Basic idea here is to compare Reavers to other core choices, and compare their performance in different roles.
Ill go units by units and think about their roles.
Spearmen
I see three main roles for spearmen. Steadfast deny, expansive tarpit, core horde clearer. Most times my build with spearmen is 30 - 40 strong, with banner of discipline and loremaster (making 10 inspiring presence) I love earthblooding them and using that lore attribute. In combat spearmen has more use for loremaster extra input than White Lions and Swordmaster have. And in Phoenix guard using earthblood only for lore attribute is rather costly. My main role for spearmen has been steadfast deny, but I actually used them as acceptable loss as tarpit against some horros in game Hell pit abomination, demon prince etc. I usually try to stay away from horde tarpits, if possibly.
Spearmen Steadfast Deny duty
RoleWell how do spearmen fair as Steadfast deny. Main problem I have been facing with them is that as all infantry they almost always end up head on against enemy -> suffers alot of casualty. Hand of glory to pump ws atleast 5 helps many times. Imo spear elves is one of the best targets for wyssan's wildform for the pure fact that they need it the most. Our elites have solid rules and stats to do their jobs even without magical boost. Also another thing I find annoying is that spear is lost in charge, which means (usual 5 wide champ) 16 x Reroll WS4, STR3 attacks.
In order to use steadfast deny properly there is really two ways. Either combo charge, or get charge with spearmen, hold and then combo charge. Last has this annoying feature that usually after two rounds of combat with anything that needs combo charge spearelfs are decimated badly. Then again, with infantry guarantee charges are also fickle. Movement 5 means that you have to be still pretty close to successfully charge. And consider combo charge where your spearbunker manages to complete it's charge but lions fail. Then because of maximizing is required spearbunker will be in the middle of enemy unit and his role just changed from steadfast breaker to tarpit. Your failed lions still be at front arc. If your tarpit holds for two rounds of bashing, perhaps even multi charge from opponent, then your charge with lions will be clipping -> Less high str attacks.
Close CombatOk, what is the most important thing about CC. That is CR and how does Spear elves with steadfast deny duty does on that. From static perspective +3 rank bonus, +1 banner. Lets crunch these number against ws 4 enemy, with T 4, 5+ armour. Wounds 16 attacks reroll 4+ hit means 3/4 hit, 1/3 wound, 2/3 wounds after armour save. This leaves 288 / 1728 (sorry if math wrong) that means actually that 1/6 of attacks wounds against such opponent. So 16 *1/6 is 2,66 wounds. Lets be optimistic since Helf is always blessed with some loaded dice so 3 wounds. That makes +7 Combat resolution. Well that opponent hits back. let say it makes 16 attacks back (horde, frenzy, just being 2 attack warrior what ever) atleast str 4 but lets crunch it to str 5 since that really pancakes. hits with 4+ means 1/2 hit, 5/6 wounds. This means 5 / 12 attacks kills this goes to 6,6666666 wounds. with str 4 1/2 hits, 2/3 wounds, 5/6 goes past armor -> 5 / 18 attacks kills this means 4,4444444 wounds. If you need steadfast denying against such opponent they have also standard, 3 rank bonus. That means, in CR perspective that our elites need to punch 2 - 4 CR, mainly from killing. And if you win combat just barely steadfast deny really doesn't help that much.
Against shooting BS based small arms hurts elf. To spearmen i have only one thing to say "We have reserves!"http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=22 . Against stonethrower templates infantry trembles. Direct hit from small template means 21 hits, with str 5 means 18 dead elves. With str 3 means 20 hits with 1/2 to wound and 2/3 past armor leads to 1/3 wound per hit + 5/6 from one high strenght resolves 7,49999 dead spears.
Magical support: Spearmen in general are ideal to have great magical support. Anybody tried Okkams with them? . I really like Loremaster synergy with banner of disc and earthblood, with Spearelves. 5 reg is solid for them, wyssan is always a great. http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=45362 has some numbers for BoH Loremaster. In my experience trying to have as much 2 PD loremastering is the way to go. Loremaster has 4 spells to help spearmen in their duty. Wyssan, Miasma, Iceshard and Earth Blood. Right out best people tend to say is Wyssan. 68% with 2PD 94% with 3PD BoH. But what magic is the best relies heavily on situation.
