Sword Masters and Lore of Life

[MRC(+)]

I am new to WFB, so posting this to bounce it off more veteran players.

It seems as if Sword Masters are the unit par excellence of the current HE Army Book, so I have been thinking about how to employ them and minimize their weaknesses.

As I see it, their durability is their primary weakness and their mobility is their secondary weakness.

Looking through the different Lores, the Lore of Life seems to be what Sword Masters might need.

I am thinking of leading them with an Archmage (Lvl 3) with Lore of Life and the Seer Staff of Saphery. The best case scenario is if I can get Throne of Vines and Flesh to Stone successfully casted... then I have T7 Swordmasters for a turn... vast majority of attacks will be wounding them on a 6+ only. That leaves me with one more spell, which would be Earthblood...T7 Sword Masters Regerating on a 4+ is pretty tough, I believe.

I am still not sure about the mobility issue, but I guess if they are survivable enough, they can march 10" accross the board until they get within charging distance.

Another option, though expensive and perhaps a bit beardy, is to use Teclis with Lore of Life and 20+ Swordmasters.

Thoughts or advice appreciated

[Image]

Depending on what you're fighting (primarily higher toughness, higher armour save models), White Lions have slightly better output, so I would consider them to be on par with Swordmasters, personally. Both are solid choices, each suffering from durability issues. Life is a nice sidestep of that issue.

Taking Teclis is beardy, but still an awesome choice. Simply consider a Lvl 4 Archmage with Book, however. Should give you all the spells you need with a similar amount of IF spells, but about 100 points cheaper.

[novatomato]

Yeah, I'd call Teclis with anything a little beardy with this edition.

The problem I have with Lore of Life is that (best case scenario) my opponent will dispel throne of vines leaving me with only the +2 toughness. Now that is still awesome with saurus but I find the worst case scenario happens more often, they let throne of vines go through and then they just dispel the stone skin.

the spells that really help the Sword Masters out are:
1 Lore of Life) as you have said, flesh to stone and earthblood really increase their ability to survive the inevitable mass of attacks returning to them.
2 Lore of Beasts) Wyssans Wildform, +1 to strength and toughness. This makes them S6 total! And at T4 they are quite a bit more survivable against most things they would be fighting against. The Curse of Anraheir can also help them out a lot, Sword Masters are WS 6 so casting this on the unit they are fighting will generally see them hitting on 6's, 5's at the very worst for you.
3 Lore of Metal) The Glittering Robe is quite good with these guys for a total of a 3+ armour save. Also the Enchanted Blades will allow them to on twos mostly, coupled with Transmutation of Lead it is almost a guarantee. The Plague of Rust is also worth mentioning as normally Sword Masters only have a -2 to AS, against heavy infantry it still allows them an armour save of 5+ or 6+, against some heavy cavalry you are still looking at 3+ or 4+ to armour, so the plague helps as many wounds as possible to go through.
4 Lore of Light) Phas Protection, a -1 to hit the sword masters is nice. Speed of Battle, WS10 and I10 you will always be getting that re-roll for higher initiative but against a lot of units this spell really doesn't make a difference. Bironas Timewarp, 3 attacks per sword master in the front rank? damn that is solid, the double movement is very useful as well but you already have ASF so that part of the spell is pretty null.
5 Lore of Heavens) Harmonic Convergence, this little beauty allows you to re-roll to hit, to wound and armour save rolls of 1, not that great but still decent with the number of attacks you'll be putting out (and the number of attacks coming back at you). Curse of the midnight wind makes the enemy unit re roll to hit, to wound adn armour save rolls of 6, once again not that bad but there are better options. The signature spell, Iceshard Blizzard, is another one of those -1 to hit spells but also conveys a -1 to leadership. All in all if all three of these goes off you are looking at a 3+ re rollable to hit, a 3+ or even 2+ to wound with all the ones being re rolled and the enemy having to re roll those 6's to save, which is quite likely to be the only save possible for a lot of units, then the enemy will be hitting on 5's or even 6's and they have to re-roll those 6's!
6 Lore of Shadow) This lore is packed with useful stuff! Okhams Mind Razor for S8 Sword Masters. MMM can reduce a highly skilled or fast opponents WS or I by d3, (or even both with the powered up version at a measly 10+ to cast). The enfeebling foe does the same thing but with strength meaning it is harder for them to wound your Sword Masters AND your Sword Masters will likely get their armour save as well. The withering reduces toughness, in the same manner allowing even more of your hits to get through.
7 Lore of Death) the combination of Aspect of the Dreadknight, and Doom and Darkness, for a fear check at -3 is not bad. Soul Blight reduces an enemies strength and toughness by 1.

