The Best Arrows for Wood Elves in The Old World

Are you starting a Wood Elf army or thinking about it? Have you started looking at the equipment options their units have?

It’s a total mess. Enough to drive you mad.

Each shooting unit can choose between five different types of arrows, which gives you a lot of ways to customize this army. But are all five options actually viable? Are they really competitive and useful? Let’s find out.

Glade Lord, Warhawk Riders and Waywatchers

Before we begin, let’s clarify that all of these units are either barely used in competitive play, or it doesn’t really matter what arrow you give them (characters… if you’re marching with the dragon, you’re not shooting. Don’t waste points on arrows for him). In this post, let’s get straight to the point — let’s break down the arrows that matter, which are for:

Deepwood Scouts, Glade Guard and Glade Riders

Skipping arrows on these units should NEVER be an option. If you need to shave off points to fit your list, drop a random model or two, but do not skip arrows.

Let’s go one by one. Remember, all units in the army book have access to the same five arrow options:

Moonfire Shot

This arrow gives your unit magical and flaming attacks for 1 point. If you’re coming from another edition, this might sound like a good idea. But in The Old World, the reality is that there are many —so many!— things that simply don’t care about these effects. Some units are even more resilient to magical or flaming attacks than they are to mundane ones (Chaos Dwarfs, the plate armor of Beastmen that gives a 3+ ward against magical attacks…).

On top of that, the armies that suffer the most from magical attacks are terrible in competitive play and are barely used (Daemons, who would lose their 5+ ward against magical attacks, have a really bad army book).

And if all that weren’t enough to erase Moonfire Shots from your list, here’s another key fact: Regeneration is NOT canceled by flaming attacks in this edition. These rules don’t interact at all in Warhammer: The Old World.

So, these arrows are highly situational. And on top of that, they take up a slot — even if they only cost one point — that could be used for better arrows. In my opinion, these are the worst, alongside…

Swiftshiver Shards

These are among the expensive ones, costing 2 points, so they should be good.

But they’re not.

These arrows allow multiple shots (2). Keep in mind, the Multiple Shots rule lets you shoot twice per model, but applies a -1 to hit. So what does this really mean?

If you’re an elf, it’s pretty standard to move and shoot, often at long range. It’s also likely — due to Old World line of sight and cover rules — that your target will have at least light cover. Because of that, hitting on 4s will not be common.

Usually, you’ll be hitting on 5s with Ballistic Skill 4 troops.

With these arrows, you’d go from hitting on 5s normally, to hitting on 6s twice. Which isn’t actually better — even with double the shots, you’ll land the same number of hits on average.

So you’d be wasting 2 points for nothing, and again, missing the chance to equip better, truly useful arrows.

Trueflight Arrows

For 1 point, you gain the rules “Ignores Cover” and “Quick Shot,” meaning:

You can move and shoot without a penalty.
You can always Stand and Shoot, regardless of the distance to the charging unit.

You’ll shoot with no penalties against units that are partially hidden. No light cover, no heavy cover — just like a Sister of Avelorn.

This all sounds amazing for only one point. Especially for certain types of units, like cavalry, that are always moving and shooting — you remove the -1 to hit from moving. And ignoring cover can help you snipe out some key targets.

Sounds great on paper. But in a Wood Elf list, there are several reasons why these arrows don’t perform so well. First: if your opponent doesn’t want you to shoot at something and knows what arrows you’re using, they’ll simply block it from your line of sight. Not just give it cover — completely block it.

And like I’ve said in many posts: something isn’t good or bad by itself, but compared to the other available options. In this case, these arrows fall short when compared to the last ones I’ll cover.

We’ll get to that in a second.

Up to this point, honestly, I haven’t seen a single Wood Elf list that looks competitive and good and includes any of these three arrow types. Now let’s get to the good stuff:

Arcane Bodkins

These are armor-piercing specialists. For 2 points, they give you Armor Piercing (2), which stacks with the Armor Bane (1) from the Asrai Bows your elves already carry.

The problem is, before reducing armor, you have to wound — and you have Strength 3. That means that even if you’re ignoring more of their armor save — which is pretty situational anyway (if you face other Wood Elves, or Dark Elves, or Night Goblins, or Tomb Kings, etc.) — it’s hard to get full value out of these 2-point arrows.

Because of that, while I’ve seen them in some competitive lists, they’re usually used in combination with the last arrow option I’ll now explain, which is by far the best.

Hagbane Tips

The absolute champion. Grants poisoned shots for 2 points.

Why are they the best? Because they’re the most versatile. With Strength 3, it’s incredibly useful not to have to roll to wound in nearly any situation — against any troop or character — in a game where Toughness 1 or 2 is virtually nonexistent, and in a meta where dragons are everywhere.

Even against heavily armored troops, not having to wound them is still very strong, despite not reducing their armor like you would with Armor Piercing 2 arrows.

Remember when I said one type was much better than the ones that ignore cover and give Quick Shot? Yeah — it’s these. And here’s why:

The negative modifiers to hit won’t matter as much when what you’re fishing for are 6s to hit — to trigger poisoned attacks and skip the wound roll entirely. In terms of averages, you deal more damage with poisoned hits than with removing penalties but still having to wound afterward.

I hope this analysis helps, and that with the new Arcane Journal, we’ll see a bunch of old Wood Elf players back on the table, sprinting around naked as always, waving their arms like lunatics and throwing Pillars of Fire.

🌳Which are the BEST arrows for Wood Elves?