Ok for two following scenarios lets imagine average Wom of 4 , 3 no channels as usual
If you try to lure your opponent in to charge your spearman in order to be held in tar pit casting Wyssan on the unit will have your opponent to think twice about the charge. 21 WS4 mostly rerolling, STR4 T4 should be scary atleast lot scarier than str3 t3. In this scenario using Earth Blood might be better, since its not so intimitating. Opponent can forsee that he prolly wins combat with ease without heavy losses. In combat resolution perspective Wyssan adds roughly +1/6 per attack to spears wounds and denies 1/6 of wounds. So it could be said that you gain roughly 1/3 advantage in combat resolution (ofcourse this depands heavily on opponent high armour save still doesnt care much str 4 etc). Earth blood do the same in combat resolution sense. It denies 1/3 of wounds incoming to you. And as for steadfast breaking keeping spears alive and using less PD is always +. On the other hand your loremaster has to be in the unit in order to have Earth Blood on. My usually build for loremaster is BoH, shield of Merwyrm, Golden Crown of Atrazar, perhaps warrior bane etc (yep. i know i lose great weapon, but imo its worth it). Earthblood doesn't help it and I hate to say that too many times 5+ ward/rege isn't just enough for our fragile characters. Wyssan actually works better for the Loremaster. Then again, if the charger has champions or not so killy characters Loremaster can always challenge and with good placement deny incoming attacks. Too bad getting charge in means that opponent has priority to issue challenges.
If you got a nice combo charge off, using Wyssan on spearelves after combo charge is pretty solid choice. As above it helps from spearman point of view to increase your CR by roughly 1/3 in wounds. Wyssan is almost auto dispel in many cases, at least in my gaming group. So the order how to play this is crucial. I usually mind game my opponent by saying. hmm. Wyssan means that I will kill your about 3-4 models and what was it? 5 - 10 SS per model and this means i lose only this much...? But now comes big question. Is wyssan better of somewhere else, lets say White Lions or Phoenix Guard for str 5 rerolling? or Dragon Princes on flanks for sweet sweet rerolling str 6nectar? In mind game perspective talk about it at least. After little mind gaming (ok, I am not always doing it) I usually throw 2 pd iceshard in. Iceshard is actually in this scenario much better spell. -1 Hit means 1/6 less hitting per attack. Which is almost the same in wound perspective as Wyssans +1 T. Iceshard has also one rather easily overlooked advantage of -1 LD. Using 2 pd means 95% chance to success. Well depends how much my opponent fears wyssan or how little he does calculations, he will let iceshard pass. Now in combo charge this actually helps every unit you have in combat by reducing incoming hits per attack by 1/6. So you could draw a conclusion that two units getting 1/6 less hits per attack roughly 1/3 advantage in combat resolution sense (spear suffers 2 less wounds in upper scenario and your whitelions suffers 2 less wounds. With wyssan that means only spears suffers 2 less wounds. So CR diffirence is significant). (depands of course opponents unit size etc and if flanked, how many attacks shared by units etc etc but I like to play with ideal numbers.) If you think about buffing one unit in combo charge opponents will try to strike weakest spot and this scenario it would be lions. Then i would be throwing 3 pd for 94% (2pd with 68% is too low for middle cast spell) to wyssan and be like come on! BoH Loremaster is usually roughly equal to +4 modifier. At least in my local group most players tend to use Level 4 as default lord choice. With from WoM 4 DD he will use atleast 3 to counter even 4 if he really wants to deny my wyssan. Perhaps even scroll if have any. What comes then really depending on opponents stats. miasma to lower WS with 1 die, or with 2 pd to lower both ws and ini. I would image that anything that needs combo charging would have WS of 4 or 5. So even drop of 1 in ws means spears will be hitted with 4+ and -1 from iceshards. And lions will have 3+ hitting. drop of two on ws 5 means spears hitting with 3+ and drop of three means white lions will only be hitted with whopping 6+. Then if left with 1 die prolly would try desperate 6+ earth blood. But miasma shines here for the same obvious reason that it helps in combo charge all units in combat not just buffed one. Other way to put those dices to good use would be trying to use earthblood as mind gaming. Saying something like "ok this saves my models and because of it your steadfast will be broken etc" Then use iceshards 2pd first, earth blood 2pd second, miasma 1 pd and lastly 2 pd wyssan to unit that benefit most from it. Anyway key item to have this work correctly is to have both ice and miasma working to your advantage. Forcing your opponent to hit you with 5+ or 6+ really says that we are elite infantry. In number crunching having your opponent to hit you less is better since there is very little we can do about our t3 and armour of 5. Str 5 wich is fairly commonly see, will decimate our ranks.
