High Elves Army Builds

[Throgg]

Hi, newbie here, I'm currently on HE ME turn 150. I've secured the island and went East 50 turns ago, as I know the area from WH1.

Archers and artillery have been fine here, for sacking Orcs and moving on, making lots of gold excellent diplomacy with man. Now I have a good gold reserve and maxed out the island settlements, I've decided to go take on the DE, however, Skaven and Lizardmen are dominating to the west. But my army builds and tactics are not quite suited to being charged by dinosaurs and other obscure creatures.

The only method I've found is brute force, autoresolve, 2x 20/20 vs 1x 20/20. but I lose a lot of life so sit around in encamp for too long and Skaven pop up and ambush a single army.

What's a good roster, I've unlocked everything, not got a huge number of high level characters though?

p.s. I've ignored most objectives and missions and just do what I want. And what I currently want is to own the Americas.

Any tips are appreciated.

[Iriath Zhul]

Lothern Sea Guard should be the mainstay of your army. Like 8-10. Assuming you have upgraded your archers and have a lord that provides missile support. They aren't AP but their huge range and high base damage will still devastate the Dark Elves' basic infantry and obliterate any dragons/hydras.

Otherwise, just bring a bunch of dragons. At turn 150 you should be able to afford them and dragons will take care of their heavier infantry. You're not likely to run into huge piles of Black Guard that can't be pummeled into submission by arrows.

It's not the most sophisticated comp but it's good multi-purpose. Just make sure to focus your archers on either the enemy's monsters or their squishier infantry. You can cause a lot of early routs with this and stop them from ever hitting at full strength.

[Aenarion]

I'm not sure LSG are a good pick against dino armies due to the very high armour.

A star dragon stack is a reasonable choice if you can get a dragon-willed lord. But my usual late game army is something like this:

- 9 phoenix guard
- 5 sisters of avelorn
- 2 star dragons
- bolt thrower
- mage or loremaster
- noble or handmaiden
- lord with resistant or doctrinal trait

It's strong against almost any opponent and especially dinos, as you have lots of armour piercing and anti-large.

[Cacomistle]

Lothern sea guard plus archers is the easiest army to be cost effective with. However as you get to late game, it still does well vs DE but lizardmen its not great against cause dinos are too heavily armored to go down quick. Vs them, you should get some phoenix guard. A couple dragons is also really good vs ai cause they tend to clump a lot, so you can dragon breath for like 100 kills, then kill all their ranged. I'd say a generalist good aemy would be 3-4 phoenix guard, a couple dragon princes to wipe out ranged, a couple dragons, whatever heros, and then the rest a 50 50 mix of seaguards and archers or bolt throwers. Or sisters of averlorn if you have the dlc.

On higher difficulties because of the cost upkeep increase of multiple armies, I think lothern zea guard stacks stop being as good by that point, and its better to just stack elites. At that point I'd rather have a few sisters of averlorn if I have the dlc, and the rest swordmasters phoenix guard dragons and dragon princes, and ofc heros.

[Iriath Zhul]

Dinos don't actually have that much armor, though, and they have no missile resistance and no shields. And you can put so many arrows onto them that they just die anyway. I mean, how often are you using all your ammo before the fight ends.

[Aenarion]

Bastiladons and Ancient Stegadons have 140 armour. So most of your LSG shots will do only 4 damage (all from the AP component - the non-AP component is fully negated) compared to 16 from the typical sisters shot. This is simply not an efficient way of fighting and you'll lose badly in a 20 vs 20 fight.

[Throgg]

Thanks all, good tips. Shielded LSG are the back bone of my 5 current stacks. I did take an LSG and 8 Star Dragons, forced marched, ambushed and gone, without ever learning how to use them :( I know what I did wrong and I won't make that mistake again.

Currently, I can focus fire all archers and route a dino but then 3 others are on top of my, and I think some of those creatures regen in battle.

I'll try a few phoenix guarg, dragons and sisters combo. Although I have a lot of high level LSG that have better stat lines then newly recruited sisters.

[Aenarion]

Even rank 9 LSG are far worse at shooting dinos than rank 1 sisters, because they have only a quarter of the AP damage. You can see this by hovering over damage on the unit card.

[Iriath Zhul]

Originally posted by rymeintrinseca:

Even rank 9 LSG are far worse at shooting dinos than rank 1 sisters, because they have only a quarter of the AP damage. You can see this by hovering over damage on the unit card.

I keep forgetting Sisters are in the game now.

[Sn3z]

1 lord
4 phoenix guard
3 Swordmasters
2 sisters of avelorn
3 Dragons/phoenix or mixture
2 Dragon princes
1 bolt thrower
3 LSG
1 agent

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

1 lord
4 phoenix guard
3 Swordmasters
2 sisters of avelorn
3 Dragons/phoenix or mixture
2 Dragon princes
1 bolt thrower
3 LSG
1 agent

Why go for so many types of units, go for units you get bonuses to. And really 3 sea guards is kind of worthless, if you're looking for cheap ranged just go archers since you easily have the front line to prevent them from getting attacked, and looking for more elite archers just get more sisters. It feels like variety just for the sake of variety, cause even at that point you're probably better off just getting more dragons (ai really sucks against dragon breath, and cause of the increased upkeep per army low tier units kind of suck), or going lothern sea guards with sisters behind and ignoring the melee component except for maybe a few phoenix guard and maybe a bit of cav/flying to flank when they go in.

[Ninjasquirrel]

I'd bring at least 2 bolt throwers. Good against both factions.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Iriath Zhul:

Dinos don't actually have that much armor, though, and they have no missile resistance and no shields. And you can put so many arrows onto them that they just die anyway. I mean, how often are you using all your ammo before the fight ends.

LOL, no.

[Уединение]

Originally posted by Sn3z:

1 lord
4 phoenix guard
3 Swordmasters
2 sisters of avelorn
3 Dragons/phoenix or mixture
2 Dragon princes
1 bolt thrower
3 LSG
1 agent

close but replace LSG with sisters 😇

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by Boneripper:

Why go for so many types of units, go for units you get bonuses to. And really 3 sea guards is kind of worthless, if you're looking for cheap ranged just go archers since you easily have the front line to prevent them from getting attacked, and looking for more elite archers just get more sisters. It feels like variety just for the sake of variety, cause even at that point you're probably better off just getting more dragons (ai really sucks against dragon breath, and cause of the increased upkeep per army low tier units kind of suck), or going lothern sea guards with sisters behind and ignoring the melee component except for maybe a few phoenix guard and maybe a bit of cav/flying to flank when they go in.

I would say HE are at their strongest with this kind of army give or take and few units it really doesn't show alot of weakness and is very aggressive, the bolt thrower can be dropped, swordmasters and phoenix numbers can also be decreased by one in favour of other things. LSG are really their to provide some archer fire when idle but prevent any flanking getting into the archers/artillery or any raised units, they protect archers thats their real job.

[Problem Solver]

Im currently using 3 star dragons. 4 sisters of Avelorn, 2 dragons princes, 5 phoenix guards. 4 swordmasters of Hoeth, 1 lord. 1 bolt thrower. Have conquered 240 settlements so far. trying to clear the map. Have 5 other armies with similiar configuration. Use dragons to attack any range units. dragon princes to chase any retreating enemies so they dont reenter the battle. Phoenix guards and swordmasters on front line and sisters behind them pelting enemy with arrows