Guardians of the forest - A guide to Wood Elves

An in-depth look at the Wood Elves. Their mechanics and how I personally utilize them to great effectiveness in dominating the campaign.

Introduction

Welcome to my guide on the wood elves in Total war: Warhammer,
This guide will go over the basic mechanics of the Wood Elves before going more in depth on empire management, economy, campaign strategy, army compositions and battle tactics.

If you follow this guide you should be able to field multiple full army stacks, of powerful Wood Elves to lay waste to anyone foolish enough to stand against you.

Disclaimer: While this guide primarily focuses on the grand campaign you can of course apply sections of it to the Elven mini campaign.

Wood Elves 101

In this section I'll briefly go over the basics of playing the Wood Elves with the express purpose of clarifying my points further down in the guide.

The wood elves start in in the western area of the map in the forest with their neighbours; Clan Aungrund (to the south) Crooked Moon (to the east) and Brettonia (to the north).

The unique feature of wood elf empire management is the regrowth of the forest symbolized by the oak of ages. In order to do so you will need a resource unique to the wood elves namely amber.
A lot of your campaign strategy and empire building is going to revolve around amber and having sufficiently enough of it.

Additionally throughout the campaign beastmen hordes will spawn, with the sole purpose of burning down your precious forest. Now according to various sources these beastmen waves spawn when you upgrade your oak of ages. Now I can't speak for the mini campaign but in the grand campaign it seems more like they spawn in preset intervals rather than being tied to the forest upgrades.

The wood elf army roster can be split into two categories. One being the actual Elves and the other being Tree Spirits such as dryads, treekin and treemen. Depending on which legendary lord you choose one of these categories will cost amber to recruit and maintain, more on this later.

Legendary lords

The wood elves have 2 legendary lords to choose from, namely Orion (Elves) and Durthu (Tree Spirits) depending on which one you choose, either high tiered Elven or Tree Spirit units will cost amber to recruit and maintain, as previously mentioned.

Each lord has 4 lines of skills to go down, improving either themselves or giving valuable buffs to their respective armies. Orion focusing more on empowering his Elves, and Durthu his kin.

In this guide we are choosing Orion, and for his upgrade path we are initially going to put all our points into the Eye of Kurnous, line (which will greatly improve our archers) of which will be the bread and butter of this campaign. After picking up Eye of Kurnous, you want to max out Nature's Quiver first followed by Bolts of the Forest. Pick up Asuryan's Command when possible.

Since Elven units are smaller than other races and are going to be outnumbered most of the time. You want to maximize your ammunition and damage, followed closely by reload rate. Shifting winds is a good skill but optional in this guide. Once available, picking up Sight Beyond Sight is also a good choice, but again optional. Later in the game, (once you have points to spare) start going down the Call of the Woods line, to improve your melee units.

We are purposely not putting in any points towards improving Orion himself, because he has solid base stats and the legendary equipment he picks up from his quests, already makes him a fearsome force to be reckoned with. He starts with the Hounds of Orion and Hawk's Talon abilities, which are both extremely effective against clusters of enemy units. Especially Hounds of Orion due to the ridiculous short casting time.

That being said after upgrading both army tree's feel free to start improving Orion to make him even more of a monster.

Lords and Heroes

Besides Orion, the Wood Elves have 2 types of lords available to them, namely Ancient Treemen and Glade lords (both male and female). Since we are using elf armies and won't be using Tree Spirits(more on this later), the only lords you want to recruit are Glade lords.

That being said, it is strongly advised to check every turn what lords you can recruit (since we are looking for lords with a specific trait), that is extremely potent with the setup we're going for however it is also rather rare, only showing up once or twice every 100 turns or so.

The trait I'm refering to is called Talon or Kurnous, which increases the range of all ranged units in the army by 12%. This will increase the range of for example, Glade Guards to a very impressive 191!
Therefore:
1. You outrange any and all other archers in the game including rival wood elves.
2. With the Reload speed upgrade you can fire 3-4 additional volley's before the enemy reaches you
3. Do I really need to say more?