AS i mentioned that iceshard lurking potential of ld -1. If opponents stays steadfast, -1 ld makes him to do break test with slightly worse odds. http://www.avianon.net/calculations/calc_leadership.php good site to watch some numbers. So most armies has access to 9 (even 10 with banner of disc combo) ld with bsb rerolling. That LD still helps. In frontal assault opponent might want to combat reform. Combat resolution is still calculated as penalty and that -1 ld comes in handy. If you manage to pull of this in Tiebreaking situation decreasing opponents hits from +3 in best case scenario to 6+ you should have won combat easily. But pulling that magic support off is tricky. It is more likely that you will have either miasma or iceshard on your opponent. Having either of them means somethig like victory of 2-4 (just shooting these numbers from out of nowhere). In leadership test 7 is magic number. As we all know that 2d6 average yield is 7 this due the fact that there is most combination of rolls that can yield 7. Dropping without reroll leadership from 7 to 6 has greatest difference in success rates (difference of 17). That also makes it more likely for opponent to break than stay. With reroll leader ship dropping 6 - 5 has similar effect. Iceshard really plays crucial part here. Lets say you win combat by 4 (in my experience this is pretty much result when used magic to solve tiebreaker). so that is ld of 5. With rerolls that means 47,9% iceshard yanks it to 4 and 30,6%. That -1 has more uses if the target unit is opponents general. (my brother trolls failing stupid twice in row with LD roll of exact 9, when Black Orc general got icesharded. well this is is again brag about unlikely events in game of probabilities)
Reavers Steadfast Deny duty
Close combatNow lets think about Reavers for the same role as steadfast breaker. Use only spears with them. Get a max 30 inch first turn move and threat flank even rear. Use fast cavalry to get them from tiny caps, reform when needed. Use 9 movement to make sure that you pass your charge. 15 x reroll WS4, STR4 attacks and 5 x steed on charge. They denies rank bonus, put out significantly more CR. Static -3 from disruption, +3 from rank bonus, banner, flank. So static bonus would be 5 (+3 from disruption?).
Killing power against same foe that our spearmen were fighting. hitting 4+ reroll 3/4, wound 1/2, 5/6 wounds past armour -> 15 / 48 attacks wounds -> 4,6 wounds And NEVER forget steeds. My steeds always lands and destroys! A one great use for steed is that they are ini 4. If you direct attacks to enemy mage and left it annoying 1 wound, those steeds surely can kill him with few lucky die throws So in this battle, 1 / 9 wounds per attack meaning 0,555555 wounds. Well the same foe does same wounding. 5/12 for str 5, 5/18 for str 4. Only real difference is dropped attack count. Let say againts 2 or more attack models, not too much drop but againts 1 that means (assume he has very deep formation)7 attacks -> 2,91 wounds for str 5 -> 1,94 for str 4. Reavers got deeply needed CR +10 (5 from wounds, 5 from static). Opponent has banner and say 3 wounds. That means losing by 5-6. Now when i crunched these numbers they don't even need support from elite when got flank.
There is one great problem here, and that is killy enemy characters / well defended enemy characters. Killers feed on reavers. Well defended denies attacks when placed correctly. And sometimes challenge can really deny attacks from either side, so be extra careful when accepting refusing challenges. Still that 5 SS investment on champion in order to have challenge and best case scenario some killy character locked to do overkill rather than body count, i am always in for that. Still overcome 6 CR even with characters can be rather tricky.
So lets consider one thing. Failing charge with your main hammer, well as seen from these numbers large spear reavers manage much better than spears. Lets say opponent chooses to reform, well best case scenario, you have flank with your hammers. But fighting strong enemy in front then with only 15 x reroll str 3, and 5 x str 3 you are bound to lose. Lets hope that opponent fails reform roll or is too psyched out by the lurking elite lions lurking nearby. One thing for charging perspective, your Reavers might more easily utilize hills +1 bonus. So when placing terrain, hills in middle flanks would make real difference in CC.
Against shooting Well... small arms will be much tougher. And boltthrowers might shoot them more likely than infantry. Not because of armour but because they yield so much more victory points. Even longshanks can't say "We have reserves" when 8 SS models fell to puny peasant arrows. Reavers could try to utilize terrains in order to have precious cover for small arms or try to get off front arc of shooter. Even getting of front arc of some models denies few shots. This is where deployment really comes in to play. But then again template does significantly less damage. And if you make vanguard move with 15 wide 2 ranks (well thats rather big unit, but in some cases doable) stone & bolt throwers do much less and prolly targets different targets. then reform to take place in enemys flanks and turn 2 charge. With max 30 inch movement you could actually get inside minimum range of stone throwers. Well againts Hellcannon going near minimum range that would be little risky. Your flank will be exposed in order to have your own flank charge. Hellcannon might fail LD and be forced to charge or WoC player could have just do it. Having terror test without reroll at LD 8 has risk. But then again, if this would happend Hellcannon would be stuck in combat with reaver block. Odds are in reavers favor to pass break test, hard time to pass combat reform from lose. Reavers would have good static 4+ (effective of 5 since musician). Hellcannon will have trouble in subsequental round win combat -> reavers get to turn, and then combat lock in attrition for many turns, until either lucky lucky Hellcannon death, or grinded lost for reavers or other units / magic steps up in game. Anyway, against trebutchets, rock lobbers this could be rather handy.
