Favourite Elven Honours Builds?

[Smartha]

Hi everyone! I'm new to old world after having had a small 6th ed high elf army in the early 2000s. My first box of models (spearmen... i know they aren't great, but I still think they are classic) is due to arrive in the next few weeks and I'm keen to get painting!

A new addition in the old world seems to be the elven honour system. They look like a great way to add both utility and thematic elements to our otherwise fairly generic characters. I've been looking at a few lists and can see that pure of heart gets plenty of play (presumably because it is the right price and seems pretty useful), with a smattering of blood of Caledor and warden of saphery, but that the other honours get very little play outside the armies of infamy.

It got me wondering as to people's favourite builds (either thematically or competitively) for each honour. I have a couple of ideas, but not having played any games yet, I'm unsure how they'd actually perform. Especially interested in ways to make the less popular/more thematic honours work.

Thanks in advance!

[Serathail]

As for my own personal favourites, it would probably be the following:

Pure of Heart: Noble BSB on a griffon with all the saves, optionally with war- or battle banner

Sea Guard: Either high or elementalist archmage deployed with a block of sea guard, or Prince/Archmage with Spectral Doppelgänger (Illusion) with the White Sword on a skycutter.

Chracian Hunter: Archmage on a Lion Chariot with Spectral Doppelgänger (Illusion)

Warden of Saphery: Ideally once more an archmage with spectral doppelgänger and a couple of opal amulets to keep him alive. Personal favourite though is putting the blade of leaping gold + shield onto a noble/prince and fishing for 6s with those 4-7 attacks. It isn't really good, but it uses an otherwise useless magic item, so I like it personally.

Loremaster: Honestly just a worse warden of saphery for thrice its price. I'd maybe throw it on a noble if I had no other way of getting a wizard or needed more points allowance for arcane items (the sigil of asuryan being probably the main one since it doesn't depend on wizard level). If so I'd go illusion for a lucky spectral doppelgänger and guaranteed glittering robe if I don't get that.

Shadowstalker: Noble with a Reaver Bow or BotSF and a halberd, but fairly underwhelming for its price. Can also be the BSB and take razor standard to turn shadow warriors into pseudo-sisters of avelorn.

Blood of Caledor: Cav Prince in a buffed up unit of dragon princes, either super defensive (to challenge out monsters, revolves around a ton of saves and/or the bedazzling helm) or offensive (to murder the stuff the dragon princes cannot deal with, revolves around the ogre blade)

Anointed of Asuryan: Probably an Archmag General on a Frostheart Phoenix with the Null Stone (18" -1 to cast, immune to magic herself if she passes a rerollable Ld8 test. Could then even pair it with high magic, as Drain Magic might finally do something in combination with this). Also not amazing, but probably the best the honour has to offer.

[Prince of Spires]

I think the general consensus is that the honours are thematic, but not all that great for what they offer. Mostly people take them to get access to a mount option. My opinion on them:

Loremaster: Level 1 mages are terrible. They have trouble meeting the casting value of spells, only get 1 spell, are easy to dispell. There really isn't any point to bringing a lvl1 mage. Which just makes it very expensive. Not worth it.

Shadow Stalker: The problem with this one is that you're limited to Light Armour only. Which means it's very hard to build a decent character. Also, because the nobles and princes don't have the Arrows of Isha special rule, the Reaver bow isn't great on them. Now with the Bow of the Seafarer it might be different. Having a mobile bolt thrower in your enemy's flank can be great. But if you bring a prince he's likely your general and then you'll be spending a lot on protection. As a noble, you probably end up with a T3 6+ save character...

An additional issue with him is that Shadow Warriors aren't great. You rarely see them, and then almost always in a support role. Which further decreases the Shadow Stalker's utility.

One built I tried, which performed okay was: Prince [249 pts] Great weapon, Light armour, On foot, Seed of Rebirth, Reaver Bow, Armour of Silvered Steel, Shadow Stalker. Though as mentioned, now I would probably rework him to bring the BotS

Anointed of Asuryan: People really only take this to mount him on a Phoenix. And since both phoenixes are pretty bad, it never gets taken. It's not worth it for the other special rules you get. Fear is meh, since few things really suffer from facing a fear causing unit. And a 6+ ward is pretty terrible on a T3 character with either 2 or 3 wounds. And I don't think anyone brings flaming attacks (since they have virtually no benefit and only downsides), so the 5+ against flaming stuff is so useless people probably forget he even has it.

