Wood Elves: Deepwood Scouts

Cover Art is “Stealth” by Hector Becantur

Apologies for the delays to this final write up on Wood Elf core units. I’ve been busy getting the play test version of a roleplaying game finished (if you’re interested, it’s called The 23rd Letter and you can join the play test / Discord over on LateGaming.com), and now that’s out of the way I can compose my thoughts on what I think is probably the #1 choice for Wood Elf core, the Deepwood Scouts. For core, Scouts are restricted to one unit per 1,000 points, but don’t be afraid to make it a big unit if you only have one!

The statline for Scouts is identical to Glade Guard, but they cost an extra two points each. For those two points, Scouts lose Open Order but gain a bunch of extra Special Rules. Let’s start with Skirmishers, which is only upside for the role you want for these archers. Most of the downside for Skirmishers comes when you put them into combat, but you really don’t want your Scouts in combat anyways. As Skirmishers they get a 360° firing arc, and are at -1 to be hit by your enemy shooting–when dealing with unarmoured T3 Elves, you want every bit of advantage you can get in this regard!

Speaking of not being shot at, they also gain Evasive. Combined with the awesome range of the Asrai Longbow (32″ in case you’d forgotten), this means you’re able to shoot at enemies more or less with impunity. If you’re at long range, you can set yourself up at ENEMY_RANGE + 1″ away and shoot at the enemy unit. On the next turn, they are forced to move if they want to shoot at you (-1 for moving, -1 for long range), you’re skirmishers (-1 to hit) and with Evasive, you get to Fall Back in Good Order if they declare a shot on you, which most likely would take you out of range anyways! That means most troops (BS3) are hitting the Scouts on 7s. Now to be clear, you really don’t want to be at long range, but the same principle applies for being at short range. If you’re at 15-16″ away, you’re at long range for most other missile troops. So the enemy commander has to decide if they want to try to move into short range when most likely you’ll skip away and keep them at long range anyways. And if you have a forest at your back (and thankfully, Wood Elves get to bring one along) then you can flee into the forest and get an additional -1 for the cover.

If someone does sneak (or most likely, fly) into range for a charge, you’ll get to Fire & Flee, which is almost always the right thing to do because you’re not likely to beat too many things in combat and will end up fleeing anyways. Sadly this is not Feigned Flight (that’s a Waywatcher talent), meaning you’ll need to rally with a Leadership roll, so I think you need to keep an eye out for those pesky fliers and shoot them down if they come too close.

Finally, and obviously, they also get the Scouts special rule. My suggestion is to put them into a forest, which may sound obvious but I’m always shocked by people not doing the obvious thing. Place your Woodland Ambush forest in your opponent’s half and put scouts in it. In fact, you can probably put all your scouts in it if you have more than one unit. Obviously this depends on scenario, opponents deployment, etc. etc. but it’s a good rule of thumb!

That then leads us to the question, what role are the Scouts playing in your army? I think their number one use is to eliminate enemy warmachines. It’s hard to hide a warmachine from Scouts and still have it be effective in the battle. And of course, the ultimate arrow for taking down warmachines are those tipped with sap from the Hagbane, for some excellent Poisoned Attacks for an extra 2 points per model. Some quick Mathhammer will show that 16 shots at short range, or 18 at long range, will do 3 wounds on average to T7 warmachine with no armour (yes, Dwarfs are a little tougher needing 18 and 21 respectively because of their light armour). Would I take 18 Deepwood Scouts in my army? Absolutely (in fact, I’ll likely take two units of 15-20 depending on points). They’ll easily fit within the free Wood Elf forest, and they’ll use up more than half your Core allowance doing it.

For command options, Scouts are limited to a champion only*, who can take a magic item up to 25 points. The only option that might be worth taking is Asyendi’s Bane, to give a re-roll to hit (with a nasty downside if you miss again) but the cost of that is 16 points (6 for the champion and 10 for the magic item) at which point I think I’d rather just have another Scout.

*as you can see in the comments, I just read this completely wrongly! I don’t think I would take a Standard on the unit, mostly because it makes the Scouts even more of a target for a combat unit to come take them out, for no real bonus (it can’t be magical, and I think that’s what confused me). I would probably take a musician, for the +1 to Ld when Rallying, given that you have Fire & Flee.

Deepwood Scouts are only 3 points cheaper than Waywatchers, but Waywatchers are just hard to fit into the army because you have to pay for a Waystalker first (85 points base) and then you are competing with points in the Rare section – Treemen and Great Eagles, both of whom are good choices. Compare with Scouts, who are Core, this is a no-brainer for me. Sadly the only character who also gets the Scouts rule is the Waystalker, so these brave Elves are out on their own!

This is my last article on the Core choices, as I’ve now covered them all. Having played more games and learned more about the rules, I think my original choices still stand in terms of ranking, and I’ll list them out here for good measure.

1. Deepwood Scouts
2. Glade Riders
3. Glade Guard
4. Dryads
5. Eternal Guard

That’s not to say you can’t or shouldn’t take models at the bottom of the list! It’s more to say that from a pure numbers standpoint, I think the models at the top are more likely to perform well for their point cost than those at the bottom. Thanks for reading! If you’ve got ideas for other articles you’d like to see, let me know!