West Coast Qualifier: Army List

For the West Coast qualifier, I was playing my Wood Elves. Wood Elves are one of my favorite armies, but for years they had problems competing in tournament environments. With the addition of the latest book, however, Wood Elves have gained some serious muscle.

Here is the list I went with, including cost for each unit in Swedish Comp:

• Spellweaver (General, Level 4, Lore of Heavens, Elven Steed, Feedback Scroll, Talisman of Preservation, Warrior Bane (-31 Swedish Comp))
• Glade Captain (Battle Standard Bearer, Elven Steed, Hail of Doom Arrow, Dragon Helm, Luckstone, Great Weapon, Starfire Shafts, Shield (-17 Swedish Comp))
• Spellsinger (Level 2, Lore of Metal, Channeling Staff, Ruby Ring of Ruin (-8 Swedish Comp))
• Branchwraith (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Branchwraith (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Branchwraith (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Glade Guard (10 models, Trueflight Arrows, Musician) (-7 Swedish Comp)
• Glade Guard (10 models, Trueflight Arrows, Musician) (-7 Swedish Comp)
• Glade Guard (10 models, Starfire Shafts, Musician) (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Glade Guard (10 models, Arcane Bodkins, Musician) (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Dryads (12 models) (-2 Swedish Comp)
• Sisters of the Thorn (8 models, Full Command, Lichbone Pennant) (-25 Swedish Comp)
• Wild Riders (6 models) (-7 Swedish Comp)
• Wild Riders (6 models) (-10 Swedish Comp)
• Great Eagle (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Great Eagle (-5 Swedish Comp)
• Way Watchers (7 models) (-11 Swedish Comp)

Total Army Points: 2492 pts.
Total Swedish Comp: 14

Wanting to take advantage of all the power the Wood Elf book packs, I went about trying to design a list that maximized my shooting potential while still providing some serious close combat hitting potential backed up by a solid magic base. As Swedish Comp penalizes the Lore of Death and the Lore of Shadow heavily for mounted elf mages, I decided to go with the Lore of Heavens on a Level 4 Spellweaver. My hope here was to get Harmonic Convergence to re-roll “1s” with my archer core, control my opponent’s board movement with Comet of Cassandora, and destroy my opponent’s chaff with Chain Lightning.

I went with a Level 2 of Metal so that I would have something besides the small Way Watcher unit to take on 1+ armor saves. Searing Doom is a great spell to take on Chimeras and other high toughness, multi-wound, decent armor save monsters that comp well in Swedish Comp (like ridden Dragons in particular).

I chose two units of Trueflight Arrows over Hagbane so that I could deal with other shooting units like Skinks, Way Watchers, and Shades, as well as the large number of low toughness skirmishing units that are floating around the game. Anything more than 25 models of Trueflight or Hagbane arrows is a serious composition hit, so to fill out the rest of my archers I took a unit of both Arcane Bodkins and Starfire Shafts to help drop 1+ armor saves and negate regeneration saves on Chimeras and trolls.

The Branchwraiths were a key component to making sure that I had access to The Dwellers Below in games against other elves, and choosing three of them made sure that I would be getting that spell in most of my games. I also liked the aspect of having additional cheap chaff units I could throw in front of the battle line to protect my archers. At only 75 points, these guys are awesome. They can take on most other similarly pointed chaff (especially on the charge) and can force nasty frenzied units into bad overrun positions saving my archer units for another shooting phase.

The rest of the army is fairly self-explanatory. Next time, I’ll go over my three games and show how the army performed.