Magic support Well Loremaster would be in Whitelion bunker for me if i would be using 30 x reavers. Since those reavers would be easily put down even by normal str 3 shots, my turn 1 magic priority would be trying to save em. Loremasters tool box has essentially three spells that could be utilized for increased survibiality. Iceshard, my favorite miasma and Wyssan. And ofcourse those magic missiles are useful against regular archers. One positive point here is that Wyssan needs 9 to be casted since reavers are cav and wildheart lore attribute kicks in, making it decent to cast with 2 PD (chance somewhere in the middle of 68 % and 89%). Problem with wyssan in turn 1 would be obvious range. You would need to pump bigger wyssan for 12+ casting. Really needs 3pd (succee in the middle of 73% - 94%). So miasma for BS decrease would be best for numerous reasons, mainly atleast -1 and possible even -3 to hit with only 5+ cast and reasonable one dicing with whobbing 48 range. Iceshard needs 2pd imo and turn 1 -1 LD for some chaff clearing archers doesn't help much at this point of game, but that -1 to hit is always welcome. Unless trying to get panic with following magic missile / shooting attacks. Loremaster seems to me that he has more synergy with spears, than it would have with reavers so that got me thinking about different lore choices. I might be wrong with this one, but for some reason my spider sense is tingling. So this swings back to having level 4 Book of Hoeth, or allarielle. I would prolly take support shadow support with scroll for sweet miasma.
High magic: As for High magic, there isn't really any direct help to solve Reavers fragility on turn 1. Extra movement from walk between, hard to find any real use for reavers. Well perhaps it would be away to get reavers off from enemy archers front arc or atleast have some of the shooting models front arc denied. That swings around with two consequences either opponent will stand still and shoot with say 2/3 of models, or he will do wheel or even swift reform in order to get more shots, but getting another -1 from moving. OR Walk between could move frost phoenix there to give hard cover to reavers and to gain better charge position as 20 march move isn't quite enough. But this would require both reavers and phoenix advance in same front and because of flank attack phoenix could easily be dropped of combat due shrinking unit. In that sense, frost phoenix should advance in different flank and pancake other flank thus removing pancaked units combat reform. For another way to help reavers surviability with High magic would be putting ward boosting mage on mount inside reavers but then they would lose fast cavalry rule and pretty much the whole point of Spear Reavers would be wasted Too bad helf steed without barding doesn't have fast cav rule as does our brethen Wood elves. I would say that it would be nice boon and there could be clear ruling, that heroes on fast steed cannot wear shields, heavy armors, great weapons, lances etc or they lose their fast cav rule. So they would be elite Reavers armor wise or something. Well this is little bit off topic, saying some wishful thinking, but i do understand why Wood elves has this luxury over us and fluffwise thats great and should be as suchs. But game wise i would love trying fast cav mage. I have used high magic with decent succee for Ward boosting in Lions. I wrote a wall of text here in ulthuan to different topic. http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... &start=210 That Wall of Text has it in perspective of Infantry heavy list.
Lore of light: has pha's protection that has great use for reavers in turn 1. Not only shielding from bs, also from templates. Then Level 4 BoH lore of lighters bubble spells will surely crunch some heavy support for our units in CC. Pha's protection bubble value is imo extremely cheap compared that what it gives. That is the reason why I revere Pha as top dog in lore of light. Again pha's isn't so terrifying spell that it could easily be overlooked. Problem with lore of light is that there really isn't any super bomb that opponent would really fear and using level 2 support mage with light is too unreliable to have pha. And to get that "threat" out you would need to have two level 4. Teclis on the other could just choose pha and enjoy with purple suns, and other selected bombs casting pha's protection with ease. Any way pha is great spell since it really helps elves alot to overcome our toughness weakness. My most common use of pha's has been in strong infantry armies where Whitelions march in middle and on the other side marches phoenix guard and on the other spearblock or silver helm block Keeping all in pha's, generals and bsb bubble. Speed of light surely useful too bad it's bubble version is bit too expansive, but it should be casted to unit that needs it most. And I would think Lions charging frontage would benefit most of it, since I 10 = hitting first and WS 10 less damage. birona for lions. Double movement in turn 1 for turn 2 guaranteed movement 10 charge/extra attack in CC. Bubbling birona isn't really worth it too expansive and since we have ASF allready it has very little use for us. Net of amyntok also really helps save reavers. Used to hex archer unit, since they are usually str 3, it means that 1/2 strikes. Opponent might even choose not to risk D6 str 4 (i wouldn't "We have reserves").
