Ulthuan

Hi all

Long time no see having drifted away shortly after the hardback armybook came out. I was daid13 but I couldn't get the password reset to work so now I'm just Daid.

I've got a game against woodies tomorrow (eek that's soon), 1500 pts. Any advice would be welcome.

My current list is looking like
Lords
Archmage Lv4 lore of life, Book of Hoeth & Talisman of Preservation 320
Heroes
Noble BSB Dragon Armour, Enchanted Shield, Luckstone and Ogre Blade 157
Core
5x Ellyrian Reavers 80
5x Ellyrian Reavers 80
21x Archers Musican 220
Special
15x Phoenix Guard Champion, Musician, Standard Bearer w. Banner of the World Dragon 305
10x Sword Masters 130
Rare
Great Eagle 50

That leaves me about 150 pts spare, I'm thinking either drop the eagle and a few things for a phoenix or adding a mage, maybe with dispel scroll and then I have a few more points for little upgrades, I think.

The vague plan is a phoenix guard death star which will hopefully smash lots of woodies but I don't really know what might be in his list and what's good and bad with either army.

Cheers
Daid13

Hi Daid




It depends what your opponent brings of course. But Wild Riders are very dangerous, best shot. I guess you’ll be very likely to face Enchanted Arrows. Your Archers will be good for counterfire, WE’s find them annoying. I don’t rate Life against WE’s, they’re too MSUish, High Magic might be better because it’d buff the PG up to a 3+ Ward and the spells are good v elves. A Phoenix would be very helpful.

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I'm currently panicking about having a really slow deathstar but nothing to force them to come to me so theorising about using 12 silver helms instead though not sure it's an improvement. Maybe two nobles and archmage in the unit.

Will sleep on it.

Welcome back.

First, on the administrative side. If you want I can recover your old account and give it a new password so you can use that again. Just let me know.

A couple of things about your list. First off, don't worry about it too much. If you haven't played in years then the aim of the game is to simply get started again. It's more about taking a bit of everything and seeing how it works then trying to get the best possible list. Also, 1500 pts is an interesting points level. You can't take everything and some games can end up unbalanced. All in all, your list is good enough for this game I think. So, have fun.

As for specifics:
- I agree with SA that I'm not too big a fan of life for your list. I would take either high or shadow.
- Also, I think that the Book of Hoeth is not that great when combined with Life. It's not terrible. But you'll end up going for a couple of big spells, which reduces the impact of the reroll. Both in fewer spells being cast (with 4 spells you get 4 rerolls, with 2 you get only 2...) But also the +2 that the Book gets you on average matters a lot with 2 dice, but a lot less with 4 or 5 dice.
If you go with High then you could probably also drop the talisman of preservation.

- Change the banner of the PG to the razor banner. BotWD is nice on PG, but very expensive for what you get. They are already very durable with the 4+ ward. The razor banner on the other hand helps with their one weakness, which is low S. The -1 to armour saves is very good and means that the PG can go up against almost all units without a 2+ or 2+ armour save without too much worry.

- Drop the eagle. You already have 2 redirectors in the reavers. Which is more then enough at 1500pts. You could even drop an eagle and a unit of reavers and be fine (though then of course you would need something different to make min-core requirements).

- I would change the dragon armour on the BSB to heavy armour. Dragon armour isn't very good this edition and very expensive for what it does. If you want the 2+ ward vs fire (which you're unlikely to run in to), change the enchanted shield to a normal shield and bring the dragon helm instead. If you drop the dragon armour, you could consider giving him a lion cloak for an extra 2+ save. Though I suspect most WE shooting is magical, so it won't do much.

If you do all this, drop the talisman, the dragon armour, the eagle and swith the banner on the PG, the you should have 256 pts to play around with. Which buys you a frostheart phoenix and the talisman of protection on the mage for instance. Which adds a big, fast threat to the army and gives the mage some protection. Or a unit of 7 or so dragon princes, with some points left over for goodies.

Alternatively, you could take a unit of SH as a core unit (something like 9 with shields) by dropping the reavers and downsizing the archers. In this case you want to keep the eagle. And you also want to mount the BSB (which has the added benefit of making him a lot more durable).

As a side note, while I love a unit of SM, they aren't the best unit in the book (though they are servicable). Take them and see how they perform. But my guess is they'll get shot to pieces by the WE player or underperform when in combat.

Rod

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Thanks guys.

The suggestions with the archmage look good, I'll change that certainly.

I think your maths is slightly wrong on the noble Rod, I'm currently spending 15 pts for 3+, 6++ and fireborn whereas your suggestion is 16 pts for 3+ and fireborn of which 5 more is magic item. I think you would be bang on if it was a prince though. I might drop the 6++ and fireborn though, depends on if those few points are hanging around at the end.

Razor banner does sound good and especially having changed to high magic, there isn't much different between the 3++ and situational 2++.

Dropping the eagle is the last thing that gives me room for the Frostheart.

16 pts left gives me either an extra Phoenix guard or dragon armour and an extra archer, I think either should be decent. Not sure how useful having the 6++ starting place to be upgraded by high magic is on the BSB.

Having access to my old account would be nice, the weird thing is it doesn't seem to be linked with the emails I thought it might be, though I have 2 old emails I might have used and haven't checked, I even still have access to one of them!

We had a fun game, I started writing up a bat rep but clicked save draft when either ulthuan or my internet was misbehaving and lost it. Wasn't very good writing to be honest so will have another go but will put a summary here.

