Lets Chat Wanderers / Wood Elves compendium

[Origin]

It is not the greatest name around, darling covens, swift hawk agents came out a bit better for sure. 

But I don't really mind, I just call them green elves most of the time, especially because I painted their skin a dark olive green. 

I do like that they are what I make them however. Not being fixed to a very static old world fluff is liberating. My green elves are of the Plains, nomadic tribes that wander around the realms in some fashion for some reason. Still need to concrete down a proper story.

I kind of imagine them shifting between realms with their grab altering colour to match they're environment. 

[Tidings]

@Origin Without seeing the positioning it's a little hard to say, but instead of staying put you might have been better off teleporting away. The strength of a pure Wanderer list is the ability to hit more isolated parts of his army and waste as much of his time chasing after you as possible. Easier said than done obviously, but there's some room for finesse. A block of 40 skeletons is pretty easy to thin down substantially before letting them hit your EG, for example. That drastically reduces their damage output. Regarding Lord of the Deepwood Host, you need to have it active when you do your Arcane Bodkins, which should be on your first turn. The more you kill during the alpha, the less he has to hit you with if you don't get the double turn. The EG are cheap and disposable - I'd say don't even worry about them not having their buff up. They are literally just there to keep the archers alive, and moving around is more important than standing still to get the buff up. In either case, it sounds like a really fun game!

@WABBIT I actually quite like the name Wanderers, but that's totally personal pref haha. 

[Origin]

@Tidings I was reluctant to teleport (need a better world for that, melt maybe...?) on the first turn mostly because of the position of the objectives. Having 6 objectives that are 12" away from the board edge and only scoring them at the end of your turn made the teleportation a touch unfavorable. My opponent was sitting tidy on 3 points already and if i 'melted' away i would gain zero points and then if i failed the double turn he would have been in a position to burn at least 2 of my home field objectives.

I think you may be right about the EG. I might drop them down to 20 men, although that only saves me 50 points. At 30 dudes, with all their buffs up (although i rarely use their innate ability, usually just shield and thorns) they are pretty tough but still take enough casualties to lose a good swath of them to battleshock so the extra 10 is being lost for nothing. And the big unit size means I almost never have them in cover. I would like try using a couple of units of 10, just to sit in cover capping an objective. 3+ re-rollable saves is nothing to turn our noses up at.

I am constantly underwhelmed by GG, the one shot with the bodkins is all they have. Once they pop they just roll over and go to sleep. No aftercare at all. Selfish pricks.

Waywatchers are my true damage dealers in the shooting phase. Best 300 points in the list.

My basic plan from here on in is deploy the two blocks of GG, trip waywatchers and SoW all within 6" of the Princeling and chained out to "wander" of the board edge. Deploy EG wrap, Shield, Thorns maybe their buff, give off first turn and just hold tight.  Hopefully double shoot and jump away like a boss. It feels to be such a one trick pony. Once my mates clue on they'll just find a work around.

I have some more games lined up for this Saturday. See how things fly. 

[Tidings]

Ahhhh okay. I haven't played that scenario yet, will have to see how it plays out when I do get a chance to!

I'd keep them at 20. That way you get at least +1 bravery for unit size in your first battleshock, and 20 is pretty easy to get in cover, at least with the terrain at my LHS. In cover you get additional bravery! So with 10+ models, a banner, and in cover you should be at 10 bravery. And as Order you can reroll your battleshock, so you should be mostly fine. The other disadvantages of MSU EG is your spells/buffs only go on one of them when you really want ALL of them protected, and MSU means more drops for deployment. 

Well, GG are very basic archers, comparable to an average human archer basically lol. They're really just there for the -3 rending, after that everything else is bonus. They still crank out a good amount of wounds with enough shots though. But yes, Waywatchers are amazing, super awesome for only 100 points.

If you want to bunker down for a gunline, swap half your EG for SotW like you said. But I'd also suggest changing the Nomad Prince's trait from Stalker to Myst Walker. This might be something we all have to do as people catch on to how much we need him alive. 

