Wood Elves Rumor Roundup

[eldargal]

two female torsos per sprue for the Eternal Guard/Woodland thingies? 4/10 in all if so, not bad.

[Chronowraith]

I hope I'm not coming off as "The sky is falling" but I do foresee issues. Overall, I like the book. Unlike the previous book, all of the units seem to work well with the 8th edition rules, even if at times they took some of the character out of them. I'll try and form everything into coherent thoughts but that likely won't happen until after my family stuff later today.

I'm not worried about monsters, Wood Elves have always been good at creating pin-cushions out of them,. I'm more concerned with handling your average T4 guys like Ogres, Chaos Warriors, etc. *Shrugs* I'll just have to see how things pan out. I'll be facing the new book tomorrow with my Skaven.

[lattd]

I think the various arrows will allow us to deal with most things, arcane bodkins and the poison arrows deal with high save and high toughness respectively.

[Chronowraith]

Arcane bodkins make glade guard more expensive than chaos warriors. I'm not saying they won't be useful or help out, but it will certainly cost WE in points.

A few good points I've noticed...

Sisters of the Thorn are as good, if not better, than DE Warlocks.
Glade riders will make some of the best warmachine hunters in the game. (they picked up Ambush)
I really like that magic arrows are unit upgrades now. They are a bit expensive to me, but, are still very useful.
War Dancers are great.
Wild Riders are great with 3 S5 attacks on the charge plus another S4 from the mount.
Wildwood Rangers are awesome... almost like mini-white lions (not quite that good)
Warhawks, while at least being usable, are still very ineffective. KB on the charge is nice but they die to a stiff breeze for Monstrous Cavalry.

Weird Stuff
Branchwraiths and Treemen have no gear options (for the most part, treemen can take a shooting attack). So what you see is what you get.
Minor heroes like the shadow dancer and waystalker can only take 25 points of items.
If appropriate terrain is on the board, Drycha is pretty sick. If you thought the green knight was irritating bouncing around the woods, she can let Forest Spirit Units come in from reserve if they can fit into the woods.

[Mr Mystery]

Quite a few of the new character classes tend to have lower magic item values.

It's likely to peg them a bit more level with your traditional heroes, who don't get snacky special abilities off the bat

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And can anyone outline Arcane Bodkins for me?

Can't really stretch to the book at the mo, as I may be off to see QI later in the month (waiting to hear if I have tickets)

[Chronowraith]

Arcane Bodkins are -3 Armor Save. Still S3 mind you.

I guess that's my issue. They have plenty of ways to get around armor (lots of armor piercing in this army) but you have to wound before the enemy worries about making armor saves. I remain unconvinced that WEs will be able to wound effectively since nearly everything is S3 (Wild Riders, Warhawks, Treekin, and Treemen are the exceptions).

[Mr Mystery]

To be honest, when it comes to hurting stuff with Elves, I'd take average strength ranged attacks over hand to hand combat pretty much any day.

After all, if I whiff it when shooting* my bows, nobody gets hurt. If I whiff it in melee, it's gonna be me that gets horribly, horribly hurt!

Add in that Bows can pretty much start tonking from turn one, and that S3 -3 is looking pretty damned tasty. Quick bit of slight rubbish math hammer (remember, I don't have the book yet, so forgive unintentional inaccuracies!)....

20 Chaos Warriors (with shields) against 20 Glade Guard with Arcane Bobbins. One would assume the Wood Elf play would deploy to take as much advantage of the 30" range as possible, so probably 6" away from their board edge. Chaos would want to close the range, so 12" from the edge, giving a neat 30" between the two.

If Wood Elves bag the first turn....20 shots, 10 hits, 3 wounds. That's 3 dead Chaos Warriors, taking them down to 17 in number. Chaos player then marches 8", closing the range to 22. 20 shots, 10 hits, 3 wounds, 3 dead Chaos Warriors, taking them down to 14 in number. Chaos player advances, on account he has precisely no other choice. Now he's within 15"....20 shots, 15ish hits, 10 wounds, call it 8 wounds. And the Chaos player is left with just 6 extremely spiky blokes. At 14" range, Chaos Warriors could potentially charge, though it's a bit touch and go, as even if they succeed, the Glade Guard can still stand and fire. Let's assume he goes for the charge, as on balance, it's still preferable to taking another full volley in the Wood Elf turn. Stand and fire - 20 shots, 10 hits, 3 dead Chaos Warriors, leaving three. Chaos is quite possibly losing that combat due to ASF...

If Chaos goes first? Pretty much the same story overall, but the combat might be more favourable, really depends if that early charge is pulled off.

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And there's also the various Lores of Magic out there to either wallop the enemy, weaken the enemy, or buff up your dudes.

[Chronowraith]

The problem with MathHammer is that it only takes into account things in a vacuum. The Chaos Warriors won't be the only unit on the field and it's unlikely that it will be the priority target for the first couple turns with Daemon Princes, Chimera, and Chariots all extremely common.

I tend to disregard Magic as a factor unless it's simply overpowering (Teclis, Slann, etc) as every other army has it too...

Again... I'm not saying Wood Elves suck or are unplayable. I'm simply concerned that they may have issues with T4 armies. I mean... what happens when playing against dwarves who can also stand back and shoot pretty effectively?

[Mr Mystery]

All Elves face the same issue.

One way or another, they can dish it out in spades, but fold like a cheap suit when it comes to retribution.

ASF is all fine and well, but you need to do serious damage for when the enemy hits back.

From what I've read about Stick Pixies, they follow that general expectation.

Which to be honest, is one of the joys of Warhammer. You can't death star you're way the victory, or even out of trouble. You need to own each turn, and pick your fights.

[Chronowraith]

While that axiom is generally true of all Elves I'd say DE and HE have better damage potential since they have a large number of units with Great Weapons, Halberds, mounted cavalry with lances/spears. WE have a few of those. Right now I'd largely consider Wildwood rangers and Wild Riders a must have since they can dish out some serious damage.

I'm okay with glass cannons as long as the cannon part actually works.