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I dont get why people are so set on cannons/shooting. ST´s are nasty for sure but I havent played a game/tournament with at least 5pieces of terrain on the field so shooting while nasty was never a game winner.

It probably has to do with how points are gained.

A greater daemon is easier to get points from than an equivalent amount of basic troops if you have access to cannons.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It probably has to do with how points are gained.

A greater daemon is easier to get points from than an equivalent amount of basic troops if you have access to cannons.

This.
It's simply annoying that we can no longer really protect our most important model, (General + Lv4 wizard), who's over 500pts which can simply be one-shoted with a lucky cannonball.
Hell, even the big fatboy can now be one-shoted since he lost 4 wounds from almost every single previous incarnation!

High Elves on the other hand now have an instant out on their big gribblies, especially the meanest one being the Frostheart who gets a basic 5++ that can then be improved upon!

Don't your greater daemons have invuln saves too? They should be at least as durable as the Phoenixes if not more.

That said I think all Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes should come with 4+ wards standard.

Yeah, the point is everything is tied into that one unit. A vampire can be bunkered and you can still have other casters. Same with a TK heirophant.

But you're only going to have one lvl 4 as doc. He is 100% likely to be your general. He has no look out sir. He can't join units. He's a large target.

Loss of TZ loremasters probably hurt 8th Doc the most.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Don't your greater daemons have invuln saves too? They should be at least as durable as the Phoenixes if not more.

That said I think all Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes should come with 4+ wards standard.

It´s 5++ for the whole army yes but as duke said, it´s a 400pts huge target (naked) with no access to BRB stuff except weapons. It´s not shabby but it can turn against you pretty hard. Again, I havent played a single WHF game since 4th without less than 5pieces of terrain so some cover/LoS block was accessable in all my games but >500 pts in one single model that can get LoS is pretty harsh. Time to get a lot DoC games under my belt now, I will meet HE in a few days and will give it a shot with DoC.

As a Daemons player, the new High Elves book makes me want to find a dark corner, assume the fetal position in said corner, and weep until my eyes fall out.

DukeRustfield wrote:

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.

No, I was the one that pointed out, between misfires, missing the target (~2" target), failing to wound, passing ward saves, and failing to do enough wounds, cannons aren't exceptional against smaller based monsters. 3 cannons for 1 solid hit is a good rule of thumb.
Stone throwers ignore the terrain and screening issues, but come down on target slightly less often.
IMO, ambushing flesh hounds and furies are a must.
If you do go up against a machine horde, the furies can make an initial run at them, and then if they fail (when they fail) the hounds coming in from behind take out the warmachines.
An army will be hard pressed to stop both. You might have to hide for 2 turns, but that leaves you 4 turns of warmachine free to do your thing.

-Matt

HE book is a big let down. Does any army need 3 different chariots in their special ?
There's a bunch of new characters that don't really do much differently ( I think the lore aster is cool, but the other ones are pretty worthless)
The big birds are cool, but really they are just dragons with ward saves.

I don't like the world dragon banner and I think the lore attribute is potentially broken = games that are no fun. It's way too easy to have several 3+ ward save units, characters, monsters.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
3 cannons for 1 solid hit is a good rule of thumb.

On average a cannon will hit and wound a GD.

This is your general in your Unstable army who all have LD 7 max, too. He's also your spellcaster. He's also a mega combat force. So you can't as easily shuttle him off to hide behind far-flung hills.

buckero0 wrote:
HE book is a big let down. Does any army need 3 different chariots in their special ?
There's a bunch of new characters that don't really do much differently ( I think the lore aster is cool, but the other ones are pretty worthless)
The big birds are cool, but really they are just dragons with ward saves.

I don't like the world dragon banner and I think the lore attribute is potentially broken = games that are no fun. It's way too easy to have several 3+ ward save units, characters, monsters.

The Anoited is godly actually. He comes with a built-in 4++ meaning his magic items alotment is open for plenty of other fun things AND he makes his entire unit ItP, and then just for kicks, gives his unit a 6++ was well. You can tool him up for well under 300pts if you want, meaning it's quite do-able to have him and a tooled-up Lv4 in 2400pts games.

Teclis is a rediculous force multiplier and buffer extrodinaire.

