Lets Chat Wanderers / Wood Elves compendium

[Aezeal]

57 minutes ago, WABBIT said:

GG Hitting on 2+? How? Did You mean with a hurricanum or did you mean the reroll 1s from the nomad prince? 

Yeah sorry it's what I meant, obviously not the same and not as good but I keep thinking he has +1 to hit. I noticed it too in my reply on the azyros.

[WABBIT]

10 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

Yeah sorry it's what I meant, obviously not the same and not as good but I keep thinking he has +1 to hit. I noticed it too in my reply on the azyros.

Ah well pity I was hoping you had stumbled on a way to buff wanderers to +1 without an expensive clunky cart. There aren't many ways to do that especially for wanderers. Free guild however...nice buff city.  

[Tidings]

People are cool with me using my Wardancers as Rangers, which makes me a lot happier since I put a lot of effort into converting them. Will miss the super cheap Wardancers who are so flexible turn-by-turn, but at least I can use the models with the rest of the army they were meant to play with.

Will be trying out another Waystone Pathfinders list tomorrow night. Not sure which artifact and traits I'll use yet. Almost certainly the one that protects the General unless he is closest model. Lemme know what ya'll think:

 

1x Nomad Prince

1x Spellsinger

3x Waywatcher Lords

20x Glade Guard

20x Glade Guard

10x Glade Guard

20x Eternal Guard

10x Rangers

5x Sisters of the Thorn

5x Wild Riders

 

Idea is to deploy safely far away and give opponent 1st turn. Then use Lord of the Deepwood Host and move along a table edge into range for lots of pew pew pew. Tie opponent up with a Wild Rider charge and screen with Rangers and Eternal Guard for the enemy's turn, since the Wild Riders will probably be dead by then. After that, I'll activate Fortress of Boughs, move everything else further back if needed, and let my front line tie stuff down while tons of shooting happens.

I think that this formation is way more viable now since you can be safely ambush an enemy with Lord of the Deepwood Host active now. This allows the alpha strike to be more effective, and I think if the movement mechanics work as well as I hope, this battalion will be Mourngoul level of annoying lol

[Cinncinnatus]

@Tidings I likethe list, but have one question: Is there any reason you aren't combining that 10 GG unit with one of the others? I think you'd have the requirements for the battalion still and EG are battleline anyway now with Wanderers allegiance (I believe).

[Tidings]

41 minutes ago, Cinncinnatus said:

@Tidings I likethe list, but have one question: Is there any reason you aren't combining that 10 GG unit with one of the others? I think you'd have the requirements for the battalion still and EG are battleline anyway now with Wanderers allegiance (I believe).

You know, I actually hadn't even thought of that. Will definitely combine them, thanks!

[Aezeal]

48 minutes ago, Tidings said:

People are cool with me using my Wardancers as Rangers, which makes me a lot happier since I put a lot of effort into converting them. Will miss the super cheap Wardancers who are so flexible turn-by-turn, but at least I can use the models with the rest of the army they were meant to play with.

Will be trying out another Waystone Pathfinders list tomorrow night. Not sure which artifact and traits I'll use yet. Almost certainly the one that protects the General unless he is closest model. Lemme know what ya'll think:

 

1x Nomad Prince

1x Spellsinger

3x Waywatcher Lords

20x Glade Guard

20x Glade Guard

10x Glade Guard

20x Eternal Guard

10x Rangers

5x Sisters of the Thorn

5x Wild Riders

 

Idea is to deploy safely far away and give opponent 1st turn. Then use Lord of the Deepwood Host and move along a table edge into range for lots of pew pew pew. Tie opponent up with a Wild Rider charge and screen with Rangers and Eternal Guard for the enemy's turn, since the Wild Riders will probably be dead by then. After that, I'll activate Fortress of Boughs, move everything else further back if needed, and let my front line tie stuff down while tons of shooting happens.

