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Home » Great Library at Hoeth » Book of Warfare » Tactics » PapaElf's 7th Edition Tactica - Part 3 - Determine Your Army’s Strategic Purpose
| PapaElf's 7th Edition Tactica - Part 3 - Determine Your Army’s Strategic Purpose |
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Tactics, Part 3 --- Determine Your Army’s Strategic Purpose
Determine your Army’s Strategic Purpose
At this point the High Elf general should now sit down and determine
the army’s strategic purpose, i.e., how is this Army going to win the
battle? No army can dominate every aspect of a battle; the majority of
armies will only dominate one category (if that) and have one or two
glaring weaknesses. You should therefore, choose one or two aspects in
which you want your army to excel.
The High Elves, as an army, are more suited to dominating certain
phases of the game than others. High Elves are very good at offensive
magic, better that average at maneuver, shock melee, average at
defensive magic, attrition melee, and psychology, below average at
missile fire, and are very vulnerable to enemy missile fire and magic.
The High Elves can be an effective “shock” army. We have the tools to
concentrate a high volume of combat power onto a small area of the
battlefield. Such tactics are completely dependent upon unit teams and
isolating enemy units, meaning that a High Elf army must dominate
maneuver in order to win the melee phase.
Quick review of what the term “phase” means in the context of these articles: it does not refer to the phases of a Warhammer game turn, i.e. Movement, Magic, Shooting, Close Combat. It does
refer to the strengths and weaknesses of a given army that can be
exploited by the High Elf general or by his opponent to gain an
advantage on the battlefield:
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Speed
Flexibility
Interdiction
Melee Troops
Shock Melee
Attrition Melee
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Counter Magic
Mage Hunting
Magic Offense
Magic Defense
ManeuverMeleePsychology
Missile Fire
Magic
So, what kind of an army appeals to
you? You should really try to dominate the phase in which you feel you
will have the most fun. You can darken the sky with arrows, you can
blast the enemy with magic, you can run over the enemy with an
overpowering melee unit (Prince on Star Dragon), or you can play a
tactical game all about creating uneven battles through assault with
multiple units. Your army selections should be made with the goal of
dominating your chosen phase(s) while reaching parity in or minimizing
the others. Every general should consider how his army will fare in
each phase of battle during the list creation process: Maneuver, Melee,
Missile Fire, Psychology, Magic.
Ensure that your army can defend itself in each phase
Once one has decided the phases where one wants to achieve superiority
or dominance doesn’t mean that one can ignore the other phases. There
are inexpensive ways to defend yourself in all phases of the game, and
its made easier if one uses “multi-purpose” units, or units which have
benefit in more than one aspect of the game. Shadow Warriors, for
example, can serve multiple purposes; they provide missile fire,
limited damage interdiction, and march interdiction. Ellyrain Reavers
can hunt enemy interdiction units, mage hunt, perform march
interdiction, or run down fleeing enemy troops.
A word of caution, just because a unit is multi-purpose does not mean
it can always perform all its roles at the same time. Using the Shadow
Warriors and Reavers as examples, notice that the Shadow Warriors can
do all three of its roles at the same time, but the Rreavers are not
multi-taskers as they cannot mage hunt and attack enemy damage
interdiction units at the same time. When creating one’s army, one need
to make sure there are enough units to do all the jobs that need doing
if multiple tasks arise.
Almost every phase has one or more complementary phases. If one has
chosen to dominate the missile fire phase, for example, march
interdiction should be a key secondary objective. The slower your enemy
moves, the more time one has to do damage in the shooting phases. Along
with the archers and bolt throwers, I would strongly suggest Shadow
Warriors, Ellyrain Reavers, Chariots, and Great Eagles as integral
parts of such an army. As a bonus, each of these units will be able to
hold or contest a table quarter at the end of the battle. By choosing
these units, one has defended oneself against an opponent who dominates
Melee by keeping his units out of melee for additional turns.
So one has defended against the melee phase, what about psychology?
Although all the units mentioned are vulnerable to psychology, it is
not a big issue to this army. Hopefully, there will be few if any
offensive charges where fear tests must be rolled. Panic and terror
checks are always a problem, but a centrally located general will
provide extra leadership as needed. On the whole, the High Elf army
that chooses to dominate the missile phase is not too vulnerable to
psychology.
