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Ive played a buddy weekly-every 2/3 weeks but mostly weekly since like March. He always plays wood elves, has Thranduil, Legolas, and now Mirkwood Rangers. Sometimes Elrond and Arwen often now.
All designed to shoot me to pieces while I cant reach combat with the Wrath and Aura of Dismay.
Ive found several things to be largely successful.
1-Counter them with more bows, more powerful ones, or better ones.
Easy to say, and stupid at times, but Im just throwing in my 2 cents about this, because Im sure almost everyone who plays against a good wood elf army with a good player in front has issues dominating let alone winning.
Ive played against them with Harad recently, and Upgraded my 24 give or take Haradrim bowmen so they have the 3+ shoot and then I had a warband of Watchers.....well, needless to say we both hit on 5s to wound mostly, but hit on 3+s and I had more bows. I wont that game in convincing fashion. He was tactically undecided and confused on how to react to being outshot in a hit and run army. He also had Rohhirm too. Just 6 but still. Also, he had Galadhrim Knights.
More powerful bows....well, debatable, but crossbows. I play a 750 pt Isengard with 18 bolts per round based off the fact Vrasku also has two.
Thing is, he can still have more or better maneuverability and accuracy, but when the chips fall, Id rather wound on 4s and 5s then him constantly on 6s and sometimes 6s. He did tactically destroy me once, by me assuming he was too afraid to go to combat, and I lined up my crossbowmen too close to the center, where he proceeded to maim them with Mirkwood Jerk Rangers.
After you thin him out though and there are less troops on the board youll probably outnumber him well in combat.
2-Numbers, numbers numbers numbers numbers lol.
This army is better suited to take on cavalry. Whether youre playing Lords of Battle, Recon, or to the death, tactically, you should be able to catch his cavalry and swarm them. I dont care how elite they are eventually you should start trapping his units one by one and killing them that way.
If you are playing High Ground, Domination, or Hold Ground, it should be even easier.
Cavalry are always a pain. If you have an enemy that uses almost all cavalry, especially from Rohan, youre not going to beat him with bows. Probably. The hope you have to have, is to either A-also have some cavalry to tie him up in a few places or B-Shoot enough of his troops to soften him up before he comes in for a kill early.
With A- even if you have six cavalry take them with some supported groups of infantry, and unless hes absolutely awesome at getting away from you every turn, you should be able to make him lose some good units, or bait him into bringing some more for support then you tie them up long enough to trap them or ruin their charge bonuses.
I cant bring out many specific details because every game is very different but for example my Isengard force, I rarely have issues with these types of forces. The list goes as follows:
Vrasku
12 x bows
Mauhur
12 Marauders
Shaman
12 ferals
Urluk(or replacement depending on game and scenario)
4 x bows 8 with shield
My army has ridiculous ranged ability, has 12 units that move 8" and can track down cavalry eventually, and a shaman with fury to prevent their bows from doing much damage. Then, I have some D6 guys to put in front of ferals and such. Everyone seems to underestimate Marauders speed. They think since its less, no big deal. Often, eventually I trap 1-2 of their cavalry behind by tactical movement, and almost everyone charged in the next turn thinking, oh good, I have the charge bonus, time to get them. Then I shield or swarm them, or heroic combat with Mauhur against regular troops and kill most of their warband in several turns. Or, they let like 1-2 guys die and I pursue till I deal with the rest of their army(assuming its not 100% cavalry)
Pick their weaknesses or make movements to make them think youre planning something and pincer them in. Likely, if they have cav or elves, youre going to outnumber them because of pts cost.
3-What Glory For Gondor said.
I had an army with the Shadow Lord on Horse, and nothing but morannons. All his stupid elf bows in the world could hardly crack the lines.
I ended up losing the majority of my troops in hand to hand with the Mirkwood Jerks and their 800 attacks and fight being high.
But the battle went splendidly besides that. I countered Thranduils Natures Wrath, killed him in one turn, and destroyed half his army while he tried to stay back and fire with the other half. Other times Ive had one warband with the Shadow Lord hold off between 15-30 troops for more than half a game because the opponent was shooting and running.
The other part of what he said....high armor.
Look at percentages....lets say you have an army of all morannons with shields for D6.
Lets say he literally has an entire army of Mirkwood Rangers. Pretend he has 23 for maths sake and Legolas, and Tauriel as warband leaders. Thats 27 shots per turn. Ill give him two turns of full firing before combat....That means 18 hits per turn. Then hes got to hit on 6s. That means roughly 1/6 being 3 kills per turn. He might take out 6 before combat begins then he has to make decisions.
Now factor in him running away, +1 to hit, and terrain, in the wars, or large shield walls so he can take all the shots.
I took Mirkwood Rangers against Glory4Gondor last Sunday, and I think they may have inflicted kills on 3-5 troops by arrow fire the whole game, and 0 on a dragon through 2-3 rounds of shooting. He had all D6 Easterlings as well. This included legolas and Thranduil btw.
Lots of things to do man. For your force, take those Knights, follow them with the exiles....8 move right? And smash into their weakest line of archers and decimate them. By the time he counter chargers, you have all those exiles and their high fight to add to the battle.
Any specific battle or force you can tell to help us any more?
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BLACKHAWK 2010 2013 2015 DYNASTY
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There are two main solutions that I can see: either outshoot them or get to them fast/nerf their ranged ability. For option one (I assume this isn't your style) take a shooty force like them as well as a "nerfer" (Shadow Lord, Gandalf, Galadriel, Celeborn etc). For option two you could take cav or flyers (Shadow Lord on Fell Beast comes to mind) or drums (Mordor Troll Drum is good) and Taskmasters or a combination of all of them.