8th Ed. How to beat High Elves?

[Ease]

So in my regular gaming group we have the following armies:
Mine:
Lizardmen (new since last week!), Wood Elves, Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings
Others:
Vampires, Ogres, Daemons, Chaos Warriors, Dwarves x2, Bretonnians, O&Gs and High Elves.

I have managed to repeatedly beat all of the other armies with my older armies, bar the High Elves. Over years and years I have never beaten this guy, and can't recall the last time any of us actually beat him ignoring peculiar scenarios and team-battles.

I'm yet to play him with my Lizardmen, but was hoping I could get some tips in advance? How do you beat ASF? I hate that special rule sooo much. I did some probability tests, and 500pts of Wood Elves Eternal Guard (basically Special choice spearmen) lost to 300pts of High Elves core spearmen every time... in fact, point-to-point none of my Wood Elves units could beat any of his High Elves in close combat, bar the Treekin, and even they get owned by a fair few of the High Elves units.

So far I only own 16 Saurus, a Stegadon and a Skink Priest, so I can shape and mould my army from here.

 

[strewart]

Hmmm I might be able to sell out and give some insight here, being primarily a HE player. Firstly though, can you post a basic outline of what he takes? There are various styles of HE army and each is powerful in its own right and has different ways of dealing with.

Couple of general things, they are an army that has the potential to hit fairly hard, but anything that you have alive to hit back with (which should be a lot given stepping up rules now) is going to seriously hurt him. That is probably the first thing, accept that he will go first and probably inflict some serious hurt on you, but then you can dish it back hard in return.

Elf armies are very expensive points-wise, the cheapest model is a whopping 9 points. They have absolutely nothing that is throwaway, any deaths you deal at range is going to hurt his army and probably get him worried. Skinks in particular should have fun pewing elves.

Unless he has a strong shooting phase, it is often better to let him charge you. Elves will go first anyway, but on the charge the spears only (lol) fight in 3 ranks rather than 4, and it will hopefully give you the chance to throw a good countercharge or flank them if they manage to break you.

I'll add more if you can give me a basic rundown of what he takes.

 

[Gor-rok]

As far as some general principals and building your army go:

Salamanders. Get them. Normally I hate jumping on the bandwagon and telling people they should have a particular 'super' unit in their army, but in this case the hype is justified. Just remember he will make them the #1 priority targets for his own shots, so give them some cover or concealment.

His sword masters are bad news up close, so shoot them up. Terradon rock dropping works great on them.

Once you start playing in bigger games, your skinks and chameleons will distinguish themselves by shooting up his dragons. Massed, massed poison fire is the key to monster slaying with our army.

Hide your stegadon from his bolt throwers, which may be easier said than done.

Playing as Lizardmen, you'll soon realize that our saurus basically always strike last anyway, so ASF isn't such a shock. On the downside, he'll get to re-roll hits most of the time, so soften up those infantry blocks before engaging them, and make sure your stegadon hits in the flank to avoid facing all those extra ranks of attacks.

That's all I can think of for now. As Strewart said, let us know the particulars of his list and strategy, and we'll be able to offer better advice. Good luck!

 

[Ease]

Thanks for all the great advice so far! Salamanders and Skinks it is!

We play quite a large variety of points, but normally his list builds up from top to bottom of this list:

Lothern Seaguard for his whole core.
Level 2 Mage
10 Swordmasters
2 - 6 Bolt Throwers
Korhil and 12 White Lions
10 Swordmasters
Lion Chariot
Teclis (swap out Level 2 Mage)
2 x Tiranoc Chariot
Ups the unit sizes of Swordmasters

Teclis is in there if the points allow it, every single time. Sometimes there's Dragon Princes too and an Elf Noble with a hand-held bolt thrower. Very rarely there's also a Dragon, though I haven't seen that for months.

 

[Naestran]

When fighting High elves I think your biggest problems is with the elites. Swordmasters, White Lions, Dragon Princes are always the thing that will kill you and then spit on your corpse. Most Highelf players will be thankful if their elites make it into combat unscratched. These guys have got to be a priority target, even if your facing a 50 man spear horde.. Swordmasters are easy, with only a five up armour save it should be pretty easy to kill these guys before they get into combat. Salamanders can have a field day by wounding on fours with no armour saves. IF these guys make it in then you're in trouble. With two strength five re-rollable attacks at WS6 (i think) they will cause huge damage. They are definitely a priority.

Next White Lions. These guys are like swordmasters, without the extra attack, a higher strength and a much better armoursave against shooting. White lions are often more popular than Swordmasters because they have only slightly different killing powers but much more of them will make it into combat. Sallies also work well against these guys. Be careful of engaging them with Stegs and characters, they strike first with a healthy number of strength six attacks.


