Lets Chat Wanderers / Wood Elves compendium

[Tidings]

19 hours ago, NoTurtlesAllowed said:

You mention warhawks a lot. I am dying to convert some up. Can you give me a rough or polished list using them?

I don't have the last list I played with them anymore, next time I put one together I'll post it for ya.

56 minutes ago, Popisdead said:

20 EG is great, why wouldn't you take them and for only 160 points?  

Treekin are nice and Tanky and cheap.  I've come to love my 6 in my Winterleaf.  

Small units of 10 have a couple slight advantages. If they are side by side and get charged by a unit of say, Ironjaws, the casualties will likely be split between both units. This means your battleshock rolls might be easier to pass, since there are less casualties stacked on one unit. It honestly might be a better setup in some situations, I'll give it a shot! You also get the bonus attack from the leader in the second unit. I'm assuming that's why he asked.

 

Glad you guys liked my walls of text haha. I'm interested in what works for other people too though! Some games I hit a brick wall and I'm still searching for the solutions. Let's keep this thread going once we get our new goodies.

[Popisdead]

6 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

I meant why not the same number total but in 10s.

And why not more EG instead of treekin.

I really like Treekin.  They sure surprise people.  I've had great success with mine granted I've combined them with Sisters of the Thorn.  Even still if that free wood pops up from the TLA, you can move them in and witha  3+ save, 4W for so cheap they can add nice support.  The 100 point pricetag makes them so appealing.

[Popisdead]

3 minutes ago, Tidings said:

Small units of 10 have a couple slight advantages. If they are side by side and get charged by a unit of say, Ironjaws, the casualties will likely be split between both units. This means your battleshock rolls might be easier to pass, since there are less casualties stacked on one unit. It honestly might be a better setup in some situations, 

That's interesting but I quite like the unit of 20 myself.  I've found it just helpful in my meta so I must not be facing the same situations. 

[Tidings]

I agree, I take units of 20x as well. Just thinking why 10x might have a place in a different list or against different opponents. 

And yeah Treekin are currently fantastic value, especially against low armor units. Suspect they'll go up though.

[Aezeal]

14 hours ago, Tidings said:

I don't have the last list I played with them anymore, next time I put one together I'll post it for ya.

Small units of 10 have a couple slight advantages. If they are side by side and get charged by a unit of say, Ironjaws, the casualties will likely be split between both units. This means your battleshock rolls might be easier to pass, since there are less casualties stacked on one unit. It honestly might be a better setup in some situations, I'll give it a shot! You also get the bonus attack from the leader in the second unit. I'm assuming that's why he asked.

 

Glad you guys liked my walls of text haha. I'm interested in what works for other people too though! Some games I hit a brick wall and I'm still searching for the solutions. Let's keep this thread going once we get our new goodies.

This is what I meant.

[darkspear]

Hi Guys,

Any advice on defeating the Star Drake plus 2 Knights Heraldors?  Supported by Liberators, Dracoth Cavalry and Judicators.  I am using pure Wanderers army (no Compendium) but am open to using compendium units and non-wood elf Aelven units as well.

As a Wanderers player, I often need to put my units and characters at high terrain pieces to get LOS to shoot my targets, but with the Heraldors I am forced to stay away, not to mention losing the advantages we usually get by hugging terrain.  The stardrake is a big problem, my opponent is usually lucky with his 4+ that allow him to kill off my heroes by turn 2 or 3 (Nomad prince and waywatcher heroes).

My tactics against most other opponents is similar to Tidings.  A wall of eternal guard with mystic shield and shield of thorns guarding the glade guard in Waystone Pathfinders formation.  However I really struggle against this opponent (he lost only once again the stormfiend filth list and beat all other armies) and in my last game he managed to kill off all my eternal guards with combination of mortal wound spam and shooting.

[Tidings]

1 hour ago, Aezeal said:

This is what I meant.

