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Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Daemons of Chaos

2022-02-23T20:28:05Z

2600:387:2:803:0:0:0:78: /* Legendary Lords */

This is the general tactics page on how to play [[Daemons of Chaos]] in [[Total War: WARHAMMER]].

==Why Play Daemons of Chaos?==
*Because why choose between flavors of Daemons when you can have all of them?
*Why would the denizens of damnation require mortal assistance to destroy the world?
*It's not everyday we get a bad guy faction that is actually reasonably flexible so this is a nice change of pace.
*Hey, what other factions lets you wreck the world with your perfect OC?
* You're really loyal to the 8th edition army book
* You really like playing dress up with your lord
* When you want to play as "Chaos" you want your army to look like multicolored vomit from beyond the ken of man
* Because you wanted some more time with the guy from the prologue cause let's be real, the story of the prologue campaign is more interesting than the main campaign.

===Pros===
*'''Flexibility''': Easily the biggest advantage this faction has over the Monogods. Since you have the Daemons from every god, you can actually pick and choose what kind of tactics you want to go for instead of going all out in one department. So if you want to rep Daemons but not get immediately counter picked because you picked Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle or Slaanesh this is the faction for you.

*'''Unbreakable''': What the fuck is going to scare you when you're literally a Daemon? Most of your units crumble instead of running away.

*'''Terror''': Fear and terror are going to be very common across your roster because, you know, literally crawled out of the pits of hell. Factions like Skaven or Beastmen who have leadership problems will find their forces running a ton.

*'''Quality''': Your units are all very good at what they do, and as such you have some very strong elite options that can fill out numerous holes in your roster. There really isn't a department that anyone can say you're weak in.

*'''Resistances''': Ward saves, physical resistance and magic resistance abound in this army. You can't throw a rock without hitting something that's resistant to some type of damage.

*'''Everyone is here!''': You are the only non DLC race that released with your entire 8th edition army book ready to go at launch. Your roster is MASSIVE, especially compared to your other game 3 counterparts and you have so many options to butcher your enemies with. Plus, no DLCS to worry about pay to win bullshit in multiplayer.

===Cons===
*'''Lack of Specialization''': The downside to trying to appease all the gods at once is you don't get quite as good in any one department as going Monogod. Khorne will out fight you, Tzeentch will out magic you, Nurgle will out last you and Slaanesh will out run you. Add on to the fact that you don't get any of the Exalted Greater Daemons or Mortals in multiplayer (and must specially recruit them in single player) and you can feel how much they outweigh you in certain ways. If you only want to play one playstyle, you'd be better off with Monogods.

*'''Lack of Armor''': Evidently armor is hard to come by in the Realm of Chaos. Aside from a few options (mainly from Khorne) armor values are pretty low so missiles might be a bit of a problem if you can't shut them down.

*'''Expensive''': As is the trend with factions that have a ton of high quality stuff, price points might be a bit high. While you do have some chaff in the form of Nurglings, Blue Horrors, and Slaanesh Marauders, expect to go into most fights outnumbered.

*'''Lack of Range''': While having access to the full daemon roster gives you some ranged options none of them are very long ranged, aside from Skull Cannons. Like a lot of Chaos factions you're first and foremost a melee rush army.

*'''Lack of Updates''': You know how most factions get major updates alongside DLC? And you know how you have your entire roster? Yeah... While some balances changes are inevitable, don't expect big additions to your roster in the form of DLC. Though we may get some of the DLC units of the Monogod factions, if we're lucky that is.
**Exceptions may apply if CA gives Daemons of chaos pieces of DLC made for the dedicated gods. So if Khorne get's a DLC pack then Daemons might get a unit or two at the same time from that pack, but that is pure speculation.

*'''Hard as FUCK''': You are a demon, every single mortal hates you and unlike the other daemons legendary lords, you start pretty close to Kislev and the Empire. You start at war with an empire province , kislev and wood elves and dwarfs, who will send waves after waves at you. Your only respite is with the Norscan tribes and beastmen you can talk with.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Daemonic''': Undead with extra steps, really. Once your daemonic units lose enough leadership, they'll begin to lose health and fade back into the Warp in the same vein that undead units crumble away. The good news is that even if your daemons are doomed to evaporate, they'll at least stick in and fight to the last model.

*'''Barrier''': All Tzeentch daemons have two health pools; their regular health pool, and their Barrier health pool. As long as some of the barrier is left, it will absorb the damage of anything that hits the unit. It probably won't be too big, but it'll be enough to buy your troops some time to do what they need to do. It recharges when out of combat, so it encourages a hit and run ranged style of combat for your ranged units.

*'''Cloud of Flies''': A trait shared by all Nurgle daemons. As they stay in melee combat they actively gain Melee Defense, encouraging you to let them grind it out against the enemy.

*'''Devastating Flanker''':most of your Slaaneshi daemons have this special ability which doubles their charge bonus when attacking an enemy unit from the flank or rear.

*'''Hellblade''': Some (not all) of your Khorne daemons get this ability, which gives them 20% base and AP damage when they get 60 kills. Designed to reward you for being aggressive with your units with more damage. It'll be easier to get this off on squishy swarm factions (you'll get this fighting Skaven in no time) than smaller tank factions (good luck getting this fighting Dwarfs or especially Lizardmen and Woodelves with all their single-entity beatsticks), although it might be reworked to relate to damage instead of raw kills, anything else would make fighting especially against Ogres a nightmare.

*'''Reign of Chaos''': As your lord deals damage a meter on the right hand side of the screen fills up, unlocking three different abilities at three tiers. This meter can fill up more than once, meaning that as long as you keep dealing damage you can unlock these abilities pretty much endlessly. Unlike the other Chaos God factions, who have three set tiers of abilities, your army abilities ''randomly select from the army abilities of the other four Chaos Gods''. You never know exactly what you'll get, only that it will be one of the four abilities for that tier.

==Lords==

===Legendary Lords===
*'''[[God-Slayer]]:''' Customisable daemonic version of Lich King. You can customize not just the look, but the playstyle of him depending on which Chaos God (or Gods) you decide to worship. Looks alone aren't everything though. Each item you can customize also impacts the God-Slayer's stats and abilities. Should you take the Chaos Undivided route, you get access to the entire roster of all 4 gods (there seems to be a myth floating around that you don’t get certain units, that’s untrue, you get the entire roster for every god as undivided) to form the rank and file of your armies. What you lack in specialization you more than make up for in versatility.

*'''[[Be'lakor]]:''' Confirmed to be a LL for the Daemons of Chaos, he can be unlocked in campaign and custom battle by beating the single player campaign.

===Generic Lords===

*'''Daemon Prince Undivided''':

*'''Daemon Prince of Khorne''':

*'''Herald of Khorne''': A melee focused lord who can be mounted on a Bloodcrusher or Blood Throne and has various AoE buffinf abilitties that boost the killiness of nearby units.

*'''Daemon Prince of Nurgle''':

*'''Herald of Nurgle''': A slow and tanky hybrid lord with either the Lore of Death or the Lore of Nurgle. Can be mounted on a Rot Fly or a Palanquin of Nurgle.

*'''Daemon Prince of Tzeentch''':

*'''Herald of Tzeentch''': A dedicated caster lord with access to either the Lore of Metal or the Lore of Tzeentch. Can be mounted on a Disc of Tzeentch or a Burning Chariot, both of which give him added range attacks.

*'''Daemon Prince of Slaanesh''':

*'''Herald of Slaanesh''': A fast and deadly hybrid lord with either the Lore of Slaanesh or the Lore of Shadows. Can be mounted on a Steed of Slaanesh, Seeker Chariot, or Exalted Seeker Chariot. Has the Devastating Flanker ability, as well as Loci buffs for nearby units.

===Generic Heroes===

*'''Alluress''': A hybrid hero with the Lore of Slaanesh and/or Shadow magic along with AP in melee. Your only hero choice with the Devastating Flanker ability. Can ride the Steed of Slaanesh, Seeker Chariot, or Exalted Seeker Chariot.

*'''Bloodreaper''': He appears to be a combat/support character for going around murdering groups of infantry while also giving offensive buffs to your units. He can ride both a Juggernaut and a Blood Throne, making him a strong mobile threat. With AP and anti infantry he's a scary melee character that can also give other units a helping hand. Has an ability that gives 66% magic resistance to nearby allies, so a must-have against magic heavy armies like Tzeentch or the Vampire Counts.

*'''Iridescent Horror''': A more dedicated wizard hero, and also your only ranged hero. They have some Loci abilities that allow them to buff troops in combat without using magic. They come with the Lores of Metal and Tzeentch and can mount up on a Disk and a Burning Chariot. On the chariot he comes with a missile attack, allowing him to be pretty decent at kiting enemies.

*'''Plagueridden''': Another hybrid hero with the Lore of Nurgle/Death and a lot more survivable in melee than the Alluress. Can be mounted on a Rot Fly or Palanquin of Nurgle.

==Units==

===Infantry===

*'''Blue Horrors of Tzeentch''': Horrors will have a flaming range attack to pepper enemies from afar, though they will likely be the worse of the lesser daemons in combat (not that they will be useless). They will serve as your chaff infantry, meant to throw off some magic volleys then run in and die to hold for your more important troops. The range attack is meant more so as a precursor attack before charging into melee, especially since they only have 5 ammo.

*'''Bloodletters''': Your mid tier Khornate unit, meaning that unlike Furies these guy might actually kill what they're fighting. They wield great swords with fire, magical, AP damage and anti-infantry, so they're really good at busting through armored infantry. As Daemons they're also unbreakable and contain nice defensive buffs, which is good because 30 armour isn't great. They will likely be your cheapest source of AP in the infantry fight, which will make them highly desirable when fighting heavy armor.

*'''Exalted Bloodletters''': Bloodletters plus. They're a very similar unit only just much better at the job but also much more expensive. These guys will let you carve through more elite options than your standard Bloodletters can.

*'''Daemonettes''': Very fast, very AP heavy, and very squishy Daemonic infantry unit. Roughly equivalent to Wardancers, stats wise, but considerably faster. Has Devastating Flanker.

*'''Exalted Daemonettess''': Faster, killier, sexier Daemonettes. Roughly equivalent to Bladesingers, stats wise, but considerably faster. Have the Devastating Flanker and Soulscent passive abilites.

*''' Nurglings''': The first real swarm unit in the game. While there are technically only 60 models in a unit, those models consist of roughly 5-6 Nurglings meaning there's roughly 300 of these little shits in the same unit. In terms of use, they're chaff and look to be damn good chaff at that. They have Vanguard in order to block the enemy attack and mostly just exist to waste the enemy time and wear them down.

*'''Plaguebearers''': The tank to your Daemonettes and Bloodletter's spank. As slow as zombies and minimally armored, but decent melee stats, regeneration/poison, and a fuckheug HP pool means they'll hold for ages and grind most basic infantry to dust through attrition.

*'''Exalted Plaguebearers''': Aside from being a standard upgrade, they have the ability to throw a smaller versions of the Plague Drone’s Death’s Heads at foes as they approach, similar to Dwarf Miners and Chameleon Stalkers.

===Missiles===
*'''Pink Horrors of Tzeentch''': Upgrades to the blue guys. Has a better flaming range attack, and actually decent melee stats. Sadly, it has been confirmed that they will not split into Blue Horrors upon death. Will likely replace Blue Horrors once you have the money for them, as they do everything that they do but way better.

*'''Exalted Pink Horrors of Tzeentch''': And the Pink Horrors will be replaced by these guys. They come with insane ranged damage, out damaging the elite skirmishers of other factions, and increase the Winds of Magic recharge rate for your army as long as they're alive. This will be one of your likely Doomstacks in the late game, as strong missiles combined with extra magic is something no one will want less of. No AP on the ranged attack, but with a missile damage of 35 heavily armored units still won't like being hit by these guys.

===Cavalry and Chariots===
*'''Plague Drone''': Same as Nurgle, your armor piercing flying cavalry. Comes in two variants, standard melee (essentially an upgrade of rot flies) and a ranged version that tosses Death’s Heads at their foes.

*'''Bloodcrusher''': An angry Daemon riding a Robo-Rhino. Well armored and has an Anti Infantry bonus.

*'''Blood Shrine of Khorne''': A support oriented single entity chariot. Tt will likely be the weakest of the motorcycle Khorne units in combat but will provide leadership and melee attack buffs to nearby units. Plus, it heals while it's in melee so the poorer melee stats won't be the worst thing in the world for it as it'll be hard to bring down.

*'''Burning Chariot:''' A flying ranged focused chariot that has one of the most devastating ranged attacks in the entire game. It can apparently shred infantry formations and monsters but has low armor ''and'' ammo to compensate. Probably won't be the best chariot in melee, but the ability to fly and shoot flames will likely make up for that. Try to hold it in reserve for particularly valuable engagements, as you'll want to make the most out of every shot.

* '''Pox Rider''': Essentially just an upgrade to the Plague Toads, only with Plaguebearers on top of them instead.

*'''Seekers:''' Extremely fast light cavalry, unfortunately they don’t even have any armour, so cycle charging might be your best strategy when using them. Has Devastating Flanker and Vanguard deployment, making them well suited for getting right up in the face of range-heavy armies.

*'''Heartseekers:''' Named after the unit champion of Seekers, these things are most likely meant to be a straight upgrade. Unlike your regular Seekers these guys have the Soulscent passive ability which increases their armour piercing and melee attack capability when within range of an enemy unit with morale wavering or lower. Also has Devastating Flanker and Vanguard deployment.

*'''Seeker Chariot:''' A low model chariot unit with poison and Devastating Flanker. Super fast for a chariot but probably even more brittle when trapped in prolonged melee.

*'''Hellflayer:''' Essentially acts as a giant lawnmower, able to plough through infantry. Unfortunately it’s a wide target so might get singled out by ranged fire. Has Devastating Flanker but unlike the other chariots this one also has the Soulscent ability.

*'''Exalted Seeker Chariot:''' An extremely fast but extremely fragile single-entity chariot that will mow down any heavily armored infantry it comes across. Has Poison, Perfect Vigour, and Devastating Flanker.

===War Beasts===
*'''Chaos Furies (Undivided)''': Basically Chaos Furies who incorporate aspects from all the chaotic factions, with a preference depending on which side you are currently favoring.

*'''Flesh Hounds''': They share the same speed as normal Warhounds (95) but have a much smaller model count per unit but are much stronger and tougher. They also have magic resistance of 50% like Furies do. They seem to inhabit that space of smaller war hound units from Drycha and the Norscans, and act as light cavalry.

===Monsters===
*'''Soul Grinder of Tzeentch''': This thing channels the power of Zeus to chuck lightning bolts from its hands that do AP and Anti Large damage. It seems to be a very versatile unit as it can deal with large units from afar and still deal some good damage up close. It also has magic attacks, so it will also be hitting for most of its damage. Still pretty decent in melee, but it's the Anti Large range attacks you want this thing for.

*'''Soul Grinder of Khorne''': Based on what has been revealed it is a tanky cannon platform that can fire while moving. It also comes with a scattergun that does 800 damage with 120 range. The Khorne soul grinder can chop up the Tzeentch + Nurgle variants in melee, but gets it's ass handed to it by the Slaanesh version who traded the cannon away for anti-large choppy power.

*'''Soul Grinder of Nurgle''': Looks and acts like a 40K Plague Hulk, only replace the sword with a claw. Probably not the most useful Soul Grinder available to you as its gimmick of being an artillery unit is covered by dedicated pieces.

*'''Soul Grinder of Slaanesh''': A purely melee version of the Soul Grinder with 75 speed, anti-large, and lots of armour piercing damage.

*'''Flamers of Tzeentch''': A mobile flamethrower unit that can pump out ludicrous damage to unarmored targets. Apparently still ok in melee, though don't expect them to last long against most dedicated melee units. They require good positioning to use effectively, especially since they only have 10 ammo. Notably it's the first flamethrower unit that has AP damage, which might signal some hope for things like Irondrakes or Warp Fire Throwers.

*'''Exalted Flamer:''' A single entity purple version that has one of the most devastating ranged attacks in the game, able to deal heavy damage to both infantry and large units. Downside is that it has very limited ammo, so every shot has to count. It also applies Fire weakness in both melee and ranged, allowing it to set up your other unit to do more damage to the enemy.

*'''Fiend of Slaanesh:''' Imagine faster and bigger Rat Ogres with poison and you’ll get the idea. Able to keep up with the rest of your forces, but unfortunately have just as much armour as other Slaaneshi daemons. Has the Sophoric Musk passive ability which lowers enemy melee defense and melee attack.

*'''Lord of Change''' A flying bird that is said to be a full spellcaster. In campaign there are technologies that can unlock more spells for them, but game footage so far shows that in multiplayer they're limited to the Blue Fire of Tzeentch and the Pink Fire of Tzeentch. Both of these spells have a low Winds of Magic cost, meaning LoCs will be useful for spamming cheap spells to fill your Eye of Tzeentch meter. It is a decent monster in melee, though don't expect it to go toe to toe with a Bloodthirster any time soon.

*'''Bloodthirster''': The smaller, more accessible version of its Exalted cousin. It trades a lot of the scary combat stats in return for Anti Large, making it more of a dedicated monster fighter. Aside from that, it functions as a cheaper version of the Exalted lord version.

*'''Rotflies''': Riderless Rotflies. They appear to be melee only, using their flight speed and armour piercing to harass enemy back lines.

*'''Plague Toads''': A surprising addition from the [[Forge World]] Throne of Chaos book, but a cool one non the less. Fairly slow, being giant amphibians and all, but have a very high charge bonus and do well against infantry.

*'''Great Unclean One''': Nurgle's big bulbous boys of mass and rot capable of withstanding the blast from a hell cannon and shrug it off. These jolly green giants are casters of the lore of Nurgle and the massive swords they wield can shear through armour.

*'''Keeper of Secrets:''' Slaanesh's Greater Daemon unit is fast, has lots of weapon strength and armor piercing, as well as Blissful Rapture, Devastating Flanker, and Strider. Can cast two spells from the Lore of Slaanesh: Lash of Slaanesh and Acquiescence. Will likely be a powerful duelist character but will struggle with dealing with hordes compared to the other Greater Daemons.

===Artillery===

*'''Skull Cannon''': Your only artillery option, not counting the soul grinders. It has good range and damage, and its mobility allows it to keep itself safe from enemy ranged and cavalry that try to take it out. Plus, if something does get its hands on it, it'll be hard to kill with its high armor and ability to regenerate in melee. With good micro this thing has to potential to be frustrating as hell to play against. Of course, it has only 18 melee defense so if something does catch it it might take some hits, but they'll have to actually catch the damn thing first. If it runs out of ammo it can replenish it by killing enemies in melee.

==Campaign Strategies==

You start off in Norsca at war with Nordland, a nearby Norscan tribe and Konstantlyn.

It would be wise to get a non-agression pact with Skarbrand so he doesn't curbstomp you. . . which may be easier said then done with the most bloodthirsty bloodthirster to ever thirst for blood in all of space and time, maybe think about dedicating to Khorne above the other's

Expand you territory towards the Kislevite factions while waiting for the Rifts.

==Multiplayer Strategies==

Having the favor of all 4 chaos gods means you can take advantage of their roster in ways nobody else can. Bring a plaguebearer frontline and support them with fast Slaanesh flankers. Trigger fire vulnerability with flamers of Tzeentch right before you slam your enemy with flaming attacks from bloodletters and skullcannons. Stack your army with expensive Khorne heavy hitters and back them up with healing from the lore of Nurgle. Use your imagination and go nuts.

Alternately, you can go for a mostly monogod strategy. Your opponent has to spread himself thin to prepare for every crazy combination you can pull out of your ass so a good chunk of his army will be stuck with unfavorable matchups if you go all in on one god. Building rosters for particular match-ups was a big part of TW2 and the unpredictability you get as Chaos Undivided means you have a high chance of winning the pre-battle mind game. Someone who brought a bunch of armor piercing to deal with armored Khorne units isn't going to be happy when they find out you bought an unarmored Nurgle/Slaanesh STD themed army.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Beastmen| Beastmen]]''': Nurgle Daemons are a great option against the squishy beastmen. Their lack of range units means Tzeentch Daemons are free to damage them without risk

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia| Bretonnia]]''': Nurgle and Tzeentch Daemons are very useful. The former stops the Bretonnian charge while the latter burns them!

*'''Daemons of Chaos''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Warriors of Chaos| Warriors of Chaos]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dark Elves| Dark Elves]]''': Slaanesh Daemons are a must to rip-through their armor

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dwarfs| Dwarfs]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Empire| Empire]]''': Flexibility vs flexibility

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Grand Cathay| Grand Cathay]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Greenskins| Greenskins]]''': Nurgle units are great at bashing the Orcs in melee. Tzeentch Daemons easily outclass them at range.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/High Elves| High Elves]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Khorne|Khorne]]''': Biggest advantage is access to various Lores of magic. Use Nurgle melee units combined with Tzeentch range.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Kislev|Kislev]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Lizardmen| Lizardmen]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Norsca| Norsca]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Nurgle| Nurgle]]''': Use Tzeentch Daemons to whittle them down and force them to rush you, that's when you use Slaanesh Daemons to flank and finish them off

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Ogre Kingdoms| Ogre Kingdoms]]''': Tzeentch/Nurgle or Slaanesh/Nurgle combo is great here

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Skaven| Skaven]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Slaanesh| Slaanesh]]''': A combined Nurgle-Tzeentch army would counter and decimate Slaanesh

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tomb Kings| Tomb Kings]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tzeentch| Tzeentch]]''': Play mostly with Slaanesh units with a few Tzeentch/Nurgle air units. Use Nurgle's Lore to heal the squishy Slaanesh units.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Coast| Vampire Coast]]''': Nurgle-Slaanesh combo is good here

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts| Vampire Counts]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves| Wood Elves]]''': This is one match up Daemons Undivided has a better chance than all of the Monogod factions. Combining Nurgle units (to absorb hits and slowly advance at the Wood Elves) with Tzeentch (for range damage to quickly obliterate squishy Elves) or Slaanesh (to outflank and brutally overrun them) to deal a lot of damage

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves

2022-02-23T20:24:24Z

2600:387:2:803:0:0:0:78: /* Drycha Campaign Units */

{{Topquote|Lacoi Endri Loren! (Might of the Great Forest!)|Game battle chant for Wood Elves}}
This is the tactica for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of the Wood Elves.

==Why Play Wood Elves==
*Cause you're tired of tree hugger jokes.
*You have a need, a need for speed.
*Rather than blot out the sun you want to light the sky with hundreds of magical arrows.
*You love the parts from Lord of the Rings where Ents get shit done.
*Because you want the world to learn of your peaceful ways, by force.

===Pros===
*'''Sheer Speed''' - The majority of your army is quite fast. Even the most basic infantry available to you, Eternal Guards, will outpace a significant portion of the footsoldiers available to most other armies. You'll be able to dance around the plodding pace of slower armies like the <strike>dwarves</strike> Dwarfs <sub>(that's a grudgin')</sub> or lizardmen. Even fast races such as Beastmen will have trouble keeping up with your mounted units and flying monsters.
*'''Excellent Missile Infantry''' - The Wood Elves have an abundance of fantastic missile units. Ranged infantry, cavalry, fliers, lords, heroes with access to dedicated poison, anti-armor, magic or rapid fire missiles gives you immense flexibility against any threats you may face. With the new DLC, the Wood Elves have perhaps the single best ranged Legendary Lord(s) in the game in the form of the Sisters of Twilight, who are capable of not only dealing heavy single target damage but also horde clearing shots from their unique bows.
*'''Savage Melee Combatants''' - Wood Elves have access to some pretty heavy-hitting, if squishy infantry options that can scythe through hordes like lawnmowers. Additionally, Wild Riders are capable of dealing some of the most damaging charges in the game thanks to their ''immense'' charge bonus. The new Great Stag Knight unit hits even harder on the charge, and moves even faster.
*'''Micro Intensive''' - For experienced players looking for more a more dynamic faction, Wood Elves will prove quite interesting indeed. Due to the design philosophy of their army, players will need to keep on their toes and constantly be shifting a majority of their army about the battlefield to get the most out of them, more so than pretty much any other faction.
*'''Playing tall''': True to their nature, aquiring huge tracts of lands is of little interest to the Wood Elves. This makes managing your forces one hell of a lot more manageable. It also mitigates the tediousness of managing an Empire.

