… with a bit of all the other Warhammer editions thrown in!

Wood Elves – Dryads

Continuing on my thoughts on Asrai core units, next up are the Dryads.

Profile

Dryads have the same profile as a Glade Guard, but with two important improvements: an extra points of Toughness for T4, and an extra Attack. In fact, they are one of the very few core units in the game that come with 2 Attacks base. Minimum of 5 in the unit, and base sizes are increased from last edition to 30mm, although they still count as Regular Infantry, not Heavy. For 13 points, they come with Light Armour and a 6+ Regeneration save that gets canceled out by Flaming Attacks, on account of them being Flammable. They aren’t as durable as they were in prior editions, that’s for sure. The extra attack is nice, but it’s still only S3 no AP, and we don’t have Wyssan’s Wildform or similar Strength buffing spells to rely on. So, don’t expect Dryads to do a lot of heavy lifting in combat.

Special Rules

Aside from the ones already mentioned, Dryads still cause Fear, have Magical Attacks and are Immune to Psychology. This makes them excellent against Undead and Daemons, canceling out many of the inbuilt advantages of those troops. As you would expect, they also have Move Through Cover, something most of the Asrai units have. They’re also (obviously) Tree Spirits, which in this edition means that only Branchwraith characters can join the unit, and that they can’t use an Elf’s leadership (i.e. if your general is an Elf), so it’s mostly just a bunch of limitations with no benefits. The one benefit is that they can use a Tree Spirit character’s leadership if within command range, so if you have a Treeman Ancient or Branchwraith, it’ll buff their Ld a bit. Meh.

They can choose to be in either Skirmish or Open Order formation, but given the lack of Command options, it seems kinda pointless to run them as Open Order unless you need to be disrupting someone, so I expect Skirmish to be the default. Lastly, they also have the Stubborn special rule (something they got before by being Skirmishers in a Forest, but that rule is now gone). Stubborn now just grants you a free ‘Fall Back in Good Order’ on your first break test, which is not bad but no longer the meta dominating rule it used to be.

Command

Sadly, you are limited to one option, which is a Champion (Nymph) for an extra 5 points. I’d only take this if I had a spare 5 points to make up at the end of building my army list. The champion can take Forest Spites up to 25 points, but frankly I think this unit will struggle to conserve points (in other words, I expect Dryad units will get wiped out before battle’s end) so I wouldn’t bother. Given that you only get each Spite once per army, any that are worth taking would be better spent on another model.

Army Role

So, in 2,500 point lists, how will I play them? I have 15 or so Dryads, plus an old Drycha model (shown above) that suits a Branchwraith or Nymph. Most likely I’ll take these in skirmishing units of 5 or 6 and use them in a chaff role. They can probably kill most other chaff, what with having 2 attacks base, but they definitely need to be advanced through cover, and ideally want to charge out of a forest and into something small then disappear into cover again (this will be an ongoing theme for many of our units!). I’m probably not running more than two units, and even then I’d probably only run them if I really needed to make up core points. I’d probably rank them 4th out of the 5 core choices for Wood Elves, but take that with a grain of salt because I still haven’t got any games in yet!


Comments

3 responses to “Wood Elves – Dryads”

  1. Having played more, I use Dryads quite a bit. Units of 5-7, they provide excellent shielding for squishier troops (looking at you, Wardancers), and can use a Treeman’s leadership if I have one (I usually do). They also have a great trick where they can FBIGO because of Stubborn and then reform into Open Order at a weird angle … your opponent has to choose whether to pursue _before_ you reform, so they can end up pursuing and then having to pivot to open up a tasty flank or rear charge for another unit.

    1. Greg avatar
      Greg

      Hey Aj, thanks again for the great right ups and going back to add what more you learn. About the free reform after FBIGO, what gives the dryads the right to a free reform after falling back? I can’t see it in the skirmish or FBIGO rules.

      1. It’s in FBIGO on p134 that the unit automatically rallies, which then refers you to p117. In the section under Rallied Units it says “Upon rallying, a unit may immediately perform a free reform.” Hope this helps!

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