Loriel's blabbering about our core.

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Loriel
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Joined: Fri Jan 21, 2011 7:27 am
Location: Winterfell

Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#1 Post by Loriel »

I started to ponder about our core choices after Jofarin Crazy idea "run and shoot reavers" thread. I actually wrote this wall of text originally to that thread, but then I though that it really wasn't about the topic, so i created my own.

Basic idea here is to compare Reavers to other core choices, and compare their performance in different roles.

Ill go units by units and think about their roles.

Spearmen
I see three main roles for spearmen. Steadfast deny, expansive tarpit, core horde clearer. Most times my build with spearmen is 30 - 40 strong, with banner of discipline and loremaster (making 10 inspiring presence) I love earthblooding them and using that lore attribute. In combat spearmen has more use for loremaster extra input than White Lions and Swordmaster have. And in Phoenix guard using earthblood only for lore attribute is rather costly. My main role for spearmen has been steadfast deny, but I actually used them as acceptable loss as tarpit against some horros in game Hell pit abomination, demon prince etc. I usually try to stay away from horde tarpits, if possibly.

Spearmen Steadfast Deny duty
RoleWell how do spearmen fair as Steadfast deny. Main problem I have been facing with them is that as all infantry they almost always end up head on against enemy -> suffers alot of casualty. Hand of glory to pump ws atleast 5 helps many times. Imo spear elves is one of the best targets for wyssan's wildform for the pure fact that they need it the most. Our elites have solid rules and stats to do their jobs even without magical boost. Also another thing I find annoying is that spear is lost in charge, which means (usual 5 wide champ) 16 x Reroll WS4, STR3 attacks.

In order to use steadfast deny properly there is really two ways. Either combo charge, or get charge with spearmen, hold and then combo charge. Last has this annoying feature that usually after two rounds of combat with anything that needs combo charge spearelfs are decimated badly. Then again, with infantry guarantee charges are also fickle. Movement 5 means that you have to be still pretty close to successfully charge. And consider combo charge where your spearbunker manages to complete it's charge but lions fail. Then because of maximizing is required spearbunker will be in the middle of enemy unit and his role just changed from steadfast breaker to tarpit. Your failed lions still be at front arc. If your tarpit holds for two rounds of bashing, perhaps even multi charge from opponent, then your charge with lions will be clipping -> Less high str attacks.

Close CombatOk, what is the most important thing about CC. That is CR and how does Spear elves with steadfast deny duty does on that. From static perspective +3 rank bonus, +1 banner. Lets crunch these number against ws 4 enemy, with T 4, 5+ armour. Wounds 16 attacks reroll 4+ hit means 3/4 hit, 1/3 wound, 2/3 wounds after armour save. This leaves 288 / 1728 (sorry if math wrong) that means actually that 1/6 of attacks wounds against such opponent. So 16 *1/6 is 2,66 wounds. Lets be optimistic since Helf is always blessed with some loaded dice so 3 wounds. That makes +7 Combat resolution. Well that opponent hits back. let say it makes 16 attacks back (horde, frenzy, just being 2 attack warrior what ever) atleast str 4 but lets crunch it to str 5 since that really pancakes. hits with 4+ means 1/2 hit, 5/6 wounds. This means 5 / 12 attacks kills this goes to 6,6666666 wounds. with str 4 1/2 hits, 2/3 wounds, 5/6 goes past armor -> 5 / 18 attacks kills this means 4,4444444 wounds. If you need steadfast denying against such opponent they have also standard, 3 rank bonus. That means, in CR perspective that our elites need to punch 2 - 4 CR, mainly from killing. And if you win combat just barely steadfast deny really doesn't help that much.

Against shooting BS based small arms hurts elf. To spearmen i have only one thing to say "We have reserves!"http://www.moviesoundclips.net/sound.php?id=22 :lol: . Against stonethrower templates infantry trembles. Direct hit from small template means 21 hits, with str 5 means 18 dead elves. With str 3 means 20 hits with 1/2 to wound and 2/3 past armor leads to 1/3 wound per hit + 5/6 from one high strenght resolves 7,49999 dead spears.

Magical support: Spearmen in general are ideal to have great magical support. Anybody tried Okkams with them? :wink: . I really like Loremaster synergy with banner of disc and earthblood, with Spearelves. 5 reg is solid for them, wyssan is always a great. http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=45362 has some numbers for BoH Loremaster. In my experience trying to have as much 2 PD loremastering is the way to go. Loremaster has 4 spells to help spearmen in their duty. Wyssan, Miasma, Iceshard and Earth Blood. Right out best people tend to say is Wyssan. 68% with 2PD 94% with 3PD BoH. But what magic is the best relies heavily on situation.

Ok for two following scenarios lets imagine average Wom of 4 , 3 no channels as usual :lol:

If you try to lure your opponent in to charge your spearman in order to be held in tar pit casting Wyssan on the unit will have your opponent to think twice about the charge. 21 WS4 mostly rerolling, STR4 T4 should be scary atleast lot scarier than str3 t3. In this scenario using Earth Blood might be better, since its not so intimitating. Opponent can forsee that he prolly wins combat with ease without heavy losses. In combat resolution perspective Wyssan adds roughly +1/6 per attack to spears wounds and denies 1/6 of wounds. So it could be said that you gain roughly 1/3 advantage in combat resolution (ofcourse this depands heavily on opponent high armour save still doesnt care much str 4 etc). Earth blood do the same in combat resolution sense. It denies 1/3 of wounds incoming to you. And as for steadfast breaking keeping spears alive and using less PD is always +. On the other hand your loremaster has to be in the unit in order to have Earth Blood on. My usually build for loremaster is BoH, shield of Merwyrm, Golden Crown of Atrazar, perhaps warrior bane etc (yep. i know i lose great weapon, but imo its worth it). Earthblood doesn't help it and I hate to say that too many times 5+ ward/rege isn't just enough for our fragile characters. Wyssan actually works better for the Loremaster. Then again, if the charger has champions or not so killy characters Loremaster can always challenge and with good placement deny incoming attacks. Too bad getting charge in means that opponent has priority to issue challenges.

If you got a nice combo charge off, using Wyssan on spearelves after combo charge is pretty solid choice. As above it helps from spearman point of view to increase your CR by roughly 1/3 in wounds. Wyssan is almost auto dispel in many cases, at least in my gaming group. So the order how to play this is crucial. I usually mind game my opponent by saying. hmm. Wyssan means that I will kill your about 3-4 models and what was it? 5 - 10 SS per model and this means i lose only this much...? But now comes big question. Is wyssan better of somewhere else, lets say White Lions or Phoenix Guard for str 5 rerolling? or Dragon Princes on flanks for sweet sweet rerolling str 6nectar? In mind game perspective talk about it at least. After little mind gaming (ok, I am not always doing it) I usually throw 2 pd iceshard in. Iceshard is actually in this scenario much better spell. -1 Hit means 1/6 less hitting per attack. Which is almost the same in wound perspective as Wyssans +1 T. Iceshard has also one rather easily overlooked advantage of -1 LD. Using 2 pd means 95% chance to success. Well depends how much my opponent fears wyssan or how little he does calculations, he will let iceshard pass. Now in combo charge this actually helps every unit you have in combat by reducing incoming hits per attack by 1/6. So you could draw a conclusion that two units getting 1/6 less hits per attack roughly 1/3 advantage in combat resolution sense (spear suffers 2 less wounds in upper scenario and your whitelions suffers 2 less wounds. With wyssan that means only spears suffers 2 less wounds. So CR diffirence is significant). (depands of course opponents unit size etc and if flanked, how many attacks shared by units etc etc but I like to play with ideal numbers.) If you think about buffing one unit in combo charge opponents will try to strike weakest spot and this scenario it would be lions. Then i would be throwing 3 pd for 94% (2pd with 68% is too low for middle cast spell) to wyssan and be like come on! BoH Loremaster is usually roughly equal to +4 modifier. At least in my local group most players tend to use Level 4 as default lord choice. With from WoM 4 DD he will use atleast 3 to counter even 4 if he really wants to deny my wyssan. Perhaps even scroll if have any. What comes then really depending on opponents stats. miasma to lower WS with 1 die, or with 2 pd to lower both ws and ini. I would image that anything that needs combo charging would have WS of 4 or 5. So even drop of 1 in ws means spears will be hitted with 4+ and -1 from iceshards. And lions will have 3+ hitting. drop of two on ws 5 means spears hitting with 3+ and drop of three means white lions will only be hitted with whopping 6+. Then if left with 1 die prolly would try desperate 6+ earth blood. But miasma shines here for the same obvious reason that it helps in combo charge all units in combat not just buffed one. Other way to put those dices to good use would be trying to use earthblood as mind gaming. Saying something like "ok this saves my models and because of it your steadfast will be broken etc" Then use iceshards 2pd first, earth blood 2pd second, miasma 1 pd and lastly 2 pd wyssan to unit that benefit most from it. Anyway key item to have this work correctly is to have both ice and miasma working to your advantage. Forcing your opponent to hit you with 5+ or 6+ really says that we are elite infantry. In number crunching having your opponent to hit you less is better since there is very little we can do about our t3 and armour of 5. Str 5 wich is fairly commonly see, will decimate our ranks.

