# Wood Elves



## Brother Constantine (Jun 4, 2008)

I am thinking about starting a wood elf army, but I am worried that they are an army that rarely wins. 
I think the models are amazing, however I would like to win now and again.
I am new to Warhammer and I know that the tactics for the WE rely on teaming up on units and hit and runs....are the WEs a bad idea for a first time Warhammer player?


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## Ancient Tiel' a fier (May 5, 2008)

Wood elves are a very challenging army but thet are very competetive. As a heavily skirmishing army they are very hard to get to grips with and all the while the elves shower there foes with arrows. Wood elves are all about intelligent shooting hit the right foes to soften them then strike with powerful combat units, treekin and dryads are very dangerous foes and everyone is scared of a treeman. Movement is key but with practice the army is a solid foe who can run rings around their opponants.


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## Snorri O'dubhda (May 14, 2008)

They are a very challenging army to play with but once you get used to them they are a lot of fun and with practice become very very competative. for this army remember that manoverbility and combined well timed charges are your friend. your combat units are fragile but when timed well deliver a real punch. Although there shooting is very good dont fall in to the trap that the shooting phase will win you the game. as with all elves balence is usually key.


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## Ancient Tiel' a fier (May 5, 2008)

Well well snorri you old dog! very true.


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## Brother Constantine (Jun 4, 2008)

Thank you for the info guys


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## Druchii in Space (Apr 7, 2008)

I think I should point out a weakness in the army, which is an over reliance on 'Dryads' not such a problem if you love em, not so great if you want a pure or mostly Wood Elf force. I am convinced they are under pointed to make up for failings elsewhere in the list, and have a nagging feeling that was suggested at the time the book was released. Regardless alot of Wood Elf players have figures this out which is why most Wood Elf tournie armies I've seen have been heavy with Dryads. 

I raise this issue, as my wife waited 10yrs for the Wood Elf release, and was sorely disappointed with the way they balanced the army through this unit. She had one unit of 10 Dryads in her army as she wanted to have mainly Wood Elves, no Treeman as she hated the model, and my Druchii where repeatidly beating her force. 
Although our battle record isn't 50-50, shes wins a fair few battles, and to be fair I'm more into historical tactics and have 10 more yrs Warhammer experience, but after 8 battles where she hadn't managed to beat me with them once we felt something was up. She also noted that my rxb's where out shooting her Glade guard quite comfortably and as both armies where about manuver her elites where not managing to hit my army hard enough to make up from her lack of armour compared to mine.

Convinced the Dryads where the problem, she took 4 units in our 9th game.. and to sum up that battle.. she walked over my army. To be honest we where both pretty disheartened by that, because it showed a poor call by the design team. It was probably the reason we dropped out of Warhammer to try Confrontation. 

Now after saying that I still think Wood Elves are a nice force, and I think shes mumbled that she'll look at them again when their next book rolls around, but I think its a shame they choose to make one unit so important for the army.

Just my view.


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## Lord Khorne (May 6, 2008)

WE are very challenging, yes. But at least you can ally with bretonnia in a tournament!!!!
Good Luck. They have some great models


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## jigplums (Dec 15, 2006)

druchii its funny to me that you feel the woodelves book showed a poor call on game design and then changed to confrontation. ALthough i love confrontations models, i think the gaming system is terrible, much to clunky to be a battle game and more suited to a roleplay style game. Its a small scale game at best yet has delusions of being a bigger scale game. I think its showing that there basic design premise was how do we make it differet to gamesworkshop. Not the best way of designing a system.

As to woodelves i'd say there weakness is magic and shooting. as with all elves they are fragile and expensive so some effective shooting is going to hurt. Vs DE they have the drawback that they are strong shooters too, but then can't compete in the magic phase. The advantage they have over over elves though is they have resiliance, albiet in the form of dryads, treekin and treemen. If you don't like these units its not going to help you against the armies they are particularly good against. 
Against other armies, like dwarves Gladeguard will come into there own as they can outrange the dwarven gunline for the most part, and any dwarf cc units will get mown down if they try to close the gap. Dryads won't help you in cc vs a real dwarf unit that is supported.
Your looking at one army vs one army and taking out one of the major strengths of the army vs its common opponent. In my opinion the thing that shows the sucessful game design of the woodelf book is that a good balanced army vs a range of opponents is a mixed one with a variety of units. Its not about taking 60 glade guard, or some other extreme.


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## Druchii in Space (Apr 7, 2008)

Well to be fair our affair with Confrontation didn't last that long, we got into it due to the models, as you noted they are quite amazing, plus my wife loves Werewolves so you can guess where she went. However not long into our time following Rackham news that the rules where due to change started to ciculate, plus after a few battles we realised it wasn't as you said a great system, so we just dropped out of any kind of Fantasy game for about the last two years. We're Just getting back into Warhammer now.

Regarding my narrow comparison, well aye thats a good point, the balance was only poor against Dark Elves (or I'd imagine any of the three Elven armies where the Wood Elf strength mobility is not as promiment and like you said not taking the Tree spirits where hurting her, although she would use 3 of the ogre sized ones and they where the biggest pain to deal with tbh. She was certainly killing my units btw, just not doing enough damage before her units where felled to win games.) 
I also admit I've no idea how a Wood Elf force would preform against other forces, although against Dwarven Gunlines the Glade Glades str 3 bow would seem to me to be a problem at range, to get the wanted str 4 they'd need to open themselves up to Dwarven fire and have no save for their wounds. A flame cannon and a couple of artillery pieces to me would make a Wood Elf army struggle I'd reckon, as the rest of the Dwarven Gunline will happily shoot the Wood Elves down of they tried to approach, and if they didn't I'd say the flame cannon and artillery would be doing more damage to the Wood Elves, than the glade guard would be doing back at over half range.
Against heavy CC armies such as Khorne and Chaos in general, or Vampire Counts I'd assume Wood Elves would come across much stronger due to the ability to move around and shoot from afar, however I still feel a lack of Dryad units will hurt the Wood Elf player in this case as the Wood Elf 'Elf' units seem so fragile in any kind of CC. Without the Dryads supporting the line, it seems the army has problems. When I look at my Druchii armies in the past I often didn't take Warriors, or sometimes I wouldn't take Dark Riders (I mention them as they are both Core like the Dryads,) but that doesn't seem to make my Druchii army twice as hard to play with.

It just feels like Dryads are needed too much for the list, I agree with you on the vaired units for the list overall, but at the same time I can't think of many armies with a unit you must almost always take to have a competitive chance of winning. The odd thing is, in all honesty what you can't do right now with a Wood Elf army (well if you want a fair chance to win any how) is have a pure Elf force, that to me is a problem.


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