So, the moral of the story? I dunno which is best but there are a lot of options and quite a few combinations that people will not expect.

That was pretty long winded, sorry about that but I hope it helped even if just a little.

[addamsfamily36]

Now this is my kind of topic :D

if its one thing i know about its high elves, magic and swordmasters.


Firstly, you are absolutely right, lore of life is one of if not the best way of keeping a swordmaster unit alive.

toughness 7 is amazing if you can cast both spells.

likewise with the regeneration spell.

but its pulling off a combination of 2 -3 spells with one mage. Remember if you fail to cast a spell, you cannot cast anything else with that individual spell caster.

a great solution to this is to use teclis ( i never have apart from once as a play test, and lets jsut say the results of the magic phase were horrific to my opponent)

he truly is beardy in the current addition and i love that, but he doesn't fit in with my personal armies theme. But for you, he might be perfect. his ability to cast spells is amazing. being a high level he can use fewer dice to achieve the higher casting values. he gains extra dice etc etc. he is also great for ignoring his first miscast every turn.

and this is one of the biggest points i want to come to. You said you would run a unit of swordmaster with a mage........my advice DON"T

if that level 3 mage miscasts, and i assure you he will. you can say bye bye to your swordmaster unit on numerous occasions. Exploding mages has become a big problem for units that support them. swordmasters are expensive and i have seen several high elf rookies, lose half or more of their elite units to exploding mages.


hope some of this helps.

if you have any questions, please ask away.

[novatomato]

I am going to reiterate Mr. addamsfamily36.

Your mage should go in a unit of the cheapest, but still useful, unit you can buy. For High Elves this is Seaguard or Archers.

He also needs support in casting those spells, a level two and a level three with same lore guarantee you get all the spells you want and a combination of lores can provide deific level results

[addamsfamily36]

I am going to reiterate Mr. addamsfamily36.

Your mage should go in a unit of the cheapest, but still useful, unit you can buy. For High Elves this is Seaguard or Archers.

He also needs support in casting those spells, a level two and a level three with same lore guarantee you get all the spells you want and a combination of lores can provide deific level results

Firstly read my post again.

I said not in ELITE unit's. phoenix guard are possibly the only unit i would risk putting a mage in that is elite.

teclis i would happily place in most units, as the risk is reduced.

as for placing in seaguard or spearmen:

yes
done it before
will probably do it again

but note that a character standing next to a unit of a certain size gains "look out sir", and there are now many items, spells, and snipers (empire), that can single out toughness 3 elves that the unit "protection" isn't as great as it used to be, so i stand by opinion.

I would prefer to have a mage not explode in any of my units. Be they sword masters or spearmen. i will run the risk for make or break situations or if i must. But i find keeping them out of a unit both versatile, and beneficial to preventing unit loss through miscasting.


As to supporting mages, yes if you want to go magic heavy. I don't know what other characters the OP wanted, so i only gave advice on one spell caster.

as to backing up teclis, thats fine. The other two could take shadow( or another lore), and yes thats a potent mix shadow and life ( one that iv'e also run before) but with a maximum of 12 dice at any one time, i would prefer to save dice for teclis knowing i have a much greater chance of casting. i would back him up, perhaps, with one mage, with seer staff , but not two mages. Stretching dice across three mages reduces your ability to pull off the higher, and more potent spells. something i find teclis does extremely well on his own.

[novatomato]

Firstly, have read your post again and still stand by my points.
Secondly, perhaps my own post was somewhat ambiguous so I will clarify.

Your regular mages should be placed in some smallish (around twenty) unit. Not only because of miscasts damaging vital units but because it must have some protection from the plenty of fast paced units out there that will gladly take advantage of a single lone mage. My terradon riders would love you to place your mage on his own, or my chameleon skinks might shoot at him instead. a 4+ LOS roll is not all that good

When referring to back up I was referring to the original posters level 3 archmage not Teclis. Teclis can do just fine on his own the little piece of bearded limburger.

[addamsfamily36]

hmmm

we are probably going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

I, means i play two types of high elf armies.