Another notable trait is called Ariel's Chosen (+15 Winds of Magic power reserve, Melee attack +4 during forest battles) which is also a good pick to combo with a Life Spellsinger.

As for upgrade paths; it is similar to Orion which the exception the ranged and melee paths are mutually exclusive. That being said we will still be going for the Eye of Kurnous tree first and then Arrow of Kurnous afterwards.

The Wood Elves have 3 hero types available to them namely,

Branchwraiths - Tree spirit hero
Good hero for the campaign map, to improve public order, anti corruption and giving a minor economy boost. He is also a decent battle hero with magic spells, but spellsingers can perform this role better.

Waystalkers - Elite archer hero
Excellent hero to embed in armies, for their bonuses towards our archers. Makes for a decent campaign map hero counter. We will be recruiting the maximum amount of these guys.

Spellsingers - Elven sorcerer hero
Subdivided into three different lore's (Beasts/Life/Shadows) an overall strong supportive caster hero to embed into armies. I personally favor the Life lore for recruitment into armies, for their combination of healing and buffing spells, with two powerful offensive abilities.

As stated above we will be recruiting waystalkers and Life Spellsingers for our armies having one of either embedded in every army we field. As for traits we aren't looking for anything specific as long as it is not negative.

As for upgrade paths for the waystalker first max out the army archer buffs to further strengthen our archers followed by his personal upgrade path (Eye of Kurnous/ Arrow of Kurnous). For the Spellsinger its pretty straightforward picking up everything in the spelltree.

NOTE: This goes for all lords and heroes you want to avoid picking up any mounts for they do increase speed but significantly reduce other stats such as mellee defense which in my opinion is not worth it.

Unit roster

I will not be going over the entire unit roster as there are already adequate guides for this.
Instead I will be going over the units we'll be using in our army composition and why.

At the start of the game Orion will have 2 Eternal Guards one shielded and one not. A unit of Waywatchers, Deepwood scouts, Wild Riders and a unit of Hawk Riders.

First order of business would be replacing the none shielded eternal guard for ones with shields and increase the number to 4 units of eternal guard. This will be your first and primary line of defense.
Having large shields means they are fairly resistant to missile fire and with the anti large trait are effective at holding off units of cavalry size and up. On top of having high leadership in combination with decent melee defense and armour means that they have a good staying power in holding the line against most enemy attackers. Now it has to be said there are other units such as tree kin who can perform this role better however these are:
1. Not readily available
2. More expensive
3. Cost precious amber.
Therefore Shielded Eternal Guard are a very cost effective way of having a solid front line.

Secondly you will be recruiting between 6-8 units of glade guard. As previously mentioned glade guard will be the bread and butter of this campaign and the main source of damage in this army setup. later on you will replace them with 4 units of starfire shafts and 4 unit of hagbane tips when these become available.

Glade guard are excellent archers and half decent melee combatant. They are the cheapest archer and are immediately available in any elven settlement. Thanks to the later special arrow types and the progression of our lords and heroes buffing the litteral **** out of our archers means that even though being a supposedly low tier unit they scale extremely well into the later stages of the game. Obliterating even the biggest and badest of enemy units with focused fire.
You will also want to embed your starting waystalker into Orions army (hoping his trait doesnt suck) if it does just replace him later.

Next you will be adding 2-4 units of wardancers once they become available preferable 2 regular wardancers and 2 with asrai spears. We are doing this for 2 reasons.
1. The regular wardancers have better melee attack and their shadow dance of loec boosts their melee defense which means they have better staying power in prolonged melee combat
2. The asrai spears wardancers have the anti large trait and their shadow dance of loec grants them 44% missile resistance which makes them better against taking ranged fire and monstrous infanty.
Depending on the situation either one will be more suited for the task and its nice to have options.

Lastly but not least you want to have 2 wild riders and later on 2 shielded wild riders.
Wild riders are extremely potent melee cavalry having the Frenzy and Damage Dealer traits and a charge bonus of 51 they can lay waste to enemy units on the charge and are decent in prolonged melee although not preferred. On top of that they also have the vanguard deployment trait which allows you to hide them in woods already on the flanks or rear of the enemy from battle start voiding the need of obvious and blatant flanking maneuvers.