I think that this formation is way more viable now since you can be safely ambush an enemy with Lord of the Deepwood Host active now. This allows the alpha strike to be more effective, and I think if the movement mechanics work as well as I hope, this battalion will be Mourngoul level of annoying lol

Without the teleport trait you will be very dependant on what the opponent puts on the flank where you can move you troops (assuming you want to focus on 2 flank to be able to defend the GG and give them the RR 1's. 

[Aezeal]

On 26-8-2017 at 5:48 PM, Aezeal said:

• Nomad prince 80
• Spell weaver 80
• 3 x waywatcher 300
• 2 x 20 GG 480
• 1 x 10 sisters of the watch 220 (proxied by my old waywatcher which are way cooler) 
• 1 x 10 EG 80
• 1 x 20 EG 160
• 1 x 5 Wildriders 140
• 1 x 5 sisters of the thorn 220
• Waystone pathfinders. 240

 

1 hour ago, Tidings said:

1x Nomad Prince

1x Spellsinger

3x Waywatcher Lords

20x Glade Guard

20x Glade Guard

10x Glade Guard

20x Eternal Guard

10x Rangers

5x Sisters of the Thorn

5x Wild Riders

Those are my list and yourlist. 40 GG, 30 EG, 10 SotW (940) vs 50 GG, 20 EG, 10 WWR (940)  OR basicly 10 SotW + 10 EG vs 10 GG + 10 WRR.

What would be the advantages of both? I can see the use of the WWR as a suicide squad against mosnters.. but if you move them normally they will probably be intercepted or avoided (or shot) and if you can teleport them you'd still have a 9"charge..  My EG are more defensive and damage would have to come from the shooting which is slightly stronger with 10 sisters vs 10 GG.  In your list the most expensive models/ wounds are the rangers, in my list the sisters.. both would be prime targets for shooting (both not so good saves) and MW (next to characters).

I think I'll try a list without WWR first since I fear they will often die before engaging the right enemy (I think they are still overpriced when fighting non monster units.

I am considering dropping the SotW for a 10 extra GG and another waywatcher (also a 2nd drop and outside the batallion)

19 minutes ago, Tidings said:

You know, I actually hadn't even thought of that. Will definitely combine them, thanks!

If you don't you'd actually have to put one of the units outside the batallion and get another drop. (same for my list btw).

I also think the items to take would have to be the shawl and the forget me not. And while it seems natural to put the shawl on the mage I think the -1 to hit on the nomad prince might be the better choice.. if you teleport a large group then the mage will probably stay with him and benefit from the bonus to cast.. and the mage will need to be in 3" to use the flower.. but still.. keeping the prince alive is key to this army and this batallion.

[Cambot1231]

What do you guys think of Knight-Azyros and a pack of Gryf-hounds for Allies?  Any other good Wanderer ally options for a shooty elf list?

[Aezeal]

12 minutes ago, Cambot1231 said:

What do you guys think of Knight-Azyros and a pack of Gryf-hounds for Allies?  Any other good Wanderer ally options for a shooty elf list?

I think nomad prince and Azyros is a bit doubling up and that doesn't seem ideal. So in a waystone pathfinders batallion it's not that ideal. Also the Azyros is more vulnerable than a nomad prince and needs to be close to the enemy: he will probably die faster especially since IF you go shooty he will probably not have that much back up of advancing units.

If you make a list with a waywatcher general he might be a very good idea though (maybe even take 2, for both sides of the table or as redundancy. Since the batallion is expensive and it's not certain it's worth it... that might be an option.

Gryph hounds seem a good option.. but in my small local group I don't have enemies who will pop up behind my lines.. so I'm not using them.

 

[Aezeal]

I really think our army missed models with supporting abilities that aren't command abilities.... nothing to buff eachother in general or on keyword wanderer. I mean... prince and waywatcher are general options.. but the wayfinder and the other one could've just had a weaker always on ability like lots of other armies have.

[WABBIT]

The main problem I see with the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion is its an old battalion written without the hindsight of today's game.