AS i mentioned that iceshard lurking potential of ld -1. If opponents stays steadfast, -1 ld makes him to do break test with slightly worse odds. http://www.avianon.net/calculations/calc_leadership.php good site to watch some numbers. So most armies has access to 9 (even 10 with banner of disc combo) ld with bsb rerolling. That LD still helps. In frontal assault opponent might want to combat reform. Combat resolution is still calculated as penalty and that -1 ld comes in handy. If you manage to pull of this in Tiebreaking situation decreasing opponents hits from +3 in best case scenario to 6+ you should have won combat easily. But pulling that magic support off is tricky. It is more likely that you will have either miasma or iceshard on your opponent. Having either of them means somethig like victory of 2-4 (just shooting these numbers from out of nowhere). In leadership test 7 is magic number. As we all know that 2d6 average yield is 7 this due the fact that there is most combination of rolls that can yield 7. Dropping without reroll leadership from 7 to 6 has greatest difference in success rates (difference of 17). That also makes it more likely for opponent to break than stay. With reroll leader ship dropping 6 - 5 has similar effect. Iceshard really plays crucial part here. Lets say you win combat by 4 (in my experience this is pretty much result when used magic to solve tiebreaker). so that is ld of 5. With rerolls that means 47,9% iceshard yanks it to 4 and 30,6%. That -1 has more uses if the target unit is opponents general. (my brother trolls failing stupid twice in row with LD roll of exact 9, when Black Orc general got icesharded. well this is is again brag about unlikely events in game of probabilities)

Reavers Steadfast Deny duty
Close combatNow lets think about Reavers for the same role as steadfast breaker. Use only spears with them. Get a max 30 inch first turn move and threat flank even rear. Use fast cavalry to get them from tiny caps, reform when needed. Use 9 movement to make sure that you pass your charge. 15 x reroll WS4, STR4 attacks and 5 x steed on charge. They denies rank bonus, put out significantly more CR. Static -3 from disruption, +3 from rank bonus, banner, flank. So static bonus would be 5 (+3 from disruption?).

Killing power against same foe that our spearmen were fighting. hitting 4+ reroll 3/4, wound 1/2, 5/6 wounds past armour -> 15 / 48 attacks wounds -> 4,6 wounds And NEVER forget steeds. My steeds always lands and destroys! A one great use for steed is that they are ini 4. If you direct attacks to enemy mage and left it annoying 1 wound, those steeds surely can kill him with few lucky die throws So in this battle, 1 / 9 wounds per attack meaning 0,555555 wounds. Well the same foe does same wounding. 5/12 for str 5, 5/18 for str 4. Only real difference is dropped attack count. Let say againts 2 or more attack models, not too much drop but againts 1 that means (assume he has very deep formation)7 attacks -> 2,91 wounds for str 5 -> 1,94 for str 4. Reavers got deeply needed CR +10 (5 from wounds, 5 from static). Opponent has banner and say 3 wounds. That means losing by 5-6. Now when i crunched these numbers they don't even need support from elite when got flank.

There is one great problem here, and that is killy enemy characters / well defended enemy characters. Killers feed on reavers. Well defended denies attacks when placed correctly. And sometimes challenge can really deny attacks from either side, so be extra careful when accepting refusing challenges. Still that 5 SS investment on champion in order to have challenge and best case scenario some killy character locked to do overkill rather than body count, i am always in for that. Still overcome 6 CR even with characters can be rather tricky.

So lets consider one thing. Failing charge with your main hammer, well as seen from these numbers large spear reavers manage much better than spears. Lets say opponent chooses to reform, well best case scenario, you have flank with your hammers. But fighting strong enemy in front then with only 15 x reroll str 3, and 5 x str 3 you are bound to lose. Lets hope that opponent fails reform roll or is too psyched out by the lurking elite lions lurking nearby. One thing for charging perspective, your Reavers might more easily utilize hills +1 bonus. So when placing terrain, hills in middle flanks would make real difference in CC.

Against shooting Well... small arms will be much tougher. And boltthrowers might shoot them more likely than infantry. Not because of armour but because they yield so much more victory points. Even longshanks can't say "We have reserves" when 8 SS models fell to puny peasant arrows. Reavers could try to utilize terrains in order to have precious cover for small arms or try to get off front arc of shooter. Even getting of front arc of some models denies few shots. This is where deployment really comes in to play. But then again template does significantly less damage. And if you make vanguard move with 15 wide 2 ranks (well thats rather big unit, but in some cases doable) stone & bolt throwers do much less and prolly targets different targets. then reform to take place in enemys flanks and turn 2 charge. With max 30 inch movement you could actually get inside minimum range of stone throwers. Well againts Hellcannon going near minimum range that would be little risky. Your flank will be exposed in order to have your own flank charge. Hellcannon might fail LD and be forced to charge or WoC player could have just do it. Having terror test without reroll at LD 8 has risk. But then again, if this would happend Hellcannon would be stuck in combat with reaver block. Odds are in reavers favor to pass break test, hard time to pass combat reform from lose. Reavers would have good static 4+ (effective of 5 since musician). Hellcannon will have trouble in subsequental round win combat -> reavers get to turn, and then combat lock in attrition for many turns, until either lucky lucky Hellcannon death, or grinded lost for reavers or other units / magic steps up in game. Anyway, against trebutchets, rock lobbers this could be rather handy.

Magic support Well Loremaster would be in Whitelion bunker for me if i would be using 30 x reavers. Since those reavers would be easily put down even by normal str 3 shots, my turn 1 magic priority would be trying to save em. Loremasters tool box has essentially three spells that could be utilized for increased survibiality. Iceshard, my favorite miasma and Wyssan. And ofcourse those magic missiles are useful against regular archers. One positive point here is that Wyssan needs 9 to be casted since reavers are cav and wildheart lore attribute kicks in, making it decent to cast with 2 PD (chance somewhere in the middle of 68 % and 89%). Problem with wyssan in turn 1 would be obvious range. You would need to pump bigger wyssan for 12+ casting. Really needs 3pd (succee in the middle of 73% - 94%). So miasma for BS decrease would be best for numerous reasons, mainly atleast -1 and possible even -3 to hit with only 5+ cast and reasonable one dicing with whobbing 48 range. Iceshard needs 2pd imo and turn 1 -1 LD for some chaff clearing archers doesn't help much at this point of game, but that -1 to hit is always welcome. Unless trying to get panic with following magic missile / shooting attacks. Loremaster seems to me that he has more synergy with spears, than it would have with reavers so that got me thinking about different lore choices. I might be wrong with this one, but for some reason my spider sense is tingling. So this swings back to having level 4 Book of Hoeth, or allarielle. I would prolly take support shadow support with scroll for sweet miasma.

High magic: As for High magic, there isn't really any direct help to solve Reavers fragility on turn 1. Extra movement from walk between, hard to find any real use for reavers. Well perhaps it would be away to get reavers off from enemy archers front arc or atleast have some of the shooting models front arc denied. That swings around with two consequences either opponent will stand still and shoot with say 2/3 of models, or he will do wheel or even swift reform in order to get more shots, but getting another -1 from moving. OR Walk between could move frost phoenix there to give hard cover to reavers and to gain better charge position as 20 march move isn't quite enough. But this would require both reavers and phoenix advance in same front and because of flank attack phoenix could easily be dropped of combat due shrinking unit. In that sense, frost phoenix should advance in different flank and pancake other flank thus removing pancaked units combat reform. For another way to help reavers surviability with High magic would be putting ward boosting mage on mount inside reavers but then they would lose fast cavalry rule and pretty much the whole point of Spear Reavers would be wasted :? Too bad helf steed without barding doesn't have fast cav rule as does our brethen Wood elves. I would say that it would be nice boon and there could be clear ruling, that heroes on fast steed cannot wear shields, heavy armors, great weapons, lances etc or they lose their fast cav rule. So they would be elite Reavers armor wise or something. Well this is little bit off topic, saying some wishful thinking, but i do understand why Wood elves has this luxury over us and fluffwise thats great and should be as suchs. But game wise i would love trying fast cav mage. I have used high magic with decent succee for Ward boosting in Lions. I wrote a wall of text here in ulthuan to different topic. http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... &start=210 That Wall of Text has it in perspective of Infantry heavy list.

Lore of light: has pha's protection that has great use for reavers in turn 1. Not only shielding from bs, also from templates. Then Level 4 BoH lore of lighters bubble spells will surely crunch some heavy support for our units in CC. Pha's protection bubble value is imo extremely cheap compared that what it gives. That is the reason why I revere Pha as top dog in lore of light. Again pha's isn't so terrifying spell that it could easily be overlooked. Problem with lore of light is that there really isn't any super bomb that opponent would really fear and using level 2 support mage with light is too unreliable to have pha. And to get that "threat" out you would need to have two level 4. Teclis on the other could just choose pha and enjoy with purple suns, and other selected bombs casting pha's protection with ease. Any way pha is great spell since it really helps elves alot to overcome our toughness weakness. My most common use of pha's has been in strong infantry armies where Whitelions march in middle and on the other side marches phoenix guard and on the other spearblock or silver helm block Keeping all in pha's, generals and bsb bubble. Speed of light surely useful too bad it's bubble version is bit too expansive, but it should be casted to unit that needs it most. And I would think Lions charging frontage would benefit most of it, since I 10 = hitting first and WS 10 less damage. birona for lions. Double movement in turn 1 for turn 2 guaranteed movement 10 charge/extra attack in CC. Bubbling birona isn't really worth it too expansive and since we have ASF allready it has very little use for us. Net of amyntok also really helps save reavers. Used to hex archer unit, since they are usually str 3, it means that 1/2 strikes. Opponent might even choose not to risk D6 str 4 (i wouldn't "We have reserves").