As you are building your army you will want to disband the waywatchers and deepwood scouts as they are expensive and dont fit the setup we are going for. Eventually once you need the space you can disband the hawk riders as their role as a flanking force is better fulfilled by the wild riders and disbanding the unit will give you some of that precious amber back.

To recap your standard army composition is as follows:
1x Lord (Orion or Glade lord)
1x Hero (Waystalker or Life Spellsinger)
2x Wardancers
2x Wardancers (Asrai Spears)
4x Eternal Guard (Shields)
4x Glade Guard (Starfire shafts)
4x Glade Guard (Hagbane tips)
2x Wild Riders (Shield)

We don't use any treespirit units for the same reasons we dont use tree kin instead of eternal guards. They are expensive, not readily available and cost amber.

Campaign strategy and Empire management

At the start of the game you only have King's Glade and The Oak of Ages under your control both starting at tier 1 and a very limited supply of amber.

First off you want to build a trapper's den along with the early tech Isha, the Mother you will have a very comfortable +100 growth so you can expand King's Glade extremely rapidly, this will allow you to construct all the buildings you need early on. You may want to upgrade the trapper's den to tier 2 but this is optional. Do not upgrade it to tier 3 because by that point you already or almost have all the growth points that you need to go to tier 5 at which point you want to demolish the building for something more useful.

Militairy buildings you want are Selathoi Gallery to tier 2 (tier 3 is optional if you have the spare money which you will later on). Glade Guard Hide tier 3 for the waystalker recruitment. Both the Asrai and bowyer workshops on tier 2.

Economic buildings are going to be the most important ones to keep your empire financially afloat.
The ones you want are Grape Vines tier 3 for that lovely 1200 income and Vinter's Barrel House tier 2 for what is the secret power of the elven economy. The ridiculous 40% income boost to all regions in this and adjacent provinces.

You want to spend your early amber on upgrading king's glade and technology rather than the oak of ages. The Oak of Ages provides very powerfull buffs aswell as allowing you to confederate but you will want this mid game and is not critical to have early on. Reasons for this are:
1. You will need to build a sufficiently strong relationship with the other elves before they are even interested in confederating.
2. Chaos corruption is non existant early on.

Once you have kings glade sufficiently upgraded and have Orions army built up according to the previous section of this guide you are ready to go kick carcassone's teeth in as you already start at war with them. besiege their settlement and starve them out or provoke them into sallying forth.
Picking up Hukon, the Sunderer can greatly speed up this process.

Note: While fielding a full stack army with just King's Glade you won't be making alot of money so your primary source of income is razing enemy settlements as you can recolonise them for free a lot less than what you raze them for.

After capturing Castle Carcassone and Brionne you want to invest your amber into the technologies Loec, the Trickster and Mathlann for public order and Lord of the Deeps for your next major economy boon +400% income from ports. with the latter you will be making 500-600 gold from every port town here on out. In any non port settlement you capture you want to build either a sacrificial grounds to empower your forces or foraging groves for extra income whichever you need more at the time.

After this display of power the other elven factions will aproach you in due course with a non agression pact and eventually alliances which will eventually lead to confederations.

Your next war target is Estalia. Siege and starve them out in a same manner as Carcasonne and you will gain yourself 3 additional port towns. do note that in the woods southeast of bilbali is a standard spawning location for a beastmen horde.

After Estalia is nomore you should have enough amber and income to start upgrading the oak of ages to atleast tier 2. And start recruiting a second army. You now have the choice to either attack the rest of Brettonia or attack Crooked Moon and Clan Angrund. Personally I tend to ally Bretonnia for the free amber as their cavalry poses a real threat to my archer focused armies and go after the greenskins and dwarves instead.

And yes Bretonnia will hate you at first but after your swift destruction of both Carcasonne and Estalia they are more than willing to sign a non aggression pact. Otherwise the ladrielle, lady of the mists tech will help it along aswell. These treaties will start generating better relations over time leading to eventual militairy alliances.

