grimdank

Back in the day, I was talked into playing in a WH Fantasy tournament by my FLGS owner, despite (frankly, more likely because of) my public opposition to GW's shitty antics. The tournament was to take place over summer break and by celebrating the upcoming 3rd edition, hopefully pull in some new players to the hobby. They were even allowing 100% proxy armies to lower that barrier. So, I knew I had some treants and elven rangers leftover from a recent d&d campaign, and Wood Elves seemed cool enough.

In building that army, what stuck out to me was the wording of a certain magic sword (items that only heroes and leaders could equip, some faction-locked but many were not). The sword granted its "bearer" a ST 10, and I quietly looked up the same in the brand new 3rd Ed rulebook. It said "wielder", and I knew my strategy was secure as the tournament was openly advertised as "using both 2nd and 3rd editions to help everyone get familiar with the new rules". That, coupled with the Wood Elf racial item Bow of Lothlorien (fire up to your ATT at your ST) and my army's leader astride a mighty unicorn (passive save 4+ vs magic, on top of leader's same save meant I had an incredible chance to simply ignore every spell targeting the unit or its location), the rule-bending badass was firing four times per activation at Strength 10. To put that in perspective, a ballista was ST 8 and only fired once — I repeat: a siege weapon that fired small telephone poles to sunder stone structures was more than 4x less dangerous... Oh, and one more thing to dial this in nicely: Wood Elf skirmishers are non-viable targets in wooded cover per both 3e and 2e rules.

So, running that leader up and down a treeline as part of a skirmish unit, while lobbing tactical nukes at the adversary and shrugging off every attempted AoE effect made short work of every single match, straight through to the Finals.