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You're really dividing your leadership and BSB away from the main part of your army. If both go into those knights I can basically win the game by focusing on that one unit and avoiding the rest of your army.

For some reason a lot of people seem to forget that you don't have to deploy right at the line. If you deploy 6" back, you'll get or go 2nd, you'll generally get the same number of turns shooting with handguns as you do with crossbows. Add an HOT and you don't really even lose the first turn of shooting. Will it win you games? Probably not, but I think there's more utility there than many people credit.

I struggle with WoC more than any other army, I think.

The only way I can manage them is to really break up their advance and send them in different directions. The two best tools I've found to do this are archers and pistoliers. The archers are awesome to bait and hold frenzied units because frenzied units are forced to overrun when they wipe out a unit, and they will wipe out your archers, or stand there doing nothing instead of charging, either way you're coming out ahead. So look for those mark of Khorne units. If you angle the archers correctly, you can set up a flank charge for your knights or a strong infantry unit.

Pistoliers, espcially a large unit of 10 or two units of 5 can get up close and whittle down the medium sized blocks of warriors very quickly so that they'll lose the war of attrition when they get into combat with your units. Again, he either has to just take gunfire to the face, or turn in circles trying to outmanouver your pistoliers, either way is  win for you.

I guess I have two more tips, for what they're worth (not much): Hold back, and even think about deploying more than 24" away. He'll bitch about it, but it's his fault for playing warriors  Use large stubborn units like infantry busses or large units of knights to hold up his less offensive units like Tzeentch warriors. You'll never get their points, but you can also keep them from getting yours.

After that, pile on the choices that others mentioned: HBVG, Lore of Metal, Demigryphs, and I would also put in a nod for large units of great weapon IC knights (14-18) so that they're capable of grinding. I find the steam tank is not very useful against WoC. Volume of attacks is what does in a steam tank and WoC can muster a very high volume of attacks across a small frontage.

It's easier said than done, but like I said, I think WoC is one of our toughest match-ups, if not the hardest. And by the way, feel grateful that he's not packing  hellcannons because they can force you to him.

Quote from: Gorgash Redfang on January 04, 2013, 06:47:08 AM

Quote from: Captain Alard Krusen on January 04, 2013, 05:30:05 AM

..................  what you're about to attempt will be awesome.

"So yeah, I point my 12 snipers at your BSB."

"Wait, what?"

"BAM! FTK!"

Hehehehe  Just the image that conjures up is amazing!

12 shots, hitting on 6+ (long range, sniper) - 2 hits
1 wound
Usually some kind of save (BSBs are important).

Marksmen are BS4, so they should be hitting on a 5+ turn 1. On turn 2 it should be a 4+ because short range for an HLR is 18". So, it's a little better than that...

...but still I think there's way better places to put the 1440 points and $300 of real money than 12 units of handgunners with HLRs. 

I've got 3 basic builds that I run for knights:

1) The classic cheap 5-6 knights with lances and musician only
Good distractor, chaff remover, counter-charger, and depleted unit runner downer in the end game.

2) 10-12 ICK with lances, a warrior priest, full command, and a gleaming pennant (so they can run off on their own a bit)
Solid and versatile line unit. This is good for building up core when building a cavalry list. They're not as good as demigryphs, but they are a great core option for a cav list.

3) 16 ICK with great weapons, full command, warbanner, warrior priest and BSB
Solid grinder unit that will mash pretty much anything out there, with enough durability to make it across the field and still do its job. If you get the charge (you should) this unit comes in with static CR 6 even before it swings a cavalry hammer. Even better at larger point games where this 525 point unit can take a big chunk out of the core requirements and where other threats in your army divert some of your enemy's attention from this powerhouse. I like to add the Crown of Command to one of the characters to help this unit stay in there. One of the best games I ever played was a huge 10k per side affair and this unit fought back 3 giants.

Halberds are for winning combat, spears and swords are for losing slowly.

Halberd's S4 is useful for wounding, but a lot of guys overlook the -1 armor when they make these comparisons. A survivable warrior priest in this unit and/or any magic buff you can think of turns a halberd horde into an insane quisinart in a way that the other Empire core choices can never comprehend. (Well maybe a swordsman horde with Occam's and a warrior priest can comprehend it, but that's a chancy move.) I'll admit freely though, that many armies have troops much better suited to winning combats than halberds. Actually, Empire does too... greatswords come to mind.

Spears lose combat slowly by having a lot of bodies. Swords lose combat slowly by having light armor and H/W Shield combined with WS4. I personally prefer swordsmen because in most situations they are slightly better for the cost (we're talking tenths of a point here) than spearmen, and they seem to be more versatile to me. That's because spearmen only perform their best when they haven't charged, while swordsmen will always perform the same.

My preferred set up is a halberd horde, a detachment of 15-20 swordsmen, and a unit of missile troops, usually archers for screening and distracting purposes, but sometimes I go a little off my rocker and take crossbows or handgunners instead.