Lore of life: Flesh to Stone. Imo one of the greatest buffs in game. That could be used to make reavers survive str 3. Lore of life also provides great regeneration option for white lions and good old Dwellers is great to have as mind game. in turn 1, since you prolly cant do throne of vines, flesh to stone and reliably have enough dices to cast dwellers on 21 (or perhaps not cast it but keep your opponent on his toes) I would see it like this. first spell would be flesh to stone used 2pd on reavers. There is little reason to have throne on for this purpose. Lets say, best BS attack that threats those reavers would be str 4. At worst there is grinding organ gun... (oh mother of dwarf organ gun would be nasty nasty against our reavers). Still have on average 5 pd left and as your opponent knows doing 24 inch (and of course you have moved with your lions to middle of board) to do dwellers. I would say no to use it without vines. since doing turn 1 dwellers risking IF and in worst case blowing mage up or draining his level is prolly not worth it. I would then use spare dices to throne which would be more than likely be dispelled and earth blood for 5+ reg for lions. For extremely good winds throne of vines could be the first spell casted, and that makes your opponent using dispells? Then perhaps flesh to stone for reavers keeping dweller option open. Opponent will save his scroll for it unless IF of course. Reavers also could have very good use for shield of throns in turn 1. Lets make it so that something in flanks would try to charge them. that 2d6 str 3 at the end of his magic phase will really make him think about dispelling it (if he calculate) that this charge he made is capable to hold those reavers in place or even try to break em. That would need atleast 2 PD to dispel and hinders opponent magic greatly. Or if he lets it be, then those 2d6 will surely help reavers alot against... what could it be actually even against hellcannon abit helpfull those attacks has average of 7 hits 1/6 wounds 1/2 pas armor 2/3 past ward -> 1 / 18 hit wounds -> 0,38 wounds on average result. If vines is on when casted thorns Hell cannon would suffer 1/12 wounds per hit -> 0,58 on average. And that 2d6 str 4 against anything else is great.
Lore of Heavens: Ok, Iceshard no need to reopen this case. Only real difference is that level 4 BoH has decent one dicing of 8/9 this spell. Another spell that directly aids against shooting is curse of the midnight wind. This was actually first time I realized that curse can be used to minimizing killing blows and poisoned attacks. Excelsior! How come i never even though of that. Great spell for getting frostie out of poisoned skinks / stegadon battery or help with cavalry bus. Wind blast might have rogue use because pushing archer (even when not changing phasing) if line is good, they might end up in situation where some models front arc doesn't have any reavers on. Or if those archers stand near mysterious terrain forest or river, push them inside, hope for boiling flood for laugh of your life, any dangerous terrain test, river of light and hope some net of amyntok, damage spells etc. River of light might have two spells that aids opponent. Pha or light of battle. Pha in sense, that if you plan to shoot unit afterwards it will protect it and light of battle guarantee that no panic cannot be utilized. For forests again cover safe against shooting is little downside, but they might also have little CC, in form of stupidity (where iceshard helps with -1 ld) and some wildwood thing. I had one of the funniest Warhammer moments few weeks ago when i experimented MSU with lore of heavens lvl 4 and shadow lvl 2 against dark elves when I pushed Hydra in forest (real intend was to just push it little further so Delf player had worse chance to charge. Forest turned out to be blood forest then i used miasma to reduce its movement and the forest bashed hydra. Sadly if i remember correctly forest didn't do any wounds since solid hydra saves, but that really had nice ring to it. Well if this would happend that you expose blood forest, then one spell in for receive damage and with some luck forest will travel in between archers and reavers and gives soft cover for us (if terrain wouldn't allow it otherwise) If pushed in marshland that causes DT test. Windblast really has it uses. I really wanted to see monstrous cavalry near khemrian quicksand and windblasting them in. 1/3 of models dead! Then next turn they have to move, so again 1/3 of models dead! Or imagine some monster, but then again DT on only 1 for monsters. Well lets see. Harmonic Convergence is truly great spell. White Lions and Sword Masters regain effectively their lost potential. It was close to same as having full reroll on 3+ to hit than having rerolling 1 to hit and 1 to wound. And that armour save of 1 really helps if you think about stonethrower that tries to nail WL. 3+ save, only 2 are outright fails and 1 for reroll. And bubble version is great and I could see me using bubble version. Frost phoenix would love it, even reavers would like to have rerolling to wound of 1. And this spell is very very very easily overlooked by opponent. I actually used it with good succee in the same Delf msu list for my archers. Ok what else we have, Urannos thunderbolt, never can have enough long range high str magic missiles. Comet of Casandora, I could blabber about this babe a Wall of Text. This spell is plain and simple fun. For this reaver list I would use it as area control, would use it to cover my other flank. But as aiding reavers i cannot find direct use for comet, so I will save my blabbering for another day. Chain lightning nice to burn MSU. Not really helpfull for reavers.