Pheonix Guard are an anvil, they have a 4+ ward save, often they will have caradryan to give them magic resistance to add to this. These guys are there to tie up Stegs and your characters, it will take most of a game to kill a decent sized unit, and they have str 4 due to halberds. With these guys I just avoid them.

Lastly, Dragon Princes. With 2 attacks and rerollable misses, these guys are virtually immune to rubber lance syndrome. These guys are also immune to fire so watch out for that. Dragon Princes are dangerous, but they are T3, and despite having good armour, they will go down, they cannot take a unit on their own now, you just don't want them in your flank... ever.

Hope that helped a bit

 

[Xul]

put some chameleon skinks on those balistas. HE will usually have too few units to cover the whole potential deployment zone for scouts. skrox units are good for quick flanking moves (although when hit by missile fire can go down quickly). fitting out your hero/lord with the sword of hornet (or the one from the main book) which gives you ASF is a good thing when fighting his characters - both models strike at the same time and he can't re-roll misses. the Blood statuette of spite can be a nasty surprise for a HE character, if the HE player already used up all dispel dice and has no dispel scroll.

 

[Arli]

I don't think they would strike simultaneously unless they have the same initiative. Once ASF cancels out, it goes by Initiative.

 

[Xul]

I don't think they would strike simultaneously unless they have the same initiative. Once ASF cancels out, it goes by Initiative.

that was 7th. check the ASF rule in the 8th book.

 

[vapor]

I don't think they would strike simultaneously unless they have the same initiative. Once ASF cancels out, it goes by Initiative.

P66, BRB-- they strike simultaneously and neither gets a reroll.

 

[Arli]

Right you are! I assumed that it was like the ASL rule in that it would cancel out and you would then go by initiative.

Good to know.

 

[strewart]

Thanks for all the great advice so far! Salamanders and Skinks it is!

We play quite a large variety of points, but normally his list builds up from top to bottom of this list:

Lothern Seaguard for his whole core.
Level 2 Mage
10 Swordmasters
2 - 6 Bolt Throwers
Korhil and 12 White Lions
10 Swordmasters
Lion Chariot
Teclis (swap out Level 2 Mage)
2 x Tiranoc Chariot
Ups the unit sizes of Swordmasters

Teclis is in there if the points allow it, every single time. Sometimes there's Dragon Princes too and an Elf Noble with a hand-held bolt thrower. Very rarely there's also a Dragon, though I haven't seen that for months.

MSU? Wow surely he is struggling a bit more in 8th ed? Steadfast and stepping up is definitely your friend.

10 swordmasters charge 30 saurus (6x2 vs 6x5) he gets 16 attacks hitting on 3's (reroll) and wounding on 3's. Say 14 hit, ~9 wound. Now your 17 s4 attacks hit back, ~6 wounds. You lose combat, but steadfast and coldblood means you stick around. Next turn, he only has 4 left so can't kill anywhere near as many, you still get 17 attacks and wipe the unit.

With a list like that, for it to be working, I think he would have to be a pretty good general. Definitely the key is to bring down some of those swordmasters at range with skinks, and go after the bolt throwers. HE bolt throwers only have 2 wounds so die rather easily. You need big units to force fights to go for more than one round, make it a war of attrition and you should be able to grind him down.

Don't worry too much about the tiranoc chariots, but lion chariots are very nasty these days. The crew are now up to s6, so with 4 s5 and 2 s6 rerolling misses, they barely even need impact hits to cause carnage. Another decent target for mass blowpipe fire if you have the skinks.

And as mentioned, salamanders will make mince meat of everything.

 

[vaalnn]

It's been said a few times but I really can't emphasize enough just how could sallys are against HE. Don't be afraid to charge them up into the middle of the battle field, right out in the open, as long as you get in a decent position to shoot. They will usually have to flee on the next turn but even if they die, a single round of shooting against HE should easily pay for the sallies points cost, and weaken up his line significantly.

Use terradons to drop rocks on his swordmasters, if he only takes units of ten you should be able to take 25% of them down with a unit of 3 terradons in a single turn (before they get close to you).

Lion chariots are horrible, if you can tie them up with throw away units then do it.

Teclis is truely horrible on the offensive, if hes really giving you trouble then try Lore of Death on your slann, with a bane head. If Teclis makes it past your second magic phase your doing something wrong.

Dragon princes are a pain, my brother usually takes at least 10, with Tyrion. Given that you've managed all of my previous suggestions you should be able to beat the dragon princes on combat resolution, and hope they flee. The main thing with these guys is to survive the first round of combat, after this they're back down to toughness 3, and they're killing power is massively reduced, then get a flank charge on them with either a steggy or some krox. They usually end up charging my Slann, so having an arse load of temple guard, or +4T from the lore of life will make the difference between losing your slann, or putting a big spanner in his works.

Hope this helps