8th Ed. Help vs. Wood Elves

[underdog6750]

Hi all. I am due to a very experianced gamer in the not so distant future for a 2.5-3k game. Ive only just got back into playin WFB and have never played against WE or any elves for that matter.

I am looking for any tips stratagies anyone may have for dealing with them. The bulk of my army is saurus based. Also any lore that would be particularly usefull would be apprichiated.

Thanks in advance for any input.

 

[Boq]

Firstly, strengths of WE : LOTS of accurate strength 3 bows
fast moving, annoying units
ability to negotiate terrain easier
high WS/BS
high iniative

weaknesses:
Low strength and toughness
only strength 3 shooting
few in number

Lore- Fire- can totally destroy elves/trees
life (reccomended) - not only can dwellers slaughter elves but if you boost your saurus to T6 or even T8 + regen then wood elf shooting is laughable. added bonus- most wood elves will be hanging around in woods for safety, ironically it increases the destructivness of life's awakeining of the wood

Stegadons are useful for impact hits but the key is to concentrate on saurus as skinks are not nearlly as useful against str3 targets, also, saurus will slaughter WE in combat and hold off most of what they can through at them, especially with life buffs.

 

[n810]

Watch our the tree spirit units, all of their attacks are magical (Driads, treemen, brantch wraiths, ect..)
these are the close combat specialist of the wood elf army are a prety evem match for Saurus wariors,
Definately watch out for the tree men, they are easily a match for a stegadon anchent.

Ps. all the tree units are immune to psycology as well.

 

[Naiilo]

Depends on the type of army the WE General plays.

Shooty Army - Get into CC, most of the Shooting strong units are rather weak in CC, and will easily fold.

CC Army - With tree spirits being immune to psychology breaking units is not possible, hit from more than one side, and hit hard. Lor of Fire is good, but not that many of the WE units are flammable.

I have not had any problems (Read: beaten horribly) with wood elves, though the General I usually play against, is not very experienced yet (we are working on this).

 

[SanDiegoSurrealist]

Another reason for Lore of Life is the Throne of Vines + Awakening of the Woods combo.

d6 Str 6 hits
2d6 if any portion of the unit is in a wood.

 

[underdog6750]

Thanks for the input so far guys. Really apprichiated. Ill post a copy of my planned army list tomorrow sometime and see what you think.

 

[Lord Tsunami]

one word: SKINKS

they cant be shot down easily by BS shooting, and they screen your sauruses. also their ranged attacks can really hurt the squishy wood elves.

all the other mentioned points are valid too, but use your cheap skinks to protect the rest of the army and you will have a good time.

 

[Stonecutter]

As a woodelf player myself, one of the banes of the army is anything that is high toughness with a decent AS is very tough to deal with. This is one instance where an EoTG will likely survive and be highly useful since its burning alignment is S5 vs all the forest spirits in the list. Here are a few other points about the WE army that may help:


1) Shooting - long bows have 30" range, are S4 at short range and have no penalty for move and shoot - giving them 20" to move and shoot and blast skinks well before the skinks are in range. The S4 can also hurt a saurus/TG block just before combat. The ruby ring of ruin from the BRB can help kill them as will almost anything that gets into combat with them since they are T3/S3 with no armour.

2) Treeman - big, tough, stubborn, S6/T6 monster with a special 6" shooting attack that does an arty dice worth of auto S4 hits (very bad vs skinks of any type so keep them at least 16" away). Magic is best but a scar vet on cold one with VoFF & halberd/GW works well, especially if the unit he is in has the flaming banner! Treekin are monstrous infantry with T5/S5 that can grind down your saurus pretty effectively so similar approach works well.

3) Dryads - if your opponent is smart, he will park these skirmishing troops in the woods where they are stubborn and pin your blocks for flank charges from Treekin/Treeman. With 2 x S4 attacks each & 5+ ward vs non-magical wounds, they make very good core infantry. Saurus will grind them down at a cost but make sure the majority of the saurus are OUTSIDE the woods so you can keep steadfast for ranks.

Tactics:

1) Deploy with a line of saurus/TG blocks close enough to each other so they can protect each other's flanks. Push forward into combat since the WE will not have much in the way of ranked troops (if any) or command so you can start most combats at +4.

2) A screen of regular skinks (in blocks 10 x 1) can protect your blocks from shooting for 1-2 turns and whatever is left over can move and shoot the archers or anything else. The skinks will die but that is what they are best at anyhow!

