Greetings noble Generals,

After reading some of the posts related to the Druchii, I could't find mention to this odd, if rather annoying, unit. And opinions on the best way to counter it.

30 to 40 shades with enough assassins and characters to respond to multiple charges, and the 'always strike first' banner. Plus the item to make them -2 to hit on shooting. And the Magic Resistance 3.

This is something I'd like to be able to counter without having to call upon a Treeman Ancient with Annoyance of Netlings to lock them down. I usually don't play with treemen.

Thanks

One way to try and deal with this is to send in the Alter Highborn with the spirit sword. It is risky, but one round of combat could win you the game. The only other way that I would see is to hit it on the front with a lockdown setup, and then send in something on the flank(treeman, treekin, maybe wild riders) that can take some punishment and stick around. One way to negate the ASF banner would be to use the amber pendant with a wardancer hero. A good round of rolling from a unit of wardancers w/ lord could tear that unit up. But then again, all of these tactics are risky. They all depend on the dice. Other than that you are stuck with the treemen. You can't very well shoot it, unless you are from the Province of Nuln (i.e. mortars and such) and you have to kill it to win the game; or at least disable it somewhat. But, I would say, kill everything else first then go after it with whatever you think best at the time, or whatever else you have left at that point.

The best way this stupid unit could have ever been dealt with, is through playtesting, and proof reading, so designers remember to add an upper limit to the units in the books.
I agree that the best way is the Alter mentioned before. Just challenge, as I'm pretty sure that the unit will have 3 or 4 characters in it.
That's the way I saw it, when our DE "Player" brought it. If it helps you will only ever see it on the field once. After that, the severe beating the DE player gets should take the idea out of his/her head!

Spit on it. Every time the unit does something good or prevents you from hurting it through some stupid random combo... Spit on it.

Bonus points if you "spit" on it with acid. Or a sledgehammer

Seriously? A 40 elf strong unit of shades is more than 600 points, and that's if they don't have extra weapons, before adding characters.
Thus, the plan is as follows. Get TWO unit of dryads. Screen the shade fire-base*, and get rid of the rest, OR stay out of his 24 inch range.
After the game is finished, tell your opponent that you just got the most boring minor victory/draw/minor loss in the world, and you'd rather not repeat this game. Shake his hand, and leave.
Some games are won by not winning them.

Oh, besides that: any given unit can hide one and only one assassin. If your opponent has more than one inside the unit at the start of the game, you can get the heaviest book on sight, and smack his head. And no one can tell you were wrong.

*So it can either shoot at your 100 or so points unit of dryads, or cannot get more than a few shots on anything else. Remember kids, no dividing shot this edition

How would Treekin do against them? I'm too lasy to do the math right now

Ow I just thought about a cheesy way to destroy this unit

Take a unit of Wild Riders. Musician + Banner + Warbanner.
Add a Wild Rider Highborn on steed.
Equip for combat : Annoyance of Netlings, Amaranthine Brooch.

Deploy 3 wide in the front rank, charging without taking too much damage should be do able, screen the Riders with Dryads in a way the Dryads prevent most shooting to reach the Wild riders but the Riders still can see some of the shades.

When you finally get in combat you offcourse challenge with the Highborn. Static CR should be equal : Banner and outnumbering vs Banner and warbanner. So The Highborn gets an equal chance to defeat the enemy in combat. In the combats after the first you'll mostlikeley loose the rest of the Wild Riders, making the Highborn's job somewhat harder, Fighting on his own against 2 static CR. ( he needs to win with 3 wounds to win )

However when you can get rid of the assasin on the first turn you'll be facing foes with a smaller WS then his own so his 5 attacks will be hitting on 3's and wounding on 3's. Very well possible to win combats this way.



An Alter Highborn should also have a fair chance, if he can manage to get into combat without getting shot up.

Netlins, Helm of the hunt, Amber Pedant and great weapon. 6 Attacks hitting on 3's wounding on 2's on the charge, 5 after the charge.