It's very one-trick-pony but that's all we got haha. Not enough unit selection or other battalions to do anything else, and all the Wanderer allegiance stuff is dedicated to the teleporting for the most part. The other option is Mixed Order with Hurricanum, Sylvaneth, etc and have a gunline that can slowly advance while shooting. I'm working on a custom Wanderer Hurricanum. 

[Yeled]

I'm ok with the name Wanderers, mostly because it's their basic identity in AoS. In WFB they guarded their forest. They didn't really do anything else. Just sat there defending the woods. They had a home to call their own.

In AoS that home is gone and they wander the realms.

[Origin]

 

3 minutes ago, Tidings said:

I'm working on a custom Wanderer Hurricanum. 

Would love to see that, freaking hate that model. Didn't even include it in my Free Guild army because I hate so much. How does it even stand up? The slightest gradient and it would just fall over...

I'll keep with the current build for a little while, I feel like this is one of those builds that you just need to play the ****** out of.

[Tidings]

1 hour ago, Origin said:

 

Would love to see that, freaking hate that model. Didn't even include it in my Free Guild army because I hate so much. How does it even stand up? The slightest gradient and it would just fall over...

I'll keep with the current build for a little while, I feel like this is one of those builds that you just need to play the ****** out of.

I'll share it once I've got it build, need to buy another Wild Rider box for parts though! 

Yeah it's definitely a super finesse army when played this way. Rewarding to pull off, and I like that it's more complex than just standing still shooting or charging straight forward for melee. 

[Yeled]

On 9/6/2017 at 0:21 PM, WABBIT said:

Just gonna leave this here. No reason. 

This looks like a color scheme waiting to happen.  

On 9/6/2017 at 0:46 PM, Tidings said:

• Nomad Prince - Stalker of the Hidden Paths, Viridescent Shawl
• Spellweaver
• 3x Waywatchers - one of them with a Forget-me-knot
• 20x EG
• 30x GG
• 20x GG
• 10x WWR
• 5x Sisters of the Thorn
• 5x Wild Riders
• Waystone Pathfinders battalion

This is a one-drop army, so you can choose turn most of the time. My strategy is to deploy safely in a corner and give the opponent first turn. The reason for this is a double turn basically wins the game for us, and if they get a double turn we mostly die that turn. Your opponent shouldn't be able to do anything to you on their first turn if you deployed correctly anyways, other than perhaps Murderhost.

On your turn, get buffs up and teleport 9" away from the best available target. A good opponent will string his forces out to deny you as many places to tele as possible. Regardless, you should be able to get at something important anyways. When you land, keep your EG bubblewrapping everything and run your Wild Riders at a target, but keep them strung back to be within 6" of your Nomad Prince and the table edge. The goal is to keep your enemy's unit in combat on his turn, and if your Wild Riders survive, to be able to teleport them with the rest of your army. 

Fire at the best target, you should be able to kill just about anything. Charge your Wild Riders into whatever is closest and most likely to charge your force. They should be the ones buffed by spells btw. 

Your next turn should start with buffs, then shoot again using the battalion ability. Your teleport should take you away from whatever is remaining there to the next target, which you'll have to decide on based on positioning, threat, objectives, etc. Rinse and repeat. This is basically two turns of offense against the enemy for every one he has against you, and most people don't clump their whole army, so you also have basically 2000 points against something like 750 points. 

Regarding objectives, you have a few options depending on scenario and positioning. Let's say there's an objective on your side of the table, you can leave the WWRs guarding it. You don't HAVE to bring them with you! Or if it's not there, you can bring them with you when you teleport and then run them towards the nearest objective. The point is, you have 4 units that are viable for grabbing objectives in most scenarios, and you have a ton of flexibility regarding leaving them behind at objectives or teleporting them somewhere else to contest a different one. I basically offloaded one unit each turn to contest a different objective each time - it left my opponents feeling helpless because they had to spread out to deal with me actively pursuing different objectives, and the more spread out they were the more effective I was at killing them. 

