Advantage Elves in the Spire of Dawn?

[Toddy]

A friend and I played our first game of Age of Sigmar on Sunday, using the contents of Spire of Dawn. It was alot of fun! But ended with the Elves tabling the Skaven by the end of the third turn.

Now while I'd love to put this down to my superior generalship (though my opponent and I have found ourselves pretty evenly matched in older incarnations of Warhammer and other strategy games), I can't help thinking that the Skaven seem to get the short end of the stick with this boxset. I can't see an easy way for them to win. The Swordmasters make mincemeat of the clan rats, and the combination of bowfire, arcane bolts and the griffon swooping in to pick off stragglers mean that I found it easy to pick off individual threats like his weapons-teams and characters will little risk to myself.

So a few questions for you experienced Sigmarites

• Do the Skaven stand a chance in this matchup?
• Is there much you can do to stop your characters being picked off by ranged weapons (other than hiding them behind cover for the entire battle)?

[TerrorPenguin]

Bear in mind the box was designed for a previous edition and as such has not been updated for AOS - so what might have been a balanced matchup in eigth ed. 

I don't know skaven well but i think they have plenty of answers to ranged; but yes, ranged is very strong in AOS 

[chord]

when taking the skaven against the dawn spire elves you need to play to the objectives, as well as spread their units apart. The griffon doesn't have a great save and can be drowned in bodies.  Keep him away from the mage so a mystic shield can't be placed over him.  The mage can easily be taken down with a ranged weapon. 

[Mrmattywoodz]

A few players at my shop spilt the box. We added it up and the Skaven are at a few hundred less points than the Aelves I've never seen the game played straight out of the box, as both players had existing armies, and just added units to get to even points. When the point balance out, the armies stack up well against each other.

On another note, I find AOS often comes down to the first three turns in lower points games, so the other thing you might be experiencing is the Aelves getting the upper hand early on, knocking down the Skaven dominos.


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[mhsellwood]

3 hours ago, Mrmattywoodz said:

A few players at my shop spilt the box. We added it up and the Skaven are at a few hundred less points than the Aelves I've never seen the game played straight out of the box, as both players had existing armies, and just added units to get to even points. When the point balance out, the armies stack up well against each other.

On another note, I find AOS often comes down to the first three turns in lower points games, so the other thing you might be experiencing is the Aelves getting the upper hand early on, knocking down the Skaven dominos.


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In my experience the second paragraph is really important - in small point games a good first turn and / or a fortunately timed double turn can give one side the edge quite quickly.

In general I would say the Skaven have a chance but would need to do more playing. By that I mean that the Aelves are quite a balanced army straight from the box with a bit of everything and no real weakness in their list. 

That said, it is not unbeatable. In general, monsters can be very difficult to deal with until you work out how your army can deal with them, and that a beat stick monster + buffs is a very solid tactic. The Skaven player has a few options in his list to help with this but not enough to answer all the issues he has.

I would suggest the Skaven player prioritise his attacking as follows:

• The Archmage. He is such a strong buff support and so fragile that he needs to go quickly.
• The High Warden next. With his speed and damage output he should be a priority target.
• The Sword Masters.
• The Reavers. 
• The Spireguard

He should absolutely focus attacks on one target until dead, even at the risk of overkill. No point leaving the Archmage on one wound for example as he will still cast spells. Also remember that Skaven Clanrats can retreat and charge. What this enables is infiltration through defensive lines or to ensure you get some weight of attacks on high priority targets.

The Skaven player will also need to focus more fully on the actual objective and (like a true Skaven player) ignore losses suffered to achieve the goal. So what if you lose 19 Clanrats but the last gives you the objective? So what if your Rat Ogors never inflict a wound but pin the Reavers back away from the important things? If at the end you have achieved the actual victory conditions, you win.

[Toddy]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'll be sure to pass your advice on.