Whoa... you are blowing my mind right now. I've never even stopped to question the "all-comers" list paradigm. Tailoring lists is somewhat frowned upon in my neck of the woods, and that seems consistent with attitudes on the forums. But if I'm not supposed to make a list until I know the scenario, I actually have two pieces of information prior to list building: what scenario I will be playing and who I will be playing against.

If I'm not mistaken, this suggests that tailoring one's list is the intended paradigm. The all-comers convention that obviously has its roots in tournament play is the exception. I'll talk this over with the guys in my group, but it might fundamentally shift the way we play the game.

I'll give you five good ways to run them:
1. Combo charge with knights. Maximizing both units means that you can position flaggies for maximum carnage while forcing a couple files of the enemy to throw their attacks into 1+ AS knights.
2. Buff 'em. Light, Beasts, Life, War Altar... take your pick.
3. The flagellant wave. Take two small units ( I like 14 in 2 ranks), line them up one behind the other. The first unit goes in, does carnage and when it wimps out or gets wiped out in the next turn or two of combat, you've got a fresh wave of 14 flagellants. There are very few units in the game that can withstand 2 first rounds of combat with a unit of flagellants.
4. Screen them. An cheap detachment makes an excellent screen, breaking up LoS or granting them a much needed hard cover bonus. The detachment can then combo charge, or charge out of the way. Alternately the detachment can flee without panicking the flagellants behind them, either forcing a redirect or setting up a nice counter charge. Keep a stubborn unit with a lot of wounds nearby as the potential redirect target for your opponent and you can have a devastating counter charge.
5. Clear buildings. They fight with S5 every round they fight!

All that said, there's much less complicated and much more reliable ways to accomplish much of the above without using flagellants. Still, they're pretty tactically fun!

I must be one of the ones who's not using the hellblaster right. On paper it's a lot better, in practice it attracts to much attention and still not reliable enough. Add in the engineer and it becomes too expensive for what it does while taking away supporting characters from other parts of my army. I won't say it's bad, but either I don't know how to get the most out of it, or it just doesn't fit my play style.

The new warrior priest prayers are much stronger than they seem on paper and add some much needed flexibility along with outright smashing power.


Otherwise everything is behaving according to expectations. But note that I haven't used any of the new units yet, although I faced DGKs while playing my ogres and ogres have some simple solutions for dealing with DGKs, so I don't think I've experienced the awesomeness they seem to contain on paper.

Can characters join demigriffons?

Yep. As mentioned before, he doesn't get Look Out Sir! if he's not mounted on a pegasus, but then again, in a unit of 3 demigryphs, I don't think he would get LOS even mounted on a peg since it's less than 5 rank and file... or is it three rank and file for monstrous cav? No book on me ATM, so I can't double check.

Interesting debate about the Runefang though. I think you would have to call it S4, unfortunately. But there's a lot of unfortunate things in Warhammer for me these days: DGKs are only T3 and Mournfang impact hits are only S4... dang rules getting in the way of everything 

You could also field both I believe...I personally favour Crossbows but my main opponents are Elves and Skaven. Or rather, I favour Outriders at the moment but that's partly because of a better paint job and nicer models.

Clymer, I don't understand your reasoning. The charge distance for M4 infantry in any "over 24" apart" scenario and you deploying 4" back will be 4" on turn 4, not extra long (3*8=24).

Doh! Sorry for the long reply time, I didn't realize I'd been addressed. Funny thing is that somehow I worked that math out in my head against Skaven's M5 and actually played it out in a game where I ended up with 4 turns of shooting, but in hindsight there was some other movement disruption that caused his long time to advance.

Well, the logic should work with different numbers though (maybe the opponent's march distance -1"?). The problem then is that you're getting too far back and too close to the board edge. Still, I think that maybe just goes to the point of crossbows being more versatile in general.

Then again... I was listening to the guy doing the review of the ogre book on Bad Dice podcast and he said something that resonated with me as being basically true, but that I never really articulated. In a 2400 point game, really 2000 of your points are doing the heavy lifting. You've got to build that essential core of a hard army. After that, you can kind of take what you want with that last 400 points without too much detriment. So, maybe if you get yourself a strong enough core, it doesn't really matter whether your small support units are crossbows or handgunners.

I'd go with the Arch Lector. At a GT you're bound to run into the unkillable Dark Elf hero on a pegasus. All he has to do is plant himself in front of your DGK and super killy lord, throw down a challenge and viola: a quarter of your army is sitting out the game. It's such an effective tactic that I never put characters or even champions into cavalry units with just one rank if I suspect I'll be facing DE.

You know... I think I might be able to make an even win-loss-draw record with the list you've got above.

If you really wanted to go for the losingest list at 2000 points, I think I might go for:

Level 1 wizard (general)
10 units of 33 spearmen with full command

... then again, that might actually make for a ridiculously fun game. And I know that somewhere out there someone has 300 spearmen. Between halberds, swordsmen, handgunners, crossbowmen, free company and archers, I guess I've got about 210 state troops myself.

But if your point was, "how do I get the weakest possible list that still includes commonly chosen reasonable choices?" Then I think you've got a good start there.