Another viable wartarget you want to hit at some point is Tilea for the same reason we attacked Estalia, namely port towns. All of the port towns $_$.

By this stage you should be able to upgrade the Oak of Ages to tier 3 if you havent done so already and start confederating the other elven factions. They should have sufficiently good relations with you thanks to the previous treaties generating positive relations over time. Once confederated you want to build the tier 3 grape vines and vinters barrel houses to their respective maximum tiers as quickly as possible in all 3 elven halls.
As you might remember the later boosts the former by 40% in its own aswell as all adjacent regions. which means each Winery is boosted by at least 3 of them which results in a 120% boosts of that 1200 gold income! (money for days).

Once you have enough amber you will want to grab the Asuryan, the creator tech aswell for another 20% income boost to all structures (primarily the winery's and port towns).

You are free to build whatever you want in the remaining slots of the other three elven halls but I recommend to build at least a Roots of Ghyran and Waywatchers Perch in each of them for the respective hero slots.The four elven council buildings, and the two temples to unlock your late game technologies.

Additionally you are going to want to build at least one Skycrown Oak Walls for Orions Quest for the Horn of the Wild Hunt.

From here on you can finish researching everything in the tech tree and you should have enough income to maintain multiple fullstack armies of elves and conquer basically anything you want. Thanks to all the razing and massive income I usually sit between 250-500K in my treasury at all times.

Note: When you confederate it is possible due to the AI cheating you will suddenly have an amber deficit. Just conquer some extra settlements to aleviate this as it holds no immediate negative repercussions.

Battle Tactics

Battle tactics are pretty straightforward for the woodelves with your current army setup.
You want to be the defender at all times, this can be achieved by placing armies in provocative locations in the map such as threatening an enemy settlement or cut them off in a mountain pass ect. And by starving them out of their settlements. Forcing them to either surrender or sallying forth.
It is also possible once they started starting to simply auto resolve the siege assault with minimal casualties as it is massively in your favour.

As for actually fighting battles your basic formation is going to sit as far back on the map as possible so the enemy has to march further thus slightly more fatigued. with your eternal guard in the front stretched out as wide it allows you to. Line up all of your glade guard behind your eternal guard with your wardancers covering the flanks. Place your Lord and Hero somewhere in between your 2 battle lines to buff as many of your units as possible with their passive abilities. You want to set all of these units to guard mode so they do not break formation to chase a routing enemy.

Finally you want to hide your wild riders in a flanking position either to the side or rear of the enemy.

Staring the battle you want to have a good idea what units your opponent has and watch for their movements. If they have artillery wait for the AI to split them of from the main force as they start firing on you. When they are sufficiently isolated crush them with your wild riders. Let the enemy get into range of your glade guard which will open up and lay waste to the enemy as they attempt to reach you. If they even manage to reach your melee lines extremely weakened or very low on morale your eternal guards should have no problems holding the line. Any problem that may occur you can support with either your lord/hero or wardancers.

Balance your glade guards between attacking the enemy melee and ranged units. If need be pull your glade guards further back so they have a clear shot on the enemy (in case they cant fire due to obstructions). Once your wild riders are done with the enemy artillery if there was any slam them in the rear and clean up enemy ranged units. By this time a lot of the enemy troops have most likely given up and started running which makes them prime targets for your wild riders aswell.

Other viable tactics are of course ambushes and elven skirmish tactics since they can fire whilst moving however I found that this tactic is very effective at crushing most opponents.

Final thoughts and tips.

Other things of note is to keep track at what your archers are shooting at and matching the right arrow type to the right target. Starfire shafts for armoured targets and Hagbane tips for the rest.
Sometimes you want to use a mix of both for the Armour piercing properties in combination with the poison debuff. Focused glade guard fire will make short work of any unit including Lords.

Take a look at the tips and tricks CA posted themselves about the Wood Elves found here[forums.totalwar.com]

I hope you will find this guide usefull as I spent a decent chunk of time on it and I hope you will have fun playing my favourite faction in Warhammer Total war, The Wood Elves.

If you have any questions and or feedback feel free to leave a comment below and I'll get back to you when I can.

