Howdy all! Long time lurker here, but I recently had a game against my WE buddy that had me scratching my head at how to counter his sister bus with the new ET rules. The basic comp is this: 17 SotT Lv 4 Death with tree singing spell and Obsidian Amulet Lv 4 High with scroll and Tal of Preservation BSB Standard of Dicipline, Armour of Destiny Basically he just ran it in a 5x4 block and played bumper cars with it. With it he has a 2++ vs magic and 4++ vs anything else. It comes with a -6 to combat res before casualties. High magic can further offset that (the counters come off with wounds but do not count for combat res), and the sisters provide +3 to cast effectively giving him a lvl 5 mage with access to all of beast and life, and 2 lvl 4s with all their choices. I tore through the rest of his gunline pretty well and with tetto's vanguard I managed to get 15ish sword and board saurus into the flank simultaneously with a couple of rippers in the front (both units boosted with 2 wissians apiece). I wasn't really surprised to see the rippers melt even with the boost, but with the combat res the saurus tested on double 1s, bounced off, and were run down. On a separate occasion I managed to get tetto's bunker into it (was on my last legs) with a decked out OB in the flank... bounced and was run down again. Ah, I should also mention that I had hex scrolled his sisters so he was at M2 which was the only reason I got anything in combat in the first place. The basic strategy was to run into things, and cast high magic to generate negative CR for the next combat. Each combat saw a fair handful of buffs/debufs that were 2-diced and with the lore variety you don't run out of anything useful. It's a huge avoidance point retention unit that can take a heck of a lot of punishment, and then just re-grow itself back. I'm eager for the challenge of taking this on again, but I'm just scratching my head at what we have in our book that can possibly handle a comp like that. Any thoughts fellow swamp dwellers?
I'll give it a try. First about what you wrote about the game : His BSB can't have both magic banner and item. The saurus in the flank should do better alone than joined by rippers to the front. guess the rippers basically just hand him some free CR, since they are quite squishy. The old blood in the flank would probably do better alone without tettos bunker. Will write more later.
That's a good point about the banner and item. It didn't play a part in this game, but I'll have to bring that up for the next time. I thought the same and debated sending them into combat in the first place, but figured I had a flank with the 15ish S6 T6 saurus and the rippers should be ok with T5 (all courtesy of Wyssan's) and if they survived I would be in 2 flanks and keep him from reforming, thus holding disruption for his ranks. In reality even T5 rippers melt to poison asf and they're not going to see the tabletop for a good long while... What really makes this work is the high magic attribute. It basically makes you immune to any damage that first round of combat (which takes a minor miracle to get into with any kind of block unit with staying power). I flubbed my rolls and he got pretty lucky and took me to 4 units on the 2nd rank so there went disruption. Even without it the static combat res and wound immunity left me at a -7 or so due to combat res (and yeah, the rippers contributed to that). To date this is hands down the hardest anvil unit I have faced and that combat res makes it a pretty effective hammer when it wants to. In the meantime it just dances and avoids like WE tend to do.
I think a saurusunit in the flank should do pretty ok, since they remove the rankbonus. Did he have a champion? If he doesn't just ram a cowboy into the front and challange, his BSB should be an easy match, and if he refuses you can always send him to the back and kill one of the mages instead. 1. An oldblood with 1+ AS with dawnstone and crown of command should stay forever. 2. Hex to make his unit reroll 6s to hit and 6s to wound would be great. Maybe combined with -1 or 2 to hit as well. 3. Lots of skink shooting. Think you need about 8 shots/wound, that's a total of 136 shots. Should be possible over a few rounds. 4. Skirmisher conga (1 model wide to limit the number of attacks, he should get 2 models in Btb) and keep the skirmisher in a forest for steadfast. Would take quite a few rounds of combat to slay them all. 5. Other tricksters shard. 6. Light magic to strike at the same time (ASF), or at least deny him the reroll to hit (WS & I 10) 7. Dwellers from below. 8. Transmutation of gold (metal nr 6) 9. Nr 6 from high, there's enough hits to cause some wounds. 10. Curse of anraheir (if he marches or charges he loses 1/3 of the models, at least if open ground counts as terrain). Something like that maybe?
High magic can only boost a ward save to 3+, so that means 1/3 of your wounds should be getting through. If he was playing it to get down to 2+ then he was wrong (you didn't state it one way or the other, but a lot of people play it that way). Skink shooting should eventually dwindle that unit. He doesn't have any way to grow them back, so once they're gone, they're gone.