Alarielle is the end-all-be-all of being a total donkeycave to Daemon players when combo'd alongside a White Lion unit w/BotWD.

The Frostheart from what my buddy has told me needs an urgent FAQ, since apparently his own entry doesn't limit the -1S down to a minimum of 1 like the hex spells do... Thus you can run him into a unit, hex them down to S1 and come the combat phase, the Phoenix drops them to S0 and instantly explodes the entire unit!
(note: this is what a friend who has their book has been telling me...)
But if true, well, like I said; FAQ please or we've got some pretty rank cheddar here! That's quite a bit better than anything any 'ol dragon will ever acomplish.

DukeRustfield wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
3 cannons for 1 solid hit is a good rule of thumb.

On average a cannon will hit and wound a GD.

This is your general in your Unstable army who all have LD 7 max, too. He's also your spellcaster. He's also a mega combat force. So you can't as easily shuttle him off to hide behind far-flung hills.

Daemons are not Unstable like Undead are. Losing our general will not force crumble tests.
Instead, Losing your Greater Deamon means you lose your only Lv4 wizard (unless you're playing like 3200pts or higher!), and of course, your General (who only gives his Inspiring Prescence to 25% of the book anyways! )

If you really wanted to make a point about Alarielle, I would be looking at the banner which having Alarielle unlocks.

Spells from the Lore of Light and the Lore of Life cast by a friendly wizard that target a unit containing the Battle Standard Bearer with the Standard of Avelorn (it can only be on the BSB apparently) gain a +4 bonus to cast.

The entry for the Frostheart Phoenix (in the print book at least) explicitly states in the "Blizzard Aura" entry:

Warhammer Armies: High Elves page 53 wrote: Any enemy unit in base contact with a Frostheart Phoenix has the Always Strikes Last special rule and suffers -1 to its Strength (to a minimum of 1).

DukeRustfield wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
3 cannons for 1 solid hit is a good rule of thumb.

On average a cannon will hit and wound a GD.

This is your general in your Unstable army who all have LD 7 max, too. He's also your spellcaster. He's also a mega combat force. So you can't as easily shuttle him off to hide behind far-flung hills.

Average:
23 out of 36 shots produce a bounce that crosses a base that is more than 2" and less than 4" (ie, 50mm base at any angle). (6/36 shots misfire, 7 out of 36 fail to bounce far enough).
5 out of 6 successfully wound.
4 out of 6 bypass the ward save of a non-tzeench daemon.
Discounting terrain blocking bounces/LOS, or monstrous beasts stopping the ball, you have a 35.4% chance of getting past a daemons defense. Then you roll number of wounds.
So, like I said, if you want to count on 1 cannon getting through, it's best if you have 3.

To bring this back around to high elves, what's the best way for high elves to deal with hard monsters (like Chimeras, hydras and Abombs)?



-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
So, like I said, if you want to count on 1 cannon getting through, it's best if you have 3.

Assuming the cannons explode after round 1. You can put your army and cannons anywhere. Only 2 GD fly. If they run to get into combat to get they will leave their entire army and simply die.

Daemons are not Unstable like Undead are. Losing our general will not force crumble tests.
Instead, Losing your Greater Deamon means you lose your only Lv4 wizard (unless you're playing like 3200pts or higher!), and of course, your General (who only gives his Inspiring Prescence to 25% of the book anyways! )

I think people know what it means. Unstable is shorter than Daemonic Instability. Unstable doesn't force crumble tests, btw. That's a VC/TK thing. But it's a big deal. ~25% of your points, your general, your toughest champion (by far), highest caster/dispeller (by far), highest LD (by far). It's tough to see recovering from losing a GD within the first few turns.

There are several daemon players in my local meta I'm looking forward to using this army book on.
All the ones who, while trampling on all comers when the daemon book first came out, responded to all complaints with "suck it up and learn to play better"
What goes around, comes around.

If you were losing to 8th daemon book you indeed need to l2p cuz it's pretty sucky except for nurgle. It's certainly worse than previous edition.

If a newcomer to Warhammer were to read this thread, he'd be left with the impression that there are only two armies in the game.

