I think the race specific section of the forum is pretty great. So does anyone else have trouble fighting against the high elves? I play them quite a bit but unfortunetely almost always lose. If they are a breeze to you, how do you beat them and with what kindof list? I'd love to be able to beat those smug sallies for once. :P

Bows and catapults seem like a great idea against the swordmasters and spearmen, and pretty much anything except the pheonix guard and white lions.

Casket has never worked for me because of the high natural leadership, but now with the magic boost it may help get a spell or two off which I've always found tough to do. Although I'm not sure a heavy magic list is worthwhile. Maybe useful for defence, but I still think it will be difficult to go toe to toe against high elf mages.

Chariots seem like an obvious choice to deal with the ASF..

any thoughts?

Those are the obvious things that jump to mind for me too. Shooting and chariots.
Maybe as far as magic lore of light? Net of amyntok and magic missiles sound like good ways to deal with their troops, as does boosted I to take away their rerolls.

That might work well, I haven't had a chance to try light yet though. I just played two games against high elves today at 2000 points, and used a TK and a LHP lvl 4. I found that the lvl 4 was amazing with the lore of Nehekhara though. The movement, extra attacks, ward saves just worked really well. Skullstorm was very effective as well.

Archers weren't all that effective, but I only took 20 of them to bunker my mage. Maybe with alot of them they would be decent. They just didn't manage to dent the swordmasters or enemy archers very well at this number.

I used 2 units of 4 Chariots in both games. My first game they got charged by lion chariots and tiranoc chariots unfortunately. Amazingly he wiffed his impact hits and broke from combat but that was entirely luck. The next game one chariot unit got charged by his dragon, but the other slammed into 30 spears and scored 22 impact hits! It ended up totalling to 11 kills which was pretty decent, plus augmented with smiting they fared very well. They didn't break the unit because of steadfast, and got bogged down and broke later on once his prince joined the fray. Maybe I had too much faith in the impact hits and shouldn't have charged in alone. The hardest part with using the chariots was HIS chariots and his dragon. Two had greater movement than me and the other the same, so how to you guys deal with the movement 8 vs movement 8 scenario? Or movement 8 vs movement 9?

Casket was great too surprisingly. It killed off a bunch of swordmasters, bounced and killed an eagle, then bounced and killed his dragon. 3d6 minus leadership can be amazing. Of course the plus d3 power dice good too.

The 40 skellies with hw/s got obliterated by highelf spearmen in the game they were in combat, they just can't act as a tarpit against this unit it seems. Not sure what to do about this, maybe I'll hit them into something other than spearmen next game. I was wanting to pile them into his dragon mage, but of course it can fly circles around me so that wouldn't work.

Tomb Guard with King and mask was pretty good. They got wrecked by the whitelions with swordmasters in the flank, but who wouldn't. They were losing the battle before the swordmasters joined in though. The mask on the king is expensive and the elves still have pretty decent leadership even without the general or bsb, so not sure its worth it. I'm debating between tooling him up to be really killy or really defensive for next time, not sure what is better against the elves. Perhaps a king in chariot unit would be the best.

Scorpion did a good job at assasinating the dragon mage, and holding up a unit of archers.

People 'always say' that the sphinx will get chopped down by the spearmen, but its actualy done amazing against all the elves I play against, for 1 big reason. Elves top out around str 6... and that there bolthowers... for the most part after 2 turns of needing 6's to hit they stopped targeting it with any of there ranged as it was pointless (the have trouble fielding the number to deal with it becuase of how expensive there units are). And against a horde you would only get about 10-11 attacks at you (becuase of base size), with on average 8-9 hitting, with 1-3 wounding, and 0-1ish saved... meaning that if and when you get that guy there he can survive on average 2 rounds of CC with the spears alone... thunderstomping, thundercrushing, and breathing fire down there bums.. even if you lose him he will/should remove so many of the spearmen that the unit will not be useless. This works even better against white lions or there GW guys since they get even less attacks and there higher str means very little.

Second, HE are designed to kill hordes, and avnils... both of these unit types will be FAR less effective against them, elite hard hitting, or multiple small units flanking they can't really deal with, and shooting really lays them flat... most have low saves, and T3 accrossed the board -mostly-

I've never actually considered the sphinx, but what you say does make sense. It would be very expensive for them to field enough missle troops to take it down quickly. Their bolt throwers do worry me though, not because of the strengh six, but because of the multiple strength four (I think thats the strength) shots. We have some great ways to deal with warmachines though so this probably won't be much of a problem.

Yes, my opponent also said that HE were designed to take out hordes and anvils as his spears hacked the skelly anvil to bits, even doing alright after failing fear test because of the rerolls and mass of attacks to get 6's. I'm not sure if its even worth taking a sword and board unit. Is there anything in the army that the unit can tie up without giving up too much to combat resolution for the hammer? The archers would probably be more effective, I'm going to try adding another unit of 10 or 15 along with another catapult.

Have you tried necroknights against the high elves yet? What do you use character wise?

Charector wise, bring at least one lvl 4... they are good spell casters and almost all HE people use em, so to have a chance at the magic phase, you will need a lvl period.

OUr combat charectors unless kitted out right will be slaughter becuase of the number of attacks at them.

Think high T (hits them where it hurts the most), and good weapon skill (avoid getting hit on 3's at all costs - and yes i am thinking of TG here)

Another good point, it matters not how good your leadership is if you need to roll it 4-5 times a turn. No matter what happens keep going after it, if a unit breaks, and every time one fails fear, and well every failure in this field really hurts the army as a whole. (Mask works wonders here if you have room for it.)

ALso, casket, you will want it if you plan on spell casting, and its bound spell isn't bad either (3d6 average is 10.5 higher then ALL leadership).

BG isn't bad, if you can flank assualt with it. Ushabti bow's not horrible if you think there will be a dragon or multiple chariots....

Hope this quick brain storming session helped.

Always love brainstorming ways to take out coneheads.
Agreed on the lvl4, really need to make sure you get those spells off and dispel. Flames of the pheonix or whatever spell hits every model in the unit on Str4 is annoying/devestating.

Have you tried the mask against High elves? It didn't do too much for me the 2 I've played. But for a few turns we forgot about the fear test every turn, and I never got a chance to charge with the mask unit. But ya maybe all that combined with catapults and he'll be failing alot of tests. I was also thinking of giving a king the sword of bloodshed for +3 attacks and maybe glittering scales to hope he doesn't get wrecked becore he strikes. If he's still alive to strike that would cleave through any infantry save pheonix guard maybe.

How many characters do you take other than the lvl4? Liche? Prince?

against spearmen and swordmasters:

against phoenix guard:

against white lions (all the things ive mentioned against spearmen except archers, SSC and net of amontyak):

against lords/heroes: