3k point Wood Elves List

Bear in mind that information on this is liable to change fairly soon - there is rumours that Monstrous Ridden Creatures will undergo a massive rework as a result of the Undead Legions special characters in Nagash; The End Times.

You must always use your Magical Weapon over any mundane ones. The spear is wasted points while you have the Spirit Sword. The Spirit Sword itself is okay - but I think that it's cost of 85pts outweighs its use. You also have spent over your points allowance - you have spent 85+25+45+35points - a Glade Lord has 100pts to spend.

If you also factor in how dragons operate, Forest Dragons are really kind of bad. Their low strength breath weapon means that they cannot take on killy combat units (so what if they take wounds at -3 and cause Stupidity - you're wounding on 5's against Goblins et al), which is a turn wasted not being in combat. It loses its 6+ Ward Save because it's a mount, and Starfire Arrows are weak - Swiftshiver at least gives you an extra shot (not really worth it) while Arcane Bodkins can at least ensure that you can kill what you wound. Alternatively, Hagbane are useful for hunting monsters thanks to Poison, but with only 6 shots a game, assuming they all hit, and you get to actually make all those shots by not being in combat and by not being cannonsniped, that's only 1 guaranteed wound - you don't spend 148pts on only causing 1 guaranteed wound a game by BS shooting. I would save the points until I was sure I only had a few left - remember that Arrows of Kurnous is not affected by the enchanted arrow so even worse.

Now, factor in their rider - unlike other notable Dragon riding races, the High and Dark Elves, and Warriors of Chaos - they don't have access to a Lance, or a natural 3+ save without delving into magical items. Even lower tier troops can easily access S4, which cuts your save of Light Armour, Shield and Mount to 5+, which combined with being wounded on a 3 can see you being eaten through quite quickly. At least Chaos Dragon Riders have a 2+save base, and other elves have a 3+save base, with option for a 2+ via the cheap Enchanted Shield or Dragonhelm, which still allows them a 45pt ish weapon, like the Ogre Blade, or Star Lance, or what have you when combined with the near mandatory Talisman of Preservation on combat characters. This gives a fairly solid combat build. With a Glade Lord though, you've not got a 2+/4++ with 4 S6 attacks. You're going to either need to spend more on getting the same results (Armour of Silvered Steel) or go with a weaker version.

Long story short, Asrai Combat Dragon Lords don't do as well as they sound, especially when they're currently as weak as they are against other things in the meta.

Second thing - unless you're playing using the Nagash rules for Lords, you're limited to 25% of Lords - you're currently sitting at 1015pts.

Next, the Spellweaver. Can't go far wrong with a L4 Lifecaster. However, important to remember again the 100pts Magic Limit for Lords again - the Acorn itself is 100pts which is your full allocation. The Channelling Staff is no real loss, maybe four extra power dice over the course of the game sounds okay on paper, but compared to other Arcane Items, it's not a necessity.

Spellsingers - the Lore of Light loses much of it's lustre (excuse the pun) - the important one being that the buff for ASF is wasted on Elves, and you've not got Forest Spirits who can benefit as much from it. Light of Battle is wasted because Wood Elves rarely flee - they're so fragile they either die, are resilient enough to not break anyway, or if they do break, are in so few numbers that they cannot do much if they rallied anyway. Speed of Light, they're already quicker in combat than most things in combat, and rarely want to actually be in combat either. Light is one of the weakest Lores.

Also, you can only have one of each magical item - they're unique.

Lore of Shadow is good though - however, it's a toss up of whether to take it on the Level 4, and Life on the level 2, as the Lore of Shadow has more useful spells - Mystifying Miasma to lower movement, Enfeebling/Withering to make arrows more dangerous/reduce enemy threat, Pendulum for a mini-cannon, Pit of Shades really helps with killing armoured units, as does Mindrazor with high Ld units. You're not going to find that the Winds of Magic will favour you enough to have 3 casters.

Waystalker with the Bow of Loren - that's two shots. Not worth it, especially as it's not that clear whether making Sniper Shots is in place of Multiple Shots (I personally read it as Sniper is an attack made instead of normally shooting, so only 1 shot, even though that is a massive gimp). It already has Hawk-Eyed Archer which gives it Multiple Shots. Running it naked is the easiest way.

Eternal Guard - a unit of 20 is really weak - especially when they're T3 5+ Save elves - 12pts is a lot of ppm - it's only like 6 casualties need to be caused, and they don't have that much damage dealing potential - 3 ranks of 6 gives you 18 attacks, with possible rerolls to hit, at S3 with -1 to enemy saves. Against things like Empire Halberd troops - that's around 16 hits, and 8 wounds with no saves. For 275pts - in return, you are up against a unit of ~40-50 models, who hit on 4's, wound on 3's, save on 6's - with a rank of say 7x7, that's 14 attacks, 9-10 wounds, and 1-2 saves - so 8 kills. Congratulations, you've just drawn a combat against Empire line infantry - and they have the numbers to kill you over the duration of a battle.