Blood of Caledor: You take it if you to mount a character on a Sun Dragon or if you run him in a unit of Dragon Princes. Otherwise, Impetuous is too much of a disadvantage. However, if you do bring a Sun Dragon or run him in Dragon Princes, then it's pretty good. +1WS and free full plate armour is pretty nice.

Chracian Hunter: Generally taken for the ability to mount a White Lion Chariot. People generally don't bring large units of White Lions. So they don't put characters in there and therefore don't need the honour for that. The free Chracian Great Blade is pretty nice, but if you want it for the weapon option, then the Sword of Hoeth is probably better.

Warden of Saphery: I like this one if you have a character on foot. It's cheap, you get a pretty good weapon and Killing Blow. Only problem is that our characters on foot aren't great.

Pure of Heart: Probably the best honour we have. It basically turns every character into a sort of mini-general. For free. What's more, because it doesn't grant Inspiring Presence as a rule, but rather it simply lets other units use the character's LD, it even works in those situations where you can't use Inspiring Presence. This honour is a default unless you are bringing another honour.

Sea Guard: You take this if you want to ride a Skycutter (see a pattern here?) or if you want to run a big unit of Lothern Sea Guard aggressively and want to benefit from the Naval Discipline special rule.

All in all, I like the idea of having honours to customize your characters, but I think the execution is bad. Currently people only take them to get access to mount options or to be able to join units, not to actually make their characters better or more flavorfull. The only one that does that is the Shadow Stalker one, and that one suffers from SW being bad.

[Jedra]

I wouldnt say terrible, but some are generally better than others. The main issue is the mount restrictions.

For foot characters its basically "take seaguard if you want to put them in a seaguard unit, else take warden of Saphery". Illusion AM with warden packs quite the punch, and it's better value than any magic weapon.

Outside of that... the prince mounted in skycutter is one of my favourites right now, using seaguard. It also will end up as your general, getting to take a skycutter in special is good.

Pure of Heart on a monster mounted BSB is also a great way to get a large ld9 bubble of you have a low LD general.

Honestly? I dont really use the others... chrace has some value for the chariot, but i prefer the skycutter mount in almost every situation. Caledor seems attractive but the one time i took it impetuous screwed me over, so it's a bit of a gamble on a potentially very expensive unit.

[Ielthan]

Blood of Caledor is a good way to get a cheap 6+ ward save on a character on a star dragon, which lets you take a nice choppy weapon (star lance is good) and still have a 2+ armour and 5+ regen save (dragon helm, seed of rebirth, opal amulet for a one off 2+ ward to stop warmachines). Don't take the sun dragon, it's worthless.

Seaguard honour on a foot archmage/mage is quite nice for the free bow and rallying cry.

Seaguard honour on a prince on Lothern Skycutter with the White Sword, and similarly the Lion Guard honour on a Prince with White Sword on a lion chariot are good fun.

Warden of Saphery on an archmage with high magic can be handy if you want to run them in a block of infantry (casting walk between worlds), it's not great tbh but it's thematic and the honour is good value.

Pure of heart is basically good on almost anything, the immune to panic is very nice.

Loremaster is sadly terrible outside of like a 500pt game.

[Smartha]

Thanks everyone. That's really helpful but has also confirmed my fears re: loremaster and shadowstalker honours.

I wonder if the rumoured changes to wizard level scaling coming with the balance update may make loremaster more viable in the future?

[Jedra]

It's funny that people dismiss loremaster and praise ring of fury. *For an infantry character*, the battle magic loremaster (which can guarantee hammerhand) is about the same chance to cast as the ring, because of lileath's blessing (slightly worse with a lvl 4 dispell, much better without) - it costs slightly more but the sword of hoeth is well worth 5pts and the fact it doesn't eat into your magic item allowance is pretty good. If the rumoured change happens as i read it in the other thread (level 4 only getting +3 to cast/dispell), it will be slightly more reliable than a power 2 bound spell (assuming those don't change).

Obviously the real issue is you need to take it on an infantry character. If you had a Swordmasters unit to host it, LM is certainly an option over warden but in PG i think I'd always opt for the tiranoc, and LSG obviously need seaguard.