===Cons===
*'''Fragile''' - The Wood Elves are debatably ''the'' frailest overall faction in the game. A few niche units like the Tree Kin or Treemen can hold their own in prolonged fights, but the rest of your army will wither away in a sustained assault. A successful Wood Elf army must strike with surgical precision and do so swiftly and from afar. Because of this constant skirmishing, Wood Elves are arguably the most difficult race to play, as they require the most micromanagement on the battlefield.
**'''Micro Madness''' - A bit of an elaboration on the prior point, to the newer player, you may struggle to keep up with all the maintenance most Wood Elf units require to operate effectively. Unlike some of the easier or more flexible factions, it cannot be overstated that Wood Elves cannot afford to just be smashed against enemy forces recklessly or be committed to a grindfest against sturdier or more rounded factions.
*'''Weakness to Fire''': Duh. Anything that can burn or brings flaming attacks will give you a lot of trouble. A lot of your roster is especially vulnerable to this, since it directly counters your otherwise tanky Treekin frontline units, and several of the games factions have no trouble bringing it to the table, either through units (Dwarfs and Skaven in particular have no trouble to get some Irondrakes or Warpfire Throwers) or through the Lore of Fire, which is also a very common lore to find, with 6 factions (Empire, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Norsca and Warriors of Chaos) having access to it.
*'''Absent Artillery''' - Though you have plenty of long-ranged missile units to choose from and one or two missile units who can act similarly to artillery, you have no dedicated artillery platforms. This isn't a ''major'' issue primarily because you have so many archers that can fill every role the otherwise absent artillery would perform, but you will lack a notable source of hard-hitting burst damage. This is only getting worse in campaign with the Twisted and the Twilight's changes to Wood Elf hero skills, now only the Lords can buff your missile units range meaning no more 300 range Waywalker cheese, it was fun while it lasted. Use the Arrow of Kuronous ability instead of Artillery, with a range of 600 it's quite capable of sniping out enemy artillery and lords before you get close.
*'''Limited Roster''' - Wood Elves have fewer unit choices than a number of other playable factions. This limits your army composition into fairly predictable builds that does nothing for players looking for adaptable playstyles. It also means your faction has a number of fairly obvious weaknesses, such as the aforementioned fragility and lack of artillery but also a vulnerability to heavy cavalry and fire damage. These weaknesses can be exploited by your opponent relatively easily since most of them will have the flexibility to gear specifically against those weaknesses.
*'''DLC Faction''' - In order to play the Wood Elves at all, you need to buy at least one of the two optional DLC packs featuring them. "Realm of the Wood Elves", their initial release, is DLC for the first Total War: Warhammer game. "The Twisted and the Twilight", a lord pack for Total War: Warhammer II, will allow players of the second game a way to play them if they don't own both the original game and the original DLC, but some of the roster will be somewhat limited (more so than it already is). Regardless, if you want to have the whole faction available to play, you'll need to purchase two full price games and two separate DLC packs in order to access everything. If that's not premium content, I don't know what is.

==Universal Trait==
Wood Elves don't really have much in the way of extra abilities or perks, there is one particular thing they have going for them though:

*'''Hide (Forest)''' - What did you expect? They're ''Wood'' Elves. Hell, some of their units are literally just tree people. The only units in the entire elven roster who can't hide in forests are the Great Eagle, Hawk Riders and Forest Dragon.

*'''Forest Spirit''' - Though this affects only a portion of the Wood Elf roster, it still is frequent enough that it warrants a mention. All of your tree units possess this trait, which simultaneously provides extra defense against standard melee attacks and bequeaths magical attacks unto the tree units in question. While this helps make them particularly durable against most infantry armies, it dramatically weakens how effective your tree units are when faced against magically potent/resistant enemies, who will deal heightened damage to them while taking less in turn. Thankfully such enemy units are in relatively limited supply, but you definitely need to consider the type of opponent you're facing before you build a list around Tree Kin and Treemen. As of game three magical attack damage is no longer reduced my magic resistance (MR will only reduce actual spell damage), so this will be at least partially relieved.

==Lords==
Compared to the swollen ranks of the Warhammer II races, your available lord list is a little lacking. With all the Wood Elf DLC, you do have a grand total of 7 choices, though in Multiplayer you'll have little reason to take any of the generic choices. Even in the campaign, where confederating your fellow Wood Elves is relatively easy (usually only requiring the completion of a specific mission per WE faction to confederate), it can be difficult to justify recruiting the generic dudes outside of filling Office Slots on your council. Drycha is a notable exception, as the only lord she can confederate with is Durthu; she's not exactly a fan of the meatbags infesting Athel Loren.

===Legendary Lords===
*'''[[Orion]]''' - Orion is a hybrid ranged/melee beatstick who specializes against infantry. At a distance, he's one of the best ranged lords in the game and deals ''hefty'' anti-armor damage, perfect for sniping large monsters and individual lords/heroes. He's also blisteringly fast for a foot lord and can even keep pace with some of the slower cavalry found in other armies. This pairs well with his impressive melee attack and charge bonuses; it's a common tactic to skirmish at range with a few well timed missiles to then follow up with a charge. Though he's not a caster, Orion also has access to a powerful bound vortex spell, ''Hounds of Orion'', which will easily burn through most (elite) infantry when the burst damage is needed. All in all, a solid, well rounded lord that you can't go wrong with.

*'''[[Durthu]]''' - Everyone's favorite genocidal tree ([[Drycha|no, not that one]]) is your best dedicated duelist. In a similar vein to Orion, Durthu is a hybrid lord who has access to the lore of beasts; a reasonably useful set of supporting or offensive spells that can turn either himself or supporting treekin into terrifying combat monsters that will deal death to many a foe. As a massive monster, Durthu can wade through infantry and cavalry with relative ease and can go root-to-toe with a majority of the single-entity monsters in the game. Unfortunately, not everything to be said of Durthu is good. First, as a giant monster, Durthu is particularly vulnerable to both anti-armor weaponry and anti-large weaponry. This size also makes him an easy target to missile fire. Secondly, he's also vulnerable to fire damage, something many factions have access to and something modestly abundant on missile units. If caught in a crossfire of several such tools, Durthu will melt away frighteningly quickly, so you'll need to take extra care and support him with life magic should he get stuck in.

*'''[[Sisters of Twilight]] Naestra and Arahan (DLC)''' - These two ladies are collectively the only true-blooded ''elf'' Legendary Lord available to the Wood Elves. They are exclusively mounted on either a Great Eagle or a Forest Dragon and function best as a dedicated ranged unit. They do have decent combat stats, particularly when on the dragon, but they'll almost always lose against any other dedicated duelist unit or character worth their weight in gold. They excel in sniping targets from afar and have all tools to do so; both flying options safely keep them away from any melee combatant, and also have a very nice AoE attack not unlike the split shot ammo from the DE and HE artillery pieces. The SoT also grant Hawk Riders the "Arrows of Kurnous" ability, which is basically a "fuck you in particular" button that outright deletes any big unit you point it at.

*'''[[Drycha]] (FLC)''' Everyone's favorite genocidal tree ([[Durthu|no, not that one]]) returns as a "free" bonus Legendary Lord for Mortal Empires exclusively. Like her Branchwraith kin, Drycha is a hybrid melee combatant and spellcaster who can actually hold her own in combat if properly supported, but she will certainly not win any one-on-one duels with any characters with an actual melee statline. Unlike her generic sisters, Drycha is a pure-strain Lore of Shadows caster and as such is a shockingly vicious blob blender. As far as unique abilities go, Drycha brings two things to the table; she can summon a unit of (Malevolent) Dryads up to two times per battle and she provides a progressively more potent AoE buff that increases the melee attack of fellow Treekin units the lower her health is. Combined with the Frenzy ability found on a lot of her campaign unique units, this can be a particularly nasty combination that allows her and her angry trees to carve through quite a lot of the squishy, meaty competition. In campaign and custom battle she gets her own little roster of unique Malevolent Tree Spirit/Wild Beast units including Coeddil himself (unfortunately though none of her units have custom models, just reskins). Sadly, as mentioned, she is exclusive to the Mortal Empires campaign and so likely won't be seeing much time in the spotlight.

===Generic Lords===
*'''Glade Lord''' - Your generic elf dude/dudette, glade lords are flexible and very customizable lords who can lead from the front or afar. They are specialized duelists at heart and will excel at hunting enemy lords/heroes if you can separate them from their armies but, unlike Durthu, tend to be vulnerable to getting tied down by hordes of enemies. Normally your cheapest lord, you can invest in a steed/eagle to maximize their mobility (take the steed if you want to utilize forest terrain) or place them atop a Forest Dragon to allow them to fight a much wider selection of enemies. Note that while the male/female distinction is cosmetic only in campaign, in multiplayer battles, male glade lords are specced for melee while the female glade lords are specced for range. The glady tends to be more popular there since she gets an magic missile with arrow of kurnous and a snare with prey of Anath Raema.

*'''Ancient Treeman''' - Ancient treemen function somewhat like Durthu (understandably) in that they are hybrid lords with respectable melee damage output and access to a supplementary lore of magic. However, unlike Durthu, the regular ancient treeman has access to the significantly more useful lore of life. This makes them fantastic centerpieces for a treeman-style/focused army who can hold their own far more effectively than your spellsingers, but this comes with the same inconveniences plaguing Durthu. As a large, flammable monster, treemen are very weak to flamming attacks, anti-armor attacks and anti-large attacks. Even if he's healing himself, he can and absolutely will melt quite quickly if focused down (and believe me, he will be focused). You will absolutely need additional screening units to help protect him in combat.

*'''Spellweaver (DLC)''' - Caster ladies who can straight up lead your armies into battle, letting you save your hero slots for something else, if you so wish. In a manner similar to the High Elves, the Spell Weavers have access to a much wider variety of magic lores than their lesser variants (and by that, I mean they get two more schools). Otherwise, they're virtually identical to their sisters.
**'''Life Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Life Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Beasts Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Beasts Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Shadows Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Shadows Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Dark Spellweaver''' - Now we're getting somewhere new. An offensive discipline, the Lore of Dark Magic provides some solid anti-lord/hero spells via Doombolt and Soul Stealer while also providing some decent anti-infantry spells in Chillwind and Blade Wind. Frankly, not a bad pick at all. Lore attribute passively increases missile damage map wide which is actually pretty nice stacked with all the other auras/skill bonuses you can get.
**'''High Spellweaver''' - This Spellweaver got a little too into the 'shrooms and learned a whole new lore of magic. With a little bit of everything, the High Spellweaver can provide a bit of healing support, single target damage, AoE damage and can even trap/damage flying units with a cast or two of Tempest. To be frank, a lot of what she can do is overshadowed by her sisters, so you'll probably want to pick one of them if you want offensive or supportive magic. Lore attribute is nice for stacking physical resist map wide but honestly it’s not a great lore. Dark has much better damage. And you can just bring a secondary caster for buffs.

==Heroes==
You have one (two for ME) Legendary hero and three flavors of generic heroes, each with their own uses.

===Legendary Heroes===
*'''Ariel (DLC)''' - Ariel is an obscenely powerful caster hero that starts with a full roster of spells taken from the Lores of Life, High and Dark, but also Greater Arcane Conduit and two bound healing spells that rival Alarielle the Everqueens Heart of Avelorn in terms of raw healing potential. In direct combat itself, she's rather frail when put up against her direct DLC-counterpart Ghoritch, not to mention Throt, so her use against enemy single-entity-units is rather limited; her Magic combined with her Ward Save of 25% relegates her to Chaff clearing duty, where she performs very well.

===Generic Heroes===
*'''Branchwraith''' - If ever there could only be a single unit that could be defined as a "hybrid", branchwraiths would be strong contenders for the title. Not only are they capable melee fighters in their own right, but they have access to a variety of handpicked spells from both the lore of life and lore of shadows. This gives them equal measure of frontline support and damage. Penumbral Pendulum gives you a strong sweeping wind spell that excels at softening harder units for your Wardancers and Rangers. Their additional access to earthblood gives them a cheap multi-target heal that, when paired with Shield of Thorns, will make your frontline units extremely resilient for a brief period of time. AOE aura buffing melted attack is quite nice for your frontline. Best on bladesingers or dryads especially.

*'''Waystalker''' - These guys are lord/hero hunters, pretty much strictly designed and specialized for that singular purpose. They can easily vanish from your foe's view thanks to their Master Ambusher ability which, combined with their speed, also allows them to easily kite footlords while blasting them with arrows. A few limited use abilities, like the Arrow of Kurnous, can allow them to deal decent damage and disrupt infantry in a pinch. It can also be reserved for sniping and destroying artillery pieces. Despite being built to hunt characters, Waystalkers are actually only decent melee combatants and will falter against melee-focused foot lords. Only send them in if they're completely out of ammo and/or properly supported by reinforcements. AOE aura buff missile damage, park by your archers.

*'''Spellsinger''' - Your cheap, dedicated mages. Spellsingers, like the purestrain generic mages of other factions, only exist to cast spells and nothing more. Keep these gals behind your front lines and out of harms way if you want their support to last you the battle. If you can spare the coin, consider placing them on elven steeds or unicorns so that they can quickly respond to changing conditions on the battlefield and quickly escape should enemies come for them. You have three flavors to choose from:
**'''Beasts Spellsinger''' - A dedicated vector for the mixed lore of beasts, spellsingers of this category are ideal for supporting fellow elves/trees with buffs while contributing occasional bursts of AoE damage. A spare flock of doom can do decent work to clusters of infantry, though you'll get better AoE damage going with a shadows spellsinger. The spellsinger variant of Transformation of Kadon received a fluffy nerf; instead of summoning a feral manticore, now it summons eagles. Eagles are dramatically inferior to the manticore, but they can still be summoned to provide a surprise flank or to tie down enemy artillery in a pinch.
**'''Life Spellsinger''' - Your cheapest source for lore of life spells. All in all, you really can't go wrong with her; healing magic is invaluable and can absolutely mean the difference between a winning/losing engagement on the field. You'll get a lot of mileage out of her if you pair her with treemen/forest dragons.
**'''Shadows Spellsinger''' - The lore of shadows is your most offensive choice for your spellsingers, and it's not a bad one. Your two primary offensive spells, the Penumbral Pendulum and the Pit of Shades both deal impressive AoE damage and thus specialize in clearing out armored frontlines. The Pit of Shades also holds the distinct honor of being the only stationary vortex spell in the game. This ensures that it'll never randomly roll over your own troops, but it also cannot potentially flow into neighboring enemy formations to cause greater damage, so it's a bit of a trade off there. If nothing else, you can use it to create a zone of denial in chokepoints.

*'''Glade Captain (DLC)''' - A baby Glade Lord, Glade Captains are effectively identical to their lord counterparts in form and function. Frankly speaking, being relegated to the hero slot suits them better than the Lord slot, as you aren't sacrificing the offensive prowess of the Sisters of Twilight or Durthu for a generic damage dealer. Having said that, it's still somewhat hard to justify taking a Glade Captain over a Spellsinger or Branchwraith in most lists just due to the lack of utility they provide, but if you're in need of a more flexibly inclined damage dealer, Glade Captains are decently suited to the task. However, while it's definitely hard to justify bringing a glade captain to a multiplayer custom match, she's a must include in campaign since she passively increases an army's movement range and grants army wide buffs depending on what mount she has. Giving her a great stag allows cavalry to ignore movement penalties. Giving her an eagle causes hawkriders to instill fear. Taking her on foot allows wardancers and bladesingers to vanguard deploy, which is very effective when comboed with the Sisters of Twilight office that gives them stalk stance. Probably best on foot if you want vanguard bladesingers or on stag to accompany great stag knights where she is amazing. Makes great cavalry even better.

==Units==

====Melee Infantry====
*'''Eternal Guard''' - Eternal Guard are the closest thing to a defensive front line unit you have. Available shielded or unshielded (you should ''always'' take shielded Eternal Guard, precious other units in your army resist ranged attacks), these stalwart warriors are in that perfect twilight zone of being cheap and somewhat expendable while also remaining rather competent combatants capable of holding their own against other units above their weight class. Though they'll often lose in drawn out fights against stronger, higher tier melee infantry, they can pin them down long enough for your archers or dryads to flank and make up for their sub-optimal damage output. Eternal Guard, being exclusively armed with spears, are excellent anti-cavalry/monster screens and, when braced, can easily halt enemy charges in their tracks. No matter your focus, be it cavalry, missile units or treemen, you'll want your line held by a few of these guys. They don’t hold up to elite infantry well though, late game may want to replace with treekin, who are much more durable generally.
**'''Winterheart Guards (RoR)''' - Eternal Guard, only with charge defense against everything, an encouragement aura for nearby allied units and ''unbreakable''. These guys will hold the line until the bitter end, something they'll ensure takes a long time due to their increased defensive stats. You'll want these guys somewhat centrally located in your front line to ensure their leadership buff affects as many Eternal Guard as possible.

*'''Wardancers''' - These lovely ladies serve as dedicated infantry blenders, a job they do really, really well. They are exceptionally quick for infantry themselves, able to outrun a majority of the targets you'd throw them at (only a select few infantry units can even keep pace with them, namely Skinks). They do their best work against unarmored foes, so you should generally avoid sending them in against particularly hardy front line units. This is because, like a significant portion of your army, Wardancers are frail. Really frail. They take damage just as quick as they (try to) give it, so if they enemy they're fighting just won't die then they'll begin to. They do have an active skill that trades some of their melee attack for a defensive buff, which can help them come out on top in a DPS race, though they'll still be left far worse for wear without support. Pairing Wardancers with Eternal Guard is recommended to alleviate this; while the Eternal Guard pins down and tanks a particularly dangerous enemy, the Wardancers step in and carve them to pieces. Obsolete compared to spear version and blade singers.

*'''Spear Wardancers''' - Wardancers who specialize against large foes instead of infantry formations. Where regular Wardancers simply appreciate having Eternal Guard tank the hits, Spear Wardancers actually synergize with them extremely well due to their shared offensive niche. Just like the regular Wardancers, have the Eternal Guard intercept cavalry or monsters before sending these gals in. Spear Wardancers have an activated ability that grants them additional missile resistance, but it comes at the cost of their melee defense. They do much better vs armoured elite infantry than the normal version because of AP.
**'''Loec's Tricksters (RoR)''' - If you thought regular Wardancers were glass cannons, you haven't seen these ones at work. This regiment of renown exchanges the normal Spear Wardancer activated ability in exchange for one that pumps up their melee attack in exchange for their defense (literally the opposite effect of the regular Wardancers ability) which, when combined with the addition of Frenzy, makes them do ''obscene'' damage to large units. Unfortunately, this also means that a stiff breeze will slaughter them to the last. Hold these ladies in reserve for a critical fight, such as engaging the enemy lord or a key monster in their army and support them with magic to make sure they survive the ensuing melee.

*'''Wildwood Rangers''' - The Wildwood Rangers have an... interesting role. Previously, they were your only dedicated source of melee armor piercing damage, which they deal a lot of, but they also only specialize against large targets. While these two perks often work fantastically against monsters and cavalry, it tends to pay off less on the armored masses you may often find yourself against. They still hold a somewhat viable niche if you expect to face armored cavalry/monster armies like the Lizardmen or Bretonnia, but they are thoroughly outclassed by the new Bladesingers against all forms of infantry without good magic resistance you might face.
**'''Wardens of Cythral (RoR)''' - Take the Wildwood Rangers, give them silver shields, armor sundering and a ''beefy'' charge defense against large targets and send them on their way. These guys are better suited to prolonged fights against large foes than Spear Wardancers, particularly because they have actual stats in their defenses. With support, these guys can chunk most armored targets relatively well in good time.

*'''Dryads''' - The first of your treekin soldiers, Dryads are better suited to tanking and dealing physical damage than your Eternal Guard, but are notably weaker than them against magical and fire based attacks. Dryads also have virtually no charge defense and cannot deal with enemy cavalry remotely as well as the Eternal Guard either. Having said that, Dryads do have two notable selling points over Eternal Guard: They are immune to psychology (so Fear and Terror) and they have vanguard deployment. Cleverly hidden trees can easily fall upon a squishier back line to disrupt/shut down artillery and archers while formations of Eternal Guard distract the heavy hitters long enough for your angry trees to come into play.
**'''Wraiths of the Frozen Heart (DLC, RoR)''' - These dryads have been gifted with attacks that freeze and slow their targets, helping to ensnare and lock down enemies.

*'''Bladesingers (DLC)''' - At first glance, you'd assume these fiery redheads are just reskinned Wardancers. You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to assume that, but you will pay dearly if you underestimate them for that mistake. These ladies are your elite melee infantry and ''butcher'' anything not horse-sized or larger due in no small part to a combination of magical attacks and high armor-piercing damage. Bladesingers also have the ability to "turn off" their armor piercing damage modifier to give themselves a melee attack buff, letting them effectively cut down virtually any flavor of infantry you could throw them at. You can switch between the two modes at will, unlike the Wardancers, so they are exceptionally flexible for how killy they are. The main drawback is exactly what you'd expect from a bunch of half-naked ladies; their defensive stats are hot tish. Though they have access to Dodge and a decent melee defense, they will still die in droves if targeted by archers or thrown against an enemy a touch outside their weight class. None-the-less, having at least one squad of these fine warrior women is strongly recommended against literally any army that fields frontline infantry.

====Missile Infantry====
*'''Glade Guard''' - Your first, cheapest and ever reliable missile infantry, Glade Guard are the troops you'll have in your back-line in order to rain hell upon the enemies your melee infantry is currently harassing. Frankly speaking, there's little that can honestly be said about the bog-standard Glade Guard; they'll do decent work against unarmored enemies and they're pretty damn cost efficient, but you might find yourself looking at one of the two variants if you want to get some real work done.
**'''Glade Guard (Hagbane Tips)''' - Glade Guard with poisonous arrows. Though they deal slightly less direct damage with their missiles, they more than make up for it if they're supporting your melee infantry by applying poison debuffs all over their target's back. Using these particular Glade Guard for that purpose is a touch tricky however, as you need to be incredibly mindful of your positioning so as to not fire into your own unit's backsides while they're mashed against the enemy. available from the start of campaign, you should never use the basic. these should completely replace the basic version.
**'''Glade Guard (Starfire Shafts)''' - Glade Guard with armor-piercing arrows. These guys are a fantastic ranged answer to the likes of Dwarves, Chaos Warriors and Lizardmen and should almost always be taken over regular Glade Guard (or at the least, alongside them) to ensure that you can still deal damage to them.

*'''Deepwood Scouts''' - Sneaky elves who can utilize the combination of their stealth and vanguard deployment to sneak up and ambush the vulnerable backsides of enemy formations. Unlike Glade Guard, the Deepwood Scouts can fire while moving and can do so from any angle, letting them easily kite slower, unarmored units.
**'''Deepwood Scouts (Swiftshiver Shards)''' - Deepwood Scouts that fire two shots at a time. Even with the reduced range over regular Deepwood Scouts, the doubled DPS more than makes up for that minor inconvenience.

*'''Waywatchers''' - Your premium archer unit, and one of the highest damaging archer units in the game. Considering that this is factoring in units like the Sisters of Averlorn, that's saying something. All the strengths of the Deepwood Scouts are combined the Starfire Glade-Guard's utility with yet more impressive range and heightened movement speed that allows them to function both as a back-line unit or as vanguard ambusher.
**'''Hawk-eyes of Drakira (RoR)''' - Waywatchers that also come packing with a smokebomb to slow and discourage anyone from getting too close. They also have a slightly faster reload speed and slightly better accuracy than their generic kin, which alone is worth the slight upsell.

====Melee Cavalry====
*'''Glade Riders (Spears) (FLC)''' - Cheap, fast cavalry. At 94 speed they're faster than your Wild Riders but that and the price tag are basically the only good things you can say about them. They lack the armor piercing damage and Frenzy of the Wild Riders and, despite what the (Spears) tag might have you believe, they are not actually anti large, at least not in multiplayer though they can get an anti-large technology in campaign. As a fast, cheap melee harasser they will likely be best used in a similar fashion to hounds or feral cold ones, chasing down ranged infantry and artillery units and chasing units off the field

*'''Wild Riders''' The premier Wood Elf light cavalry and [[Orion|Mel Gibson's]] personal guard, these units can blend infantry they get a rear charge into but their squishiness will mean you don't want to leave them in combat for long. With decent melee attack, a nice charge bonus and armor piercing damage, these units can effectively kill things, but with low melee defense and armor they can certainly be killed back. Some physical resist makes them a bit tougher than their otherwise low defensive stats would lead you to believe, but don't send them into combat with units that deal magical damage or they'll melt fairly fast. All varieties of Wild Riders have Frenzy, meaning they'll be extra choppy until their leadership gets below 50% so if you want them at their most effective don't let them take too much damage.
**'''Wild Riders (Shields)''' A straight upgrade to Wild Riders, other than the price. Silver shields make them much more resistant to ranged fire and slightly higher melee defense lets them stick in combat for longer. They're still not heavy cavalry though, and are much more comfortable attacking from the side or rear than the front.
**'''Wild Hunters of Kurnous (RoR)''' With naturally higher melee attack than your standard Wild Riders and magic damage on top of that, these dendrophiles are even choppier than your standard variety stag-riding knife-ear. Don't bring them against Dwarfs though, the magic resistant little bastards will actually be harder to kill than if you'd brought standard Wild Riders.

*'''Great Stag Knights''' What's better than riding a stag into battle? Riding a really big stag into battle, of course! These monstrous cavalry are even faster than normal Wild Riders, with slightly higher melee attack and melee defense than even the shield variant. More importantly the Great Stage Knights have some actual armor meaning they're capable of taking a hit, though they certainly don't want to stay in melee combat for too long. Send them into infantry formations then giggle as the infantry goes flying. A few cycle charges from these will even break Chaos Chosen. Pair with a great stag riding glade captain and a sisters of the thorn unit giving ranged support for best results. Captain provides strider, melee support, and a Melee defense buff. sisters proved poison, buffs, and a debuff all together. 2-3 stag knight, the captain, and the sisters will combine into a terrifying cavalry deathstar.
**'''Lost Sylvan Knights (RoR)''' What's better than riding a really big stag into battle? Riding a really big ghost stag into battle, of course! As an ethereal unit, all the standard ethereal rules apply. They've got a ton of physical resist and no armor. Throw them into melee with bog standard swordsmen and you can leave them there safely but as soon as some wizard wazzock starts tossing magic damage around your Sylvan Knights will start dying, really fast. Don't let them fight anything that deals magic damage unless you want them to become lost again, permanently this time. They're undead, which means they crumble instead of routing which is generally a good thing as they can still hold a line and attack while crumbling. Back them up with lore of life, they can take advantage of it better than any other unit in the game thanks to their high physical resist and ability to run away from unfavorable engagements.

