I've finally put up my first win vs Dark Elves in the current edition... the only downside is that I didn't do it with my Ogres. Had a friendly game against my friend's Dark Elves on Wednesday and to change it up, I decided to bring my Wood Elves out of retirement.
As I've said in the past my WE's are a bit out of date(all the models around 5th edition) and it contains no Dryads or Treekin. So I designed the army to basically shoot and run circles around my opponent and hope to avoid combats except where I wanted them.
My army was an Ancient Treeman, Hero on Great Eagle, Lvl 2 caster, 20 Glade Guard, 10 Glade Guard Scouts, 6 or 7 Glade Riders, 2 units of 6 Wardancers, Warhawk riders, and a full unit of Waywatchers.
Not to sound too smug, but that's basically how the game played out. In the middle of the board I had a large unit of Glade Guard, and my Warhawks and Great Eagles. Everything else was deployed on the flanks. My idea was to either have him split his forces in 2 or if he decided to keep them together, I'd just run around to the back of him. I put 2 units of scouts (one glade guard scout and one full unit of Waywatchers) behind his army on the flanks.
His army was a pretty standard Dark Elf list. In his defense, he just recently finished it and hasn't had a ton of experience with it. Cauldron of blood, 2 unit of repeater crossbowmen, 5 Cold One Knights, big unit of Black Guard, big unit of Corsairs, Hydra, and a Level 4 sorceress. I knew that anything the Cold One Knights, Black Guard or Corsairs touched would be blown to bits. I figured my Ancient Treeman stood a pretty good chance against the Hydra if he could go against him alone.
Turn 1
Shooting.. lots of shooting. Waywatchers took down a couple Cold one Knights with their Lethal Shot ability (aka killing blow for shooting) My unit of Glade Guard scouts shot some repeater crossbowmen. With some lucky shooting, I put a couple wounds on the Hydra with the Glade Riders.
My opponent was so gracious as to have his level 4 wizard forget most of this deadly spells due to a miscast. Taking some of the Black Guard out with him in the explosion.
Turn 2
More shooting for me. I think it was this turn that I took out the Cold One Knights with the Waywatchers. I charged the Cauldron of Blood with my Warhawk riders and Hero on Great Eagle. I moved my Wardances up into a position where the Hydra would charge them and I had hoped either take him out that combat, or at least draw him into a position that my Treeman would get a round or two of combat against the Hydra without a unit being around to support him. My Flying Cav performed like a champ. Taking out the Cauldron of Blood and avoiding not dying from some character thing with them.
My opponent decided that instead of charging my Wardancers, he'd breath weapon them to death. Which to no one's surprise was "Super Effective." This turned out better than I had planned. By using his breath weapon there, instead of in the combat with my Treeman, I avoided taking double wounds from his flame attacks.
Turn 3.
My Treeman took advantage of the flank that the Hydra exposed to me to get into breath weapon position. At this point everything in my army, except for the stationary unit of Glade Guard was behind him and I had whittled down his black guard to only 6 or 7 models so I positioned my flying cav in the rear of them, then in the Magic phase charged them in using Call of the Wild.
Since all there was left to shoot at was the Corsairs, my shots were mostly ineffective because of their anti-shooting cloaks. The Treeman was able to beat and break the Hydra who ran away and panic the unit of crossbowmen behind him. The Black Guard combat didn't go so well for me. Infact, I was wiped off the board before getting to make a single attack in return.
During his turn my opponent rallied both the crossbowmen and the hydra. Nothing really eventful after that in this round. The corsairs tried charging the Glade Riders but I made them flee.
Turn 4
My Treeman went back for more against the hydra and took him out, overrunning into the crossbowmen. More shooting. More running in circles around the Black Guard and Corsairs.
During his turn, my Treeman took out the crossbowmen unit. We called it after that because I wasn't going to let any combat happen. Had we played it out, the only difference might have been me finishing off the Black Guard with all my shooting.
We didn't figure up VP but I lost 1 hero on Great Eagle, 3 Warhawk riders, and 6 Wardancers, and I took out 2 unit of crossbowmen, the hydra, cauldron, and cold one knights.
MVP of the game has to go to the Waywatchers for neutralizing those Cold One Knights. Those guys were mobile enough and killy enough to pick my army apart. If I were to add to my Wood Elves under the current book, I would get a 2nd unit of those guys. A bit pricey, but well worth it.
LVP was my spell caster. The wood elf lore sucks. The spells are situational at best except for Call of the Wild, so I built her up to be a dispeller and didn't even do that properly.
I was very surprised to pull out a win there because A. My opponent is a very good player, B. I never can beat the Dark Elves, and C. I was freakin Wood Elves. I gained a bit of respect for the hippies, although I get the feeling that against most other armies this setup wouldn't be as effective. The low toughness of Dark Elves and their average armor save was designed for the wood elves to have someone to pick on. Against anyone who's got some survivability(dwarfs, ogres, chaos) or one of the horde armies (one of the undeads, O&G's, skaven) I don't think my strategy would be that effective. You're basically playing to not lose, instead of playing to win.
Also want to thank my opponent for not being too pissed at me for arriving late. A wreck on the highway caused me to be 30-40 mins late and aside from a few screamed curse words(which apparently is frowned upon in GW stores.. who knew), he didn't mind.
