Topic: Enter the era of the Pigeon Council

[Darknight]

I agree Jompex, its just I stopped believing

Man, Journey is going to be so pissed.

[emcdunna]

WOW. hahahhahaha

hey i just had an unrelated idea. whatif your minis could make sound effects (clanging of swords, chanting, gutteral screams or warcries) hahahaha oh jeez i want that.

[TastyBagel]

WOW. hahahhahaha

hey i just had an unrelated idea. whatif your minis could make sound effects (clanging of swords, chanting, gutteral screams or warcries) hahahaha oh jeez i want that.

..... you're telling me you don't provide your own sound fx for your battles ??

[emcdunna]

hey! although yeah wouldnt it be great if when you rolled for handgunner shots youd here a crackle of shots or a boom from a great cannon or twangs from arrow shots or whatever weird noises spells make.. but i think thinks like the hurricanum would make more of a constant buzzing noise.

[Rein]

How are you going to keep the engineers save? from lets say magic missiles ? Or if you put them in a unit, then you have to spend points on bunkers which cost you combat effectiveness, how to deal with this?

[Jomppexx]

How are you going to keep the engineers save? from lets say magic missiles ? Or if you put them in a unit, then you have to spend points on bunkers which cost you combat effectiveness, how to deal with this?

They run with the knights pretty sure. The knights can still fight.

[Fidelis von Sigmaringen]

It is feasible, if you know what you are up against. The cheapest way would be to hide them and/or keep them within 3" of a War Machine. There is also the option of LA, enchanted shield, and barded warhorse (for a 2+ AS), the rather expensive AoMI, although those magical items may have better uses. As Jomppexx says, you can put all of them into a unit of knights, which, however, is likely to draw a lot of fire.
Of course, if you do not know what you are up against, your pigeon may quickly turn out to be a lame duck.

[Rein]

You cant shoot from combat and almost any unit will do against plain knights + engineer (especially if you put 3 of them in there!). So you are not creating any solutions but only shifting the problem (from concentrating on one unit to another)

I also think it might be best to park them next to a WM (canon) and shoot with the canon first turn if you have no other targets and otherwise shoot the pidgeons! nobody will expect this

[Fidelis von Sigmaringen]

I think the plan is that the Engineers leave the knights before CC. But, of course, "no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force," and it is probably better not to put all your pigeon eggs into one basket.

[BBorN]

Our entire army is like how you described it, Mortim...
People are like "demigryphs should cost 60 points", but why they can't accomplish anything. S5 is sad, elf infantry has better S...
Same thing with greatswords, give them ASF and I6, voila, completely broken unit...

Whenever I talk about how chaos is wayyyyy more powerful than empire and elves are above even that, everyone just answers with "Well chaos & elf models cost far more points per model! This makes it balanced!" So, if you think like this, that also means that if the points are equal, the units are balanced. Lets do a little comparison, compare Chaos warriors and halberdiers, both worth say 250 points.
So were gonna equip the warriors with the following :

Chaos warrior - 19 points
 mark of nurgle
 Halberds

And compare to our 6 point halberdiers.
250 points gets the empire roughly 42 halberdiers.
250 points gets the woc roughly 13 warriors.

So lets compare them in combat :
Consider the warriors are 6x2 with one extra guy in the back, therefore getting 18 attacks.
They strike at I5, meaning they go first. WS5 versus WS3, the warriors hit on 3+ so roughly 10 or so hits.
With halberds they wound our paper thin "elite" soldiers on 2+ causing 9 wounds and 9 casualties.

Lets assume we also deploy in 6x7, meaning we get 2 ranks of attacks, adding up to a whopping 10 attacks.
WS3 vs WS5 + mark of nurgle (-1 to hit) means our trained soldiers hit on 5+ causing a massive 3 hits. With our amazing S4 we wound on 4+, which means 1,5 wounds, so lets assume that scores a wound. The warriors still get a 5+ armour save, so a 32% chance not to suffer ANY damage. This means empire loses by 9 to start off with, still have 3 ranks, so empire only loses by 6, if warriors fail their 5+ save we lose by 5.

So uumm what? 42 (!) halberdiers averagely lose against 13 (!) mark of nurgle, halberd warriors of chaos. No wonder nobody brings empire infantry... Not sure if any of the math is accurate, but I think its pretty close.

About the pigeons. So you have a 5+ chance to cause a small template S4, AP. Not very convincing.
The more math I do about empire, the more sure I become I chose the absolute worst and hardest army ever. Elves and any kind of demons offer free wins, whenever I play against my local WoC player he just charges everything towards me and I lose, doesn't matter whether my knights charge or not, trolls and daemon princes won't care, I'm lucky if I manage to hit the lords or even hurt the 4+ regen trolls.

