At this point, most of you are screaming at your computers hoping that I’ll get to the point of this exercise and give you some tips and tactics to try against the elves for whom every day is before Labour Day.
Minis By Willmark Phoenix Guard, the silent guardians of the Flames of Asuryan, and the bearers of the secrets of the ages (like how they weave the flaming lava pattern into their capes). These boys are a much better deal than many have complained about – they cause fear, so they have a consistent bonus to their combat resolution now, and don’t need to worry about the autobreak, they have a really awesome ward save and are decent fighters. What does this mean to us – not much really, what we do to Swordmasters or White Lions is what we need to do to the Phoenix Guard – reduce their numbers prior to combat then send in a beefy unit of infantry to finish them off.
Magically, we’ve got 4 lores to choose from, and of them the Lore of Metal is of marginal use against HE due to the lack of very heavily armoured models on the other side. The unit buffs and hexes are of some use, but don’t expect to cause much in the way of damage to HE with the Lore of Metal. Also, bear in mind that the damage spells are considered to be fire based, so the Dragon Princes are immune. Fire magic has a better chance of hurting high elves, but I’d probably go for the Lore of Shadow. The unit buffs available to you are good, and the hexes that can be applied to them are definitely worth it – especially if you can reduce the initiative of Swordmasters or White Lions down, you might even stand a chance of going first (probably not, but it’s worth a shot). I would strongly urge you to consider giving one of our sorcerers the Chalice of Darkness. It will come into it’s own during our magic phase, but can still be useful in theirs – provided you’ve got something up your lamellar sleeves to boost your Dispel dice pool (say one of the Obsidian amulets). Tactically, the basic mantra of having beefy ranked infantry units, some
some capable
The oddball unit found in the rare units is the Giant Eagle. Able to do what fast cavalry do, but faster due to flight these have been fairly common in the past, and we’ll probably start seeing flocks of the birds leaving all sorts of messes on the statues. These fliers are a threat to war machines, and as march blockers, but are not effective against ranked infantry due to their unit size (single model). The extreme mobility of these flyers is the problem, but the solution is simple – shooting with archers to remove the threat. The final unit to look at is what can be the biggest threat to us, the Eagle Bolt Thrower. Capable of shooting one bolt and penetrating multiple ranks or shooting six bolts without penalty for multi-shot with a better than average ballistic skill these war machines are the bane of ranked units everywhere. These need to be shut down ASAP, Wolfriders or earthshakers are your best bets to do so, but for Hashut’s sake, do it fast.
Minis By Willmark
Issue 9- The Word of Hashut– 99