Lore of shadows: Well miasma being obvious help, other spells doesnt help on defense on turn 1. Shadows synergy with our army is well known fact. If anybody could say that enfeebling foe or withering doesn't earn their place in battles... Only bad thing i have to say for them that I usually find them slightly just too expensive. But using level 4 BoH that problem minimizes. I have my personal antipathy against level 4 shadow since i used it ALOT during 7th armybook. Imo, shadows pros still ably pretty much the same as in previous book. But I usually play miasma support mage. Like I have many times said miasma is too good to not use. And smoke and mirrors can be real point saver time to time. I can't remember the last time I used prince as general. Mostly my archmage/loremaster/annointed serves as general.
Lore of death: For turn 1 surviability death has little to offer. Character sniping, or warmachine sniping. In general I like death, it has it uses. Character sniping can change game and purple sun againts ogres / orcs... rok rok... For my little reaver block idea Doom and Darkness has excellent synergy. Remember when we crunched Reavers breaking power from flank charge against almost anything. -3 LD and lost combat is likely dead unit. This helps alot even if unit passes break test, then he will likely fail combat reform. Best way to utilize this would be having terror unit (what better than frostie) that could make the first charge and try to make unit flee in turn 2. Perhaps that aspect of the dreadknight could be used on reavers. If you may use small reaver units to make it flee even more and best case scenario off the board, even if that unit stays on board then opponent will have hard magic phase ahead. Opponent must choose if he want's to dispel Doom and Darkness, or your character sniping etc. Best case scenario his mage is in fleeing unit so hard dispelling without proper modifiers (and prolly cannot use scroll? if fleeing. not sure) This confers especially against nurgle warriors. But if thats the case mage prolly isnt in that unit . Now when Will of Chaos rule got removed they are likely to shiver in fear or flee from terror. Of course there is bsb nearby. but depands on lord / hero choices nurgle warriors have either 5 or 6. Lets say 5, means with reroll 47,9% change of passing, with ld 6 66%. Without reroll for ld 5 -> 27,8% and for 6 -> 41,7 %. This could be combined with level 2 support heavens to icesharding unit. Shoot iceshard to nurgle warriors in turn 1. Your opponent will be wait what? Doom and Darkness off. Your frostie needs only be at 22 inc away from unit, since in order to declare charge you must have theoretical possibility to complete it. Since Terror is really off the table (compared to old editions. Bubble terror, breaking, charge protection) it would be extremely surprising to use it. Then again many people don't realize that frostphoenix has terror, since High Elves aint your regular fear/terror armies. And Warriors players might not even realize that their precious chaos warriors do fear. There is also great psychological nuance that people tend to dismiss LD modifiers until they have faced it first hand. Well thats that. Soulblight very solid. In combat resolution view roughly as same as wyssan except when doing multi charge soulblight helps even more. So soulblight with frostie -2 str...
Lore of metal: I don't know how come I cannot find lore of metal tempting. It seems to be solid choice in comps. For our reaver block Glittering Robe is definitely spell of choice to aid Reavers in turn 1. Enchanted blades for lions / reavers would be solid. One spell is something that I really don't get. Transmutation of Lead. -1 to WS, BS and Armour save. WS modifying being what it is (situational) BS modifier is solid -1 to hit always and works against tomb kings. Well armour save reduction is always a bonus, but my wondering revolves around casting cost of 12... 3 PD for level 4... If someone laughs at flock of doom, i could still see Flock being used against warmachines and flock is easily one diced as last spell and it might do little damage, mostly not. To be honest in fluff sense transmutation of lead should also decrease movement and initiative. So it would be miasma with armor decrease then i would perhaps see it for use 12+. Then i could see this spell for some use. Comparing it to miasma for 10+ cast WS, BS, I, M -d3... Spell that permanently decreases armoursave is casted 7+. Spell that effect ends next turn, does weak miasma effect. Perhaps I just got it wrong. Golden hounds, sniping spell that does d6, and only 1/6 thos hits hits the actually target. Most of times must be used with 12+ cast. I love fluff idea of it, some hounds bashing and friendly troopers yelling "no mister president". Final Transmutation i like it decimate 1/3 of models in unit. Solid. And that after effect stupidity, excellent fluff! Like Shawn from BTP would say "Faa-antastic!". Stupidity check as from Ogre Kingdom's Greasus Goldtooth (imo one of the funniest models in FB)
Lore of Beast: There is two excellent spells in beast. Wyssan being the obvious and the Curse of Anraheir. That curse is extremely powerful. Not only solid -1 to hit which is always nice, but if you move for any reason 1/3 models die (unless ward saves) Real power of this spell isn't actually the damage output rather than making opponent to choose acceptable loss or just stay put. Best used against cavalry for obvious reason. Denies their movement badly. Or against tomb kings chariot unit. In Helf perspective i find these character boost to be little too expensive to use. For Eltharion i could see best support lore being beast and I actually have used it and been fairly happy with my choice when ended up with wyssan ofc, and pann's impenetrable pelt. As said before flock of doom is rather underwhelming. I could see it used against warmachines, other high toughness targets. Since most shooting/magic will all ready wound only with 6, flock is low cast 2d6 that can be used one dicing as last die. Average flock would do 1,16 wounds to warmachine without any armor. say doom diver. Amber spear is nice to have, but then again Helf can get it with 70 points from rare if needed. Of course that larger version solves host of problem giving high elves that long desired cannonball. Transformation of Kadon is great fluff spell. I haven't never used it, I prolly value too much for reliable magic and tend to use low cost, tiebreaker type spells.