====Missile Cavalry====
*'''Glade Riders''' - Your fairly standard missile cavalry, Glade Riders only really stand out above other faction's similar missile cav by having slightly better than average range. They have somewhat decent melee capabilities, but in this regard they're only useful in charging lightly armored units, like opposing missile infantry. If you need something cheap to kite and harass enemy lines, these guys will get the job done. If nothing else however.
**'''Glade Riders (Hagbane Tips)''' - Debatably far more useful than their regular variants, Hagbane Tipped Glade Riders use poisonous ''and'' magical arrows, making them an excellent force against magic-weak armies and solid support units. Between their high speed and ability to apply poison against enemy units, they are virtually uncatchable by opposing cavalry and are simultaneously a fantastic unit for crippling faster units for your slower infantry to engage. consider as an alternative to hagbane glade guard, you dont need both probably.

*'''Hawk Riders''' - A rarity, Hawk Riders are one of the few dedicated flying missile units in the game. Extremely fast, Hawk Riders can easily dodge incoming enemy fire if microed properly (something you'll have to do if you want them to live long enough to do their job) and makes them ideal for flanking enemy positions to rain hell upon them from on high. Unfortunately, like much of the WE roster, Hawk Riders have non-existent defensive statlines and they will drop like flies if you allow them to take missile fire or get pinned down in combat. Additionally, when they ''are'' in combat, their melee attack and defense scores are ''terrible''. This is ever so slightly mitigated by their mediocre charge bonus and hefty (melee) armor-piercing damage bonuses, letting them act as halfway decent shock cavalry against armored infantry in a pinch. This should definitely only be done as a last resort or if you have sufficient forces to support them however, else they just impotently kamikaze themselves into your opponent's ranks like so many gnats on a windshield. In the Sisters of Twilight campaign, they received a ''major'' buff in the Volley of Kurnous ability, letting them fire a high damage burst of arrows into ground bound enemy targets. Be it a single character or horde of infantry, the Volley of Kurnous does ''ludicrous'' damage and a doomstack of Hawk Riders can delete massive ground-bound armies with the click of a single button. This makes them ''the'' premiere airforce army in the campaign.

*'''Sisters of the Thorn''' - Elite missile cavalry that, unlike anything else in your roster on four hooves, can do a little bit of everything. Though they don't have the charge bonus of your Wild Riders or Great Stag Knights, Sisters of the Thorn can actually remain in combat for extended periods of time due to their superior defensive abilities (both innate and through access to their on demand bound abilities). This can be further supplemented by their poisonous arrows, letting them soften up and slow down enemy forces for a follow up charge. Unfortunately, in any single attribute they typically fall short of the rest of your options; they lack the range of your Glade Riders while being slightly slower, they don't have as impactful a charge as your Wild Riders/GSK and they don't even have any armor-piercing damage like your Hawk Riders do. Despite that, alongside their rather steep price tag, they are still wonderfully flexible missile cav units (flexible by WE standards) that will likely find more opportunistic match-ups against a wider range of foes than some of your other options. great at supporting other cav, wild riders, stag knights etc

====Monsters====
*'''Tree Kin''' - Your monstrous infantry and the only units in your roster that can actually hold their own in a grindfest, even if they themselves won't really be doing much damage in the process. With thick armor, high melee defense and charge defense against large, these bark monsters will take an eternity to die if the enemy units fighting them find themselves lacking anti-armor or magic/fire damage. Against most factions, these guys are fantastic "meat" shields for your considerably squishier elven units. Just keep the matchbox away from them. Ancient treeman lords can give them 10% ward and an extra 10% physical resist from the red skill tree in campaign. they can become tough enough to hold well even vs anti large and armor piercing especially with lore of life support.
**'''Firebark Elders (RoR)''' - This is what you get when your Treekin ''are'' the matchbox. With a 70% fire resistance and the ability to bequeath that resistance to nearby units, you can patch a fairly notable (and semi-common) weakness of your other tree units. If you expect that you'll be facing an army with relatively easy access to flaming attacks, like Bretonnia or Lizardmen, having these guys form your frontline core is strongly advised.

*'''Zoats (DLC)''' - Boy, we're going deep for these guys. These guys are effectively Wood Elf Dragon Ogres and very much fill the same role; anti-large monstrous cavalry that can deal crippling damage to the big beasties. They sacrifice some of the innate damage and durability the Dragon Ogres possess for much greater utility with access to two bound Lore of Life spells: Earth Blood and Flesh to Stone. With these, Zoats can support themselves and other Wood Elf units without imposing on the Winds of Magic reserves ideally utilized by your Lord/Heroes. Take a care though, Zoats don't have the stats their Dragon Ogre counterparts do and aren't quite as flexible in their engagement choices. Have a unit of Tree Kin or at the very least Eternal Guard support your Zoats to help mitigate incoming damage.
**'''Enigmas of Ghyran (RoR)''' - Zoats who have better stats and two charges of Regrowth instead of Earth Blood. These guys are fantastic support for lists with a focus on monster units and can easily pair up with a lore of life spellsinger for immense burst healing.

*'''Great Eagle''' - Something of a squishy unit, Great Eagles are extremely fast flying units that are pretty much designed to do one thing; body slam artillery pieces and backline units with cycle charges while your infantry holds them in place. Unfortunately, that's... pretty much all they can do. They are not remotely as punchy or durable as a majority of other single entity monsters and will quickly die if left in melee combat with anything that can hold a sharp stick. Cycle charging this guy is ''imperative'' if you want them to stay alive. Fortunately, when airborne, almost nothing can catch them and they can evade missile fire from dusk until dawn. They do have a unique kill animation that can take out a third of a blob but don't expect to see it unless fighting the frailest units.

*'''Treeman''' - An all-purpose wrecking ball, Treemen are melee beatsticks that can throw a mean left hook and stand in an ocean of angry infantry without a care in the world. Unless they have fire, in which case... enjoy the lightshow, I guess. Unlike the smaller Tree Kin, Treemen are actually threatening in melee combat and are quite capable against a wonderfully wide variety of targets, large and small, armored and not. As they are very tall, bipedal trees, Treemen make a fantastic [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX]] that your opponent can't afford to outright ignore, especially since they cause fear and terror. Be cautious though; they're big, slow moving trees. They're very vulnerable to getting focused down at range and though they can wade through any infantry tarpit dancing around their roots, they can't do so quickly enough to evade incoming missile fire. And unlike their Ancient Treemen leaders, who at least can utilize magic for defense an a modicum of offense if necessary, regular Treemen don't have ''any'' way to deal with ranged assaults on their own.

*'''Forest Dragon''' - Your one and only Dragon, Forest Dragons are pretty much the crown jewel of the Wood Elf monster units. Unfortunately, when compared to the full selection of dragons available to High Elves, Forest Dragons fall fairly short in relative power, being roughly on par with Sun Dragons. They do make up for this slightly with their additional physical resist and poisonous attacks, letting them dive into the thick of it more confidently than the other flavors of dragon other factions have. When paired with a lore of life spellsinger/Ancient Treeman, these dragons can tough it out in a fight for a ''very'' long time. Defensively, a lot of the same cautionary measures other dragons use should be taken at range; their flying speed coupled with their size isn't conducive for dodging ranged attacks and their resistances don't apply against projectiles. Try to pin down enemy archers and artillery with cavalry or a Great Eagle before having the Forest Dragon swoop in for the kill.

====Drycha Campaign Units====

These units can only be used by Drycha's Wargrove in campaign or custom battles, but as campaign units are unavailable to multiplayer (or custom battle if you have unit caps turned on). The units are split into two distinct groups, Malevolent Tree Spirits who are essentially just ordinary Tree Spirits with Frenzy and a kickass purple glow, and Wild Beasts, beefed up versions of monstrous animal units from other factions most of which have vanguard deployment and Forest Stalker, making them effective flankers and slightly tougher in the trees. All of these units, like Drycha herself, are FLC units given to anyone who owns the original Realm of the Wood Elves DLC, and are exclusive to the Mortal Empires campaign. Drycha and her units cannot be played in Vortex, though she does appear in the background of Throt's campaign and in the final battle.

*'''Coeddil''' - A little treat that CA didn't really feel like advertising, Coeddil makes a surprise appearance as a Legendary Hero available in Drycha's Mortal Empire campaign. [[FAIL|And only in that campaign.]] Befitting his psychopathic hatred for all things not made of bark, Coeddil is an absolute melee menace who constantly saps nearby enemy unit's health while giving all allied nearby a minor melee buff. He's a mixed Beasts/Dark caster with several choice spells from both winds including Transformation of Kadon and Power of Darkness. If that wasn't enough, Coeddil is unbreakable and will stay in the fight until the bitter end. It's worth noting that in custom battle he's considered a campaign exclusive unit rather than a hero so if you really feel like shenanigans [[Rip and tear|you can make an army of Coeddils.]]

*'''Malevolent Ancient Treeman''' - The only lord on this list, basically just an ancient Treeman with Frenzy. This makes it even more of a melee powerhouse than ordinary Ancient Treemen, though a strong anti-large duelist lord can still take it down. Unlike ordinary Ancient Treemen, the Malevolent ones get access to three distinct Lores of Magic instead of being locked to Lore of Life. They can take Lore of Life, but can instead choose to take Lore of Beasts or Lore of Shadows. Like Coeddil, the Malevolent Ancient Treeman is considered a campaign exclusive unit rather than a lord and so you can take as many as you like, provided you have the funds for it. Lore of Beasts can summon the usual Matincores instead of Great Eagles and gives beast units frenzy. Shadows gets improved glamour removing the debuff from elf units. Life gets regen as a skill. Beasts is probably the most useful for buffing your army. A life branch wraith is probably better than putting life on your lord due to less competition for skill points.

*'''Malevolent Branchwraith''' - A Branchwraith with frenzy. Whereas the standard Branchwraith is not the best melee fighter, the Malevolent variant is actually a decent damage dealer so long as you keep her away from flaming attacks. Similar to the Malevolent Ancient Treeman, the Malevolent Branchwraith has an expanded list of Lores it can choose from. Ordinary Branchwraiths are a mix of Lore of Shadows and Lore of Life, while their Malevolent kin can specialize in either full Lore of Life, full Lore of Shadows or Lore of Beasts. Strangely, there is no mixed Lore of Life/Lore of Shadows Malevolent Branchwraith. Life gets regen, beasts gets extra melee attack, shadows gets stalk. Recommend life only and get beasts or shadows from your lord. Lords get nice army buffs.

*'''Malevolent Dryads''' - These are basically ever so slightly buffed Dryads with the added Frenzy ability, making them substantially more threatening right out of the gate. Drycha herself can summon two of them per battle using one of her unique abilities, making them the only unit on this list usable in multiplayer (if only as summons). red skill tree can give them extra melee attack, weapon strength, melee defense and an extra 15% physical resist. They can outfight chaos warriors with all the buffs applied, and even against things they might not beat they are like more tanky non AP hex wraiths that dont crumble.

*'''Cave Bats''' - Non-undead Vampire Count Fell Bats with an extra 20 leadership, vanguard deployment and the ability to hide in trees. Used in essentially the same way as Fell Bats, they're great at tying down fast units, distracting ranged units, nomming artillery, causing chaos on walls and being meat shields for more important flying creatures. As previously stated they're not undead so they won't hold the line while crumbling the way Fell Bats do but they're also dirt cheap and expendable so you won't care when they're inevitably slaughtered.

*'''Giant Wolves''' - Norscan Ice Wolves without the Frostbite, considered small units instead of large for some reason meaning the standard anti-large tactics don't work on them. They're quite speedy and have a decent weapon strength though it's not majority armor piercing, meaning they're effective against low armor opponents. Charge them into the flanks of infantry or ranged units and use them to kill routing enemies, but don't expect them to hold the line.

*'''Giant Spiders''' - These big angry arachnids don't really have a direct parallel to any other units. These are essentially buffed up Forest Goblin Spider Riders but without the Goblin. This unfortunately means they lose the shield held by said goblin, but considering it was a bronze shield anyway the 70 armor, armor piercing damage, increased melee attack and forest stalker attributes more than make up for it. Their poison in conjunction with their decent armor means they can serve surprisingly well as front line fighters, especially with magical support spells like Shield of Thorns or Wyssan's Wildform

*'''Great Hawks''' - The only unit on this list that probably should have been available to the entire Wood Elf faction, these are essentially slightly cheaper Hawk Riders with improved melee stats but no ranged attack. They have the standard vanguard deployment and Forest Stalker traits and are VERY fast. Give them some Cave Bats to act as meat shields and they can be quite effective melee combatants. They'll very quickly rip apart ranged infantry and artillery and can be absolute terrors in sieges, capable of massacring any infantry on the walls with flying cycle charges. They are fragile though, so good micro and support from other units is essential when using them.

*'''Feral Manticore''' - Of course Drycha would get at least one Chaos unit. This is literally the exact same unit as fielded by Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elves. Notably, the Feral Manticore lacks the Vanguard Deployment and Forest Stalker attributes of the rest of the Wild Beasts, making it a bog standard vanilla Manticore. It's essentially a slightly tougher but slower terror causing Great Eagle. It's an effective source of flying terror, but it's certainly not the biggest beastie out there and is somewhat vulnerable to anti large, ranged fire and other more powerful single entity monsters like dragons. Its rampage is especially bad, as it means that you can easily lose control of it at the worst possible time and, as a (reluctant) member of the Wood Elf faction, you're a bit lacking in tools to go get it. These still get 20 physical resistance from a tech and frenzy from drycha or a beasts Treeman.
**With both frenzy and the tech boost they the same nearly the same raw killing power and physical resist as a Forrest dragon for less than half the cost. They don’t have breath attacks or poison but they are faster and smaller so can dodge arrows much easier. Actually very cost effective. Plus Unlike the other manticore using factions Dycha has lore of life to keep them alive. Can replace hawks entirely except for lacking vanguard.
**Wut? A Forest Dragon is niche and only really good when in the woods, but its health, breath attack, damage type and the fact that its a dragon means that they have their best use is supplementing your line, flying in and out of combat as needed. Manticores do not get forest bonuses, but are much more accessible and expendable. Manticores take out missiles, artillery, and flame weapons so your trees and forest creatures don't have to take those shots upon approach. Dragons use their breath attack, smash into the lines, then leave so you can do it all over again
***The Feral Manticore is your mom's boyfriend that comes over before the party and helps out but doesnt stick around for long, the Forest Dragon is your drunk dad who comes in and wrecks shit

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===
The first and most important component of playing Wood Elves; stay moving. Due to how frail the majority of the Wood Elf roster is, you cannot afford to allow your opponent to take the initiative in a fight. The good news is that many of your work-horse units are quite fast; many standard or slow moving armies will rarely be able to pin down your forces if you literally just stay one step ahead of them. Additionally, your Cavalry does almost all of their work in the charge; they will ''greatly'' diminish in strength and value if they remain in extended combat. Cycle charging is the name of the game for you, and it's a tenant you'll need to stick to if you actually want to give Bretonnia a run for their money. All of this combines to make Wood Elves one of the most micro-intensive factions in the game, if played right. While this can make them more interesting and fun to play, it also makes them considerably more challenging with mistakes punishing you much more severely than what other factions might've endured for similar errors.

====Faction Counterplay====
*'''Beastmen''' - The only other faction that can consistently keep pace or even outrun your in a flat out foot race. Beastmen are very much a rush faction and will do their damndest to close the gap between your forces; something you should take every measure to prevent. Eternal Guard or Tree Kin are reasonable front line screens and have a natural affinity for fighting against the Beastmen's larger units, like Minotaurs, while Wardancers can quickly butcher a majority of the infantry they tango with. Just make sure none of your damage dealing units ever take a head on charge. Beastmen have a very notable weakness that you can exploit; a near complete lack of armor and relatively limited missile units means that they'll be taking the full force of your ranged assaults. Hagbane Glade Guard/Riders not only deal respectable damage to the beastmen units, but the application of poison helps your footbound infantry catch up to and slaughter their infantry with considerable ease. In a cavalry face off, these hagbane missile units can slow down opposing Centagors for your Wild Riders and Great Stag Knights to deliver crippling blows with a few cycle charges. Lastly, Waywatchers and Deepwood Scouts (swiftsilver) are fantastic character or monster hunters who can pop up behind enemy lines and burst down Bray shaman, Giants or Cygors.

*'''Bretonnia''' - Make no mistake, Bretonnian cavalry is beyond your league. Though Wild Riders and Great Stag Knights have impressive charges of their own, they cannot remain engaged in a fight. This isn't really a problem for Bretonnian cav, who have the stats and tools to remain in a fight and still come out on top. The two biggest units to watch out for are Questing Knights and Grail Knights. Though they specialize primarily against armored units, Questing Knights will easily catch up to and slaughter a majority of your infantry in quick order. Grail Knights are the swiss-army knife of the faction against you; with magical attacks as well as an anti-armor and bonus against large, these guys are tailor made to chop down your tree units. It's less than ideal, but try to box them in or screen them with Eternal Guard, who will at the very least hold them off and allow your vulnerable missile units to reposition or support them with anti-armor fire. If you can at least pin them in long enough, Wardancers with Spears can do impressive damage against them despite their armor. As far as the peasantry goes... you have nothing to worry about. Your archers will absolutely dominate theirs in a firefight and literally any of your infantry options will win against theirs.

*'''Dark Elves''' - Fortunately, much of their AP ammunition and melee specialization goes to waste in this matchup. Even better, their lack of firing range means you can often fire off several volleys before they can, even with their missile chariots. The best of news, their heavy cavalry is among the worst in the game, and is hardly able to keep up with yours. Not to be confused with their light cavalry, which is actually quite capable and the most picked flavor of Dark Elf cavalry. Black Ark Corsairs, Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter are particularly feisty in melee combat and are the best suited to dealing with your kind, so try to wear them down at range before you contest them with Wildwood Rangers/Wardancers. Dryads and Tree Kin are not recommended units to bring in this matchup; they're too slow and the Dark Elf emphasis on AP will shred them before they so much as take a step out of the woods. Keep an eye peeled for when Murderous Prowess procs and do everything you can to avoid engaging the Dark Elves while it's active; the offensive bonuses can easily turn a losing engagement into a winning one for them and you definitely aren't suited to DPS race another glass cannon faction.

*'''Dwarfs''' - This is your worst matchup by far. A lot of your front line infantry will struggle ''immensely'' against the wall of bearded armor slowly plodding its way across the map towards you. Starfire Gladeguard will be your best discount ranged option while Wildwood Rangers can deal with them in melee, but you will need to support them with something tanky if you want them to last. Tree Kin and Treemen are a wonderful bastion to center your army around, but you will ''need'' to take out any Irondrakes the opponent may have fielded before you commit them to battle. The Firebark Elders RoR can help mitigate this fire weakness. Bladesingers will soon become excellent beard-cutters once the magic-resistance only applies to spell damage as opposed to magic attacks, giving you a much needed way to carve through Dwarf armor.

*'''Empire''' - That artillery... is going to be a problem. A rather shocking array of long range artillery well suited for every occasion will make any frontal assault all but suicidal. Play to your strengths; try to flank and ambush weak points in empire lines. Stay on the move and don't give their missile infantry a chance to set up and fire. If you can, vanguard deploy cavalry or dryads in a position to shut down careless artillery placements so that your archers can start picking apart empire gunpowder before ''they'' can get into range. Great Eagles are also fantastic for this purpose, just make sure you keep an eye on any halberds that might be standing by. Otherwise, Wardancers and Bladesingers thoroughly outclass Empire infantry if they can make it in safely, though don't expect them to get out unscathed.

*'''Greenskins''' - Little to no armor? Check. General lack of anti-large? Check. Relatively sluggish frontline? Also check. You have a lot of things going for you in this matchup, but that's not to say Greenskins aren't able to give you a damn good fight. Goblins and Goblin Skirmishers will be a bitch to deal with; exceedingly numerous, nimble and accurate with their bows and ultimately disposable if you pin them down, they'll often distract or whittle away enough of your forces that the Ork Boyz about to crash into your lines will be able to deal some serious damage. Dryads are solid counters to the non-armored Boyz, though you'll want Wildwood Rangers or Bladesingers to deal with Black Orks. Your Cavalry is well suited to deal with the Greenskins, but only if you continuously cycle charge with them.

*'''Grand Cathay''' - Yet another defensive gunpowder faction. Your air force does outclass Grand Cathay's in a skirmish and you can easily take down their Skyjunks with Great Eagles or Forest Dragons (something you'll want to do if you don't want fiery hot death spewing from it), but the same can't be said for the rest of their artillery. Grand Cannons will be very problematic for your forest spirits and surprisingly difficult to pin down due to their speed while Fire Rain Rockets put out enough anti-infantry firepower to make Hellstorm Batteries blush. Your missile cav will prove quite valuable at outmaneuvering and outranging most of the gunpowder and can generally keep away from Grand Cathay's own lackluster cavalry selection, though just make sure you don't directly charge into any braced infantry with your cavalry; flank them or charge them with less valuable units like Dryads or Eternal Guard before sending in your heavy hitters.

*'''High Elves''' - High Elves share many of the same strengths you do. Their Sisters of Avelorn can very nearly match Waywatchers in ranged dps while their weakest dragon, the Sun Dragon is comparable to your Forest Dragon in stats. Also, their units have a durability yours simply can't match, a large part of which is their Martial Prowess. Worse, many of their units come with a 55% block chance against missile fire, which can be incredibly potent against a faction such as yours that relies heavily on missile fire. Fortunately, you have an advantage that can help negate both of those difficulties: your speed. Wood Elves are the best skirmish faction in the game, use that to your advantage. Take some ranged cavalry to circle the enemy or vanguard deploy some archers behind enemy lines and shoot their infantry in the back to ignore those pesky shields. Remember that Waywatchers don't duel other archers very well due to their low model count, save them to shoot at large targets or lords. If your enemy is smart they won't try to contest the air, if they're not shoot their dragons and phoenixes out of the sky with a combination of prey of anathraema (so you'll probably want to take female glade lord as your lord) and waywatcher fire. Either way you should be able to field some flying units such as hawk riders which you can use for more skirmishing. Remember that if possible you don't want to engage the enemy in melee until their units are at half health and their Martial Prowess is gone. The new DLC units are quite effective against the High Elves, Zoats are strong anti-cavalry and Bladesingers can blender High Elf infantry, especially if Martial Prowess is lost. Don't bring tree spirits unless you're willing to invest in Firebark Elders because the High Elves have a ton of sources of fire damage. Branchwraiths might also be a poor choice as the High Elf Fireborn RoR can kill a Branchwraith in seconds.

*'''Khorne''' -

*'''Kislev''' - Bring some spears and some Tree Kin because cavalry is likely going to be the name of Kislev's game. Keep an eye out for any Ice Guard; while Kossars and Streltsi will not pose much of a threat (at range) the Ice Guard are quite capable at any range and will be very adept at scything through your forest spirits if you give them the opportunity. If you can contain them and any Ice Witches, your Tree Kin will be pretty well set to hold back any Winged Lancers or War Bear Riders trying to get at your backline. Use Eternal Guard and Spear Wardancers to mop up any such cavalry and you should be golden.

*'''Lizardmen''' - While you will have absolutely no issues outrunning and kiting Saurus and Kroxigors, you should take a caution against Skink units. They might be cute little lizards who deal relatively minor damage against most other factions, but you're not most other factions. Since a majority of your infantry is unarmored, you'll be taking the full brunt of their little assaults and they're one of the precious few infantry units that can reliably keep pace with yours and even outrun a fair chunk of your own frontline formations. Additionally, Skink Skirmishers and Chameleon Skinks will prove shockingly effective at whittling down your unarmored forces with poisonous missile fire while proving to be a frustrating target in turn due to their lose formations and (for Chameleons) ranged damage resist. Lastly, you will want to take an extreme care around Fire Slann and Salamanders, who will be the ''bane'' of your Tree units. If you can shut down their fiery assaults, Tree Kin will prove a reliable walling unit to hold down and defend against Saurus frontlines and can even resist the onslaught of their varied monsters. Your cavalry will also prove extremely effective against the Lizardmen with their superior speed and devastating charges; there's precious little the Lizardmen can do if they can't pin down your Wild Riders/Great Stag Knights.

*'''Norsca''' - The general disdain for armor among Norscans makes dealing with them at range substantially more viable than their heavily armored cousins (WoC), though their higher speeds and more prolific monsters will prove troublesome should they manage to catch up to you. Anti-Large is a must in some flavor (not that it's particularly hard to come by for you).

*'''Nurgle''' - The only thing Nurgle can do to your skirmishers are furies and Ku'gath if your opponent brought him. Try to avoid melee for as long as you have any ammunition left, there's no sense letting Nurgle deal any unnecessary damage to your forces.

