Magic Items:
What should your magic items do? A few things, every single item you buy should fall under at least one of these criteria, and also make sure that WHAT they do is worth how much they cost: 1) Grant a benefit to the unit they are in 2) Help keep a character alive 3) Support the whole army 4) Help a character do more damage
Now theres a few things to keep in mind: Weapons, armor, and talismans all cost the same price no matter whether they are on a model with 5 wounds and 6 attacks, or on a model with 2 wounds and 1 attack. So there are many very bad ways to kit out your characters, either with too many items that cost too much for what they do, or too few items to make the character worth his cost overall.
Magic Weapons: In general, you don’t need these. Empire characters are not going to be blender lords, chaos heroes or orc warbosses. Magic weapons cost too much for helping too little, usually we will not want to take these. What are the exceptions? Well the grand master could take an Ogre blade to be pretty killy, and that weapon is probably the best magic weapon for its cost. Don’t bother with the giant blade, and don’t bother with the runefang or the swords that grant extra attacks. Other weapons could be the sword of anti heroes as some armies may bring tons of characters. So thats nice. But pretty much all of our characters should avoid taking magic weapons.
Magic Armor: Do not take expensive magic armor on any character that can get a 2+ or 1+ all by themselves. So this means the grand master, general, and captain can take full plate, and barded steeds to get their 2+. On foot, you can build a few characters to have nice armor, like with the enchanted shield, dragonhelm, and skavenhelm. All warrior priests and captains should at least get 3+ armor saves. If your general is an arch lector then HE is the guy who should be given the Armor of Meotoric Iron, its awesome, and its all you need in the way of armor. Any one who is mounted can get a nice armor save by other means. The charmed shield is nice for any flying character (griffin or pegasus) to block that first turn cannonball shot thats headed his way.
Magic Talismans: A few viable choices here, first your level 4 can be given the talisman of preservation to give him protection and help keep him alive, but its not always necessary.A character should probably carry the ironcurse icon as well since it can help you survive warmachines for super cheap. Magic resistance is a nice thing to give to a unit, but don’t get more than MR2. MR2 on a warrior priest would be nice, it can protect your big blocks against curse of years and a few other nuke spells that you really don’t want going off.
Enchanted items: What are the good ones that are worth taking? Well, Crown of command is probably the best one. Why? Because making a unit stubborn is unbelievable. Take this on a foot arch lector in a unit of halberdiers with two detachments and you can easily get a block of 100 guys who will all be stubborn. Pretty sweet. What else? Ruby ring on a warrior priest is kind of funny since you can get a killing blow fireball. So thats nice. Also, van horstmans speculum is amazing at helping us deal with uber killy characters or monster-characters out there. All you have to do is challenge the guy and you swap all the stats. Ideally you take this on your wizard lord so that the enemy only gets 1 attack at S3 which massively limits how much damage he can do against you. The ring of volans would be very good if it wasn’t one use only. I think the best thing to use it for is to get one use only wyssan’s wildform that you can roll 6 dice at to attempt to miscast since there will be no backlash, but i dont think its that great. Other than those ones, they aren’t really worth taking.
Arcane items: A few good choices here, they are unique as only wizards can carry them. First off, DISPEL SCROLL!!!!!!! it is an absolute must, stopping that one spell at that one worst possible moment has won many games for every veteran player. Use it, in fact, I could write a whole paragraph about simply HOW to use the scroll. So take one and use it when you first get hit with a really nasty spell, hopefully not until turn 3. The other ones are mostly too expensive for what they do, but the power stone is nice on your lvl 4 guy to help him power through that one spell in a crucial turn. Just dont go buying your level 4 the 70 pt item that gives you +1 to cast and dispel. Thats way too many points, no one buys that. So yeah, just take the dispel scroll.
Magic banners: These are very important. Its sad that we can’t take magic banners on regular knights, flagellants, huntsmen, or the main state troops because thatd be very helpful. The magic banners worth taking are as follows: Razor banner on a unit of greatswords or knights is very cool and helps them really chop through stuff. The steel standard helps a knight unit make its charges, so its worth it to ensure that good charge. The banner of eternal flame is good, but it’d be best on a unit of huntsmen (who can’t take it) so i don’t know who you would give it to, perhaps a unit of knights or you could give it to your BSB and put him in any unit that you want to have flaming attacks. Also, standard of discipline on a unit that has your general in it gives his inspiring presence rule +1 LD so that means any LD9 general in a unit with it makes him LD10. Really good. Only limited by which units can take these banners. Also, Gleaming pennant is good for a knight or demigryph unit that will be on the flanks of your army outside of the general and BSB range to help them hold the line. I would not recommend taking the griffin banner as you can pretty much only put it on your bsb and also you will usually not have enough ranks for it to matter. And combat res isnt worth that much. So just stick to the ones i laid out first.
