a 2000pt army?

First impression...GK have arrived. Second thoughts, its 8th and ETC will comp them into a shiny gold turd because it is quite obvious GW does not have anyone capable of balanced rules writing left on their staff.

Nah, that's not true. All other 8th army books are really well-written. It's just Mat Ward being an a-hole and stuff.

Oh, and High Elves wizards can now wear magic armor. Whoop whoop. Dragon Mages at least.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Nah, that's not true. All other 8th army books are really well-written. It's just Mat Ward being an a-hole and stuff.

Oh, and High Elves wizards can now wear magic armor. Whoop whoop. Dragon Mages at least.

Well, technically Dragon Mages who were ment to be fighty wizards should have had the option for armour in the last book... (just like Vampires should never have been forced to pay 20pts just to get heavy armour+shield!)

But I do agree that both of Ward's Fantasy books are rediculous...
Daemons are laughably horrific in their internal balancing - we may as well just throw everything Khorne & Tzeentch bar ambusing Flesh Hounds, Skillcannons & LoC out the window and be done with it!
The Reign of Comedy table is a double kick to the junk of the Daemon player and needed to be FAQ'd to even work as intended because Ward can't write proper fething english...
Daemonic Generals and BSB's can only ever effect 25% of the book's units! (but only Nurgle is really viable as a mono-god list)
Locus abilities overall are horrifically overcosted, and Herald themselves are the squishiest characters in the entire game bar a Nurgle Palanquin rider.
The way Daemonic Gifts work is beyond attrocious when you compare it to how well it was implimented in the 40k book... For example, not only am I forced to spend 500+ pts to put a decent Lv4 on the table, but now I only get a 16% chance to get cannonball protection?!

High Elves on the other have no real 'weak' choices. Everything for the most part is readily competitive and there's alot of hard choices to be made in list design. (a really good thing!) There's a couple OTT special characters for sure, and the BotWD is laughably undercosted and silly in it's effects.
But overall High Elves are in a really good standing right now, and will probably be right up there with Ogres & WoC in terms of their competitiveness.



It just feels like Ward didn't give a crap about Daemons and didn't want to actually be bothered with the project, while it's readily clear that he was highly enthused about the High Elves and has thus given them a very strong and vibrant book that can build almost themed list you could ever dream up.

 Flashman wrote:
Can I repeat my question to those who have the book...

Do Eltharion and Stormwing still fit into a 2000pt army?

He's 5 points cheaper coming in at 490 with stormwing so to answer your question, yes

 pities2004 wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
Can I repeat my question to those who have the book...

Do Eltharion and Stormwing still fit into a 2000pt army?

He's 5 points cheaper coming in at 490 with stormwing so to answer your question, yes

Thank you

 Sigvatr wrote:
Check my previous post, I said I did.

The HE army book, however, is the only 8th army book where even at first read, some things just get at your face.

And really, Mat f-ing Ward.

but, but, but, we need to play with army for 6 months before we can know anything!

/sarcasm off

Pretty much whatever happens now we are stuck with an edition that has a huge disparity in power between the best and worst books. Another problem for sure will be that the power of the HE book is going to influence the power of books down the road.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Nah, that's not true. All other 8th army books are really well-written. It's just Mat Ward being an a-hole and stuff.

Oh, and High Elves wizards can now wear magic armor. Whoop whoop. Dragon Mages at least.

Well, technically Dragon Mages who were ment to be fighty wizards should have had the option for armour in the last book... (just like Vampires should never have been forced to pay 20pts just to get heavy armour+shield!)

But I do agree that both of Ward's Fantasy books are rediculous...
Daemons are laughably horrific in their internal balancing - we may as well just throw everything Khorne & Tzeentch bar ambusing Flesh Hounds, Skillcannons & LoC out the window and be done with it!
The Reign of Comedy table is a double kick to the junk of the Daemon player and needed to be FAQ'd to even work as intended because Ward can't write proper fething english...
Daemonic Generals and BSB's can only ever effect 25% of the book's units! (but only Nurgle is really viable as a mono-god list)
Locus abilities overall are horrifically overcosted, and Herald themselves are the squishiest characters in the entire game bar a Nurgle Palanquin rider.
The way Daemonic Gifts work is beyond attrocious when you compare it to how well it was implimented in the 40k book... For example, not only am I forced to spend 500+ pts to put a decent Lv4 on the table, but now I only get a 16% chance to get cannonball protection?!

High Elves on the other have no real 'weak' choices. Everything for the most part is readily competitive and there's alot of hard choices to be made in list design. (a really good thing!) There's a couple OTT special characters for sure, and the BotWD is laughably undercosted and silly in it's effects.
But overall High Elves are in a really good standing right now, and will probably be right up there with Ogres & WoC in terms of their competitiveness.



It just feels like Ward didn't give a crap about Daemons and didn't want to actually be bothered with the project, while it's readily clear that he was highly enthused about the High Elves and has thus given them a very strong and vibrant book that can build almost themed list you could ever dream up.

Not my intention go too far OT but every unit in the DoC book has a 5++ by default so there is your cannonball protection for no extra points. The Heralds are actually not that squishy except the Tzeentch one but he is not meant to go into a bear knuckle fight.
Besides that I cant believe they really made the HE book as it is. But well, I am used to play against stupid lists so one more is for me not the problem but the impact on WHF as a whole is terrible.

 Gorbad wrote:

Not my intention go too far OT but every unit in the DoC book has a 5++ by default so there is your cannonball protection for no extra points. The Heralds are actually not that squishy except the Tzeentch one but he is not meant to go into a bear knuckle fight.
Besides that I cant believe they really made the HE book as it is. But well, I am used to play against stupid lists so one more is for me not the problem but the impact on WHF as a whole is terrible.