I'll play it more and see how well it continues to work. I have a feeling someone will counter it hard by either having something to kill my Nomad Prince, or will just stay clumped up and retaliate with a lot more force than I can deal with. 

Question: In this configuration, if there aren't objectives, what would you use your Wyldwood Rangers for? Would you be better off replacing them with Sisters of the Watch for another unit of shooters (since you need one or the other for the battalion)?

[Origin]

@Yeled it is a valid swap but points are an issue. To fit in the SoW  you'll have alter the configuration of the GG and EG or drop some waywatchers for lesser heroes. 

WWR while not great,  aren't terrible (at least in my experience) and are a nice little counter punch unit and our only real offensive melee unit. 

That being said I'm dropping them from my list in favour of SoW but I run 30 EG and two units of 20 GG to make it fit. 

[Aezeal]

Had a first 1K Triumph and Treachery game... didn't work well due to me not knowing the rules of T&T or darkling covens:

(I played prince, weaver, 2x waywatchers, 2x 20 GG, 2 x 10 EG)

I got first turn and teleported to 20 inch of 20 excecutioners (we where next to a long side so I could put archers in rows of 5 so I think my front EG where 16 inch removed: 40 shots should have hurt them, there where also 5 warlocks there but I was prepared to take what they could dish out.

1. he used the first ability of TnT in the shooting phase: means I couldn't target him (he rolled the 4+ ofc)... so had to shoot with only 2 waywatchers on the other enemy... useless)

2. Then he SHOULD've had a very long charge of 10 inch: but apparently he has a run+ charge command trait: oops: only a 5 inch charge. Excecutioners killed 2x10 EG in a single turn. 

3. He got double turn: Excecutioners killed 1 unit of GG

4. then I could teleport away and try again with my damage output severly reduced (I did manage to kill that unit of Exec. in the next turn with the -3 rend.

 

My views:

TnT first ability is much stronger than all other options

20"shooting is not very far OR movement options in AoS are way way way to quick

EG aren't that durable when teleporting (often not in cover I'd guess), now I know excecutioners are top elite troops and it was a major points investment in a 1k game (and actually even after loosing 20 EG and 20 GG the remainder of my troops could still kill the execs and I'd lost 400 vs 360 which considering everything went to hell isn't that bad.

Waywatchers are awesome, GG less so.

Next time I'll just remove the spell weaver and all the EG to get one more waywatcher and get one GG unit to 30. I figure I can just as well put a waywatcher somewhere as a roadblock, he's got a decent save and 5 wounds so won't be that much worse than my EG and in the meanwhile he can shoot too. If I put 2 in front of the GG the enemy might actually have to divided attacks (with the option to do it incorrectly and get overkill on one of them and waste wounds). And if they survive I can teleport them away ... unless double turn... and they still have full shooting capacity.. and then use another one as roadblock next time. 

The large unit of GG might actually be able to take objectives too.

[WABBIT]

4 hours ago, Aezeal said:

Had a first 1K Triumph and Treachery game... didn't work well due to me not knowing the rules of T&T or darkling covens:

(I played prince, weaver, 2x waywatchers, 2x 20 GG, 2 x 10 EG)

I got first turn and teleported to 20 inch of 20 excecutioners (we where next to a long side so I could put archers in rows of 5 so I think my front EG where 16 inch removed: 40 shots should have hurt them, there where also 5 warlocks there but I was prepared to take what they could dish out.

1. he used the first ability of TnT in the shooting phase: means I couldn't target him (he rolled the 4+ ofc)... so had to shoot with only 2 waywatchers on the other enemy... useless)

2. Then he SHOULD've had a very long charge of 10 inch: but apparently he has a run+ charge command trait: oops: only a 5 inch charge. Excecutioners killed 2x10 EG in a single turn. 