Lore of life: Flesh to Stone. Imo one of the greatest buffs in game. That could be used to make reavers survive str 3. Lore of life also provides great regeneration option for white lions and good old Dwellers is great to have as mind game. in turn 1, since you prolly cant do throne of vines, flesh to stone and reliably have enough dices to cast dwellers on 21 (or perhaps not cast it but keep your opponent on his toes) I would see it like this. first spell would be flesh to stone used 2pd on reavers. There is little reason to have throne on for this purpose. Lets say, best BS attack that threats those reavers would be str 4. At worst there is grinding organ gun... (oh mother of dwarf organ gun would be nasty nasty against our reavers). Still have on average 5 pd left and as your opponent knows doing 24 inch (and of course you have moved with your lions to middle of board) to do dwellers. I would say no to use it without vines. since doing turn 1 dwellers risking IF and in worst case blowing mage up or draining his level is prolly not worth it. I would then use spare dices to throne which would be more than likely be dispelled and earth blood for 5+ reg for lions. For extremely good winds throne of vines could be the first spell casted, and that makes your opponent using dispells? Then perhaps flesh to stone for reavers keeping dweller option open. Opponent will save his scroll for it unless IF of course. Reavers also could have very good use for shield of throns in turn 1. Lets make it so that something in flanks would try to charge them. that 2d6 str 3 at the end of his magic phase will really make him think about dispelling it (if he calculate) that this charge he made is capable to hold those reavers in place or even try to break em. That would need atleast 2 PD to dispel and hinders opponent magic greatly. Or if he lets it be, then those 2d6 will surely help reavers alot against... what could it be actually even against hellcannon abit helpfull those attacks has average of 7 hits 1/6 wounds 1/2 pas armor 2/3 past ward -> 1 / 18 hit wounds -> 0,38 wounds on average result. If vines is on when casted thorns Hell cannon would suffer 1/12 wounds per hit -> 0,58 on average. And that 2d6 str 4 against anything else is great.

Lore of Heavens: Ok, Iceshard no need to reopen this case. Only real difference is that level 4 BoH has decent one dicing of 8/9 this spell. Another spell that directly aids against shooting is curse of the midnight wind. This was actually first time I realized that curse can be used to minimizing killing blows and poisoned attacks. Excelsior! How come i never even though of that. Great spell for getting frostie out of poisoned skinks / stegadon battery or help with cavalry bus. Wind blast might have rogue use because pushing archer (even when not changing phasing) if line is good, they might end up in situation where some models front arc doesn't have any reavers on. Or if those archers stand near mysterious terrain forest or river, push them inside, hope for boiling flood for laugh of your life, any dangerous terrain test, river of light and hope some net of amyntok, damage spells etc. River of light might have two spells that aids opponent. Pha or light of battle. Pha in sense, that if you plan to shoot unit afterwards it will protect it and light of battle guarantee that no panic cannot be utilized. For forests again cover safe against shooting is little downside, but they might also have little CC, in form of stupidity (where iceshard helps with -1 ld) and some wildwood thing. I had one of the funniest Warhammer moments few weeks ago when i experimented MSU with lore of heavens lvl 4 and shadow lvl 2 against dark elves when I pushed Hydra in forest (real intend was to just push it little further so Delf player had worse chance to charge. Forest turned out to be blood forest then i used miasma to reduce its movement and the forest bashed hydra. Sadly if i remember correctly forest didn't do any wounds since solid hydra saves, but that really had nice ring to it. Well if this would happend that you expose blood forest, then one spell in for receive damage and with some luck forest will travel in between archers and reavers and gives soft cover for us (if terrain wouldn't allow it otherwise) If pushed in marshland that causes DT test. Windblast really has it uses. I really wanted to see monstrous cavalry near khemrian quicksand and windblasting them in. 1/3 of models dead! Then next turn they have to move, so again 1/3 of models dead! Or imagine some monster, but then again DT on only 1 for monsters. Well lets see. Harmonic Convergence is truly great spell. White Lions and Sword Masters regain effectively their lost potential. It was close to same as having full reroll on 3+ to hit than having rerolling 1 to hit and 1 to wound. And that armour save of 1 really helps if you think about stonethrower that tries to nail WL. 3+ save, only 2 are outright fails and 1 for reroll. And bubble version is great and I could see me using bubble version. Frost phoenix would love it, even reavers would like to have rerolling to wound of 1. And this spell is very very very easily overlooked by opponent. I actually used it with good succee in the same Delf msu list for my archers. Ok what else we have, Urannos thunderbolt, never can have enough long range high str magic missiles. Comet of Casandora, I could blabber about this babe a Wall of Text. This spell is plain and simple fun. For this reaver list I would use it as area control, would use it to cover my other flank. But as aiding reavers i cannot find direct use for comet, so I will save my blabbering for another day. Chain lightning nice to burn MSU. Not really helpfull for reavers.

Lore of shadows: Well miasma being obvious help, other spells doesnt help on defense on turn 1. Shadows synergy with our army is well known fact. If anybody could say that enfeebling foe or withering doesn't earn their place in battles... Only bad thing i have to say for them that I usually find them slightly just too expensive. But using level 4 BoH that problem minimizes. I have my personal antipathy against level 4 shadow since i used it ALOT during 7th armybook. Imo, shadows pros still ably pretty much the same as in previous book. But I usually play miasma support mage. Like I have many times said miasma is too good to not use. And smoke and mirrors can be real point saver time to time. I can't remember the last time I used prince as general. Mostly my archmage/loremaster/annointed serves as general.

Lore of death: For turn 1 surviability death has little to offer. Character sniping, or warmachine sniping. In general I like death, it has it uses. Character sniping can change game and purple sun againts ogres / orcs... rok rok... For my little reaver block idea Doom and Darkness has excellent synergy. Remember when we crunched Reavers breaking power from flank charge against almost anything. -3 LD and lost combat is likely dead unit. This helps alot even if unit passes break test, then he will likely fail combat reform. Best way to utilize this would be having terror unit (what better than frostie) that could make the first charge and try to make unit flee in turn 2. Perhaps that aspect of the dreadknight could be used on reavers. If you may use small reaver units to make it flee even more and best case scenario off the board, even if that unit stays on board then opponent will have hard magic phase ahead. Opponent must choose if he want's to dispel Doom and Darkness, or your character sniping etc. Best case scenario his mage is in fleeing unit so hard dispelling without proper modifiers (and prolly cannot use scroll? if fleeing. not sure) This confers especially against nurgle warriors. But if thats the case mage prolly isnt in that unit ;) . Now when Will of Chaos rule got removed they are likely to shiver in fear or flee from terror. Of course there is bsb nearby. but depands on lord / hero choices nurgle warriors have either 5 or 6. Lets say 5, means with reroll 47,9% change of passing, with ld 6 66%. Without reroll for ld 5 -> 27,8% and for 6 -> 41,7 %. This could be combined with level 2 support heavens to icesharding unit. Shoot iceshard to nurgle warriors in turn 1. Your opponent will be wait what? Doom and Darkness off. Your frostie needs only be at 22 inc away from unit, since in order to declare charge you must have theoretical possibility to complete it. Since Terror is really off the table (compared to old editions. Bubble terror, breaking, charge protection) it would be extremely surprising to use it. Then again many people don't realize that frostphoenix has terror, since High Elves aint your regular fear/terror armies. And Warriors players might not even realize that their precious chaos warriors do fear. There is also great psychological nuance that people tend to dismiss LD modifiers until they have faced it first hand. Well thats that. Soulblight very solid. In combat resolution view roughly as same as wyssan except when doing multi charge soulblight helps even more. So soulblight with frostie -2 str...

Lore of metal: I don't know how come I cannot find lore of metal tempting. It seems to be solid choice in comps. For our reaver block Glittering Robe is definitely spell of choice to aid Reavers in turn 1. Enchanted blades for lions / reavers would be solid. One spell is something that I really don't get. Transmutation of Lead. -1 to WS, BS and Armour save. WS modifying being what it is (situational) BS modifier is solid -1 to hit always and works against tomb kings. Well armour save reduction is always a bonus, but my wondering revolves around casting cost of 12... 3 PD for level 4... If someone laughs at flock of doom, i could still see Flock being used against warmachines and flock is easily one diced as last spell and it might do little damage, mostly not. To be honest in fluff sense transmutation of lead should also decrease movement and initiative. So it would be miasma with armor decrease then i would perhaps see it for use 12+. Then i could see this spell for some use. Comparing it to miasma for 10+ cast WS, BS, I, M -d3... Spell that permanently decreases armoursave is casted 7+. Spell that effect ends next turn, does weak miasma effect. Perhaps I just got it wrong. Golden hounds, sniping spell that does d6, and only 1/6 thos hits hits the actually target. Most of times must be used with 12+ cast. I love fluff idea of it, some hounds bashing and friendly troopers yelling "no mister president". Final Transmutation i like it decimate 1/3 of models in unit. Solid. And that after effect stupidity, excellent fluff! Like Shawn from BTP would say "Faa-antastic!". Stupidity check as from Ogre Kingdom's Greasus Goldtooth (imo one of the funniest models in FB)

Lore of Beast: There is two excellent spells in beast. Wyssan being the obvious and the Curse of Anraheir. That curse is extremely powerful. Not only solid -1 to hit which is always nice, but if you move for any reason 1/3 models die (unless ward saves) Real power of this spell isn't actually the damage output rather than making opponent to choose acceptable loss or just stay put. Best used against cavalry for obvious reason. Denies their movement badly. Or against tomb kings chariot unit. In Helf perspective i find these character boost to be little too expensive to use. For Eltharion i could see best support lore being beast and I actually have used it and been fairly happy with my choice when ended up with wyssan ofc, and pann's impenetrable pelt. As said before flock of doom is rather underwhelming. I could see it used against warmachines, other high toughness targets. Since most shooting/magic will all ready wound only with 6, flock is low cast 2d6 that can be used one dicing as last die. Average flock would do 1,16 wounds to warmachine without any armor. say doom diver. Amber spear is nice to have, but then again Helf can get it with 70 points from rare if needed. Of course that larger version solves host of problem giving high elves that long desired cannonball. Transformation of Kadon is great fluff spell. I haven't never used it, I prolly value too much for reliable magic and tend to use low cost, tiebreaker type spells.

