Don't Panic!

[All-Terrain Monkey]

I've been kicking around the boards today and have been noticing a lot of alarm over the changes to Archery. Back in November in the Elven tactics thread I warned about relying on groups of archers to rule the day, solely from the fact that, when you look at the game from a tactical standpoint, all archer forces were already going to go by the wayside.

 

Warlord has always been designed as a paper/rock/scissor system, and before we only had two of the three. Archers were supposed to be good against melee, melee against cavalry, and cavalry against archers. With the faction books coming out and large cavalry options for many factions a person playing an all archer force was pretty much going to be hurting no matter what.

 

And, even without Cavalry, once people got used to the Warlord mindset all-archer forces were already being circumvented by tactics and army composition choices.

 

So, general armies aside, what about my own beloved Elves? What can they do in this strange new world? How will they ever fight back the forces of evil?

 

Pretty much what I've said before; combined arms is the way to go. Take a mage, archers, and melee with every force. One way to defend against archers is to group together, and one way to defend against mages is to spread out; deny your opponent easy tactical decisions.

 

Throw your Vale Guard into the melee mix unhesitantly, but don't attack. Fire arrows into close combat with impunity (which is always been the Elven forte) and use the frontliners to coup-de-grace.

 

Use small volleys to get at protected models or to hit models you normally could not (remember, you do not need 5 archers to volley, you only have to meet the # of attacks requirement under the Elven Special Abilities chart). Learn your opponent's armies to determine who best to take out first. Buy musicians to further give you the speed advantage. Focus on one portion of the opposing force at a time instead of spreading yours out. My usual battle strategy is the same; Round 1, kill the casters: Round 2, if casters are still alive, see Round 1.

 

Elves already have a huge advantage with leaders who can fulfill multiple roles; plan your troop choices accordingly. Danithal was corrected to a mage 2/4; see what it's like having a melee warlord cast fireball a few times. Selwyn, Niriodel, and Meridh all have archery as well as melee and casting. Ardynn is a mini-warlord in his own right; give him Greater Magic Empowerment to boost his casting and melee. Try on some Deathseekers to see what adding a melee punch to your ranged mixup is like.

 

And, who knows. Maybe the Elven faction book will have plenty of surprises to ensure the Elves have one of the best mixup of abilities in Taltos.

[spiritual_exorcist]

That being said, I like (or should I say LIKED) the Warlord system specifically because you could build nearly any sort of army you wanted, with any sort of emphasis you wanted as well.

 

Sure a combined arms force is going to be the most well rounded, but the option of going very melee, ranged, or cavalry heavy was something I found very exciting.

 

How fair is it for Reaper to make such a huge and drastic change to the dynamic of various armies when players could have already invested ALOT of money in creating the force they want.

 

If I had 20 Elven archers that I could have previously fielded in an army of 1000 points I don't really feel it is fair for you to tell me, Geee, now you can only field all those minis you bought if you buy even more minis and field a 2000 point army instead.

 

Poorly thought through by Reaper in my opinion, they've possibly alienated a number of their customers. I don't happen to be one of them, but I can still see how this change would really hurt someone.

[spiritual_exorcist]

Keep in mind, I love this game. I'm just disappointed because I don't think it was the correct decision. I'll still support Warlord, and Reaper, and this change doesn't affect me personally; but it is a little heartbreaking for someone who has put time and effort and money into supporting the game.

[Hoarfrost]

Warlord has always been designed as a paper/rock/scissor system, and before we only had two of the three.  Archers were supposed to be good against melee, melee against cavalry, and cavalry against archers.

 

Errr...

 

But with all archers suddently being adept, you have - using your analogy - severly limited the use of paper, thus making it much more viable to take rock every time, and making it rather pointless to take scissors...

[Gus Landt]

But with all archers suddently being adept, you have - using your analogy - severly limited the use of paper, thus making it much more viable to take rock every time, and making it rather pointless to take scissors..

Perhaps in some games, like 1500 point games.

I have three thoughts.

 

1) Looking at the army building rules for the Reaper tourneys (750 points, 2 troops max), the tourney type games wouldn't be too affected.

 

2) It seems to me Reaper wants to make warlord a melee game. All archers are adepts, and the only cavalry we have seen (Necro Deathriders) are also adepts.

I personally am in favor of this, as I find the melee stuff more exciting. Watching all my troops get mowed down by archers before I get to roll a single die is NOT exciting. Getting into the thick of things and being able to roll attacks whether or not I'm the one who did the attacking (defensive strikes) IS exciting.

