Are we an overpowered army?

[Mathias]

Hi everybody,

so, I've started playing Warhammer Fantasy not so long ago (my first game was somewhere in Oktober last year I think), and I've chosen High Elves, well, because I like Elves, I like good guys (so no Dark Elves for me) and I had a friend who was already playing Wood Elves (or at least had some models). So my choice was based around visual looks and fluff mostly.

Now, since this year I haven't lost a single game (and we are talking about 20+ games, versus WoC, Ogres, DE, VC and Skaven). It has come to the point where my friends really don't like playing against me anymore. They say that High Elves are to overpowered. I've used all of the good stuff, but I try not to combine ALL of them in the same army. My last army was even comped at 12 (where my opponents don't use Swedish Comp) and I've still managed 2 turn 2 wins...

1) Are we overpowered?

2) How do you beat a standard High Elves list (some Reavers, some Helms, some shooting, a Phoenix, a caster Lord with BoH (Archmage or Loremaster), and a mini-star of PG)?

3) Should I go for a "lesser" list, leaving all the good stuff for what it is? Maybe try MSU?

I know this is kind of a strange topic, and I would love to answer any question you may need to ask. But I would really like it if I could "lose" for once, if you know what I mean?

[Prince of Spires]

short answer is "No"

If we were, then we would be winning tournaments all over the place. And we're not. We have our share of wins, but it's not a big rate or anything.

Slightly longer answer:
A few things to think about. HE are a pretty good army if you can tailor your list against your opponent. We have the tools to deal with most things. We just have trouble fitting them in a single list. So, in one on one matches we can do better then in tournaments. I don't know if you tailor your list or not, but that could be an issue.

I think HE are a tough army for beginning or average players to play against. With ASF, high WS, high movement and high leadership, we are a very reliable army. We definitely have weaknesses (mainly in the low model count, T and armour save department). But it's a tough prospect to face. Not everybody hits 75% all the time or has BS4

This changes when players become better. All races you mentioned have the tools to deal with HE. Skaven and VC can just bog you down and wear you out with superior numbers. DE are a mirror army of HE with slightly different accents but they can do anything we can do (more or less). Ogres have the T and S and number of attacks to walk over a lot of things. And WoC can match us in combat and have chariots.

In my experience, the best way to deal with HE is to deal with all units in separation. HE units need to support each other. If you manage to take them on one on one then they are a lot less scary.

As for ways to make your list easier to deal with, you could already drop the BoH (and thereby surrendering magical superiority) and the PG from your list. Replacing them with some SM and some of the less common choices like chariots should really change the balance of your list I feel. And PG can definitely be a pain to deal with.

Rod

[Loriel]

1) I don't know if I would say overpowered, I would say powerful.

In short I think people that say something is overpowered tend to lack precision of the matter. Rather than whining about of you have banner of world dragon or one of the best monsters in game, they should focus winning the game with hand they are dealt with. High elves are very good army because of two reason:
- We have great movement ability
- We have reliable unit choices

if someone says that this army is broken because it has banner of the world dragon, (depending of course how players play it) but if it is in unit of about 1/4 of the points total, deal it with same tactics as you would any death star. chaff and cc. You don't need to remove that unit to win the battle. If someone says that Book of Hoeth is overpowered item, i would agree that it is one of the best arcane items in the game right now. Still I feel that our magic went very much down since lost of banner of sorc, lost of teclis no brainer glass cannon dweller spamming. Some one says that you have best monster in the game... well Frost phoenix is very powerful indeed no doubt about it. Some one says that we have very good sisters.... well to that I say shoot it with any magic missile / archers and that's gone.

this means that even mediocre player can be forgiven by little errors made during the game and can win games with rather easy choices, which are rather easy to play compared to many other armies. For this same reason WoC is considered pretty powerful, since they have pretty much one basic tactic "walk forward and smash".

2) That is pretty good over corner list. perhaps in that list best way to beat it is monster smash. Unless mage has magic to stop big monsters, there isn't much that army can do other than tank with phoenix, anvil with PG. Those PG can be viewed as 2 wounded elves. and using thunderstomps in unit will make them wear off.