My opponent brought Lord and Captain on Great Stags, 2 units of wild riders, 12 dryads, glade guard with trueflight, 3 treekin and an eagle. The battle turned into two fights split by a lake, which had the doubled role of catching drips from the roof! On my left I had phoenix guard with characters and phoenix versus wild rider unit, dryads and characters. On the right I had my archers and my swordmasters versus treekin and wild riders. We selected blood and glory on the basis the table was slightly too small and the distances were smaller there.

We realised mid deployment that putting characters on great stags in wild riders would stop them having fast cav so he didn't deploy them in the unit as he had planned, this rather messed up his plans.


My left reavers were charged in the flank in the middle of the table by the eagle and this held up the dryads and his general a little while. Meanwhile he pushed that unit of wild riders with BSB nearby to inside my deployment zone. I set up my guard facing side ways towards those wild riders and misplaced my phoenix next to but behind when it should have been next to and along side. Phoenix guard were much killier and tougher and the wild riders run quickly though the bsb survives an extra combat round. I mess up an 11 dice magic phase by overkilling number of dice to kill 6 phoenix guard. Both sides combat reforming means that my phoenix and guard are once again not lined up but he can't charge both units into the same one of mine easily. His general hits the phoenix guard, hoping to kill my archmage and the dryads hit the phoenix. Both generals fall in the ASF period breaking both armies.

On my right the wild riders are right on the flank and his treekin are directly opposite my archers. The treekin advance, are shot a little and charge. The result is simply he loses one treekin between shooting and combat and I loose several archers a combat round but hold steady. I out manoeuvre his wild riders with reavers and swordmasters threatening to flank the wild riders. In the last of my turns played I'd moved the swordmasters so they are very close to the flank of the treekin and the wild riders have the reavers very close, preventing them from charging anything else and forcing them to overrun to nothing if they destroy the reavers. He does wipe out the reavers before the game ends but I don't get to charge in the swordmasters

I played fairly well I thought, definitely out played him in the chaff department and my list was much stronger with him having badly kitted out characters and no wizard. Swordmasters didn't actually do anything but were very scary in conjunction with the reavers which is why they didn't do anything.
Amusing to note that I killed more phoenix guard than he did.

Next game is probably on Tuesday and we've decided to bump up the points to 1750 for that. I'll put a list soon.

I figured I'd use the extra points to go a little faster and more monstery.

Currently thinking
Archmage lv 4high magic, dispel scroll Talisman of Prot 225
Noble Griffon w. swiftsense, bsb, HA, Star lance, Enchanted Shield and Luckstone 309

2x 14 archers 280
2x 5 reavers 160
5 dragon princes 145
15 phoenix guard FC razor standard 300
Frostheart 240
Eagle 50

I've basically swapped out the foot noble for one on a griffon, added a few archers, swapped swordmasters for dragon princes and added an eagle. I might drop the eagle to improve archmage's gear and other small things.

Don't know if removing the swordmasters was wise, while they didn't cause a single wound in the previous game they combined with one of my reavers to take one of his wild rider units out of the game entirely and would have had the chance to get the treekin had the game lasted any longer. Dragon princes have speed but don't have many models of course. I suspect they'll be somewhat scared of any shooting with no spare wounds available.

Overall I think I like the new list. I'm not the biggest fan of the BSB on a Griffon, though. Griffons are notoriously easy to kill. You do have a Frostheart to draw fire which is good, but the Griffon could go down pretty quickly, and that's your BSB lost. The Griffon will also probably want to be roaming far and wide and the BSB could be out of range a lot because of that.

I think you also may be a bit chaff heavy. Three units of chaff is more than I run at 2500 and you've got it at 1750. You'll have good board control, but I'd drop one of them to beef up the power of some of your combat or shooting units. The Phoenix Guard in particular I'd want to see go up in size. I tend to run conservatively when it comes to unit sizes and I like to have ablative models, so that's just my perspective. I know others have had great success with the unit of 15.

The Swordmaster swap for Dragon Princes is a good change. I think your Wood Elf opponent must be new to the game or inexperienced against High Elves? A unit of 5 Wild Riders should wipe out a unit of 10 Swordmasters on the charge without any difficulty. They'll kill 8-9 of them before the Swordmasters attack and then the Stags will finish the rest. 15 ASF S5 attacks on the charge is devastating and the Swordmasters just cannot take that. Dragon Princes have a much better chance of out-maneuvering the Wild Riders to get the charge themselves which will take down the Wild Riders. Dragon Princes are indeed vulnerable to shooting, but Swordmasters are the epitome of vulnerable to shooting and with a Griffon and a Frostheart in your list I think your opponent will likely be shooting at them rather than the 5 Dragon Princes.

Both me and him used to play a bit when we were 12 give or take a few years which was in 8th but before the respective hard back books, but neither of us had played recently. Regarding swordmasters and wild riders, he never had the chance to charge them into swordmasters, I was able to use the reavers so that he could only charge the reavers and he didn't take that up early on because the swordmasters would flank him if he did so. I don't really expect a similar list, I'm sure he'll bring magic this time, better equipped characters, though possibly less melee ones. Treekin and dryads are unlikely to be dropped, I suspect a little more chaff.

I added the eagle to counter him going for more chaff, also an extra monster for flank charges, might well drop it for better gear on the archmage and miscellaneous upgrade.

The bsb is a bit risky but is an important part of what I want to do with the list, if it fails horribly then I won't play it again.

Battlescribe says that Talisman of Protection is only 10 pts not 15 but I can't see any reason for this, is that a mistake?

Battlescribe has several errors in the points costs of Magic Items. It also erroneously lists the War Banner as 25 points instead of the correct 35. There have been no adjustments to points costs in 8th edition, the BRB and army books are correct.