High Elves MSU - Observations

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Eltherion2
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#91 Post by Eltherion2 »

Hi Swordmaster

Eltherion here had to change my account name to Eltherion2 :( so can no longer use old account.

I will try to recount a game I played at a Tourney late last year.

I played vs. a VC player who had a Cavalry Deathstar with lots of VC characters in it. The rest of his forces were chaff and a unit of Hexwraiths, a big block of Skeletons HW & SH, and 2 big zombie blocks and lots of chaff dogs and bats. In fact so much chaff he had more drops than my MSU list giving me the +1 to go first

So the key to defeating the VC was his Knight Bus which I intended to re-direct from turn 1. The second key unit was his hexwraiths which had to be eliminated otherwise it would cause problems behind my lines (being Ethereal and fast with fly over damage).

Luckily I managed to out deploy him even though his units matched mine in numbers.

His knight bus would obviously destroy anything it came into contact with.

Turn 1 he advanced his chaff (dogs and Bats) to close and I managed to charge most of it with Reavers and Silverhelms clearing a lot of it turn 1.

More importantly I managed to kill the Hexwraiths which had got to close to one of my Sisters units. Most of my Magic went into helping clear the chaff.

Turn 2 the VC was already running out of chaff and I allowed a Zombie block to hit a unit of WL's as the Knight bus got trapped behind it. Meanwhile a unit of DP's pushed up on my right flank to distract the Knight bus.

To cut a long story short my Silverhelms and Reavers pushed up the left flank (now unhindered no Hexwraiths) and swung into his main battle line eventually defeating the zombies. My centre finished clearing the chaff and my Achmage was 6 dicing Final Trans on the Knight bus softening it up over 3 or so turns.

His Vamp Lord was forced to leave the knight bus for fear of dieing to Final Trans. The remaining knight bus killed a unit of DP's but was then hit in the flank and finished off by a Silverhelm unit.

Eventually the Vamp Lord died to a Searing Doom after the Lord killed a WL unit.

By turn 6 the VC were left with a unit of Skellies hiding in a building.

Summary
1. Spot the threats Knight Bus + Characters and Hexwraiths
2. Eliminate easiest threat ie: Hexwraiths
3. Core troops easily dispatched the enemy chaff (won chaff war)
4. Focus on the Knight bus (Magic and shooting) whittle it down to a manageable size
5. Finish off the Lord and Knight bus (ignore the Skellies in building)
Last edited by Eltherion2 on Wed Apr 30, 2014 12:55 am, edited 3 times in total.
Bashtrigger
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#92 Post by Bashtrigger »

I finally managed to play that game, although the list got slightly adapted because I wanted to try the Loremaster and my friend wanted to play 2000pnt

But I managed to defeat a Daemons army with a MSU list fully thanks to the units being MSU. He had that flying Khorne monster (forgot it's name) with WS10, ST6 and T6 and so on. The monster did great for him (it just refused to die even though it only had 1 wound left at the end and I managed to force him to take like 12 saves on that one wound, which he all passed :shock:

However, the only largish target I had was my 20 Swordsmen, and he was (rightfully) afraid of BotWD on that unit, so his monster didn't have a whole lot of points to hunt :evil:

In the end I managed to clear up everything but a chariot of tzeentch and his monster, and he only managed to kill a little under 600 points total (one group of archers, one RBT, one group of Sisters and my two groups of Ellyrion Reavers)
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Swordmaster of Hoeth
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#93 Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Hi guys,

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

A question to mods, btw. Is it normal that there are no options to edit text in this sub-forum? I can't even make the text bold and that helps a little. Not to mention the possible updates in the future, where text editing, including addition of pictures and diagrams, is going to be even more important.

@ Eltherion

Thanks a lot for more highlights on the game. it definitely helps to understand your approach in more details. A few comments on what you have described:

1. Using speed of the light and medium cavalry to capitalize on mistakes of the enemy and clear the support elements of the opponent. If possible to execute that helps to do so much faster than shooting itself and has the advantage of carrying fight to the enemy. Now he not only had lost his support units but has some fast regiments of the enemy to deal with.

These charges, according to my understanding, also helped in terms of target priority for magic and shooting, i.e. destroying hexwraiths.

2. Seizing the initiative was very important. Taking advantage of the early mistake and a success in the support units war allowed for better board control. The main threat was not allowed to charge anything meaningful while the magic was used to soften it up so that it was possible to take it down later.

3. I think that the main thing, however, as a plan that also assumed it is possible to take down that unit and associated characters and aggressive approach that allowed to achieve the goals leading to that effect. it was a very good and well executed plan and it clearly shows that MSU can win big against Deathstars too.

I am wondering, however, how much the fact that his army also needed to be in combat helped here. He needed to move forward too so that saves time and space. He didn't have a defensive army to keep the solid formation and not allow for envelopment. Basically, how do you force the enemy who does not want to fight to commit his army to combat?

@ Bashtrigger

Congratulations on the victory!

From what you wrote I understand that having MSU army and no big targets for his greater daemon (apart from Swordmasters with BoWD) was essential in achieving the victory. What was your plan for that game, however, in more details and did you manage to accomplish all the goals? Did you play aggressively or more like counter attacking? Was your game plan similar to the approach made by Eltherion?

I hope you will have more games to follow and that you can be convinced to write some battle reports too!

