The Great Hunt, War Host of Athel Loren vs. Ryan's Devious Dark Elves (2250)

Tonight I had the opportunity to see just how the infamous Dark Elves operate on the battlefield.  I took on Ryan's Dark Elf army and sadly got crushed in the 5th turn.  While my army is very weak on magic, Dark Elves happen to be very good at it.  So good in fact that one of his two spell casters turned the tide in turn 3 and managed to absolutely change the flow of the game.
Here is the deployment that we started out with.  I only have the one picture since the other pictures did not turn out very well but I'll narrate the battle as best that I can.

As you can see here I managed to position my Waywatchers and my Waywatcher General right in the middle of his army.  I got the first turn and managed to use my Scouts (bottom of picture in the forest) to kill his repeater ballista and then my Waywatchers moved out and assassinated his big spellcaster.  While these were two very important kills they did not do enough since I was in such a rush to get to the next turn that I failed to shoot with the two units of Glade Guard (which I might add was a COSTLY mistake).
Ryan's turn 1 ended up with his Harpies (the MVP of the game) charging my Scouts and then in the next turn his other spellcaster managed to cripple my large Wild Rider unit by reducing their Weapon Skill to 1. I failed my Break test and lost 400 points worth of Wild Riders to a 66 point unit ... ffs.
I managed to wipe out an entire unit of Cold Ones with my Waywatchers but sadly his Assassin showed himself and bushwacked my entire Waywatcher unit.  From that point I began to slowly get in my own way while Ryan maneuvered his units into position and was able to pull out the devastating Overrun in turn 5 which saw my Wardancers and Treekin die.

Ryan won by over 500 victory points and I learned how not to play against Dark Elves.  Overall a fun time!
Best part of Fantasy so far is that you really can not be sure that you have won or lost til the end of the game (sans total route) and I had a blast getting my Woodsy teeth kicked in.

The other upside is that after over a dozen games with this army I'm beginning to slowly see small changes that I can make to the list that would be a bit more effective while still keeping the same overall theme.  I'm really enjoying my fast cavalry and while I love my Waywatchers, I feel perhaps a smaller unit of them would be easier to manage and free up some much needed points for other units. (Much like your first experiments with your Seer Council there John ... interesting parallel!)  My Treeman has been hit or miss as have my Treekin but I am loathe to swap them out for other units because they do add a durability to my army that is very needed.  The other thing I need to do is work on a better deployment strategy since not all armies barrel ahead to kill you like Ogres and Warriors of Chaos.  So some alternate deployment tactics will need to be mastered in order to be not only a bit more successful but also allow me to just become a better player overall.