I hadn't really thought about that advantage of 10x until you asked. Have you tried both? Have you noticed much of a difference? I'm going to try two units of 10 tomorrow night!

[Tidings]

33 minutes ago, darkspear said:

Hi Guys,

Any advice on defeating the Star Drake plus 2 Knights Heraldors?  Supported by Liberators, Dracoth Cavalry and Judicators.  I am using pure Wanderers army (no Compendium) but am open to using compendium units and non-wood elf Aelven units as well.

As a Wanderers player, I often need to put my units and characters at high terrain pieces to get LOS to shoot my targets, but with the Heraldors I am forced to stay away, not to mention losing the advantages we usually get by hugging terrain.  The stardrake is a big problem, my opponent is usually lucky with his 4+ that allow him to kill off my heroes by turn 2 or 3 (Nomad prince and waywatch heroes).

My tactics against most other opponents is similar to Tidings.  A wall of eternal guard with mystic shield and shield of thorns guarding the glade guard in Waystone Pathfinders formation.  However I really struggle against this opponent (he lost only once again the stormfiend filth list and beat all other armies) and in my last game he managed to kill off all my eternal guards with combination of mortal wound spam and shooting.

I'm guessing he's using one Heraldor to speed the Star Drake into combat asap and the other to deny you cover? I'm honestly not sure off the top of my head what the best strategy would be. If you could get a cheap but durable unit like Treekin to take the charge from the Drake, that would probably stop it for two turns. Treekin are 12 wounds with a natural 4+ save for only 100 points, and battleshock is basically a non-issue for them. They are my go-to unit for stopping the Verminlords, Bloodletters and Thundertusk type monsters I see in my area. You could use Kurnoth Hunters too but they cost almost twice as much as Treekin and aren't that much more durable. 

The Star Drake has several abilities that make it exceptionally dangerous to low wound, high model count units like Eternal Guard. Fewer models with higher wounds are safer because they are less vulnerable to one of his spells and two of his abilities. You could consider throwing something big at the Drake, like a Treelord or a Forest Dragon, because they you are completely safe from his two abilities, but that's a lot of points to gamble against a Star Drake. 

If you can tie it up with the right unit, you have a couple turns (hopefully) to shoot the ****** out of it while it chews through your wall. Arcane Bodkins are your only hope, so use your Lord of the Deepwood Host ability and pray for good rolls. The Star Drake has nasty damage output all the way till it dies and his command ability is brutal, so try to finish it off ASAP. 

There's only one SCE player in my local area, but if I played against them more I would probably take 3+ units of 20x Glade Guard. If all I played were high-armor armies, I would probably take a list that was mostly Kurnoth Hunters, Glade Guard, and couple things for objectives. 

EDIT: Forgot to mention you should abandon Waystone Pathfinders. Or at least try something else. I have found it to be way better on paper than in practice. The turn you move onto the table, you can't make use of its bonus shooting. You can't really make use of the deployment to grab multiple objectives because you need to clump all your archers near your Nomad Prince, and you need everything else there to protect them. Also, the turn you move in you don't want to use Arcane Bodkins because you don't have Lord of the Deepwood Host active, and your Waywatcher Lords don't have their bonuses to hit. 

So the alpha strike potential from the battalion is horrible, since you can't do it till the second turn they are in. This means you are literally betting on a double turn, or landing right in front of an opponent and praying your Nomad Prince + the rest of your army survives. In either scenario, those are bad odds to plan for. Plus as soon as the Nomad Prince dies, the main ability is gone. Too much value in a 5 wound hero. 

Final point, the amount of unit requirements means you have very little room for list building. You're forced to take units like Sisters of the Thorn (very expensive) or Wild Riders (very bad). You're almost certainly better off building a mixed order list and using more efficient units for your wall. BUT let's see what GHB2 brings!

[Popisdead]

The issue with the formation is the ambush aspect is fairly useless outside a small part of it.

I've seen people take 2 x WRs, spam WW heroes for the alpha strike on them with the Nomad Prince ability.  