Glade Riders are quite big - avoidance lists are beginning to creep up (a style of gameplay where you don't actually get involved in slogging matches) - and elves, especially Wood Elves do it reasonably well thanks to the amount of shots they can put out. However, the flexibility of a unit is lost when it's 10 men strong. 2 units of 5 is invariably better. You're also going to find that the Musician is more useful for the reforms, and that the banner is just a waste of points. Also remember only 1 of each magic item.

Sisters of the Thorn - a large unit of these are a bunker for a Wizard. But they kind of suck. Can't think of a use other than for being fairly tanky, and with only 2 units of 5, they blow ass.

Warhawk Riders - possibly the best unit in the army. War Machine Hunters, flankers, avoidance par none, and capable of looking after themselves (ish) unlike Glade Riders.

Waywatchers - why have you not taken 4 units of these maxed out? These are an argument for the best unit in the game. It's cheaper to take these than it is for a similar number of Glade Guard shots (20 versus 24 - don't take Swiftshiver arrows) - they have better Ballistic Skill, and mince through armour quicker than Louie Spence on hot coals. Great Eagles have competition from Special Slot Warhawks, and Treemen took a massive hit with being dropped to S5, and are far too expensive.

If you don't want to go Waywatcher heavy, Wild Riders, Glade Guard w/ Arcane Bodkins and Lore of Metal Casters can deal with Armour, but usually the answer is usually "more Waywatchers" from the Wood Elf community.

If this is your 3K list, I seriously recommend trying an easier army to play - High Elves can easily be adapted into Wood Elves at a later stage (just use the models and counts as) - especially if you're new to the game. 3K is a lot of models, normally, and while the other elves have things like "The Battle Banner of I Win Everything", and units like White Lions or Swordmasters to just chew through everything and Phoenixes, or Dark Elves have Witch Elves/Black Guard for just tearing units a new one, the Kharybdis or Executioners for Armour, etc, Wood Elves one strength is avoidance which is very difficult to pull off.

I typed out a massive reply and accidentally hit backspace. FFS

Long-story short - Great Weapon, Ironcurse Icon, Armour of Silvered Steel and Talisman of Preservation on a Dragon gives you 9 S6 Attacks including the overgrown lizard. Alternatively, for no Dragon, on an Eagle instead, Spirit Sword and Charmed Shield to prevent cannonsnipe.

Only a single Level 4 caster is needed. A Level 4 in a wood with a Sisters of the Thorn 4 ranks deep and a Book of Ashur is looking at +6 and +5 to cast respectively with 6 spells known, and it will not be going anywhere, thanks to a 4++.

This forms the basis of an avoidance style list - which sadly means losing the Eternal Guard to make way for Waywatchers, Wild Riders, Warhawk Riders, and Ambushing Glade Riders (who have to deploy via Ambush, there's no choose sadly). It's a royal pain to play against, and has single handedly changed the meta, encouraging people to pick up Magic Missiles to deal with squishy 5 man units.

Lore of Shadow or Heavens works best, as Curse of Anraheir from the sisters (Open Terrain is still terrain after all) while Miasma/Curse of the Midnight Wind+Harmonic Convergence can rip through enemy units fairly quickly with combined charges et al.

The list looks like;

Level 4 with Book of Ashur, and either Heavens or Shadow, on Steed, sits in Sisters of the Thorns
Possible BSB, maybe with Standard of Disciple, sits in Sisters of Thorns
Core; Minimum unit size Glade Riders only, Musician only, Standard Bearer only if you play using Fortitude rules
Special; 2x Warhawks, 2x Wild Riders, 1x15+ Sisters of the Thorns
Rare; Waywatchers. Did you think it would be anything else? Fill your boots with these.

Edit; @JAMOB - can't take Armour of Destiny and Helm of the Hunt, both are Magic Armour.

Technically you can fit a Lord on Dragon in an 1500pt list thanks to the Nagash book upgrading that to 50%, rather than 25. At lower points games, Combat Lords become even more points ineffective, simply due to the lack of other models you can bring to the table.

I'm not sold on Champion upgrades, rarely ever. You've sank 30pts into Champions here, for +1 attack. On Warhawk Riders, you've got enough attacks (9 that +1 is rarely going to make that much difference), with the Eternal Guard, it's either a challenge shield should you come up against something bigger/nastier than your Lord (Chaos Lord/Ogre Tyrant/Oldblood/Dreadlord) or is wasted sitting still for half the battle and not actually in combat where his additional attack works - it's a bunker for sitting in a wood. The only unit where it might come in helpful is for Wild Riders - but consider that you've sank 30pts into Champions in total, you now have another Wild Rider which can actually make a bit more of a difference - 3 more S5 AP attacks from the rider and 1 S3 attack from the horse, compared to +1 attack.