3. He got double turn: Excecutioners killed 1 unit of GG

4. then I could teleport away and try again with my damage output severly reduced (I did manage to kill that unit of Exec. in the next turn with the -3 rend.

 

My views:

TnT first ability is much stronger than all other options

20"shooting is not very far OR movement options in AoS are way way way to quick

EG aren't that durable when teleporting (often not in cover I'd guess), now I know excecutioners are top elite troops and it was a major points investment in a 1k game (and actually even after loosing 20 EG and 20 GG the remainder of my troops could still kill the execs and I'd lost 400 vs 360 which considering everything went to hell isn't that bad.

Waywatchers are awesome, GG less so.

Next time I'll just remove the spell weaver and all the EG to get one more waywatcher and get one GG unit to 30. I figure I can just as well put a waywatcher somewhere as a roadblock, he's got a decent save and 5 wounds so won't be that much worse than my EG and in the meanwhile he can shoot too. If I put 2 in front of the GG the enemy might actually have to divided attacks (with the option to do it incorrectly and get overkill on one of them and waste wounds). And if they survive I can teleport them away ... unless double turn... and they still have full shooting capacity.. and then use another one as roadblock next time. 

The large unit of GG might actually be able to take objectives too.

Sounds like you just had bad luck rather than poor performance. Triumph and treachery games are not a reliable way to test units or armies out but they are a lot of fun as anything can happen. In previous 8th edition we had a grey seer cast the spell that turns everyone in the unit into a clan rat if the whole unit dies to it. The orc player that was target pulled out a card that redirected the spell back on to the casters unit of slaves turning them and the attached grey seer into clan rats.  No more army general and wizard to worry about. 

executioners are awesome, they have 2" range, 4+ save, 3/3/-1/1 attack profile and a decent mortal wound ability that's always useful. Way Better than the d3 normal damage our rangers get which can be saved and only good against monsters who can easily avoid them. Why are they the same points???? It's Ridiculous. Sorry I'm getting wound up again.  I run my rangers as executioners in an order army. They only lose the wanderer key word which is no loss when not running wanderer alliegence. I hope one day I can use them as wanderers, maybe next year.

[Yeled]

Yeah, mortal wounds are a great way to wipe out EG, and executioners are great at dishing out mortal wounds. They do 2 mortal wounds on a 6. It was a bad combo.

Why are Executioners the same points as WWR?

[WABBIT]

 

54 minutes ago, Yeled said:

Why are Executioners the same points as WWR?

I can only assume they didn't bother looking at wanderer warscrolls when rebalancing the points Or no one complained enough about it before GBH2017. Look what happened to kurnoth hunters after all the complaints about their cheapness. As long we don't whine about it ( like I do, sorry) we should be able to highlight obvious imbalances like this in a constructive way.

I'd even try agreeing a points drop with the friends you play with (or kids ?) and reciprocate for gripes they may have about cost of their warscrolls. I like GHB 2017 over all but I think there are some very obvious balancing issues that they have not addressed that could easily have been fixed.

[GammaMage]

2 hours ago, WABBIT said:

executioners are awesome, they have 2" range, 4+ save, 3/3/-1/1 attack profile and a decent mortal wound ability that's always useful.

I think you're mixing up your Darkling Coven units. Executioners have 1" range, and 3/3/0/1 with mortal wounds on hits of 6. Black Guard are the ones with the 2" range, 3/3/-1/1 profile. But no mortal wound ability.

[Cinncinnatus]

So I've been thinking dusting off my Wanderers, as the new abilities and battalion look like a lot of fun, but I'm worried that constantly moving my army around the table will slow down the game too much. Removing my entire army and setting them up across the battlefield sounds like it will have logistical issues. Am I worrying about nothing? Or are there time saving ways you are diminishing the impact of these moves?

