Vs High elves

[Lordn00b]

Hi Chaps,

I have potentially got my first battle against HE this Wednesday and I was wondering if you guys had any tips on how to beat our erstwhile cousins? It will be a 1500 pt game.

I have read a few thoughts around the forums about going shooting heavy to get rid of those annoying units like sword masters and White lions but apart from that what do people think?

I quite like the idea of having two units of shades to sit about and whittle him down and then most of my core being in RXBs and corsairs as I think the corsairs usually weakness will be negated by only T3 elves.

That said, that same T3 weakness could be exploited by a hydra and a COK bus as they are harder and the poncy elves would have a hard time getting through either T5 or an 2+ Armour save.

What magic do you think as well, I thought about havuing lore of fire as it's good against low toughness troops, but it hasn't really shone for me in the past and I am tempted to go Dark lore instead.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Ataroth]

I have to say you seem already on the right track. Shooting and more shooting makes very short work of High Elves, just be aware that they have the slight margin on range but once your RXB's are closer, you'll mow them down quite quickly. Your opponent won't like you bringing 2 units of Shades as they should be very nasty. Dark is good against them though High Elves have quite good magic defence so to counter that bring along the Sac Dagger. Also I imagine he won't due to the low points but do you know if your opponent is bringing along Teclis?

[Calisson]

HE have decent anti-fire protection and outstanding anti-magic generally speaking.
They do hate our shooting.
Shades are excellent to run around their units while they cripple them.

[Leduwob]

Shoot them to death. That usually works

[Paricidas]

I dont know which kind of HE-list you guys are usually playing, but HE dont have a "slight" range advantge. In fact its a whooping 56% advanatge.

Idealy (for the HE) he will start shooting without any movement penalty by round 1, while the RXBs will have to march to even come into range. And then they can start to fire at the eagles and risk another turn of being shot at or they catch an eagle charge, which can be quite devastating to small RXB units.

No sane HE will venture into the area of death that an ordinary RXB unit provides to almost anything but White lions and even they suffer from the armor piercing. As soon as the RXB can start to shoot without any additional penalties, its game over for most of the HEs as you will wound them on 4, leaving a 6+ AS at best.

But if you throw in a shadow debuff, than that mexican stand-off soon becomes dangerous for the RXBs. Shades may, or may not be better suited for the mission, depending how well they can use the terrain to shield themself.

As for the 2+ AS: HE spit at 2+ AS and eat it for breakfast. And T5 is also nothing to write home about if you are facing 10 ASF str 6 attacks. So unless you are planing to ride to town with 15 fully buffed CoD you better not start to aim them at their elite infantery. Hydras should avoid base contact with most HE units unless its only via corner to corner. One of their main strenghs lies in its incredible killing power with the breath weapon, which should be used as soon as possible.

Lorewise I would suggest anything but metal, in fact a sacrifical dagger and a well placed fire spell can flaten whole HE units. Magic missles are very very good to thin out the white lions, especialy at such a low point game).

One of the most deadly spells for HE is the signature spell of shadow (melkoths miasma), as this will deny them their rerolls and therefor a shadow sorcerer, even a lvl1, will cause much troubles during the magic phases.

However, do not rely on magic too much. HE have by far the best magic defense in the whole fantasy universe (dwarfs may now start to argue...), here just some specials:

any HE caster gets +1 for dispelling
all high magic casters can cast nullify magic (?), raises complexity by 3
annulian crystal: transforms a power die of the enemy into a dispell die
banner of the world dragon: unit is IMMUNE against magic
loremaster cloak: character (and the unit he is in) get 2+ magic resistance

thats only a part of the things they can throw at you, not to mention items that simply end the magic phase, dispell scrolls that destroy spells and items that generate none-magic fields (like the ring of hotek).

So if you want to break through that magic def, a sacrifical dagger (and some guys to sacrifice) will come in very handy.

[Samusin]

well its for sure he can't bring teclis... he is to high prized... lol you would need a 2000p game at least if i remember his points correctly

[Paricidas]

I dont have any plan about DE (only one game until now).
But ask yourself this:

1. If my 50 archers are deployed 29.5 inches away from your RXBs and I have an item that gives me +1 for the first turn, how will the RXBs like that?

