Dealing with the Sons of As By Border Reiver
H
igh Elves. The words conjure images of tall somewhat androgynous humanoids, seemingly fragile, full of mystic energy, and more arrogant than a teenager that just managed to prove to Dad that he was right. With the advent of 8th ed they remain one of the most challenging armies to beat and that challenge makes the satisfaction of grinding the pointy-eared bastards into a fine paste to serve with crackers and ale so much better. First thing we need to do as sound generals is look at our opponent to see what we can expect and to plan accordingly. The army wide rules are a good place to start before we examine the various soldier types present. The easily most relevant rule is the “Speed of Asuryan” rule, which means that everything with pointy ears and a strange predilection for wearing white into battle gets an opportunity to hit you first, regardless of magic weapons – even their great weapon armed troops will get to strike in initiative order (Remember Initiative? That stat that everyone used to opine was as useful as the old “Cool” and Intellect”? It’s back, and it’s ready to spank you.) The other part to note is that as a result of the ASF rule and the high Initiative value of the Elves, they will get to reroll misses. Get over it and remember that our infantry (easily the second best strength of our army after war machines) can step up and still deliver an attack, the counter to the blinding speed of the elves is to have large blocks of infantry that can absorb the initial attack and then hit back – hard.
promise. The other rule that concerns us is the bonus for dispelling enemy magic. High elves get a slight bonus to dispel, and while not a huge bonus, it doesn’t go away like a Dispel Magic Scroll, and can only be stopped by killing the wizards. Fortunately, this is not that difficult a proposition for us. Alrighty then, we should now start into our overview of the High Elf army, and, much like the army book, I’ll begin with characters. As might be expected, they come in two basic flavours – combat and wizards. Combat characters have a wide variety of options available to them with respect to both mundane and magical equip-
The only other bit I’m going to comment on here is that which will bring a smile to our hearts, all elves are fortunately slight, delicate creatures that, once captured, are singularly unsuited for a life of hard labour in the mines. All elves, high, dark and tree-hugging, regardless of power are Toughness 3, making it even odds at worst for all our troops to wound theirs once we hit them – and the number of great weapons we can bring to bear should make the job even easier. I’ll look at this again later – I Issue 9- The Word of Hashut– 96
Mini By Willmark