After a lot of Hard 6 podcast and Rangers I'm wondering about ways to use ambushing rangers as the means to make it work better.  The problem is that means it's good vs a gunline since stuff is generally coming at you.  And Tree Revenants do that better with the re-roll ability.  Just, so lackluster.

 

 

 

[Oppenheimer]

I have been playing Warhammer Total War and got in a Wood Elf mood. Pulled my Sisters of Twilight, Orion, Glade lord on giant eagle and glade lord on great stag out of hibernation and started painting. Want to field them all but will make the army pretty lopsided. That's OK though. I'm just playing to get those guys some use. Have 30 glade guard and 5 wild riders. Plus, have a full sylvaneth army to supplement them with.

[awcamawn]

Warhammer Total War is the reason I got into miniatures! I love the playstyle of the Wood Elves in that game. I've played the Total War games for 15 years and never had more fun with the series than with the Wood Elf dlc. Going up against crazy odds and winning with the right micromanaging is so satisfying. Really excited for Total War Warhammer 2, I'm ready to bring the Wild Hunt across the sea and remind our misguided cousins in Naggaroth and Ulthuan of their ancient debt to the forest.

You should definitely fit all that in your list, should be fun! Too bad wild riders aren't the absolute beasts they are in Total War (or were WHFB, from what I hear). The Glade Lord on Great Stag seems a very good value at it's current 100 points - 7 wounds and 9 melee attacks make him a real beast of an elf. I imagine having him and/or Orion fighting right next to the dragon would put out a terrifying amount of damage before the units in combat with them could even strike back.

Had my first real game of AoS the other weekend and had a fun time with the Sisters of Twilight at 1000 points vs Ironjawz. I found the dragon's soporific breath rule to be a lot of fun with msu of Wardancers and made both players think carefully. Probably would work equally well with Wildwood Rangers, who are arguably even more of a glass cannon than the Wardancers (but I don't have any Wildwood Rangers yet as they always seemed to fail me in Total War and get themselves killed). The game was super close, we both nearly tabled each other and I won o objectives. The only units left on the board at the end were five Wardancers, a Waystrider, and a very angry Rogue Idol of gork/mork. I easily could have lost had I not rolled pretty well or if he had be able to get his idol into the fighting earlier. Still it was fun to tell everyone at the store that I was playing Wood Elves and then proceed to charge right at my opponent with minimal archers on the board. My opponent couldn't quite get to 1000 points even so a took the Waystrider to meet him right at 980.

Sisters of Twilight on Forest Dragon
Nomad Prince
Waystrider
2x3 Waywatchers
4x5 Wardancers

[Popisdead]

20 hours ago, awcamawn said:

 I found the dragon's soporific breath rule to be a lot of fun with msu of Wardancers and made both players think carefully. Probably would work equally well with Wildwood Rangers, 

It works really well with Rangers.  I really like that unit.  

[darkspear]

On 8/2/2017 at 11:15 PM, Tidings said:

I'm guessing he's using one Heraldor to speed the Star Drake into combat asap and the other to deny you cover? I'm honestly not sure off the top of my head what the best strategy would be. If you could get a cheap but durable unit like Treekin to take the charge from the Drake, that would probably stop it for two turns. Treekin are 12 wounds with a natural 4+ save for only 100 points, and battleshock is basically a non-issue for them. They are my go-to unit for stopping the Verminlords, Bloodletters and Thundertusk type monsters I see in my area. You could use Kurnoth Hunters too but they cost almost twice as much as Treekin and aren't that much more durable. 

The Star Drake has several abilities that make it exceptionally dangerous to low wound, high model count units like Eternal Guard. Fewer models with higher wounds are safer because they are less vulnerable to one of his spells and two of his abilities. You could consider throwing something big at the Drake, like a Treelord or a Forest Dragon, because they you are completely safe from his two abilities, but that's a lot of points to gamble against a Star Drake. 

