I played a 1250 point game last night against a dark elf player that brought shadowblade. He was new to 7th ed (had played a bit in 6th ed, so was confused a bit on some basic rules). The game wasn't that close, as my dryads made short work of a small unit of shades and a unit of warriors, and my wardancers took out a unit of corsairs after the HoDA softened them up. They later took out another MSU shade unit.

Shadowblade hid in my glade guard unit and broke them when he popped out, but he didn't catch them, forcing him to spend another turn killing them with his poisoned throwing stars. I was able to then run the rest of my units away from him, making sure he did no further damage. Turn 5, after taking out one of the 2 bolt throwers and stranglerooting 4/5 cold one knights, I ran the treeman over near shadowblade, but "misfired" on the strangleroot roll! He passed the terror test, but failed the fear test to charge! The bottom of 6 strangleroot did 8 hits, killing him.

In the end, he had only a bolt thrower a CO Knight, and his general on Cold one left on the table, and I lost only a unit of dryads, my glade guard, and my Wild Riders. I also had 3 table quarters. Fun game, though I'm sure at a larger point value game, Shadowblade would've been much more effective (more units to chase after)!

Good show.

Shadowblade is a character killer, or only marginally suited for strong infantry. I think he suffers a lot if the only unit worth hiding in are glade guard, especially if the rest of the army is fast enough to run away.

misfiring on that first shot can always be frustrating, and it seems to happen more often than it should, but I'm sure it was more than rewarding when you nailed him right at the last moment.