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So I might be playing some Brets today, and I have never seen that army before. I know its a lot of heavy calvary, at first that sounds scary but I have bolt throwers and such that can help.

Anyone got any tactics or advice for me? I've had my share of wins versus wood elves, I lost hard and fast to Lizardmen, but are Brets an issue for High Elves? Is the list below lacking anything that would be useful against brets?

Ill be running something similar to

Prince
Star Dragon, Dragon Armour, Golden Shield, Lance, Longbow, Vambraces of Defense

Mage
Dispel Scroll, Dispell Scroll

Now im having troubles picking my last hero, really really cant decide. Thinking of throwing in a melee hero on foot or on mount, I dont really know how to play the foot hero game mechanics very well.

20 Spearmen with some form of 25 pts or lower banner

10 Archers

Possibly another 10 archers or 20 spearmen, dunno yet

10 Blademasters of Hoeth

10-20 White Lions

15-20 Phoenix Guard with War Banner

6 Dragon Princes or 8 Silver Helms

2 Repeater Bolt Throwers

You have no light cavalry, and therefore: deserve to lose.

The best tactic I can give you, is to do everything you can to condense his entire army to the center of the table.. Then keep your Dragon out on an extreme flank. When his knights condense to the center to align for the ubercharge, get your dragon in such a position so that he's staring down the flanks of 3 or 4 units. Charge one, run it off, run it down, charge the next.

Hopefully you can take down 2 big lances of knights and offset the points you're going to lose in the mass charge

If you had just 2 units of light cavalry, you'd be able to claim 3 units of knights AND prevent most charges until turn 3 or 4. Which would allow you to really create an advantage.

Don't see many High Elves with fast cav, honestly. Great Eagles, though, could be awesome for turning the lances away.

Depending on what lances he's bringing, he can end up with issues dealing with psychology, your terror causer should hurt. With all your foot blocks, a BSB would be quite handy, though he doesn't need to be on foot himself.

With sufficient size, your White Lions will hold at least a turn, more if they manage to score enough kills on the turn the Brets charge. Phoenix guard should do OK too, with the 4+ ward. What you really don't want is for the Brets to hit you and blow right through. Once the lances have stuck in the front of your units, flank charges from the dragon, and dragon princes will do nicely.

Dragon Princes over Silver Helms IMO.

RZ

Brets suffer from an army-wide extreme focus on getting the charge in, period. If they don't, there are precious few things they can do to survive, much less win. And your ASF negates a good portion of the benefit from getting the charge in. So Brets running a traditional knight-heavy force shouldn't be too much of a problem for you. Of course, you're still facing a very large number of S5/6 attacks coming in when he charges...

Some sort of march blockers to give your dragon time to get into position would be invaluable. Big lances of knights have very large flanks, and the dragons charge should wreck his battleline totally when you cause the survivors to flee into the other units...

The flip side of that is if he runs lots of peasants. They turn the Brets into a horde army that even the Skaven have to smile at. One on one, you'll way outclass them... but you'll probably be outnumbered both unit-to-unit and in number of units. This could cause problems, especially since the peasants get to use the Ld of any nearby knights.

Brets SUCK in the magic phase even with a Lord level caster - so much so that it is pretty much a no-brainer to go with a fighting Lord instead. Indeed, most Bret list I've seen get by with just a scroll caddy. You could take advantage of this and try for a heavier magic punch, they likely won't have much to stop you.

Beware the Pegasus Knights, though. They are T4, AS 3+ W2 each with 1 S6 attack and 2 S4 attacks on their 20" (flying) charge.

Red_Zeke wrote:Don't see many High Elves with fast cav, honestly. Great Eagles, though, could be awesome for turning the lances away.

I think that's because people don't think about the warhammer metagame beyond "once it's in combat, does it own face?" As soon as people realize movment is the most important phase in this game, and that light cav is the king of all things movement. They'll come to the light.

Not buying it. I don't think players are that simplistic, especially at the higher levels, where, curiously enough, you still don't see reavers. At least not in the tourney reports I've seen.

Eagles do a similar job, fly, and are a lot cheaper. They also take the wide open rare slots instead of the specials.

RZ

The tournament levels; such as Adepticon, GT's et al, are not better competition, just more of the same.

Bill Williamson fields light cav quite often, and that guy wins GT's like it's his job. I know because I've played him at multiple GT's.

People argue that they are too expensive... but I author that they aren't expensive enough. 100 points for a unit that just about guarantees your going to get the charge? Sign me up.

A bit late for my advice, but i would just crash the dragon into about any unit thats in lance formation. Giving the knights saves to make on a 5+ could easily stagger any static combat res the unit may have. Make sure to pick out the characters!! a lot of the resolution and special rules come from the characters in bretonnians (stupid killing blow virtue ).

As far as arguing about fast cav, i almost always use cheap units like ungor raiders and warhounds to either redirect (not so with raiders) or to hold off the enemies overrun for a turn.

I dont know what the forum term is for it, but essentially my 30 point unit of raiders gets killed bad, the enemy overruns into my brick of gors and his turn ends then and there. On my turn i get a strong opportunity to flank charge with the rest of my army and break their unit(s) on my turn only losing a handful of gors in the process.

Don't get me wrong, I think fast cav are great. I just think that Reavers don't generally match up well against other chaff/redirector fast cav units.

RZ

infamousxiii wrote:A bit late for my advice, but i would just crash the dragon into about any unit thats in lance formation. Giving the knights saves to make on a 5+ could easily stagger any static combat res the unit may have. Make sure to pick out the characters!! a lot of the resolution and special rules come from the characters in bretonnians (stupid killing blow virtue ).

Beware! That killing blow virtue works on Dragons. (Ironically, it does not work on regular troops, just on monsters. It is called the Virtue of Heroism for a reason!)

As far as arguing about fast cav, i almost always use cheap units like ungor raiders and warhounds to either redirect (not so with raiders) or to hold off the enemies overrun for a turn.

I dont know what the forum term is for it, but essentially my 30 point unit of raiders gets killed bad, the enemy overruns into my brick of gors and his turn ends then and there. On my turn i get a strong opportunity to flank charge with the rest of my army and break their unit(s) on my turn only losing a handful of gors in the process.

That's the way to do it. Get him to charge expendables or tarpits, then slam him in the side with a hammer. Standard maneuver tactics. The real trick is pulling it off against someone while he is trying to do it to you...