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7th Ed. Dealing with a Treeman

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SiegeCommander

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My buddy who plays wood elves recently started running one in every game we play. We usually play 1k-2k games and I have not taken it down once. It's not that I haven't won a single game it's just that I never seem to have anything capable of killing it. It hides in the forest so it's really hard to target, and even once you can see it it's still t6 6wounds 3+as and 5+ward :( How do you guys kill or deal with them?
 
If you're playing in higher point games, a Slaan with Lore of Fire would be more than a match with some clever Channeling. Otherwise, perhaps a Scar-Veteran with the Burning Blade of Chotek. True, you're only hitting on 4+ and wounding on 5+ (those change to 3+ and 4+ with an Oldblood), but with 4 (or 5) Attacks, you might get lucky.
 
I think an Oldblood is still S5 asrodrig :) so that would still be 5+ to wound ;) how about mounting him on a Carnosaur? :P
 
Ah, you're right - he is "only" S5.
As for the Carnosaur - that would definitely do some damage as well, especially with Ultimate Predator multiplying your wounds and stuff. Off the top of my head (I'm obviously not the best at calculating these on the fly, but I'll give it a shot anyways), he's hitting on 4+ and wounding on 2+?
 
carnosaurs are S7 iirc.
except the BBOC wich kills a treeman after only 3 wounds, it negates his armor save and maybe his ward save aswell if he is a forest spirit.
also blowpipe spam would probably work, 20-30 skinks shooting at it. there are only so many 3+/5+ saves he can make
 
Well, I took out a treeman in one round via an EotG charge and pulse. d6+1 S6 impact hits in addition to d6 s5 no armour saves. I had a bit above average rolls and turned him into a pile of timber.
 
Lore of metal is great. 3+ save means S5 with Spirit of the Forge. 7 hits on avarage, 2.33 wounds that doubles to 4.67 as they are flaming. If you have bane head and you target a treeman ancient you are looking at 9 wounds per Spirit of The Forge. Lore of Fire is pretty crappy, as all have S4 which means they only wound on 6s, and the treeman still gets a 4+ save.

A unit of 12 skinks also does 1 wound per shooting phase if they are at close range or didnt move (4 psn hits, 4 regular hits causing 0.66 wounds, 4.66 wounds = 1.55 unsaved, 1 slips throught the ward save). Only problem with using skinks is that the strange root attack is absolutley devestating to skinks, so only use them to finish the treeman off.

Blade of Realites is probably your best bet if you dont run a slann. 5 attacks should force 3.3 LD tests, each one with a 28% chance to fail and poof the treeman (17% for an ancient), which should take 1-2 combat rounds before he poofs. That or the Tzunki blade works alright(3.3 hits, 1.65 wounds and no saves at all), but its pretty useless against the rest of the army as they dont have any decent save. Burning Blade of Chotec is pretty nasty too, 3.3 hits scores 1.1 wounds negating all saves and dublicating to 2 wounds, which would also work well on a Scar Vet, but they wont hit on 3+ so their are less effective.

In the monster department Carnosaurs are great and engines should cause 1 wound per Burning Alignment.
 
The reason skinks do well is because it's large they can move and shoot at long range and still hit on 6's. If you throw 36 wounds at it his armor will let 12 through, and his ward will let 8 through. Just shoot him 216 times with pipes, which isn't that super hard considering each one shoots twice a turn, so 20 skinks can throw 40 a turn, 5 turns of continuous pewing will take it down.
 
What about Salamanders? Their flaming attacks add the extra damage and if I remember correctly it's a significant negative to armour. Granted it's low strength but no worse than a skinks. Plus if you pack in a few Salamanders it's just that many more attacks.

Plus the Manders are effective for the rest of the game...

Just a rookie suggestion, I imagin there is a reason why they've not been suggested yet but they were the first that came to mind.
 
JohnMavrick said:
What about Salamanders? Their flaming attacks add the extra damage and if I remember correctly it's a significant negative to armor. Granted it's low strength but no worse than a skinks. Plus if you pack in a few Salamanders it's just that many more attacks.

Plus the Manders are effective for the rest of the game...

Just a rookie suggestion, I imagine there is a reason why they've not been suggested yet but they were the first that came to mind.
Click to expand...

Ok lets assume you have a group of 3 salamanders and none of them eats a skink and the template doesn't miss... then you will be hitting a grand total of 3 times... :(

If you did the same scenario with 3 razordons you would be dealing between 6-30 hits.
and you don't have to worry about the template missing either.
 
Razordons vs Treeman: Avarage 5 hits, 0.83 wounds, 0.41 unsaved wounds, 0.27 slips thru the ward. 0.27 wounds per 80 pts of razordon per turn.