*'''Ogre Kingdoms''' - Under no circumstances are you to try to meet their charges head on; any non-Tree Kin infantry that tries will get utterly demolished before the ''actual'' fighting begins. Instead, divide and conquer; Ogre Kingdoms are going to generally have a lower unit/model count than most other armies, so every dead ogre adds up fairly quickly and they can't be everywhere at once. Spread out your forces so that even if they manage to pin down some of your units, you still have reinforcements ready to reposition and hit them where it hurts. Additionally, their relative lack of armor means your abundance of ranged units can soften them up significantly before they get close. Tree Kin, with their expert charge defense, melee resistance and high melee defense stats, are one of the few units that can safely stop an Ogre charge in its tracks. Follow this up with some Eternal Guard to further tie them down.

*'''Skaven''' - Other than the High Elves, if any other faction can rival you at range, it's the Skaven. Between their Jezzails, Ratling Guns, Poisonwind Globadiers, Plagueclaw Catapults and Warplightning Cannons, Skaven have a gun for every conceivable job. You on the other hand, have virtually no armor and shielded units are few and far in between. Thankfully, many of your archers still outrange their missile units and so long as you don't allow yourself to get backed into a corner, you shouldn't have too much issue kiting their slightly slower ranged infantry. Dealing with Skaven artillery will always be your first priority; Great Eagles or Wild Riders/Great Stag Knights can swiftly slip behind enemy lines and shut down artillery long enough for your archers to set up and deal some damage. In general, your melee infantry shouldn't really be too bothered by theirs; skavenslaves and clanrats are a mere nuisance to your considerably more "elite" infantry, though don't get complacent; even skavenslaves can deal not inconsiderable damage to your unarmored elves and, like all chaff infantry, their main value lies in simply tying your guys down. Key Skaven infantry to watch out for are their Plaguemonks and Death Runners.

*'''Slaanesh''' - The only faction that can definitively claim to be faster than you... and at least in this matchup, that doesn't necessarily do them too many favors. Much of the Slaaneshi roster is geared to fight armored opponents, which thankfully (in this particular case, at least), you generally aren't. Having said that, Slaanesh isn't without claws or teeth; if you want your Waywatchers or Glade Guard to get any work done, you're going to need to screen them diligently. Slaanesh lacks much in the way of range (effectively non-existent ranged roster) or armor (...it's Slaanesh after all), so you can get some serious work done from afar if you can keep his/her chariots, cavalry and/or daemonettes from scything through your backlines. Hawk Riders can also serve you quite well in this matchup, as once you clear out any potential furies from assaulting them, they'll be virtually uncontested while they rain arrows down upon the backsides of those horny, horny daemons. You'll want to take the ever vigilant Eternal Guard to combat enemy cavalry/chariots and as general damage sponges while Wardancers can mop up any infantry currently engaged with them.

*'''Tomb Kings''' - An unpredictable matchup. Their frontline will be slow, and much of it can be whittled down with skirmish tactics before your own melee units will even need to engage them. Ushabti Great Bows pose a serious threat to the Wood Elves as they can steadily fire upon your Lords from afar, especially Orion and Durthu whose large model sizes makes them much more vulnerable, as well as outranging the Sisters of Twilight by a considerable margin. Faster constructs such as the Warsphinx and the Necrosphinx puts a great damper on the skirmishing tactics which Wood Elves mainly rely on, being capable of chasing down kiting units such as Deepwood Scouts and Waystalkers. Keep the Tomb Kings player on their toes with a good mix of Cav, ranged units and anti-large spear units, making sure to avoid engaging their frontline units in melee until absolutely necessary due to their fear effect putting you at a disadvantage.

*'''Tzeentch''' - First; leave anything with bark for skin in the woods; trying to mitigate the sheer amount of flaming, magical damage at Tzeentch's disposal is impossible. Instead, you're going to want a dedicated cavalry build; Tzeentch relies heavily on cycle charging and keeping out of extended fights. Use your superior speed to prevent any daemons from escaping. Once you manage to pin any particular units down, Wardancers and Bladesingers will dominate anything they come into contact with. Of course, you'll want to have a few archers contest/discourage any Horrors attempting to line up some shots of their own if only to further soften them up for your melee kill squads.

*'''Vampire Coast''' - Look out for artillery. If you can do that, this matchup can become modestly easy; Vampire Coast infantry is rather slow and you easily outrange all non-artillery missile units they can bring to bear. So long as you're careful with your positioning, pick your engagements and keep two steps ahead of them, you can pick apart much of their gunlines before they can get a chance to return fire. Once you do so, Wardancers with Spears and Eternal Guard are pretty suited towards dealing with the bigger monsters they might have.

*'''Vampire Counts''' - One of your best matchups. VCs have a tough time handling your skirmishers since they don't have any ranged units or light cav. They also have a tough time handling your forest spirits. Treemen/treekin can easily smush skeleton spearmen and shut down blood knights with their charge def vs. large. If you really want to be an asshole, take sisters of twilight/hawkriders, park them on top of enemy, and pick away at their key units while they impotently shake their fists at you. VC lords are frequently put on flying mounts such as Hellsteeds and Zombie Dragons. An excellent strategy against these picks is to expose archer units in hopes of baiting the VC Lord in before trapping him or in place with the female Glade Lord's Prey of Anath Raema ability. As long as Dire Wolves and Vampire Cav are kept far away while this commences, a full back line of archers can easily whittle the VC Lord down within the sixteen seconds of prey of Anath Raema, especially given its twenty percent missile resistance debuff, thereby automatically securing your victory.

*'''Warriors of Chaos''' - A heavily armored melee faction with virtually no ranged options, you won't have much trouble keeping your distance from a majority of the WoC roster. The problem is, between their heavy armor and shields, Wood Elves had a bit of trouble actually dealing with their front lines until recently. Though Wildwood Rangers are reasonably decent at facing them in combat, the addition of Bladesingers has given Wood Elves a very strong melee-oriented answer for all that bulk. When properly supported, Bladesingers can and will carve a path of death through Chaos front lines, especially if you have anti-armor missile support from the flanks. Eternal Guard, as ever, are the best screening unit you can ask for against enemy cavalry while Tree Kin are a bit more suited to holding back the tide of enemy infantry while your Bladesingers get into position. One major issue you'll need to keep in mind; if the WoC brought a Hellcannon, you will want to prioritize that before anything else. WE have no direct artillery to answer them in kind and with virtually no defensive statlines on most of your units, Hellcannons can deal terrible damage to a majority of your roster if you let them fire at you uncontested.

*'''Wood Elves''' - Oh boy, fantasy guerilla warfare. If you're facing other fleshy wood elf infantry, don't expect a straight up fight. Try to outflank and shut down their archer units to force them into a more direct confrontation and shut down their healers to prevent them from shaking off the damage you deal to them. Try to save your magical arrows for any Trees looking at you funny.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves

2022-02-23T20:22:55Z

2600:387:2:803:0:0:0:78: /* Drycha Campaign Units */

{{Topquote|Lacoi Endri Loren! (Might of the Great Forest!)|Game battle chant for Wood Elves}}
This is the tactica for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of the Wood Elves.

==Why Play Wood Elves==
*Cause you're tired of tree hugger jokes.
*You have a need, a need for speed.
*Rather than blot out the sun you want to light the sky with hundreds of magical arrows.
*You love the parts from Lord of the Rings where Ents get shit done.
*Because you want the world to learn of your peaceful ways, by force.

===Pros===
*'''Sheer Speed''' - The majority of your army is quite fast. Even the most basic infantry available to you, Eternal Guards, will outpace a significant portion of the footsoldiers available to most other armies. You'll be able to dance around the plodding pace of slower armies like the <strike>dwarves</strike> Dwarfs <sub>(that's a grudgin')</sub> or lizardmen. Even fast races such as Beastmen will have trouble keeping up with your mounted units and flying monsters.
*'''Excellent Missile Infantry''' - The Wood Elves have an abundance of fantastic missile units. Ranged infantry, cavalry, fliers, lords, heroes with access to dedicated poison, anti-armor, magic or rapid fire missiles gives you immense flexibility against any threats you may face. With the new DLC, the Wood Elves have perhaps the single best ranged Legendary Lord(s) in the game in the form of the Sisters of Twilight, who are capable of not only dealing heavy single target damage but also horde clearing shots from their unique bows.
*'''Savage Melee Combatants''' - Wood Elves have access to some pretty heavy-hitting, if squishy infantry options that can scythe through hordes like lawnmowers. Additionally, Wild Riders are capable of dealing some of the most damaging charges in the game thanks to their ''immense'' charge bonus. The new Great Stag Knight unit hits even harder on the charge, and moves even faster.
*'''Micro Intensive''' - For experienced players looking for more a more dynamic faction, Wood Elves will prove quite interesting indeed. Due to the design philosophy of their army, players will need to keep on their toes and constantly be shifting a majority of their army about the battlefield to get the most out of them, more so than pretty much any other faction.
*'''Playing tall''': True to their nature, aquiring huge tracts of lands is of little interest to the Wood Elves. This makes managing your forces one hell of a lot more manageable. It also mitigates the tediousness of managing an Empire.

===Cons===
*'''Fragile''' - The Wood Elves are debatably ''the'' frailest overall faction in the game. A few niche units like the Tree Kin or Treemen can hold their own in prolonged fights, but the rest of your army will wither away in a sustained assault. A successful Wood Elf army must strike with surgical precision and do so swiftly and from afar. Because of this constant skirmishing, Wood Elves are arguably the most difficult race to play, as they require the most micromanagement on the battlefield.
**'''Micro Madness''' - A bit of an elaboration on the prior point, to the newer player, you may struggle to keep up with all the maintenance most Wood Elf units require to operate effectively. Unlike some of the easier or more flexible factions, it cannot be overstated that Wood Elves cannot afford to just be smashed against enemy forces recklessly or be committed to a grindfest against sturdier or more rounded factions.
*'''Weakness to Fire''': Duh. Anything that can burn or brings flaming attacks will give you a lot of trouble. A lot of your roster is especially vulnerable to this, since it directly counters your otherwise tanky Treekin frontline units, and several of the games factions have no trouble bringing it to the table, either through units (Dwarfs and Skaven in particular have no trouble to get some Irondrakes or Warpfire Throwers) or through the Lore of Fire, which is also a very common lore to find, with 6 factions (Empire, High Elves, Dark Elves, Lizardmen, Norsca and Warriors of Chaos) having access to it.
*'''Absent Artillery''' - Though you have plenty of long-ranged missile units to choose from and one or two missile units who can act similarly to artillery, you have no dedicated artillery platforms. This isn't a ''major'' issue primarily because you have so many archers that can fill every role the otherwise absent artillery would perform, but you will lack a notable source of hard-hitting burst damage. This is only getting worse in campaign with the Twisted and the Twilight's changes to Wood Elf hero skills, now only the Lords can buff your missile units range meaning no more 300 range Waywalker cheese, it was fun while it lasted. Use the Arrow of Kuronous ability instead of Artillery, with a range of 600 it's quite capable of sniping out enemy artillery and lords before you get close.
*'''Limited Roster''' - Wood Elves have fewer unit choices than a number of other playable factions. This limits your army composition into fairly predictable builds that does nothing for players looking for adaptable playstyles. It also means your faction has a number of fairly obvious weaknesses, such as the aforementioned fragility and lack of artillery but also a vulnerability to heavy cavalry and fire damage. These weaknesses can be exploited by your opponent relatively easily since most of them will have the flexibility to gear specifically against those weaknesses.
*'''DLC Faction''' - In order to play the Wood Elves at all, you need to buy at least one of the two optional DLC packs featuring them. "Realm of the Wood Elves", their initial release, is DLC for the first Total War: Warhammer game. "The Twisted and the Twilight", a lord pack for Total War: Warhammer II, will allow players of the second game a way to play them if they don't own both the original game and the original DLC, but some of the roster will be somewhat limited (more so than it already is). Regardless, if you want to have the whole faction available to play, you'll need to purchase two full price games and two separate DLC packs in order to access everything. If that's not premium content, I don't know what is.

==Universal Trait==
Wood Elves don't really have much in the way of extra abilities or perks, there is one particular thing they have going for them though:

*'''Hide (Forest)''' - What did you expect? They're ''Wood'' Elves. Hell, some of their units are literally just tree people. The only units in the entire elven roster who can't hide in forests are the Great Eagle, Hawk Riders and Forest Dragon.

*'''Forest Spirit''' - Though this affects only a portion of the Wood Elf roster, it still is frequent enough that it warrants a mention. All of your tree units possess this trait, which simultaneously provides extra defense against standard melee attacks and bequeaths magical attacks unto the tree units in question. While this helps make them particularly durable against most infantry armies, it dramatically weakens how effective your tree units are when faced against magically potent/resistant enemies, who will deal heightened damage to them while taking less in turn. Thankfully such enemy units are in relatively limited supply, but you definitely need to consider the type of opponent you're facing before you build a list around Tree Kin and Treemen. As of game three magical attack damage is no longer reduced my magic resistance (MR will only reduce actual spell damage), so this will be at least partially relieved.

==Lords==
Compared to the swollen ranks of the Warhammer II races, your available lord list is a little lacking. With all the Wood Elf DLC, you do have a grand total of 7 choices, though in Multiplayer you'll have little reason to take any of the generic choices. Even in the campaign, where confederating your fellow Wood Elves is relatively easy (usually only requiring the completion of a specific mission per WE faction to confederate), it can be difficult to justify recruiting the generic dudes outside of filling Office Slots on your council. Drycha is a notable exception, as the only lord she can confederate with is Durthu; she's not exactly a fan of the meatbags infesting Athel Loren.

===Legendary Lords===
*'''[[Orion]]''' - Orion is a hybrid ranged/melee beatstick who specializes against infantry. At a distance, he's one of the best ranged lords in the game and deals ''hefty'' anti-armor damage, perfect for sniping large monsters and individual lords/heroes. He's also blisteringly fast for a foot lord and can even keep pace with some of the slower cavalry found in other armies. This pairs well with his impressive melee attack and charge bonuses; it's a common tactic to skirmish at range with a few well timed missiles to then follow up with a charge. Though he's not a caster, Orion also has access to a powerful bound vortex spell, ''Hounds of Orion'', which will easily burn through most (elite) infantry when the burst damage is needed. All in all, a solid, well rounded lord that you can't go wrong with.

*'''[[Durthu]]''' - Everyone's favorite genocidal tree ([[Drycha|no, not that one]]) is your best dedicated duelist. In a similar vein to Orion, Durthu is a hybrid lord who has access to the lore of beasts; a reasonably useful set of supporting or offensive spells that can turn either himself or supporting treekin into terrifying combat monsters that will deal death to many a foe. As a massive monster, Durthu can wade through infantry and cavalry with relative ease and can go root-to-toe with a majority of the single-entity monsters in the game. Unfortunately, not everything to be said of Durthu is good. First, as a giant monster, Durthu is particularly vulnerable to both anti-armor weaponry and anti-large weaponry. This size also makes him an easy target to missile fire. Secondly, he's also vulnerable to fire damage, something many factions have access to and something modestly abundant on missile units. If caught in a crossfire of several such tools, Durthu will melt away frighteningly quickly, so you'll need to take extra care and support him with life magic should he get stuck in.

*'''[[Sisters of Twilight]] Naestra and Arahan (DLC)''' - These two ladies are collectively the only true-blooded ''elf'' Legendary Lord available to the Wood Elves. They are exclusively mounted on either a Great Eagle or a Forest Dragon and function best as a dedicated ranged unit. They do have decent combat stats, particularly when on the dragon, but they'll almost always lose against any other dedicated duelist unit or character worth their weight in gold. They excel in sniping targets from afar and have all tools to do so; both flying options safely keep them away from any melee combatant, and also have a very nice AoE attack not unlike the split shot ammo from the DE and HE artillery pieces. The SoT also grant Hawk Riders the "Arrows of Kurnous" ability, which is basically a "fuck you in particular" button that outright deletes any big unit you point it at.

*'''[[Drycha]] (FLC)''' Everyone's favorite genocidal tree ([[Durthu|no, not that one]]) returns as a "free" bonus Legendary Lord for Mortal Empires exclusively. Like her Branchwraith kin, Drycha is a hybrid melee combatant and spellcaster who can actually hold her own in combat if properly supported, but she will certainly not win any one-on-one duels with any characters with an actual melee statline. Unlike her generic sisters, Drycha is a pure-strain Lore of Shadows caster and as such is a shockingly vicious blob blender. As far as unique abilities go, Drycha brings two things to the table; she can summon a unit of (Malevolent) Dryads up to two times per battle and she provides a progressively more potent AoE buff that increases the melee attack of fellow Treekin units the lower her health is. Combined with the Frenzy ability found on a lot of her campaign unique units, this can be a particularly nasty combination that allows her and her angry trees to carve through quite a lot of the squishy, meaty competition. In campaign and custom battle she gets her own little roster of unique Malevolent Tree Spirit/Wild Beast units including Coeddil himself (unfortunately though none of her units have custom models, just reskins). Sadly, as mentioned, she is exclusive to the Mortal Empires campaign and so likely won't be seeing much time in the spotlight.

===Generic Lords===
*'''Glade Lord''' - Your generic elf dude/dudette, glade lords are flexible and very customizable lords who can lead from the front or afar. They are specialized duelists at heart and will excel at hunting enemy lords/heroes if you can separate them from their armies but, unlike Durthu, tend to be vulnerable to getting tied down by hordes of enemies. Normally your cheapest lord, you can invest in a steed/eagle to maximize their mobility (take the steed if you want to utilize forest terrain) or place them atop a Forest Dragon to allow them to fight a much wider selection of enemies. Note that while the male/female distinction is cosmetic only in campaign, in multiplayer battles, male glade lords are specced for melee while the female glade lords are specced for range. The glady tends to be more popular there since she gets an magic missile with arrow of kurnous and a snare with prey of Anath Raema.

*'''Ancient Treeman''' - Ancient treemen function somewhat like Durthu (understandably) in that they are hybrid lords with respectable melee damage output and access to a supplementary lore of magic. However, unlike Durthu, the regular ancient treeman has access to the significantly more useful lore of life. This makes them fantastic centerpieces for a treeman-style/focused army who can hold their own far more effectively than your spellsingers, but this comes with the same inconveniences plaguing Durthu. As a large, flammable monster, treemen are very weak to flamming attacks, anti-armor attacks and anti-large attacks. Even if he's healing himself, he can and absolutely will melt quite quickly if focused down (and believe me, he will be focused). You will absolutely need additional screening units to help protect him in combat.

*'''Spellweaver (DLC)''' - Caster ladies who can straight up lead your armies into battle, letting you save your hero slots for something else, if you so wish. In a manner similar to the High Elves, the Spell Weavers have access to a much wider variety of magic lores than their lesser variants (and by that, I mean they get two more schools). Otherwise, they're virtually identical to their sisters.
**'''Life Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Life Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Beasts Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Beasts Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Shadows Spellweaver''' - Virtually identical to your Shadows Spellsinger, only large and in charge.
**'''Dark Spellweaver''' - Now we're getting somewhere new. An offensive discipline, the Lore of Dark Magic provides some solid anti-lord/hero spells via Doombolt and Soul Stealer while also providing some decent anti-infantry spells in Chillwind and Blade Wind. Frankly, not a bad pick at all. Lore attribute passively increases missile damage map wide which is actually pretty nice stacked with all the other auras/skill bonuses you can get.
**'''High Spellweaver''' - This Spellweaver got a little too into the 'shrooms and learned a whole new lore of magic. With a little bit of everything, the High Spellweaver can provide a bit of healing support, single target damage, AoE damage and can even trap/damage flying units with a cast or two of Tempest. To be frank, a lot of what she can do is overshadowed by her sisters, so you'll probably want to pick one of them if you want offensive or supportive magic. Lore attribute is nice for stacking physical resist map wide but honestly it’s not a great lore. Dark has much better damage. And you can just bring a secondary caster for buffs.

==Heroes==
You have one (two for ME) Legendary hero and three flavors of generic heroes, each with their own uses.

===Legendary Heroes===
*'''Ariel (DLC)''' - Ariel is an obscenely powerful caster hero that starts with a full roster of spells taken from the Lores of Life, High and Dark, but also Greater Arcane Conduit and two bound healing spells that rival Alarielle the Everqueens Heart of Avelorn in terms of raw healing potential. In direct combat itself, she's rather frail when put up against her direct DLC-counterpart Ghoritch, not to mention Throt, so her use against enemy single-entity-units is rather limited; her Magic combined with her Ward Save of 25% relegates her to Chaff clearing duty, where she performs very well.

===Generic Heroes===
*'''Branchwraith''' - If ever there could only be a single unit that could be defined as a "hybrid", branchwraiths would be strong contenders for the title. Not only are they capable melee fighters in their own right, but they have access to a variety of handpicked spells from both the lore of life and lore of shadows. This gives them equal measure of frontline support and damage. Penumbral Pendulum gives you a strong sweeping wind spell that excels at softening harder units for your Wardancers and Rangers. Their additional access to earthblood gives them a cheap multi-target heal that, when paired with Shield of Thorns, will make your frontline units extremely resilient for a brief period of time. AOE aura buffing melted attack is quite nice for your frontline. Best on bladesingers or dryads especially.

*'''Waystalker''' - These guys are lord/hero hunters, pretty much strictly designed and specialized for that singular purpose. They can easily vanish from your foe's view thanks to their Master Ambusher ability which, combined with their speed, also allows them to easily kite footlords while blasting them with arrows. A few limited use abilities, like the Arrow of Kurnous, can allow them to deal decent damage and disrupt infantry in a pinch. It can also be reserved for sniping and destroying artillery pieces. Despite being built to hunt characters, Waystalkers are actually only decent melee combatants and will falter against melee-focused foot lords. Only send them in if they're completely out of ammo and/or properly supported by reinforcements. AOE aura buff missile damage, park by your archers.

*'''Spellsinger''' - Your cheap, dedicated mages. Spellsingers, like the purestrain generic mages of other factions, only exist to cast spells and nothing more. Keep these gals behind your front lines and out of harms way if you want their support to last you the battle. If you can spare the coin, consider placing them on elven steeds or unicorns so that they can quickly respond to changing conditions on the battlefield and quickly escape should enemies come for them. You have three flavors to choose from:
**'''Beasts Spellsinger''' - A dedicated vector for the mixed lore of beasts, spellsingers of this category are ideal for supporting fellow elves/trees with buffs while contributing occasional bursts of AoE damage. A spare flock of doom can do decent work to clusters of infantry, though you'll get better AoE damage going with a shadows spellsinger. The spellsinger variant of Transformation of Kadon received a fluffy nerf; instead of summoning a feral manticore, now it summons eagles. Eagles are dramatically inferior to the manticore, but they can still be summoned to provide a surprise flank or to tie down enemy artillery in a pinch.
**'''Life Spellsinger''' - Your cheapest source for lore of life spells. All in all, you really can't go wrong with her; healing magic is invaluable and can absolutely mean the difference between a winning/losing engagement on the field. You'll get a lot of mileage out of her if you pair her with treemen/forest dragons.
**'''Shadows Spellsinger''' - The lore of shadows is your most offensive choice for your spellsingers, and it's not a bad one. Your two primary offensive spells, the Penumbral Pendulum and the Pit of Shades both deal impressive AoE damage and thus specialize in clearing out armored frontlines. The Pit of Shades also holds the distinct honor of being the only stationary vortex spell in the game. This ensures that it'll never randomly roll over your own troops, but it also cannot potentially flow into neighboring enemy formations to cause greater damage, so it's a bit of a trade off there. If nothing else, you can use it to create a zone of denial in chokepoints.

*'''Glade Captain (DLC)''' - A baby Glade Lord, Glade Captains are effectively identical to their lord counterparts in form and function. Frankly speaking, being relegated to the hero slot suits them better than the Lord slot, as you aren't sacrificing the offensive prowess of the Sisters of Twilight or Durthu for a generic damage dealer. Having said that, it's still somewhat hard to justify taking a Glade Captain over a Spellsinger or Branchwraith in most lists just due to the lack of utility they provide, but if you're in need of a more flexibly inclined damage dealer, Glade Captains are decently suited to the task. However, while it's definitely hard to justify bringing a glade captain to a multiplayer custom match, she's a must include in campaign since she passively increases an army's movement range and grants army wide buffs depending on what mount she has. Giving her a great stag allows cavalry to ignore movement penalties. Giving her an eagle causes hawkriders to instill fear. Taking her on foot allows wardancers and bladesingers to vanguard deploy, which is very effective when comboed with the Sisters of Twilight office that gives them stalk stance. Probably best on foot if you want vanguard bladesingers or on stag to accompany great stag knights where she is amazing. Makes great cavalry even better.

