1500pts vs Ogres

[Morquentas]

Just started playing High Elves and only have two games under my belt, but having been smashed about the park twice in a row against my mates Ogre Kingdoms army, I'm trying to refine the list ahead of my next game this weekend.

I'm limited by the models I've got, although we've agreed we can proxy within reason, but any help would be amazing, thanks!

List one


Archmage: Talisman of Preservation; Book of Hoeth; Level 4 Wizard; Lore of Shadow 320

Noble: Shield of the Merwyrm; lance; Dragon armour; Griffon 251

25 Spearmen: Sentinel; musician; standard bearer 255
5 Ellyrian Reavers 80

5 Dragon Princes of Caledor: Drakemaster; musician; standard bearer 175
14 Phoenix Guard: Keeper of the Flame; musician; standard bearer (Razor Standard) 285

Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower 70
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower 70

1,506 points

List 2

Archmage: Book of Hoeth; Level 4 Wizard; Lore of Shadow 275

Noble: Ogre Blade; Shield of the Merwyrm; Golden Crown of Atrazar; Dragon armour; Elven Steed (Ithilmar barding) 160

5 Ellyrian Reavers 80
9 Silver Helms: High Helm; musician; standard bearer 219
20 Spearmen: Sentinel; musician; standard bearer 210

14 Phoenix Guard: Keeper of the Flame; musician; standard bearer 240
5 Dragon Princes of Caledor: Drakemaster; musician; standard bearer 175

Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower 70
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower 70

1,499 points

[Koval]

If you're limited by models, then we need to know what models you have. This is what I could come up with based off of your lists.

Mage on foot.
Elf on a griffon. I'm going to assume this is the model from the Island of Blood kit. If so, then this can be run as an eagle as well.
25 Spearmen. These could be run as sea guard, or even used to fill in the back ranks of an elite infantry unit.
5 Reavers
15 Heavy cavalry. These can be used as either just fine.
14 Phoenix Guard. 14 is an unusual number and may have just been to make points work, but I'll limit the list to them, plus some spearmen in the back.
2 Bolt throwers. These are getting used.

I'm going to go off-topic for a bit to discuss the "typical" ogre army. I have no idea if your opponent runs this, or if it even works at 1500, but most ogre armies in bigger games look pretty similar. They fill out their minimum core with one solid unit of ironguts (ogres with great weapons). At 1500, that will be 9, with some options. They then put a few characters in it, and support it with a fair number of small units. Anything that takes it head-on will die. If you can set up a really nice double- or triple-charge, you might have a chance against it. For the most part, your goal is to kill everything else and lose as little as possible.

We'll start off the list with the "obvious good stuff."
Reavers
2 Bolt throwers
220
If you have any eagles, they get added here.

For the rest of your core, you'll want something mobile with enough punch to mow down those little support units. That sounds like silver helms. Take enough to fill out your core, keeping close to 375 to save points for the good stuff.
Reavers
2 Bolt throwers
Silver Helms
~515

I'm not seeing much else mobile, except for that one character. The griffon is pretty fragile and just generally not worth it over the eagle. A nicely kitted out noble on an eagle will run you around 185 and is a mobile hammer on his own, perfectly capable of taking down ogre cannons and mournfang (to the flank or supported by magic). Speaking of magic, you can't go wrong with a lord with a 4+ and the book. Shadow is nice, but I would also consider a loremaster, especially if you only have a model on foot.
Wizard
Eagle noble
Reavers
Silver helms
2 Bolt throwers
1020

Now we have a little under 500 points and 39 infantry models. That's enough for a big, solid block of phoenix guard. It's not the best in this matchup, because it still can't take the big block head-on, but the ward save does a pretty good job shutting down the S6, and they might hold long enough to bring another unit in.

[Morquentas]

Thanks Koval, that's really helpful. Here's what I've actually got - as you spotted it's basically the Island of Blood with some extras.

Archmage
10 Lothern Sea Guard
16 Spearmen
13 Reavers (opponent happy for me to use them in a block as silver helms, or as back ranks in a Dragon Prince Unit)
14 Phoenix Guard (10 plus 4-base unit filler)
5 Dragon Princes
10 Swordmasters
2 Repeater Bolt Throwers

Here's what my opponent is planning to run. It's pretty tough.

