Topic: The Imperial Hunt - 2000 point army list

[Clymer]

Thought I might try out an all-cavalry list for a game tomorrow night.

The wizard in here is my biggest question. He’s currently tooled up to be a magic missile artillery base. But I may want to completely re-tool him if you have suggestions for a wizard who would be a better support for a cav army. I’m also looking for tips on how to build the Grand Master.

Anyway, the idea of this list is that I have 4 units of knights in 1-wide marching columns with drilled that will be able to march 21” the first turn to hopefully set up just about any charge I want while avoiding my opponent’s charge lanes. Grand Master and BSB would each go in an Inner Circle unit. Wizard would stay close to the relatively slow demigryphs to hold onto lone character while blasting any problematic skirmishers that show up.

Then, for fun, and because I have this unbuilt box of militia sitting around, I thought I’d build up 10 more archers so I can field a total of 30 scouting archers. My main target for these would be bolt throwers and ranged units that could threaten my knights.

Anyway, would love your ideas and feedback, especially about the character builds. I only have 3 demigryphs, but I had toyed with the idea of ditching the unit of Demigryphs in favor of mounting the Grand Master and BSB on gryphs, but I’m not sure what that would do to their marching columns. It might still work I suppose. Thanks in advance for your ideas!

===
Imperial Hunt [1999 pts]
Warhammer: The Old World, Empire of Man
===

++ Characters [998 pts] ++

General of the Empire [353 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Full plate armour
- Shield
- Imperial Griffon
- Giant Blade
- The White Cloak
- Healing Potion

Grand Master [261 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Full plate armour
- Shield
- General
- Barded Warhorse
- Ogre Blade
- Talisman of Protection

Captain of the Empire [94 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Full plate armour
- Shield
- Battle Standard Bearer
- Barded Warhorse

Wizard Lord [290 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Level 4 Wizard
- Pegasus
- Ruby Ring of Ruin
- Arcane Familiar
- Armour of Tarnus
- Wizard's Staff
- Daemonology

++ Core Units [514 pts] ++

5 Empire Knights [122 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Great weapons
- Heavy armour
- Drilled (0-1 unit per 1,000 points)
- Preceptor (champion)
- Musician

5 Empire Knights [127 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Great weapons
- Heavy armour
- Drilled (0-1 unit per 1,000 points)
- Preceptor (champion) [Charmed Shield]
- Musician

10 Empire Archers [95 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Warbows
- Fire & Flee
- Scouts
- Marksman (champion)

10 Empire Archers [85 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Warbows
- Scouts
- Marksman (champion)

10 Empire Archers [85 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Warbows
- Scouts
- Marksman (champion)

++ Special Units [487 pts] ++

5 Inner Circle Knights [176 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Lances
- Shields
- Full plate armour
- Inner Circle Preceptor (champion) [Charmed Shield]
- Standard bearer
- Musician

5 Inner Circle Knights [171 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Lances
- Shields
- Full plate armour
- Inner Circle Preceptor (champion)
- Standard bearer
- Musician

2 Demigryph Knights [140 pts]
- Lances
- Shields
- Full plate armour
- Demigryph Preceptor (champion)
- Musician

---
Created with "Old World Builder"

[https://old-world-builder.com]

[Clymer]

Also, in terms of model availability, I have one more unit of 8 knights with lances and full command that I could swap in. And a total of 15 great weapon knights to swap if needed. Also have 10 pistoliers and 5 outriders, but not sure what I would sub out for them.

[Athiuen]

A Daemonology Mage on a horse in a unit could be very good with enchantments, hexes, and an assailment.

[Clymer]

A Daemonology Mage on a horse in a unit could be very good with enchantments, hexes, and an assailment.

Ite a good idea. I thought of it too. My hesitation is that he can’t cast if he’s in a single wide column because he can’t be in the front rank. Then once he’s in combat, no more dispelling.

Still, I like the look, it just seems a tad risky that he won’t actually do much during the battle.

[PowerSeries]

And they would keep drilled if the Wizard joined the unit still


https://tow.whfb.app/special-rules/drilled

I really like taking the +1 to dispell magic item, but that might not fit with your gameplan.

[Grendel083]

A Daemonology Mage on a horse in a unit could be very good with enchantments, hexes, and an assailment.

Ite a good idea. I thought of it too. My hesitation is that he can’t cast if he’s in a single wide column because he can’t be in the front rank. Then once he’s in combat, no more dispelling.

Still, I like the look, it just seems a tad risky that he won’t actually do much during the battle.

Knights would loose Counter charge and First Charge if a Wizard joins them though.

[Clymer]

Yeah, it's too much of a liability to put the wizard in the knights, I think.

With the pegasus, he gets counter charge and first charge, but putting a pegasus in a unit of knights leaves him hanging in a weird spot, and let's face it, is aesthetically unappealing. And if we're not going to win, we at least better have style 

[koh68]

Looks fun! interested to see how Cav perform for you!

[Athiuen]

putting a pegasus in a unit of knights

Flying units can't join non-flying units.

[Clymer]

My original sparring partner fell ill, so I didn’t get to run this list tonight. Instead, I did a 1250 point list for my game group’s current escalation league step. I ended up playing my same buddy as I did at 1000 points, but now with his upsized army of Ghost Dragon doom. Ugh… those things suck to have to fight against.

