I remember when Waywatchers first came out for 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I was working for GW at the time, in one of their retail stores. Nothing captured the imagination of a potential Wood Elf player quite like the idea of super stealthy sniper archers, impossible to see, impossible to target, but will kill you from a distance if you just walk close enough to their little patch of forest.
Over the years, that vibe has really stayed with the unit. If you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet that you’re nodding and saying “hell yeah, Waywatchers are what got me into Wood Elves” or if not you, then it’s that other Wood Elf player you know. They are so core to the identity of the Asrai as we know them today that it’s hard to imagine the game without them.
So, how are they in the Old World? Sadly, they have been overburdened by the powers that be with enforced leadership: they can no longer be fielded without taking a Waystalker, an 85 point hero-level character. That means I really have to view them in the context of how they are actually fielded in a list, and including the Waystalker in my overall thoughts on the unit.
My initial impression is: Waywatchers are cool and can do a lot, but the Waystalker makes them a real points sink and you’re probably better off using your models to count as Deepwood Scouts instead. Let’s see if I can convince myself that I’m wrong 🙂
Waywatchers
Let’s start with the troops themselves, and I’ll really base this as a comparison with Deepwood Scouts because these troops play a very similar role in army composition. Both units are likely to be deployed in cover, in the enemy half of the board, with a goal of shooting off chaff, war machines, or possibly heavily armoured units or foolish lone characters.
For 16 points a model, they are BS5 and I5, and otherwise have the same stats as the Deepwood Scouts (who cost 13 points base). They share a bunch of the same special rules–Elven Reflexes, Evasive, Fire & Flee, Move Through Cover, Scouts and Skirmishers–and I go over how those are used in the Deepwood Scouts article. However, you do get two extra special rules which are very thematic and an improvement over their Deepwood brethren: Feigned Flight and Ignores Cover. With Feigned Flight, you automatically rally after you Fire & Flee, which is a huge benefit for a unit that will typically be deployed away from the main body of troops (and thus out of range of either your General’s Inspiring Presence or your BSB’s Hold Your Ground special rules). Ignores Cover does exactly what it says on the tin: no modifiers to shooting at targets behind cover–it’s half of the benefit of Trueflight arrows, although you’ll still suffer penalties for moving & shooting and long range.
So, for an extra 3 points a model, it’s definitely a tempting upgrade to choose Waywatchers, even though they don’t have any rules relating to their lore about being epic at concealing themselves (which is right there in the description in Forces of Fantasy!) I’m guessing the optional ability to give them Ambushers special rule (+1 pt per model) is meant to represent that, but Ambushers is a terrible rule and you should never use it–a 50/50 chance each turn of being able to deploy is really annoying and actually kind of giving an advantage to your opponent: just stick with their Scout ability. Likewise I wouldn’t bother paying the extra 1 pt per model for Vanguard, just deploy them as best you can with Scouts and save the points. The other final optional upgrade is Veteran, which doesn’t seem that useful to me: you don’t want these troops in combat unless it’s late game and they are coming in to help mop up or provide some last gasp combat support (they are expensive troops with T3 and no armour!), and they automatically rally from a Fire & Flee roll (you pretty much always want to Fire & Flee when charged!). However, if you’re facing a lot of Terror causing enemies, or lots of chaff and you need fight out a combat or two, then maybe? Again, doesn’t seem worth the points to me.
An extra 6 points gets you a Sentinel, the champion, who has BS 6 (same as the Glade Captain!) and can take 25 points of magic items. You might think Asyendi’s Bane is worth taking, but I’d say probably not–you’re getting Quick Shot for 10 points and a 50/50 chance to kill yourself if you miss. Likewise, the Wailing Arrow is a waste of points (you have to hit and you have to wound and all it does is cause a Panic Test for 20 points), so I’d only take the champion if I happened to have 6 extra points at the end of list building as I don’t think it significantly improves the unit’s performance.
