8th Ed. Dirty Rotten Tricksy High Elves

[Orion.Pax]

So...

A high elf archmage takes the 'Talisman of Saphery' and 'Folariath's Robes'.

The Talisman neuters magical weapons while in base-to-base. The Robes neuters non-magical attacks.

And the high elf charges my cold one cavalry.

I cannot wound him without a magic weapon or magic spell.
I cannot get near him with a magic weapon or it becomes a normal non-magical weapon.
I cannot target him with a magic missile or direct damage spell because he's in hand-to-hand.
He cannot wound me because he cannot attack me, due to the nature of the Robes.

He is, as far as I can tell, utterly invincible, barring non-targeted spells like the Comet. We spent 5 turns flailing at each other because he couldn't hurt me, and I couldn't hurt him, and I wouldn't let anything near my tarpitted cavalry unit.

Can someone who is familiar with the high elf codex please advise if I'm missing something?

It's an expensive way to tarpit a unit, but... let's just say it was a net win for him anyways.

 

[Stonecutter]

To begin with, the combination is entirely legit and effective, but only under perfect conditions (which obviously occurred) where the opponent has no magic attacks. Given that the HE player has to take a lord level character to field this and the character is a wizard (and likely the army general as well), they have a lot of points tied up in the character to put them in harm's way. From a lizard perspective, here are a few ways of dealing with this combo:

1) venom of the FF - this makes all of a character's attacks magical and poison - it does not create a magic weapon which can be negated by the robe of foliariath. Simple, effective and VoFF + GW on a scar vet is already an amazing combo.

2) augments & hexes - depending on the lore you are running, some augments cause damage (shield of thorns, fire cloak, flaming sword, etc.) or the light hex net of amyntok can damage a T3 elf right off the board. With heavens magic, iceshard blizzard offers an indirect assist as noted below.

3) breaking in combat - the robe is an enchanted item so the character cannot also have the crown of command, meaning they are quite vulnerable to static combat res. Even just the +1 for standard &/or musician will mean they need 8 to hold and will be checking twice per turn. Throw in ranks and a flank/rear charge by some skirmishers or spells that lower leadership and the "utterly invincible" elf will be run down in short order

It is always tough to encounter something for the first time but hopefully these ideas will help provide some effective means of countering this combo the next time you encounter it.