Salamander vs Treeman: You won't be hitting the entire treeman so right off the bat we do an avarage of 0.5 hits, and thats assuming we can't misfire or miss with the template. 0.08 wounds, 0.069 unsaved wounds, 0.046 wounds after ward. 200 salamander shots to do 2 wounds.. effective...

12 Skinks vs Treeman: 24 shots, 4 poisons, 1.33 wounds, 0.88 after ward. 84 pts of skinks does 0.88 wounds per turn, the far best shooting choice (0.073 wounds per skink per turn, 82 shots = dead treeman). Skinks are still a VERY BAD choice to take down a treeman, a strangleroot attack should kill 4-5 skinks easily (auto hits, wounding on 2+).
 
I was about to comment on how the skink priest channeling spirit of the forge seemed to be the most viable tactic, then I realized that it's not a magic missle :( Even so out of all the tactics posted here I think that spell is the most viable tactic, trouble is getting the treeman in line of sight. If the tree man is in the forest the old blood on a carno will have a lot of trouble getting the charge off and chances are the treeman isnt the only thing hanging around those woods. So you could possibly be sending your old blood into an ambush to hunt the treeman or get him lost and marchblocked in the woods.
 
I haven't ever played wood elves before so I'm a bit foreign to the concept of a treeman. Can someone explain what they do/what wood elf players use as tactics for them?

So far it looks like they hide in the woods somewhere and cast spells or something? Then if you get close they have some pretty devastating attacks. The only thing is... woods are only so big you know? The little bubble of invisibility seems like it would be easy to chase the thing out of with a carnosaur.
 
Sorry John, but salamanders are completely terrible against treemen, despite being flaming attacks. If you plan to pew it to death then blowpipes are super effective at wounding the thing.

Personally, I find that the best way to take care of a tree man is with 15 skinks with a banner. You just charge at the thing in the flank and voila you are fine. The tree man kills an average of 2.777 skinks on it's attacks, have two ranks banner outnumber and you win. Get on it's flank and you have an extra 2 points of safety to beat the thing. Further, the ranked skinks can still throw their javelins at it, and use all ranks, making them quite effective at getting poison, and the occasional non poison wound in. They can also very easily stand and shoot the thing to death. Mostly, they cost around 80 points (no specifics) and can easily hold the thing down for quite some time. (3 dice leadership is surprisingly effective even needing a 6) The presence of a Toad makes this even more viable, since his leadership of 9 and the banner makes them tarpits against this guy, he wounds kroxigors just as easily as skinks, so why not let him eat skinks and hope he fails stubborn sometime?

Also, a group of 3 or four kroxigors is a good way to finish him off. They'll unfortunately only put 1.25 wounds on him a round, but they'll chop it down eventually if they get his flank and keep beating it in combat. The big thing to remember is that the thing costs nearly 300 points, he costs as much as 57 skinks...so...yeah.
 
i wouldn't us a banner against that guy, 20 skinks maybe, but a banner gives 100 VP's away if you fail combat...
i only have 1 question: is he a forest spirit? if yes then the EotG ignores goth his saves and wounds on 5's, 2 turns of brning alignment should make himm die, or just charge him and get impact hits aswell wich wound on 4's and ignore armor saves. even fore efecive would be a chief with the war-spear, the impact hits alone should kill him if not for the additional 6 S6 attacks.
 
Burning alignment is a horrible plan unless he's quite wounded. It is not a flaming attack as far as I remember in the errata, and it still needs 5's to wound, and only hits on average 3.5 times so.... slightly more then one wound, which is pretty crummy. The real reason why it is a terrible thing to do is because a tree man on the other hand throws 2.7777 wounds onto the skink priest, with 1.85 of them getting through his armor. An even slightly below the mean roll and your skink priest gets K.O.s off the back of the stegadon, and there's not much you can do about it, not to mention, his roots can still perchance bring itself home to hit the priest. A stegadon without the burning alignment is likely to get it's stega-ass kicked by the treeman because the tree man has more attacks and more weapon skill, gets a ward save against the stegadon itself, and has a slightly higher initiative in case things get real close, just forget about the guys on its back doing anything. (though impact hits could give you a win certainly, it's risky)

If I were to try and bring down the tree man, I'd throw skinks at it, just skinks. If you REALLY are so worried about that banner then just replace it with musician and more skinks to hold more ranks for longer, and give you more initial poison javelins, just bring it to half health and you'll get enough VP to pay for the skink unit, not to mention skinks are innately useful against wood elves because they act as good fodder to absorb arrows, and the lack of rank bonuses means that just 25 skinks with banner and musician can hold up against things like dryads or treekin. (with toad helping especially)

If that doesn't work, just use saurus. They aren't very good at wounding it, but at least they hit on 4's and hit a lot. They are sub-optimal compared to skinks because the tree man bypasses their armor and their toughness, but they are still a ranked unit.
 