TerrainOn consideration is dangerous terrain. Since cavalry takes dangerous terrain more often and (at least it feels like when ever we roll for terrain we get tons of fences). This unit really needs to use march in Turn 1 and charging in flanks. Cleverly placed terrain pieces hinders this freedom alot. So big unit of cavalry doing dangerous terrain means decimation of 1/6 and that is extremely painful. On the other hand reforming to avoiding terrains or minimizing DT tests. As mentioned up there, hills can be used with greater chance to have important +1 CR.

ArmylistMost obvious key difference here is model cost. Spear being 4,5 SS and reaver with spear 8 SS. In order to break steadfast in most cases you need to have 25 - 30+ models. Lets say 30 models. For spears cost would be 135 SS and reavers 240 SS and this unit really wants full command (even champion for challenge purpose) so extra 15 ss for both. Too bad magic banner is only for spears. Those reavers die as easily as spearman. They are very vulnerable even low str bs shooting, magic missiles. On the other hand sheer moving power of reavers means, that you can try to avoid that threat much easily. Spearbunker usually travels in middle of the board.

Reavers setup Well there isn't really no need to even discuss about using only bows or spear bows with 30 model steadfast breaker. Rough calculation says, spear bow is 45 SS and 5 reavers with bows cost less and do much better. I would say 30 models would be good unit size, music, banner and champion. I would take for sole challenge purpose.

To the last thing I wanted to add somewhat nastiest infantry unit I know in the game. Nurgle chaos warriors with halberds. Lets say unit of 30 spear reavers (Full command) cost 255 SS. Lets assume that chaos player has used same points to his warriors so he has 25 Nurgle halberdies with full command. (no magic banner this time). Now Reavers manage to flank them and main combat block fails to aid them. Reavers have 5+ to hit, means 5 / 9 hits, 1 / 3 wounds, 2 / 3 (4+ -1) gets past armor -> 10 / 81 attacks wounds -> 1,85 wounds. Steeds does 1 / 3 to hit, 1/3 wounds, 1/2 get past armour -> 1 / 18 attack wounds -> means 0,27 wounds for steeds. So fair to say 2 wounds will be expected for Reavers. Then chaos strikes back 2/3 to hit, 5/6 to wound -> 10/18 attacks wounds. Nurgle block would get 11 attacks to side 2 per Rank and file and champ. -> 6,11111 wounds. So combat resolution. +1 Charge, +1 Flank +3 rank ( with 30 models still 24 left) +1 Banner + 2 wounds total of 8. Result for nurgle warriors, no ranks since disruption, +1 banner, +6 from wounds total of 7. Lose by one, and not steadfast since one killed. Well, if WoC only kills 5 reavers, then they cant be steadfast. I don't even want to make numbers for failing spearblock against this unit. That would be somewhat of butt rap. And when added that nuance of Hill utilization, that would be +2 winning without steadfast. So demon prince general / chaos lord would mean break with 8 and bsb reroll. With chaos player that likes sorcerer lord that means 7 bsb reroll. Not too shabby =)

Conclusion for Reavers as Steadfast breaker duty
+ Reavers contribute to that role better in CC, simply due less dying in flanks and putting out more CR.
+ Combo charge easier and reavers benefit from charge +1 str when spears lose extra rank.
+ Movement phase is the phase that dictates who wins. Flyers being kings of movement, reavers are easily the queens of movement.
+ Flanking rearing extremely much easier. Well wayward shard might be rogue way to have steadfast breaker to rear. But that would be earliest to turn 3 while reavers can do they magic in turn 2.
+ surprise element of coming in game with 30+ spear reavers (my phalanx got mounts!)
+ Fun to try ;)
+ evasion
+ better against templates
- cost more to have bodies
- fragility to small arms and more points to opponent per kill
- Dangerous terrain becomes even more dangerous

Tarpit
Spearman tarpit. Oh thats expansive and when compared to zombies... well not the smartest thing to do. But I have won games with this. Played out and horde of grypt horrors for 3 turns (magic buffing really helped. This battle was with the 7th book and I used shield of saphery 5+ ward to keep those spears alive little longer) To my best surprise they actually fought very well against those horrors. Other utility that I could be trying some times is againts Gutstar. Having with defensive annointed stubborning in with banner of disc, for that 6+ ward. Perhaps even support high mage to rise that ward (but against hellheart bad idea ;) ). Then use that time to place whitelions/phoenix guards to flanks and something to rear. This tactic really needs it to be so that spears count would be very close that if you make the charge to gutstar, that they survive just two combat rounds OR that you can lure ogres to charge this unit bash it as hard as they can but not breaking it and then when your main force strikes, there wouldn't be too many spears left to give CR to ogres.

As tarpit reavers.... I can say only one tarpit role for them. That is 6 models with champion, running to demon prince force challenge utilize imo one of the irritating rule set in game
BRB 8th page 102, Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide wrote:A Character cannot refuse a challenge if his model cannot be placed so that he is not in base contact with an enemy model...
I could start rambling about this rule for days. Just picture this thing, when I was a "young" handsome new player in game, I got this fancy dragon and kitted it to be 300 ss killing machine, oh star dragon, star lances etc. vambracers (was it 4+ ward and reroll armour). I charged flank to.... i dont know, lets say it was undead skeletons or something as trivial as that. My opponent champion called
challenge with his puny champion. Well I was like, hey didn't that mean that i could only kill one of your models in this fight. No way I am not accepting that, why would my prince choose to fight that puny skele. Well then came BRB bashing in our board and that rule was extremely clear. Well then I was well, I can have my overkill no problem. I of course killed that champion with my prince overly bad roll. Managed to do just one wound to it. Then I was ok, now my dragons gets sweet sweet nectar... No it doesnt! BRB page 103. The best part in this particular event was that I had three combat resolution flank, charge and wound. My opponent had banner and 3 ranks. Ok then we went for disruption rules BRB page 52, need to have atleast two rank of 5 in units flank/rear, because "smaller units are assumed to have unsufficient mass to cause disruption". Well you can prolly see where I am going next. Rolling break test of 9 since lost one and not stubborn. Failed, I measured to my BSB it was like 14 inch away... Some tears might have bursted from my eyes then rolled something like 5 flee, and those skeletons just caught me... There was that small little point in this game when I almost flipped a table over...... Well this had absolutely nothing to do with the topic, but I hope you enjoyed story :lol:
As I was saying, challenge demon prince or other similar character, get smashed and stay steadfast for LD 8 to deny that character next turn of movement. Overall this really doesn't qualify as tarpit its more of a roadblock

Conclusion for reavers as tarpit:

No real use as tarpit

Core Horde Clearer
I found out that spearmen are excellent counters to core hordes such as goblin spears, skaven rats, human men at arms, zombies, skeletons. Since those units clearly function good as tarpits what better way to answer it than 30+ well statlined soldiers that actually does decent damage back, and doesn't take too much since WS4. In 7th edition I used swordmasters alot (loved, well actually i love them fluff wise and they were so killing powers) and nothing wasn't so annoying than having that unit tied to combat with some skaven clanrats. They hack and slashed those rats, but everybody was so expensive, high str attacks goes to waste.

As Horde clearers... Well steadfast duty actually overlaps with this. They die as easily as spears and bodies cost more than our elite. But as numbers crunched they have decent change to break anything that isn't well armoured... [-X

conclusion for reavers as horde clearer:

Pretty much same role as steadfast breaker

------------

For spearmen. One of the things why I don't play them as much is because during 7th armybook and 8th brb that 25% Core Tax just took my fibes of from them. You had only spear or archer or spear&archer... Use 25% on that, end of story.


[Edit]
- 5.9.2013 Added some stuff to spearman, corrected few mistakes... Even changed opinion about core horde clearers.
- 6.9.2013 Added magical support consideration for steadfast breakers. Corrected few mistakes and typos here and there.
- 29.10.2013 Removed archer considerations (found the reason why couldn't edit. For somehow google chrome just crashes)
Last edited by Loriel on Tue Oct 29, 2013 8:48 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#2 Post by Sackree »

Fantastic write up so far, looking forward to the next part.

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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#3 Post by cptcosmic »

there are good reason to pack in spears into core but you have to build your army around that core unit that is why spears are not that popular, other core units are just easier to use. if you take spears you want to have magic that buffs their damage, you want special units that do not rely on buffs that much and you also want some support units like chariots or small cavarly units for countercharges for moments when magic fails.

1. Vs T3 5+ AS and below, they will usually do decently with their amount of attacks. not everything in the game is T4 with 2+ AS. that does also include elven elite infantry, SM & WL c not like massed amounts of S3 hits thus keep that in mind when you are playing against other HE.
2. there are often situations where you do not want to send in your elite infantry because the matchup is not in your favor but you have to hold that position otherwise you expose your flank. would you rather waste stubborn WL or steadfast spears for that?
3. well painted big unit of spears looks great on the table 8)
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#4 Post by Gondarion »

Excellent job taking our core infantry seriously and exploring in depth their particular uses. It should of course me mentioned how excellent, possibly unrivalled, synergy with our core foot troops and Lore of Shadows.
Discussing the idea of redesigning WHF from scratch sound like fun? If so...
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#5 Post by Jofarin »

Nice writing :) I like calculations like that.

