Hey there, My girlfriend just started the hobby and we play a lot. However she struggles to beat me. Although she know rules and her army pretty well now, she only managed to beat me 1 or 2 times in 10+ games. Also she plays sylvaneth without Alarielle. I'm trying to play easy but as a huge competitive player, i got some reflexes and rarely fail on table . Against her i played a variety of lists ( Thunderquake, Shadowstrike, Dracothion tail, Dread saurian .... ) However she used to pressure me well in the first turns but always lost on the long run because of skinks mainly or heavy shooting . ( Yea i fly stuff that shoot ) So the questions i cant really answer myself are what are our weaknesses, how to BEAT us ?
I would say these are some of the things she needs to look at and assess which is the most important to achieve, I've put them in what I would assess and try to carry out. Play the objectives - Can I achieve this without taking out all your army. Prevent deepstrike - I know you have nasty stuff flying around can I keep it away from my key units and force you to attack something else, bait you. Prevent summoning - Do I need to stop summoning early on with my own Alpha strike/snipe. Tie up your units - Can I use cheap chaff to keep your key units tied up. Snipe the Heros - Do you have key units badly positioned and not guarded.
Ok so you said she uses the woodland crew - but what exactly does she use? Those guys have to be very strategically played at the best of times, I think if she got a load of Hunters with bows they could rain some hurt down on your units (with better range than lizards and plenty of damage) but if she really wants to cause some pain(plus some mental regeneration) she should get the everqueen-she’s simply a one model army that can summon and heal everything. As she’s starting off strong but losing in the long run I imagine it’s due to being ground down, if she could heal back those lost wounds then surely her initial push would keep its momentum ?
@Crowsfoot Yea she thinks of it but we'll make it better . That's what i'm used to do too but it's more natural to me ( long time player ) And i'll help her to process it this way @Deed525 here is the list she loves and play ( she plans to get Alarielle but for now, try to learn without her ) Tree lord Ancient, Durthu ghyrstrike gift of gyran, Tree lord , 2 branchwraith ( acorn / Ranu's ) 30 / 10 /10 dryads, 3 kurnous hunter with bow and Harvestboon. She tried double Kurnoth bow, but replace them with treelord because of the randomness of their shot. Do you think she should get back those ? I had to play super defensive and she managed to kill some Engine , lower slann.
Treelords and Khurnot, placed in sylvaneth forests upon objectives are basically unbeatable without mortal wounds. My suggestion is to ttry the inverse: play sylvaneth while your girl plays Seraphon and show her how to hit your weak points.
Based on playing with my girlfriend and her younger brother there's a couple of things I've noticed 1) Objectives go a long way towards making fights more fun, especially against newer players as you can handicap yourself here relativly easily without making it too obvious. Plus, with a good objective at least it can stay exciting much longer as getting decimated doesn't necesarly mean losing. Also, don't limit yourself to just the objectives on the cards, assymetrical scenario's like in the various fluffbooks or what they occasionally put in white dwarf are very good as well as those can give her an advantage due to the nature of the scenario which still feels fair. 2) Due to how powerfull certain things are it can be very difficult to create a "fun" fight. Especially in smaller games with newer players. The issue is that in smaller games there's usually only a handfull of genuine threats. And these threats are disproportionatly more powerfull than the rest of the army. So if you play well and efficiently kill them off you create a massive power difference between the remaining forces. This means that playing well often means you end up steamrolling your opponent. On the other hand, purposely handicapping yourself will most likely mean that the one threat now ends up murdering half your army. If the player is then also relativly new (or just plain bad...) it becomes even worse as it just becomes too easy to take out the 1 or 2 major threats. From what I've seen the best thing to do is getting her a sufficiently large army that she can vary tactics, and can have multiple threats in it, while trying out as many scenario's as you can until you find a couple you like.
that's a good idea we might try @Killer Angel . Also yea Kurnoth rooted are insane to kill in melee, so have to kill them in range.