One is my alith anar list with two level 2 mages, swordmasters, 30 seaguard, two lion chariots, and shadow warriors. (this is more a themed list will eventually sculpt the chariots into wolves etc etc - basing the army on the shadow king book.)

in this army i cannot afford to place the mages in any of the larger units for the risk of miscasting. I do place them in units depending on opponent, i.e if they have scouts etc. But i will try and keep them out of units if i can, and i avoid elite units like the plague.

But yes totally agree if you have a small cheap unit to put them in then yeh, we can agree on that lol.

no hard feelings i hope.

and yeh teclis = a beard so long a dwarf would be jealous.

[novatomato]

hey this is the internet, if I was capable of taking offense from anything on a forum I probably shouldn't be using the internet in the first place.

Quite interested to see that list further, I personally can see it fairing quite well in all but Blood and Glory battles but in order to not derail this thread I will wait to see the threads showing your conversion work etc.


Back on topic, Lore of Life buffs are great IF you can get that throne of vines off AND the buff spell, otherwise they are still decent but I might try some other options.
In all honesty I think the best spells to protect the SM are going to be the ones that make the enemy hit less, an increase (or decrease hex) to weapon skill and/or the -1 to hit spells are the primary ones I'd go for.
Secondly would be increasing their Toughness or decreasing the enemies Strength
Third would be a ward/regen save, and lastly would be an increase in AS

So to (finally for me after three long posts) answer the posters question, Id say the three best Lores would be;
1. Shadow (lots of great hexex)
2. Light (combo of increased WS and -1 to hit is just golden)
3. Life. (Increased T and Regen are handy, the 'powered up' version would handily come in first but I never get it so I base this on the regular version)
the rest of the Lores I mentioned above would all fall in a jumbled shapeless heap tied up in fourth

[addamsfamily36]

hey this is the internet, if I was capable of taking offense from anything on a forum I probably shouldn't be using the internet in the first place.


lol just thought i would check. I usually keep calm, and most of my posts are friendly, but my first post ever on the site....wow huge backlash which was unintended. Since then i'm cautious about causing insult. :D


Quite interested to see that list further, I personally can see it fairing quite well in all but Blood and Glory battles but in order to not derail this thread I will wait to see the threads showing your conversion work etc.


It's not a terrible list, its more those are the units i like fluff wise, and ran them before 8th and before i read shadow king. Since reading shadow king im going to use the rules for those units, but models them to have a more shadow feel as well as write fluff and background that explains why (cloaked guys with swords) are effectively assassins aka swordmasters. But yes, i'll sed you a private message at some point with the army list. and later down the line (could be awhile) i'll probably start a blog/post that shows the conversions etc and ill link you to that.

As to spells, i was down my local GW tonight actualy and had a fantastic victory against some dark elves.

Managed to get Okmand mindrazor off 4 times!! with my level 2, making my 30 strong lothern seaguard unit strength 8. killed 25 corsairs in one round of combat. I also combined this with the basic spell thats 5+ to cast and alters a characteristic by d3.

It meant his blackguard always strikes first unit hit on 4's against my strength 8 seaguard. both units effectively wiped each other out. But by then he had nothing left i still had alith anar, a full unit of swordmasters and two shadow warrior units.
:D


1. Shadow (lots of great hexex)
2. Light (combo of increased WS and -1 to hit is just golden)
3. Life. (Increased T and Regen are handy, the 'powered up' version would handily come in first but I never get it so I base this on the regular version)
the rest of the Lores I mentioned above would all fall in a jumbled shapeless heap tied up in fourth

I would personally take life before light, but thats a personal preference. Also High magic is extremely effective to. 5+ ward and flames of the phoenix are two of my all time favourites :D

But other than that yeh i agree.

[Drachenprinzen]

I too am trying my hand at giving more survivability to my Swordmasters. I'm fooling around with the notion of two mages using life, one having the seerstaff and giving him throne of vines and regrowth, and the other hoping for toughness and whatever else finds me.
One thing I think some failed to notice is that throne of vines is a remain in play spell. So, until that miscast, it stays in play boosting other spells.
Also, remember that upon every successful cast in lore of life, a unit within 12" regenerates one wound previously dealt to a unit (hey look! that arrow through his neck doesnt seem to bother him!).

[novatomato]

the wound per spell is not for a unit it is for models, so characters, monstrous infantry, monsters etc. You can not bring someone back from the dead with the lore attribute

[Drachenprinzen]

My bad, thanks for the clarification.

[novatomato]

no worries. ;)