Killing Blow is the main reason to opt for warden over LM - against heavily armoured infantry/Cavalry this probably is more reliable, especially if they have multiple wounds. This is why the illusion AM warden is such a nice combo: lots of highish st killing blow hits can tear through most enemies

[Ielthan]

It's funny that people dismiss loremaster and praise ring of fury. *For an infantry character*, the battle magic loremaster (which can guarantee hammerhand) is about the same chance to cast as the ring, because of lileath's blessing (slightly worse with a lvl 4 dispell, much better without) - it costs slightly more but the sword of hoeth is well worth 5pts and the fact it doesn't eat into your magic item allowance is pretty good. If the rumoured change happens as i read it in the other thread (level 4 only getting +3 to cast/dispell), it will be slightly more reliable than a power 2 bound spell (assuming those don't change).

Obviously the real issue is you need to take it on an infantry character. If you had a Swordmasters unit to host it, LM is certainly an option over warden but in PG i think I'd always opt for the tiranoc, and LSG obviously need seaguard.

Killing Blow is the main reason to opt for warden over LM - against heavily armoured infantry/Cavalry this probably is more reliable, especially if they have multiple wounds. This is why the illusion AM warden is such a nice combo: lots of highish st killing blow hits can tear through most enemies

Ring of fury is praised because it can go on champions and you can take loads of them in your army.

[Jedra]

Sure. And I wouldn't build my army around a LM, but it's a bonus RoF AND a +2 str -2AP, doesn't lose ASF magic weapon for 35pts that doesn't eat out of your Magic Item allowance - if combat infantry characters were better it would be a decent use of points. You could even double up with the ring, giving you a 45% chance of getting a Hammerhand off even with a level 4 dispeller in range (not far off a 4+ to hit...)

The base problem is that any combat infantry character is too squishy...

[Avatarbriman]

Sure. And I wouldn't build my army around a LM, but it's a bonus RoF AND a +2 str -2AP, doesn't lose ASF magic weapon for 35pts that doesn't eat out of your Magic Item allowance - if combat infantry characters were better it would be a decent use of points. You could even double up with the ring, giving you a 45% chance of getting a Hammerhand off even with a level 4 dispeller in range (not far off a 4+ to hit...)

The base problem is that any combat infantry character is too squishy...

You name the reason people avoid Loremaster right in this post. "If combat infantry characters were better", they aren't. And since nothing is confirmed about changes people can only go by what they would currently use. RoF can be used to beef up pretty much any unit for 25 pts, monster, infantry, cavalry. Loremaster seriously curtails your options for a character. If it could even be on a chariot I think it would see use.

For me my favourite honour build was in a border patrol tournament. 500pt lists, 125pt max for a character, one 25pt magic item and 25pt honour allowed. It was a very fun format and I recommend it


- Noble [111 pts]
-# (Hand weapon, Sword of Hoeth, Full plate armour, General, On foot, Ring of Fury, Warden of Saphery)

Put this guy in a unit of Phoenix guard and went 4 - 0 over the day, the RoF and killing blow allow you to mince an opponent that charges you before they can ever get a chance to fight back. Only really works in smaller games, but if you guys are trying out smaller games I recommend it.

[Jedra]

In general yeah fighty foot characters aren't the best but there are still times it's not a dumb choice. Mostly I think if you want to put a BSB in a unit of Swordmasters, tbh. Illusion and Battle magic signature spells are both useful enough, and Spectral Doppelganger on s6 ap-2 hits doesn't suck if you get lucky. Anything casting roll 7-9 has about a 1/3 chance of succeding with a level 4 dispeller so you have good odds of getting 1-3 off in the game - more if you can take out the enemy mage or tie them up in combat. whether that will outperform killing blow is very opponent and situation dependent.

I'm definitely not saying it's the best thing ever, but there are times i might take it - unlike shadow stalker, or chrace and Asuryan that I'd only take if i really wanted to field the mounted version

[Prince of Spires]

The base problem is that any combat infantry character is too squishy...

You name the reason people avoid Loremaster right in this post. "If combat infantry characters were better", they aren't.

Pretty much this. There is very little reason to bring a prince on foot. And people are giving RoF to units champs because they increase the combat output of our units a lot. Especially for core units they're essentially free points to spend. Anything that boosts their performance while coming out of core points is a win. But most people don't take a generic combat character on foot, simply because they aren't very good in the first place. If they were, and we wouldn't need another honour, then the Loremaster honour would be decent. Though having only a +1 to casts still makes it questionable. And with only the 1 spell, he doesn't so much feel like a prince/mage combo, but rather just a prince with a bound spell.