P.S: I calculated that 1 SS is 2 army building points...but what does SS stand for?
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#6 Post by Malossar »

Skaven Slave.
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#7 Post by Loriel »

Jofarin wrote:P.S: I calculated that 1 SS is 2 army building points...but what does SS stand for?
Basic idea behind this SS is that GW has forbidden reveal point cost in puplic. So some some cheeky wiseass nerds came up solution. In order to say point cost without any violation to any copywrite etc we compare it to something well known thing. Skaven Slaves point cost. So if you know that one reaver with spear would cost same as 8 Skaven Slaves. To be frankly GW has prolly forbidden telling other stats directly in puplic. But who cares.

----------------------

I have tried to have my latest blabbering to be edited, but it just clocks out. Then i found "Message body:
Enter your message here, it may contain no more than 60000 characters. " :lol:
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#8 Post by Stormie »

It's a completely nonsensical system anyway. If you need to discuss how many points something is worth, just say how many points it is. As long as you're not copying large swathes of the army book no-one will get into any trouble. If you're really worried about getting into trouble then you might as well just use hSS as units (half Skaven Slaves). For example, a High Elf Spearmen costs 4.5 SS, or 9 hSS.

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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#9 Post by Loriel »

That ramble was still only 47010 characters so far, so my edit problem yesterday wasn't because of that. There might be some spam filther etc that prevented editing to go of... So little bit magical thoughs for spear reavers added.
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#10 Post by Loriel »

I took my archer consideration off from the first post and added it to here, as well some new Blabbering about the subject.

Archers

Well i see three main roles for archers. chaff clearer , mage bunker , Artillery barrage. I prolly used archer mostly small unit of 10-15 as chaff clearer or magebunkers. I actually am pretty fond to 18 models 6 x 3 formation. It has almost same performance as 20 wide unit (without martial prowess) and takes 80 mm less space. And that formation looks cool.

Archers Chaff clearing duty
Archers chaff clearing success depends heavily on deployment. Few bad terrains might render them useless. BS4 str 3 30 range is effective against most redirectors. And archers arc is zone that opponent needs to think twice to enter especially if he has only like warhounds. I tend to use archers 10 - 18 to this duty and has been pretty solid choice for me at least almost every game with 7 th book 8th brb.

Reavers chaff clearing duty
For reavers this duty is in their blood. The fluff for Reavers is patrol, border control.

terrain: Compared to archers Reavers can overcome bad terrain much more ease., wich is very important in my opinion. Somebody behind hard cover wall, just 18 inch march to good spot, receive only -1 from moving. If you compare it to archers, they usually have long range for many redirectors at least in turn 1, perhaps even turn 2. And that hard cover for terrain, makes some painfull rolls. Then again, reavers have potential to defeat chaff in CC especially spear & bow. And they are the best to do little cat and mouse with warhounds/direwulfs. Just running out of charge sight and shoot. Archers doesn't have this luxury, they have to shoot chaff enough. But even archers have their potential against many chaff in CC.

Middle and end game uses: In my experience archers tend to win every small and medium chaff in game in their own flank. Lets say its turn 2 perhaps 3 when that happends. Then your main combat blocks are CC with opponents, and usually archers lacks any targets after that. Ok you spend somewhat max 100 ss to chaff clearing troopers. ok they earned their points by destroying nasty redirectors and not dying in process. Even with that 30 range, usually I end up marching archers to somewhere closer to action.

For reavers, when chaff clearing duty is over they are easily used in much different roles. Warmachine hunters, march blockers, redirectors, flank / rear bonus adders, in order to deny opponent to combat reform, or add conga lined flank, rear and second combat phase charge bonus to CR, or my favorite break bouncers (meaning that i put reavers in conga line behind an enemy unit that is about to break and then smile and laugh, when that happends and when all my units restrains and reforms for next battle.)

Army design I would say for Chaff duty unit of 10 with bows and ...spear???... that depends much on the opponents army. if you intend to clear chaff in CC ban and mus, would be nice.

So 10 with bows is same cost as 16 archers+mus (to archer Musician is MUST since swift reform) That archer block would be good sized to do this role.

More fragile to opponentOne of the clear disadvantage that reavers has in this role, is that enemy chaff clearers has much more easier job to counter it. Not many army have 30 ranged bows, most have 24 or even 18. Most magic missiles has 24 range and magic missile really hurts our poor reavers. Reavers that roams close can be picked up and t3 as5 in small unit isn't fanfare. On the other hand, reavers can try to find best way to utilize terrain. And of course, since one body cost more, even with that 5+ as, its no go go. Lets say normal str 3 hits from, right about anything. 1/2 wound and for archers that means half dead from every hit so every hit from is worth 5 points. For archers with light armor, every hit is 1/2 wounds and 5/6 pass armour. Meaning 5/12 dead per hit -> meaning 4,16 points per dead archer. For reavers 1/2 wound, 2/3 past armor -> 1/3 of hits is dead reaver. With bow means 5,6666 points per dead reaver. Most str 3 shots comes from BS based shooting attacks. Leaving reavers in extra danger since most likely to be short ranges. That means 1/6+ to hit so roughly 1/18 increase to dead count for str 3 shooting and it means 0,95555 points per shooting. So only short range modifier 6,6 points per dead reaver.

So our archers have straight advantage against most armies archers that are placed to do same duty. Cover modifiers would be mutual. This reminds me of classic archers at 1 inch from front line and dark elf xbow been in front. Then they duel to bitter end by shooting. I remember to calculated this in previous edition that archers win this confrontation only if starting 1 inch apart and got starting turn. I haven't calculated this again, but I think that since now archers are 1 point less, they prolly win duels much easier.

I havent considered any magical support for this role. In my mind, if you have to buff say, small reaver unit with some extra defense/offense in order to fight some chaffs, you are prolly going to waste precious PD and spells that could be used other wise. Reavers/archers have good statline to be used without support. And if your opponent uses magic to boost his chaffs, I would prolly say "go for it!".

Conclusion for reavers as chaff clearing role
+ Overcomes terrain more ease
+ versatile and can be used after turn 3 (if alive)
+ movement being obvious ;)
- enemy chaff clearing bs shooting

Archers as mage bunker
This is very solid choice to protect our mages. 30 range, means that they contribute to battle very often. Compared to spearmen as mage bunkers, spears have two pros. 5+ armor and 1 point less. Ok, for archers one of the biggest question for me is when to buy light armor? In my mind i almost always buy light armour against orc's and goblins. Stonethrower has 3 str and wolf riders shooting attacks can be hindered by it. But as I calculated above against str 3 naked archers gives 5 points per hit. Armoured ones gives 4,16 points. Compare points so for price of 10 naked is 50% of the point spend per model per hit. for price of 11 means only 37% of the points spend is dead per hit. Ok, if opponent has str 4+ then clearly no use for light armor. TOO bad they don't get shield too. I would love that parry save, but then again what usually charges front of our mage bunkers tend to be fast, chaff clearers (save vargulf and other big creatures) and they really don't want to have stand and shoot -> so no parries either. Well no need to think this more, since we cannot claim parry from any of our regular troops.

Reavers as Mage bunkers
Losing fast cavalry: Ok the most obvious argument against reavers as mage bunkers is that they lose their fast cavalry. Ok that is true and very important factor. But this got me to think that what is the purpose of mage bunker? It is ofcourse keeping your mage alive. Can it be done marching 18 per turn? YES! So even withough free reform etc, these reavers can really run out the the harms way. Consider 3 wide unit, not too costly to have wheeling. perhaps 2 inches at most. meaning still 16 inches movement. Then again fast cavalry is best used to get enemy flanks early in the game. Your mage bunker doesn't want to get in the flanks (atleast not by default) So archers can move 5 inches and shoot, reavers 9 inches and shoot. and with musician swift reform rock rock.

Equipment: Ok, this leaves one big question. ? spears or bows or both. I would say bows even as they will lose marching and fire. Spears have two pros. Obvious point reduction, but that is only 1. As mage bunker you need to bodies to take hits. To have extra wound for the reaver block it means that you have to have 17 models. That in my mind sounds little too big unit. Ok, having say 10 models of reavers as mage bunker (i could see this to be good size) paying only 10 points you get 10 archers. Not too shabby. Spears other power is str 4 in charge and if you are trying to protect your mage even small units might do damage to it. And of course depanding on what lores are you using, you prolly don't want to end up in CC. Magic missiles / direct damage spells / vortex. So I would advise against charging anything at least by default.

Magical support: As I have mentioned few times is that, I tend to play medium sized infantry blocks that tries to get to CC as soon as possible. My 8th armybooks list have used High magic for ward boosting fairly often. For almost every other lore, you don't want your mages to even see blood on the field. For archers they usually tend to be left behind and I would really love use those bows, since that is why archers over spearmen. As i would land reaver bunker to middle of the board, it has great chance to swift other side of the table in one turn. As archers 10 inch march isn't usually enough. I wouldn't use high magic with the mage that is in reaver bunker. I could use beast, light, death, shadow, life, (fire though i wouldn't never use it :lol: against anything) For all the lores I would think that Beast and light would benefit the most of reaver bunker.