A 33% chance to protect your easily 500+pts General and only Lv4 caster, when everyone else at least gets access to a 15pts/4++ item?
Yeah, still looks like we're on the massive losing end of that one!

And now HE's can insult us even more by potentially building a 3++ onto their big gribblies...

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Gorbad wrote:

Not my intention go too far OT but every unit in the DoC book has a 5++ by default so there is your cannonball protection for no extra points. The Heralds are actually not that squishy except the Tzeentch one but he is not meant to go into a bear knuckle fight.
Besides that I cant believe they really made the HE book as it is. But well, I am used to play against stupid lists so one more is for me not the problem but the impact on WHF as a whole is terrible.

A 33% chance to protect your easily 500+pts General and only Lv4 caster, when everyone else at least gets access to a 15pts/4++ item?
Yeah, still looks like we're on the massive losing end of that one!

And now HE's can insult us even more by potentially building a 3++ onto their big gribblies...

Come on, that´s a one trick pony. I dont say our lvl4 is cheap and well protected but it´s not that bad. Could be better though plus the lack of BRB items is a bit GAK but well, all in all I like the new book and playstyle way more than the old one.

Don't overlook that those greater daemons have 5 or 6 wounds, that helps out quite a bit.
Also a daemon prince clocks in under 400 points as a level 4 wizard, which some daemon players seem to like to forget when they are crying about their daemon options.
For 75 points, daemons can drop a cannon ball stopping wall on the table during the game.
Finally, daemons get access to very durable monstrous beasts to screen cannons.

The list as a whole is fairly cannon survivable.

-Matt

 NELS1031 wrote:
I'm kind of annoyed that the High Elves got so many exclusive magic items.

I'm really happy about this. One of the things I loved about 7th edition books was the number of magic items available and all the awesome, unique combinations you could make. I'd thought that 8th had killed this but I'm glad to see, for the HE at least, I was wrong. There's lots of awesome combos still available. Get a large unit of spearmen (or something else) and give them the Banner of eternal flame then stick a character (BSB for example) in the unit with the Gem of Sunfire. Activate it and for one turn the entire unit gets +1 to wound! Remember everyone, you saw this tactic here first!

I do hope this magic item tradition continues though. But, that said, as long as DE keep the Sacrificial Dagger, I'm not too bothered

You can't give core a Magic banner anymore. We lost that option. You can give that Banner to a BSB Noble and then give the Gem to a mage.

I'm happy that Hero can now take a griffon mount. So I finally have a use for my IoB griffon lords. Now I can run both for just under 600 points.

 Sir Blayse wrote:
You can't give core a Magic banner anymore. We lost that option. You can give that Banner to a BSB Noble and then give the Gem to a mage.

I'm happy that Hero can now take a griffon mount. So I finally have a use for my IoB griffon lords. Now I can run both for just under 600 points.

Spears can still take a banner.

Read through the book yesterday, a few things that caught my eye: The shadow king character (Cannot remember his name ) has a bolt thrower bow that will be fired at BS7 and S7 with D3 wounds. I think this is actually really good, I think he clocked in at 250 points. He will be way more reliable than a BT at putting wounds on monsters.

I do think that drain magic is too good. Unless I am mistaken it can remove augment/ hex spells that are not remains in play. So effectively your opponent will only be getting one combat phase (in his turn) with his mindrazor or other buffs up. I think this is so far a very underestimated spell.

Petrocco wrote:
Read through the book yesterday, a few things that caught my eye: The shadow king character (Cannot remember his name ) has a bolt thrower bow that will be fired at BS7 and S7 with D3 wounds. I think this is actually really good, I think he clocked in at 250 points. He will be way more reliable than a BT at putting wounds on monsters.

I do think that drain magic is too good. Unless I am mistaken it can remove augment/ hex spells that are not remains in play. So effectively your opponent will only be getting one combat phase (in his turn) with his mindrazor or other buffs up. I think this is so far a very underestimated spell.

Alith Anar is pretty good, it's just a shame that Shadow Warriors aren't quite as good.

As for drain magic, whilst it is great in theory, spells like Mindrazor only need to be active for one phase to utterly wreck you. Does help against the spells being used as a deterrent though.

Does drain magic remove hex effects on High Elf units or all friendly units?

I believe so.

The spell is an Augment if cast on friendlies and a Hex if cast on enemies. It removes RiP and Hex/Augment spells on the target unit IIRC.

Cryda wrote:
Does drain magic remove hex effects on High Elf units or all friendly units?

You can target a single enemy or friendly unit within 18", the spell being a Hex or Augment respectively. All spells affecting that unit are removed. You can also boost the power of the spell to remove all spells on all units, both friend and foe, within 18".

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Sir Blayse wrote:
You can't give core a Magic banner anymore. We lost that option. You can give that Banner to a BSB Noble and then give the Gem to a mage.

I'm happy that Hero can now take a griffon mount. So I finally have a use for my IoB griffon lords. Now I can run both for just under 600 points.

Spears can still take a banner.

Sorry, I run Sea Guard instead of regular Spearmen. So I didn't notice they still had it. I find the Flame banner better when you can use it to shoot and to stab with though. 2

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Don't overlook that those greater daemons have 5 or 6 wounds, that helps out quite a bit.
The list as a whole is fairly cannon survivable.

I think it was you who was mentioning how even ward 4+ heroes were doomed from war machines. There's cannons and there's stone throwers. A few stone throwers will take out any GD. They get no LoS at all. It's a big deal.