The Arcane Journal Wood Elf Realms just came out and having played Wood Elves in the past I couldn’t help but pick it up! Like the other Arcane Journals this is a 48 page soft cover book which provides additional background, two Army of Infamy army lists, a scenario, new troop and character types, two special characters and 18 additional magic items. It also contains a lore of magic, The Lore of the Wild, and rules for upgrading your characters to be from different Kindreds.
Once again the scenario features the title army facing off against the Beastmen. In this scenario 2,500 points of Wood Elves are arrayed against 1,500 points of Beastmen, but the Beastmen have a trick up their sleeves, another 2,000 points deployed in Ambush! The Wood Elves need to act fast if they are to kill Kralmaw, the Beastman special character and general of this scenario and break away to the edge of the battlefield to freedom! This is an interesting scenario that looks like it would be really difficult for the Wood Elves to win. They need to move quick but they also need to kill the Beastman character which can just hide until his overwhelming points superiority come to bear. Once again a herdstone is featured on the battlefield, I guess it’s just a matter of time until Games Workshop releases a terrain feature for us to use in our games!
The two new Armies of Infamy are Orion’s Wild Hunt, and the Host of Talsyn. Any old school players of the Wood Elves will recognize Orion, the King in the Woods from throughout the Wood Elf history, Araloth, Lord of Talsyn is (I believe) a brand new character for the book. Wardens of Talsyn, Guardians of Talsyn, and Wood Elf Beast Packs are the only new units in this book. Wood Elf Beast Packs can be brought as Rare choices in any Wood Elf Realms Grand Army. The Wardens are characters that give the Guardians of Talsyn Immune to Psychology, and the Warriors are spear armed elves that use supporting attacks to the front or rear. Wood Elf Beast packs are minimum 1 Elf with either 1-3 Deepwood Hounds, Forest Cats, Sylvan Boars, or 1 Bear of Loren. You can bring as many Beast Keepers as you want but all the beasts need to be the same in each unit. No mixing and matching!
The Orions Wild Hunt list allows one unit of Wild Riders per 1,000 points to count as Core. That one unit and Glade Riders are the only Core in the list so you can tell it is designed to be a primarily cavalry list, although you can take Wardancers. This list does not have a lot of special rules. Nobles can take Talismanic Tattoos, Glade Riders, Warhawk Riders, and Wood Elf Beast Packs can upgrade to have both Furious Charge and Impetuous and the army has the Worthy of Kurnous rule. This allows you to nominate a single enemy character or monster as a prized trophy. All friendly units in your army can re-roll To Hit rolls of a 1 in both shooting and combat. If this marked model is slain, is fleeing at the end of the game, or flees the battlefield the Wood Elf player gets an extra 100 victory points.
The Host of Talsyn list limits your list building options, requires Eternal Guard and allows for slightly more tree folk. The whole army hates Beastmen, benefits from the Lore of the Wilds Lore of Magic, re-rolls 1’s To Hit and To Wound in close combat while occupying a special feature, and can have ambushing Dryads, Treekin, Treemen and Treemen Ancients! You do not want to get lost in these woods!
The Kindreds list is broken into Alter Kindreds and Noble Kindreds, each with four options. I’m not sure why they bothered to split the list into two. While you can only be a member of one kindred each model can only take one buff, and there is nothing saying you can’t have different Kindreds across the army. Anyway, it appears most of these buffs are good, and as always some are better than others. Still, it’s nice to be able to add extra flavor to your characters without taking up magic item spots!
The Lore of the Wild is a nice looking spell list, although the default spell is not particularly good as it only allows the caster and the unit she joins to force their opponents to re-roll 6’s when shooting against them. While the is a decent spell against shooting armies it’s not that great against all comers, and certainly not the best default spell.
While the Arcane Journal Empire of Man surprised me and really inspired to me to consider getting an Empire Army this Arcane Journal does not inspire me to collect Wood Elves again. I do wish I didn’t give away my army back in the day, and I’d love to have that awesome Forest Dragon but this book doesn’t add enough to inspire me. Additionally, it only adds one unit and a list of magic items to the Wood Elf Grand army. Even with the champions of the Guardians of Talsyn being called Watchmasters I’m still not feeling it! Still, if you are a Wood Elf player you might appreciate the extra army list options, and the Beast units are too cool not to have the rules for!
-Wachtmeister
The Wachtmeister's Patrol 