What is the current meta and how do you play it?

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Cyrus
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#31 Post by Cyrus »

Part of what you're noticing is an artifact of the local meta here, which includes a number of armies like Ogres, Chaos Dwarves, Chaos Warriors, Empire knights and demigryphs, who can win against the Silver Helms and Phoenix Guard if they're not improved by spells. The other factor that leads me to want to buff especially the Silver Helms is the importance in 8th Ed of killing off enemy units. If you want VP, you have to kill the enemy to the last man. A cav prince will win fights, but he will often do it so slowly that he's not finished with an enemy unit by the end of a typical game. Withering or Mindrazor helps the Silver Helms to actually back him up and do some killing. The Phoenix Guard are similar--S4 will lose or win slowly against very many opponents. It's an aggressive army but a low-Strength army, so I think it benefits a lot from Shadow and Beast lores.

To be honest I haven't faced a shooty or evasive enemy like Dwarves or Wood Elves with this list. So there may be some tuning necessary there. When the mage-carrying archers have come under threat, I've usually been able to redirect their attackers or use the PG as an emergency backup bunker.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#32 Post by Curu Olannon »

If everything you face is low-I, armour-heavy with poor board control I can definitely understand how you favour Shadow so much. Once you start encountering Elves, Lizardmen, Daemons etc you`ll start to appreciate the fact that Shadow, for all its power, is fairly one-dimensional.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#33 Post by Cyrus »

Every army is going to perform better and worse in different contexts. If I were facing a more board-control-type army, I might want a different set of troops in some ways, but I would still want a lore that helped me kill the enemy. I actually rarely use Pit of Shades with this list, and often turn it down in favor of the hexes. I would be inclined to switch away from Shadow, though, if I gave up PG and SH in favor of Swordmasters and/or White Lions.

In my experience, the main thing that helps determine which lore you should choose with High Elves is which troops form your front-line fighting units. Phoenix Guard and cavalry synchronize well with Shadow and Beasts, the other elite infantry work better with Life or High magic, and in the rare cases where you don't feel your troops won't need a bonus from magic in hand to hand, Death is a good option.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#34 Post by Curu Olannon »

Indeed, context is everything. What I`m talking about here though is a competitive meta, where (unless you play in a really small area with just the same players) the armies will be varied and you won´t know what`s coming apart from general trends (e.g. Elves seem to be popular world-wide these days).

As for PG, I haven`t run them with Shadow since the last book. I find they work perfectly well with a Loremasters or High Magic. Give them a razor standard and they`ll go toe-to-toe with most things. Never found their killing to be lacking really, which in part may be because of the facts I outlined in my original post as to the status of the current meta (i.e. no deathstars). If you play with just a few friends who always wield the armies you cited in your last post, I can see that this doesn´t apply to you and you might find PG in need of killyness.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#35 Post by Cyrus »

The Phoenix Guard need it less than they used to, for sure, and less than the Silver Helms do. Time was, I would never take a Phoenix Guard unit if I didn't take a Shadow or Beast mage. Now I take a unit of them in pretty much every army.

What lore would you be inclined to take with a list of this sort?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#36 Post by Casazzo »

I cannot speak for Cyrus, but i found the prospect of me six-dicing a mindrazor very intimidating for my enemy.
They dont fear the PG for themselves, but 15-20+ rerollable mindrazor attacks from PG are easily able to crush almost everything on their own.

Same happens for a unit of SHs, stuck in another unit after their first charge, or worse - getting attacked on their own.
(having pit as a wm or monster-crusher helps too. Same for the RIP-hexes from shadow lore, who drain passively energy dice from your enemy) I really like it as a backup plan, for when shit hits the fan.

Personally i switch my lore of magic constantly between high (you HAVE to love "walk between worlds" for its sheer tactical power), shadow (see above) and death (mainly for the reasons, curu always cites, but i always live in fear of a mishap from my purple sun. Nothing makes me more happy than sniping a vampire count general out of his bunker)

Maybe you should stop trying to find the BEST lore of magic. Even the other lores are viable or even strong. Just find the 2 or 3 ones suited for your playstyle and your type of army.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#37 Post by Prince of Spires »

I my experience, PG don't need mindrazor too much. Give them the razor banner and get them decent matchups and they will slice through a lot of units. High WS, reroll to hit vs everything but ASF units and a few characters and S4 armour piercing is quite brutal when combined with a 4+ ward and a few ranks. A unit of 15 PG with razor banner is a standard unit in my list. And my opponents fear the unit. At least they do so after it has been the key unit in one or two battles.

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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#38 Post by SpellArcher »

I think part of what Curu is saying is that if you run a board-control Lore rather than Shadow you have a good chance of getting that bus into faster and juicier combats.

