I struggle a lot with positioning to make that happen, though. Usually when I charge, my unit luckily destroys the enemy or makes them flee, but then, in my opponent’s next turn, that unit is left exposed and vulnerable to being charged.
Do you have any advice on how to avoid that?
The fundamental trick is to get the other player to leave their units exposed and vulnerable first. There are a few ways to do this, and you will likely need to use a combination of some or all of them to succeed.
The first is to use the terrain. For a Wood Elf army the terrain is your best friend. Other Warhammer armies typically have to work against the terrain, but Wood Elves are able to work
with the terrain instead, and Wood Elf armies have a range of tools to allow them to wield the tabletop itself as a weapon against the other army.
The most obvious terrain features to exploit are woods, but most terrain features are useful to you in one way or another, and most of your units and characters are not slowed down by any of them. Buildings provide shelter for your fragile units, and force combats into rankless duels where your combat skirmishers and characters often have the edge (just watch out for heavy combat characters like vampires, Chaos Lords and Dwarf Thanes). Difficult ground like rocks and ruins also negates rank bonus for units fighting in them and slows down ranked units moving through them, but not skirmishers like your Dryads and Wardancers. Likewise, marshes slow down opposing units that have to move through them.
All of this means that most opposing units will normally try to go around a lot of the terrain features on the table, which in turn means they will be forced to take certain routes across the table to reach where they need to get to - use that to your advantage! If you know an opposing unit has to come a certain way to avoid getting slowed down by terrain, you can exploit it by either setting up a trap along the path or avoiding it entirely and leaving the opposing unit with nothing to do when they do arrive at their destination.
The next way is to channel your opponent. As the old wisdom goes, all warfare is based on deception - appear strong where you are weak, and weak where you are strong. Think about what your opponent will want to do and where they will go, and plan around that. Some of this is going to rely on guessing your opponent's plan and capabilities, but you can also do some of the work by presenting them with obvious choices that work to your advantage. A big unit of 20 Eternal Guard bang smack in the centre of your line, for example, presents a big obvious target for your opponent to concentrate on. Similarly, the opposite approach, a big hole deliberately left in your formation, also presents an obvious place for the opposing army to commit to.
By leaving these obvious situations for your opponent to think about, you can anticipate where they will position themselves and prepare accordingly, either by leaving dangerous units without anything to fight or by setting up traps for the units you do want to fight.
The third way is with your counter-mobility units. Wood Elves have access to a range of fantastic counter-mobility units that can use a combination of speed and/or advance deployment to get into the perfect places to disrupt the opposing formation - specifically right behind them.
Like the enemies of the Necromongers, the greatest weak point of most Warhammer units is right behind them. Ranked units cannot attack directly behind them, and take at least two turns to reorient and engage a unit that is directly behind them (often exposing their rear to another unit in the process). This means that you ideally want to get lots of units behind the opposing formation as quickly as possible, and Wood Elves have an abundance of units that can do just that, either through fast movement speeds or advance deployment.
Once you have these units behind the opposing formation, they can hover close behind key opposing units to slow them down, causing other units to advance further ahead of them where they will be vulnerable and opening up holes in the opposing formation for you to exploit.
Again, you will likely need to combine all of these methods for best effect. Remember, don't think about where the opposing units are right now, think about where you want them to be in 2 or 3 turns.
Also, do you have any recommendations when it comes to choosing units? I’d love to hear your tier ranking of Wood Elf units.
Tier rankings are a red herring, especially with Wood Elves. EVERY Wood Elf unit is S-tier when played to its strengths. There are no bad options.
Case in point, I actually recommend Eternal Guard because they exemplify the ideals of the Wood Elf army, and Waywatchers because their capabilities are well worth it, but consider Glade Riders a waste of time because
they don't fit the Wood Elf ideal and require painting way too many horses.