TerrainOn consideration is dangerous terrain. Since cavalry takes dangerous terrain more often and (at least it feels like when ever we roll for terrain we get tons of fences). This unit really needs to use march in Turn 1 and charging in flanks. Cleverly placed terrain pieces hinders this freedom alot. So big unit of cavalry doing dangerous terrain means decimation of 1/6 and that is extremely painful. On the other hand reforming to avoiding terrains or minimizing DT tests. As mentioned up there, hills can be used with greater chance to have important +1 CR.
ArmylistMost obvious key difference here is model cost. Spear being 4,5 SS and reaver with spear 8 SS. In order to break steadfast in most cases you need to have 25 - 30+ models. Lets say 30 models. For spears cost would be 135 SS and reavers 240 SS and this unit really wants full command (even champion for challenge purpose) so extra 15 ss for both. Too bad magic banner is only for spears. Those reavers die as easily as spearman. They are very vulnerable even low str bs shooting, magic missiles. On the other hand sheer moving power of reavers means, that you can try to avoid that threat much easily. Spearbunker usually travels in middle of the board.
Reavers setup Well there isn't really no need to even discuss about using only bows or spear bows with 30 model steadfast breaker. Rough calculation says, spear bow is 45 SS and 5 reavers with bows cost less and do much better. I would say 30 models would be good unit size, music, banner and champion. I would take for sole challenge purpose.
To the last thing I wanted to add somewhat nastiest infantry unit I know in the game. Nurgle chaos warriors with halberds. Lets say unit of 30 spear reavers (Full command) cost 255 SS. Lets assume that chaos player has used same points to his warriors so he has 25 Nurgle halberdies with full command. (no magic banner this time). Now Reavers manage to flank them and main combat block fails to aid them. Reavers have 5+ to hit, means 5 / 9 hits, 1 / 3 wounds, 2 / 3 (4+ -1) gets past armor -> 10 / 81 attacks wounds -> 1,85 wounds. Steeds does 1 / 3 to hit, 1/3 wounds, 1/2 get past armour -> 1 / 18 attack wounds -> means 0,27 wounds for steeds. So fair to say 2 wounds will be expected for Reavers. Then chaos strikes back 2/3 to hit, 5/6 to wound -> 10/18 attacks wounds. Nurgle block would get 11 attacks to side 2 per Rank and file and champ. -> 6,11111 wounds. So combat resolution. +1 Charge, +1 Flank +3 rank ( with 30 models still 24 left) +1 Banner + 2 wounds total of 8. Result for nurgle warriors, no ranks since disruption, +1 banner, +6 from wounds total of 7. Lose by one, and not steadfast since one killed. Well, if WoC only kills 5 reavers, then they cant be steadfast. I don't even want to make numbers for failing spearblock against this unit. That would be somewhat of butt rap. And when added that nuance of Hill utilization, that would be +2 winning without steadfast. So demon prince general / chaos lord would mean break with 8 and bsb reroll. With chaos player that likes sorcerer lord that means 7 bsb reroll. Not too shabby =)
Conclusion for Reavers as Steadfast breaker duty
+ Reavers contribute to that role better in CC, simply due less dying in flanks and putting out more CR.
+ Combo charge easier and reavers benefit from charge +1 str when spears lose extra rank.
+ Movement phase is the phase that dictates who wins. Flyers being kings of movement, reavers are easily the queens of movement.
