Dogs of War

Recently, the High Elves have been wrecking havoc against my Estalian Dogs for several reasons: their ability to always strike first being one of them, and an increadibly powerful wizard mounted atop a dragon being the other.

At the 1500 point mark, I'm finding I have little in the way that can deal with it. I can't summon enough magic to counteract the 5 power dice it can haul out, and with a 20" flight move, it can easily stay out of range of my more powerful melee or shooting units.

I had thought about hiring Asarnil, fighting fire with fire so to speak, but I have my heart set on building an Estalian Square first (a unit of 36 pikes surrounded by four units of duelists) .

Any ideas or proven tactics for negating this thing? It is a substantial points-sink, and taking it out would go a long way towards a crushing victory...

Hmm... well I guess the choices would be.
A) Asarnil like you said.
B) Cannon's are good at this stuff.
C) Use Crossbowmen and try and hit the mage off teh top of the Dragon. Doesn't necessarily solve the Dragon problem though, just the mage on top of it.

I don't know the stats of the Sun Dragon, so not sure how well a charge with Heavy Cavalry (Probably Volands) would work out.

I use a dragon mage at 1000pts, be grateful, mine uses up to 10 powerdice a turn

The key to bringing it down is shoot, shoot and shoot some more. I suggest marksmen, halflings and as much other shooting as you can. Even if you can't get LOS on him you can still be shooting at the rest of his army. If your a good shot with a cannon take it. Sun Dragons only have 5 wounds and a 5+ save (still T6) so even if you don't get the randomisation onto the mage, the dragon can be bought down!

If he goes for combat target the mage, ignore the dragon. This is where your big block of pikes and duelists will be great, they both chuck out masses of attacks to allocate against the mage, just make sure challenging isn't an attractive option for him, either have no characters in the unit including champions or have someone who can kill him.

Hope that helps a bit.

I concer. Shooting, Shooting and more shooting (the uncapitolized one is for halfings!).

A cannon is probably a must against him, which he will more curtainly avoid or try to kill (so place it in the center of your line), but youre really trick for taking him out will be your crossbowmen and your duelist.

I'm not taking about commiting to a total gun line here, just enough to make him cautous in his play, 2-3 unit of crossbowmen and 2-3 unit of duelist - your first goal of course it to kill the rider off the dragon - and force the monster reaction test. Of course well also assume that he has a repeating bolt thrower - so I would also take light cav and sent them after that (or a nice little captain on a pegasis), other wise he'll be shooting the life out of your xbows.

Take a Truthsayer. He'll help a bunch in Magic defense