Cheers!
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High Elves MSU - Observations
Rabidnid wrote:Are you seriously asking someone called Swordmaster of Hoeth why he has more swordmasters than white lions? Really?
Bashtrigger
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#94 Post by Bashtrigger »

Well, I knew both his flyers were difficult to hunt, so I tried to draw them to one flank by deploying both my boltthrowers there, while deploying my small unit of ten white lions on the other flank, my swordmasters straight in the middle to rush up to his tzeentch blocks and my sisters and archers in range of both his flaming cannons. My goal was to play more aggressively than I normally would (the list is designed to outshoot most lists and force them to come to me). My small arms fire to take down his furies and cannons, my bolt throwers to target his beasts of nurgle (together with as many sisters as I would need to ping off his regeneration) and after the first turn (when beasts were already halved from 4 to 2) the second turn onwards I targeted his khorne monster.

Meanwhile my swordsmen moved up the board as aggressively as possible, while my white lions moved up his largely unprotected left flank.

He managed to do scary damage by miraculously getting of transmutation 3 magic phases in a row on my swordmasters, but luckily I threw decent and only lost about 10 models total, without killing characters. Still, that meant half my swordmasters got turned into gold (my unit started with 20)

He surprised me by aggressively deploying everything on his right flank though, I didn't expect him to deploy both flaming cannon chariots there too, so I ended up having to use half my small arms fire on his tzeentch casting blocks.

Anyway, my reavers have done an amazing job, managing to survive his chariot of tzeentch fire, inflicting a wound of one of his cannon chariots and holding up his beasts for an extra turn, and the second group managing to get in his back on his left flank and taking out a group of ten tzeentch dudes on their own, before getting massacred by a charge from his tzeentch chariot.

I managed to kill one chariot cannon the first turn with BSB upgraded reaver bow shooting and archer fire, managed to halve his beast of nurgles with sisters and both bolt throwers. Second turn I got his second chariot cannon with my sisters, archers and BSB, and managed to inflict 3 wounds on his monster with my bolt throwers, from his second turn onwards the monster would proceed to kill my archers, a bolt thrower and a group of sisters, while my white lions managed a lucky overrun from a unit of tzeentch dudes into his chariot (I needed to roll a 10, but they unfortunately didnt manage to kill it for the rest of the game, but they did keep it nicely busy). My swordsman made short work of the rest of his tzeench dudes while my sisters managed to get his beasts down to one model when he decided to just go for guts and glory by charging his last beast into the side of my swordmasters, and his last group of tzeench dudes (15 in total) into my front.

Banner of the world dragon won me that combat though, so the game ended not long after that.

Still, I'm pretty sure that taking a bigger block of swordsman (and having less points of small arms fire and chaff) or taking more than one bigger block (the one without BotWD would end up getting hunted by his monster and chariots) would have made my game a whole lot more difficult. It's only because I was capable of sacrificing units to keep his monster busy while I went after the rest that gave me the opportunity to hunt his chaff and weaker units to my liking.

And having a couple of units of archers, together with my two groups of 10 sisters, and 2 bolt throwers gave me a decent amount of fire power.
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#95 Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Hi Bashtrigger,

Sorry for late reply!

I see your game was full of action and you had to bring all elements together to pull out the win. You also utilized all phases of the game for the overall success that makes the game even more interesting and multidimensional.

Do you think your game can be used as an example of how to tackle Greater Daemons in general? If you can delay them for long enough and in the meantime kill more of his army than the GD can then it should give you a victory. What to do you think?

Cheers!
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High Elves MSU - Observations
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Bashtrigger
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Re: High Elves MSU - Observations

#96 Post by Bashtrigger »

Well, in this case it worked because I tricked my opponent into placing his greater daemon on a flank, rather than smack in the middle to hunt my infantry. Partly also because I placed my BotWD unit smack in the middle of my line, and he was a bit afraid of it. But a smarter opponent would have abused the fly from the Bloodthirster to reach the more important units on my side while avoiding a charge from the BotWD unit.

The true way to deal with the Greater Daemon is just to focus it with your small arms fire. Even just our core of archers (say 30 archers) have a decent chance of wounding the thing, because of it's lack of a good armour save and it's large target rule. Most ideally you would want poison fire (like the wood elves have in abundance), we sadly lack this however. I was personally surprised how many wounds I dealt to it in just 2 shooting phases (he was lucky with his saves or I would have managed the last wound too, I dealt like 12 wounds to it in the 3rd and 4th shooting phase in which I targeted him and all combat phases in which he was fighting combined, but he saved each one of them while being on it's last wound).

I did feel like I made great use of one of the old tricks in the WHFB general's manual, flank denial. It can be soooo powerfull to trick your opponent to placing his strong units in a flank and then just deny him that flank by placing a throwaway amount of points on that flank. I recently crafted a WoC list with a similar idea, using 2 core chariots, 2 groups of fast cav and one group of dogs and a hellcannon to grant me 6 drops before I even have to place my true value units (a group of nurgle warriors with a BSB and a Daemon Prince). It grants you soooo much advantage, and it's something that any good MSU list is already inherently capable of (just by having a lot of cheap drops).


The short answer is, if I would have to fight the same battle again, I would have deployed the same, but I would have focused his Greater Daemon right from turn one onwards, in any turn that I would have an opportunity to hit it. If you do that, not one of the Greater Daemons have the same potential as the Nurgle Daemon Prince from WoC has (that dude has a good armour save and can regain wounds easily).
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