But yeah, the great thing about Shadow with PG is that they will stick around long enough to get that buff off. Spears for example may well be toast if they don't IF it. I could see Withering being handy against a T6 monster for example.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#39 Post by Curu Olannon »

Casazzo wrote:I cannot speak for Cyrus, but i found the prospect of six-dicing a mindrazor completely broken. 15-20+ rerollable mindrazor attacks from any unit in Warhammer willl completely crush almost everything.
There, I fixed your post. Nobody is arguing the power of mindrazor. The spell allows you to do truly ridiculous things. Let`s say you drew an opponent`s scroll with a huge cast on withering on an exposed unit (assuming your list had lots of shooting to follow up) and in the next turn you have 5 mournfang bearing down on your flank. No problem, send in the 20 Archers! Magic phase comes up 7v5, fairly usual, you 6-dice mindrazor and your opponent is powerless to dispel. Down goes the mournfang.

What I`m saying is that your list already has so much combat power that I don`t believe it amplifies your strength compared to other lores. You don`t have enough shooting to capitalize on Withering properly and Mindrazor is largely overkill. Again, I can understand the meta you`re describing but that`s a very rare case it would seem, where it`s all about who can have the baddest unit and send it one on one to win Warhammer. A typical board control list would dominate this meta, hard. Try playing DoC MSU (multiple beasts, flies, furies, a guo etc) for example and see how much 15 drops, multiple chaff units and several hard hitters can dictate a game against solid blocks that are hard, yet sluggish.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#40 Post by Casazzo »

Yeah. I like that about shadow. But for the big monsters i would recommend using the pit most of the time. It frees up your shooting/attacks for other uses.

I have one question though, that came to mind recently:
Do ponys attack with their LD while under the influence, too?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#41 Post by Curu Olannon »

I think so
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#42 Post by Cyrus »

Anyway, let's keep in mind my initial point. If Shadow is your lore, you don't need to put your mage in a character bunker--a unit of archers will do. I agree that it's arguable whether Shadow is the right lore to go with my aggressive HTH list, but as long as you grant that Shadow will work well with some High Elf lists, that means a character bunker is not entirely obligatory.

Which is good, because unless you're using High Magic, or maybe Life magic, it's extremely hard to make High Elf characters (except the Anointed) hard to kill on foot. With heroes you can't even get a re-rollable 2+ or a 2+ combined with a ward save.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#43 Post by Cyrus »

Also, how could you possibly include a character bunker in a Star Dragon list? You can't even afford a lord character on foot. I guess you could tool up a single hero as best you could and put him in front of a three-wide unit of White Lions?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#44 Post by Curu Olannon »

Light is also good for foot characters, but usually with that lore you only have the Loremaster (and maybe BSB) as even remotely combat-worthy characters.

My point of the slight derail was that Shadow is hardly a suited lore for a balanced meta (which most of us have to deal with, at least everyone who goes to major tournaments). I know some members on this forum have experimented with it but I have yet to see how it performs in a competitive setting. Tales of mindrazored Archers ripping apart Skullcrushers in a friendly beerhammer simply doesn`t matter all that much as far as discussing the overall meta is concerned.

Character bunker in a Star Dragon list? Silver Helms :)
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#45 Post by Cyrus »

But with Silver Helms you can't get Banner of the World Dragon unless you put it on a BSB, in which case the BSB will be too poorly protected to last more than a turn or so in HTH. So either your bus misses out on the Banner's protection, which is very risky, or you need to shell out points for *another* character to bump the BSB into the back rank.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#46 Post by Curu Olannon »

Exactly. Hence why Silver Helm busses typically house 4 characters: 2 Nobles and 2 Mages. You want the double L2s for magical offense, whereas the 2nd Noble helps the BSB out. Typically this configuration is played with Crown of Command as well, so you can run the Helms 3 wide to avoid anything important going in the front rank.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#47 Post by Cyrus »

Interesting. Next time I play a dragon list I will try a 3-wide Helm bus with Crown and see how it works. It's a shame to spend all those points and lose the BSB's attacks, but I suppose that's High Elves for you. Nothing is ever easy, or entirely points-efficient.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#48 Post by Cyrus »

Do you usually use 5 Helms then, or 8 of them?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#49 Post by Curu Olannon »

5? 8? I never take less than 15 in a configuration like this, preferably up to 18. 5 will lose Look Out, sir! before you can even move them.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#50 Post by Cyrus »

You take 18 Silver Helms deployed 3 wide? That's a lot of wasted lances.

