[AL]Wood Elves

[Aldhick]

I really don't understand the wood problem. You are saying it is overpowered for we to be able to easily hide two quarters of your army into woods where only thing it can do beside standing a watching is to shoo 30 cm with som of their units? In my eyes and experience, now rhe opponent has olmost whole army to deal wit the rest of the we army easily. And payin for woods with whole units would mean no one would ever take them. The we are already suffer from being small in numbers of units.

I think the main problem is one of boredom, and not being a fun force to play against. Fantasy Wood Elves had a bit of the same problem.
Basically, if the Wood Elves bunker in a forest you can't hurt them easily, they may be able to do some opportunistic sacrificial chargers, but for the most part the players stand and stare at each other while the models don't move. If the non-WE player gets bored and attempts to take the wood, they probably lose the game.
The fact that the wood elf player gets to place the forest makes them very different to regular terrain.

You are right... but that was the initial ideological WE problem when we started messing with the list... This is basic WE trait... if you strip it from them making it regular WM army, you would get disagreement from all dedicated WE players as they would be WE no longer fluff-wise.
  Please note that this "hide and seek" problem was radically diminished compared to the original Trial army list and there are now ways how to play them offensively.

[Geep]

I absolutely agree it's always a likely issue due to their intended guerrilla warfare nature, and I agree it's an improvement from the last list. I'm also all for them keeping something like their current abilities as it fits their flavour. There may need to be more discouragement though from the bunker approach into using some of that movement they have.
The mis-sized forest was definitely an issue in the earlier battle, but I don't know if that alone caused the above problem. It probably doesn't help that the player was experienced with the previous list, where the bunker was a greater issue- but it's a problem that it worked so well here regardless.

[Leonida]

@Aldhick
This army list at the moment seems to me a good compromise between playability and the peculiar characteristics of WE. Already tested twice from the exit, but never victory, (tomorrow afternoon test battle against Albion ..) But despite everything, but I appreciate it and I love it, because it represents very well the essences and difficulties of play of the WE. Thank you

[Leonida]

So: I come back now from my club, where I just faced 2000 pts Albion with my We 2000pts. I was defeated (three Feanbeast summoned two of which killed) But despite the defeat I had fun. Thank you

[Dark Omen]

ORIGINALLY POSTED BY empireaddict;

…."I set up the terrain (desert themed) with everything (apart from the hills) being impassable.  Barry swapped 60 points worth of Wardancers and placed two 16x16cm square woods.  I suppose I could have insisted on him trimming the corners, but even round woods with a 16cm diameter are still pretty big woods.  Anyway, they started 12cm apart but later moved closer together due to the Tree-singing spell.  He placed them next to the impassable terrain because the rule specifies dense terrain, ie. woods, village.  But even if he had kept them away from the impassable terrain, it wouldn't have changed the basic dynamic of the game which was all his infantry with defended status and (spoiler alert) me unable to do anything about it."....

These woods were too big! The rules clearly state that the Wood Elf army's chosen woods cannot be larger than 16 cm in any dimension. This means the biggest the woods can be is a 16 cm diameter circle. Your woods were 22.6 cm across the diagonals! Naughty naughty!

[empireaddict]

Played Barry again this week and my Wood Elf proxies lost the game.  Barry's Empire were 0.5 from break when that happened.  Set up my two woods for 60 points (each much less than 16cm diagonally) in good pillbox positions.  Took out all his artillery on the second attempt with my Warhawk Riders.  Before that I had reduced the effectiveness of artillery on hill by moving woods in front of them.  Stalemate.  He had nothing to dig me out of the woods and I had no incentive to exit them.  So, having driven a couple of hours to play the game against him, I decided to go out and attack him because otherwise it would be a really dull evening.  My units with Ogre and Orc Warrior prices/stats (no terror) did pretty well against Empire infantry and my attack left him clinging on by a thread.  But Barry is a really good player and threw everything at my troops (some of whom were now in the open) and managed a victory by the narrowest of margins.

This is the first time I have played with the new WEs.  It is probably also going to be my last.  And this is the end of my commenting on this thread.  For the reasons why, I refer readers to these comments and my previous ones.

[Geep]

Excessively pillboxing Wood Elves is likely, and a problem in that it kills the fun of the game.
It may be a good idea to add incentive for enemy movement into the base rules. I know it's yet another special rule, but it was added as a balancing factor in pre-book 6th ed Fantasy Wood Elves and seemed to work. My suggestion for Warmaster would be something similar to:

Enemy units score VPs equal to their points if they end the game within 20cm of the Wood Elf's table edge.

Elves being static? Ignore them- march as much as you can into a far corner and if the game gets called you'll win. That won't be a fun ending- but hopefully that's then enough incentive for the Elves to come out and engage your army (and therefore result in a fun game).

[GrumpyOldMan]

Maybe a 'Napalm' rule 

[Geep]

It's probably also worth noting that ANY army can pillbox in woods if the terrain happens to be favourable- so this isn't purely a WE problem.

Possible alternatives should probably revolve around ease of perfect wood placement, or the escalating benefit of multiple forests.
Some examples:
-An "I place, you place' system. The WE player would place the first forest they've bought, the opponent gets to place the second, the WE player the third, and so on. All must be placed in the WE board half.

-Post-placement scatter- as it sounds, after all bought forests are placed scatter them 4D6cm in a random direction. They stop if the hit other terrain, a board edge, etc. You may want to let them cross the half-way line, and could have an 'annihilation' possibility- A forest hitting another forest removes it from the board, with no compensation (or opponent places as they want anywhere then scatters). It'd discourage over-foresting a table and placing bought forests too close to each other.

-Scaling cost. Each forest costs the sacrifice of a number of Wardancer stands equal to the number of forests already on the board. Ie. placing 1 forest on a bare board costs 1 stand, a second forest costs 2, etc.