I play sylvaneth as well as wood elves/wanderers and it's a much newer battletome with very well thought out battalions ranging in size and purpose that can and sometimes must fit within each other. GW learned a lot from the first wave of releases and battletomes. I don't think GW would have constructed the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion the same way today if it had the chance again.

The Waystone Pathfinder Battalion requires almost the whole armies points to fulfil its requirements and it forces wanderers to bunch up and stay bunched up. We end up with a static gunline (albeit one that teleports now) which is not really what wanderers should be about . They should be independent mobile units able to hold their own while being mutually supportive. For Waystone Pathfinders you want all your missile units together to make full use of the hero phase extra shooting and you need the infantry elements to protect your Nomad prince and weak missile units (GG). The "tax" is very high in the number of heroes and units making it very inflexible unit choice wise and means pretty much the whole army will be in the same place in a 2000pt game. You simply don't have enough troops left to send anywhere else to secure objectives. You may win the battle by killing the enemy but you will lose the game by failing to get the objectives. You need power and resilience for that which Wanderers lack severely so we need to look at something like a dragon rider or Durthu from our allies pool.

There are armies out there with much better shooting that Wanderers and even with pathfinders battalion wanderers won't be able to compete with Kunning Ruk for example even after the small nerf it got. I'd love to hear how you get on with your games using it but if you want to win matched play games you need to study the battle plans and work out how you can dominate the board with a more flexible army. Wanderers may have some cool new features but it does lack essential units. If we cannot get them via Allies we may need to go order allegiance and cast our net wider - this unfortunately bleeds away the theme of a wanderer army though.

It is a shame we cannot use Wood Elves but the wanderer keyword changes are only enforced for tourney games/events and probably in stores and some clubs. I'm confident my fellow gamers will be more relaxed about the compendium changes and allow me to use all wood elves as if they had the Wanderer keyword as it just makes sense. I will of course return the favour so they can use their old compendium units with their new allegiances. I would be sad to see some old adversaries disappear especially knowing my mates just finished painting an awesome conversion and discovers he can't use it anymore. I'm not going to stop him. We play how we want to play so chat with your opponents and agree the rules. The match play rules outside of a tournament event are just a guide. We often drop battle line restrictions so we can build the armies we want for example - let it be fun

Ok I stop waffling now

[The Wanderer]

So with the GE 2017 now out I am intending to move forward with just the units that are clearly meant to be Wanderers and likely have a future as part of my list.

With that in mind I'm currently thinking of this as a 1k list:

Leaders

Waywatcher x 3 

300pts

Battleline

Eternal Guard x20

Glade Guard x 30

520pts

Other

Wildwood Rangers x10

180pts

Total

1000pts

 

I have yet to decide how to equip my general.

[Tidings]

@Aezeal The reason I don't like Sisters of the Watch, especially with our new movement abilities, is they only shoot once when you move. Waystone Pathfinders is useful for moving into range and alphastriking - you lose a lot of that first punch by taking Sisters of the Watch instead of GG. Output on your alpha strike: 20x -3 rending vs 10x with +1 wound.

I don't have much experience with WWRs, but my reasoning is I needed a bit more melee to screen and they are punchy as hell. If my opponent is scared of them and kills them first, that's fine with me, because even my GG are actually doing more damage due to double shooting. 

@WABBIT I've voiced my exact same feelings about Waystone Pathfinders. Totally agree it's way better on paper than in practice. I think it might be a lot better now though, due to being able to redeploy instead of staying stuck in combat. This offsets its very weak frontline. I agree it is poorly designed though. 

I was someone who relied heavily on Warhawks, Eagle Lords, Shadowdancers, Wardancers, Treekin, Teclis, etc. But we don't have any of that now, so the only way I can even hit 2000 points anymore is with Waystone lol. 

 

[Cerve]

5 hours ago, WABBIT said:

The main problem I see with the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion is its an old battalion written without the hindsight of today's game.

