If you controlled Wood Elves and Brettonians.

[Thornblood]

To Further Wildeybeasts very interesting points in a different thread I would like to know how you would fix Wood Elves and Brettonnians.

As pointed out skirmishers, elite units, an cavalry are pretty weak in 8th.

Whilst big units (lots of infantry, monstrous infantry and monsters) are very strong.


My few ideas would be more of 'buffing' armies for the two factions. Heroes that make units stronger so they can hold their own against the tough stuff.

E.g. an evil brettonian baron practised at peasant slaughtering and picking on the little guys. Maybe as a Knights of the realm upgrade and makes the unit good at killing massed infantry?

Quests for heroes? So beast-slayer quests buff the unit? Character slayer quests (killing blow even against monstrous infantry types)?

Lance formation can be made more deadly.

Maybe some good incentive to take loads of men-at-arms, grail pilgrims, and bowmen?

As for wood-elves a good incentive for tonnes of archers and maybe some new monstrous infantry. Maybe something more imaginative than just dead wood re-animated? Looking at forest floor creatures the obvious predators are some kind of large cats but maybe world of warcraft did that to death? Packs of oversized Jaguars as monstrous cavalry? Pigs are fond of the forest floor so maybe a breed of oversized boar/warthogs that the orc pigs are descended from. Maybe black-tusk the one Sigmar killed was the father of these brutal beasts? In fact maybe the same goes for the cats and sabre-tusks are long removed descendants of much larger original pureblood cat species prowling the forests of Athel Loren? Bears feel a little overused and not fresh enough to me. On the other hand maybe there are more original monsters to be created. Maybe the big forest monsters can wear bone-armour?

These are my kick-off thoughts anyway. What do people think?

[CrimsonTurkey]

Historically speaking, knights in a lance formation were often used to break infantry formations. Because of the greater penetration into the enemy regiment panic would also set in more quickly. I think that lance formations should remove some rank bonuses on the charge.

[HaleysRedComet]

Big fan of the lance negating the rank bonus. Though I think that the steadfast rule hurts Brets more I think. I have noticed that it has become much harder to make the enemy run on the first charge. I always have to get them with a second charge before they run in eigth ed.

[Thornblood]

Good mechanic.

Maybe just that Lance negates the Horde rule?

[Kaiserdean]

To fix Wood Elves, you could go a couple of different ways...

The rules for big blocks of hoard troops are one of the elements that many WE players find it difficult to compete against. The WE one has archers that can feasibly take advantage of that rule and it's not really to their benefit. I haven't crunched the numbers, but HE seem to do this better.

To address this, WEs can have more (core) units that can adopt a hoard formation, armed with spears, sword and shied, two hand weapons, or great weapons. I think glade guard should have a couple of options other than just bow and arrow. Even HE have mixed bow and spear units and I think WE could have this as well.

Another option is to have a new rule that negates hoard or rank bonuses. Perhaps WE don't need extra ranks to negate an opponent's rank bonus when attacking on the flank or rear. Another idea is that WEs can create flank units out of their parent units, like every army could do in previous editions after winning a round of close combat.

WEs are over priced. Lower the cost of just about everything in the book, especially cav.

WE magic is fairly limited. In addition to making a more competitive WE only magic list, I'd give them access to Beast, Life, Light and Shadow.

I don't mind the dryads right now, but I would get rid of the vulnerability to magic (same for the treekin) and give them the option to rank up instead of being skirmishers.

Since Dark and High elves have pretty powerful rules in Always Strike First and Hatred, I think the WE need something too. Perhaps the army could gain a feigned flight rule (even models on foot) or the entire army can rally, even if below 25%. Another idea is that the army gets a "first round frenzy" rule where they get a bonus attack in the first round of combat but are not subject to the penalties of regular frenzy.

I'd give Wardancers the "Shadows Coil" dance back to end combat as a stall maneuver. I know that's powerful but giants still have yell and bawl.

The current list doesn't have any "warmachines" or even chariots. Some sort of ambushing style warmachines like spiked logs swinging out of the the woods would make since thematically, but might be difficult to draft rules for. Personally, I don't think chariots or bolt throwers are too far out of character for the WEs, but catapults, cannons, and mortars don't fit in at all.

A lot of players like big monsters and every list seems to have one or two in their army. Tomb Kings have a decent list of models on chariot bases, like the Necropolis Knights / Sepulchral Stalkers, that fit into the special selection and have multiple attacks/special rule. A new mid-level monster rider wouldn't break the theme of the army or be totally out of line. Imagine a WE riding a wyrm or bear into combat.