[tea_wild_owl]

36 minutes ago, Cinncinnatus said:

So I've been thinking dusting off my Wanderers, as the new abilities and battalion look like a lot of fun, but I'm worried that constantly moving my army around the table will slow down the game too much. Removing my entire army and setting them up across the battlefield sounds like it will have logistical issues. Am I worrying about nothing? Or are there time saving ways you are diminishing the impact of these moves?

try out movement trays. they are great for horde and mobile units (at least if you don't need to micromanage pile ins^^)

[Aezeal]

1 hour ago, Cinncinnatus said:

So I've been thinking dusting off my Wanderers, as the new abilities and battalion look like a lot of fun, but I'm worried that constantly moving my army around the table will slow down the game too much. Removing my entire army and setting them up across the battlefield sounds like it will have logistical issues. Am I worrying about nothing? Or are there time saving ways you are diminishing the impact of these moves?

I since you will often keep them together I'd say movement trays. I've magnetized my bases and have metal plates (sprayed green) to move them on, nothing fancy, no edges.. but moveing a unit of 20 GG on 2 trays of 5 x2 is simple and still allows me to poistion them 5x4 or 2 x10.

[Tidings]

@Cinncinnatus you need movement trays for the ranged units. The melee units need to pile in and wrap around stuff, so movement trays don't help as much there. It does slow the game down a bit more less because of the moving and more because you have to do lots of measuring. 

@Aezeal The 20" range is short but the biggest change is that things move and then charge, where the charge phase used to be declared before movement. It makes AoS faster but also means things tend to be out of range, then OMG THEY MADE A CHARGE before you can shoot them. I think to compensate for the faster movement we should have 30" range but hey, GW disagrees. 

11 hours ago, Yeled said:

This looks like a color scheme waiting to happen.  

Question: In this configuration, if there aren't objectives, what would you use your Wyldwood Rangers for? Would you be better off replacing them with Sisters of the Watch for another unit of shooters (since you need one or the other for the battalion)?

I had my Wild Riders turned sideways and bubblewrapping stuff, so when I got charged, he could only hit them, while my WWR could hit over the Riders with their 2" range. They did a lot of damage throughout my game, more than earning their points, but they definitely have no room for error. If you do some shuffling the safer way to play is definitely to take more EG and archers. Rangers are barely as effective as other army's equivalent units and have less room for error. 

I lost last night's game by one victory point. It was the scenario where heroes and behemoths cap objectives and they give more points the longer you hold them. I was playing against Ironjaws. a bad matchup in this scenario since he can grab objectives very fast and is tougher to kill than most. He also had a 1 drop, he won the dice roll and gave me first turn, and his battalion gave my army -1 to hit for the whole first battleround.

First Battle Round: I proceeded to fail Mystic Shield AND Shield of Thorns. the lack of buffs and the -1 to hit meant any attempted alpha strike would be suicidal, especially since he had access to the double turn. So I elected to just stand still and pass turn. Still think that was my best option; it was just a really ****** situation. Ironjaws moved up, luckily not fast enough to get both objectives. His Mawcrusher got one but that's it. 

Second Battle Round: Ironjaws won the double turn. His Mawcrusher left the objective, but his Shamans moved onto both of them. He probably should have just left his Mawcrusher on the first one to get the consecutive points for it, since I was behind I would HAVE to take both to win or tie. In either case, he proceeded to charge my bubblewrapped army with his Mawcrusher and a unit of Brutes. I lost 15x Eternal Guard and 4 of my Wild Riders that turn, but my Wild Riders and Rangers surprisingly managed to kill off the entire unit of Brutes. On my turn, I failed Shield of Thorns again but did my hero phase shooting, reducing the Mawcrusher to 4 wounds. Teleported most of my army away towards the far objective and shot his Shaman off it - awesome! Screened against the unit of Black Orcs that were there but wasn't concerned about them. My Wildwood Rangers were left behind to kill the Mawcrusher. Unfortunately they wiffed, leaving him with 1 wound. He also wiffed, only killing 3 Rangers. 

