All kinds of Aelves - or how I learned to like AoS

[SentinelGuy]

I've been trying different armies for a while now and none of them have really clicked as a force that I am happy playing. I dabbled in Death but it was boring and Chaos has no appeal whatsoever.  A lot of my friends are running Destruction so I went with Order.  After games with Sylvaneth, Duardin and Free Peoples I moved onto Aelves and really, I can't believe I didn't try them earlier.  I guess because I had played a lot of Wood Elves in the past I was afraid that I would be massively disappointed by the changes that were made when the game moved to AoS.

So there I was rummaging through boxes of old metal minis and I came across some really old elf sea guard and further digging revealed chariots, archers, bolt throwers and all of a sudden I had the makings of a mixed army of Aelves.  Now I've only tried this list once against my brother so far but I had loads of fun with it.  How do you guys feel about Forgeworld rules?  I had a carmine dragon stand in (an old metal dragon) and it was pretty awesome at killing the enemy ratkin warlord with it's magic blast attack.  At the time we had a bit of a discussion as it's a lot of points, but I think it's probably worth it.  The extra wounds, better save and special rules really bring a lot to the table and it's a quick and easy way to reach 2000 points once you have 1500 already out to play.

 

My list at 2000 points (1980 total) was - 

1 Sea Helm with banner (General, Inspiring, Phoenix Stone).

1 Archmage on horse.

1 Korhil.

1 Highborn Chariot.

5 Highborn Reavers (Battleline).

20 Highborn Sea Guard.

10 Highborn Archers.

1 Highborn Repeater Bolt Thrower.

1 Carmine Dragon.

3 Waywatchers (Battleline).

6 Waywatchers (Battleline).

4 Hunting Hounds.

10 White Lions.

 

The sea helm is a buffing machine chucking out wound bonuses to sea guard, archers, chariots, reavers, Korhil, and the bolt thrower.  His leadership bonus for sea guard makes them a solid anvil, even more so with arcane shield from the archmage, and the command ability works well on anything, although I do like it on the bolt thrower early on before switching it to the sea guard if they aren't moving.  Does his ability count twice for sea guard? Do they get +1 for being withing 8" and then another +1 for being within 18"?  It reads like that is how it works but I'm not sure.

My weak units - the chariot and hounds are there as blockers and chaff.  At 80 points each they can hunt warmachines and generally just be a pain.

Generally I plan to mostly use the reavers, chariot and hounds to wear the enemy down and distract opponents.  The dragon goes for anything critical for the enemy such as tough heroes, those annoying buffing solos, warmachines and generals etc.  His breath attack is nice and he deals a lot of damage in combat.  The rest of the force shoots and doesn't stop until they're out of arrows.  Korhil and the lions are there for a bit of punch once the dragon goes down. Korhil has actually impressed me more than I thought he would.  His ability to save Highborn heroes by jumping in the way of attacks saved my general last game and he took out rat ogres like they were made of cardboard.