Slaughtermaster: Fencer's Blades; Talisman of Preservation; Ironcurse Icon; Level 4 Wizard, Lore of the Great Maw 370

Bruiser: Enchanted Shield; Luckstone; Crown of Command; heavy armour; Battle Standard 179

10 Ironguts: Gutlord; Bellower; standard bearer (Standard of Discipline) 475

4 Leadbelchers 172
1 Sabretusk 21
1 Sabretusk 21
4 Mournfang Cavalry: Bellower; standard bearer 260

1,498 points

[Andros123]

Are you guys playing by the rulebook, or do you use ETC restrictions?

If you are just playing by the exact rules in the rulebook, you should be 6-dicing pit of shades every turn, and then when combat hits you should go for mindrazor. Because, to be honest, you simply don't have anything in your army, that can deal with 10 iron guts (30 wounds!). Normally I don't like to play like this, but when your opponent fields a iron gut star that takes up 1/3 of the whole army and even give them, the crown of command, it is time to take of the white gloves.
As Koval mentioned, you should be using your eagles and reavers to slow that big unit down, and kill anything else. You said your are fairly new, so if you don't know what we mean by "redirecting" and "blocking" a unit, or how it is done, just ask.

[Andros123]

Oh and btw it doesn't make sense to take the shield of merwyrm on a noble on a griffon, since mounted models can't claim a parry save.

[Morquentas]

Oh - great point about the shield - thanks!

We're playing by the rulebook, and while we're veteran hobbyists we're new to these armies (I also play Bretonnians and Vampire Counts) but we're pretty rusty on our rules. Point taken on Pit of Shades/Mindrazor - my only worry is if I don't roll it when choosing spells!

Blocking and redirecting are two concepts I think I understand, I could probably do with a refresher, might look for some tactics videos on youtube. My main worry is that in the case of my reavers he's got to take the bait and charge them in order to pull them out of line and set up a flank charge etc.

I think I may need to buy a Frostheart. Out of interest, what would you put in a 1500k list against this army?

[Andros123]

my only worry is if I don't roll it when choosing spells!

Well their is basically 3 spells in the lore of shadow that ogres really hate: Withering, pit of shades and mindrazor(okay everyone hates this one ). Even the pendulum and miasma is actually useful too. So you will pretty reliably get at least 2 of these three spells. He doesn't have a dispel scroll, so you should at least get one of these bad boys of every magic phase, which is going to be tough on him.

Blocking and redirecting are two concepts I think I understand, I could probably do with a refresher, might look for some tactics videos on youtube. My main worry is that in the case of my reavers he's got to take the bait and charge them in order to pull them out of line and set up a flank charge etc.

For purposes of delaying that big block of iron guts, you simply just park an eagle or reavers one inch in front of the unit in a skewed angle. In his turn he has to charge your unit, because otherwise he can't move. His unit is now facing a way, that he doesn't want to go (because you put your units in a skewed angle), and therefore when he kills your unit, it doesn't make sense for him to overrun, so he chooses to reform. That turn he then only moved 1 inch.

If it was me I will take archers, bolt throwers and swordmasters and then focus fire on one target at the time. Don't touch his main blog, but just delay it, while you concentrate on the rest. When combat hits you can cast miasma, withering or mindrazor. Miasma will make all his ogres hit your swordmasters on 5's which is amazing.

[Rabidnid]

Shadow is a good lore for Ogres.

Based on what you have I would look at something like

Your mage.
Eagle noble with starlance, halberd, dragon armour, DB helm and luck stone 172.
BSB with armour of destiny and a halberd (use your seaguard standard)

Core
8 SH with full command (DPs and reavers) This is a fairly dubious unit given the opposition but should be able to clear up the leadbelchers and flank or rear support on what your main unit hits.
5 reavers
5 reavers

Special
17 PG with full command

rare
bolt thrower
bolt thrower.

40 models and 1498 points.

My PG have the BSB and a tanky LM in it so they can be very damaging to the enemy once in CC. Okkams will do the same thing, but expect him to buff is own magic protection once you win a couple games.

Basically chaff up his star and kill the mornfangs and leadbelchers ASAP. The sabretusks are also well worth killing but don't divert bolt throwers when they have a shot at the mornfangs. The eagle nob is a support element here, and will die to the mornfangs and maybe even the leadbelchers by himself unless they are much reduced in strength and miasmaed first.

Don't stand around, this is not a static list, its an in-your-face list that the ogres are not used to from elves.

2 smaller units with just a muso, or perhaps a champ as well, would be better than 8 with FC. 2 boxes of SH, a box of phoenix guard and a Hobbit Great eagle box would be my next purchases.