==Units==

====Melee Infantry====
*'''Eternal Guard''' - Eternal Guard are the closest thing to a defensive front line unit you have. Available shielded or unshielded (you should ''always'' take shielded Eternal Guard, precious other units in your army resist ranged attacks), these stalwart warriors are in that perfect twilight zone of being cheap and somewhat expendable while also remaining rather competent combatants capable of holding their own against other units above their weight class. Though they'll often lose in drawn out fights against stronger, higher tier melee infantry, they can pin them down long enough for your archers or dryads to flank and make up for their sub-optimal damage output. Eternal Guard, being exclusively armed with spears, are excellent anti-cavalry/monster screens and, when braced, can easily halt enemy charges in their tracks. No matter your focus, be it cavalry, missile units or treemen, you'll want your line held by a few of these guys. They don’t hold up to elite infantry well though, late game may want to replace with treekin, who are much more durable generally.
**'''Winterheart Guards (RoR)''' - Eternal Guard, only with charge defense against everything, an encouragement aura for nearby allied units and ''unbreakable''. These guys will hold the line until the bitter end, something they'll ensure takes a long time due to their increased defensive stats. You'll want these guys somewhat centrally located in your front line to ensure their leadership buff affects as many Eternal Guard as possible.

*'''Wardancers''' - These lovely ladies serve as dedicated infantry blenders, a job they do really, really well. They are exceptionally quick for infantry themselves, able to outrun a majority of the targets you'd throw them at (only a select few infantry units can even keep pace with them, namely Skinks). They do their best work against unarmored foes, so you should generally avoid sending them in against particularly hardy front line units. This is because, like a significant portion of your army, Wardancers are frail. Really frail. They take damage just as quick as they (try to) give it, so if they enemy they're fighting just won't die then they'll begin to. They do have an active skill that trades some of their melee attack for a defensive buff, which can help them come out on top in a DPS race, though they'll still be left far worse for wear without support. Pairing Wardancers with Eternal Guard is recommended to alleviate this; while the Eternal Guard pins down and tanks a particularly dangerous enemy, the Wardancers step in and carve them to pieces. Obsolete compared to spear version and blade singers.

*'''Spear Wardancers''' - Wardancers who specialize against large foes instead of infantry formations. Where regular Wardancers simply appreciate having Eternal Guard tank the hits, Spear Wardancers actually synergize with them extremely well due to their shared offensive niche. Just like the regular Wardancers, have the Eternal Guard intercept cavalry or monsters before sending these gals in. Spear Wardancers have an activated ability that grants them additional missile resistance, but it comes at the cost of their melee defense. They do much better vs armoured elite infantry than the normal version because of AP.
**'''Loec's Tricksters (RoR)''' - If you thought regular Wardancers were glass cannons, you haven't seen these ones at work. This regiment of renown exchanges the normal Spear Wardancer activated ability in exchange for one that pumps up their melee attack in exchange for their defense (literally the opposite effect of the regular Wardancers ability) which, when combined with the addition of Frenzy, makes them do ''obscene'' damage to large units. Unfortunately, this also means that a stiff breeze will slaughter them to the last. Hold these ladies in reserve for a critical fight, such as engaging the enemy lord or a key monster in their army and support them with magic to make sure they survive the ensuing melee.

*'''Wildwood Rangers''' - The Wildwood Rangers have an... interesting role. Previously, they were your only dedicated source of melee armor piercing damage, which they deal a lot of, but they also only specialize against large targets. While these two perks often work fantastically against monsters and cavalry, it tends to pay off less on the armored masses you may often find yourself against. They still hold a somewhat viable niche if you expect to face armored cavalry/monster armies like the Lizardmen or Bretonnia, but they are thoroughly outclassed by the new Bladesingers against all forms of infantry without good magic resistance you might face.
**'''Wardens of Cythral (RoR)''' - Take the Wildwood Rangers, give them silver shields, armor sundering and a ''beefy'' charge defense against large targets and send them on their way. These guys are better suited to prolonged fights against large foes than Spear Wardancers, particularly because they have actual stats in their defenses. With support, these guys can chunk most armored targets relatively well in good time.

*'''Dryads''' - The first of your treekin soldiers, Dryads are better suited to tanking and dealing physical damage than your Eternal Guard, but are notably weaker than them against magical and fire based attacks. Dryads also have virtually no charge defense and cannot deal with enemy cavalry remotely as well as the Eternal Guard either. Having said that, Dryads do have two notable selling points over Eternal Guard: They are immune to psychology (so Fear and Terror) and they have vanguard deployment. Cleverly hidden trees can easily fall upon a squishier back line to disrupt/shut down artillery and archers while formations of Eternal Guard distract the heavy hitters long enough for your angry trees to come into play.
**'''Wraiths of the Frozen Heart (DLC, RoR)''' - These dryads have been gifted with attacks that freeze and slow their targets, helping to ensnare and lock down enemies.

*'''Bladesingers (DLC)''' - At first glance, you'd assume these fiery redheads are just reskinned Wardancers. You wouldn't necessarily be wrong to assume that, but you will pay dearly if you underestimate them for that mistake. These ladies are your elite melee infantry and ''butcher'' anything not horse-sized or larger due in no small part to a combination of magical attacks and high armor-piercing damage. Bladesingers also have the ability to "turn off" their armor piercing damage modifier to give themselves a melee attack buff, letting them effectively cut down virtually any flavor of infantry you could throw them at. You can switch between the two modes at will, unlike the Wardancers, so they are exceptionally flexible for how killy they are. The main drawback is exactly what you'd expect from a bunch of half-naked ladies; their defensive stats are hot tish. Though they have access to Dodge and a decent melee defense, they will still die in droves if targeted by archers or thrown against an enemy a touch outside their weight class. None-the-less, having at least one squad of these fine warrior women is strongly recommended against literally any army that fields frontline infantry.

====Missile Infantry====
*'''Glade Guard''' - Your first, cheapest and ever reliable missile infantry, Glade Guard are the troops you'll have in your back-line in order to rain hell upon the enemies your melee infantry is currently harassing. Frankly speaking, there's little that can honestly be said about the bog-standard Glade Guard; they'll do decent work against unarmored enemies and they're pretty damn cost efficient, but you might find yourself looking at one of the two variants if you want to get some real work done.
**'''Glade Guard (Hagbane Tips)''' - Glade Guard with poisonous arrows. Though they deal slightly less direct damage with their missiles, they more than make up for it if they're supporting your melee infantry by applying poison debuffs all over their target's back. Using these particular Glade Guard for that purpose is a touch tricky however, as you need to be incredibly mindful of your positioning so as to not fire into your own unit's backsides while they're mashed against the enemy. available from the start of campaign, you should never use the basic. these should completely replace the basic version.
**'''Glade Guard (Starfire Shafts)''' - Glade Guard with armor-piercing arrows. These guys are a fantastic ranged answer to the likes of Dwarves, Chaos Warriors and Lizardmen and should almost always be taken over regular Glade Guard (or at the least, alongside them) to ensure that you can still deal damage to them.

*'''Deepwood Scouts''' - Sneaky elves who can utilize the combination of their stealth and vanguard deployment to sneak up and ambush the vulnerable backsides of enemy formations. Unlike Glade Guard, the Deepwood Scouts can fire while moving and can do so from any angle, letting them easily kite slower, unarmored units.
**'''Deepwood Scouts (Swiftshiver Shards)''' - Deepwood Scouts that fire two shots at a time. Even with the reduced range over regular Deepwood Scouts, the doubled DPS more than makes up for that minor inconvenience.

*'''Waywatchers''' - Your premium archer unit, and one of the highest damaging archer units in the game. Considering that this is factoring in units like the Sisters of Averlorn, that's saying something. All the strengths of the Deepwood Scouts are combined the Starfire Glade-Guard's utility with yet more impressive range and heightened movement speed that allows them to function both as a back-line unit or as vanguard ambusher.
**'''Hawk-eyes of Drakira (RoR)''' - Waywatchers that also come packing with a smokebomb to slow and discourage anyone from getting too close. They also have a slightly faster reload speed and slightly better accuracy than their generic kin, which alone is worth the slight upsell.

====Melee Cavalry====
*'''Glade Riders (Spears) (FLC)''' - Cheap, fast cavalry. At 94 speed they're faster than your Wild Riders but that and the price tag are basically the only good things you can say about them. They lack the armor piercing damage and Frenzy of the Wild Riders and, despite what the (Spears) tag might have you believe, they are not actually anti large, at least not in multiplayer though they can get an anti-large technology in campaign. As a fast, cheap melee harasser they will likely be best used in a similar fashion to hounds or feral cold ones, chasing down ranged infantry and artillery units and chasing units off the field

*'''Wild Riders''' The premier Wood Elf light cavalry and [[Orion|Mel Gibson's]] personal guard, these units can blend infantry they get a rear charge into but their squishiness will mean you don't want to leave them in combat for long. With decent melee attack, a nice charge bonus and armor piercing damage, these units can effectively kill things, but with low melee defense and armor they can certainly be killed back. Some physical resist makes them a bit tougher than their otherwise low defensive stats would lead you to believe, but don't send them into combat with units that deal magical damage or they'll melt fairly fast. All varieties of Wild Riders have Frenzy, meaning they'll be extra choppy until their leadership gets below 50% so if you want them at their most effective don't let them take too much damage.
**'''Wild Riders (Shields)''' A straight upgrade to Wild Riders, other than the price. Silver shields make them much more resistant to ranged fire and slightly higher melee defense lets them stick in combat for longer. They're still not heavy cavalry though, and are much more comfortable attacking from the side or rear than the front.
**'''Wild Hunters of Kurnous (RoR)''' With naturally higher melee attack than your standard Wild Riders and magic damage on top of that, these dendrophiles are even choppier than your standard variety stag-riding knife-ear. Don't bring them against Dwarfs though, the magic resistant little bastards will actually be harder to kill than if you'd brought standard Wild Riders.

*'''Great Stag Knights''' What's better than riding a stag into battle? Riding a really big stag into battle, of course! These monstrous cavalry are even faster than normal Wild Riders, with slightly higher melee attack and melee defense than even the shield variant. More importantly the Great Stage Knights have some actual armor meaning they're capable of taking a hit, though they certainly don't want to stay in melee combat for too long. Send them into infantry formations then giggle as the infantry goes flying. A few cycle charges from these will even break Chaos Chosen. Pair with a great stag riding glade captain and a sisters of the thorn unit giving ranged support for best results. Captain provides strider, melee support, and a Melee defense buff. sisters proved poison, buffs, and a debuff all together. 2-3 stag knight, the captain, and the sisters will combine into a terrifying cavalry deathstar.
**'''Lost Sylvan Knights (RoR)''' What's better than riding a really big stag into battle? Riding a really big ghost stag into battle, of course! As an ethereal unit, all the standard ethereal rules apply. They've got a ton of physical resist and no armor. Throw them into melee with bog standard swordsmen and you can leave them there safely but as soon as some wizard wazzock starts tossing magic damage around your Sylvan Knights will start dying, really fast. Don't let them fight anything that deals magic damage unless you want them to become lost again, permanently this time. They're undead, which means they crumble instead of routing which is generally a good thing as they can still hold a line and attack while crumbling. Back them up with lore of life, they can take advantage of it better than any other unit in the game thanks to their high physical resist and ability to run away from unfavorable engagements.

====Missile Cavalry====
*'''Glade Riders''' - Your fairly standard missile cavalry, Glade Riders only really stand out above other faction's similar missile cav by having slightly better than average range. They have somewhat decent melee capabilities, but in this regard they're only useful in charging lightly armored units, like opposing missile infantry. If you need something cheap to kite and harass enemy lines, these guys will get the job done. If nothing else however.
**'''Glade Riders (Hagbane Tips)''' - Debatably far more useful than their regular variants, Hagbane Tipped Glade Riders use poisonous ''and'' magical arrows, making them an excellent force against magic-weak armies and solid support units. Between their high speed and ability to apply poison against enemy units, they are virtually uncatchable by opposing cavalry and are simultaneously a fantastic unit for crippling faster units for your slower infantry to engage. consider as an alternative to hagbane glade guard, you dont need both probably.

*'''Hawk Riders''' - A rarity, Hawk Riders are one of the few dedicated flying missile units in the game. Extremely fast, Hawk Riders can easily dodge incoming enemy fire if microed properly (something you'll have to do if you want them to live long enough to do their job) and makes them ideal for flanking enemy positions to rain hell upon them from on high. Unfortunately, like much of the WE roster, Hawk Riders have non-existent defensive statlines and they will drop like flies if you allow them to take missile fire or get pinned down in combat. Additionally, when they ''are'' in combat, their melee attack and defense scores are ''terrible''. This is ever so slightly mitigated by their mediocre charge bonus and hefty (melee) armor-piercing damage bonuses, letting them act as halfway decent shock cavalry against armored infantry in a pinch. This should definitely only be done as a last resort or if you have sufficient forces to support them however, else they just impotently kamikaze themselves into your opponent's ranks like so many gnats on a windshield. In the Sisters of Twilight campaign, they received a ''major'' buff in the Volley of Kurnous ability, letting them fire a high damage burst of arrows into ground bound enemy targets. Be it a single character or horde of infantry, the Volley of Kurnous does ''ludicrous'' damage and a doomstack of Hawk Riders can delete massive ground-bound armies with the click of a single button. This makes them ''the'' premiere airforce army in the campaign.

*'''Sisters of the Thorn''' - Elite missile cavalry that, unlike anything else in your roster on four hooves, can do a little bit of everything. Though they don't have the charge bonus of your Wild Riders or Great Stag Knights, Sisters of the Thorn can actually remain in combat for extended periods of time due to their superior defensive abilities (both innate and through access to their on demand bound abilities). This can be further supplemented by their poisonous arrows, letting them soften up and slow down enemy forces for a follow up charge. Unfortunately, in any single attribute they typically fall short of the rest of your options; they lack the range of your Glade Riders while being slightly slower, they don't have as impactful a charge as your Wild Riders/GSK and they don't even have any armor-piercing damage like your Hawk Riders do. Despite that, alongside their rather steep price tag, they are still wonderfully flexible missile cav units (flexible by WE standards) that will likely find more opportunistic match-ups against a wider range of foes than some of your other options. great at supporting other cav, wild riders, stag knights etc

====Monsters====
*'''Tree Kin''' - Your monstrous infantry and the only units in your roster that can actually hold their own in a grindfest, even if they themselves won't really be doing much damage in the process. With thick armor, high melee defense and charge defense against large, these bark monsters will take an eternity to die if the enemy units fighting them find themselves lacking anti-armor or magic/fire damage. Against most factions, these guys are fantastic "meat" shields for your considerably squishier elven units. Just keep the matchbox away from them. Ancient treeman lords can give them 10% ward and an extra 10% physical resist from the red skill tree in campaign. they can become tough enough to hold well even vs anti large and armor piercing especially with lore of life support.
**'''Firebark Elders (RoR)''' - This is what you get when your Treekin ''are'' the matchbox. With a 70% fire resistance and the ability to bequeath that resistance to nearby units, you can patch a fairly notable (and semi-common) weakness of your other tree units. If you expect that you'll be facing an army with relatively easy access to flaming attacks, like Bretonnia or Lizardmen, having these guys form your frontline core is strongly advised.

*'''Zoats (DLC)''' - Boy, we're going deep for these guys. These guys are effectively Wood Elf Dragon Ogres and very much fill the same role; anti-large monstrous cavalry that can deal crippling damage to the big beasties. They sacrifice some of the innate damage and durability the Dragon Ogres possess for much greater utility with access to two bound Lore of Life spells: Earth Blood and Flesh to Stone. With these, Zoats can support themselves and other Wood Elf units without imposing on the Winds of Magic reserves ideally utilized by your Lord/Heroes. Take a care though, Zoats don't have the stats their Dragon Ogre counterparts do and aren't quite as flexible in their engagement choices. Have a unit of Tree Kin or at the very least Eternal Guard support your Zoats to help mitigate incoming damage.
**'''Enigmas of Ghyran (RoR)''' - Zoats who have better stats and two charges of Regrowth instead of Earth Blood. These guys are fantastic support for lists with a focus on monster units and can easily pair up with a lore of life spellsinger for immense burst healing.

*'''Great Eagle''' - Something of a squishy unit, Great Eagles are extremely fast flying units that are pretty much designed to do one thing; body slam artillery pieces and backline units with cycle charges while your infantry holds them in place. Unfortunately, that's... pretty much all they can do. They are not remotely as punchy or durable as a majority of other single entity monsters and will quickly die if left in melee combat with anything that can hold a sharp stick. Cycle charging this guy is ''imperative'' if you want them to stay alive. Fortunately, when airborne, almost nothing can catch them and they can evade missile fire from dusk until dawn. They do have a unique kill animation that can take out a third of a blob but don't expect to see it unless fighting the frailest units.

*'''Treeman''' - An all-purpose wrecking ball, Treemen are melee beatsticks that can throw a mean left hook and stand in an ocean of angry infantry without a care in the world. Unless they have fire, in which case... enjoy the lightshow, I guess. Unlike the smaller Tree Kin, Treemen are actually threatening in melee combat and are quite capable against a wonderfully wide variety of targets, large and small, armored and not. As they are very tall, bipedal trees, Treemen make a fantastic [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX]] that your opponent can't afford to outright ignore, especially since they cause fear and terror. Be cautious though; they're big, slow moving trees. They're very vulnerable to getting focused down at range and though they can wade through any infantry tarpit dancing around their roots, they can't do so quickly enough to evade incoming missile fire. And unlike their Ancient Treemen leaders, who at least can utilize magic for defense an a modicum of offense if necessary, regular Treemen don't have ''any'' way to deal with ranged assaults on their own.

*'''Forest Dragon''' - Your one and only Dragon, Forest Dragons are pretty much the crown jewel of the Wood Elf monster units. Unfortunately, when compared to the full selection of dragons available to High Elves, Forest Dragons fall fairly short in relative power, being roughly on par with Sun Dragons. They do make up for this slightly with their additional physical resist and poisonous attacks, letting them dive into the thick of it more confidently than the other flavors of dragon other factions have. When paired with a lore of life spellsinger/Ancient Treeman, these dragons can tough it out in a fight for a ''very'' long time. Defensively, a lot of the same cautionary measures other dragons use should be taken at range; their flying speed coupled with their size isn't conducive for dodging ranged attacks and their resistances don't apply against projectiles. Try to pin down enemy archers and artillery with cavalry or a Great Eagle before having the Forest Dragon swoop in for the kill.

====Drycha Campaign Units====

These units can only be used by Drycha's Wargrove in campaign or custom battles, but as campaign units are unavailable to multiplayer (or custom battle if you have unit caps turned on). The units are split into two distinct groups, Malevolent Tree Spirits who are essentially just ordinary Tree Spirits with Frenzy and a kickass purple glow, and Wild Beasts, beefed up versions of monstrous animal units from other factions most of which have vanguard deployment and Forest Stalker, making them effective flankers and slightly tougher in the trees. All of these units, like Drycha herself, are FLC units given to anyone who owns the original Realm of the Wood Elves DLC, and are exclusive to the Mortal Empires campaign. Drycha and her units cannot be played in Vortex, though she does appear in the background of Throt's campaign and in the final battle.

*'''Coeddil''' - A little treat that CA didn't really feel like advertising, Coeddil makes a surprise appearance as a Legendary Hero available in Drycha's Mortal Empire campaign. [[FAIL|And only in that campaign.]] Befitting his psychopathic hatred for all things not made of bark, Coeddil is an absolute melee menace who constantly saps nearby enemy unit's health while giving all allied nearby a minor melee buff. He's a mixed Beasts/Dark caster with several choice spells from both winds including Transformation of Kadon and Power of Darkness. If that wasn't enough, Coeddil is unbreakable and will stay in the fight until the bitter end. It's worth noting that in custom battle he's considered a campaign exclusive unit rather than a hero so if you really feel like shenanigans [[Rip and tear|you can make an army of Coeddils.]]

*'''Malevolent Ancient Treeman''' - The only lord on this list, basically just an ancient Treeman with Frenzy. This makes it even more of a melee powerhouse than ordinary Ancient Treemen, though a strong anti-large duelist lord can still take it down. Unlike ordinary Ancient Treemen, the Malevolent ones get access to three distinct Lores of Magic instead of being locked to Lore of Life. They can take Lore of Life, but can instead choose to take Lore of Beasts or Lore of Shadows. Like Coeddil, the Malevolent Ancient Treeman is considered a campaign exclusive unit rather than a lord and so you can take as many as you like, provided you have the funds for it. Lore of Beasts can summon the usual Matincores instead of Great Eagles and gives beast units frenzy. Shadows gets improved glamour removing the debuff from elf units. Life gets regen as a skill. Beasts is probably the most useful for buffing your army. A life branch wraith is probably better than putting life on your lord due to less competition for skill points.

*'''Malevolent Branchwraith''' - A Branchwraith with frenzy. Whereas the standard Branchwraith is not the best melee fighter, the Malevolent variant is actually a decent damage dealer so long as you keep her away from flaming attacks. Similar to the Malevolent Ancient Treeman, the Malevolent Branchwraith has an expanded list of Lores it can choose from. Ordinary Branchwraiths are a mix of Lore of Shadows and Lore of Life, while their Malevolent kin can specialize in either full Lore of Life, full Lore of Shadows or Lore of Beasts. Strangely, there is no mixed Lore of Life/Lore of Shadows Malevolent Branchwraith. Life gets regen, beasts gets extra melee attack, shadows gets stalk. Recommend life only and get beasts or shadows from your lord. Lords get nice army buffs.

*'''Malevolent Dryads''' - These are basically ever so slightly buffed Dryads with the added Frenzy ability, making them substantially more threatening right out of the gate. Drycha herself can summon two of them per battle using one of her unique abilities, making them the only unit on this list usable in multiplayer (if only as summons). red skill tree can give them extra melee attack, weapon strength, melee defense and an extra 15% physical resist. They can outfight chaos warriors with all the buffs applied, and even against things they might not beat they are like more tanky non AP hex wraiths that dont crumble.

*'''Cave Bats''' - Non-undead Vampire Count Fell Bats with an extra 20 leadership, vanguard deployment and the ability to hide in trees. Used in essentially the same way as Fell Bats, they're great at tying down fast units, distracting ranged units, nomming artillery, causing chaos on walls and being meat shields for more important flying creatures. As previously stated they're not undead so they won't hold the line while crumbling the way Fell Bats do but they're also dirt cheap and expendable so you won't care when they're inevitably slaughtered.

*'''Giant Wolves''' - Norscan Ice Wolves without the Frostbite, considered small units instead of large for some reason meaning the standard anti-large tactics don't work on them. They're quite speedy and have a decent weapon strength though it's not majority armor piercing, meaning they're effective against low armor opponents. Charge them into the flanks of infantry or ranged units and use them to kill routing enemies, but don't expect them to hold the line.

*'''Giant Spiders''' - These big angry arachnids don't really have a direct parallel to any other units. These are essentially buffed up Forest Goblin Spider Riders but without the Goblin. This unfortunately means they lose the shield held by said goblin, but considering it was a bronze shield anyway the 70 armor, armor piercing damage, increased melee attack and forest stalker attributes more than make up for it. Their poison in conjunction with their decent armor means they can serve surprisingly well as front line fighters, especially with magical support spells like Shield of Thorns or Wyssan's Wildform

*'''Great Hawks''' - The only unit on this list that probably should have been available to the entire Wood Elf faction, these are essentially slightly cheaper Hawk Riders with improved melee stats but no ranged attack. They have the standard vanguard deployment and Forest Stalker traits and are VERY fast. Give them some Cave Bats to act as meat shields and they can be quite effective melee combatants. They'll very quickly rip apart ranged infantry and artillery and can be absolute terrors in sieges, capable of massacring any infantry on the walls with flying cycle charges. They are fragile though, so good micro and support from other units is essential when using them.

*'''Feral Manticore''' - Of course Drycha would get at least one Chaos unit. This is literally the exact same unit as fielded by Warriors of Chaos and Dark Elves. Notably, the Feral Manticore lacks the Vanguard Deployment and Forest Stalker attributes of the rest of the Wild Beasts, making it a bog standard vanilla Manticore. It's essentially a slightly tougher but slower terror causing Great Eagle. It's an effective source of flying terror, but it's certainly not the biggest beastie out there and is somewhat vulnerable to anti large, ranged fire and other more powerful single entity monsters like dragons. Its rampage is especially bad, as it means that you can easily lose control of it at the worst possible time and, as a (reluctant) member of the Wood Elf faction, you're a bit lacking in tools to go get it. These still get 20 physical resistance from a tech and frenzy from drycha or a beasts Treeman.
**With both frenzy and the tech boost they the same melee stats and physical resist as a Forrest dragon for less than half the cost. They don’t have breath attacks or poison but they are faster and smaller so can dodge arrows much easier. Actually very cost effective. Plus Unlike the other manticore using factions Dycha has lore of life to keep them alive. Can replace hawks entirely except for leaking vanguard.
**Wut? A Forest Dragon is niche and only really good when in the woods, but its health, breath attack, damage type and the fact that its a dragon means that they have their best use is supplementing your line, flying in and out of combat as needed. Manticores do not get forest bonuses, but are much more accessible and expendable. Manticores take out missiles, artillery, and flame weapons so your trees and forest creatures don't have to take those shots upon approach. Dragons use their breath attack, smash into the lines, then leave so you can do it all over again
***The Feral Manticore is your mom's boyfriend that comes over before the party and helps out but doesnt stick around for long, the Forest Dragon is your drunk dad who comes in and wrecks shit

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===
The first and most important component of playing Wood Elves; stay moving. Due to how frail the majority of the Wood Elf roster is, you cannot afford to allow your opponent to take the initiative in a fight. The good news is that many of your work-horse units are quite fast; many standard or slow moving armies will rarely be able to pin down your forces if you literally just stay one step ahead of them. Additionally, your Cavalry does almost all of their work in the charge; they will ''greatly'' diminish in strength and value if they remain in extended combat. Cycle charging is the name of the game for you, and it's a tenant you'll need to stick to if you actually want to give Bretonnia a run for their money. All of this combines to make Wood Elves one of the most micro-intensive factions in the game, if played right. While this can make them more interesting and fun to play, it also makes them considerably more challenging with mistakes punishing you much more severely than what other factions might've endured for similar errors.

