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After finally getting several games of WFB under my belt, I've tweaked my Caledorian High Elf list a bit.

LORDS
Prince - 256
~dragon armor, shield, barded steed, Vambraces of Defense, Sword of Might

HEROES
Mage - 165
~lvl2, Silver Wand, Power Stone

Noble - 218
~dragon armor, shield, barded steed, lance, BSB - Battle Banner

CORE
21x Spearelves - 234
~full command, War Banner

10x Archers - 110

SPECIAL
5x Dragon Princes - 215
~full command, Banner of Ellyrian

5x Dragon Princes - 200
~full command

18x Phoenix Guard - 300
~full command

RARE
2x RBT - 200
2x Great Eagle - 100

TOTAL: 1998pts

(Note: I predominantly face a Dwarfs. An Orc player should be joining in soon.)
Plan would be to have the Prince join the Ellyrian Banner unit of Dragon Princes with the BSB joining the other.
Originally, I had a second mage, the BSB was not carrying the Battle Banner, had a second unit of Spears as opposed to the archers, had a 3rd unit of Dragon Princes instead of the PG and had one fewer RBT. Playing at 1k levels, I've found that that extra CR is nice to have, and I liked how the PG were able to hold their own and not die easily to shooting. Also figured Magic for the most part was wasted unless I went full out, so I'm hoping the lvl2 will be able to at least run some support-type magic.

Think this would hold out ok?


Thanks in advance.

*Bump*

I too am curious. Thinking about starting High Elves.

ixlar wrote:I too am curious. Thinking about starting High Elves.

They're quite fun! Although, generally, if something hits you, you die. I like 'em a lot, though it'd be nice to have a bit better survivability.

Other option I'm considering:

LORDS
Prince - 256
~dragon armor, shield, barded steed, Vambraces of Defense, Sword of Might

HEROES
Mage - 165
~lvl2, Silver Wand, Power Stone

Noble - 218
~dragon armor, shield, barded steed, lance, BSB - Battle Banner

CORE
21x Spearelves - 234
~full command, War Banner

20x Spearelves - 205
~full command

SPECIAL
5x Dragon Princes - 215
~full command, Banner of Ellyrian

5x Dragon Princes - 200
~full command

6x Dragon Princes - 200
~Drakemaster

RARE
2x RBT - 200
2x Great Eagle - 100

TOTAL: 1993pts

Overall faster than the option with the Phoenix Guard, and actually with slightly more numbers. BSB would be going with the 5 strong DP unit without the Banner of Ellyrian, making for 3 6-strong units of Dragon Princes.

I'm starting to kind of lean toward this list, but not sure which one would fare better. Main downside with this list is that I'd have to buy some more stuff -__-.
It feels a bit more in line with the theme with the 3 units of Dragon Princes, though.

I'd stick with your theme and go with the heavy DP list. It just seems more offensive minded and thats how I think a caledorian army should look. At least at first, you can always put some pheonix guard in later if you want.

I'm gonna try to get my "themed" units done first in my army(magic and swordmaster heavy saphery army), but thats just me. I'll probably add some DP's and a block of PG eventually just cause they look so good

Your Lord

Ok I see where you are going, something to hold in close combat with a rune axe character. However do one of three things.

1. Reduce his to as Hero for 80% of the fighting power and 50% of the price. Lords really only work if you take army items or monsters a hero cannot. If you want to chop up enemies do so on the cheap.



2. Go all the way and boost his defences further. Vambraces are not armour, it provides (here) a 2+ rerolled armour save and a 4+ ward save. Add Temakadors Gauntlets and you get a a rerollable 1+ save, a 4+ ward save and a 5+ ward save. Nice thing isd that anything that modifies the armour save by strength will run into the final ward save.

Before it was very touch and go, especially against save negating items, but now you have a very good chance of surviving a challenge with an enemy general.

3. When facing Dwarves swap out the Vambraces for Talisman of Saphery. You will have a better chance keeping just the armour save and negating magic weapons than adding ward saves. In fact I would save the points by cutting your leader down to a hero and give him an enchanted shield for the 1+ save and a lance. This ought to be good enough against Dwarves. Cloak of Beard looks tempting, but you could drain the wrong item and be left facing the runeaxe.

Mage
No problem right up until the time you face an enemy with magic. Four dice wont go far, and armour negating spells cast on Dragon Princes will quickly cost you the points you saved by not taking a second mage.

BSB
This guy does work, and could be added to an infantry unit, ut he can die very easily, especially against any unit the combat esolution is most needed for. You need to be really rerally careful with him.

If you want to add d6 to your combat resolution get it through chariot impact hits.