Lore of Beast: Beast character boost bubbles are only 12 inches. Obvious reaver bunker can get closer to your main combat block and give nice Savage Beast or impenetrable pelt boost to your characters (if going for character heavy build. And of course character heavy build tend to be riding armies. Too bad Wildheart has one or more. And of course your riding armies would be running of the board finding the best situation. There is this questin ? well if i used beast support why I wouldn't place my mage on the same combat unit as rest of my heroes. Well that might be "best" way to do it, but if you really want to use savage beast of horror you risk miscast. Well this can be mimimized with banner of world dragon. Well there you have it. Death star... all the points in almost one unit, and opponent will have fun time redirecting it and prolly manages to out maneuver it.

Lore of light: For the same reason lore of Light will get extra benefit from reaver bunker, since all the bubbles there is also 12 inches. Pretty solid for any type of army playing.

Lore of Life: That reaver block can be pretty fragile. Earth Blood is solid answer to that problem, but better answer would be to run out of harms way. Other spells that life have doesn't require mage to be inside the main combat unit. So mage slaying with reaver bunker.

Lore of Heavens: There is also few bubbles and especially bubble hex. even i would say 20 casting value for curse of the midnight winds is pretty steep. But then again as i realized during my Spearman survey, that can be used against killing blows / poisoned attacks. Wind blast also has better chance to utilize terrain since more maneuverability. As said, pushing unit to boiling flood means every model touching the river will suffer str 4 hit, or some big monsters to khemrian quicksand. 1/6 chance of dying out right. But then again, heaven prolly isn't the best lore to used in reaver bunker.

Lore of shadow: Well, those RIP spells are 18 range. Raise their arms that had to use upgraded version more than once, or pretty much every game? 0/. Upgrade means one more PD has to be used to cast them.

Lore of Death: As same as shadow, those sniping spells are 12 / 24. If you are not having your death mage in your main combat block, those ranges will be hindered greatly. Soulblight bubble, solid boost from reaver bunker.

Lore of metal: As I said before for some reason I haven't found this lore to be appealing at all. Well that bubble scaly skin has its uses and performance is increased due reavers mobility.

Reavers as mage bunker
+ Spell ranges and especially bubbles benefit from it
+ Even without fast cavalry 18 march move is better way to have your mage out of harms way. And if that isn't the point of mage bunker what is? And because of this extra avoidance losing extra wounds from unit isnt so bad
+ Fun to try and build a army around this
- Obvious cost more, but are little better armoured. Allthough that extra armour doesn't add up in point cost.

One last consideration as mage bunker is that if you usually end up marching with mage in order to get in range with spells, you are prolly much better of with spearmens. One point less and 5+ armor. Even smaller unit say 15 models would be sufficient. And that nice banner of discipline, so if your archmage is your general, then 10 ld boost and march of 10 or nice little +1 movement. Those reavers can move 9 and shoot, archers can move 5 and shoot. If you are mostly marching with them, then you are better of using simply spearelves.


Archers as artillery barrage
I have few times tried 30+ model archer unit, supported by nice spells. Last time I used teclis with sword of ruin, blades of aiban, harmonic convergence, soulblight, withering. I had dwellers as spooky spell, wyssan and pha's to increase CC surviability. I played against VC so not too worried about shooting. I was very pleased that even one of those spells went of they increased performance much. Usually got two buffs up and that game i Won.

Ok, big question is should that barrage be equipped with light armor. You get 11 models naked and 10 models with light armour for the same cost. Light armour saves against str 3 and less 1,6 models, which simply means that in big unit you benefit more from armour than the extra wound added. But anything above 3 will make it worse. I still think I would be naked most the time.

Obvious annoying thing about archer barrage is that they are pretty heavy brick. You cannot move them very freely and some times that small movement isn't worth it to have -1 from moving. Also terrain can really really really end the game for you. Think about throwing 6+4 terrains, with mostly buildings and fences... In my experience usually 2-3 terrain pieces comes every battle that can really change the game for you.

Reavers as artillery barrage
Army buildingObvious disadvantage being cost. They cost 70% more. They lose 6 inch from shooting, but it can be really avoided with marching and moving. Let say you invest 2400 point game all 600 for artillery. Say two archer unit with banner, mus perhaps even champ for challenge purpose. withough armours. so lets say just two units withouth armor and ban mus means -> 2 x 28 models. It means 56 shooting attacks per turn and if terrain is on your side, you prolly don't have to move at all. For reavers. You get with same configuration one unit of 17 and one unit of 16 (1 point over minimun requirement for core. Ok, way I would see it (and actually i Used when playing againts those VC last time is to have one 30 models strong archer unit. with mus and banner, and one 15 models strong reavers. I choosed to use Spears & bows, since 15 unit strong can be pretty useful with flank / rear charge. But lets go with the maximum barrage. 56 shoots for archers, 33 for reavers so 42 % less.

TerrainOnce again said, Terrain can really say after deployment that you lose the game, with Archers. With Reavers Terrain isn't so big problem anymore. One thing also it that what does your archers fear the most? flanking chaff, especially if that flanking chaff is something like chimera, vargulf, phoenix. Anything that our regular chaff cleares cannot handle. With reavers you have decent chance to out maneuver those big threats, or at least hinder their charge chance to moving little bit backwards/sideways/front. You can actually run directly backwards 18 inch (or the any other direction) and still able to shoot with every body With archers movement is hindered only 2,5 backwards or sideways. Usually this movement is enough to buy one more turn of shooting. Say that you could make charge roll of 7 to 9, or 6 to 8? Thats usually enough. And that might be enough to allow full stand and shoot if charged to front.

Still barrage after turn 3 Well with archers, you are prolly in close combat in turn 3. With reavers you might able to maneuver shooting perhaps to even turn 6. If that would be the case. that 42% less attacks (of course models die during the game for magic missiles / shooting) but isn't so bad after all.

Other units in army If you are goinging for artillery, you will probably have more ranged units all over. You should have sisters and sisters are really very stand still shooters. You prolly have shadow warriors, which excels in same powers as reavers and my experience is that shadow warrior scouting is really good way to have your opponent divide their ranks. If there is only one real threat coming at your archers, its no brainer to focus every shooting against that threat. If you have bolt throwers, those are most stationary units in our army. So one of the "great bluffs" here is to have most of the points inside reavers / shadow warriors / other mobile unit as silver helms dragon princes. Your opponent will soon realize that oh I cannot get those reavers he might end up marching for bolt throwers, small sister units etc. You consider them to be acceptable loss since there isn't much to be done. and if you field like 4 x bolt throwers and 2 x unit of sisters say 5 - 10 models. You are giving your opponent about 500 points. Well then you have to earn those points from your opponent about 200 easily from chaff, then ... hard to say. If he has big infantry blocks or heavily armoured troops, you are prolly screwed up. But the beaty of reaver barrage is that he has much trouble of hiding weaker units. For big unit of archers going straight behind building to deny LOS, and it's check mate, if most of other troops are chaos warriors with 3+ save, or 1+ as mounted dudes. Against reavers it's much harder to get LOS deny.

Magical support Really really big disadvantage and prolly the reason why I wouldn't use large reaver barrage is to have less change to aid them magically. Main reason behind is that you want to keep up movement with those reavers in order to avoid opponents threats. If you land mage inside reaver unit losing that fast cavalry is not as okay, than it was when we considered reavers as Mage Bunker. One way to have this effect diminished is to use small mage bunkers of reavers / silverhelms and trying to keep up, or goingin solo mage on great eagle or steed. And then again, having something like +1 to wound, just simply works better if you have more shooting attacks. There archers clearly outweights reavers for this purpose.

Ok if I would land reaver heavy artillery army, I actually consider not to have mage at all. My usual build is about 300 points for archmage and 150 max for support. So 450 points. If i would convert that to one reaver block thats about 25 models of reavers. Well of couse then you need one hero. Perhaps this list could have it for Dragon mage? well perhaps not. My choice would probably be scouting reaver bow noble. Or if going big sized sister unit, then hand maiden as general.

Dispel & magical avoidance: If planning to go without any mage, only real spells that you would need to worrier about is magic missiles and direct damage. All other, offence combat buffers are really no concern, usually anything that can manage to charge our reaver (especially if Reavers are in small unit) can kill it without having magical buff. So most armies tend to have max 2 magic missile spells, and most of them have 24 range, lets say +8 from mage marching (considering most armies have movement of 4). Needs front arc and LOS (Very very important) So terrain can be used in many instances so that you can shoot something and something other can't shoot you. Or then again, you can force your opponent hand to march his mage bunker unit for little worse position in order to gain LOS for shooting. Or even move it by little and if that bunker is BS shooting that -1 really helps. Perhaps next turn they cannot do anything but swift reform, or there might be some bad terrain that gives stupidity, or damages, or anything that you really don't want to have (and of course wants your opponent to have). So lets say, common army have 0 - 2 magic missiles, 0 - 2 direct damage spells. Then buffs such as pha's and wyssan are annoying, offensive buffs are not to be worried. Movement buffs of anykind might end up having you lose the game. You can pretty much dispel one spell per turn with only army bonus using all dices. And if your opponent wants to force magic missiles or direct damage with more PD, he risk Miscast and that would be really good trade of for you. SO key element here is surprise. If your opponent cannot see your real tactic when deploying his mages and choosing spells he might choose some real offence spell like okkams, str reducers, toughness reducers, sniping spells from death to get your mages, lore of metal would be the best if he doesn't get scaly skin.

conclusion as artillery barrage
+ element of surprise
- no magical support or if used it will be much harder to benefit
- shooting heavy Helf list tend to have little hard time in 8th because of the large blocks. harder to have panics.
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#11 Post by Loriel »

Silver Helms

I see three major roles for silver helms. Chaff clearer, Medium Hammer, Character bus. There is also this minor role of character sniping? perhaps situational.