If you can tie it up with the right unit, you have a couple turns (hopefully) to shoot the ****** out of it while it chews through your wall. Arcane Bodkins are your only hope, so use your Lord of the Deepwood Host ability and pray for good rolls. The Star Drake has nasty damage output all the way till it dies and his command ability is brutal, so try to finish it off ASAP. 

There's only one SCE player in my local area, but if I played against them more I would probably take 3+ units of 20x Glade Guard. If all I played were high-armor armies, I would probably take a list that was mostly Kurnoth Hunters, Glade Guard, and couple things for objectives. 

EDIT: Forgot to mention you should abandon Waystone Pathfinders. Or at least try something else. I have found it to be way better on paper than in practice. The turn you move onto the table, you can't make use of its bonus shooting. You can't really make use of the deployment to grab multiple objectives because you need to clump all your archers near your Nomad Prince, and you need everything else there to protect them. Also, the turn you move in you don't want to use Arcane Bodkins because you don't have Lord of the Deepwood Host active, and your Waywatcher Lords don't have their bonuses to hit. 

So the alpha strike potential from the battalion is horrible, since you can't do it till the second turn they are in. This means you are literally betting on a double turn, or landing right in front of an opponent and praying your Nomad Prince + the rest of your army survives. In either scenario, those are bad odds to plan for. Plus as soon as the Nomad Prince dies, the main ability is gone. Too much value in a 5 wound hero. 

Final point, the amount of unit requirements means you have very little room for list building. You're forced to take units like Sisters of the Thorn (very expensive) or Wild Riders (very bad). You're almost certainly better off building a mixed order list and using more efficient units for your wall. BUT let's see what GHB2 brings!

Thanks for your advice man.  I will take into consideration.  I am thinking of what you said about treekin, I will try to avoid using compendium units so I may end up using Kurnoth Hunters or any suitable allies based on GHB2017.

[Tidings]

No problem! If you want to avoid Tree Kin then yeah, Kurnoth Hunters are good. I'm guessing they'll be bumped up to 200 points in GHB2 though. The other thing you could try is a forest dragon and a unit of Wildwood Rangers. Sophorific Breath pairs reeeeally well with Rangers against big monsters. 

I've got a local tournament in a week, we'll see how I do against the really competitive lists (I don't expect to get very far :P)

[Tidings]

CHECK OUT OUR NEW ABILITY!!!
Pretty ****** promising, moves us back towards the old style of play I love and miss!

Melt Away: Wanderers are impossibly difficult to lock in combat, melting away to strike from afar with their missile weapons. A friendly Wanderer unit that retreats can shoot in the shooting phase of the same turn.

What's most promising though is this bit - "The Wanderers are a fast-moving ranged army, capable of disappearing off of table edges then reappearing"

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/08/04/keeping-order-in-the-generals-handbook-2017/

[Uncas]

The "melt away" seems ok to me. In the example they use sisters of the watch, who are quite flimsy with 5+ saves. A lot of the time, they won't survive any melee from which they could potentially retreat and shoot. Also, they have quicksilver shot which gives them 2 shots if they don't move. So if they did happen to survive a combat phase, would you leave them in melee so they could get the double shots, or, retreat, shoot x1, and then wait to be charged( after the enemies hero/magic/shooting when your sisters could be widdled down) to get another round of shots? 

The potential to use board edges to pop up/disappear from would be excellent

[Tidings]

3 minutes ago, Uncas said:

The "melt away" seems ok to me. In the example they use sisters of the watch, who are quite flimsy with 5+ saves. A lot of the time, they won't survive any melee from which they could potentially retreat and shoot. Also, they have quicksilver shot which gives them 2 shots if they don't move. So if they did happen to survive a combat phase, would you leave them in melee so they could get the double shots, or, retreat, shoot x1, and then wait to be charged( after the enemies hero/magic/shooting when your sisters could be widdled down) to get another round of shots? 