I play sylvaneth as well as wood elves/wanderers and it's a much newer battletome with very well thought out battalions ranging in size and purpose that can and sometimes must fit within each other. GW learned a lot from the first wave of releases and battletomes. I don't think GW would have constructed the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion the same way today if it had the chance again.

The Waystone Pathfinder Battalion requires almost the whole armies points to fulfil its requirements and it forces wanderers to bunch up and stay bunched up. We end up with a static gunline (albeit one that teleports now) which is not really what wanderers should be about . They should be independent mobile units able to hold their own while being mutually supportive. For Waystone Pathfinders you want all your missile units together to make full use of the hero phase extra shooting and you need the infantry elements to protect your Nomad prince and weak missile units (GG). The "tax" is very high in the number of heroes and units making it very inflexible unit choice wise and means pretty much the whole army will be in the same place in a 2000pt game. You simply don't have enough troops left to send anywhere else to secure objectives. You may win the battle by killing the enemy but you will lose the game by failing to get the objectives. You need power and resilience for that which Wanderers lack severely so we need to look at something like a dragon rider or Durthu from our allies pool.

There are armies out there with much better shooting that Wanderers and even with pathfinders battalion wanderers won't be able to compete with Kunning Ruk for example even after the small nerf it got. I'd love to hear how you get on with your games using it but if you want to win matched play games you need to study the battle plans and work out how you can dominate the board with a more flexible army. Wanderers may have some cool new features but it does lack essential units. If we cannot get them via Allies we may need to go order allegiance and cast our net wider - this unfortunately bleeds away the theme of a wanderer army though.

It is a shame we cannot use Wood Elves but the wanderer keyword changes are only enforced for tourney games/events and probably in stores and some clubs. I'm confident my fellow gamers will be more relaxed about the compendium changes and allow me to use all wood elves as if they had the Wanderer keyword as it just makes sense. I will of course return the favour so they can use their old compendium units with their new allegiances. I would be sad to see some old adversaries disappear especially knowing my mates just finished painting an awesome conversion and discovers he can't use it anymore. I'm not going to stop him. We play how we want to play so chat with your opponents and agree the rules. The match play rules outside of a tournament event are just a guide. We often drop battle line restrictions so we can build the armies we want for example - let it be fun

Ok I stop waffling now

I...can't agree so much with this. As a fast-fragile-glasscannon army player (it's the playstile that I prefer) it is not true that Wanderers needs to be indipendent and spread on the board for objectives, it's quite the opposite! The key with Wanderers is to facing 2000 points of them against one portion of the enemy list. So you will pop up into one side of the enemy army, and focus (twice!) your 2000 points into a single flank of the enemy.

Then retreat, and pop up in the other side, shoots, retreat, rip your enemy unit-by-unit.

That's basically the guerrila style! You need to scattered the enemy, not yourself. It's the enemy that needs to be divided, not you. Basically, you must stick yourself togheter, and fight your enemy piece by piece. 

You will bring the objectives later on the game. You can't old them in early game, you have not the body for that. You're a glasscannon. 

 

Need to try these new wanderes but I'm pretty excited to try out them soon! 

[WABBIT]

6 hours ago, Cerve said:

I...can't agree so much with this. As a fast-fragile-glasscannon army player (it's the playstile that I prefer) it is not true that Wanderers needs to be indipendent and spread on the board for objectives, it's quite the opposite! The key with Wanderers is to facing 2000 points of them against one portion of the enemy list. So you will pop up into one side of the enemy army, and focus (twice!) your 2000 points into a single flank of the enemy.

Then retreat, and pop up in the other side, shoots, retreat, rip your enemy unit-by-unit.

That's basically the guerrila style! You need to scattered the enemy, not yourself. It's the enemy that needs to be divided, not you. Basically, you must stick yourself togheter, and fight your enemy piece by piece. 

You will bring the objectives later on the game. You can't old them in early game, you have not the body for that. You're a glasscannon. 

 

Need to try these new wanderes but I'm pretty excited to try out them soon! 