====Faction Counterplay====
*'''Beastmen''' - The only other faction that can consistently keep pace or even outrun your in a flat out foot race. Beastmen are very much a rush faction and will do their damndest to close the gap between your forces; something you should take every measure to prevent. Eternal Guard or Tree Kin are reasonable front line screens and have a natural affinity for fighting against the Beastmen's larger units, like Minotaurs, while Wardancers can quickly butcher a majority of the infantry they tango with. Just make sure none of your damage dealing units ever take a head on charge. Beastmen have a very notable weakness that you can exploit; a near complete lack of armor and relatively limited missile units means that they'll be taking the full force of your ranged assaults. Hagbane Glade Guard/Riders not only deal respectable damage to the beastmen units, but the application of poison helps your footbound infantry catch up to and slaughter their infantry with considerable ease. In a cavalry face off, these hagbane missile units can slow down opposing Centagors for your Wild Riders and Great Stag Knights to deliver crippling blows with a few cycle charges. Lastly, Waywatchers and Deepwood Scouts (swiftsilver) are fantastic character or monster hunters who can pop up behind enemy lines and burst down Bray shaman, Giants or Cygors.

*'''Bretonnia''' - Make no mistake, Bretonnian cavalry is beyond your league. Though Wild Riders and Great Stag Knights have impressive charges of their own, they cannot remain engaged in a fight. This isn't really a problem for Bretonnian cav, who have the stats and tools to remain in a fight and still come out on top. The two biggest units to watch out for are Questing Knights and Grail Knights. Though they specialize primarily against armored units, Questing Knights will easily catch up to and slaughter a majority of your infantry in quick order. Grail Knights are the swiss-army knife of the faction against you; with magical attacks as well as an anti-armor and bonus against large, these guys are tailor made to chop down your tree units. It's less than ideal, but try to box them in or screen them with Eternal Guard, who will at the very least hold them off and allow your vulnerable missile units to reposition or support them with anti-armor fire. If you can at least pin them in long enough, Wardancers with Spears can do impressive damage against them despite their armor. As far as the peasantry goes... you have nothing to worry about. Your archers will absolutely dominate theirs in a firefight and literally any of your infantry options will win against theirs.

*'''Dark Elves''' - Fortunately, much of their AP ammunition and melee specialization goes to waste in this matchup. Even better, their lack of firing range means you can often fire off several volleys before they can, even with their missile chariots. The best of news, their heavy cavalry is among the worst in the game, and is hardly able to keep up with yours. Not to be confused with their light cavalry, which is actually quite capable and the most picked flavor of Dark Elf cavalry. Black Ark Corsairs, Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter are particularly feisty in melee combat and are the best suited to dealing with your kind, so try to wear them down at range before you contest them with Wildwood Rangers/Wardancers. Dryads and Tree Kin are not recommended units to bring in this matchup; they're too slow and the Dark Elf emphasis on AP will shred them before they so much as take a step out of the woods. Keep an eye peeled for when Murderous Prowess procs and do everything you can to avoid engaging the Dark Elves while it's active; the offensive bonuses can easily turn a losing engagement into a winning one for them and you definitely aren't suited to DPS race another glass cannon faction.

*'''Dwarfs''' - This is your worst matchup by far. A lot of your front line infantry will struggle ''immensely'' against the wall of bearded armor slowly plodding its way across the map towards you. Starfire Gladeguard will be your best discount ranged option while Wildwood Rangers can deal with them in melee, but you will need to support them with something tanky if you want them to last. Tree Kin and Treemen are a wonderful bastion to center your army around, but you will ''need'' to take out any Irondrakes the opponent may have fielded before you commit them to battle. The Firebark Elders RoR can help mitigate this fire weakness. Bladesingers will soon become excellent beard-cutters once the magic-resistance only applies to spell damage as opposed to magic attacks, giving you a much needed way to carve through Dwarf armor.

*'''Empire''' - That artillery... is going to be a problem. A rather shocking array of long range artillery well suited for every occasion will make any frontal assault all but suicidal. Play to your strengths; try to flank and ambush weak points in empire lines. Stay on the move and don't give their missile infantry a chance to set up and fire. If you can, vanguard deploy cavalry or dryads in a position to shut down careless artillery placements so that your archers can start picking apart empire gunpowder before ''they'' can get into range. Great Eagles are also fantastic for this purpose, just make sure you keep an eye on any halberds that might be standing by. Otherwise, Wardancers and Bladesingers thoroughly outclass Empire infantry if they can make it in safely, though don't expect them to get out unscathed.

*'''Greenskins''' - Little to no armor? Check. General lack of anti-large? Check. Relatively sluggish frontline? Also check. You have a lot of things going for you in this matchup, but that's not to say Greenskins aren't able to give you a damn good fight. Goblins and Goblin Skirmishers will be a bitch to deal with; exceedingly numerous, nimble and accurate with their bows and ultimately disposable if you pin them down, they'll often distract or whittle away enough of your forces that the Ork Boyz about to crash into your lines will be able to deal some serious damage. Dryads are solid counters to the non-armored Boyz, though you'll want Wildwood Rangers or Bladesingers to deal with Black Orks. Your Cavalry is well suited to deal with the Greenskins, but only if you continuously cycle charge with them.

*'''Grand Cathay''' - Yet another defensive gunpowder faction. Your air force does outclass Grand Cathay's in a skirmish and you can easily take down their Skyjunks with Great Eagles or Forest Dragons (something you'll want to do if you don't want fiery hot death spewing from it), but the same can't be said for the rest of their artillery. Grand Cannons will be very problematic for your forest spirits and surprisingly difficult to pin down due to their speed while Fire Rain Rockets put out enough anti-infantry firepower to make Hellstorm Batteries blush. Your missile cav will prove quite valuable at outmaneuvering and outranging most of the gunpowder and can generally keep away from Grand Cathay's own lackluster cavalry selection, though just make sure you don't directly charge into any braced infantry with your cavalry; flank them or charge them with less valuable units like Dryads or Eternal Guard before sending in your heavy hitters.

*'''High Elves''' - High Elves share many of the same strengths you do. Their Sisters of Avelorn can very nearly match Waywatchers in ranged dps while their weakest dragon, the Sun Dragon is comparable to your Forest Dragon in stats. Also, their units have a durability yours simply can't match, a large part of which is their Martial Prowess. Worse, many of their units come with a 55% block chance against missile fire, which can be incredibly potent against a faction such as yours that relies heavily on missile fire. Fortunately, you have an advantage that can help negate both of those difficulties: your speed. Wood Elves are the best skirmish faction in the game, use that to your advantage. Take some ranged cavalry to circle the enemy or vanguard deploy some archers behind enemy lines and shoot their infantry in the back to ignore those pesky shields. Remember that Waywatchers don't duel other archers very well due to their low model count, save them to shoot at large targets or lords. If your enemy is smart they won't try to contest the air, if they're not shoot their dragons and phoenixes out of the sky with a combination of prey of anathraema (so you'll probably want to take female glade lord as your lord) and waywatcher fire. Either way you should be able to field some flying units such as hawk riders which you can use for more skirmishing. Remember that if possible you don't want to engage the enemy in melee until their units are at half health and their Martial Prowess is gone. The new DLC units are quite effective against the High Elves, Zoats are strong anti-cavalry and Bladesingers can blender High Elf infantry, especially if Martial Prowess is lost. Don't bring tree spirits unless you're willing to invest in Firebark Elders because the High Elves have a ton of sources of fire damage. Branchwraiths might also be a poor choice as the High Elf Fireborn RoR can kill a Branchwraith in seconds.

*'''Khorne''' -

*'''Kislev''' - Bring some spears and some Tree Kin because cavalry is likely going to be the name of Kislev's game. Keep an eye out for any Ice Guard; while Kossars and Streltsi will not pose much of a threat (at range) the Ice Guard are quite capable at any range and will be very adept at scything through your forest spirits if you give them the opportunity. If you can contain them and any Ice Witches, your Tree Kin will be pretty well set to hold back any Winged Lancers or War Bear Riders trying to get at your backline. Use Eternal Guard and Spear Wardancers to mop up any such cavalry and you should be golden.

*'''Lizardmen''' - While you will have absolutely no issues outrunning and kiting Saurus and Kroxigors, you should take a caution against Skink units. They might be cute little lizards who deal relatively minor damage against most other factions, but you're not most other factions. Since a majority of your infantry is unarmored, you'll be taking the full brunt of their little assaults and they're one of the precious few infantry units that can reliably keep pace with yours and even outrun a fair chunk of your own frontline formations. Additionally, Skink Skirmishers and Chameleon Skinks will prove shockingly effective at whittling down your unarmored forces with poisonous missile fire while proving to be a frustrating target in turn due to their lose formations and (for Chameleons) ranged damage resist. Lastly, you will want to take an extreme care around Fire Slann and Salamanders, who will be the ''bane'' of your Tree units. If you can shut down their fiery assaults, Tree Kin will prove a reliable walling unit to hold down and defend against Saurus frontlines and can even resist the onslaught of their varied monsters. Your cavalry will also prove extremely effective against the Lizardmen with their superior speed and devastating charges; there's precious little the Lizardmen can do if they can't pin down your Wild Riders/Great Stag Knights.

*'''Norsca''' - The general disdain for armor among Norscans makes dealing with them at range substantially more viable than their heavily armored cousins (WoC), though their higher speeds and more prolific monsters will prove troublesome should they manage to catch up to you. Anti-Large is a must in some flavor (not that it's particularly hard to come by for you).

*'''Nurgle''' - The only thing Nurgle can do to your skirmishers are furies and Ku'gath if your opponent brought him. Try to avoid melee for as long as you have any ammunition left, there's no sense letting Nurgle deal any unnecessary damage to your forces.

*'''Ogre Kingdoms''' - Under no circumstances are you to try to meet their charges head on; any non-Tree Kin infantry that tries will get utterly demolished before the ''actual'' fighting begins. Instead, divide and conquer; Ogre Kingdoms are going to generally have a lower unit/model count than most other armies, so every dead ogre adds up fairly quickly and they can't be everywhere at once. Spread out your forces so that even if they manage to pin down some of your units, you still have reinforcements ready to reposition and hit them where it hurts. Additionally, their relative lack of armor means your abundance of ranged units can soften them up significantly before they get close. Tree Kin, with their expert charge defense, melee resistance and high melee defense stats, are one of the few units that can safely stop an Ogre charge in its tracks. Follow this up with some Eternal Guard to further tie them down.

*'''Skaven''' - Other than the High Elves, if any other faction can rival you at range, it's the Skaven. Between their Jezzails, Ratling Guns, Poisonwind Globadiers, Plagueclaw Catapults and Warplightning Cannons, Skaven have a gun for every conceivable job. You on the other hand, have virtually no armor and shielded units are few and far in between. Thankfully, many of your archers still outrange their missile units and so long as you don't allow yourself to get backed into a corner, you shouldn't have too much issue kiting their slightly slower ranged infantry. Dealing with Skaven artillery will always be your first priority; Great Eagles or Wild Riders/Great Stag Knights can swiftly slip behind enemy lines and shut down artillery long enough for your archers to set up and deal some damage. In general, your melee infantry shouldn't really be too bothered by theirs; skavenslaves and clanrats are a mere nuisance to your considerably more "elite" infantry, though don't get complacent; even skavenslaves can deal not inconsiderable damage to your unarmored elves and, like all chaff infantry, their main value lies in simply tying your guys down. Key Skaven infantry to watch out for are their Plaguemonks and Death Runners.

*'''Slaanesh''' - The only faction that can definitively claim to be faster than you... and at least in this matchup, that doesn't necessarily do them too many favors. Much of the Slaaneshi roster is geared to fight armored opponents, which thankfully (in this particular case, at least), you generally aren't. Having said that, Slaanesh isn't without claws or teeth; if you want your Waywatchers or Glade Guard to get any work done, you're going to need to screen them diligently. Slaanesh lacks much in the way of range (effectively non-existent ranged roster) or armor (...it's Slaanesh after all), so you can get some serious work done from afar if you can keep his/her chariots, cavalry and/or daemonettes from scything through your backlines. Hawk Riders can also serve you quite well in this matchup, as once you clear out any potential furies from assaulting them, they'll be virtually uncontested while they rain arrows down upon the backsides of those horny, horny daemons. You'll want to take the ever vigilant Eternal Guard to combat enemy cavalry/chariots and as general damage sponges while Wardancers can mop up any infantry currently engaged with them.

*'''Tomb Kings''' - An unpredictable matchup. Their frontline will be slow, and much of it can be whittled down with skirmish tactics before your own melee units will even need to engage them. Ushabti Great Bows pose a serious threat to the Wood Elves as they can steadily fire upon your Lords from afar, especially Orion and Durthu whose large model sizes makes them much more vulnerable, as well as outranging the Sisters of Twilight by a considerable margin. Faster constructs such as the Warsphinx and the Necrosphinx puts a great damper on the skirmishing tactics which Wood Elves mainly rely on, being capable of chasing down kiting units such as Deepwood Scouts and Waystalkers. Keep the Tomb Kings player on their toes with a good mix of Cav, ranged units and anti-large spear units, making sure to avoid engaging their frontline units in melee until absolutely necessary due to their fear effect putting you at a disadvantage.

*'''Tzeentch''' - First; leave anything with bark for skin in the woods; trying to mitigate the sheer amount of flaming, magical damage at Tzeentch's disposal is impossible. Instead, you're going to want a dedicated cavalry build; Tzeentch relies heavily on cycle charging and keeping out of extended fights. Use your superior speed to prevent any daemons from escaping. Once you manage to pin any particular units down, Wardancers and Bladesingers will dominate anything they come into contact with. Of course, you'll want to have a few archers contest/discourage any Horrors attempting to line up some shots of their own if only to further soften them up for your melee kill squads.

*'''Vampire Coast''' - Look out for artillery. If you can do that, this matchup can become modestly easy; Vampire Coast infantry is rather slow and you easily outrange all non-artillery missile units they can bring to bear. So long as you're careful with your positioning, pick your engagements and keep two steps ahead of them, you can pick apart much of their gunlines before they can get a chance to return fire. Once you do so, Wardancers with Spears and Eternal Guard are pretty suited towards dealing with the bigger monsters they might have.

*'''Vampire Counts''' - One of your best matchups. VCs have a tough time handling your skirmishers since they don't have any ranged units or light cav. They also have a tough time handling your forest spirits. Treemen/treekin can easily smush skeleton spearmen and shut down blood knights with their charge def vs. large. If you really want to be an asshole, take sisters of twilight/hawkriders, park them on top of enemy, and pick away at their key units while they impotently shake their fists at you. VC lords are frequently put on flying mounts such as Hellsteeds and Zombie Dragons. An excellent strategy against these picks is to expose archer units in hopes of baiting the VC Lord in before trapping him or in place with the female Glade Lord's Prey of Anath Raema ability. As long as Dire Wolves and Vampire Cav are kept far away while this commences, a full back line of archers can easily whittle the VC Lord down within the sixteen seconds of prey of Anath Raema, especially given its twenty percent missile resistance debuff, thereby automatically securing your victory.

*'''Warriors of Chaos''' - A heavily armored melee faction with virtually no ranged options, you won't have much trouble keeping your distance from a majority of the WoC roster. The problem is, between their heavy armor and shields, Wood Elves had a bit of trouble actually dealing with their front lines until recently. Though Wildwood Rangers are reasonably decent at facing them in combat, the addition of Bladesingers has given Wood Elves a very strong melee-oriented answer for all that bulk. When properly supported, Bladesingers can and will carve a path of death through Chaos front lines, especially if you have anti-armor missile support from the flanks. Eternal Guard, as ever, are the best screening unit you can ask for against enemy cavalry while Tree Kin are a bit more suited to holding back the tide of enemy infantry while your Bladesingers get into position. One major issue you'll need to keep in mind; if the WoC brought a Hellcannon, you will want to prioritize that before anything else. WE have no direct artillery to answer them in kind and with virtually no defensive statlines on most of your units, Hellcannons can deal terrible damage to a majority of your roster if you let them fire at you uncontested.

*'''Wood Elves''' - Oh boy, fantasy guerilla warfare. If you're facing other fleshy wood elf infantry, don't expect a straight up fight. Try to outflank and shut down their archer units to force them into a more direct confrontation and shut down their healers to prevent them from shaking off the damage you deal to them. Try to save your magical arrows for any Trees looking at you funny.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]] {{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/High Elves

2022-02-23T20:10:49Z

2600:387:2:803:0:0:0:78: /* General */

{{Topquote|Galri Asur! Galri Asur!|Game battle chant for High Elves}}
This is the general tactics page on how to play [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|High Elves]] in [[Total War: WARHAMMER]]. This assumes you understand the basics of the games and if not, [[Total War: Warhammer/Tactics|here is the general tactics page]].

==Why Play High Elves==
*Because you want an excuse to act like a snobby prick.
*You like armies that don't really have a field where they are particularly weak in, and are just solid all around.
*Because you probably played them on the tabletop and this is the closest thing to 9th edition we will have til [[Warhammer: The Old World]] comes out.
*You have a high tolerance for silly headgear.
*MOTHER FUCKING DRAGONS!!!!!!

===Pros===
*'''Versatility''': An all around very well balanced roster. If the Empire is a Jack of all Trades, you are a Queen of all Trades.
*'''Range''': Their range units can dish out a hell lot of damage. Their cheapest archers can out range and kill a lot of elite skirmishers in a shootout. It also means that they can land the first blows of battles.
*'''Martial Prowess''': Their passive ability, Martial Prowess, gives you 12 melee defense and 2 melee attack as long as you are above 50% HP. This make you by far the most durable of the Elven factions, unlike your edgy or hippy cousins, most of your units can actually take a hit or two. To some people, this ability was poorly adapted from the tabletop rule, for the tabletop stated the ability allow the HE to strike first no matter how injured they are, making it more of an offensive ability than a defensive one. Either way, this ability could use some rework.
*'''Magic''': You currently have access to the most lores of magic in the game, having all the generic ones and a unique one for your own.
*'''Cavalry''': Dragon Princes are some of the most cost effective heavy cav in the game. They won't beat Grail Knights, Blood Knights or Demigryphs, but damn they are sturdy (due to their physical resist and fire resist) and having high charge bonus. Even Silver Helms aren't bad for the price, and Ellyrian Reavers are some of the best light cav in the game.
*'''Fire''': A hell of a lot of fire damage, from dragons, RORs, mages and mages who RIDE DRAGONS, you will laugh at anything weak to fire.
*'''Air Superiority''': With Dragons, Phoenixes, and Eagles it is not hard to gain control of the skies if you decide you want to invest into it.
*'''Infantry Specialization''': A lot of their units are specialized to go after certain targets, and some of them are the best at it. Rangers are great chaff cleaners, Swordmaster win against any non ROR infantry unit one on one and Phoenix Guard are expert monster killers.

===Cons===
*'''Cost''': High Elf units are expensive. Their units cost more than just about any other unit in the game at their respective tiers. You will likely go in heavily outnumbered.
*'''Reliance on Healing''': Due to how their passive works, a lot of their fighting ability relies on keeping Martial Prowess up. If it goes away, their units got from being very good for their price to being very NOT good for their price. For most factions healing is recommended, but for these guys it's almost required.
*'''Over Specialization''': The downside to a lot of their specialization in the Infantry department is they get trounced by anything they aren't supposed to be fighting against. Sure, Swordmasters will cut through Bestigors but if Minotaurs get on them they are screwed. Phoenix Guard can kill the Minotaurs just fine, but Bestigors trade up against them. make sure your units are fighting the right targets.
*'''Lack of AP''': You don't have that many armor piercing options, and the ones you do have tend to be on the expensive side. Because of this high armor might be a problem for you. Can be mitigated with a Lore of Metal mage with Plague of Rust.
*'''Low Health Pools.''' An issue with Elves in general. They are categorized with expensive costs, high stats, and low health. This doesn't really make you a glass cannon army because a lot of your units are pretty resilient, but you probably aren't going to out grind the likes of the Dwarfs, Warriors of Chaos or Lizardmen.
*'''Lack of Difficulty''': Aside from Imrik, High Elves aren't really known for having particularly difficult campaigns. They all have strong starting lords, powerful early units and they usually all have easy access to Ulthuan, making for a more casual easier setting. If you want a challenge in your campaign and aren't interested in Imrik, perhaps look elsewhere.
*'''DLC''': Unfortunately, a lot of their best units are locked behind DLC. The Queen and the Crone are needed for Alarielle and Sisters of Averlorn and The Warden and The Paunch are needed for Silverin Guard, Rangers and War Lions. If you want to win consistently, you may have to spend extra dough.

==Universal Traits==
*'''Martial Prowess''': You're standard High Elf passive ability. When you are above 50% HP, you gain 12 melee defense and 2 melee attack, making you a lot tankier and able to hit just a bit more often. This means that High Elves can hold a line for a surprisingly long time, as even their offensive infantry can hold for a while. Sadly, this comes with a reliance on healing, as if a unit's HP gets too low, they get a sizable stat debuff. Make sure your high tier units have some form of sustain, either through magic or passive abilities.
** Just to expand, this trait is super good, it pumps High Elf Spearmen to Melee Defence 50 (38 base), which is incredibly good when we look at how melee combat works in the game:
Unit Chance to Hit = Base 40% + (Melee Attack as % + Charge Bonus as % - target's Melee Defence as %)
::An Orc Boyz unit costs 450, has MA 28, so they have a chance to hit of only 18% (40+28-50), they cost 50 gold less but the Spearmen have 37% (40+22-25) chance to hit back. A very strong unit like Saurus Warriors with shields have only a 19% (40+29-50) chance to hit and cost 800 gold to the Spearmen's 500 gold. If these units charge the spearmen they do better with their charge bonus applied, but otherwise they're tarpitted once that's gone. The requirement of being above 50% health might seem offputting, but on units like Spearmen the trait helps sustain itself.

*'''Martial Mastery''': An upgraded version for elite units. Supplies 8 melee attack instead of 2, meaning they can pump out way more damage. Comes with the same weakness though, so make sure you are getting that healing as units with this trait are usually expensive.

*'''The Sword of Khaine''': Less of a trait and morelike a campaign mechanic. The Sword of Khaine is a balls-out broken OP epic weapon for any Lord that is lucky enough to pick it up. In includes absurd bonusses to Melee Attack and Defense, Armour, HP, Regeneration and a unique Vortex spell that even surpasses Doomsday Rockets and Wind of Death in terms of Damage and grows in power as long as it is in your posession. However, it comes with some harsh downsides. First amongst all is that you need to actually draw it from the Shrine of Khaine in the North of Nagarythe, you can alternatively wrestle it from the cold, dead hands of any opponent whw happened to have it. Secondly, and much more important is that the sword eventually causes your faction to descend into something that is little better than a bunch of maniacal lunatics, reflected in-game with harsh penalties that get worse as time goes on. The corruption of the sword is however not permanent; your Lord can choose to return it to the Shrine of Khaine at each additional step of Corruption; if you choose to return it, the penalties vanish and the Sword respawns at the Shrine of Khaine, where it can be picked up again. Important to note is that, while only the elven factions can actually draw it, ANY faction can claim the Sword if they defeat its current wielder, which is a terrifying prospect should it fall into the hands of characters like Grom the Paunch, Ikit Claw or Settra, all factions that have much less trouble at keeping their public order up and/or field cheaper units than the Elves do.

==Lords==
Your Elf bois (and gals) who shall be leading your forces into battle. You have quite a few to pick from so let's get into it.

===Legendary Lords===
*'''Tyrion''': Ulthuan's best military mind is exactly what you think he'd be, a fast duelist character who specializes in eliminating Lords, Heroes and other single entity targets. High armor, high speed and high armor piercing makes sure he can lay the whooping on whatever you need him to and stay out of harms way. Feint and Repose increases his already considerable dueling might and Sunfang allows him to almost insta-clear any chaff around to get to his desired targets. And if he does get low, don't worry! Heart of Averlorn has a chance to bring him form near dead to almost 3/4ths HP. His main drawback is the fact that he can only use a horse as a mount, meaning getting to the targets he wants can be hard. Still, a pretty decent, relatively cheap duelist lord.

*'''Teclis''': The wimpy nerd who can destroy an entire city if he sneezes too hard. Your main magical lord, who can do a little bit of everything you want a mage to do. He's got damage, lock down, buffs, debuffs and is an all around great utility mage. His Potion of Charoi gives him 4 healing potions with damage resist so he's not completely screwed if he's caught out of position. Still a character that is squishy and shouldn't be in the melee fight. Or at least he was, until CA decided to give him an Arcane Phoenix for some reason. After being given a monstrous mount, his main weakness went away and he became one of if not THE best mage lord in the game, his only real weakness being his ungodly high price tag.