Similarly, I actually recommend bigger units over smaller ones. MSU armies look great on paper but tend to fall apart in real tabletop conditions because their smaller units are very vulnerable to Murphy's Law, and the other side always gets a vote. A single volley of handgun fire or an above-average magic missile can often wipe out a unit of 5 Wardancers, but against a unit of 10 Wardancers it will normally still leave you with around 5 or so survivors still in a position to do something useful. Similarly, a unit of 10 Glade Guard only needs to lose three models to start panicking, and once it does panic (and it will, dice love to hit you right in the stats you think are safest) it can lead to other nearby units fleeing as well.
The real question to ask is not "What units are best" but "What can this unit do for me?" and "How does this unit fit in with other units?"
Overall, Wood Elf units can be broken down into roughly three broad categories:
Counter-mobility: units with fast movement speeds or advance deployment, best used for getting behind the other army and being annoying.
- Waywatchers
- Scouts
- Warhawk Riders
- Eagles
- Glade Riders
Fulcrums: units that can take a hit and provide a big obvious target to distract the other side and a fulcrum for you to manoeuvre your own units around.
- Eternal Guard
- Tree-kin
- Treemen and Treemen Ancients
Hammers: units that hit hard and provide your main killing power, best used by smacking them into the flanks of opposing units.
- Wardancers
- Dryads
- Wild Riders
Within these categories, no one unit is strictly better than any other. All have their own strengths and weaknesses, and all of them are fantastic when used with a good plan behind them.
Glade Guard are a category all of their own, as they're your main bread-and-butter unit and are versatile enough to perform several tasks at once. They are your main source of bulk shooting, and your only source of Strength 4 shooting, but they can also supply you with rank bonuses in combat should the situation call for it - charging a unit of ranked up Glade Guard alongside a unit of Wardancers or Dryads on the flank can potentially break the target unit in just one round of combat and give you two pursuit rolls to chase it down. While you don't necessarily want to rely on it as a Plan A (unless your Glade Guard are like mine and kill more things in melee than with shooting!), don't be afraid to send the Glade Guard in if the opportunity presents itself and the rewards outweigh the risks.
Similarly, Wood Elf characters are a category of their own as their versatility allows them to be customised to perform any of the above missions. A Waywatcher Noble can perform counter-mobility actions to a similar level to a unit of Waywatchers, while an Alter, Wild Rider or Wardancer kindred makes for a respectable hammer.
Personally, the one unit I would recommend more than anything else is a unit of 5 Scouts with a Lord's Bowman. A band of 5 Scouts is cheap enough to be fitted into just about any game size, provides excellent reconnaissance capability, and can infiltrate into just the right place to disrupt far larger forces. My Scouts have been star performers in every game, and have managed to pull whole sections of the opposing army out of position - most notably kiting two giants and about two or three mobs of Night Goblins into an irrelevant corner of the table where they chased down the Scouts and then did nothing useful for 3 whole turns as they tried to move back into position, while also having to deal with their own Fantaics that the Scouts triggered - not bad for five humble elves.
My other favourite unit I never leave home without are Warhawk Riders - I like to use 4 or 5 of them with a Wind Rider. They are the best wizard-hunters in the army (remember, Wood Elves rely on active magic defence), as they can quickly get in, drop a bunch of Strength 4 hits on the target wizard, and then get out before the wizard's friends can grind them down. But more importantly than that, their mobility and Hit-And-Run ability allows them to drop a few Strength 4 hits right where they're needed most, and the mobile combat support they can provide doing that is invaluable - a few extra Strength 4 hits from a unit of Warhawk Riders can be the difference between breaking a key combat and chasing down the opposing units, and that same combat being stalled long enough for your own units to be ground down. Don't forget to shoot their longbows at targets of opportunity too, as there is no drawback to shooting with them on the move.
The other unit you will need to consider of course is the Spellsinger on a Unicorn. You are required to take one in every Wood Elf army, so it pays to think about how you wish to utilise her.
I appreciate it.
That’s good advice. I’ll try to weaken them before charging.
I’m still trying to paint mine.