DonkeyHotep said:
If I were to try and bring down the tree man, I'd throw skinks at it, just skinks. If you REALLY are so worried about that banner then just replace it with musician and more skinks to hold more ranks for longer, and give you more initial poison javelins, just bring it to half health and you'll get enough VP to pay for the skink unit, not to mention skinks are innately useful against wood elves because they act as good fodder to absorb arrows, and the lack of rank bonuses means that just 25 skinks with banner and musician can hold up against things like dryads or treekin. (with toad helping especially)
Click to expand...

Spirit of the Forge is by far the best way to kill him, he is a large target and you can see him everywhere. If he hides in a forest, why bother going after him? He isn't gonna do anything that has an impact on the game unless he gets treesurfed, in which case he must spend at least 1 turn to get out of the forest so you hit him when he sets up his charge.

Pit of Shades is another great spell, he only has In 2, so if you land a pit of shades on him chances are he is gonna poof, no saves allowed. The rest of the metal spells are far better against wood elves tho, so I still recommmend SotF.

Skinks aren't the best idea thanks to Strangelroot as I alraedy mentioned. They get 360 degrees stand and shoot, killing an avarage of 4-5 skinks. If your 15 big unit of skinks charge the Treeman you loose 1 rank on the charge and another one in the first round of combat. Then you're down to 8 skinks, which means you have outnumber and 2 ranks vs 2 kills in the combat phase in your turn, in his turn he clobberes 2-3 skinks, wins combat and is outnumbering terror causer, bai bai skinks.

A unit of 25 skinks can hardly hold up a unit of dryads. 6 Dryads get into combat, 12 attacks, 8 hits, 6.67 wounds and a 6+ save, killing 5.57 winning, which means they win most combats and you loose ranks very quickly (and soon 247 VPs). 4 treekins (the by far most common size) kills 6.67 skinks winning with 1-2 every turn, 2-3 rounds of combat and they break from outnumbering fear causers. When it comes to tanking wood elf heavy hitters Saurus is way, way better (even for if you count "per point") and can dish out some serious pain back at them.

In my experience there are 2 effecient ways to take treeman down, either by magic (SotF or Pit) or by just zerging him. Take a few turns to get everything into position, then hit him with Burning alignment, 36 skink blowpipes, giant bows, javelins, razordons and everything else you have and just hope you can blow him up in 1-2 turns of horrendoues mass shooting. If you try to take him down by chipping away at him, throwing a random unit of skinks now and then to blow pipe him, they will just end up getting killed by strangleroot or run off by terror.
 
How about some Skink/Krox units... the stats in the Krox wounding loo like the best odds yet and the krox will knock that terror test down to a fear test... throw in a banner and you night even (with more than a little luck) beat it in combat.
 
actually, he doesn't get a ward save from the war-spear, the impact hits become magical, thats why i suggested it.
as for spells, i'd rather go for shadow. while pit of shades is only usefull on the treeman (maybe treekin and dryads but i have no ideea what I they have) you still have steed of shadow for a scar vet with GW and venom and unseen lurker to get your slow saurus in position/to charge, not to mention the magic missile thingy against T3
lore of metal usually relies on armor and WE's barely have any.
 
I don't think I would use skrox for taking down any sort of monster... Myabe in combination with something else but not alone.

I think the best bet, besides the spells listed, is a scarvet with a burning blade of chotec. The strength six will give you -3 to your armor but if you have a cold one, enchanted shield and light armor you'll get a 0+ save or a 3+ after modifiers. Then, you'll be wounding on 5's with 4 attacks, which take the 3+ armor save away COMPLETELY! Plus the cold one and whatever group of coldones make it into combat with the treeman.

So, lets assume you charge and I haven't messed up the rules for treemen.

4 attacks at WS 5 means you hit twice, wound a little less than once with double wounds. So you may or may not get 2 wounds per turn. He attacks back with 5 attacks, hits 2.5 times (3 times if against your other cold ones) wounds twice (or about 2.5 times against the cold one riders) and you save 1.6 wounds, taking .8 (or taking 1.6 ish against your riders). So you should either tie or win most combats, not that he'll flee on a stubborn 9.

So, even then, spells are probably better. I mean, the margin for error in this is great because if you do one more or one less wound the difference is 2 wounds. That means you could just as easily do 4 wounds as none if you don't roll average.

A carnosaur with a burning blade of chotec is even more potent... if you are fighting a dryad army and want to really lay down the hurt. 2-4 flaming wounds with no armor save plus probably 1 to 2D3 wounds with no armor saves (ward save though).
 
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