I'm utterly lost, I really need help with how to play this army.
Edit: hastily posted, added more.

I stopped reading when you said halberds would be 6x7. Who the hell deploys 42 halberds that way? If your not going horde with them you bring spearmen. Let's try your example with horde halberds with hurricanum support cuz let's face it you don't field halberds without hurricanum. And don't give me crap about adding stuff in - warhamer isn't about throwing one unit against another unit without support. If the warriors had a typical support unit fielded with warriors I would say fine. Anyways here is more realistic math hammer :

18 warrior attacks hit on 3 - 12 hits wound on 2s - 10 wounds
25 halberds swing back hit on 4s - 12.5 hits wound on 4s - 6.25 wounds. Warriors make 2 saves so 4 wounds taken Halberds have 3 ranks so lose but steadfast.

Warriors have 9 guys left, halberds have 32 left.

Round 2.

16 attacks from warriors do 8.89 wounds round it to 9
Halberds 20 attacks do 3.33 wounds. Warriors save 1 so 2 more wounds. Your a smart general so you reform the halberds out of horde going 8 wide now.

7 warriors left vs 23 halberds

14 attacks from warriors do 7.78 wounds round it to 8
16 attacks back does 4 wounds 1 saved so 3 wounds on warriors.

4 warriors left vs 15 halberds

9 attacks from warriors does 5 wounds
10 halberd attacks do 2.5 wounds round to 3 warriors save 1 net 2 wounds on warriors. Halberds still steadfast.

2 warriors left vs 10 halberds.

5 attacks from warriors does 2.78 wounds round to 3
7 attacks back does 1.75 wounds - warriors save .58 so 1 wound net. 

1 warrior left vs 7 halberds.

3 attacks does 1.67 wounds round to 2
5 attacks back does 1.25 wounds warriors save .42 so round to 1 wound

Halberds win with 5 dudes remaining.

[Jomppexx]

Expect now the point sides arent even, add in 130 points worth of warriors and see what happens now...

[Morray]

I agree Jompex, its just I stopped believing

Man, Journey is going to be so pissed.

ROFLCOPTER

[Rein]

Expect now the point sides arent even, add in 130 points worth of warriors and see what happens now...

I think the point of the exercise was to show how underwhelmed empire soldiers are. They need a free Hurricanum to make a difference! (+1 to hit or a discount on pts to compare to warriors).

p.s. He did not want to calculate a vacuum example but then he did!

[emcdunna]

Doesn't matter because no one even takes warriors anyway.

Our infantry is a tragedy. We have a few things going for us though: no one fears them, and no one knows what they actually can do well.

Our leadership is great. Cold blooded break tests? Yes.

We have tons of access to spells that can buff our infantry to heroic status when combined together.

Also, try taking 60+ state troops. You think someone's gonna try nuking you? No. They don't care. They're worried about our knights and cannons. No one shoots at our infantry even with war machines.

But no matter what our infantry is not cost effective even with the detachment rules. Its a major bummer.

[Waywatcher]

Our infantry is a tragedy. We have a few things going for us though: no one fears them, and no one knows what they actually can do well.

Our leadership is great. Cold blooded break tests? Yes.

We have tons of access to spells that can buff our infantry to heroic status when combined together.

Our infantry is a tragedy. Cold blooded break tests won't happen; foot captains are too easy to murder (Unless you spend more points on one than a knight captain costs...) It's like WPs in infantry--too easy to murder; and once dead the remaining unit is effectively neutered.

Any spell that is good at buffing our infantry is good at buffing our knights, even better usually.

[emcdunna]

I wouldn't say buff spells work better on knights. Giving 10 knights +1 S and T isn't as good as giving it to 50 halberdiers.

But yes the thing Is that our support is good but expensive, our characters are expensive and super easy to kill on foot, and our infantry is over priced whether you get those buffs from having alive characters or not.

The only thing you can hope to do is to play an army that somehow sucks worse than yours does if you want to run infantry. Its a sad miserable lifestyle.

[Rein]

Or try and find a way to make the armybook work, instead of only complaining about our infantry but then also saying that our infantry is great when you buff them ?

[Fidelis von Sigmaringen]

The Empire is not a tier one army, but it does not suck, either. It lacks internal and external balance, but that is nothing new, nor Empire-specific.

[emcdunna]

I am just saying I love our army but it's not balanced and that makes me sad. What we excel at is great but it's not enough.
So I say release the pigeons!

[Jomppexx]

Our infantry is a tragedy. We have a few things going for us though: no one fears them, and no one knows what they actually can do well.

Our leadership is great. Cold blooded break tests? Yes.

We have tons of access to spells that can buff our infantry to heroic status when combined together.