What lore do you take with that unit?
Last edited by Cyrus on Mon Aug 11, 2014 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#51 Post by Curu Olannon »

Cyrus wrote:You take 18 Silver Helms deployed 3 wide? That's a lot of bodies to go through on a small frontage to get to the important characters.
There, fixed your post :)
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#52 Post by Cyrus »

What lore do you take with it?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#53 Post by Curu Olannon »

The most frequent is High Magic. I still believe Light could be worth trying out, but +1 to cast from High along with its amazing flexibility makes it the "default" lore for these types of lists. WBW is great, Arcane unforging is great, defaulting to soul quench is really good vs dodgy armies, defaulting to drain magic is really good vs armies relying on clutch spells. Hand of Glory is cheap and solid, Apotheosis is really nice to have with the big birds.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#54 Post by Cyrus »

You certainly wouldn't be taking much damage with that unit, with Shield of Saphery. I would just worry about it doing much damage after the first round of a fight. It's hard to make a noble strong enough to fill the damage-dealing role of a cav prince, especially if you need him to also plug the first rank in a character bus. You probably couldn't take the Star Lance, for example, since you're going to want Dawnstone on that guy. I guess Sword of Might would be your magic weapon, then? 3 S5 and 11 S3 attacks (including horses) aren't that much. But maybe the idea is to use the bus to support another unit in combat?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#55 Post by Baleanoon »

I really want to take High Magic to a GT type event the only problem is locally the GTs are 6 games and not really sure it would be consistently useful. However that it is very internally focused so you can build your list to use the majority of the spells. It is still worrying though.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#56 Post by Curu Olannon »

Cyrus, if you`re worried about damage output in a Star Dragon + Frostheart list, chances are you`re doing it wrong. The bus isn`t there to provide a deathstar, it is a points-preservation utility unit whose sole purpose is to assist the monsters.

High Magic I think necessitates one of 3 builds: Infantry Deathstar, cavstar or Dragonbuild. If either of these fit your playstyle, I`d say go for it :) Alternatively you could work a hero-level caster into many builds.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#57 Post by SpellArcher »

Bus plus foot block plus support?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#58 Post by Curu Olannon »

I assume you mean Seredain`s list? The problem I have with this approach is that either your Archmage is with the cavalry, which puts an aweful lot of points in them for what they do, or he`s with the infantry, in which case he can`t really help the cavalry. High Magic`s primary combat effect is Shield of Saphery, which obviously requires the mage to be in the unit. By running him in the bus, you have 2 options pretty much: run a barebones kit with Prince + BSB, in which case the death of the champion means the mage goes forward. The secondary option is to provide yet another Noble, but at this point we have 4 characters + a significant amount of Helms, which means that it`s closer to a deathstar than a combined arms approach. If you want the infantry + cavalry approach, I believe Life is the necessary lore. This allows you to put the Archmage with the cavalry since they`ll be harder to take down, but perhaps more importantly it allows you to take BOTWD on the infantry supporting unit, meaning you can kit your BSB defensively. Lastly, Lifebloom and Earthblood makes the bus durable. With BOTWD on the support unit, Lions become the obvious choice. Though I`m not personally a big fan of them in offensive lists, this build certainly has merit: Furion used it to great effect last year and this year`s ETC featured several cav+infantry with L4 Life builds, including the wínning team (Sweden) where I do believe the High Elf list scored 75 points.

I think the inherent problem is thus how poorly high magic is equipped to support infantry if you`re in the bus and vice versa whereas life for example is always useful. That, and Lifebloom + Regrowth with a Phoenix (which is pretty much always present in these lists) tip the scales. Personally I`m hoping to make the Loremaster work with such a configuration, but it`s hard and I haven`t proven its viability yet.
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#59 Post by SpellArcher »

I remember Furion trying High for his bus Archmage and discarding it, whereas he seemed quite happy with Life. Seredain has the AM on foot but a High mage in the bus, so he's still getting some Shield of Saphery benefit. The PG will at least be advancing, so the spells themselves should be mostly in range.

So I take it you're saying Curu that the Shield just won't be strong enough on the bus?
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Re: What is the current meta and how do you play it?

#60 Post by Curu Olannon »

Shield just doesn`t make that much of a difference for a bus. Sure the characters might get an extra point or two of save, but consider the investment relative to Life where Earthblood and Flesh to Stone (2 casts @2D6) will make a big impact. Furthermore, High Magic is usually easy to prioritize against once combat hits home. Its strength is flexibility, its weakness is actually making a difference one combat has been reached. Even if you have a selection specifically for combat: i.e. Drain, Hand and Apotheosis (the other 4 are direct damage/magic missiles), you don`t really fear any of them all that much. Well situationally drain and apotheosis are great of course, but it`s not even close to Life and that`s not even counting Lifebloom (which in a bus context is at least as useful as Shield of Saphery, if not more so). High Magic is just underwhelming unless you can largely benefit from Shield of Saphery and upping a no-ward to a point or two is just irrelevant, most of the time.
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