CORE

21 spearelves, just how I run them.

SPECIAL

f you want Dragon princes avoid thestandard bearer unless you want a magic banner, and the only banner you need is Warbanner. Dragon rpinces are too expensive to take more than five or six of, and are too random in their attacks. Standard and warbanner gives you a healthy +2. Battlebanner looks like it helps, but it is more randomness. If you want random take it cheap, match every unit with a chariot slam trhem all in together and rely on the imapct hits to help drive your attacks home. Sure you can still be unlucky, but you would have to be very unlucky.

Meanwhile if you do lose you may lose the 50pt sdtandard beaervmodel, yes steep isnt he. You lose him and his unit strength and his attacks with the loss of the standard. For Dragon Princes you must win and that means flank charges of chariots.

I would prefer to see the Phoenix Guard than a third unit of Dragon Princes.

RARE

No problems here.

Other than that I dont have much to say, the list is rather good.

Good points, Orlanth.

On the Lord: I'm vacillating between getting a tooled up Lord over 2 Heroes. I think I may take the latter, running one with Talisman of Saphery to go up against my friend's Dwarf Lord. Somehow I overlooked that item, glad you pointed it out to me.

Question: on your suggestion of Temakador's Guantlets - can you take two ward saves from it? I know that its ward save is conditional (must be S4+, which isn't an issue against Dwarf heroes/lords), but I thought that you could only take one ward save (whichever's best) in the event that you have multiple ward saves?


On the Mage: I agree with your assessment. In the event that I encountered an opponent with Magic, I would certainly shuffle points around for the second mage. For the most part, however, I'll only be facing against my friends, who tend to lean magic-light.

BSB: Valid point. Not having the option for magic items does make him fairly vulnerable to the combat he'll most likely see.

Dragon Princes: Perhaps I'll drop the warbanner from the spears and give it to the second DP unit instead. DPs are rather expensive, but so far in the 1k games I've been playing, they've been doing quite well at breaking enemy units and earning their points back. I do suspect that a unit of Phoenix Guard will make the army more stable than a 3rd unit of Dragon Princes, but I'm curious to try out a very Dragon Prince-heavy list. May try to fit in a chariot as a support unit.

I'll think about some tweaks to this list. Thanks for the input so far.

HFJor wrote:
On the Lord: I'm vacillating between getting a tooled up Lord over 2 Heroes. I think I may take the latter, running one with Talisman of Saphery to go up against my friend's Dwarf Lord. Somehow I overlooked that item, glad you pointed it out to me.

Take characters for the job they do, not for how hard they hit. If you need a lord, take a lord, if you only need a hero take only a hero. If you take two you are wasting points, the second hero is not worth his price in troops. That is unless you have another role for the hero to perform.

HFJor wrote:
Question: on your suggestion of Temakador's Guantlets - can you take two ward saves from it? I know that its ward save is conditional (must be S4+, which isn't an issue against Dwarf heroes/lords), but I thought that you could only take one ward save (whichever's best) in the event that you have multiple ward saves?

Yes! Unlike 40K saves accumulate. In the example given above you get a cascade of four saves. There are other combos that give three or four saves, but both are based on Vambraces of Defence or Helm of Fortune. Helm of Fortune and Guardian Phoenix is the budget 'invincible' hero option.

HFJor wrote:
Dragon Princes: Perhaps I'll drop the warbanner from the spears and give it to the second DP unit instead. DPs are rather expensive, but so far in the 1k games I've been playing, they've been doing quite well at breaking enemy units and earning their points back. I do suspect that a unit of Phoenix Guard will make the army more stable than a 3rd unit of Dragon Princes, but I'm curious to try out a very Dragon Prince-heavy list. May try to fit in a chariot as a support unit.

Dragon Princes work and work well. But basing an army around them is a bad idea, your model count will be too low. Phoenix Guard are the opposite to Dragon Princes they are ultra resilient rather than an offensive unit. Phoenix Guard can hold the line that is reduced in size by having multiple Dragon Prince units.

Orlanth wrote:Take characters for the job they do, not for how hard they hit. If you need a lord, take a lord, if you only need a hero take only a hero. If you take two you are wasting points, the second hero is not worth his price in troops. That is unless you have another role for the hero to perform.

Good point. I'm still stuck a bit in "Timmy" mentality (to bring up an old MTG term) in getting lots of big(relatively) shiney/hitty things in my list.

Orlanth wrote:Yes! Unlike 40K saves accumulate. In the example given above you get a cascade of four saves. There are other combos that give three or four saves, but both are based on Vambraces of Defence or Helm of Fortune. Helm of Fortune and Guardian Phoenix is the budget 'invincible' hero option.

