Beating a treeman in 800pts

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Rhakinlanthari
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Beating a treeman in 800pts

Post by Rhakinlanthari »

Hi,

my gaming group is having a league where each gaming session the army sizes go up by 100pts each time. I should also point out that the size of your army also depends on how you've gone so far on the day. The list below shows the effect of your results.

Min Army Size: 800pts
Max army size: 890pts
Massacre: +35
Win: +30
Draw: +25
Loss: +20

e.g. if you've played 2 games and with a loss in the first and a win in the second you'd have 850pts.

Anyway I need a list that will be competitive against a wood elf player who is pretty much certain to take a treeman in 800pts :evil:

Here's what I came up with, but I'd like to see if D.net can do better.

Heroes
Sorceress, Level 2, Lifetaker --- 160pts

Core
10 RXBs with shield, muso ---- 125pts
10 RXBs with shield ---- 120pts


Special
2 Cold one Chariots with spears --- 194pts

Rare
2 Repeater Bolt throwers --- 200pts

Total: 799pts.

If I end up playing some other games first I'd add the following: Tome of Furion for the sorceress, +4 crossbowmen between the units and full command to the first RXB unit (borrowed from spearelf models).

I generally like to plan an army for the minimum size with these gaming days and just increase numbers of units if my points allowance increases as opposed to completely changing my army.

I should mention too the other models I have to work with, so I don't get useless advice: Another foot sorceress, 2 nobles on foot, 5 Dark riders w/ Muso & RXbs, 20 spearelves w/ full command, 16 Corsairs w/ full command, 17 witch elves w/ banner & hag, 5 shades.
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Vorchild
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Post by Vorchild »

Well, that'll do it if you want a chance at wiping out the treeman, there's no doubt about that. That being said, you've locked yourself in tactically to sitting back and firing as your army can't do too much else. Perhaps the annoying thing will be that the wood elf player can still outshoot you in the end and staying around in the back field is still likely to play to his advantage.

Generally, the smallest table people play on is a 4x4, which at this points level makes mobility a huge asset. So, not only do you gain a constant tactical advantage, but you simply avoid the treeman and have him chase you around.

So, personally, what I'd go for in terms of a list is the L2 sorceress on a steed (with the cloak for the extra PD and the seal for defence), 2 units of 5 DR, 2 units of 5 COK, and a unit of 5 harpies (you can expand later to include command options and banners to the knights or something) and that runs you just under 800 pts. Then you simply run around the treeman and wipe out the support units instead.

EDIT: Noticed what models you have to work with - not too much there to be honest and you're likely not able to run with my idea, which makes your idea look that much better. ;)
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Post by Bounce »

Witch Elves are good against Trees as their poison can ignore their toughness. And they get massive numbers of attacks.

If you want to be really mean simply take a Hydra and Breathe fire on it.
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Post by Vorchild »

The only problem with witch elves is that they'll have a difficult time getting past the armour on the treeman (against dryads, they are pretty decent - but they'll likely get shot to pieces before they get there). For the hydra breath weapon, you'll never get past the toughness on the treeman, and the fire ability doesn't really help you with dryads.

As a point of note however, you should be thankful that he is taking the treeman rather than certain other units, like wayatchers that you simply cannot kill no matter what. ;)

I would definitely look at the corsairs as an option in the list given their resilience to missile fire.
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Post by Bounce »

Hmm, I didn't know it had an AS as well. What armour is it wearing?

I went against one once and charged it with a unit of Spearelves and Witch Elves which beat it in combat and it ran away.

I agree Witch Elves are really nasty against Dryads, in that same game I had at one point 30 attacks and ended up wiping out the unit of 10 dryads.The RBT's did well also with their higher strength punching through the wood.
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Post by Vorchild »

Treemen have a 3+ AS - its pretty harsh. Beating it in combat is a decent way to do things, but it is stubborn after all on Ld8, so its not too horrible. I saw someone bring a treeman to a 500 pt game (equivalent to warbands) and he lost it to a unit of goblins who broke it and ran it down. On the other hand, I've seen one hack away at a ranked unit until the ranked unit broke and ran, so it can go either way.
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Post by Rhakinlanthari »

I played against the woodies in a ladder type tournament one of my friends is running over several months. I thought I'd post a comment on how the game went.

I went with pretty much the list posted, but swapped the RXBs with muso for a unit of about 14 corsairs (I had 830pts for the army).

Terror caused huge problems for me - the crossbow unit with my sorceress fled from terror on turn 2 and panicked a bolt thrower crew in the process who ran off the table. The other bolt thrower shot the treeman down to 2 wounds over the next 3 turns. I could have killed it if it didn't pass a ward save on one of the shots, or if the other bolt thrower crew hadn't run off. Magic was useless for me all game.

Both chariots avoided the treeman and went for other stuff. One combined charged with some corsairs into dryads hiding in a woods in the middle of the table (really bad idea). I killed the dryads but lost the chariot moving out of the forest after combat. The corsairs got killed down to one man in the next wood elf magic phase. I didn't know tree singing could be used to damage enemies. I also didn't realise dryads were only worth 12pts each (insanely cheap for how good they are) so I ended up throwing away about ~250pts to kill ~100pts :(.

The other chariot managed to get to one of the archer lines (without the mage) and run them off the table, but it took all game to get there. Meanwhile the treeman got to my rallied unit of crossbows with sorceress and the 2nd bolt thrower and killed them both over a couple of turns.

I was down by 102 VPs at the end, which scraped in for a draw. I'd lost everything except for a chariot which was on 1 wound! In return I'd wiped out 1 squad of 12 archers, 1 squad of 8 dryads and reduced his mage (through a miscast of his :)), treeman and other unit of 12 archers to below 1/2 strength. I'd also achieved my secret objective of killing at least 1/2 the unit strength of his army which was worth 160 VPs. The way we've been doing VPs for this ladder was you only get points for killing/half killing units and you use one of the warband secret objectives.

It was the least fun of my 3 games on the day, but I was glad I got a draw against such an extreme army.
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