He had
500+ point wizard on dragon with spell eater axe and a 2+/6+ that stayed ethereal the whole time. I didn’t dispel it once.
2 RBTs
A unit of 8 silver helm
5 reavers
10 Shadow warriors with a level 1 or 2 wizard with them.

I’ll do a full battle report sometime, but the gist of the game was that I was able to take out his RBTs with archers and a drilled unit of knights. His Shadow Warriors had occupied the tower (we played the Lonely Tower scenario) and kept using Evasive to pop out and pop back in again every time I shot them, until they failed a terror test from my charging Griffon, fled through their wizard girl outside the tower, panicking her, fleeing through the silver helms and panicking them, and then were magic missiled off the table. The wizard on foot never stopped fleeing, but the silver helms rallied and charged my stubborn knights in combo with the wizard dragon. Somehow one knight survived and FBIGO, setting up a flank charge from my Griffon and my Demigryphs also charged in, nearly wiping out the Silverhelms who broke, while the dragon FBIGO. In two more turns of combat, the Demi’s and Griffon clashed with the dragon again. He killed a Demi, and they broke, but he failed to catch them and then rallied in the bottom of the 5th. The only other big event on the table was that I shot away and panicked off his Reavers with my outriders, but they got charged by the dragon, failed their terror test, and were run down.

How did it end?
He had his dragon left (how do you ever kill those things?)
I had my griffon, wizard lord, Demigryphs, a lone knight, and my archers. No one contested the watch tower.
The result: a crushing victory for the Empire.

Here’s the list I ended up running:

===
The Count’s Riders [1249 pts]
Warhammer: The Old World, Empire of Man
===

++ Characters [623 pts] ++

General of the Empire [353 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Full plate armour
- Shield
- General
- Imperial Griffon
- Giant Blade
- Healing Potion
- The White Cloak

Wizard Lord [270 pts]
- Hand weapon
- Level 4 Wizard
- Pegasus
- Arcane Familiar
- Ruby Ring of Ruin
- Armour of Tarnus
- Daemonology

++ Core Units [321 pts] ++

5 Empire Knights [133 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Lances
- Shields
- Heavy armour
- Drilled (0-1 unit per 1,000 points)
- Preceptor (champion)
- Standard bearer
- Musician

5 Empire Knights [138 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Lances
- Shields
- Heavy armour
- Stubborn (0-1 unit per 1,000 points)
- Preceptor (champion)
- Standard bearer
- Musician

5 Empire Archers [50 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Warbows
- Fire & Flee
- Scouts
- Marksman (champion)

++ Special Units [305 pts] ++

3 Demigryph Knights [210 pts]
- Lances
- Shields
- Full plate armour
- Demigryph Preceptor (champion)
- Standard bearer
- Musician

5 Outriders [95 pts]
- Hand weapons
- Pistols
- Repeater handguns
- Heavy armour

---
Created with "Old World Builder"

[https://old-world-builder.com]

[Clymer]

putting a pegasus in a unit of knights

Flying units can't join non-flying units.

I did not realize that. Good to know. Where can I find that rule for reference?

[PowerSeries]

Under fly.

https://tow.whfb.app/special-rules/fly

Last line.

[Clymer]

Under fly.

https://tow.whfb.app/special-rules/fly

Last line.

Thanks! Missed it.

[commandant]

He doesn't appear to be too successful with his dragon of doom.

I think you kill with magic missiles.

[Clymer]

Yeah, the ethereal dragon is not the end all be all, at least not at 1250 or 1000 points. It cannot be killed by the Empire. It just can’t.

But at least at these smaller game sizes, he doesn’t have a strong army to support it. So I’m able to avoid it pretty well, deny it the combo charges it wants, and wipe out the rest of his army for victory points. No telling if that will hold up at 2000 points though.

Combo charges are oddly a liability for it too. The one big round of combat, I won because my Griffon and Demigryphs killed Silverhelms and won on combat resolution by a lot. But they wouldn’t have been able to do much to the dragon.

 

[Warlord]

My opinion on your first list…
Lance and shield on knights instead of great weapons.
Stubborn instead of drilled - drilled is for bigger units IMO.
The archers as scouts seem too big?
Bring pistoliers as extra chaff and to just charge into stuff sometimes - maybe as combo charges with knights? See the guy who takes 4 or 5 units, and try what we does.

[Clymer]

Thanks Warlord!

I hadn't thought about the archer unit size until after I played the smaller 1250 sized game and ran the unit of 5 archers. They way he deployed, I barely had the room to squeeze them in where I wanted to. A unit of 10 definitely would not have fit, so something to keep in mind for sure.

My thought on the stubborn vs. drilled was that the drilled knights were just there for flanking after the stubborn units did some tar-pitting. Like you, I also had been thinking about Drilled being for larger units to maximize attacks. But when I ran that unit of 5, 1-wide, man they were fast! They caused a real problem for my opponent. At just a 5 point upgrade, I will now take drilled on smaller units of knights every time. Even if I don't use it, it's just a 5 point upgrade.

I really want to try out some pistoliers too! I have trouble finding the points to spare for them, but I'll do some experimenting eventually.