Third Battle Round: Ironjaws wins the turn again. Mawcrusher retreats to the middle of the table, most of his force screens out to stop me from teleporting in and sniping his other Shaman and Mawcrusher, and his Black Orcs charge me. They kill the last Wild Rider and 4 of my 5 remaining EG. A couple of them die.  I wipe most of the unit with my free shots, then teleport to another table edge and snipe his Shaman and Mawcrusher, despite his best efforts to stop me. My Rangers teleport along their board edge to deny points for killing them, along with my one remaining EG. My Spellsinger was left behind to run towards the objective, guarded by Sisters of the Thorn (who still failed to get their spell off), but unfortunately she got a ****** run roll. 

Fourth Battle Round: I finally get a double turn, long after it's needed though. SotT fail their spell again, and the Spellsinger rolls a bad run roll again and fails to make it to the objective. That loses the game for me - had she capped the objective, we would have tied at 3 victory points each, and I would have won a minor victory for killing half his army. 

 

All in all, fun game! I had so many things stacked against me in the beginning. Bad matchup in terms of army on this scenario, -1 to hit first round, failed all spells, he got immediate double turn, and I didn't get my double turn till I had already lost. The teleporting continues to be really fun and really useful. My opponents here all think it's insanely strong, but I pointed out that if they just clump their army on an objective, I would have to get that objective to catch up in points, and now it's his whole army that can retaliate when I show up. When they spread out they give me less options on where I can teleport in, but they are spread out so I keep getting to fight one unit of his army with my entire army. 

The Sisters of the Thorn didn't cast their spell once the entire game despite +1 to cast with the Shawl. at a whopping 220 points, I'm never playing them again in a list like this. They are more useful in a static gunline with EG, since with all their bonuses they reflect MW on 3+. In this formation the EG never stand still and rarely have cover, so it's garbage. Will just take 2x units of Wild Riders - they teleport-run-charge which is way more useful and I don't care if they die. 

The WWR were okay. I think I used them perfectly that game. They had a one-way combat (since the Riders protected them from the Brutes hitting them) and then they went against the Mawcrusher. They had a very unlucky turn but still did damage, then survived to run away. 

Before my next tournament I plan to try out another Mixed Order list spamming Waywatcher Lords with the Hurricanum. Sadly I think that approach is more versatile and harder to counter than the Waystone Pathfinders. And I can't imagine a Wanderer list not using Waystone Pathfinders, it's just so much better with the teleporting now. The free shooting is insane. 

[Yeled]

1 hour ago, Tidings said:

The Sisters of the Thorn didn't cast their spell once the entire game despite +1 to cast with the Shawl. at a whopping 220 points, I'm never playing them again in a list like this. They are more useful in a static gunline with EG, since with all their bonuses they reflect MW on 3+. In this formation the EG never stand still and rarely have cover, so it's garbage. Will just take 2x units of Wild Riders - they teleport-run-charge which is way more useful and I don't care if they die. 

This is very interesting. The synergies between SotT, SotW, and EG are really rendered much less useful with the new Wanderer allegiance abilities. It's almost like they are abilities for two very different armies. You choose one or the other but not both.

Either later tonight or tomorrow I'm going to start posting thoughts about individual units over on the Wishlist page. I'd like to get your reaction (and the reactions of others) so that we can put up a unit by unit wishlish in the first post.

[WABBIT]

3 hours ago, GammaMage said:

I think you're mixing up your Darkling Coven units. Executioners have 1" range, and 3/3/0/1 with mortal wounds on hits of 6. Black Guard are the ones with the 2" range, 3/3/-1/1 profile. But no mortal wound ability.

