So i got to face the High Elves on monday can anyone shed some experience on facing these. I think he has 3 bolt throwers, 2 Units of 5 Dragon Princes, 20 Swordmasters and a few blocks of Lothern Sea Guard. I think he takes ArcMage, Bsb and a few Heroes. I have Slaan, 2 priests, Block Temple Guard, 2 blocks Saurus, Skrox, 2 units of 8 Chams and 2 units of 2 Sallies Thanks Luke.
Take the baseline Slann build (rumination, mystery, becalm). Squeeze in a lvl 1 skink priest with the cube, you'll want to shut down his turn 3 or 4 magic phase, elves can't stand up to our saurus unbuffed so anything that can help to tone down his magic will be huge for you. As far as your own lores go, life or light are your best bets. Sallies absolutely demolish elves, just watch out for dragon princes as they are immune to flaming attacks. As much as I love skrox elf archers will destroy them. Leave at home if you can. Chameleon skinks are great for hunting his bolt throwers (you only need 6's to poision them to death, after that hunt mage bunkers).
Yeah i figured i cant beat the ASF on ther elves (well without having the buffs from lore of light) so im going to go for lore of life and just make them have to hit a tougher Lizard. Well reminded about the Dragon Princes i almost forgot there immune to fire that could have been embarassing. Im looking forward to the Chameleons and what they can do. Last game they took down a screaming bell and wounded the grey seer once with 2 rounds of shooting
The nastiest units in that army are his Swordmasters and Dragon Princes. The Dragon Princes won't be that much of a threat if they are split up in units that are only 5. They dont have a rank bonus, and generally just taking out one of them will screw up his unit. The trick with those is not letting him charge your important blocks, especially not in the flank or rear (even though he needs more ranks to disrupt, but still). They have a nasty 10-11 Str 5 attacks ASF with rerolls. Those will hurt if he charged a unit not prepared. You can vastly decrease their potential by either getting ranged/magic to pick a few off OR buffing a unit and making him charge that unit. Str 5 won't do any good against Toughness 8 The Swordmasters are pretty nasty. Try to target them with magic AND salamanders. They die easily under flame templates Beware of the shooting power of his seaguard. He might set them up in units like 10 wide with 2 ranks and when you start getting close reform to 4x5 and voila you have a worthy combat unit. But meanwhile you have a constant firing of 20 shots into a unit. If he has 2 or 3 units like that all targetting the same lets say Saurus unit, you won't keep them all alive. Basically try to get your Saurus units in combat asap, they will absolutely destroy anything but Swordmasters, White lions and Phoenix guard. In my opinion Light and Life are the best lores to pick on your slann. Life has the ability to buff your troops AND kill half a block of those seaguard (The Dwellers Below). Light gives you the ability to move faster(so get your saurus in combat faster) and override their ASF if I'm not mistaken? I usually go with life because it opens up a slot for a different arcane item than Cupped Hands. My slann usually has Lore of Life with Bane head and Feedback Scroll to kill off a lvl 4 mage. Really Useful. And last but not least: Skirmishers. Try getting some skink skirmishers. They are excellent to soften up some units and just generally annoying your opponent. For instance if you have a good 10 skink sirmishers between a block of his spearman and a block of your warruiors, just let them charge the skinks, do a stand and shoot if possible and then hope that your skinks get overrun. He then charges onto a block of your saurus. It doesn't matter if he charged you, he barely gets any benefits from it. A good block of saurus warriors can easily take the hits of a charging unit like that. But usually High elf players dont fall for it. Don't do it if its a unit of White lions instead of spearmen/seaguard I hope this was helpful if you have more questions just ask! edited: fixed some typos probably more in there but meh
Yeah thats cool - Im tempted to drop the cupped hands and try the feedback and banehead myself. Keep the advice coming its greatly appreciated!
The downside of it, is that you have to let a potentially devastating spell go off. The more dice they chuck at a spell, the more effect the scroll has. But they also get a higher chance in IF. They also tend to cast the nasty spells with more dice I would still prefer to use the cube against a boosted version of pit of shades directed at my army center IF i actually can dispel it. AKA if the caster isnt Teclis (or an archmage with the "all doubles are IF" item). IF + pit of shades = dead saurus.
Yeah just looked at me setup and it would disrupt it to much so not goiong for the scroll + banehead option. I do have 2 priests one with a scroll abd one with the cube.
Whatever unit the BSB goes into, test some magic on it early, especially if he puts it in the same unit as the mage. The banner of the world dragon is nasty, so you want to discover it early, before you start throwing dwellers at the unit.
I would drop the skrox and put some skirmishers and/or terradons inside instead. terradons can kill some swordmasters with their stones and do some annoying harassment behind the lines.
depends... don't forget the vanguard move. even if they get shot at - that's 1 less shooting on salamanders or chameleons.
what's the point of taking lore of life and cube of darkness, won't it shut down al your remain in play spells? and life has alot of them, ant theye are important...
Throne of vines and shield of thorns are the only 2 remains in play spells. Its likely your opponent will dispel thrones at the start of their own magic phase anyways.
only an opponent that doesn't want to use those dice to cast some important spells for himself, wich raises the question wheteeher do you really need cube of darkness against him ....