*'''Alarielle (DLC)''': Your other caster lord. Where as Teclis is a utility mage who can go a bit of everything, Alarielle focuses more on defensive buffs and healing. With an eagle mount she can stay out of harm's way and she give AOE immune to Psych and magic damage, making Vampire players cry. She also has a variety of defensive items that can really.... Oh, who are we kidding? If you're picking Alarielle as your lord you're picking her for The Star of Avelorn. Considering how important healing is for the High Elves, a magic item that can give OVER 2000 HP IN HEALING is invaluable for elite focused armies. "What's that Mr. Star Dragon? You're almost dead!? Well, here's a healing bomb, go beat up the bad people." This ability can turn a battle from a sure fire loss into a win if used at the right moment. She's been considered one of the Asur's best choices since she came out. And totally on her own merit and skill, not because she has one of the most broken magic items in the game.

*'''Alith Anar (FLC)''': Alith Anar checks in for Nagarythe. This man is a bolt thrower with legs, and can chunk down targets from a considerable distance. However, unlike a lot of archer lords and heroes, he lacks a form of net, which is part of the reason those lords are so viable. Turns out a lot of people are going to be running in Alith Anar's lobby. (He's voiced by Dylan Sprouse if you're wondering about the Zack and Cody jokes.) As such, you almost have to lock yourself into the Lore of Light for Net of Amyntok to get the most out of his. Also, his lack of mount options makes it hard for him to get away when he is eventually discovered. He works best in full on kite builds with shadow warriors and archers since he gives a lot of buffs to range, including missile resistances and reload skill, though overall is still considered a niche pick.

*'''Eltharion the Grim (DLC)''': On paper, Elf Batman has a lot going for him. As a Hybrid Lord with the Lore of High Magic, decent melee stats, and an automatic barrage of missiles every few second you'd think he'd be a good bunker buster. Hell the guy also has a sword that gives him 44% physical resistance and his helm can make units unbreakable and straight up stop them from dying. You'd think he'd be an amazing tanky lord with a lot of utility. Unfortunately, he has the exact same problem the had on the table top, that being his price tag. Even when you strip the less useful stuff down he can cost close to 3,000 points, which sadly doesn't justify many of his cool abilities. He DOES have a cool combo with Phoenixes, as due to his helm stopping units from dying he can guarantee a fiery rebirth, but that's about his only gimmick.

*'''Imrik (FLC)''': The Lord of Caledor is what you'd expect him to be; a pompous, punchable prick on a giant fuck off dragon. His Dragonhorn grants melee attack and speed map wide when used, meaning unlike other High Elf lords you want to play offense when you pick this lad. Lord of Dragons give a massive debuff to attack and defense and he can instill fire weakness on his lance. Generally Imrik is fairly straightforward, point him at something, drop his buffs and debufffs, and watch as he beats the shit out of it. Granted you are paying for his ungodly statline at over 3,000 points and he is surprising fragile with no self healing, meaning lore of life is pretty much a requirement if you want the most out of him.

===Generic Lords===
*'''Prince''': Your generic melee lord, coming with most of the what you'd expect out of a melee dedicated generic lord. Has some weapons and abilities that give him some good self buffs, and some abilities like Stand Your Ground that most generic lords have. His issue is the lack of any real buffing abilities to help his army, no magic no nothing, which makes it easy to overlook him. Granted, anything that has a Star Dragon for a mount will be useful in some way, though it asks why you aren't just getting a normal Star Dragon for cheaper. If you put him on the Star Dragon, give him his weapon buffs and treat him like budget Imrik he ''kinda'' works, but honestly you're better off with the Dragon Lord.

*'''Princess''': Don't let those bitches at Disney taint your mind, this princess doesn't take shit from nobody. She sacrifices some melee prowess in exchange for a bow, which makes her way more useful than her Prince counterpart when on monstrous mounts as you get a Star Dragon that shoots arrows at people. She also has some really good buffing abilities, focusing on helping archers, which is good for 90% of High Elf builds. She also comes with an armour piercing magic missile ability for helping dish some damage at long range. Oh, did we mention she's cheaper than the Prince? She serves a similar role to Alith Anar only she actually gets mounts so she can stay out of harm's way when she needs to. The lack of magic holds her back from being top tier, but overall a very solid pick.

*'''Archmage (DLC)''': For you Saphery fans, Archmages fulfill all your magical needs in the Lord slot. These ladies come with the usual mage stuff, Arcane Conduit and one of the Lores of Magic, though she can pick between any of the generic ones and Lore of High Magic, giving her the highest variety of any generic mage lord in the game. Her mounts are also cool, choosing between a horse or chariot for ground support or an eagle or Moon Dragon for aerial dominance. Her magic items include an increase to power recharge rate and armor that when activated gives her stalk and unspottable. Yup, you can give a goddamn dragon stalk and unspottable, it's as hilarious as it sounds. Granted a Moon Dragon isn't as nice as a Star Dragon, but it's good none the less. All in all, she's about what you'd expect from a High Elf mage lord, and probably the best generic choice.

==Heroes==
Sadly, no Legendary Heroes for the Asur, guess Korhil and Caradryan didn't get an invite. Still, they have pretty good options.

*'''Noble''': The minor nobility of Ulthuan and your melee heroes. Halberd wielding Anti Large fighters who generally act as bodyguards when you bring a squishier lord like Teclis. When on a horse, 2 of them plus your lord can serve as a good goon squad to help take out specific targets. They also act as decent mage killers and are overall pretty cheap by hero standard. Chariots are also handy for Dwarfs. Overall, not a bad pick if you need something to protect your mage lord on a horse, though the lack of Guardian means they aren't the best heroes in the game at that job. Or don’t ever use them in campaign, Because you need them spamming gather influence every single turn. Use a handmaiden instead.

*'''Mage''': I mean... it's what you think it is. She's your generic caster hero and is about what you would expect. She has every generic lore plus High Magic, Arcane Conduit, and will get her ass clapped in melee. The chariot mount option does come in handy if you're fighting Dwarfs or any faction that struggles with Chariots in general. If you aren't picking a magic lord, you pretty much have to grab one. Note to Dragon Mage fans that Fire Mages get access to a Sun Dragon mount, because CA figured making making a whole different mage hero just to give it a Dragon would be redundant. As useful as you'd expect a mage on a dragon and Fire is a great lore, though she becomes expensive and a massive bullseye for missiles. Campaign dominance usually wants you camping as many mages as possible with economy boosting traits in your most profitable province. So optimally use archmage lords and camp the rest.

*'''Loremaster''': Sadly, these pointy eared Jedi got demoted from Lords to Heroes in the jump from Tabletop to Game, though they can whoop ass none the less. One of very few Hybrid Heroes, they have good casting along with good Melee stats. The variety of spells allow them to heal, do direct damage and buff troops, giving him some good variety. The combo of Spirit Leech plus Armor Piercing Anti Infantry damage can make them decent duelists when fighting foot lords. What screws them over is their lack of mounts and cost to recruit, so be wary of that when using them. Can be a good mage substitute if you use yours to boost your economy.

*'''Handmaiden (DLC)''': The bodyguards of Alarielle, and your sniping heroes. With flaming, magical armor piercing shots, they can lay a bit of damage on a target given they have the time to shoot. Of course, she's squishy and of the three melee heroes she is probably the worst fighting up close. She has anti large, thought a Noble can do that plus armor piercing. She also has some passive abilities and items that can buff archers, so in a fully dedicated range list she can do a bit of help. Overall though, you may as well go with a Noble, he'll do everything she does better. - the above is only true in multiplayer. in campaign where nobles are better used to gain influence you should probably only handmaidens as your primary combat hero. Especially since they boost archers and sisters of avelorn doom stacks are objectively the cheapest, strongest armies high elves can field. (Dragons stack may be stronger but cost 2-3 times as much, and come online much later and slower). In campaign they also have a skill to give a boost to public order factionwide (sure, it's just a +1 per Handmaiden that has the skill, but since you're going to want to recruit them anyway...)

==Units==
Lords and heroes are cool and all, but a faction can't win without their units. Let's see what the Pointy Ears got.

===Infantry===
*'''Spearmen''': Your standard, tier one Infantry, armed with spears and shields. They are what they say on the tin. High Melee Defense and low Attack means they are used more for holding the line rather than outright killing their opposition, unless they are fighting straight up chaff. At 500 points, they are hardly what one would consider "cheap" compared to what others can brings, so swarming isn't exactly the plan with these guys. Also with only 40 armour, they will be chewed up by any missiles not hitting the shield. As with most spear units, they have Charge Defense against large and Anti Large, so they are great light cav killers. A go to pick in a lot of match ups.
**'''Scions of Mathlann (RoR, DLC)''': Same as above, with slightly better stats and give an AOE 12% ward save. This can help keep your front line going just a little bit longer, though the short range and the fact that people enjoy distancing their units to avoid the risk of spells killing them is means their usefulness is a bit limited. Certainly one of those "better in campaign" units.
*'''Dryads (DLC, Avelorn Only):''' Only available if you are playing as the Avelorn subfaction, which locks you into Alarielle as your only Legendary Lord choice (Not that anyone would complain). One of the better tier one infantry, with good stats for the price, physical resistance and fear. Keep them the hell away from fire, for obvious reasons. Pretty good offensive choice, but honestly picking a subfaction and giving away part of your strategy may not be worth it, especially since their role can be fulfilled by...
*'''Rangers (DLC)''': ... These lovely boys from The Warden and The Paunch. Your cheap (by High Elf standards anyway) tier one offensive infantry. Dual swords gives them a nice bonus vs infantry, meaning they are great for clearing out enemy chaff such as Goblins and Skavenslaves. While you may look at their 30 armor and grow concerned, their loose formation and their 20% physical resistance means they can take more missile fire than you would expect an unshielded unit of that tier to take. They are also decently fast by infantry standards, so they won't be soaking up fire for too long anyway. Granted, they are going to get trounced by anything mid tier or higher or anything that has a decent armour value. You want to be bringing these guys against factions that throw in unarmored trashed to bog you down, like Skaven or Beastmen.
*'''White Lions of Chrace''': I don't know if the King's Court faced some serious budget cuts or whatever, but man these guys have fallen on some hard times. [[Derp|These bodyguards of the Phoenix King are mid tier infantry that go down to mid to elite tier units form other factions]]. Jokes aside, these guys got a bad wrap but they aren't AS bad as people say, you just can't use them as a front line (Unless you're fighting Dwarfs). They have great AP values and good armor with missile resist, so they're hardly useless. Use them as support for your spears to cut through enemies and they can do some work. It's understandable CA didn't want to give the High Elve 2 elite great weapon units, but the fact the King's bodyguards got reduced to mid tier left a sour taste in the mouth of lots of High Elf fans.
**'''The Puremane Company (RoR, DLC)''': More or less the same as above, only with better stats and new abilities. These guys have -30 armour sundering, which only further helps them as a support option for a cheaper frontline without AP. They also get the guardian trait to protect Lords and Heroes from harm, so they at least now actually act like bodyguards. Great against heavy armour like Dwarfs and Warriors of Chaos, they will not only do lots of damage, but support others in doing damage as well.
*'''Silverin Guard (DLC)''': Now THIS is a staunch line of spears. These guys are to normal Spearmen what Longbeards are to Dwarf Warriors. Just a better, sturdier and more expensive alternative. Great defensive stats and magic resistance means that cutting through these guys is not going to be easy to anyone but dedicated armour piercing and/or strong anti infantry units. Their main use is to give a massive middle finger to any rush faction, and watch as they try to slam their heads against this wall to no avail. Of course, they are a much more expensive frontline than normal spears, so you will have less resources in other parts of the battlefield. Despite that, they are still a fantastic choice and can hold forever against the right opponents.
*'''Swordmasters of Hoeth''': Now we're getting into the big guns. These guys but White Lions to shame, and stat wise can take on any other non RoR infantry 1 one 1 and win. Combine fantastic stats with an armour piercing anti infantry bonus and they will lawn mower their way through any infantry they come across. Plus, they even have a missile block chance, which allows them to mitigate missiles, which is usually the best way to fight great weapons. However, they are expensive, and most competent enemies know how scary they are. Because of this, a lot of people bring monstrous infantry to deal with these guys, which is not something they enjoy fighting. They can earn you a lot of profit against infantry, but if your enemy burns them down before they fight anything, that's 1250 points you aren't getting back.
*'''Phoenix Guard''': The Anti Large alternative to Swordmasters. With a large 30% physical resistance, fear and charge defense against large, they are tanks through and through. They can hold the line and carve apart monsters with fairly little issue. Their lack of shields does leave them vulnerable to AP missiles, however, so watch out for that.
**'''The Keepers of The Flame (RoR, DLC)''':Even better Phoenix Guard with magical attacks and The Mark of Asuryan. What that does is when a model dies, it explodes, and deals damage to enemies around them. This makes them much better infantry killers than normal Phoenix Guard, as an explosion will probably drag a model or two with them.

===Missile Infantry===
*'''Archers''': It's all in the name. Fellows with bows that have a whooping 180 range. Only Waywatchers out range you, meaning you can get some easy free fire on most enemy units before you come under pressure. Lack of AP aside, a great unit. Of course, you need to protect these little bastards as they are crap in melee. They also come in a "Light Armour" varient that give cost 50 more cold for 30 more armour. Given the fact that the DPS is the same and they'll die is light cav sneezes on them anyway, most people just go with the standard version.
**'''Talons of Tor Caleda (RoR, DLC)''': Fun unit if you love playing with fire. Not only do they do Fire damage, but they also imbue a fire weakness. Team these guys up with some Sisters of Avelorn and watch whatever they're shooting get blown to smithereens!
*'''Lothern Sea Guard''': Another non AP archer unit, but one who trades a bit of range for a spear. While they don't have the sheer oppressive firing range of normal archers, it means you don't have to babysit them nearly as much. If a light cav shoots them they will laugh as they turn in the horse pelts for new boots. Granted, you'd rather they not be fighting light cav because you want them shooting, but hey. They can even serve as a front line, especially if you pay extra for the shielded variant. A great hybrid unit that can fulfill all kinds of roles and are useful even with no ammo. Upkeep is about the same as sisters of avelorn, ask yourself are they ever really better than just more sisters? Generally the answer is no. Kinda a trap option because the fight slight worse than basic spearman and shoot slightly worse than basic archers. Not bad just overshadowed.
**'''The Storm Riders (RoR, DLC)''': These guys really wanted to become Shadow Warriors but unfortunately grew up in the pleasant city of Lothern and not the shithole that is Nagarythe. One day they said, "fuck it, we can do skirmishing better than them!" They can't. Vanguard and fire while moving is nice but you want these guys stationary to help with your lines, so it seems pointless. They do have that fear though, which can come in handy.
*'''Shadow Warriors (DLC)''': They have the same range and damage output as normal archers. You're paying extra for vanguard, stalk, fire while moving and better melee stats (not like you want them throwing hands with anything stronger than Clanrats.) They are if you are really into the kite game, and want to use mobile skirmishing to blast the enemy to pieces. Granted with only 22 Melee Defense they aren't that good in melee, and honestly in most match up archers will do the same job for cheaper. They have a nice niche, particularly against factions with shit infantry, but aren't a staple by any means.
**'''The Grey (RoR, DLC)''': No point in taking these guys over normal Shadow Warriors. All they get is snipe and a banner that makes them unspottable. Save your cash.
*'''Shadow-Walkers (FLC, Nagarythe Only)''': Not much to say about these guys, they're just better Shadow Warriors. The poison they have is cool. Rarely seen as the subfaction don't have a lackluster selection of Legendary lords of one guy. Locking into a subfaction is not so bad if you don't use Legendary lords in MP.
*'''[[Sisters of Avelorn]] (DLC)''': Feast your eyes and despair, for your gaze upon one of the best archer units in the game. With 180 range, massive armour piercing, magical and fire damage and the ability to fight in melee makes them one of the best overall units the High Elves have. Anything they shoot turns to dust, and they can create a firing line that can make gunpowder factions jealous. Also, they are pretty damn good in melee, able to hold off cav charge until reinforcements come and can tear apart chaff that is thrown their way. Their big failing is their high price, meaning you will have one or two on the field at a time if you want to invest in anything else. Used wisely, and these lovely ladies can win games all by themselves. In Campaign, where financial concerns become laughably inconsequential, their price-tag becomes a complete non-issue. Objectively the most op and cost effective unit on the high elf roster.
**'''Everqueen's Court Guard (RoR, DLC)''': These even better ladies come with encourage and The Banner of Avelorn for more magic recharge. Want your troops to hold out longer? Want more magic in your pool? These ladies got you covered.

===Cavalry===
*'''Ellyrian Reavers''': Light cav that can put on pressure like very little light cav can. With vanguard and great speed they can run rampant across the battlefield, preying on skirmishers and artillery alike. Granted, they are about as durable as tissue paper, so don't expect them to last if they come across actual resistance. Still, as far as light cav goes, this is one of the best options currently in the game.
*'''Ellyrian Reaver Archers''': Skirmisher cav that can still whack people in melee. Their bows can give out a good stream of damage over time and give enemies an aneurysm. Plus, despite their primary role being ranged warfare, they are honestly pretty good in melee, they'll actually beat Dark Riders with shields in a head up engagement. Not that you need to, because with 360 fire and fire while moving, they can punish anything that tries to chase them down.
**'''Heralds of The Wind (RoR, DLC)''': Not much to say about these guys. They're the same as above but with way better melee stats. This means they can serve both purposes as skirmisher hunter and ranged damage. Solid RoR all around.
*'''Silver Helms''': If you want something that punches more punch that Reavers but don't want to invest all that money in Dragon Princes, this is a solid pick. Very sold mid tier cav option meant to ride around and slam into the backs of enemies. They will lose to pretty much all elite cav head on, so watch out for that. They come with a shielded version as well, which you should honestly grab whenever you can.
*'''Dragon Princes''': of course, why settle for 2nd best when you can have the best. These boys do Caledor proud, being just as fast as Silver Helms and having better stats in virtually every department. They also have physical and fire resistance, meaning as long as they aren't fighting anything with magic damage they can be one of the more resilient cav units in the game. Granted, their lack of anti large and armor piercing makes them not the best against other heavy cav. Instead, these guys focus more on charging into the rears and flanks of enemy infantry and taking them down. Keep them healed up, and they can put armies on their back.
**'''The Fireborn (RoR, DLC)''': Well, now they have fire damage and anti large, so sorry Skaven players, if you thought throwing a Hell Pit Abominations would kill them you were mistaken. Now they're cavalry killers, and wreck lightly armoured monsters or one weak to fire.

===Chariots===
*'''Tiranoc Chariot''': The first of three chariots, and one focused on skirmishing. The magical arrows are cool and can help against physical resistance, but it's not like the High Elves are missing in that department. The bonus versus large also helps versus lightly armoured troops, though they won't do much against heavy armour. They have a niche, but really this is a unit that you can certainly skip in your army if you want to.
*'''Ilthimar Chariot''': Same issue here to be honest. People grab chariots for hard hitting armour piercing infantry blending. A chariot this expensive without armour piercing is never going to be useful. There's honestly nothing they can do that a unit of Ellyrion Reavers or Silver Helms can't do better, at least the Tiranoc version can shoot magical arrows. Widely considered one of the worst units on the roster, and one you can easily skip.
*'''White Lion Chariot (DLC)''': Now THIS is a chariot unit! These cat lovers have that AP that the other chariots are sorely missing. While they do give up some armour in exchange, the ability to mulch Dwarfs and Chaos Warriors into paste is more than worth the trade off. Plus, they don't care about losing armour that much because they gained missile resistance, so shooting them won't get rid of the quickly. Finally, they cause fear because, you know, it's a chariot pulled by fucking lions. Has the same flaws most chariots do, being a lack of ability to fight in sustain melee, but easily the best option of the chariots here.

===Artillery===
*'''Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower''': The only artillery piece these elves have, and not one that will be winning any "Best Artillery" awards soon. Not to say they're bad, the ability to cycle through anti large single shot and anti infantry multi shot makes them a bit more versatile than most artillery units. Plus, they can be good for sniping out other large artillery units, like War Lightning Cannon or Queen Bess. Of course, they won't win any shootout with Dwarfs but for the price it will probably get the job done so long as it's protected. If given the choice between targeting monsters or elite infantry it's better to pick the latter.

===Monsters===
*'''Great Eagle''': This giant bird is a relatively cheap flying unit that can provide some decent mage hunting and is a fairly accessible source of fear. The best thing it offers is its speed, and can be used to get from different points of the battle when needed. Granted, these guys are squishy, and will lose to most monster units. Honestly work best as mounts for mages you want to keep out of the fight, acting as a distraction to missile units (being able to easily dodge most ranged assaults) or to escort tattered, key enemy units off the map.
*'''War Lions of Chrace (DLC)''': War hounds on steroids, these thing can provide a lot of killing power. They are fast, have decent stats and have armour piercing anti infantry damage. This equates to a lot of dead skirmishers, but also dead mid tier infantry if they are able to support infantry. A missile resistance will protect them on the way in form archers, and they have strider to help them ignore penalties from trees. Plus, fear is never a bad thing. Pretty solid choice all around, and serve as great flankers and artillery hunters.
**'''Rahagra's Pride (RoR, DLC)''': These mighty kitties come with a Mighty Roar ability, lowering leadership and speed. If they attack from the flank, they can pop this to potentially cause a mass route and make sure ideal targets don't escape. Great for low leadership armies like Skaven or Beastmen.
*'''Tree Kin (DLC, Avelorn Only)''': Continuing Alarielle's tree fetish, these guys serve a tanky defensive role. They can help spears hold the line longer and instill fear to make them run off faster. Immune to Psych and high physical resistance means these trees aren't going anywhere. Granted, fire will put them down fast, so keep that in mind if your enemy has lore of fire. They also won't do much damage to their enemies, so don't expect them to buzzsaw through any form of enemy.
*'''Treeman (DLC, Avelorn Only)''': The ents are marching, but they're much less impressive in this setting. The tanky stats, good armour piercing and magic damage are nice, but they are way too slow to be of much use. Any skirmishing force can burn these guys down, especially if they have fire. Not really a worthwile pick, and we already discussed the downsides of sub factions.
*'''Flamespyre Phoenix''': The first of three magic birds. This fire one has fear and terror, good stats all around, and is mainly focused on chaff clearing. All Phoenixes ahve an ability where they get a ward save when the magic pool is above 50% It has ten uses of a bombing type attack where it drops down fire bombs on the enemy to blow them to pieces. Not great against armour, but can deal with blobs pretty well. The other is Fiery Rebirth. If it gets too low, it has a chance to either die outright, or too go through an animation where it comes back to life with significantly more HP, which in the right scenario can turn a fight. You don't want to rely on this to win though, as it may not happen. Still a decent monster.
*'''Frostheart Phoenix''': The icey bird. Trades the fire bombs and rebirth ability from the previous phoenix in exchange for better overall stats and a good debuff ability. Blizzard Aura generates around it and causes a decrease to overall weapon damage and melee attack. Elven spearlines will appreciate this, as it will allow them to hold out for even longer. Granted, losing the chance to rebirth sucks, but still considered an overall better pick than the fire bird.
*'''Arcane Phoenix (DLC)''': The last bird, and the best of them all. Comes with even better stats, regains the rebirth, and gains Emberstorm. This allows it to face plant into the ground and create a stationary vortex that burns anything around it. Great for clearing our low armour, it can demolish blobs of infantry. It's an expensive little chicken (Seriously, it costs more than a Moon Dragon) but one that certainly wins fights in the right scenarios.
**'''Omen of Asuryan (DLC, RoR)''': This birb does everything listed above and also gives Immune to Psych in an AOE. Not the best thing for a race that doesn't really suffer from leadership problems, but still nice to have.
*'''Dragons''': With 3 goddam choice, i figured we'd make a general listing then split them off. Dragons have crazy ass stats but aren't something you should just throw around willy nilly. They can be fragile and will often lose to elite anti large units and monsters. It's the breath attacks that make these guys scary. and each dragon's breath serves a different purpose. A well placed breath can win you the game, and a bad one can blow it away. BRING HEALING TO KEEP THEM IN THE FIGHT!!!!!
**'''Sun Dragon''': The weakest and cheapest of the dragons. Their breathe is spread out more and will destroy infantry blobs.
**'''Moon Dragon''': The inbetween of the two stats wise, and can deal damage with its breath to both monsters and units.
**'''Star Dragon''': The strongest dragon, and widely considered the best unit on the roster. If played well can absolutely demolish units. their breath will destroy other monsters.