3) EoTG - Give the priest the dawnstone just to keep him alive as there will be lots of shooting and a 2+ re-roll AS will help protect you from bad luck. Place in the centre behind the TG/saurus block to give 5+ ward vs shooting initially as well as -2 to shooting at it for hard cover from the infantry block. Once in combat, move it up to bomb with burning alignment and charge it into any combat (other than vs a treeman) to add impact hits and stomp - this will quickly smash even large dryad blocks in woods.

4) kill the shooters first with magic and perhaps 2-3 units of chamo skinks. You will lose the chamos but keep the archers occupied while the rest of your army advances.

5) Magic - only the 4th level is an issue since they can take lore of life. Ensure your slaan has cogitation to steal 6s and you should be fine. One woodelf spell is treesinging that either a lower level caster or the treeman can cast as a bound. It moves woods d3+1 inches or inflicts d6 x S5 hits on any unit in a woods.

 

[underdog6750]

Here is a proposed list im planning on using on the forth comming game. Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome.

Lords

slann; focus of mystery, focused rumination, cupped hand and BSB

Old blood; carnasaur, armour of destiny, spear and shelid

Heros

skink priest on ancient steg wit EoTG; steg war spear

Scar vet; cold one, glittering scales, spear and shield

core

20 sauruswith full command

20saurus with spears and full command

10 skinks

10 skinks

speacial

temple guard; full comand, razor standard

11 cold one riders full command huanchis totem

Total 2998



Plan is as follows; slann will be running life so going to be casting dwellers with plenty of dice till miscast and use cupped hands.

Carnasaur will be going for any big nasties (tree man)

Skinks will be used as a human shield to provide cover for the saurus.

The saurus will be trying to get into cc as quick as possible while using the cold ones for flankin or takin on way watchers.

Some comments would be apprichiated. Thanks guys

 

[Zakharov]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the stegadon war-spear is a 'Skink Chief only' weapon. So no putting it on an EotG, sorry.

 

[BEEGfrog]

Lords

slann; focus of mystery, focused rumination, cupped hand and BSB Would probably go for 2 slann at 3k, one in TG bunker one solo, life slann wouldn't have cupped hands. If I had Lord points available would give slann magic banner, would probably give at least one slann Becalming Cogitation, might not have BSB slann if points tight
Old blood; carnasaur, armour of destiny, spear and shelid Doesn't need shield as already 1+ AS without it as carnosaur gives +1, but may be useful as carnosaur likely to die quickly to shooting.
Heros

skink priest on ancient steg wit EoTG; steg war spear As has been said already this combo not legal, probably needs 4+ ward or dawnstone to survive shooting attacks, I tend to find EotG uses up too many character points although less or a problem at 3k; might consider a skink bsb possibly with flaming banned instead

Scar vet; cold one, glittering scales, spear and shield Would go with cheap magic weapon over spear unless in CO unit and even then would probably go for something else over item that only benefits when charging
core

20 sauruswith full command Unit a bit small be current standards although probably ok v wood elves with their lack of ranked units

20saurus with spears and full command Unit especially small for spear, also spear generally not as good as HW for more points

10 skinks

10 skinks

temple guard; full comand, razor standard How many?, also razor standard not much use against woodies as they don't have much armour

11 cold one riders full command huanchis totem Would consider putting a scar vet here, would lose champion if scarvet not in unit, also very vulnerable to shooting so might consider sun standard instead or have BSB to have both standards

slann will be running life so going to be casting dwellers with plenty of dice till miscast and use cupped hands. Woodies' nasty units tend to be smaller sized high strength units so dwellers may not be the threat it is with other armies.

As you can have 4 rare units, I would probably have 4 single sallie units to provide some flaming shooting and some extra shooting targets. You have a lot of points in characters, I might consider more troops over more characters as this is 8th edition

 

[underdog6750]

Cheers to everyone for the input. Unfortunately i never got to play the WEs after and ended up playing Tomb Kings instead. I ran lore of shadows. Pit of shades did the job nicely and when i miscast took out his general with cupped hands Used the list i mentioned with some minor changes from the advice given. Ended up with a 250 point victory on my hands. Am playing a game against orcs next week. Will be my forth game of wfb now so gonna put up a new post for some more advice. Thanks again to all for the help was much aprichiated.