alarielle army composition (campaign)

[ludo]

What army did you give her?
I'm not sure of what to army to build for my campaign, for now, i have planned:
Of course, Sister of Avalon will be the main component (around 12 of them)
1-2 bolt thrower to destroy tower and motivate stationary unit to come and die on my sister salvo
1 handmaiden on horse to run interference
1 noble on foot as bodyguard, eventually on eagle to destroy artillery and isolated caster
1 mage, probably light for net of amyntok combo with sister and pha's protection if someone unexcitingly need to tank
Maybe a treeman or two for meme, door bashing and general tanking? single entity work well with healer like alarielle

Though and opinion?

[Gorwe]

Like 4 Treemen, Elle, a Life Mage(Light Mage can work too) and 10+ Sisters? What else did you expect? (just auto resolve Siege, that ♥♥♥♥ ain't worth my time!)

edit: Yeah, 1 Eagle Claw is necessary to make AI do anything.

[Mr Robert House]

2 bolt thrower, 14 SOA 1 resistant handmaiden, 1 tanky noble (forgot trait name) 1 light mage, either with the move speed trait or an entrepreneur.

Tree men is probably ok, but will be worse than welves

[pascal.difolco]

Yeah SoA all the way, treemen are for Drycha

[alionamongstmen]

Alarielle's strongest quality is healing. To make the most of it you want to run as many single entities as possible while still having enough Sisters. I usually end up with:
Alarielle on Eagle
Noble on Eagle (look for Frugal)
Light Mage on Chariot (Conductor, Entrepreneur, or Incinerary)
Handmaiden on Steed (Resistant, with Entangle)
12 Sisters of Avelorn
Frostheart Phoenix
Arcane Phoenix
2 Star Dragons

I use the Star Dragons and Arcane Phoenix to harass the enemy as they approach and the Frostheart to support them and the Noble in combat. Mage can keep infantry away from your Sisters in an emergency. Just be careful not to shoot your monsters so much. I like this comp because you want the tier 2 red line archer buff and you need 6 points in tier 1, so you can have her buff both the Sisters and monsters. Alarielle's healing is insane, tbh a lot of the time just the heroes and monsters can defeat a stack or two. I don't like going all Dragons though, the Phoenixes and Noble are fast and can tie down enemy cavalry whereas the Dragons can get outmanouvered. And don't forget Alarielle can drop Dwellers on blobs tied up by your monsters. Tempest can ensure you maintain air superiority as well. This army is pretty fun too, more interactive than just checkerboarding and dropping nets and entangles.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by alionamongstmen:

Alarielle's strongest quality is healing. To make the most of it you want to run as many single entities as possible while still having enough Sisters. I usually end up with:
Alarielle on Eagle
Noble on Eagle (look for Frugal)
Light Mage on Chariot (Conductor, Entrepreneur, or Incinerary)
Handmaiden on Steed (Resistant, with Entangle)
12 Sisters of Avelorn
Frostheart Phoenix
Arcane Phoenix
2 Star Dragons

I use the Star Dragons and Arcane Phoenix to harass the enemy as they approach and the Frostheart to support them and the Noble in combat. Mage can keep infantry away from your Sisters in an emergency. Just be careful not to shoot your monsters so much. I like this comp because you want the tier 2 red line archer buff and you need 6 points in tier 1, so you can have her buff both the Sisters and monsters. Alarielle's healing is insane, tbh a lot of the time just the heroes and monsters can defeat a stack or two. I don't like going all Dragons though, the Phoenixes and Noble are fast and can tie down enemy cavalry whereas the Dragons can get outmanouvered. And don't forget Alarielle can drop Dwellers on blobs tied up by your monsters. Tempest can ensure you maintain air superiority as well. This army is pretty fun too, more interactive than just checkerboarding and dropping nets and entangles.

This is exactly what I try to avoid. Phoenixes and Dragons are for other LLs. Elle has her own, quite useful and tanky SEMs(Treemen). Are they as good as WE? Surely not. Do they need to be? No. I mean, Elle is still so absurd as an LL that she might just put Tyrion to shame(probably not). So she don't need peak efficiency when she's already way above others.

With that said, I'm not completely happy with her spell repertoire. I expected something more support oriented. Banishment? Tempest? lol, wtf? I mean, she is absurd, but also sometimes feels like discount Teclis or Morathi. In spell selection way. Also, Morathi should have extra charges to Power from Darkness just like Malekith or transfer it. She's the schemer, not him lol!

[The Sand Witch]

Idk I play her with starting units + spearmen and archers and that beats everything already. 3x treemen units holds the line forever and archers just wipe everything. Late game you improve your archers and that's pretty much it.
She's a meh faction for the ease she brings imho, although has some flavour

[Xaphnir]

Treemen aren't the best tanks for Sisters since they have fire weakness.