Is it? Ok sorry I got it wrong. Well they are still way better than rangers, it's average over 3 mortal wounds per 10 models. No wound rolls needed and most important is the 4+ save making them much more durable. Weak defence cancels out strong offense so rangers should be far cheaper than 180 as they are glass cannons and cannot sustain their offense and need much more support from other units and abilities in order to get the engagement on their terms. Tidings example of stringing out an elite unit  (wild riders) like cannon fodderjust so the rangers have a buffer and can engage without being destroyed first. Sacrifice 140pts  (wild riders) just to get that engagement on favourable terms is something we can't afford to do with a wanders army unless it's open play and non competitive. 

[GammaMage]

Rangers should be cheaper - but I don't think they should be compared to Executioners, as those have a different function as you said: mortal wound output. Should be comparing them to the Coven's rend infantry - Black Guard. They have the same weapons profile as Rangers, but are now cheaper (160 pts), with a better save (4+). And Black Guard are pretty squishy, as I can tell you from experience. I would hate to play them if they had a 5+ save.

[Tidings]

@Yeled Yeah the design of the Wanderer allegiance abilities is awesome, but it was like they designed it in a vacuum. They either didn't think about how the mobility doesn't synergize with a lot of our units (SotT/EG, SotW, Waywatchers), which I find unlikely, or they are planning to release stuff in the future that will make these units more of a niche role. Before GHB17 I wouldn't have suspected any new Wanderer releases, and I still don't know that I do, but the fact that the allegiance abilities are basically designed for a different selection of units than what we have makes me wonder. Maybe it really is just bad design. If that's the case, I hope they go back and alter Wanderer Warscrolls to be more in line with the new direction they are pushing the army. 

@WABBIT Yep, you said it perfectly. Our units CAN be good, but I had to allocate 320 points of units (Wild Riders and Wildwood Rangers), play them nearly perfectly, and still sacrifice all the Wild Riders to have a chance against 180 points of Brutes. ???? I killed 4 of them and the last fled to battleshock, but jesus that is unsustainable. I can only overwhelm (to get pretty equal combats) in one or two places on the battlefield.

Ideally, 180 points of Brutes (melee specialists) should be pretty evenly matched against 180 points of Rangers (melee specialists). And the other factors are pretty even: Rangers can teleport, Brutes have bonus movement and 5 more hp for the unit. Brutes have more special attacks and melee rules, Rangers have extra damage against monsters. etc.

I hope GW reads this. The math is just... ????

[Aezeal]

9 minutes ago, Tidings said:

@Yeled Yeah the design of the Wanderer allegiance abilities is awesome, but it was like they designed it in a vacuum. They either didn't think about how the mobility doesn't synergize with a lot of our units (SotT/EG, SotW, Waywatchers), which I find unlikely, or they are planning to release stuff in the future that will make these units more of a niche role. Before GHB17 I wouldn't have suspected any new Wanderer releases, and I still don't know that I do, but the fact that the allegiance abilities are basically designed for a different selection of units than what we have makes me wonder. Maybe it really is just bad design. If that's the case, I hope they go back and alter Wanderer Warscrolls to be more in line with the new direction they are pushing the army. 

@WABBIT Yep, you said it perfectly. Our units CAN be good, but I had to allocate 320 points of units (Wild Riders and Wildwood Rangers), play them nearly perfectly, and still sacrifice all the Wild Riders to have a chance against 180 points of Brutes. ???? I killed 4 of them and the last fled to battleshock, but jesus that is unsustainable. I can only overwhelm (to get pretty equal combats) in one or two places on the battlefield.

Ideally, 180 points of Brutes (melee specialists) should be pretty evenly matched against 180 points of Rangers (melee specialists). And the other factors are pretty even: Rangers can teleport, Brutes have bonus movement and 5 more hp for the unit. Brutes have more special attacks and melee rules, Rangers have extra damage against monsters. etc.

I hope GW reads this. The math is just... ????

Kill them melee specialists with ranged specialists? I think for a small game I'm going full shooting. For a larger (2K) game I might take 1 unit of EG to put in front of sisters since I'll have to take them then.