==Tactics==

===Multiplayer Strategies===

If you're playing High Elves, you already think you're better than everyone else, and you want to prove it! Fortunately for you, you have a very well rounded roster that can be used in a myriad of ways to take out a variety of opponents. You have the obvious strengths in your ranged, but you are also strong in terms of cavalry, monsters, and healing. However, the high cost of your army means that you will be outnumbered in many of your match ups, and AP is something you need to pay a premium for. And while you're the tankiest of the Elven factions, that really isn't saying much. That said if used well you can cause havoc. Here is how you can assure domination against the inferior races! Keep in mind this is assuming you bought both High Elf DLCs because if you haven't you may struggle a bit. Yeah, multiplayer can be pay to win, sorry.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Beastmen| Beastmen]]''': You got enough range to poke down their lack of armor, the question is can you protect it all against their flanking and vanguard shenanigans? Kite builds tend to work best here. Get a relatively cheap frontline (trust me, with Minotaurs and Chaos Spawn you do not want to lean on infantry to win) to hold them in place so your Reaver Archers can begin their poke. Make sure to get some cheaper melee cav to screen for the horse archers, preferable Silver Helms. You generally aren't going to see the Ghorgon or the Jabberslythe in this match up since both are very prone to getting shot by missiles. Tyrion is a surprising solid pick, as Sunfang can melt any Beastmen infantry but Bestigors and they mutants have such a hard time catching and killing him.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia| Bretonnia]]''': This has historically always been one of your hardest match ups. Don't even think of relying on cavalry, Grail Knights will fuck up Dragon Princes and run amok. Silverin Guard act as a good deterrent against heavy cav and can beast most Bret infantry aside from Foot Squires, and Lothern Sea Guard can at least do something against knights if they are charged. Teclis with nets and enfeebling foe will also play big for you to stop and debuff heavy cav. Use bolt throwers to take out cav models and finally, the Star Dragon can carry if well supported, as Bretonnia tends to struggle with big armoured monsters.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Daemons of Chaos| Daemons of Chaos]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Warriors of Chaos| Warriors of Chaos]]''': This is a tough one for you. Shaggoths beat Dragons one on one and are cheaper, making it a bit unfair for you. You still want to bring a star dragon to burn shaggoths down with breath attacks, and a couple swordmasters can help burn through that heavily armoured infantry. You can use Teclis on the pidgeon to help the dragon in melee or Alarielle to help keep it alive. Aside from that, grab basic spears and archers and just try to take down those damn shaggoths.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dark Elves| Dark Elves]]''': Scourgerunners are the bane of your existence, as they can kill anything you bring to the table. Bolt throwers are the best way to deal with them, and if you can do that Dragon Princes are free to run rampage across the Druchii. You have the advantage in Heavy Cav, range and magic variety, make sure you use it! Also, a Star Dragon is always good to help deal with any big beasties that might get thrown your way. Bring a couple basic archers to shoot down their skirmish cav and short range before they get a chance to rip you apart.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Dwarfs| Dwarfs]]''': Is Chrace your favorite kingdom on Ulthuan? Well, this match up is a perfect chance to rep the Lion Boys! White Lions are amazing here, with AP and missile resistance at a decently affordable price. Bring a few archers or eagles to deal with Gyrocopters and reavers or war lions to deal with artillery and you can score a decent amount of value. And of course, no build against the Dwarfs is complete without AP Chariots, and White Lion Chariots can destroy Dwarfs. Any Dwarf player who picks the stunties against you either think they are way better than you or are new and don't understand match ups yet. (Seriously, this is so one sided it makes you wonder how the High Elves lost the War of the Beard)

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Empire| Empire]]''': The big question in this match up is going to be "how the fuck do you deal with knights?" Demigryphs will eat Dragon Princes 1 on 1 so similar to Bretonnia, don't rely too much on your heavy cav. One tactic that has become popular is to bring a single Lore of Metal caster with Teclis, net them, cast plague of rust and shoot them down with your archers. Phoenix Guard can also be useful here since they can tear up state troops and knights with fairly little problem, but they have to worry about guns. In that case, archers can be used to shoot their guns down or Reavers can be used to run them over. The infantry fight shouldn't be an issue unless they brings Greatswords (which are rare) it's the mobile aspects and gunpowder that will end up giving you headaches.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Grand Cathay| Grand Cathay]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Greenskins| Greenskins]]''': Ok after The Warden and The Paunch this became a hard one for two reasons. One, Stone Trolls give a a massive middle finger to everything you love to do with their magic and missile resistance. Two, now that WAAAGH! is an army ability and not a lord ability, Arcane Unforging can't put it on cooldown anymore. If you want to rep the Asur against da boyz, Silverin Guard will be your friends. They can hold against anything but Black Orcs or Arachnaroks, and the best way to deal with them are with either Swordmasters or Plague of Rust and missile fire. In terms of missiles I recommend Lothern Sea Guard because then you don't have to worry about the abundance of flanking the greenskins love to bring against you. Also, Dragon Princes will run over any cav that the Greenskins bring so one or two of them can help worth wonders (The Fireborn especially, since it can help with them pesky Stone Trolls)

*'''High Elves''': Honestly, this match up boils down to "Who can micro their Dragon Princes better." Since it's a mirror match up it is 100% even, assuming both sides bought the DLCs. Don't bother with Dragons, you'll be fighting a ton of missiles and Dragon Princes have a crap ton of fire resistance anyway. Some AP in the front line can help so White Lions could be used to break through the front line and help your mounted lads get some easy hammer and anvils. Also, as usual heals are paramount, so bring Alarielle or some form of healing in order to keep your army on top. If your enemy's Martial Prowess runs out before yours does, you are going to be in a VERY good position to dominate the map.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Khorne| Khorne]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Kislev| Kislev]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Lizardmen| Lizardmen]]''': Anti-Large and AP will be your bread and butter against the children of the Old Ones. The first major weakness of the Lizardmen is their speed. Skinks aside, their foot soldiers will advance at a rather trudging pace. This, coupled with the relative lack of ranged options in the Lizardmen roster, will give your many ranged units plenty of time to rain hell upon them with impunity. Sisters of Averlorn in particular will decimate Saurus lines (even with shields) due to their solid AP damage while Eagle Claw Bolt Throwers can put some severe hurt on the bigger beasties they'll be bringing. Keep an eye out for Chameleon Skinks; though they're little more than an annoyance to your armored units, they can pop into your back lines unannounced, deal not insignificant damage to your unarmored infantry and will absorb missile-fire from dusk 'till dawn. For all flavors of Skinks, use Rangers to skin them with laughable ease. Spearmen and Lothern Sea Guard are ideal for tying up Lizardmen cavalry and monsters, though you should spring for Sylverin Guard if you have the coin to spare. Lastly, if there is a Slann Mage-Priest leading them, try to focus them down. Slann (especially Life Slann) are often the single source of support magic in the entire army and taking them out of the fight early can ''devastate'' the Lizardmen in the long run. No half measures though; Slann are surprisingly tanky and can often endure combat long enough for reinforcements to rescue them while they heal off the damage you dealt. If you aren't able to burn them down quickly and efficiently, then you shouldn't commit to hunting them down. If you neglect to pay attention to the rest of the Lizardmen army while you obsess over the fat frog, you will pay dearly.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Norsca| Norsca]]''': Good news, you have plenty of ranged assets to take out the lightly armoured troops of the north men! Bad news, they have a shit ton of flanking and skirmisher killers, along with strong line abilities that will make your neatly organized frontline cry. It's fairly similar to what you bring against Greenskins to be honest, Silverin Guard to stop the rush and Lothern Sea Guard to protect yourself incase they get into your backline. There are two main differences. One, lighter cav tends to be better to keep up with the more mobile army of Norsca and to catch out skirmish cav and their anti large range. The other is a Star Dragon should be brought to help burn down Mammoths, though be sure to keep that damn thing save from any Anti Large that comes your way. As usually, bring heals.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Nurgle| Nurgle]]''':

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Skaven| Skaven]]''': The rats are one of very few factions that can out range you due to their weapon teams and artillery, and if you're outranged, you're a sad pointy ear. Bolt Throwers will help a ton, because not only can they use multishot to help clear away chaff, but more importantly they actually win in shootouts against Skaven artillery. Because of the massive models Skaven artillery have, bolt throwers have an easy time shooting them and getting them destroyed, making the unit useless and forcing the rats to come to you. Rangers will tear through pretty much any infantry that aren't Stormvermin, so that should be your frontline. As far as mobile aspect, due to the sheer number of ranged units coming your way, quantity beats quality. Go for Reavers and Silver Helms over Dragon Princes since they can cover the map more and the loss of one unit won't hurt that much. Side note, this is pretty much the only match up Alith Anar is useful in, since he can easily snipe artillery and large characters without much fear of counterattack.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Slaanesh| Slaanesh]]''': ...Fuck. This one isn't going to be pretty. They'll easily be able to dive into your backline, murder your archers and flank you, meaning a lot of your elves' souls will become some Daemonette's new favorite butt plug. One of the upsides of this match up is that since they have no missiles or strong fliers, a Dragon can get breath attacks off without much issue. So one should be brought for breath attacks and cycle charging, just keep them away from Soul Grinders and Keepers of Secrets. As for your infantry, get as many spears as you can, I'm talking Spearmen, Silverin Guard and Lothern Sea Guard. Not only because they're your most effective holding units, but because Cavalry and Chariots will be plentiful and that sweat anti large will come in handy against all that low armor. Investing in Cavalry might not be the best idea, but if you're going to go for Dragon Princes or Silver Helms, Reavers have no missiles to go after and will get run down by Seekers and Hellstriders. You will want a flying general to keep them as safe as possible. Imrik comes with a Dragon, though you would prefer to have your mage wrapped into your lord so I would recommend Alarielle or Teclis for nets. Just try your best to lock Slaanesh down, if you can pin their units in with mass or Net them with Teclis your Lothern Sea Guard should get good value.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tomb Kings| Tomb Kings]]''': BOLT. THROWERS. ARE. YOUR. FRIENDS!!!!! They help deal with a ton of things that the Tomb Kings love to give your trouble for, like Ushabti Great Bows, big constructs or a Casket of Souls. If you can effectively defend your artillery and take out the dangerous ranged tools the skellies love to bring, you have two options on how to completely wipe them. One is combining bird Teclis with a Flamespyre Phoenix, using flight to pick your targets and engage on your terms, as well as taking advantage of the fire weakness. The second is Phoenix Guard, which can mulch anything the Tomb Kings throw at them if they don't have to worry about the AP range. Since Phoenix Guard tend to be risky if you don't deal with the ranged, Rangers are also good since they can trade up against most Tomb King Infantry. Scorpions tend to be common since they can easily dodge missiles and their animations make them hard to catch. In that case, high mass cav can pin them in place and you can shoot them down.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Tzeentch| Tzeentch]]''': At least on paper this actually seems like a pretty solid match up for you. Your lord choice should be Alarielle, though all the fire damage will reduce her healing so you may just want to grab someone with tempest. Watch the Furies die in a tornado and trap down the Lord of Change, Doom Knights, and Chariots for your archers to get easy shots at. Considering how your missiles out range theirs by a lot, picking down the barrier shouldn't be too hard. Basic Archers will probably do the trick but if you're scared you can't pick off all the fliers Lothern Sea Guard will also be a solid choice. While the rework to Magic Resistance means they won't be reducing Daemon damage, Silverin Guard will still probably be a great choice as they will be able to hold against most Tzeentch units and resist their spells that they will inevitably bring. Finally, Dragon Princes are going to be an absolute nightmare for Tzeentch to deal with due to the fire resistance shrugging off a lot of the damage that their units can throw at you. Honestly the unit I an see being the biggest problem for you is the Soul Grinder as it can fight your infantry up close and shoot your cav from a distance. Once you wipe the floor with the rest of the army though, you should be able to overwhelm it and drag it down.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Coast| Vampire Coast]]''': Rangers beat every infantry but Depth Guard, and honestly you probably won't see much Depth Guard anyway. There are two ways Pirates like to play this match up. A gun build with lots of flanking dogs, bats and mortars to deal with archer spam, and crab rushes. In the case of the former, Keeping Spears in the back to help secure the backline from dogs and bats while your cav (Preferably reavers) hunt down the artillery can help your archers rip them apart. As for the latter, bring a metal mage with plague of rust and shoot them down. Your really want to invest in range against these guys as they tend to struggle against a ton of shooting, so protecting them and finding ways to deal with their armored stuff is how you play this. Don't bring too much big stuff like Dragons, they will probably get shot out of the sky.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts| Vampire Counts]]''': They're a rush faction, so they can be handled in a similar way to Greenskins and Norsca. Get some Silverin Guard to hold against their infantry and cav and some Sea Guard to get a hard to crack shooting line, and be ready to bunker down. You have an obvious ranged advantage, so they will have to come to you. A Star Dragon and Alarielle can be devastating if handled well, since Star Dragons eat terrorghiests and Alarielle brings so much to this match up from Immune to Psych and magic damage to deal with ghosts and other physical resistance. Be sure to bring Tempest, as Vampires love to bring scary fliers to the battlefield and if you can lock it down you can shoot them or get some easy engagements with your Dragon and Flying lord. As long as you have good ground support, they shouldn't be able to harm your fliers too bad.

*'''[[Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves| Wood Elves]]''': One of the few other factions whose missile infantry can rival yours. Wood Elves are a very skittish faction that will endeavor to avoid engaging in prolonged fights in no small part due to how fragile they are. Wood Elves have virtually no armor and only their Eternal Guard has access to shields, so ranged attacks are (ironically) quite effective against their missile infantry. For their infantry in general, Rangers will make quick work of them in a fight, but you'll want to beware of Wardancers. Spearmen and Lothern Sea Guard are crucial for intercepting Wild Rider charges; get a mage with Net of Amyntok to shut them down and allow your spearmen to box them in for the kill. Wood Elves also find themselves rather lacking in the artillery department (as in, they have none), so a few Eagle Claw Bolt Throwers can go a long way during the opening stages of the battle. Now, as far as the angry trees go, bring a matchbox. Fire damage and anti-large will quite literally burn through them, so a Fire Mage and/or Sisters of Averlorn will do you wonders. Lastly, you'll want to secure your back lines. A significant portion of the Wood Elf roster is capable of Vanguard Deployment and you do ''not'' want Dryads, Wild Riders or Waywatchers getting into your squishy infantry early into the fight.

==Campaign Strategies==

===General===

Step 1: find highest income province, step 2: recruit mages with the region income boosting trait, step 3: camp every mage in step 1 province, end result all the money you could ever need. Repeat.

High Elves have an image of being one of the easiest races to play in campaign. While yes, Due to their powerful lords and strong economies they tend to lean a bit more on the easy side, that doesn't mean you will never come across any difficulty while playing them in Vortex or Mortal Empires. In this section we will go over the general tips about how to handle a High Elf campaign, followed in more depth by the specific subfactions themselves and how they differ from each other. Let's go over the generic traits all High Elves have first:

Probably the most important mechanic the High Elves have, and the one that connects back to all of their other ones, is '''Influence'''. The Elves are political animals and as such need some kind of leverage or favors in order to make headway in anything they want to do. Influence is a special currency you get for completing missions, building certain buildings, doing hero actions and through random events on the campaign map. This offers you two major ways to spend it, one being stronger lords and the other being Intrigue at the Court. The first way revolves on how you recruit lords and heroes, as each one has a certain amount of influence you have to spend in order to recruit them. Lords and Heroes that cost 0 influence have shitty traits that hurt your campaign, ones that cost a relatively low amount have more standard traits, while the most expensive have straight up OP ones. For instance, there's a 60 influence trait for Archmages called Incendiary, which gives a +100% weapon strength, +100 charge bonus and flaming attacks. This may sounds pointless on a mage character you want to keep out of melee until you realize she can ride a fucking dragon at some point. This can get you some ungoldy powerful lords if you build up influence.

The other thing you use Influence for is '''Intrigue at Court''', which further reflects the politcalness of Elves. With this, you can improve or destroy relations between any two factions on the campaign map that you know. It's similar to what the Empire has, only while they can only do it between two Imperial factions, you can do it between anyone. This means you can puppeteer the map in anyway you like. Want to declare war on a faction but they are allies with someone you have a Non Aggression Pact with? Pump some influence and now they hate eachother. Want to confederate that one stubborn faction on Ulthuan? Keep spending Influence and you'll win them over eventually. You can manipulate diplomacy to start wars and alliances between however you want. 90% of the time you'll be using this to get other High Elves to confederate with you easier.

Since Influence is so important, here's an easy tip to get a ton of it:

*Recruit a Noble. Don't worry if he has a bad trait, he'll never be used in combat.
*Send him to a city that's owned by a faction you won't be friendly with anyway, like Dark Elves or Norsca
*Keep spamming the '''Secure Influence''' option, it will give you 1 influence every turn for 5 turns.
*Level up Secure Influence every chance you get, you get an extra point for every level up, and rinse and repeat.

If you keep doing this you will be drowning in influence.

Also, their research is kind of stupid. The research is locked by different stages and you need to construct different buildings in order to get access to all of them. This means building things you'd rather not in order to finish the research tree. You even need to get all tradeable resources in order to completely finish the tree. Just complete what you need to complete and you'll get through it fine.

Here's some buildings you'll want in every major city:

*'''Ampitheater''': Your public order building, just make it to make sure rebels don't spring up anywhere. It's also makes money and isn't too bad at it on top of that.
*'''Tower of Mages''': Gets you more Mages and Loremasters, along with more research rate and access to more stages of research.
*'''Blessed Grove''': Gets you more Handmaidens and Sisters of Avelorn. A fun agent and one of your best units.
*'''Dragon Keep''': The Dragons are nice, but you really want this for the +1 Lord Recruit rank. Being able to get lv20 lords from the start instead of leveling them up there is so nice.
*'''Elven Court''': More Nobles, which means more Influence. What more do you want.

The best time to ask for a Confederation is after your target has suffered a military defeat. If you see them lose two armies in the same battle, they are more likely to agree to Confederate.

Basic Archers and Spearmen are ridiculously effective, and wil be able to handle most of what the game throws at you until pretty far in the game. If you don't know what to put in your armies, four Spearmen, five-six Archers and two Bolt Throwers are a pretty good base that you never can go wrong with.

===Campaign Specific===

====Tyrion====

*'''J-just play the damn thing''': Look, Tyrion's campaign is designed to be the "baby's first Total Warhammer campaign." You start with one of the best cities on the map, are surrounded by friends, have fairly weak enemies and are on an isolated continent. Now this isn't a bad thing, but it results in the campaign having very little challenge for experienced players. As such, don't worry too much about it. You'll probably unite Ulthuan and attack the Dark Elves in Naggaroth to complete your campaign objectives and after that you can do pretty much whatever you want.

*'''Use Morathi to your advantage''': Morathi is eventually going to attack Ulthuan and since Auto Resolve freaking loves her she's going to take quite a few provinces. Since you are going to be trading with most High Elf neighbors, use this to your advantage to expand. Take any territory that Morathi takes yourself and confederate the factions that she weakens during her expansion. Once you control the majority of Ulthuan you can sail over to finish her off and confed Alith Anar if he is still alive.

*'''Don't do Blood of Anerion at higher difficulties''': Look, I know it's fun to give Tyrion the Sword of Khaine, max out the Blood of Anerion tree and watch him slap his dick across the face of everyone he fights but trust me at higher difficulties it isn't worth it. The public order penalties will stack with what you get with difficulty level anyway and you will start having rebel problems early on. The other tree will improve your economy, public order and relations, which are much more useful than making Tyrion more of a beatstick than he already is.

====Teclis====
*'''Invest in Anti Corruption''': You will be dealing with Skaven and Vampires in your campaign, so something to deal with all of that corruption will be nice. This is especially true in Mortal Empire where you start right next to Skrolk and Luthor Harkon. The Lustriabowl is stupid enough as it is, and getting rid of all that corruption will help you get through it.

*'''Don't bother too much with the Lustria Bowl.''' The more you expand into Lustria the more bullshit you will have to deal with. The Lizards are generally friendly with you and make good trade partners, so once you secure the Eastern Coast from Skrolk, Luthor and Lokhir, see if you can try to confed with Ulthuan. Yes, it's the more boring way to play but unless you want to reenact the Veitnam War but with Lizards it is the more practical way to do things. Of course if you're playing the Vortex campaign..... yeah you're kind of stuck. Good luck.

====Alarielle====
*'''Get Ulthuan under Asur control ASAP''': You get penalties to public order and money when there are something other than preppy pointy ears on the donut. As such, you got to make sure to go out of your way to kill anything non High Elf on Ulthuan. Once you do that, you're in the clear to steam roll the campaign, as you get massive bonuses once Ulthuan is united.

*'''Use Morathi to your advantage''': Same as Tyrion really, only it's easier for you to take advantage of it. Once Morathi takes some provinces on Ulthuan make sure you're there to sweep them up.

*'''Fortify against Blood Fleets''': Hellebron is going to send blood fleets to Ulthuan and you are probably going to have to deal with them. They will land at the Salvation Isles in Vortex and at the Shrine of Khaine in Mortal Empires. Keep these locations fortified and smash the armies they send at you before they can do any extreme damage to Ulthuan.

====Alith Anar====
*'''Do Assassination Missions when you can''': They're a very good source of money and influence that can really help you out, though the big problem tends to be getting to your target. Obviously, you shouldn't bother doing them if they're asking you to kill an ally or someone on the other side of the map, but if it's someone close and in a faction you have no interest in being friends with by all means go at them. Especially if you have your special hero that never fails assassination attempts.

*'''Fight dirty''': with your ambush stance, heavy focus on skirmishing and guerilla fighting and underworld stance, you're essentially a Skaven faction in an elf suit. Use this to your advantage and always try to go for ambushes and drowning the enemy in arrows.

*'''Kill Morathi ASAP''': You want to do this for three reasons. One, she spreads Chaos Corruption which will eventually come to bite you in the ass, so you may as well get rid of her before it spreads too much. Two, it's inevitable that she will invade Ulthuan and disrupt your main trade partners and confederation targets. Three, her main settlement is one of the richest in the game, which will heavily improve your economy.

====Eltharion====
*'''Get ready to fight a lot''': Part of this is because of the prison mechanic, which incentivizes you to fight a lot of otherwise very one sided battles. This is because while it is possible to get a prisoner in Auto Resolve, it's low so you're better off just fighting it out and capturing them manually even if it is a two stack army vs your griffon knight stack. The other part is because eventually every green bastard in the Badlands is going to want to mount your buttcheeks over his fireplace, so expect a ton of stacks coming at you.

*'''Mistwalkers stacks are Eltharion only''': There is one big reason for this, he's the only one who can buff them. The Mistwalker units don't get buffs from the Red tree, so generic and other Legendary High Elf lords can't buff them. Eltharion does have a skill that buffs them, so while they're useful in all your armies, Eltharion is the only one who can effectively doomstack them.

*'''Consolodate Forces''': In Mortal Empires you have a dual start, one on Ulthuan and one in the Badlands. With your split forces, it can be a bit hard in the early game to get started. Your main focus should be to get all of Yvresse under control so you can trade with your fellow High Elves and get an economy going. Once that is done, use your money to focus on either taking all of Ulthuan or expanding in the Bad Lands. You can do both, and to win you need provinces in both, but you'll be splitting up your forces doing so.

====Imrik====
*'''MURDER SNIKCH!!!!!''': More of a Mortal Empires problem, but one that is REALLY important. Unless you want never ending rat stacks against you, you need to kill the Rat weeb as soon as possible. Once you take the first dwarf settlement, take your army and kill Clan Eshin immediately. trust me, you will be saving yourself a lot of head ache in the future.

*'''Prepare to have no money''': Your are going to have a grand total of 0 trade in the early game because of how trade works. You can only trade with a faction if they can directly get to your capital by sea or land, meaning having a port or a settlement with a road to your main city. Since the ocean you start by is blocked to the rest of the world, and you are surronded by people who hate you, trade is not happening early one. Even when you do confed your way back to Ulthuan, your capitol doesn't change to Caledor so you can't trade with the other elves. Yes, you can cut back on Dragon money, but only cowards do that.

*'''Find those Dragons''': Once you start collecting the Dragons, you start to become stupid strong. Early on it's ok to just use their events to collect money and favor (especially if you want to confed Caledor the best way possible) but once you have a strong army there is no reason to not go after them. Once you collect one, all the others come in much easier.

==DLCs==

In this section we'll go over the DLCs for the High Elves and determine whether or not they're worth buying.

*'''The Queen and the Crone''': Because of course you're going to have a Lord Pack against your main rivals. Alarielle and the Sisters of Avelorn are the highlights of the DLC, both being core units in campaign and multiplayer. It also comes with the Handmaiden, a decent hero in campaign with nice buffs and Shadow Warriors, your mobile kiting archer unit. The biggest problem with this DLC is the lack of content compared to Lord Packs that show up later, as you only get two units and a hero option. Compare that to what other factions get later on and it does feel bare bones. Alarielle's campaign itself isn't bad but the mechanics are a little bland compared to other DLC factions and it does lean on the easy side once you kick the non Asur off Ulthuan. All in all a decent pick if you love the High Elves and are only interested in campaign but if you're tight on money you can hold off on it. If you play multiplayer though it's a must buy as Alarielle is arguably your best lord and it gives you a ton of good options.

*'''The Warden and The Paunch''': In many ways the opposite to the above in which it adds a ton of content and gives you great campaign options. The big Lord here is Eltharion, who has a fun campaign where you get to roleplay Batman and throw thousands of Greenskins into your own Arkham Asylum for cool buffs and bonuses. Other units include the Archmage, giving you a lord level mage and a collection of units to fill the holes in your army. Rangers offer good early game offense and Silverin Guard finally give you a mid tier defensive infantry option. War Lions and Lion Chariots offer good mobile AP and Arcane Phoenixes are great lord/hero duelists and blob killers. Honestly this is one of the better Lord Packs in game 2, giving you a ton of good content (especially if you also like Greenskins) and a pretty good campaign. Easy recommend.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]
{{Total War Warhammer Tactics}}