* Dang it is really hard to find something to counter that unit with !! *

2*10 Waywatcher + Snipernoble (Waywatcher, just for the fun of it), Waywatcher Highborn with BoL + Panicarrows, Waywatchernoble with HoDA.
Season to taste with a scrollcaddy and some Gladeriders.
Use our free Forest and teach the Delfs who the Kings of advance deployment, denialtactics and "no fun to play against lists" are.

By the way - What do you do when you see a screaming Shade in our Forest?
Stop laughing and shoot again!

If they hide in a wood, send in a spellsinger with deepwood sphere...

Otherwise follow up on the above suggestions, they look quite promising!

Thank you for the sage advice,

The Alter Highborn with the Spirit Sword and Netlings or Amber Pendant, provided with a screen unit to survive the stand and shoot of 80 bolts, will probably be able to kill the -2 to hit character. From then on things might even become easy.

The Wardancer Hero with Amber Pendant seems more risky, but its less points involved. I don´t think I'd charge in with the character on a unit, as that would just increase the frontage of the shades, giving them unprotected models to kill with ASF and turn the combat in their favor.

As for shooting the damned elves, they are at -3 to hit, being skirmishers and because of the magic item. Sniping at the characters (with BS6) hits on 4+ but will probably bounce off the armour and Sea Dragon Cloak. It´s got to be done up close and personal...

Again, thank you all for the input.

Not really, the Waywatchers have the same to hit penalitys when deployed properly.
This means he will shoot at one off the 7 gladerider units - in 6 rounds he can gain 720VP.
You start with 60 shots plus HoDA, loosing 5 shots per turn.
You will cause 5 casualitys per round + have the chance for Panictests (magic arrow) and a (small) chance of charactersniping.
When you manage to avoid the rest (won´t be much with this setup) of his army the Druchii will be outgunned... (hope this makes sense in english )

You can also march block this unit with insane ease. Just park an Eagle next to it and laugh as he has to choose between accepting the march blocking conditions or having to shoot all 90+ shots in one turn at your Eagle.

Then remind him how silly his unit is.

There are a couple of counters.

Turn your eternal Guard unit with Highborn with Annoyance & Regen/Stone, etc into a big single file line and magic move em in (that list typically only has 2 base DD). Then you can flank that nasty thing and send em back to hell.

Any combined charge of any eagle + anything. Charge the eagle in first to make em rank up to the eagle and then ensure you are flanking / rearing em with the nasty (Treeman, Treekin, Alters, etc..) so that your "nasty" is fighting mainly Shades and not characters/assassins. (*Bonus - keep your nasty within range to prevent S & Shoot reaction)

Shooting at this unit isn't at -2 per se, but rather BS is halved and then -1 for skirmishers.

Park 2 treemen in nearby (or sung) forests and strangleroot the piss out of those shades.

What I would do with my Welf List would be to exploit the hatred.

Charge it with my 4 units of dryads - it would easily eat through them and be forced to purse / overrun due to hatred. Just do this to keep em out of the game. Clean up the support units with the rest of your stuff, take TQ and win/draw the game.

There is no hiding of assassins with this list. They all "bail" from their starting units turn 1 and "jump" into the shade unit.

I know. I'm just saying that IF he hides more than one assassin, stop the game.

If this is a friendly game, tell your friend that this army build is quite boring, and you'd rather not play against it.
If this is a tourney game, call the referee, score a massacre because your opponent was cheating, and be done with it.

On actual advice, I think feeding him small units of dryads and avoiding the unit (archers have 6 inches of extra range, use that to your advantage) is the way to go. You won't get a decissive victory or anything, but hopefully your opponent sees the error of his ways when he gets no fun, or cannot score enough VPs to get any "Best general" awards or anything.
If he is getting fun with this list, and you don't, it is time to consider whether to play him again.

That, or a Dual Treemen (ancient if possible) backed up with singers (sure, he may have MR, but that's not helping him against moving woods, or regenerating -or even immune to his shooting- treemen), even if Carantur said he didn't want to use treemen.

I don't think an alter can do it, as the druchii player will just refuse challenges, and answer back with two characters. The alter will just get owned.

If the druchii refuses you get to select who goes back. Put back his BSB and bye bye ASF shades making combined charges very positive.