That's fine its good to hear your view. I agree with much of it and I prefer to focus my army in one place and use superior fire power to break my opponents army as well. The difficulty comes in needing to take objectives early in many battleplans. If you ignore them until mid-late game then your done for. I haven't read all the new battle plans yet so I don't know how badly this affects an "all eggs in one basket" approach. It conveniently groups all wanderer units together for the enemy to take apart and it's harder to manuver when clumped up so close.  Being able to distract and lure your opponents units into other areas of the table while your main forces gathers together quickly and hammers home is the ideal approach and being able to melt away and teleport around table edges helps wanderers do that. Waystone path finders may finally work now but the price is a very heavy investment in points and units types. Wanderers aren't very tough so grouping up the entire army could be more helpful to the enemy but hopefully the teleporting will help. If wanderers stay near table edges they won't get objectives though and arrows don't count on claiming objectives which is a shame   A wise enemy will try to lock down the table edges with cheap fast units limiting wanderer movement and even forcing them into an zone its wants which may be far away from objectives or to set a trap. Its like the sylvaneth, once the opponent learns the playstyle they can predict and block the placement of wild woods and therefore slow down the advance.

A lot of armies shoot better than wanders so popping up in range at the table edge will be risky. If they damage the GG even a little it can remove their +1 to hit and the power of waystone is greatly diminished. I've used Glade guard many times and they just don't have the punch to do tough units enough harm in my games. SoTW would be great but their price and movement nerf lets them down in a wanderer list. Im keen to hear how you get on. I'm going for a broader order approach first and blending Aelven units together. The elite infantry of Aelf factions are now a decent price apart from Rangers sadly, they are still just a little too high for a niche ability. Phoenix Guard, Black Guard, Sword Masters and White lions all do more for less. If I were facing beast claw raiders a lot then maybe my view would change

[Aezeal]

12 hours ago, WABBIT said:

The main problem I see with the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion is its an old battalion written without the hindsight of today's game.

I play sylvaneth as well as wood elves/wanderers and it's a much newer battletome with very well thought out battalions ranging in size and purpose that can and sometimes must fit within each other. GW learned a lot from the first wave of releases and battletomes. I don't think GW would have constructed the Waystone Pathfinder Battalion the same way today if it had the chance again.

The Waystone Pathfinder Battalion requires almost the whole armies points to fulfil its requirements and it forces wanderers to bunch up and stay bunched up. We end up with a static gunline (albeit one that teleports now) which is not really what wanderers should be about . They should be independent mobile units able to hold their own while being mutually supportive. For Waystone Pathfinders you want all your missile units together to make full use of the hero phase extra shooting and you need the infantry elements to protect your Nomad prince and weak missile units (GG). The "tax" is very high in the number of heroes and units making it very inflexible unit choice wise and means pretty much the whole army will be in the same place in a 2000pt game. You simply don't have enough troops left to send anywhere else to secure objectives. You may win the battle by killing the enemy but you will lose the game by failing to get the objectives. You need power and resilience for that which Wanderers lack severely so we need to look at something like a dragon rider or Durthu from our allies pool.

There are armies out there with much better shooting that Wanderers and even with pathfinders battalion wanderers won't be able to compete with Kunning Ruk for example even after the small nerf it got. I'd love to hear how you get on with your games using it but if you want to win matched play games you need to study the battle plans and work out how you can dominate the board with a more flexible army. Wanderers may have some cool new features but it does lack essential units. If we cannot get them via Allies we may need to go order allegiance and cast our net wider - this unfortunately bleeds away the theme of a wanderer army though.