[Yeled]

59 minutes ago, Aezeal said:

Kill them melee specialists with ranged specialists? I think for a small game I'm going full shooting. For a larger (2K) game I might take 1 unit of EG to put in front of sisters since I'll have to take them then.

Let us know how this goes. The idea of protecting archers by bogging opponents down in EG has been pretty fundamental to the army. But now with the new allegiance abilities is might be worth it to have more archers and just let them die when they are engaged. I don't know. Can the extra damage output in those first couple turns make up for the fact that our armies will be even squishier than before?

Maybe it's better to have an extra 10 GG to do more damage with a -3 rend against the unit that is about to charge them rather than let the EG die as a speedbump without accomplishing anything.

 

1 hour ago, Tidings said:

Yeah the design of the Wanderer allegiance abilities is awesome, but it was like they designed it in a vacuum. They either didn't think about how the mobility doesn't synergize with a lot of our units (SotT/EG, SotW, Waywatchers), which I find unlikely, or they are planning to release stuff in the future that will make these units more of a niche role. Before GHB17 I wouldn't have suspected any new Wanderer releases, and I still don't know that I do, but the fact that the allegiance abilities are basically designed for a different selection of units than what we have makes me wonder. Maybe it really is just bad design. If that's the case, I hope they go back and alter Wanderer Warscrolls to be more in line with the new direction they are pushing the army. 

 No offense to the designers, but I suspect it's poor design. Or to put it another way, I think they built the original list one way, then came up with thematic allegiance abilities later and didn't go back and change the warscrolls to reflect the new paradigm. They need to take that last step and bring our warscrolls in line with the new way the army plays.

I hope you'll help me come up with ideas in the wishlist thread. 

[Tidings]

1 hour ago, Aezeal said:

Kill them melee specialists with ranged specialists? I think for a small game I'm going full shooting. For a larger (2K) game I might take 1 unit of EG to put in front of sisters since I'll have to take them then.

Sure in a dream world you could kite all day and kill everything with ranged specialists and never be charged. But that's not how things work. I think you are missing my point. I know how to shoot the scary stuff, there was a Mawcrusher in my frontline too lol. Rangers cost the same as Brutes and are also melee specialists, so I should see a pretty balanced combat there. But I was bringing this up because the Brutes are far more efficient for the points. This is a common problem for Wanderers.

Now, I'm okay with one army having to pay more for something less effective, as long as they get a good deal somewhere else. What I mean is this: 180 points for Rangers vs 180 points for Brutes, while the Brutes are much better units, is just imbalanced. UNLESS the Wanderers are the kings at something else. Seraphon and Sylvaneth have more flexible teleporting than us, Chaos and Destruction all move faster than us, so movement isn't our thing. So it must be shooting! Except... lots of armies shoot better than us. Stormcast, Skaven, Dwarves, even High Elves etc are all arguably better or more versatile shooting armies. The Waywatcher hero is the only unit that really stands out. 

If we could pay 100 points for shooting that costs OTHER armies 140 points, then I wouldn't mind paying 140 points for melee that others get for 100. Melee isn't our army's focus, after all. The problem is we don't really have any good deals to offset the expensive stuff - no monsters, weak but expensive melee and cavalry, and generally overcosted or average shooting. 

13 minutes ago, Yeled said:

No offense to the designers, but I suspect it's poor design. Or to put it another way, I think they built the original list one way, then came up with thematic allegiance abilities later and didn't go back and change the warscrolls to reflect the new paradigm. They need to take that last step and bring our warscrolls in line with the new way the army plays.

I hope you'll help me come up with ideas in the wishlist thread. 

That's my thought too. Hopefully they make some changes to make the army feel like it was designed by one person/team, instead of someone designing the allegiance while someone else designs the units. I work in video games and unfortunately, it's pretty regular for teams within a company to design stuff that contradicts what someone else is doing.

I'll post in there again soon! Just playing some more matches and collecting my thoughts/ideas.