 Flashman wrote:
If a newcomer to Warhammer were to read this thread, he'd be left with the impression that there are only two armies in the game.

Speaking of which, I think VC might have a hard time with HE.

 Tangent wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
If a newcomer to Warhammer were to read this thread, he'd be left with the impression that there are only two armies in the game.

Speaking of which, I think VC might have a hard time with HE.

VC have a hard time with anyone can shut down their magic. That's the big downfall of all Undead - without their magic, they're a combat army with overall weak units who rely on expensive characters & rares to generate kills.
However, most of their units also drop like flies in combat and with Unstable, it's much harder for them to support their fighty units with chaff because that chaff really does die in droves!

Experiment 626 wrote:

buckero0 wrote:
HE book is a big let down. Does any army need 3 different chariots in their special ?
There's a bunch of new characters that don't really do much differently ( I think the lore aster is cool, but the other ones are pretty worthless)
The big birds are cool, but really they are just dragons with ward saves.

I don't like the world dragon banner and I think the lore attribute is potentially broken = games that are no fun. It's way too easy to have several 3+ ward save units, characters, monsters.

The Anoited is godly actually. He comes with a built-in 4++ meaning his magic items alotment is open for plenty of other fun things AND he makes his entire unit ItP, and then just for kicks, gives his unit a 6++ was well. You can tool him up for well under 300pts if you want, meaning it's quite do-able to have him and a tooled-up Lv4 in 2400pts games.

Teclis is a rediculous force multiplier and buffer extrodinaire.

Alarielle is the end-all-be-all of being a total donkeycave to Daemon players when combo'd alongside a White Lion unit w/BotWD.

The Frostheart from what my buddy has told me needs an urgent FAQ, since apparently his own entry doesn't limit the -1S down to a minimum of 1 like the hex spells do... Thus you can run him into a unit, hex them down to S1 and come the combat phase, the Phoenix drops them to S0 and instantly explodes the entire unit!
(note: this is what a friend who has their book has been telling me...)
But if true, well, like I said; FAQ please or we've got some pretty rank cheddar here! That's quite a bit better than anything any 'ol dragon will ever acomplish.
)

I generally don't even look at the special characters because they're usually terrible or overpowered/undercosted.

I forgot aobout the annointed. There are good things in the book but like I said who needs an army full of 3+ ward saves? Especially when there are so many other books that need an update. and can't deal with most armies.

as for there only being 2 armies in the game . . .

we have a hard time getting new players to play fantasy as it is. I've got two friends that play regularly. Both play HE. two others play Ogres and VC but aren't around very often. The VC player also plays HE and doesn't really play VC much (Ive only seen him complain about them, not play them)
We have some new players that play O&G and dwarves - the dwarf player gets hurt every time he plays no matter what list he plays. Everyone else is too sporadic and plays too infrequently.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Tangent wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
If a newcomer to Warhammer were to read this thread, he'd be left with the impression that there are only two armies in the game.

Speaking of which, I think VC might have a hard time with HE.

VC have a hard time with anyone can shut down their magic. That's the big downfall of all Undead - without their magic, they're a combat army with overall weak units who rely on expensive characters & rares to generate kills.
However, most of their units also drop like flies in combat and with Unstable, it's much harder for them to support their fighty units with chaff because that chaff really does die in droves!

I guess I was more referring to the Banner shutting down Vampires with magic weapons, plus decent shooting to remove our chaff, plus better casters, plus having high leadership which makes them less susceptible to screaming...

 Tangent wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Tangent wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
If a newcomer to Warhammer were to read this thread, he'd be left with the impression that there are only two armies in the game.

Speaking of which, I think VC might have a hard time with HE.

VC have a hard time with anyone can shut down their magic. That's the big downfall of all Undead - without their magic, they're a combat army with overall weak units who rely on expensive characters & rares to generate kills.
However, most of their units also drop like flies in combat and with Unstable, it's much harder for them to support their fighty units with chaff because that chaff really does die in droves!

I guess I was more referring to the Banner shutting down Vampires with magic weapons, plus decent shooting to remove our chaff, plus better casters, plus having high leadership which makes them less susceptible to screaming...

