2250 Tournament List

[KingKoopa]

Saw this list posted and it sparked an interest in high elfs for me, just curious what all of you who have experience with HE think of it.

Archmage: level 4, elven steed, Jewel of the Dusk, 2x Dispel Scroll
Noble: barded elven steed, battle standard, dragon armour, shield, Helm of Fortune, Sword of Might
15 Spearmen: standard, musician
2x10 Archers
15 White Lions: standard, musician, Lion Standard
15 Pheonix Guard: standard, musician, War Banner
5 Dragon Princes: standard, Banner of Ellyrion
5 Ellyrion Reavers: spears and bows
2 Lion Chariots

Great Eagle
2 Repeater Bolt Throwers

[SpellArcher]

Looks like a fairly standard 2-character list with a few left-field picks.

The Reavers are slightly unusual as is the Steed on the Archmage. The Spears look weak but I suspect the list was put together with a specific role for them in mind.

Where I really don't like it is the magic phase. If you're going to use your Lord slot and spend just shy of 300pts on an Archmage, why you can't give him Silver Wand, Ring of Fury and Banner of Sorcery is beyond me.

[dabber]

No reason to have the excess unit of archers when you can have an RBT instead.

[Cythis]

That is Marcelo Rouco's 2009 tournament list that made records on the Australian tournament scene. I think that it is a fairly interesting list with some definitely great qualities about it. It isn't designed to be hard as nails but to be fun to play with the units having to work in concert to achieve any goal. As far as critiques of the list go I tend to agree with spell archer about the archmage's items and the banner of sorcery. Spell selection makes a very big difference. Having to find a safe place for the banner and then worrying about keeping it safe is a significant disadvantage though. It also runs a bit counter to the theme of the list with points dispersed and no major targets for the opponent. I think the list goes for having everything useful but also disposable including the magic phase. I would probably still take the banner though =p

I've been fielding a list somewhat similar including

15 spears, b,m, warbanner
10 archers x 2

14 swords, b,m ellyrion
14 swords,b,m
5 Dragon Princes /w sorcery
5 Dragon princes no upgrades
Tiranoc x2

3 RBT
1 Eagle

Granted that two of the games I have played were against brets it has been doing very well. Even with poor luck due failed panic/psych tests it won big victories vs brets and woc due to the units that were lost or delayed not being integral to the plan. It was nice to have almost everything be sacrificial and to have the unit numbers to out-deploy my opponent.
Rouco's list has much better psych protection and dependable units which is probably important for a high elf list tending more towards msu. I posted mine because it has more dedicated magic/shooting phases but less psych protection. I am able to get a similar amount of units on the field as he does while taking more shooting and magic, but have to make sacrifices to do so. If I then wanted to make the swords DPs etc dependable in terms of psych the list would have to sacrifice numbers to do so. For this reason I think that Rouco's use of very utilitarian magic/shooting phases has some merit if you see where I am going.
I would still take seer/wand and the banner though hehe.

[Lord Anathir]

be a bit weary of the australian scene. it is possible to lose and draw a game and still win a tournament by deliberatly taking a weaker army and using comp scores to boost you. it all depends where you play. for friendly games it looks very entertaining though.

[Sashimoto]

14 swords, b,m ellyrion
...
5 Dragon princes no upgrades

Maybe it would be better to give ellyrion to DP?

[SpellArcher]

Yeah I can see the comp would make a difference to the magic phase. 7PD is somewhat better than 6 IMHO so I can see why the Jewel's there. I don't like a weakened Archmage vs two dedicated smaller casters but the guy obviously knows what he's doing.