It is a shame we cannot use Wood Elves but the wanderer keyword changes are only enforced for tourney games/events and probably in stores and some clubs. I'm confident my fellow gamers will be more relaxed about the compendium changes and allow me to use all wood elves as if they had the Wanderer keyword as it just makes sense. I will of course return the favour so they can use their old compendium units with their new allegiances. I would be sad to see some old adversaries disappear especially knowing my mates just finished painting an awesome conversion and discovers he can't use it anymore. I'm not going to stop him. We play how we want to play so chat with your opponents and agree the rules. The match play rules outside of a tournament event are just a guide. We often drop battle line restrictions so we can build the armies we want for example - let it be fun

Ok I stop waffling now

Well most objective are not that far away from the edge and waystone pathfinders forces you to get a bit of fast cavalry, but all in all I agree objectives will be hard. I think we lack some buffing heroes and maybe our core unit the gg is still a bit pricey. 

[WABBIT]

8 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

Well most objective are not that far away from the edge and waystone pathfinders forces you to get a bit of fast cavalry, but all in all I agree objectives will be hard. I think we lack some buffing heroes and maybe our core unit the gg is still a bit pricey. 

Totally agree

[Tidings]

Waystone Pathfinders will be better I think because you can deploy safely and then use the teleport to alpha strike. My biggest gripe before was you could do the table edge deployment behind the enemy but it was AFTER hero phase, so you would not have the reroll 1s on the turn you want to unleash -3 rending. Bad synergy. Now at least, we can start on the table and use the teleport to get in range with buffs active. But we still can't challenge objectives with it very well. The problem is you can only teleport along the SAME table edge you are near, so going back and forth along one edge is only gonna get you so far. Sure you can get some models up one of the other edges, but it will be hard I think to reliably get your whole army within 6" of a different edge mid game. 

I'm thinking about using Tree Revenants in the future as allies, since they by default have a better version of the Wanderers teleport (can go to any table edge). With their point drop, they are pretty viable as cheap objective snatchers now. At the very least, they force a more expensive unit to sit an guard an objective, giving you a points advantage somewhere else on the table. 

 

[Aezeal]

1 hour ago, Tidings said:

Sure you can get some models up one of the other edges, but it will be hard I think to reliably get your whole army within 6" of a different edge mid game. 

teleport item?

[Tidings]

7 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

teleport item?

If you're talking about the Wending Wand, it's very limited in how it can be used. 

• once per battle
• a single unit
• must be within 18" of the bearer

So to go to the opposite table edge, the bearer of the Wending Wand would have to cross the entire table lol. 

[Aezeal]

2 minutes ago, Tidings said:

If you're talking about the Wending Wand, it's very limited in how it can be used. 

• once per battle
• a single unit
• must be within 18" of the bearer

So to go to the opposite table edge, the bearer of the Wending Wand would have to cross the entire table lol. 

teleport trait I meant. See page 8 of this topic for my idea's on how to use it.

[Tidings]

Ahhh Stalker of the Hidden Paths? Yeah that's much more viable, it just sucks that it has a measly 6" range.  

I suppose for Waystone Pathfinders that will work quite well though because you stay clumped up anyways. I'll give it a shot tonight! I just really like Myst Walker, especially against things like Thundertusks. 

[Aezeal]

2 minutes ago, Tidings said:

Ahhh Stalker of the Hidden Paths? Yeah that's much more viable, it just sucks that it has a measly 6" range.  

I suppose for Waystone Pathfinders that will work quite well though because you stay clumped up anyways. I'll give it a shot tonight! I just really like Myst Walker, especially against things like Thundertusks. 

You can get your whole army withint 6 " easily.. let alone the strike force I mention. put the units in lines and the noman prince in the middle..or just how I propose it on page 8

 

[Aezeal]

4 minutes ago, Tidings said:

Ahhh Stalker of the Hidden Paths? Yeah that's much more viable, it just sucks that it has a measly 6" range.  

I suppose for Waystone Pathfinders that will work quite well though because you stay clumped up anyways. I'll give it a shot tonight! I just really like Myst Walker, especially against things like Thundertusks. 

Go viridescent shawl on the prince and keep the mage with him.

[Tidings]

Yeah, I'll try it out tonight. First game with Wanderers since the change. Daisy chaining is'nt a new concept lol, but I haven't had to do it much with Wanderers so far.