The magic phase, however, could be a problem. Exactly how much magical
punishment one feels one’s army can endure is up to you, but the High
Elf army is known to crumble even under moderate amounts of magic
damage. As noted before, five dice and three scrolls should be the
minimum magic defense. Some of the march interdiction units above can
dual-task as mage hunters. Also one could use the missile phase
dominance to try and destroy or panic the unit(s) that are hiding the
enemy mage(s). The High Elf general must be smart about eliminating
these sorts of threats when he can, through active exploitation of
one’s dominance in his phase of choice.
The use of multi-purpose units and a reasonable allocation of points to
defensive magic should allow any High Elf army a chance to mitigate its
weaknesses before it takes the battlefield. Remember that a weakness is
still a weakness, and a general should be actively looking for ways to
eliminate threats during the actual battle.
Disperse your Victory Points
Many generals field their armies with an “uber”-unit which contains
their general and possibly a mage along with their best shock or
attrition melee troops. The problem with this strategy is that the
“uber unit” can’t be everywhere at the same time, and it often fails to
accomplish much aside from wading through a couple of diversionary
units. The bigger drawback is that the hope of victory will be
destroyed along with the unit, since the army cannot win without the
unit.
One of the great things about the High Elf army is the ability to field
effective units at a relative moderate cost. Many very effective units
can be fielded for around or under 200 points: 12 White Lions (180
points), 10 Archers (110 points), 5 Ellyrian Reavers with Bows (105
points), 5 Shadow Warriors (80 points), 24 Spear Elves (216 points),
etc. Each of these units are very effective, but losing the unit does
not spell the end of your army. This makes it difficult for the
opponent to “concentrate” on any one unit of the army, and any “uber
unit” will be wasted taking out a unit of 110 point archers/
reavers/etc. This while the rest of your army is destroying his
supporting units and occupying table quarters.
I rarely take less than 10 deployable units (at 2250 points) in my
armies, and I perfer to push 12 or 13. I find it an advantage to have
many different tools at my disposal; and the more units I have the more
things I can do on the battlefield. 10+ deployable units also gives you
a good feel for what your opponent’s deployment is going to look like
before you commit your major units, and keeps the opponent from
tailoring his deployment to yours. I would feel very uncomfortable if I
was forced into battle with say, only eight units. The more units the
better.
Detail each Unit to a Team and an Objective
An often forgotten aspect of army construction is to assign each unit
to a team, and each team to an objective, and then deploy the team
together within striking distance of the objective. It does no good to
deploy a unit of White Lions out on the right flank when they would
best be used as a “stick” unit supported by a Dragon Prince (deployed
on the left flank) flank charge. When infiltrators are deployed, you
want to make sure the Shadow Warriors use their special deployment
rules to give the best chance of achieving their objective, whether it
is primarily mage hunting, march interdiction, or damage interdiction.
We’ve all experienced games where we felt our units were deployed out
of position, and I believe this happens because we failed to think
through what the units purpose was, when we were creating the army
list.
Teams and Objectives Clearly
you can’t detail your teams to specific objects, like “Kill the
Helblaster”, when you don’t know what troops, or which army, you’re
going to be facing. Unit objectives should be more general like so:
Archers – Kill enemy light units, cause panic check to larger units.
Shadow Warriors – Kill enemy war machines, mage hunting, march interdiction.
Dragon Princes – Team with White Lions, attack enemy Attrition/Shock Melee
White Lions – Team with Dragon Princes, attack enemy attrition/Shock Melee
Ellyrian Reavers – Eliminate Opposing fast Cavalry, attack Enemy
missile/ War Machines, Support White Lions/Dragon Princes if needed.
This sort of unit allocation will help keep you “eye on the ball”
during deployment. It’s too easy to make mistakes or fail to think
through objectives during the “heat of deployment”. Save yourself the
effort and do it before the game.
EDIT: For the complete source material contained in this post, see the "General's Tent" at Machiara's web site, www.battleglade.com |
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