Thursday, 10 April 2014

Controlled By Chaos (and Miniatures) Part 2: High Elves

And now for something completely different...

When it comes to getting my gaming kicks, 40k has always been my main squeeze. I was always more into the desolate vision of a war torn future than the traditional fantasy world of Elves and Dwarves. At times I dipped into Epic, Space Hulk, Dark Future and Blood Bowl but always came back to the familiar arms of 40k... until a couple of months ago.

Myself, Gotrek and Praetor chat regularly about 40k and gaming, one day the conversation turned to Warhammer Fantasy. Both Praetor and Gotrek have played WFB and were familiar with the rule system and armies. I on the other hand, was not. So I started reading, and Praetor very kindly passed on a small collection of High Elves (many thanks again fella) and I'm now keen to try and put together a decent HE list. 

Now I probably wouldn't have gone with HE if I'd set out to choose an army but the models I have are a great starting point, I've been getting some great advice from Gotrek on how HE work and what units work best and I'm really looking forward to playing them. I've decided to go with a fairly traditional (I think) HE army. Lots of archers and lots of spearman. Fast cavalry for precision strikes and for dissuading charges and heavy cavalry to @?#* things up. Support will come in the form of bolt throwers and HE wouldn't be HE without som good old fashioned sorcery! I haven't decided on much more than that. I want to start out with the bare minimum I need to build a balanced powerful army.

So all I need to now is fill out my army with key units, repaint them (the paint job was done by the previous owner and is awesome but I want to put my own stamp on them) and play some games
 
Lots of Elves, lots of bits, lots of painting to do! And most of all... lots of fun! Oh and if anyone can help me identify any of the bits I've got it would makes very happy :)

6 comments:

  1. Budda is the man for identifying High Elves as he's a fellow pointy ear :)

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  2. High Elves in their current form are ridiculously good. There are parts of the army book I actually thought were mistakes; that's how good they are.

    Example? High Elf rank and file troops have Always Strikes First. Good uh? Kinda wastes that Initiative of 5. Nope! Part of the rules for ASF is that if your model has EQUAL OR HIGHER initiative than your opponent they can re-roll all of their missed close combat attacks.

    Couple that with the ability to fight with an extra rank, and a block of Spearman is pretty much one of the best units in the game points-wise.

    The army book is full of these little advantages and I'll be happy to send you my thoughts in a private message (spies are everywhere).

    Do you have the army book? Also, what sized army are you looking at?

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  3. Damn, spying thwarted!! :)

    That's pretty much what I have said to CBC. HE spearmen are awesome! Archers are pretty deadly too being able to shoot in that extra rank.

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  4. One thing that does keep coming up is how cavalry are no longer that cost effective in Warhammer now that rank and file troops have been given a boost.

    Unless I was choosing a 2000+ point army, I really wouldn't bother with cavalry unless it was a 5 man artillery-hunter unit.

    Shame, as the models are really good.

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  5. Thanks Budda (and Gotrek). Yes, i've been reading the same thing (although i have no experience of WFB so i'm not able to compare to previous versions of the rules). From what i can see, taking one small unit of light cav, and one of heavy cav is still quite useful.

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  6. I think Heavy cav used to be soooooo good that, with the random charge range and buff to infantry in this edition they haven't really been nerfed as such (everything has random charge distance now) they just aren't as versatile or cost effective as infantry. I think if you use them right they can still be a thorn in the side for most armies and deathstar cav units will still win games.

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