[jamie.kevin.gallagher]

I tried this out, and while it's been pretty good, I would like to add a little tip: when you're about to take Castle Carcassone, try to trap their army in an ambush. At the start of the battle, you should focus your cavalry on the blessed trebuchet and take out the grail knights with your glade guard with starfire shafts and wardancers with spears; once they're out of the fight, the rest of the army should be a piece of cake. This will allow you to wipe out most of their army while taking minimal casualties in return, which will make taking their settlements that much easier.

[Economic Terrorist]

When I caught on that the game was merticulously spawning in Beastmen, I deliberately left a stack with Durthu by the Oak. Problem solved.

[QiBoredWorrier]

Very keen to try this faction out now

[antique_nova]

Okay, but Glade Guard stacks aren't a personal preference, they are a necessity! :P

[Xeveras]

Just going to point out this guide last updated August 2017. I wrote this with the composition that worked for me at the time. I'm certain with 3 years worth of balance updates that a lot of things have changed. Besides that it is probably also a good deal of personal preference.

My advice: Have fun playing the Wood Elves with whatever works for you. If this guide can help people with that all the better :D

[antique_nova]

I disagree with the army composition heavily.

All you need is

1x Glade lord
1x Way stalker
1x Spell Singer (Shadow always)
2x Siege units (treekin are your cheapest option, but these units can be switched for more glade guard when your glade lord gets a forest dragon for taking on walled settlements in one turn)
15x Glade Guard (Starfire Shafts)

If you can't get any characters due to having too many armies, then simply replace them with either more glade guard or tree kin as by then you'll have more than enough amber to spare and gold too!

This is ALL you need to tackle any and every scenario. As long as you don't get ambushed by beastmen or clan Eshin or Skaven in general. You'll always win.

You only need to deploy in two different ways. 2 straight lines or a chequered formation.

For Durthu, half treekin and half glade guard is good in the early campaign.

[Aquas]

I actually have to disagree with the previous mentioned strategy of choosing Orion over Durthu.
This is mainly because the presence of multiple Tree Kin in an early conquest setting has proven to be much more effective against all of the early enemies you will face. Along with Durthu's increased damage resistance and ward save for his Tree Kin, almost every enemy army will fall before a single one of your frontline units collapse. This is especially true in the case of a Life Sorceress being present in your battles. Once your army consist of about 6-8 Tree Kin & 10-12 Glade Guard units, Every. Single. Enemy. Will. Lose.
You can test this even in the hardest campaign setting.

[pplr1]

One more place I disagree with the guide is on getting an Treeman general. They don't seem to be able to join the elven council (this is a downside) but they start out as really big in themselves with spells as a bonus. Don't leave them surrounded and standing there alone when facing an entire enemy army but they can be very good at stomping tough enemy generals.

This can especially be useful when fighting vampire armies.

[pplr1]

Frosted, a couple of other things. You don't have to follow the guide's suggestion of where to attack at all. I actually made peace with Carcasonne (the enchantress faction). And picked fights elsewhere.

I mentioned getting dwarven allies-these are usually the dwarves farther away. Karak Norn in particular sometimes seems bound on starting a fight even when I leave them be. The other dwarf factions that are not right next to your forest seem to be less troublesome and can even be allied with given time and diplomacy. Which, like I said before, can bring amber and a safe area for your raiding armies to rest or travel through.

Something-especially if you get along with the nearby dwarves-you should consider is taking castle drakenhoff. Sure you fight with some vamps but it and certain other spots give a bigger than usual boost to income.

[pplr1]

Frosted Vert, I hope you subscribed and got a message someone else made a comment.

Anyway a way to get amber fast in a single player campaign is form alliances.

For example most of the Dwarf and Empire factions (except for a couple right next door) are far enough away you won't fight them for territory but you can ally with them against a third faction.

I previously mentioned that I was raiding badlands orks, since I was already at war with orks I had an easier time forming an alliance with the biggest group of dwarves and getting a bunch of amber at one moment-granted it took time to build up the diplomacy but once it happened the amber and friendly territory that I could rest in became worth it.