High magic is not boosting the ward save, it's the obsidian amulet and loadstone carried seperatly by his mages (I had to get some clarification on that). Both give at least MR1, which stack and give the whole unit a 2++ vs magic. WE high magic adds a counter for every successful spell cast which is removed if the unit takes a casualty. These get to stack. The sisters also have a spell from Life, and thus every spell under ET. If he loses a model (didn't happen this game) he can regrow them with a +5 to cast, and heal his characters with the attribute if he needed. Getting that saurus unit in the flank didn't help in this case due to some pretty terrible rolling. It was a minor miracle getting a block unit with M4 into the flank, but even 15ish models boosted to S6 T6 my init was whittled down with anraheir on the charge and by the time the combat was over I had 9 total, 5 in the front rank and 4 behind.. losing the disruption. With a flank charge I lost by something like 10 but even if the disruption had come into play it wouldn't have changed the result. I think I caused 3 wounds, all eaten by that high magic attribute so there was nothing toward CR for me :/. This is one of the only solutions I can think of tried it with my kitted other trickster shard OB in the flank. Stubborn tarpits may be the better way to go but with ET magic and death he can still doom and darkness and buff the challenger to ridiculous levels with a +5 to cast on beasts. They also have unforging for a easy wound and no more crown. I see this working for maybe 1-2 rounds before even an OB melts. That was basically his strategy, cast high and beast magic for the buffs knowing every wound from me that gets through is negated and doesn't count for CR and just relied on his ranks and banners to carry the day. It might be more effective the next time around but with the dismal performance by the OB I'm skeptical to try again. Agreed here. Slows him down, but doesn't help to neutralizing the threat. Good to assist with tar pitting though. As long as he isn't casting any HM to generate counters, life to regrow, and is standing still for a couple turns this could work. In my experience skinks can't keep up the chase with elven fast cav. The couple rounds I got any shooting off he just moved and fired off soul quench for more counters and less skinks. Hadn't thought of that. Situationally this could be very effective with the general lending leadership. In my experience you want to avoid forests with WE though. In this game he was tree singing a blood forest through my army and casting spells on my units. Was hilarious but it hurt sooo much! See above. This all will require a Slann, which I think is the only way to roll in ET too, at least vs a comp like this. Tetto did amazingly, dropping 2 comets on the unit totaling some 15 wounds. I think 1 wound got through the 2++ save, and that just removed a counter that came right back his next magic phase. The greatest thing he did was letting me get that saurus block into combat which would not have happened otherwise but I have already gone over that result. This and the net from light could put the hurt on. In reality though he takes the 4++ ward save for dangerous still so he only loses 1/6 of the models. If he has a couple previously cast HM spells that leaves him perfectly safe. My hope was to find a Slann-less answer. Spamming HM provides this bus with so much dang durability and it's sad to see our attribute so useless in ET.
I guess he can regrowth with life magic. In end times I guess the sisters has access to all life and all beast-spells, or am I wrong there? Haven't had the opportunity to read the books myself, so it's only rumours and quotes from the forum.
Magic resistance doesn't stack. But it improves his wardsave against spells. He just need MR 2 to have 2++ vs spells. But that means he's just got 4++ vs shooting and close combat!
I watched skaveninAZ's battle report against high elves yesterday... The End Times spell for High Magic is monstrous. I think it's the most agonising spell around. FoM all the way.
I didn't realize that magic resistance didn't stack . That's why I like this place, always picking up tips like that! I like the salamander idea. Lots of flame templates, forcing panic, and they can somewhat keep up the chase! I'll have to try that next time with some Slann support The durability with this unit just really had me confused. That attribute and high magic spammability is terrifying. Surely ET opens up some combinations like that for other races too. I certainly want to try fire for spammability. I wonder how effective that attribute will be with the new dispel system. Any thoughts on other units that can gain a monstrous advantage with this new magic system?
Goblins with the Power Scroll (is that the one that cuts the Casting Cost of a spell in half?) and they can pretty reliably cast an End Times spell even if they roll a 1 on their d6 Power Dice. But that only works once. A Level 4 Goblin Shaman can pretty reliably cast the Nikkit! Nikkit! spell every turn. (Using the scroll, he would only need to roll a 4 and gets to roll an extra d6 over the random d6 power dice. Without the scroll, he only needs an 11... so rolling a 2 on the d6 (plus the magic mushroom) is enough to cast it most of the time) That makes him a pretty mean sniper.
I HATE sisters, my friend is a wood elves player, I'm talking 3 units of war hawk riders, one unit of sister with 2 mages in it. I hate his list so much and sisters can be insufferable but I find dropping dwellers on them works as the entire unit (including characters) is strength 3 and disallows ward saves.