Furion's take on High Elves under ETC2015 composition rules quickly became a staple for the army and was picked up around the globe. I expect variants of this to be very popular at the ETC. As for my own list, this was an early draft in which we (as a team) basically looked at the strong Dark Elf lists from last year and asked ourselves: How can this be built with High Elves instead? The idea is shooting, strong flyers and death magic. Granted we don't get Warlocks, which is a huge downside, but Frost + SD are a lot stronger than DE Pegs.
How would this fare in a civil war?
.::. Battle Report - vs High Elves .::.
Lister:
Prince on Star Dragon: Star Lance, Dragonhelm, Talisman of Preservation, The Other Trickster's Shard, Heavy Armour, Shield, Lion Cloak, 645
Archmage: Level 4, Lore of Death, Dispel Scroll, Obsidian Lodestone, 290
Noble: Battle Standard Bearer, Dragon Armour, Charmed Shield, Reaver Bow, Potion of Strength, 155
10 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows, Standard Bearer, Champion, 190
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Champion, 90
29 Archers: FCG, 320
10 Shadow Warriors: 140
4x 1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 4x 70
Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Great Eagle: 50
Army Total: 2400
Prince on Dragon
L4 Book, Crown, High
L1 Scroll, Shadow
BSB Reaver Bow
30 Archers: FCG
2x 5 Helms: Shields, muso, champ
22 Lions: FCG, BOTWD
4x RBT
Pre-Battle Thoughts
This list is an issue for me because my magic is nearly completely irrelevant whereas his hurts a lot. In terms of sheer firepower we are evenly matched but, perhaps crucially, the Frostheart is very limited in what it can do whereas the Lions can just march up the middle and I can't really deal with them effectively. The one thing I do have going for me is the threat of Purple sun vs an eager Dragon.
Last but not least, him having 1 drop less than me is a big advantage in this game because it likely means he gets to move and shoot first, thus taking the initiative which is almost always crucial in Elven matchups.
This game was played on one of the old maps which I think highlights their problem a lot: They favour mobile aggressive lists too much. In this matchup, he will almost always be the aggressor because of my inability to effectively handle the WL and the fact that the Frostheart can be neutralized easily if I make daring moves with it. Regardless, I end up with a flank which I leave open with RBTs on the backline, thereby forcing him to take a big risk if he wants to go there while the other flank/center sees the rest of my army deploy so as to at least control that part of the board.
Reavers vanguard up to grab cover.
He gets T1.
Dragon goes full speed ahead. In my experience, it is a trademark for skilled players to play balls to the wall. While it might seem very risky, on paper it works -most- of the time. You can also see this in Furion's videos from last year's ETC. The WL start their shenanigans towards my center: Leaving him within 24" of the Archers for Fiery and 18" from Reavers for Soul Quench (his L1 Shadow rolled Withering). I scroll Fiery and IF SQ kills (!) Reavers. To add insult to injury, the one BT which can see my Prince in hard cover hits me, randomizes to Prince, wounds, I fail ward, 5 is rolled, Prince dead. So much for LD10.
In my turn I pop Potion on BSB but to no avail: After my entire magic phase and shooting phase has targeted his Star Dragon the net result is... 0w.
This is not looking good.
Dragon goes East, thereby avoiding my possible counter-charge from my own SD. I am lucky to stop Fiery in the magic phase and the rest is negligible.
Time to face the facts: My chances of winning this game are very slim. Instead I am looking at what I can reasonably expect to have alive at the end of T6. I decide to try and save the SD, FP, L4 and BSB. Everything else is expendable. To do this I move the RBTs to prevent the best overruns, characters into SWs and I block SHs with Frost. To achieve this however I need to have my own SD clear his backlines on the Western flank because I don't have enough bodies to protect my fragile infantry characters if I can't silence the BTs.
I catch a break as his L4 cascades. He does drag down a few Archers with him seeing as Fiery was the spell of choice. While lucky for me, this is the third time he 5-dices a spell with BoH re-roll to maximise value. As any Warhammer player doing magic phases like this can attest to: Cascades happen ofter than you'd think from looking at the numbers.
Dragon into bolter. SWs retreat. Magic + shooting send SH running with 1 model left alive. T3 was crucial as I now have a bit of breathing space. With the L4 down I stand a good chance of preserving SWs + chars as well. I got the sun off this turn for the 2nd time but couldn't roll the required 8+ to reach his SD.
Dragon charges Archers and I flee. I believe this to be a big mistake on his part as the flee is so obvious and he can just set up a devastating position instead should he want to get in close and personal.
For magic he rolls a miserable 3v2 but goes for gold and casts Withering on the SD. Unfortunately, he cascades yet again (!). Lady luck is on my side.
The Eagle buys a turn for me by blocking WL. Frost is ready to sacrifice itself if needed as well. Dragon eats a second bolter. This time the Purple Sun finally goes long enough and his SD goes down (though the Prince survives). With 1+/4++ I am unlikely to snipe him and grab the juicy 700+ VPs.
He tries to block me in.
A very poor T5 from me. I don't angle the Dragon properly for a T6 counter-charge on my bunker. Speaking of the bunker: I thought skirmishers were steadfast if they were touching a wood, but as I'm about to be taught this only applies if the majority are in woods. Frostheart blocks out WL. Magic and shooting targets the Prince but to no avail.
WL into Frost. Helms into SWs. Frost thunderstomps its way to victory, he holds. Helms win, I hold (lucky again!).
I finish the game by sending Archers into WL flank. I have nothing to lose seeing as I am less likely to kill the Prince with shooting than making the long charge and perhaps breaking the WL. Magic sees Soulblight go off on the Helms and D&D on the Lions. BSB makes way and I win vs SH => catch them fleeing. Soulblight really made a difference here. I win big vs WL as well as the Archers make the charge however they hold.
A truly exciting game which upon completion yielded the somewhat unexpected
10-10 tie
// Evaluation //
This game highlights 2 problems with the list that I had experienced previous to this encounter: Obsidian Lodestone is miles away from BOTWD. It's so painful to deal with magical threats at a distance such as Fiery and magic missiles. You frequently end up with too many must-stop spells. The lack of the Book makes it even worse.
The second problem is the fact that Death is primarily strong when you get it up close and personal. The 10 SW bunker/runaway solution is incapable of fulfilling such a task. They are frequently impossible to get into position, let alone be safe there, and to top it off 140 points is a significant investment. Sure they have some truly good matchups, but overall I think they're too weak in this setting.
Furion played a better game than me and had definitely deserved a victory here. He understands his list very well and he was able to utilize every part of his list to achieve specific and game-changing goals from deployment onwards. By contrast my deployment highlighted my inability to settle on a strategy and only after things went really downhill did I have an overall game-plan (which did eventually work out!) with clear goals for all elements in the list. Again though I must highlight what I consider the map issues to be here: Being of a more defensive nature there are no good spots for me in this matchup: If I commit to the West too early he gets all bolters in Ruins which means it's game over.
I definitely learned to consider deployment in light of more angles and approaches than previous to this game, as such I found it highly interesting and learned a lot. That said, I'm still not sure how I should've gone about deployment here.