Just my two cents.

[Wildeybeast]

The question should be, 'how to fix them without losing their unique character?' Having looked at the meta game, I'm honestly not sure they can and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get updated until the next edition of the rules. I don;t know much about how Brets play, but as WE player I have a few opinions. Firstly, I don't want big blocks of troops. WE are about, small hard hitting but fragile units and that's how they should stay. But that is cack in the meta game as you can't break big units quickly enough and you get swamped, so they need rules help. So here are my thoughts.

Archers: Always fire on unmodified BS, same as TK, and glade guard longbows for eveyone (especially my BSB - why can't he have a bow?)

Something a bit like beastmen ambush rules (as we are supposed to be the stealth ninjas of the world)

Some funky new forest spirits

Proper magic lore, ideally something that affects terrain and shooting a bit more.

Since we can't beak big units in comabt, we need extra protection in the form of more ward saves or the abiltiy to get out of combat - give more units the hit and run rule from the warhawk riders

MEGA TREEMAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and finecasting all that crappy metal stuff would be nice.

Though I'm not sure even all that would fix them. I think I'd rather be left to languish and done properly next ed than have a complete image transplant.

[NonComPoop]

I'd give bretonians, and really all heavy cavalry, impact hits on the turn they charge as well I'd make it so no unit may claim stubborn on the turn the bretonians charge.
they also need to make the man at arms regiments more usefull, perhaps making them unbreakable if a knight regiment is within 6" of them or something.

For Wood elves the issue seems to me to be that nobody had an army structured to work within the current eddition. They can field large infantry blocks supported by archers and nasty skirmishers, it's just that everybody created the mobile, weedy, shooty army that you could never get to grips with, and when you did you hit a wall of very fragile/ very killy skirmishers. That is an army structure that absolutely has to kill the fighting rank of anything they come to blows with...which 8th ed. more or less did away with. Points cost does need to come down on thier core regiments to make larger regiments more fesible.
They should also give tree-kin and treemen the ability to hurl stones as well to fill the artillery gap.

just my 2 cents Canadian...that's about 1 and 3/4 cents American

[Derkus]

Wow! I am glad you guys aren't in charge!

Just messin with you. Some pretty good ideas in there, I think the best fixes for both armies would be pretty simple. Both are out of date enough that some cost modifications would be in order.

For Brets, I think making men at arms hordes more of a mainstay easily counters the opposing infantry blocks and adding some foot knights for a hammer would be good also, otherwise tweaks here and there to bring magic and abilities in line with 8th should do the trick.

Wood elves should get some Core block troops (glade guard with spears for instance) so they have viable block options, and then something as simple as allowing their skirmishers to have a rank bonus (or similar) to allow skirmishers to compete, and of course, update magic and items and so forth to be in line with 8th.

Anyway, to me by keeping the changes fairly simple you stand a far better chance of keeping the army flavor. I'd hate to see either loose their character.

[Derkus]

I'd give bretonians, and really all heavy cavalry, impact hits on the turn they charge as well I'd make it so no unit may claim stubborn on the turn the bretonians charge.

I like this but I would make it Stomp on the turn they charge so they can hit, then trample stuff. would go a long way towards combat res against infantry, but not other unit types (so it is effective where it is needed, and where it makes sense).

[Wildeybeast]

Wood elves should get some Core block troops (glade guard with spears for instance) so they have viable block options, and then something as simple as allowing their skirmishers to have a rank bonus (or similar) to allow skirmishers to compete, and of course, update magic and items and so forth to be in line with 8th.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this really wouldn't work. You already have eternal gaurd who fill this role, but they are over costed and have no armour save, so any opponent worthy of the name will kil them first. And you still have the issue that, with the exception of dryads, treekin and archers, everything else is useless. What do you with wardancers for example? The obvious answer is make them big blocks of infantry, not skirmishers, but then they lose their charcter fluff wise. You keep coming back to the problem that the way to fix WE is to have big blocks of troops, supported by archers with a few small elite units. Just like every other army. Acoording to eldargal, the rumours are that the guys in the studio are hitting the same stumbling block, which is why no one has picked up Brets or WE. I honestly don't think they considered the impact 8th ed would have on these armies, nor indeed did they fully forsee quite how the meta game would work out.