The potential to use board edges to pop up/disappear from would be excellent

That's exactly what I said in reddit hahaha. Like "finally a nice rule that fits our flavor! Will almost never work in practice, but it's the thought that counts!" I think it will be more useful in situations where your archers are technically in combat because of pile-ins or because they are less than 3" away from the enemies fighting your EG.

But yeah, I'm mostly hoping we get some sort of constant redeployment, because we need to be able to build lists that are fast, and as long as we can constantly get turn one charged without any hope of running away, those lists are off the table.

Right now all Destruction, Khorne, etc fit the flavor of "fast" better than Wanderers. The only way to be faster than them is if you can move off the table and come back on somewhere else, and that ALSO fits the theme of Wanderers/Wood Elves, who were always described as being mysterious and vanishing, only to reappear somewhere else. I don't think this sort of mechanic would be overpowered by any stretch, as we would still need to actually vie for objectives, so running around only gets you so far. 

[Aelfric]

I am wondering whether the two can be combined so that you can retreat off a table edge, reappear somewhere else then shoot. Situational but interesting.

[Aezeal]

14 minutes ago, Aelfric said:

I am wondering whether the two can be combined so that you can retreat off a table edge, reappear somewhere else then shoot. Situational but interesting.

My most regular opponent didn't like me taking 3 Kurnoth Hunters (2 with bows) in 2K points.... way to strong shooting he said.. I wonder what will happen if I make a wanderer army that can shoot and the disappear again.

[Tidings]

1 minute ago, Aezeal said:

My most regular opponent didn't like me taking 3 Kurnoth Hunters (2 with bows) in 2K points.... way to strong shooting he said.. I wonder what will happen if I make a wanderer army that can shoot and the disappear again.

That's pretty silly on his part, Bow hunters average like 3 damage a turn lol. They really aren't a big deal without a hurricanum or something. 

And regarding Wanderers, that's exactly the kind of strong gameplay identity we need! Sure it's super annoying, but Wood Elves have always been that way. Also, turn one charge is annoying, everything about SCE is annoying, Skaven snipers are annoying, etc. Wanderers die to a gentle breeze and can't outrun anyone currently. We need something powerful to A) actually be competitive and B) have some unique identity as an army. Right now we are a worse version of KO, SCE, etc because we have to stand still and shoot, but we have worse armor, mobility, deployment and shooting lol. 

[Aezeal]

Just now, Tidings said:

That's pretty silly on his part, Bow hunters average like 3 damage a turn lol. They really aren't a big deal without a hurricanum or something. 

And regarding Wanderers, that's exactly the kind of strong gameplay identity we need! Sure it's super annoying, but Wood Elves have always been that way. Also, turn one charge is annoying, everything about SCE is annoying, Skaven snipers are annoying, etc. Wanderers die to a gentle breeze and can't outrun anyone currently. We need something powerful to A) actually be competitive and B) have some unique identity as an army. Right now we are a worse version of KO, SCE, etc because we have to stand still and shoot, but we have worse armor, mobility, deployment and shooting lol. 

I agree completely... on all points.

[Carnelian]

 I hope wild riders somehow get better their models are so beautiful

[Aezeal]

40 minutes ago, Carnelian said:

 I hope wild riders somehow get better their models are so beautiful

Don't think GHB will change the warscrolls.. a price decrease is the best we can hope for.. and they need a BIG drop in points.

[Popisdead]

4 hours ago, Tidings said:

What's most promising though is this bit - "The Wanderers are a fast-moving ranged army, capable of disappearing off of table edges then reappearing"

Yeah that's the only positive part of it.  

 

No one on the FB group has come up with any use of Melt Away that makes the army better however looking at others,.. 

 

le sigh.

 

[Tidings]

I think if Melt Away is just something we get as a faction wide ability, it will have some use. I suspect it's a Command Ability or something though, which would be sad, because it will almost never be more useful than something like Lord of the Deepwood Host. 

Is there a Wanderer's facebook group?