Our infantry is a tragedy. Cold blooded break tests won't happen; foot captains are too easy to murder (Unless you spend more points on one than a knight captain costs...) It's like WPs in infantry--too easy to murder; and once dead the remaining unit is effectively neutered.

Any spell that is good at buffing our infantry is good at buffing our knights, even better usually.

I agree completely on the character part.
I've started considering just running my characters (bsb, priests, general) naked with no extra armour.
If someone wants to kill them, they WILL kill them no matter what items you give to them. I guess the options of armour make them resistant to like skaven slaves or enemy halberdiers, but still... 

[emcdunna]

the number of units that actually have s3 attacks anymore is so low that armor and ward saves are kind of too expensive. the fact that a daemon prince or blender lord pays the same number of points for a 4++ ward that our characters do is a sign that we should just give up on giving them things

maybe we need to have the ability to get look out sir rolls for close combat? special rule for empire to make our characters suck less?

[Rein]

the number of units that actually have s3 attacks anymore is so low that armor and ward saves are kind of too expensive. the fact that a daemon prince or blender lord pays the same number of points for a 4++ ward that our characters do is a sign that we should just give up on giving them things

maybe we need to have the ability to get look out sir rolls for close combat? special rule for empire to make our characters suck less?

Why be so negative ? Also you cant change the rules of the game, so no need in trying to invent all sorts of new rules.

A vamp lord (blender lord) or daemon prince cost twice as much as a empire character, so the 4++ ward is cheaper for us than it is for them. We effectively buy 3 wounds for 45 pts resulting in 6 wounds at 200-250 pts instead of 500. (do the math: we pay 40 pts per wound and they pay 80-85 pts per wound)

The problem with gear is that rules like ASF make magic weapons far better while still being the same price... (now that's weird!)
Also KF is nothing to sniff at for about 400 pts. It is however harder to get him into combat because of the M7.

So you have some drawbacks playing empire (especially against elves), but you can play very competitively if you want.

[Jomppexx]

ASF is very strong when combined with other magic weapons, mainly ones that boost fighting ability, like ogre blade.
Empire is at a dilemma as we would need to buy ASF from weapons, but also need combat boost.

[Mortim]

You guys mostly brought how I feel.

Some things are still very good: Captasus, GM runefang, 8 lores of magic, Both Popemobiles, Demis, Stank, All knights (especially reiksguard), Cannons and yes Pigeons!!

The idea with pigeons is that its a devastating attack that cant be dispelled and most importantly is MOVE and fire. The bonuspart is that this artillery piece can be on a horse and relocate 16" and also join any unit except archers (being mounted so not with skirmishers). And we all know how we wish our artillery had wings or a horse to escape!!

The other thing is that our knights arent all that hitty anyway and that we often end up facing tougher knights like Elven Cav units with hitty heroes... Those combat are doomed: They charge first with better movement, they strike first and their "rerolls" doesnt go away like our priests do!! So we end up backing away and trading space for time while the Elves keep pushing/dismantling our army.

So I thought how can my knight unit be usefull at keeping stuff at bay and still dealing damage? 3 pigeons in a knight unit "strike first" from a better "charge range" which is the full 24" (combined with 7" for a 31") and after a couple of Pigeon volleys might even bring down that elven knight unit to manageable size, even for Empire knights!

Ofc u could have them on foot, but I dont believe in any infantry at all, and certainly not Heores/Lords on foot as they just get killed and have 0 means of escape with 8" move at best. Heroes should be mounted imo, they can escape better and yes be better redirecters!! Pigeoneers on horse at 97pts are expensive but they also cost just as much as 5 pistoliers that usualy end up being sacrificied as redirecters!


On the other hand, I am considering 6 pigeoneers on foot + 1 bsb as hero choices. Hide them in units at start, then move them on their own if needed (target saturation is working to some extent even with t3 models, it all depends on the enemies shooting/zapping ability). But I am wary of fielding 500 pts of foot pigeoneers that wont have any chance to escape vs a couple of Flying DE pegmasters etc...

6 pigeoneers should bring 12 hits in 6 turns, but more realisticaly 6-8 hits (some get killed during those 6 turns, some wont have good targets).

The question is 6-8 good hits enough to make a big impact on most Elven armies? (each template hits 21 small base models or units 5 or 10 cav each). I believe the answer is yes, or actually one of the best options to reliably deal damage (more reliable than magic in many ways) vs elves.

I would like you guys to try your next battles, as a community/research effort with 3-4 pigeoneers vs Elves and gather some much needed information!

Cheers,

Mortim

[Rein]

How about putting 1 or 2 in a unit of 6 Reiksguard, might even push him to the second row with command figures!

Now you can shoot at the enemy, while not really scared of being charged by the enemy.