3) I totally advice of trying MSU. MSU is one of the funnest type of list I have ever played with High elves. Nothing beats winning large horde of savage orcs with few flank / rear swordmaster, whitelion blocks, just grinding foes down and refusing reform. It is also tactically very nice list type and High elves perform in MSU very well. Another thing is that in MSU every unit is expandable and that makes it very nice to play

[Findolfin]

Switch armies. If they say your army is overpowered, use their army to beat your own army and get the obvious point trough to them.

[Curu Olannon]

Are we an overpowered army?

No.

How do you beat a standard High Elves list (some Reavers, some Helms, some shooting, a Phoenix, a caster Lord with BoH (Archmage or Loremaster), and a mini-star of PG)?

Depends on what you`re playing. Here are a few candidates:
- Wall of Nurgle + Skillcannon DoC
- Hexwraith-death VC
- Coven of Light Empire
- Netlist WoC
- 2x BS5 OG 2x Accurate Cannon 2x Blocks DW
- Lizardmen MSU
- Netlist OK
- Netlist Skaven

Just from the top of my head. Specific tactics depend upon lots of things, of course. If HE were so overpowered, how come we`re not dominating tournaments more?

[NiallCampbell]

I've only played a few games with HE at 1000 points or thereabouts against Orcs and have lost every game
So no, not overpowered hehe. Could be my fault though

[Bashtrigger]

Switch armies. If they say your army is overpowered, use their army to beat your own army and get the obvious point trough to them.

+1

My own experience is that my High Elves are pretty much balanced against my friends armies (Ogres, Daemons, VC, Lizarmen, Empire and Dwarfs), with the exception that the lists I love playing fare poorly against gunlines and lots of skinks.

I win some, I lose some, but I never win or lose easily. This did take quite a while to get to through, I used to loose pretty often against especially the Empire, Dwarf and Lizardmen. I just had to learn how to cope with certain armies and the way my friends play those armies and most importantly: how to correctly play my own army to the best of it's abilities.

I've been playing for over 6 years now and I dare say I still learn something new in every other game I play.

If your friends have a lot of problems trying to beat you, then send them over to this forum, let them read some of the High Elves tactics articles, to get an idea of how an High Elf plays, let them play with your army (and you play with one of theirs) and let them figure out how the High Elves are being played. If they are smart enough, this will give them an idea of how to counter those High Elf tactics aswell.

PS. One of our greatest weaknesses is impact hits. Tell your friends to take some chariots, and let them figure out how to play them to ensure they get the charge. The experiences will be helpfull in games where its just normal infantry who have to grind it out, as they'll learn how to pick their fights (which consists mostly of making sure you're the one charging the other)

[gaz]

I don't think HE really have access to anything particularly broken (with the exception of the banner vs daemons). HE is however a strong army that is well equipped to deal with a lot of the 'broken' builds used by other armies. If your friends are relying on exploiting simple yet powerful units/builds (nurgle daemon prince, death magic) they may find we are less vulnerable than a lot of armies and that they lose as a result of relying on a particular power unit too heavily.

I think one of the things that makes HE a powerful army is that, despite all the expensive T3 models, the army as a whole is fairly resilient.

This is true of some individual units but is more true of the way the army functions as a whole. Unlike a lot of armies, it's quite difficult to cripple a high elf army as we don't really have obvious critical weaknesses.
By that I mean, in most HE armies, there is not one critical model or unit without which the army falls apart (at least not like undead or low leadership armies).

We have some good synergy within the army but a lot of our popular units also tend to work decently in isolation. This (and our high movement characteristics) gives more freedom in the movement phase than most armies have.

I think the HE army is well rounded enough that regardless of what power unit is thrown at us, we probably have something in our book (and often on the field) that is at least moderately effective against it.
There aren't many auto-wins against HE as a result but I don't think that makes HE overpowered.
It just means you need to actually play the game and set up desirable matchups for your army during the game (rather than just taking a powerful list).