And so we get to the only really important decision you’re making, which is what arrows the Waywatchers will have. I’m going to ignore Moonfire Shot because getting Magical and Flaming Attacks is very situational, and if your situation calls for it, you’re probably better putting them on Glade Guard. Trueflight Arrows seem a bit wasteful at first glance, because you already have Ignores Cover. It also grants Quick Shot, which means two things: no penalty for moving and shooting, and you can Stand & Shoot (or Fire & Flee) from any distance. However, I don’t think you want to let anything get close enough to you that you can’t Fire & Flee (remember that Fire & Flee has a flee distance of 2d6 drop lowest, not 2d6 like a regular Flee), so I wouldn’t recommend Trueflight, as much as I love them. So this leaves Hagbane Tips (for Poison), Swiftshiver Shards (for Multiple Shots (2)) or Arcane Bodkins for AP -2. I think Hagbane is actually a better choice for Deepwood Scouts, because you’re hoping to roll 6s anyway, and it doesn’t take advantage of the better BS of the Waywatchers. Giving them Shards for +2 points is kind of like giving you the shooting equivalent of two Deepwood Scouts when you think about it: you get two shots at -1. I think this is probably a fine choice if your main job is chaff hunting, as chaff tends to be lightly armoured and lower toughness. Bodkins are also a good choice, as the Waywatchers’ higher BS means they are more likely to hit those armoured targets, meaning you’re hoping for a 4+ or 5+ to wound, and they’re only likely getting a 5+ or 6+ armour save. However, all of these are dependent on the number of Waywatchers you’re taking and what their role is … and that comes back to how many points you’re spending, which brings me back to the Waystalker.
Waystalker
The first time you read the Waystalker’s Hawk-Eyed Archer special rule you think “Cool, this guy can snipe enemy characters in units!” but as the recent FAQ has shown us, the enemy characters are all going to get a Look Out Sir! save (on a 2+ the hit goes on the unit). That being said, there are still plenty of opportunities to shoot Lone Characters who aren’t in units, or late game when units have been whittled down to fewer than 5 rank and file models. It’s currently pretty popular to have a fighty character on a Monstrous Cavalry mount because they get the 360° charge arc (due to being Skirmishers), and then keep them within 3″ of a Cavalry unit in order for them not to be targeted–Bretonnians especially like this build with their Royal Pegasus. A Waystalker can still target those characters without any Look Out Sir! concerns. However, they really won’t do much damage to those characters, who tend to be T4 or T5 and have 3+ or 2+ Armour Saves. Even if you give them the Bow of Loren so that they get two shots, the FAQ states that they’ll only shoot one enchanted arrow with the Bow, and then switch to normal arrows to shoot the second shot (why? no-one knows–the idea that they have two different quivers with different arrows in them seems absurd). So, realistically they might plink a wound off a character if you’re lucky. Other than that, they are a shooting-focused hero character with all the same special rules as Waywatchers, and BS7, for 85 points. Realistically, this means they are going to help Waywatchers in the same battlefield role they are already playing: chaff/warmachine hunting, or targeting armour and occasionally getting some extra hits on a lone character.
The Math of It All
So, is it worth it? I want to look at the actual math of shooting with Waywatchers + Waystalker versus a Deepwood Scout unit costing the same number of points. Obviously the more Waywatchers you’re taking, the lower the ‘Waystalker tax’ is in terms of percentages, but to reiterate what I said in my article about Treemen, the Waywatcher points are coming out of the Rare slot and so have to compete with other units that are very solid. Working backwards, I’m going to assume that in a 2,000 point list, you’d want to take 1 Treeman and 1 Great Eagle, and in a 2,500 point list you’d want 2 Great Eagles. That leaves 225 and 285 points available respectively for Waywatchers, so I’ll test out both values of unit.
225 points of Waywatchers at 18 points a model (16 + 2 for arrows) gives me 12 Waywatchers and an extra few points for a Sentinel. 285 gives me 15 + Sentinel. We’ll keep the arrow choices the same per unit when doing the calculations. For Deepwood Scouts, at 225 points I get 15 Scouts (no champion) and 19 at 285 (again, no champion). However, the Waystalker with special arrows is 88 points, which translates as 5 extra Scouts + a champion, so I’ll be calculating the odds using these totals.
| Army Size | Waywatchers | Deepwood Scouts |
| 2000 (225) | 12 w/Champion + Waystalker | 20 w/Champion |
| 2500 (285) | 15 w/Champion + Waystalker | 24 w/Champion |
Vs War Machines
For target, let’s choose my perennial “favourite” the Dwarf Cannon. It’s T7 with 3 wounds, and likes to kill Treemen, so it has to die first. I’m going to assume we are at long range or have moved into short range, which is pretty common, and that we’re using Hagbane because our primary mission is eliminating war machines (again, my most common use case). Most war machines have a similar profile, so it’s a good sample.