[alionamongstmen]

Originally posted by Gorwe:

Originally posted by alionamongstmen:

Alarielle's strongest quality is healing. To make the most of it you want to run as many single entities as possible while still having enough Sisters. I usually end up with:
Alarielle on Eagle
Noble on Eagle (look for Frugal)
Light Mage on Chariot (Conductor, Entrepreneur, or Incinerary)
Handmaiden on Steed (Resistant, with Entangle)
12 Sisters of Avelorn
Frostheart Phoenix
Arcane Phoenix
2 Star Dragons

I use the Star Dragons and Arcane Phoenix to harass the enemy as they approach and the Frostheart to support them and the Noble in combat. Mage can keep infantry away from your Sisters in an emergency. Just be careful not to shoot your monsters so much. I like this comp because you want the tier 2 red line archer buff and you need 6 points in tier 1, so you can have her buff both the Sisters and monsters. Alarielle's healing is insane, tbh a lot of the time just the heroes and monsters can defeat a stack or two. I don't like going all Dragons though, the Phoenixes and Noble are fast and can tie down enemy cavalry whereas the Dragons can get outmanouvered. And don't forget Alarielle can drop Dwellers on blobs tied up by your monsters. Tempest can ensure you maintain air superiority as well. This army is pretty fun too, more interactive than just checkerboarding and dropping nets and entangles.

This is exactly what I try to avoid. Phoenixes and Dragons are for other LLs. Elle has her own, quite useful and tanky SEMs(Treemen). Are they as good as WE? Surely not. Do they need to be? No. I mean, Elle is still so absurd as an LL that she might just put Tyrion to shame(probably not). So she don't need peak efficiency when she's already way above others.

With that said, I'm not completely happy with her spell repertoire. I expected something more support oriented. Banishment? Tempest? lol, wtf? I mean, she is absurd, but also sometimes feels like discount Teclis or Morathi. In spell selection way. Also, Morathi should have extra charges to Power from Darkness just like Malekith or transfer it. She's the schemer, not him lol!

Sure, you can go Treemen if you'd like. I think that, as someone mentioned, the fire weakness makes them less than ideal blockers for the army due to friendly fire. Also the biggest challenge to a Sisters spam is enemy war machines which having fast flyers and breath attacks can help against. I guess the difficulty you play on could make a difference.

I forgot she doesn't have Dwellers though haha, it's Banishment. Anyways her main role in battle is healing and her strength as a lord comes from her faction buffs and campaign effects.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Treemen aren't the best tanks for Sisters since they have fire weakness.

You are right. Why do they have Fire modifier to begin with? Don't seem like a kind of thing they should have.

[BiteSizeCenter]

Originally posted by Gorwe:

You are right. Why do they have Fire modifier to begin with? Don't seem like a kind of thing they should have.

They're TREES bro. There's a reason why Smokey the Bear says "Only YOU can defeat forest fires". Fire>Trees, this is just a fact of life.

edit: Go ask anyone who lives in California. Fire pwns trees in that state on a regular basis.

[The Coal Man]

I think he meant why do the sisters do fire damage. Wouldnt magic make more sense, and fit her special unit comp?

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Coleron:

I think he meant why do the sisters do fire damage. Wouldnt magic make more sense, and fit her special unit comp?

They're described in the lore as firing arrows of magical fire.

[I|III||I|||II|IIII|]

1LL
2 resilient SMOH to tank the front lines and heal
1 light mage for net
1 beast mage for flock of doom
11 SoA in chess board formation
2 resistant handmaidens on mounts keeping AoE on SoA (items/followers)
2 perfect vigor nobles at flanks and on mounts to attack cavalry.

I don't run artillery because I use pierces better seige mods

[YungShun]

It depends. I just play Alarielle campaign and I think SOA are not doom stack for any kind of enemy.

If facing factions, like skaven or dark elves, with strong ranged weapon team or artillery. You need some dragons and phoenixes. Or you still can't win artillery-heavy opponents.

If facing strong cavalry factions, like chaos. You need more treemen for blocking. According my experience, SOA are not strong as you imagine VS lots of chaos knights and chaos giants. I usually get very bad results using 12 SOA stack VS two armies of chaos. They still have hellcannons and SOA in fact cannot weep out chosen quickly.

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by Xaphnir:

Originally posted by Coleron:

I think he meant why do the sisters do fire damage. Wouldnt magic make more sense, and fit her special unit comp?

They're described in the lore as firing arrows of magical fire.

Which still don't make sense for an unit from a magical forest. Maybe if they were from the Shrine of Asuryan, sure. But as Avelorn elite units? Meh, just don't make that much sense.