Not to say I don't trust you on this point, just to get the understanding of how it all works properly within the context of the rules:
On page 30 of the BRB in the blurb about Ward Saves, it says that a model may only ever make one ward save against a wound suffered. Is it just the conditional part of the Gauntlets that allow him to get the extra 5+ Ward?

Orlanth wrote:Dragon Princes work and work well. But basing an army around them is a bad idea, your model count will be too low. Phoenix Guard are the opposite to Dragon Princes they are ultra resilient rather than an offensive unit. Phoenix Guard can hold the line that is reduced in size by having multiple Dragon Prince units.

I don't disagree with your points here. The third unit of Dragon Princes would be chosen completely for thematic reasons more than anything else. Most likely, I will opt for the Phoenix Guard option for some more stability/resilience (and because I already have the models, so no more buying would be needed ). In the games I've tried them out, they've been wonderfully dependable and durable. And again, I'll probably try the 3 DP unit list for the sake of fun/diversity at some point just to see how they run.

After playing some more games, I'm definitely decided to use the Phoenix Guard over the 3rd unit of Dragon Princes.

New list with Orlanth's suggestions:

HEROES
Noble - 156
~barded steed, dragon armor, lance, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Saphery

Noble - 138
~barded steed, dragon armor, lance, shield, BSB

Mage - 165
~lvl2, silver wand, power stone


CORE
21x Spearelves - 234
~full command, War Banner

21x Spearelves - 214
~full command

10x Archers - 110

SPECIAL
5x Dragon Princes - 215
~full command, Banner of Ellyrian

5x Dragon Princes - 180
~Drakemaster, Musician

17x Phoenix Guard - 285
~full command

RARE
2x RBT - 200

2x Great Eagle - 100

TOTAL: 1997

Should be a lot more stable now. The archers give a nice bit of extra shooting, though I'm considering a chariot as well for those points.

Ok, after playing a bit against my friend's Dark Elves, and seeing how nasty magic can be, I've decided to add in more Magic support to my list.

HEROES
Noble - 138
~barded steed, dragon armor, lance, shield, Helm of Fortune
~General

Noble - 138
~barded steed, dragon armor, lance, shield, BSB

Mage - 165
~lvl2, Silver Wand, Power Stone

Mage - 170
~lvl2, Jewel of Dusk, Dispel Scroll


CORE
21x Spearelves - 234
~full command, War Banner

20x Spearelves - 205
~full command


SPECIAL
5x Dragon Princes - 215
~full command, Banner of Ellyrian

5x Dragon Princes - 180
~Drakemaster, Musician

15x Phoenix Guard - 255
~full command


RARE
2x RBT - 200

2x Great Eagle - 100

TOTAL: 2000 pts exact

EDIT: Alternatively, I could replace the two mages with a single Archmage @lvl4, with Seerstaff of Saphery and Ring of Fury for 5 points less.

If you're going to use two mages, make sure which way you want to go: offense or defense. Right now, I'd definitely consider adding in the Ring of Fury instead of the power stone; since it works every turn and contains a dangerous spell, it'll drain more dispel dice the the power stone. Also, in my experience power stones only work if you inlclude lots, so you can really overwhelm the enemy for two consecutive magic phases. With only two mages, you won't be draining many scrolls early, so the power-stoned spell will just get scrolled.

If you are scard of the dark elf magic, consider the Anullian crystal: not only will you boost your dispel dice pool, you steal a power die, meaning an effective gain of two dice.

You don't need full command on your dragon princes, so you could save some points there. Also, I'd consider giving the war banner to your bsb since he doesn't have a nice magical flag to wave about. It's a bit more fragile, but will allow you to put +2 combat res + wounds from the bsb where you need them most.

Orlanth wrote:
Yes! Unlike 40K saves accumulate. In the example given above you get a cascade of four saves. There are other combos that give three or four saves, but both are based on Vambraces of Defence or Helm of Fortune. Helm of Fortune and Guardian Phoenix is the budget 'invincible' hero option.


Not to say I don't trust you on this point, just to get the understanding of how it all works properly within the context of the rules:
On page 30 of the BRB in the blurb about Ward Saves, it says that a model may only ever make one ward save against a wound suffered. Is it just the conditional part of the Gauntlets that allow him to get the extra 5+ Ward?

Only one ward save I'm afraid. If you want to go full defense against a dwarf lord, consider combining theTalisman of Saphery witht he cloak of beards. Mix with a mounted prince with some gear or a prince on foot with gw and armour of Caledor, and enjoy
Good luck against the druchii!