Silver Helms as Character snipers
One usage of 3x3 dart was character sniping. This use works best if
a) character isn't in the corner of the unit or you have allready attacked with it some other unit, say spearmen etc. If opponent is wider then you can charge next turn in and burn that character out.
b) character is important to opponent (say general, bsb, important caster) and yields at least as much points as SH unit costs.
c) Character is in large base than 20x20 mm.
d) character is allready wounded.

So lets assume situation where 25x25 mm and he is putted (against best judgement) in the middle of the unit. OR his unit is allready in combat (say inside horde) and you can charge Silver helms so that they actually make full base contact with the cornered character. So plan ahead where does your main combat unit move directly if you got the charge last turn. On the other hand if opponent has some fragile character he prolly tries to make his charge so that he doesn't end up in base contact with it. Anyway very situational. SH on charge will have 9 x ws 4 (perhaps reroll) str 5 attacks.

So here few best case scenarios against some foes that "might" be good targets for SH snipe dart. Some battles have fears, etc. but i haven't considered them in these calculations.

Savage Orc Great Shaman Level 4 with shrunken head. Perhaps magic resistance 3 for nice 2++ save for whole unit. So exactly total 300 point. (perhaps even general?) There might be better builds but lets just assume this.
8/9 hits, 1/2 wounds 2/3 past ward -> leads 8/27 attacks is wound -> 2,66666 wounds for sh (With champ 2,96 wounds, but beware challenge). For 3 attacks from steeds 1/2 hits, 1/6 wounds, 2/3 past ward -> 1/18 attack wounds -> 0,16666 wounds. total 2,83666(3,126) . So on average it might kill, but not reliably.

Chaos Sorcerer Lord Level 4, mark of tzeentch? chaos familiar? i dont know? talisman of preservation? Lets assume that Chaos player really doesn't want to pay for sorcerer safety. So level 4, tzeentch, familiar. 310. So no champ since challenge (its usually better all around when dealing with chaos warriors imo. it might be pretty annoying to got deamon prince out of marauder champion ;) ) 3/4 hits, 2/3 wounds, 5/6 past armor, 5/6 past ward (tzeentch) -> 25 / 72 attack wounds -> 3,125 wounds + steed 1/2 hits, 1/3 wounds, 1/2 past armor, 5/6 past ward -> 5 / 72 -> 0,208 wounds. So total of 3,3333 on average kills (put then again, if using tzeentch perhaps there really would be at least talisman of protection for 6+ and +1 from mark)

Ogre Butcher level 2? maw. Hellsheart. ironfist 188 points. So 8/9 hits, 1/2 wounds and 5/6 past parry ward-> 10/27 attack is wound-> 3,3333 (3,70 champ). Steed 1/2, 1/6, 5/6 past armor, 5/6 past ward -> 25/432 attack is wound -> 0,17 wounds from steeds... So total of 3,5(3,87) average kill , not reliable

Master Necromancer Level 4, ... say some protection talisman of preservation? 255 points as VC generals now when they can have it if playing only hero vampires. Too bad 20x20 model means only 6 SH can strike it. 8/9 hits, 2/3 wounds, 1/2 past ward -> 8/27 attacks wounds -> 1,777 wound, (2,07 champ). (lets assume no protection which would be odd, but 3,554 (4,14 champ)) steeds 1/2 hits, 1/3 wounds, 1/2 past ward. 1/12 wounds per attack for steeds so 0,16666 wounds. So this would be rather juicy target, but then again Nightshroud could really hinder this down (removes +2 str and rerolls)... and if playing master necromancer as general VC player prolly doesn't leave protection behind. Then again if he plays it as support caster with lets say black periapt (it might be revealed in the first magic phase in the game or perhaps in the second. He might have cursed book, book of arkhan, rod of flaming death.) Then perhaps he doesn't have any saves and not nightshroud. This way he would easily be 250 point model and there is decent change that SH dart with 6 attacks might kill him.

Night Goblin BSB spider banner, shield, light armor. short bow. 146 points (+100 bsb) Ok, this prolly would be inside goblin archers and they would make poisoned stand and shoot. lets say 20 attacks? long range, stand and shoot -2, poisoned. 1/6 hit -> all wounds -> 1/6 pas armor. 1/12 x 20 attacks means 1,666 dead SH. max 6(7 champ) attacks (or 5 if two sh died due s&s reaction) 3/4 hits, 2/3 wounds, 5/6 past parry -> 5/12 attack wounds -> 2,5 wounds(champs 2,91 wounds). Steed 1/2 hits, 1/3 wounds 2/3 past armor 5/6 past ward -> 5/54 is 0,185 wounds from two steed. ACTUALLY there is most likely netters and perhaps even fanatics (all though those should be launched by eagles / reavers in turn 1), 3/4 hits, 1/2 wounds, 5/6 past armor, 5/6 past parry -> 75 / 288 -> 1,56 wounds (1,82 champ) and steeds does 0,09 wounds. That goblin unit is good target since you aren't practically giving SH unit away, they can hold on with normal goblin archers and even reform for more attack since even horses can contribute to wounds. So having extra steed attack for 2 goblins, (3 if deeper) would be ok.

Magical support: I have used High often and Hand of Glory with WS / I boost is great for this role. Adds ward to your main block and. many lesser characters are ws 4. And many characters have initiative 6+ so bigger hand helps to get rerolls also. It helps them to survive making almost everything hitting them 4+. If you would charge to your opponent in order to kill his character in unit, then best scenario character is dead and you get to keep the unit at bay for at least charge turn, but perhaps even the following turn.

BeastWyssan's Wildform would be probably the best spell to aid in this role. Having STR 6 makes huge difference when tackling characters, ofc okkams would be even better, but that is so costly. And that +1 t makes them stick little better and aids in the opponents turn because 4 str is way better than 3 str.

Light birona would add 3 attacks or 2 attack with 12 cast.... that might be just enough to tip the balance. Most of those harder examples had like 7/28, 8/27 wounds per hit ratio. Speed of light helps a lot almost guarantee hit 3+ reroll.

Shadow Obvious miasma (for the same reasons as hand of glory) and better range so if you helmsnipe someone from flanks, easier to have. Withering would be excellent choice here to increase odds against those biggies.

Death Soulblight solid, solid. Sniping character before for few wounds off, solid again.

So conclusion for sniping with SH dart is that usually you shouldn't do it. Cornered character means max 3(4 if champ) SH attack and 1 steed. Those SH can really kill goblin shamans, skink priest etc. But usually in that job they are little wasted. But this option is really great to have and can make real difference when played in favorable situation. And the surprise when you pull this stunt the first time. Say wounded vampire lord general due miscasts / other mishaps having that 1 wound left just waiting to be picked. fortune favors the bold!

Reavers as character sniping
Two absolutely crucial benefits for this role is 16 points per model compared to SH 23 and fast cav (those mages waits you). Most obvious disadvantage is 4 str and lesser armor so small arms can really kill em at opponents first turn. Having a dart of 9 models, musician perhaps, banner.... perhaps not... perhaps... and champ absolutely no for this role(no extra attack and challenge can be bad) so 144 points Silverhelm equal is 207 (with shields, I would still take shield with em, don't really see any point saving 10 points to have them 3+ as.) Then again if reavers hunts smaller game, then perhaps 8 two wide would be better making it 128 points.

So we perhaps shouldn't even think about those bigger lord targets, since str 5 struggled with em str 4 with same statline srtuggle more. Reavers hunts for smaller mages.

Night goblin shaman scroll caddy, level 2? 75 points - 110 points?. Hiding in spear good, hiding in archers little worse... S&S reaction max 19 shoots (no shoot for shaman) long range, SS so -2. Poison banner? nah.. 1/6 hits -> 1/2 wounds -> 2/3 past armor. 1/18 wounds -> 1,05555 dead reavers, so no effect if 9 models, or 8 with 2 wide formation. With poison banner death toll is actually double so 2,1 reavers with 8 models 2 wide no effect. 8/9 hits -> 1/2 wounds 4/9 hits -> 2,66666 wounds from reavers and steeds 2/3 hits, 1/2 wounds -> 0,666 wounds from steeds. so total 3,3333 wounds and best case scenario some mushroom damage. No too bad. Hold for at least charge. Here reforming to wider isn't so good option. Even though goblins would be steadfast decent chance even breaking the goblin unit.

Necromancer scroll caddy, invication spammer. Same as above but the steeds will do 0,5 wounds (due ws 3) Necromancer in skele / zombie unit -> reavers dead in attrition battle.

Sorceress scroll caddy, level 2? delf. 125 - 160 points. No protection? perhaps not. Hiding in spears / crossbows (that would be very bad) say max 19 models shoots. Long range? prolly. multiple shot? prolly. S&S so total -3. 1/6 hits -> 1/2 wounds -> 5/6 past armor. 1/12 attacks wounds 3,1666 dead reaver. Actually that multiple shot and normal shot has exactly the same odds and result ;) So if using 8 model 2 wide, 3 dead before finishing the charge, means . But lets assume that they have "full" hitting power. 3/4 hits -> 2/3 wounds -> 1/2 wounds so 3 wounds. And steeds would have 0,5 wounds. This would be great trade off. -> Delf spears / crossbows evaporate reavers.

Magical support Actually all same spells applies here as well as with SH. But in general Fast cav might be little farther away so I think Shadow miasma would have good use. Especially that Delf sorceress will cry with -1 ws.

I think my next game will have 8 models 2 wide small character sniping speary reaver team. This could come as little surprise!

Silver Helms as Chaff clearers
Small unit of SH is great in Chaff duty. 2+ armor is very solid against most chaffs and they are very durable against small arms. Dangerous terrain is little bigger problem for SH.