2. If I start to cast, will you dispell the miasma that debuffs your bowskill, will you dispell the toughness debuff that will kill off half your RXB unit or will you dispell the pit of shades that eats your cauldron/hydra?

While shooting is devastating for HE, shooting is also devastating for DE, and a mexican stand-off with a guy that has more range than yourself is not always a good idea.

At 1500 points, imho the most deadly things to my army are:
-Fire-spells in all of their hated forms, especialy if they target my WL-units.
-impact hits
-melkoths miasma

[Red...]

I concur with Patricidias re: shooting. If a high elf goes shooting heavy, you WILL lose a shoot out. If he's gone melee heavy against you then you can indeed bring your shooting into play. But most of my HE opponents go shooting heavy these days. By the way, they have a magic item that can give them +1 to their starting roll, and often finish deploying first (due to less units on the board), so have a +2 bonus to their starting roll. That makes the odds of them getting at least two full rounds of shooting without moving to your none very high (first turn you have to march your RxBs forward to get into range, meaning you won't get a round of shooting in until after his second turn. And that's a lot of pain coming at you, before you even get a chance to respond).

2+ armour saves on CoKs = dies to a ton of arrows (especially flaming arrows of S4). T5 and a 4+ regen on a hydra = dies to a ton of arrows (especially flaming arrows of S4 that remove regen and knock its scaly skin save down to a mere 5+).

How to beat high elves?

Chariots, chariots and more chariots. At 1.5k you can take 3. Do so. High elves hate100 point models that have T5, 4 wounds (enough that even a maximum damage causing single bolt shot won't knock it out, and High Elves don't have cannons), a 3+ armour save and D6+1 S5 impact hits on the charge.

Ironically though, Patricidias has it wrong regarding the lore. Lore of metal is ideal versus high elves. Not for the anti-armour spells, but for Glittering Scales (an extra +2 to the armour save versus high elf shooting for all non-hydra and dragon units within 12" of the caster (or 24" for one unit for the lower powered version) is spectacular: it means execs, blackguard and even shielded warriors have a 3+ save versus high elf arrows, while corsairs have a staggering 2+ and chariots are up to 1+! Try it and see.) Blades of Aiban is farily decent too and Transmutation of Lead has its uses. Heck, even plague of rust is not bad, making those 5+ armour saving models into 6+ or no save at all. Final transmutation will make those phoenix guard and their irksome 5+ armour save / 4+ ward save cry. And if he brings any dragons, chariots or silver helms, the two (of seven) inverse-armour save damaging dealing spells won't be so bad after all.

As regards magic, high elves can still spam out magic very easily (thanks to dragon mages with their 'reckless' extra power dice per spell and the banner of saphery providing +D3 power dice). Your best bet is to identify which spells you need to beat and which spells you are happy to suffer through. He wants to hit your unit with D6 S4 hits from Awakening of the Wood? Sure. He wants to annihilate half of your horde of elite troops with tiny moles jumping out of th ground (dwellers below)? Dispel at all costs!

[Lordn00b]

Last time I played him he played a very melee based army and I can guarantee Life magic will be used as the best lore in the game. I like the idea of Melkoths every turn as a low level spell to get rid of some of his dispel but the rest of that lore isn't great against HE. I have to say Red that Metal definitely sounds interesting and I think I will go for that as it seems the best.

Despite suggestions from myself when I had dwarves this player has not been known to do the classic Horde of Lothern Seagulls with the World banner. That said he will probably go on some forum for his list and just copy it.

I currently have no chariot models so that is out of the window. I think a big block of spearmen for sac dagger purposes run with a lvl 4 metal, maybe a lvl 1 shadow as a scroll caddy and for melkoths. A few corsairs with XHW to be buffed, two units of 20 RXBs and then two units of shades. Should leave me some points for either a Hyrdra, a COK bus or some BG. What do you think?

[Lordn00b]

Actually just thinking about it, since we have the same initiative with most match ups, (aside from his elite) won't he just get the ASF without re-rolls? Where as I will get re-rolls every turn and he will get to re-roll psychology tests?

[Daeron]

You get rerolls from ASF if your initiative is equal to or high than that of the other unit. So they basically always get rerolls unless it's a less elite troop from them against an elite troop from us... Or MIASMA had its way

Or we used the banner of Hag Graef, in which case neither gets rerolls from ASF... but we still get rerolls from Hatred.