Not counting the re-roll for the Waystalker/Sentinal, the Waywatchers on average will do 2.89 wounds (and I’ve just realized that the Mathhammer app we wrote needs to have BS re-rolls added to it!), but a quick back of the envelope calculation tells me that the rerolls should inch the result up to that 3 Wound mark. For the Scouts, they are averaging 3.95 wounds, so let’s call it 1 Wound more. For the larger units, the disparity is greater (about 1.1 wounds).
(Maybe the units need to be smaller? Minimum size is 5, which would put the points cost at 178 including Waystalker … if I give them a champion, that’s 184, which allows me to get 12 Scouts. The wounds disparity is still in the Scouts favour, by about 0.88 wounds or so.)
Clearly, just for war machine hunting, Scouts seem better. If the target is behind partial cover, the Waywatchers will ignore that, but the Scouts will drop down to doing 3.34W, and if behind full cover, it drops to 2.81W … so shooting at stuff behind full cover (-2 penalty to hit) is where Waywatchers start to shine here.
Vs Chaff
What if we want to clear out chaff? Let’s give them all Swiftshiver Shards and see how good we are killing stuff with no armour save. For target practice, we’re using Chaos Warhounds–cheap, fast, and T3 chaff that are pretty common in the otherwise elite Warriors of Chaos army. For this calculation, I’m going to assume that the chaff unit is coming at us, to try and engage the unit in combat, and thus has moved within charge range (i.e. short range).
At the 225 point mark, the Waywatchers will get 26 attacks at -1 for multiple shots, so hitting on 3s (with the Waystalker getting 2 rerolls hitting on 5s, and the Sentinel getting 2 rerolls that hit on 6s) – I’m calculating around 9.2W on average, which will delete pretty much any Warhounds unit, or at least reduce it to unusability. The Scouts will get 40 attacks hitting on 4s (3s for the champ) which I’m calculating out around 10.2W. For the higher points value, again the wound spread increases in favour of the scouts.
However, as soon as the chaff is behind cover, the math swings dramatically in favour of the Waywatchers–at the 225pt mark, the Scouts drop to ~6.9W for partial cover, and a measly ~3.5W if behind full cover. I’m starting to see a pattern here …
Vs Armour
As a final check, let’s see if giving them Bodkins will change the odds in the Waywatchers favour. We’ll shoot at a unit of Knights of the Realm, who are T3 with a 3+ armour save–whittling these guys down is a good use of Bodkins, because T3 is going to result in more wounds than trying to shoot the T4 models such as Grail Knights.
Let’s have them be at short range (arrogant knights!), and we’ll vary the cover just as we have done in the previous iterations. The Waywatchers will all be hitting on 2s, I calculate ~3.4W to the Knights for the 225pt unit, and ~4.2 for the bigger unit. Meanwhile, the Scouts are doing ~4.1W and ~4.9W respectively. Again, without cover, the superior number of the Scouts does more for the attack than the superior BS of the Waywatcher cohort. However, as soon as cover is introduced, the Waywatchers shine: the Scouts drop to ~3.1W and ~3.7W respectively for partial cover, or ~2.1W and ~2.5W when the Knights are behind full cover.
Conclusion
You know, it turns out I have actually talked myself around somewhat on Waywatchers. If you don’t give the Waystalker any magic items (probably a good plan) and just run him as if he’s a super-champion in the unit of Waywatchers, then it turns out there is a specific use for the unit above and beyond what Deepwood Scouts can bring, which is either Chaff or Armour Hunting when those units are behind some type of cover (although it doesn’t matter much if you’re hunting high toughness war machines, because you’re rolling for 6s to trigger that Poison). Cover is pretty common, even if it’s just other models, and there are also a number of spells that provide it, so it’s definitely going to be something that comes up in games.
I also think there’s a psychological aspect to the Waywatchers, and Waystalker in particular, that is hard to put into math. When your opponent knows that you can snipe at things, it can make them think and play differently, even if the math is actually not that great. The risk of losing wounds to a sniper, particularly if you managed to get a wound with your Arrow of Kurnous shot, can really rattle an opponent and make them play sub-optimally.
So, Waywatchers, you’ve earned your spot back in the army. Plus you look cool as hell 🙂
What do you think? Do you play with Waywatchers? How have they performed for you in your battles?
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