At low levels, you've got an Anchor which can be avoided. It's a massive chunk of your army (460pts) which is intending to just sit there. It is also only 16 T3 5+ Save models. It is too easy to remove them from the game. When 360pts of your army is sat off the board before the game begins, and the other 670pts is intended to do dedicated tasks - such as hunt war machines, shred light infantry, and provide a bunker for a caster, and target heavy cavalry/saves, you're not left with much to do.

This means your opponent has one priority target. Considering that they likely have a level 4 and you don't have a Dispel Scroll, they're getting their spells off unless there's a particularly stupid Winds of Magic, and yours will count for nothing. The difference is you're not forcing the enemy to do anything. They're taking advantage of easy kills.

A bunker is around 30 wounds in fantasy terms, which can be either healed (Lore of Life/Invocation of Nehek/Lore of Nehekhara). When 8th edition came out, and the unit minimum requirements were reduced, many armies took advantage of creating death stars - immense blocks of elite heavy infantry making advantage of the new improved augments from powerful casters. Thanks to the changes to how ranks, steadfast, and casualty removal happened, it became a matter of ensuring you could take the hit that was dealt to you, and then retaliate back - minimising the amount of randomness of the dice. Because you were going to take the hits from attacks anyway despite getting a charge in (in the past, if you charged, you went first, and if you removed an entire front rank, then the enemy had no retaliatory attack), Great Weapons became the option of choice - usually a minimum of S5, and more often a Strength of 6, with a few rare exceptions, those units which could take Great Weapons became very popular. It wouldn't be odd to see single units of Chaos Warriors/Chosen/Temple Guard/Ironguts/Longbeards/Black Orcs take up near the entire allowance of specials or rares supported by a few powerful artillery pieces - namely due to the existence of supporting attacks allowing such units something along the lines of a unit front of 160-175mm around 25ish WS4+ S6 Attacks, while being supported by spells like Lore of Life for +4 Toughness, or Speed of Light to completely blend other units.

There's still no answer to fighting immense blocks like that - you can either throw more dice with greater chance of success at the enemy or just not fight them. For a combat block however, you can guarantee that someone will have kitted them to be better than you. You're Wood Elves. You don't really do combat. What you do have is a unit of WS5, Stubborn Ld9 that will not go anywhere despite the casualties they take, or any other negative modifiers etc.

Try the following;

Noble, BSB, +1 Ld Banner. This gives you a core unit with WS5, Ld10, Stubborn, 12" Leadership reroll. That's needed - you're going to want to rally with your Glade Riders should they flee a charge.

To find the points, drop the Lord, and make the Spellsinger a Level 4 caster like everyone else is doing (seriously - you'll struggle to find any competitive player who does not field a Level 4 - outside of Dwarfs - and they kinda suck short of gunlines). And drop the Glade Riders to pump up the points.

Your Sisters of the Thorn are wasted. 5 T3 models with a 4++ won't last long against anything, and they can't do that much. Sure, there's a few poisoned wounds you can cause, but it's unit that's going to be trying to cast spells with even fewer dice available without the level 4, and you've not got the ranks to make them a capable caster either.

Strong points - Warhawk Riders can target enemy Artillery, Wild Riders can counter charge like few other units, and Waywatchers turn enemy Heavy Cav into meatsticks.
Weak points - not enough Waywatchers, wasted points in champions, wasted points on Glade Lord, no level 4, Eternal Guard don't fit in an avoidance list (they're free points for the enemy) and it seems like you're wanting the army to do too much. And not enough Waywatchers once again.

Wood Elves come in several flavours;

Forest Spirit Heavy - sucks. Dryads are too expensive, Treemen took massive hits, and Treekin need huge amounts of Magic shepherding to be useful. Wide access to flaming as a result of regeneration as well makes them vulnerable.
Avoidance - see posts before. You don't want to get in combat. Giving them a unit to target in combat is throwing away points. Eternal Guard have no place in this list.
Glade Guard Gunline - automatic first thought of a Wood Elf list. Outclasses nearly all but artillery heavy gunlines of the dwarves and empire). Once you get over "lol I throw 3428547 dice at you" you'll realise they're no fun to play as or against.
Combat heavy - Wildwood rangers and Wild Riders flank blocks of Stubborn Eternal Guard. Doesn't work. The heaviest save of 5+ just doesn't cut it to rely on. Gets blended by a light breeze.