Actually, it's the same problem we've always had. White Lions are stupidly good. Hopefully with more new toys, we see less white lions.
If you run a lower magic vampire list that is more focused on specials and rare beat-sticks, it should still do fine against elves.
I'll still be running a coven throne vs high elves, it tends to do pretty well.
I'll still be running spirit hosts against high elves, because I want to force you to use that S4 magical flaming armor piercing shots on my skirmishing ethereals.

Good points. But I mean, does anyone run vampires without magic weapons? I know I don't.

As for the Coven Throne, why does it do well against Elves? They have high leadership against Battle of Wills, and aren't the attacks of the spirit horde magical (and so are screwed by the banner)?

I'll say it again: not every unit in the HE book has the banner. The Coven Throne probably does pretty well against all but the single unit that does have the banner. And the Elves' Ld isn't as good as it appears. Most of the time, we aren't going to be taking a Ld 10 General.

Damn. Then they will be a horrible LD8 and 9, with Valour of Ages and magic banners on every unit that wants it.

Pathetic.

Pheonix Guard auto have 2++ against magic though? Of course this was "costed"
/derision off
Potentially a lot of the armycare v hard to kill. T3 doesn't seem that likely to matter.

 The Shadow wrote:
I'll say it again: not every unit in the HE book has the banner. The Coven Throne probably does pretty well against all but the single unit that does have the banner. And the Elves' Ld isn't as good as it appears. Most of the time, we aren't going to be taking a Ld 10 General.

The battle of wills isn't magical hits.
If you're general is Ld9, and mine is Ld10, and I give -1 Ld, I start up by 2 in the contest.
That's a ~9% chance that your unit swings on it's self and doesn't attack in melee at all for the round.
Most likely, the high elves are going to be re-rolling successful hits, but a 9% chance of a unit killing itself every round it attacks is pretty good.

If I can get doom and darkness, the Ld drop boosts the kill yourself result to ~41%.

Kicking around the idea of running manfred, since his double lore master will give me doom and darkness, and still let him be general.

-Matt

I like the new book. There I said it. The banner that everyone complains about will be a crutch that isnt quite as useful as a Skaven Storm Banner. One army and a couple units might be affected game wide, while the skaven banner had the ability to shut down multiple entire armies that relied of shooting or flyers. Sorry daemons, you are on your own. In the army list I am using I only have a standard BSB with a magic bow to shore up my archer blocks on my back line.

I really like the set up of the book. For the first time ever, I was able to build an army the way I had planned befoe release(2 eagles in one rare slot? Yes please, may I have another?). Effectively this book lets you easily build a themed list from any of the nations. You might not get your specialists as core but you get them and since every nation has archers at a minimum there you go. Aside from the dreaded Banner or Daemon Pants Changing, the items are pretty decent and decently priced. I havent really looked at magic, its my least favorite part of the game, so i built in a defensive mage and will figure otu what to give him later.

The fluff was ok. One part although minor kind of bugged me, the part where the HEs dont really need to trade since they have more enchanted weapons in their armories than they have troops to use them. Sooooo why not issue those weapons instead of sending troops out to fight daemons and undead without them? Duh!

Oh and as for someone writing a few pages back that GK were the hard counter to the daemon army... well they are GK. They are supposed to be the daemons worst nightmare. But to counter their daemon stomping ways, they are supposed to be only so-so vs everyone else since they are only used against daemons by the Imperium. But Ward came and changed that a bit......

I wonder if you couldn't field a gunline-ish army right now. Their archers are extremely effective and both Skaven and Dark Elves are FoD armies. Add in the joke of the new lore and you could have a very effective shooting phase, you just lack template-ish stuff...enter Phoenix. Might be interesting.

 Sigvatr wrote:
I wonder if you couldn't field a gunline-ish army right now. Their archers are extremely effective and both Skaven and Dark Elves are FoD armies. Add in the joke of the new lore and you could have a very effective shooting phase, you just lack template-ish stuff...enter Phoenix. Might be interesting.

BF 5 one turn 6 with effective S4 magic weapons shot from 3+ ranks is pretty damn nasty. Bolt throwers to spice things up and the new bolt thrower on the chariot to come from the flank. It´s "just" S5 but it is a "flying bolt thrower" and S5 should be enough against a lot of core troops.