Just taking a quick break from Skyrim...

Last night I took the night off Skyrim to get absolutely thrashed in a blood and glory match High Elves vs Dark Elves.

Things that went well:
1- The horde whitelions + BSB. This is the key punch unit of the army. It wiped out a unit of horde frenzied corsairs on the charge. 31 attacks, 31 hits (boom!) 27 kills...nice. Was however isolated having done that and could not support the rest of my army.

2- magic defence. Crystal + remove spell scroll + drain magic + banner of sorcery is awesome. I had effective domination of the magic phase. Delves didnt cast much at all, and the threat of drain magic meant I could get 1 spell off uncontested. The 2nd spell and the threat of drain magic = can usually get 1 of them off. Banner of Sorcery meant my smallest magic phase was 9 dice.


 Things that didn't go too well:
1- Helf chaff being a rare choice sucks-especially when playing to comp. Highelves are the only army that have their chaff comped and I cannot see why. Sure they fly...but so do harpies. They cause panic to my army and die rather easy. Storm banner/lore of heavens removes them from the game. High Elves do a poor man's gunline and need to get into combat to be effective. Max of 2 eagles = I cannot dictate my match ups meaning having less units actually means having less units that cannot gang up on other units. I suspect Helf armies would feature in more competitive environments if they were allowed to bring their chaff; t3 5+ as is not that much of a disadvantage with ASF and controlling match ups...however it is also not point and click.

2- I completely forgot hydra's have skirmish rules...meaning 15 out of 18 swordmasters died to breath weapon (2 inches back and it would not have been a perfect flank shot...). Also meant my right flank collapsed because of it.

The huge defeat has strengthen my resolve, and have tweaked the list to this:

lvl4: shadow, crystal, dragonbane Gem  305
lvl1: high, scroll of remove the spell from game on 4+  140
BSB: GW, 2+ rerollable dragon armour 168
2x25 spearelves: FC     500
10 archers: M      115
2x T.Chariot        170
18 Swordmasters: FC-flame banner, potion of fool  315
27 White Lions: FC-banner or sorcery   485
4 eagles     200
2398


Basically dropped the 5 Dragon Princes + musician and the lvl2 upgrade to get a 2nd chariot, 2 more eagles and spent the remaining 10 points on dragonbane gem (means lvl4 can hang alone and ignore flaming magic missiles) and potion of fool (an extra attack on swordmaster champ = should pwn most characters in a challenge on the charge).

The 2 chariots gives me a good counter punch/flank protection. 1 chariot dies too easily, 2 chariots means I can use them as detachments to the spears. 4 eagles = I should be easily delaying the units I do not want to be engaging and isolating the units I want to smash. I found that the 5 Dragon Princes were just expensive chaff; they have lost all their 7th ed punch!

List incorporates MSU and MMU. 2 real threat units and lots of stuff to support them.

I think the list is not as scary as some of the allowed comp lists and will still get pwned by the Storm banner + min sized ratpack/engineer chaff. No real shooting, no book of hoeth, no phoenix guard bunker...ACTUALLY TAKING SWORDMASTERS IN A SIZABLE UNIT...this list is not extreme High Elves that everyone moans about and is competitive vs the allowable builds (2x10 shades, 2x20 BGuard, cauldron Delves...stank, walter, 2 cannons and engineered Rocket battery Empire...usual skaven stuff...slann star+skink spam...WOC builds etc).


SO there we have it. Now back to chopping things up with a battle axe in Skyrim. Playing as a Red Guard specialising it kicking ass with battle axes; I prefer the non-subtle approach.