I love the old silverhelm models, but you can always look for other models to covert if you are that was inclined. The horses and riders are separate as are the legs and bodies of the riders.

[Koval]

Rabidnid's list is great. I would consider getting a little bit cute and dropping a phoenix guard for the banner of swiftness to negate your speed disadvantage, but that's about it. A loremaster would be better generally, but doesn't match shadow against ogres. I'm also not sold on the BSB compared to the 10 more phoenix guard or, better yet, 7 PG and an eagle once you get the model.

[Rabidnid]

Rabidnid's list is great. I would consider getting a little bit cute and dropping a phoenix guard for the banner of swiftness to negate your speed disadvantage, but that's about it. A loremaster would be better generally, but doesn't match shadow against ogres. I'm also not sold on the BSB compared to the 10 more phoenix guard or, better yet, 7 PG and an eagle once you get the model.

I've always run a BSB since our gadgets all disappeared with the new book. It might not matter versus this particular Ogre list, but its a good habit for the future.

[theviking]

I notice a couple things about that ogre list.

There's no scroll, so with the book you should have free reign in the magic phase.

The mournfang only have a 4+ armor save. He didn't upgrade to heavy armor or ironfists.

I would suggest a slightly different list than Rabidnid.

Take a block of seaguard instead of the silverhelms. They still have potential as a combat unit with mindrazor or withering, and they help out your RBT's at range. Anything but the ironguts will need panic tests if you kill one model, so I prefer bows to lances. Archers would be better still, but if all you have are seaguard then that will have to do. You can proxy in the back ranks with spears to make a block of 20 or so.

Use the eagle noble as your BSB. With the best armor across the table being a 4+, the starlance is overkill. The ogre blade will still negate the mournfang's armor and will last beyond the charge if you need to go two or three rounds of combat. I would take heavy armor, enchanted shield, ogre blade, potion of foolhardiness.

Razor standard goes really well on PG. If you don't get mindrazor off they will still negate the guts armor, and almost negate the mournfang's save. By not taking the second noble you can afford to get 20+ PG, so you might as well get the most out of them. Just add a few swordmasters to the back rank if you need proxies.

[Rabidnid]

Humm... I missed that, just run a lvl 4 fire and incinerate his army. Fire rarely gets used because its a one trick pony, but these guys have no defense against it

[theviking]

So, how'd it go?

[Morquentas]

So thanks to all your good advice, this was a big success! Or at least, I tabled everything except the gut star and managed to grind combat out until we ran out of turns, which I think was a pretty good result.

He'd changed his list slightly, and spotted that there was no dispell scroll, or ironfists, so his list was slightly better. Rabidnid, your list was great, really fun to use, despite having a few curve balls thrown at me. We were playing the third border war mission and ended up playing a night assault, I.e 4D6 roll at the start of each player turn is the max distance you can see in the dark. This mean that my bolt throwers, beautifully placed on a commanding hill at the back did... ...nothing. It also meant I had to dance within about 12-14 inches on average of his gut star to get any of my spells off!

But I successfully redirected the gut star with the first reaver unit and tied them up in the backfield. Stuck withering on the mournfang and combo'd them with the PG and SH which was still a bit touch and go, in retrospect I should have been mindrazoring the PG.

Once the Mournfang were down, I also cleared some sabre tusk chaff with the reavers and stuck the eagle noble into his Leadbelchers, which were almost too much for the noble really, but still managed to break them .

After that, it was all set up for the big gutstar showdown, which was still largely at full strength, but I sort of threw caution to the winds at that point and charged to deny him any impact hits, first turn charges were great, but with the crown of command he was going nowhere and really started to grind the next turn, but by then the game was over. It was easily the best game we've played so far, mainly thanks to you guys helping me build a decent tactical list!

A few things I learned, shadow is amazing, even if he shut a fair bit of my magic down, everything that got through helped, (including melkoth-ing his movement to stop him from charging)

• I now get why everyone likes reavers and eagles.
  I love PG but still fail 4++ saves with alarming frequency.
  The eagle is fast and cheap, but I shouldn't assume he can contribute anything to that flying lord than speed.
  I bloody love Silver Helms, and am already planning a cavalry list.
  High Elves rock.

Will see if I can get a few pictures up at some point!

[theviking]

Good work. I've played the gutstar/mournfang list about four times now and haven't managed to pull out the win yet.

Shadow has an amazing synergy with elves, it accentuates our strengths and addresses our weaknesses. Also there's no spell in the lore that is bad against ogres, even pendulum (the "junk" spell in the lore) is good against them.