+ Flanking rearing extremely much easier. Well wayward shard might be rogue way to have steadfast breaker to rear. But that would be earliest to turn 3 while reavers can do they magic in turn 2.
+ surprise element of coming in game with 30+ spear reavers (my phalanx got mounts!)
+ Fun to try
+ evasion
+ better against templates
- cost more to have bodies
- fragility to small arms and more points to opponent per kill
- Dangerous terrain becomes even more dangerous
Tarpit
Spearman tarpit. Oh thats expansive and when compared to zombies... well not the smartest thing to do. But I have won games with this. Played out and horde of grypt horrors for 3 turns (magic buffing really helped. This battle was with the 7th book and I used shield of saphery 5+ ward to keep those spears alive little longer) To my best surprise they actually fought very well against those horrors. Other utility that I could be trying some times is againts Gutstar. Having with defensive annointed stubborning in with banner of disc, for that 6+ ward. Perhaps even support high mage to rise that ward (but against hellheart bad idea ). Then use that time to place whitelions/phoenix guards to flanks and something to rear. This tactic really needs it to be so that spears count would be very close that if you make the charge to gutstar, that they survive just two combat rounds OR that you can lure ogres to charge this unit bash it as hard as they can but not breaking it and then when your main force strikes, there wouldn't be too many spears left to give CR to ogres.
As tarpit reavers.... I can say only one tarpit role for them. That is 6 models with champion, running to demon prince force challenge utilize imo one of the irritating rule set in game
I could start rambling about this rule for days. Just picture this thing, when I was a "young" handsome new player in game, I got this fancy dragon and kitted it to be 300 ss killing machine, oh star dragon, star lances etc. vambracers (was it 4+ ward and reroll armour). I charged flank to.... i dont know, lets say it was undead skeletons or something as trivial as that. My opponent champion calledBRB 8th page 102, Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide wrote:A Character cannot refuse a challenge if his model cannot be placed so that he is not in base contact with an enemy model...
challenge with his puny champion. Well I was like, hey didn't that mean that i could only kill one of your models in this fight. No way I am not accepting that, why would my prince choose to fight that puny skele. Well then came BRB bashing in our board and that rule was extremely clear. Well then I was well, I can have my overkill no problem. I of course killed that champion with my prince overly bad roll. Managed to do just one wound to it. Then I was ok, now my dragons gets sweet sweet nectar... No it doesnt! BRB page 103. The best part in this particular event was that I had three combat resolution flank, charge and wound. My opponent had banner and 3 ranks. Ok then we went for disruption rules BRB page 52, need to have atleast two rank of 5 in units flank/rear, because "smaller units are assumed to have unsufficient mass to cause disruption". Well you can prolly see where I am going next. Rolling break test of 9 since lost one and not stubborn. Failed, I measured to my BSB it was like 14 inch away... Some tears might have bursted from my eyes then rolled something like 5 flee, and those skeletons just caught me... There was that small little point in this game when I almost flipped a table over...... Well this had absolutely nothing to do with the topic, but I hope you enjoyed story
As I was saying, challenge demon prince or other similar character, get smashed and stay steadfast for LD 8 to deny that character next turn of movement. Overall this really doesn't qualify as tarpit its more of a roadblock
Conclusion for reavers as tarpit:
No real use as tarpit
Core Horde Clearer
I found out that spearmen are excellent counters to core hordes such as goblin spears, skaven rats, human men at arms, zombies, skeletons. Since those units clearly function good as tarpits what better way to answer it than 30+ well statlined soldiers that actually does decent damage back, and doesn't take too much since WS4. In 7th edition I used swordmasters alot (loved, well actually i love them fluff wise and they were so killing powers) and nothing wasn't so annoying than having that unit tied to combat with some skaven clanrats. They hack and slashed those rats, but everybody was so expensive, high str attacks goes to waste.
As Horde clearers... Well steadfast duty actually overlaps with this. They die as easily as spears and bodies cost more than our elite. But as numbers crunched they have decent change to break anything that isn't well armoured...
conclusion for reavers as horde clearer:
Pretty much same role as steadfast breaker
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For spearmen. One of the things why I don't play them as much is because during 7th armybook and 8th brb that 25% Core Tax just took my fibes of from them. You had only spear or archer or spear&archer... Use 25% on that, end of story.
[Edit]
- 5.9.2013 Added some stuff to spearman, corrected few mistakes... Even changed opinion about core horde clearers.
- 6.9.2013 Added magical support consideration for steadfast breakers. Corrected few mistakes and typos here and there.
- 29.10.2013 Removed archer considerations (found the reason why couldn't edit. For somehow google chrome just crashes)