Tuesday 6 May 2014

Wood Elves, the character quandary

Hello again everyone. My post's seem to be few and far between at the moment, with uni and work taking up so much time and so many topics being talked to death I just haven't felt like blogging. One such topic is, of course, the brand spanking new Wood Elves that everyone seems to see as "meta breaking". My Two cents (or should that be ten cents these days, hard to tell) is that yes, it is a nice book. It delivered most of what Woody players wanted with just minor tweaks to keep balance pretty much perfect from my vantage point. Fluff units are cool additions (heres looking at you Glade Riders and Wildwood Rangers) and special characters are not over the top. However, their is one pair that I had an interesting chat about earlier today with good friend and Kiwi Hammer contributor Sam Campbell.

The sisters of Twilight
The Twins are back and, shockingly, they are now found in the Hero section (theoretically allowing you to take a dragon in both lords and heroes) and still have their wondrous ability to come back to life as long as the other is still hanging round on the battlefield. The problem arises, in my eyes at least, when you go for the cheep option (if you count 275pts as cheap) and put them on their loyal Great Eagle Gwindalor. Being now on a monstrous beast rather than a monster as they are on the back of their dragon, the sisters suddenly find themselves as a SINGLE monstrous cavalry model. The wording on page 105 of the baby rulebook (under charecter mounts) states...

"Very rarely, a character will have the option to ride a monstrous beast. In this case, the whole model is treated as having the troop type 'monstrous cavalry' and follows all the rules for both characters and monstrous cavalry"

Then, under monstrous cavalry (page 83) it states...

"Monstrous cavalry always use the highest wounds characteristic the model has, rather than automatically using the rider's"

Forgive my nitpicking but to me that sounds like the singular model of the two riding on Gwindalor would therefore only have 3 wounds between them, as the MODEL uses the HIGHEST WOUNDS CHARACTERISTIC! Theoretically then after sustaining three wounds both the sisters would then be removed from the table, and their special rule would have no time to proc.

My question is was this deliberate wording that may hint at a change of pace closing in towards the 9th edition rules where monstrous cavalry characters will not be instantly benefited by their steeds, or was this an accidental afterthought by GW during the creation of the book. I'm pretty sure its going to be the first thing to be included in big, bold lettering when the first Woody FAQ comes out.

Thats all i wanted to ramble about. Also would people see two Lvl 4's, The sisters on dragon and a Battle standard captain to be a viable character set up for the new Woodies. Captain Jebson Signing off.

2 comments:

  1. Yet another FAQ issue, another being can you take the same arrow type on different units. Don't get me wrong i like the book but they really needed to do a better job of making things so much clearer

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  2. Hi Nick! Enjoying your blog. I have nominated you for an Liebster award. It helps promote wargaming and modeling blogs:http://wargamesobsession.blogspot.co.nz/
    Regards
    Herman

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