 

3) On the other hand, there are no scissors in the game. No army has a single scissor to charge against all those pieces of paper. Even with a unit of them being included in each army faction book, some armies won't have faction books for next next 2 years!

[Hoarfrost]

2) It seems to me Reaper wants to make warlord a melee game.

Fine with me, as long as it doesn't turn into that other Fantasy TTG from France. Every single game of *that* I've ever seen or played usually consisted of everybody rushing to the centre of the table, then have one big melee for the rest of the game.

Rock sure is great, but paper and scissors make the rocks *maneuver*. And there's the whole fun for me, flanking and feinting and stuff...

 

3) On the other hand, there are no scissors in the game.

Err - Overlords, Onyx Chevalier? First one that comes to mind, and I could swear there's more even in the basic rulebook...

[All-Terrain Monkey]

In the core book you only see the Chevalier and Centaurs off of the top of my head, and even still those are solos and not units of cavalry.

 

And, while being adept limits the scissors, even 10 archers in a force can easily hit 25-33% of the total point cost of the army.

[Hoarfrost]

In the core book you only see the Chevalier and Centaurs off of the top of my head, and even still those are solos and not units of cavalry.

Could well be - I don't have my rulebook at work, so I'll take your word for it.

 

And, while being adept limits the scissors, even 10 archers in a force can easily hit 25-33% of the total point cost of the army.

Actually, I'm not so much concerned with the limited number of archers I can take when all archers become adept, but with the fact that now, I'll have to lump all my ranged combat assets into one activation. I've had some good success augmenting my Dwarf Warrior troops with a few Piercers, spreading out my shooting over 2-3 activations, and that's something that's not going to happen anymore under the new rules. Unless the army books also see more missile units introduced for each faction.

[Reaperbryan]

Another point - a lot of are looking at this as if you can only have 1 troop of archers period.

 

Us Reven get 2 - Skeeters as adepts and Bull Orc Archers as adepts. So I have 2 troops of shooty goodness, whereas even when the Beastriders are out, I have only 1 troop of Cavalry goodness.

 

Other armies, may get with their faction book more than 2 types of archers on the board, and some will get more than one type of cavalry.

 

Necropolis, as we can see, got a great share of mages, but not so much archery and cavalry. There's already a Crusader thread about how much mobility and cavalry goodness they'll get.

 

The idea here is to give each army its own flavor and its own feel. Inthe core book, we had to make each army viable, and a viable army list *must* have certain models on it to select from. Now that those are out of the way, we can focus more on what makes you army play and feel different from the others.

 

By way of comparison, even though Reven already have 2 Ranged Adept units, we don't get any more in the faction book. We may have more shooty now, but in the long run, we certainly won't have as much shooty as the elves or Nefsokar. And we have far less Cavalry than, say, Overlords and Crusaders. And less Magic than Necropolis. But we are Badaxes on Paper!

[Hoarfrost]

But we are Badaxes on Paper!

 

Don't you mean Rock?

 

Paper=Archers, Rock=Infantry, Scissors=Cavalry, innit?

[Reaperbryan]

Yeah, but Badaxes on Rock wasn't as Punny.

[Inquisitor]

Yes but twill Razig become official,and will there be more models for him...*poke with stick*

[toy soldier mick]

I'm fine with limiting archers - but I'll really miss the "combat party" feel of being able to take units that were mixed between shieldmen, beserkers, halberdiers and crossbows. It was a very unique feel compared to all the other miniature games I've played.

 

(First several games my units were pretty specialized, and always stood in formation. Boy did I learn quick! One Fireball and I was saying: man - reach and trencher sucks until the casters are dead!)

 

I'd rather see adepts limited to 10 models per army instead of one unit. But I can definately see the simplicity of the current rules...

[ladystorm]

will Razig become official,and will there be more models for him...

Official Answer: Razig's Revenge as a faction is as official as every other faction published by Reaper in the Rule Book, any Casketworks, or on ReaperGames.com.

 

Non-Official Commentary: I believe more models are indeed in the works.

[Qwyksilver]

Skeeters lose their adept status in an all Reven army. Is this going to change in the future. I noticed on the 2nd printing, they still kept this status (p 112). Not that I want to hose myself, but is this fair to the other armies?

 

Granted they are also a little pricey, so maybe that's the balance.