Post by flamingkillamajig on Jan 27, 2012 23:10:47 GMT -5
So the thing to note most about elves is off course they have a good profile except their toughness and strength are normally really bad as well as their armor. Think of glass cannons basically. So shooting, toughness and strength tests and similar magical abilities are good ways to kill them. Also though they are very fast and can wound a lot they seem to have problems against tough creatures esp. with regeneration or heavily armored units (i.e. knights and the hellpit abomination or similar).
Often being skaven i use plague against high elves and it's fantastic against them. If you can use both plague and wither then go for it. Scorch is also great i'm sure. However i suggest you kill off elves in ranged or magic before you get into melee and esp. with ranged combat. Skaven don't have much ranged combat but that doesn't stop me from using poisoned slings with my gutter runners which infiltrated close to some elite elf unit. The good thing about elves is that despite their speed their armor for almost all units is really, really bad. In fact for all infantry units +5 armor with toughness 3 can be expected all around. Often time those same gutter runners with poisoned slings have killed swordmasters down to a man in one game in particular and had that game continued they'd have all died or fled the table. It was all about getting them to panic and rally constantly and being in the flank it was hard to have good morale for them.
The one exception to the rule of elves having poor resilience would be their phoenix guard i think (halberd wielding elves) with some +4 ward save if i remember correctly in addition to their +5 armor save. They are harder to kill i'm sure but once again they are still toughness 3 and their final strength is only 4 with possibly just one attack per guy. Against something toughness 6 with armor (like the orcs and goblins arachnarok spider) they will barely scratch it.
As far as elf knights go just use some plague censer bearers, jezzails, poisoned wind globadiers (just be sure to use a lot of clanrats or slaves as fodder to tie up the enemy the globadiers attack), poisoned wind mortars or a plague furnace against them and they will fall hard.
Then there are the dragons which might be a bit tougher to take down. This isn't so much because of the dragon so much as the elf riding it. If you take a warlord on rat ogre bonebreaker with a fellblade he will absolutely torch most monsters on an average roll. The problem is with high elves and their high initiative and always strikes first your warlord will probably die before you get the chance to attack back but i could be wrong. Then there's also the matter of both probably having high initiative and being hard to kill with cracks call or a brass orb. So i guess you just have to use the doom wheel's warp lightning to do d6 wounds and similar with the warp lightning cannon. The jezzails can probably do a few wound too but it may be all up to either of those 2 units, constant poisoned wind globadier attacks with a unit holding up the dragon or throwing everything at it.
Elf magic is pretty nasty i'll admit but having numbers you should handle it all right. Just make sure to use scorch or plague on them and you should be perfectly fine. If this isn't enough throwing large unbreakable units at the whittled down elves should crumble them. I do ask you to hit them with shooting including poisoned wind mortars, warpfire throwers, warp lightning cannons and other such wonderful things and using magic before going into the melee.
Melee unfortunately is one of the areas like their magic where they tend to shine. Sad thing is they shine way too much in melee to be balanced in many cases and without proper heavily armored or super tough units you will lose combat resolution frequently and badly. I don't know who was dumb enough to make the always strikes first rule allow for re-rolls to hit when having the same or higher initiative (which high elves almost always have even vs other elves) as it gives most high elves a ridiculously high hitting rate and since they have always strikes first they will hit first. They also have a great stat-line except for ok toughness and strength with average leadership.
So basically use magic against high elves if you can and shoot against them a lot before they're weak enough to face in melee and then charge them. At this point your numbers should take care of things for you and you'll beat them in the war of attrition. Watch out for their magic but more for their melee in my opinion. Let them charge you with their spearmen or sea guard if you can as they'll get fewer attacks this way. You could always opt to have your skaven flee but being skaven they probably won't come back too easily and panic can be fairly painful even with strength in numbers and a general or BSB nearby as once you flee strength in numbers isn't used for said unit and you have to test on the general's leadership which is usually 7 at the highest with a re-roll for the BSB. It might be 8 due to the musician when fleeing but i can't remember anymore.
Often being skaven i use plague against high elves and it's fantastic against them. If you can use both plague and wither then go for it. Scorch is also great i'm sure. However i suggest you kill off elves in ranged or magic before you get into melee and esp. with ranged combat. Skaven don't have much ranged combat but that doesn't stop me from using poisoned slings with my gutter runners which infiltrated close to some elite elf unit. The good thing about elves is that despite their speed their armor for almost all units is really, really bad. In fact for all infantry units +5 armor with toughness 3 can be expected all around. Often time those same gutter runners with poisoned slings have killed swordmasters down to a man in one game in particular and had that game continued they'd have all died or fled the table. It was all about getting them to panic and rally constantly and being in the flank it was hard to have good morale for them.
The one exception to the rule of elves having poor resilience would be their phoenix guard i think (halberd wielding elves) with some +4 ward save if i remember correctly in addition to their +5 armor save. They are harder to kill i'm sure but once again they are still toughness 3 and their final strength is only 4 with possibly just one attack per guy. Against something toughness 6 with armor (like the orcs and goblins arachnarok spider) they will barely scratch it.
As far as elf knights go just use some plague censer bearers, jezzails, poisoned wind globadiers (just be sure to use a lot of clanrats or slaves as fodder to tie up the enemy the globadiers attack), poisoned wind mortars or a plague furnace against them and they will fall hard.
Then there are the dragons which might be a bit tougher to take down. This isn't so much because of the dragon so much as the elf riding it. If you take a warlord on rat ogre bonebreaker with a fellblade he will absolutely torch most monsters on an average roll. The problem is with high elves and their high initiative and always strikes first your warlord will probably die before you get the chance to attack back but i could be wrong. Then there's also the matter of both probably having high initiative and being hard to kill with cracks call or a brass orb. So i guess you just have to use the doom wheel's warp lightning to do d6 wounds and similar with the warp lightning cannon. The jezzails can probably do a few wound too but it may be all up to either of those 2 units, constant poisoned wind globadier attacks with a unit holding up the dragon or throwing everything at it.
Elf magic is pretty nasty i'll admit but having numbers you should handle it all right. Just make sure to use scorch or plague on them and you should be perfectly fine. If this isn't enough throwing large unbreakable units at the whittled down elves should crumble them. I do ask you to hit them with shooting including poisoned wind mortars, warpfire throwers, warp lightning cannons and other such wonderful things and using magic before going into the melee.
Melee unfortunately is one of the areas like their magic where they tend to shine. Sad thing is they shine way too much in melee to be balanced in many cases and without proper heavily armored or super tough units you will lose combat resolution frequently and badly. I don't know who was dumb enough to make the always strikes first rule allow for re-rolls to hit when having the same or higher initiative (which high elves almost always have even vs other elves) as it gives most high elves a ridiculously high hitting rate and since they have always strikes first they will hit first. They also have a great stat-line except for ok toughness and strength with average leadership.
So basically use magic against high elves if you can and shoot against them a lot before they're weak enough to face in melee and then charge them. At this point your numbers should take care of things for you and you'll beat them in the war of attrition. Watch out for their magic but more for their melee in my opinion. Let them charge you with their spearmen or sea guard if you can as they'll get fewer attacks this way. You could always opt to have your skaven flee but being skaven they probably won't come back too easily and panic can be fairly painful even with strength in numbers and a general or BSB nearby as once you flee strength in numbers isn't used for said unit and you have to test on the general's leadership which is usually 7 at the highest with a re-roll for the BSB. It might be 8 due to the musician when fleeing but i can't remember anymore.