Since we have allready talked about Reavers as chaff clearers no need to open it. When compared to SH, they obviously excel in different traits.

Silver Helms as Medium Hammer
I say medium hammer because... imo they aren't too great hammer unit. They deal fair amount of damage and takes little back keeping decent CR difference which is everything what hammer is supposed to do. I have used Silver Helms mostly in 8th book with 9 models 3x3 FC dart. They have good movement, small frontage in deployment and they can fairly easy to assume flank positions and change role during game. Perhaps as hammers they should have more bodies, but then they usually gets too much attention from opponents if model count rises. And I love having two darts in the board.

Combat resolution boost: Usually in most cases Silver Helms can push more combat resolution in flank charge can opponent can generate. My use of 9 models usually means that I use infantry to tackle opponent in front and support them with smallish SH unit. Perhaps for this purpose 12-15 models would be better in order to disrupt opponent, but in my experience 5 model wide cavalry is must harder to maneovre and it becomes very tempting target to decimation / redirecting. That is my main reason why I grown fond to 9 models 3x3 FC. They usually add that much needed combat resolution even they don't give that disruption. And that formation also has its pros combo charging front, because even with SH movement flanking isn't always possible, then only brute force can lead through enemy lines. And smaller frontage can provide almost all models to attack, when combo charge with infantry and 5 wide cavalry to front probably wastes attacks. And since cavalry is mostly support for infantry in 8th 3x3 for the win!

Magical support High magic walk between the worlds is real game breaker when used to get Silver Helms in flank / rear in turn 1. Psychological effect on that is enormous and opponent probably divide his forces up.

Reavers as medium hammerers
Well my considerations Reavers as steadfast breakers were actually very promising. This role is about the same, except reaver unit would be much smaller and then there would be medium/large infantry block doing the anviling. But when it comes to make CR difference Reavers can do it as much as Silverhelms, and that extra fast cav vanguard movement makes flank / rear charge tons of easier with reavers than SH. So that 15 reaver Banner & musician unit(total 260 points) might be better investment in many cases than 15 Silver Helm Full command invest (total 375 points). My dart has price of 237 points and 15 spears have 260... And every opponent sees 2+ armor save as threat. Having punch of fast cavalry speary elves & pointy ears in the flank isn't as scary to over confident opponent. They will see them as some Welf rabble.

Silver Helm character bus
Well I personally ain't too fond to character heavy builds. We are not vampires and I truly miss Vambraces of defense from last book =( But I have done them. I don't like putting any magical banners on BSB (not even mounted one) and this unit really yells for banner of the world dragon. BSB is way to get it and then again dragon princes are also great way to have it. And dragon princes synergy with riding High archmage level 4 BoH is great! So in short if I would go for character bus I would choose dragon princes, even if I would lose attacks from the princes itself due pushed back ranks. But DP present big problem. First core needs full filling. 25% having character heavy builds means lords and heroes almost 25% perhaps combined like 40 % of the points spent. DP then will take the rest. Core character bus allows other special choices to be made.

Anyway what is the main purpose of Character bus? Its a delivery system to close combat and offer as much protection to those precious glass cannons. So most obvious is against any BS shooting, impact hits, magical attacks, templates due look out sirs. etc.

Army design With this character saturated list there is actually few ways to handle it. Either do a Deathstar like approach and that is pretty dull to play. Perhaps every now and then, but on regular basis... I would skip it. Or actually do it smaller surgical alfa strike team. Having 10-15 SH Full Command and character loaded unit means you can break steadfast. But that unit will be most targeted unit you would have in the army. Another way would be dart like Having 3, 4 wide means you can deal alot of damage and serve as epic hammer to lets say Phoenix Guard, since PG goes from special, character bus from core.

CharactersOk. lets say 2400 points game, you can have max three prince lords riding with almost nothing more than lance / gw / halberd? but for deathstary / big charabus i would take High,or Life Archmage for this build for warding, 4+ reg toughnes boost. For smaller character busses beast for wyssan, panns pelt and savage beast. This would be perfect for perhaps even land Tyrion on the field. (love the fluff and my first lord ever bough from back almost....... 15 years. I "started" this game back then while I really didn't even know how to read English properly, but I really started playing few years back. But lets have that Archmage and prince now. I would actually try extra attacks. Imo. having 7 str 4 almost always reroll attacks would be great if stuck with some tarpit and synergy from beast mage gives +3 attacks a good to go signal. Then you can have at most 4 nobles for mundane 2+ and lance? great weapon? Star lance, ogre blades? glittering scales....

Formation considerations So lets have it so that we have BSB noble star lance, noble ogre blade, prince extra attacks Then 3 x ? formation. In this formation no command group since your characters are putted in back. So 6 SH attacks and all those nice high str attacks from the first rank. You should get banner and mus from phoenix guard for example. You need about 6-9 silverhelms. So total of 15 models. As mentioned few times in this thread that just try out 3 wide and 5 wide formation in cavalry. Try wheeling and moving past. Try doing little step dance in small space. So this bus would cost 207 (shielded) In my opinion the greatest benefit from this smaller unit is that your opponent cannot focus his attention only to this character heavy troopers galloping towards his front line. There is still Phoenixes, phoenix guard pressing. Perhaps even divide of characters. Having two units of 2 nobles lance/gw?, 2+/3+ in 9 SH musician unit (mus for swift reform purpose) coming from both flanks. Then doing phoenix guard in the middle. This 2 strike team formation lacks magical protection because light spells bubbles would be out of range if you would pursue for flanks. and if you boost the other opponent prolly shoots other...

say 15 models banner & musician. Same characters as above. Now more attacks from silverhelms, less mobility and can break opponent easier alone. Point cost 365, (shielded).

Big bus of 30 models 710 points (shielded).

One way to see this would be having large silver helm unit with steadfast breaking / anviling duty and then small darts with characters doing heavy hammering.

Reavers as character bus
Ok same as mage bunker their obvious lose would be losing fast cav. And another important factor is that if you would have wider unit or any command group opponent can direct attack to those weaker reavers, than silverhelms. And those suport attakcs would come in str 4. Point cost drops from 23 to 16 (so about 30% drop) And of course armor drop means more bad things vs. shooting. Say againts VC ain't that big of a deal.

But if we are talking about delivering those characters to cc, reavers can do it almost as good SH. You should be in CC by turn 2. If talking about helping survive shooting it all comes down to few critical factor. If opponent has high str / no armor shooting. Say bolt throwers, plague catapults, cannons etc. Silver Helms do worse than reavers due they die same rate, but every body cost more. If opponent has small str shooting bows, stone throwers etc. 1/2 wounds -> 1/6 get past armor for SH -> 1/12 shots kills str 3. For reaver 1/2 wounds -> 2/3 gets past armor. So 1/3 shot kills reaver. rate is 4 times as high and for every dead silver helm 23 points is 64 points of reavers. Say boltthrower (not character full front or firing flanks) means.... this can be tricky to calculate by my method but would it be something like this.1/2 hit, 5/6 wound dead silverhelms. penetratin bolt has had 5/6 chance to be lethal( due if the first roll is 1 then the second cannot happend) and str 5 is still 5/6 to wound. so now again for penetration there is 5/6 chance that the last bolt was penetrating and next is 2/3 of kill. then penetration was 2/3 chance and next is 1/2, then 1/2 and 1/3, then 1/3 and 1/6. -> and.... hmm... is there a rule that str 0 cannot wound?. So if this calculation is correct (and it very likely is not ;) ) it means bolt thrower shot kills (lets say)
1/2 * (5/6 + 5/6 * 2/3 + 5/6 * 2/3 * 1/2 + 5/6 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 1/3 + 5/6 * 2/3* 1/2 * 1/3 *1/6) -> This yields 0,956790123 models dead per shooting with 4+ hitting... Anyway, its easy to think about, that if you get hit by bolt thrower you will lose very likely 2 models. And if you half the time its something of 1 model per shot.

Only formation that I would even consider using this way would be that 3x? or 4x? front rank full of noble / princes. Reasoning behind this is the fact that in CR perspective 6 reaver attack compared to silverhelm attacks loses roughly 1/6 combat reso. (this depends on bunch of factors armor saves etc etc. buts thats why there is that roughly 1/6.) and if opponent can strike rank & file silver helm denies roughly 1/2 combat resolution going to opponent due wounds. (again depends on str of hits etc etc etc. Here high str or no armor also doesn't make any difference) So if Reaver is showing his face as musician in the front rank and opponent strikes him. They will give roughly twice as much CR to opponent compared to SH -> prolly not worth it. Musician would still be pretty good boon for this unit. The place he would be placed is the far corner so that musician will be left with (if flank charged) in the opponents units rear end, so shrinking unit will deny some attacks to reavers -> denies combat resolution.

When it comes to Reaver character bus I think people would generally just say NO. Silverhelms excels over them. I say they excels in most cases and in fluffwise fills that duty much better. (important factor). Still having that dart of about 9 str 6 hits and 6 str 4 with much less point spent might be worth it. Still I aint so hopefull after doing this little mathammering
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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#12 Post by Prince of Spires »

I had forgotten all about this topic. Nice overview of our core. We could move it to the tactics articles section. I definitely think something like this has a place there.

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Re: Loriel's blabbering about our core.

#13 Post by Loriel »

Prince of Spires wrote:We could move it to the tactics articles section. I definitely think something like this has a place there.
I would be honored if you would do so.

To be honest I have for little while wanted to make bigger article about High magic and how I used it to my success. Perhaps I should do one ;)
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