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Hello DakkaDakka, I've been playing WHFB for a little while now, I have a Lizardmen army and love it, but I had an idea I was really wanting to start an empire army working off of a theme I was thinking about for a while, to make a Chaos Empire army, mostly Nurgle or a Tzeench themed army because I like the blues and greens, and I think that would make for a really cool army to play and would be an interesting flavor of an Empire army. However, I really don't know where to start with them, I actually don't know anyone who plays Empire in my local area, so I don't have anything I could borrow to try them out. I see swordsmen being good, WS 4 and a parry save is a good thing, cannons are good, as are hand gunners, but I don't know most of the stuff to get. Should I start with the Battalion box? I don't know how the riders are, and I really don't know what to get beyond that, so if anyone has any suggestions on starting this army, they would be much appreciated.

Welcome to the Empire! Here to answer your questions!

First thing is...Battalion box is very good in my opinion, you get practically a good start for small games, with just the addition of wizards needed. Quick things to note:

-We have decent magic (All lores available, depending on your tastes)
- Sweet artillery (Cannons + Helblaster Volley Gun)
-Demigryphs and tanks are big hitters
-Our cav is pretty tough, great on charge with lances!
-Inf is okay...Halberdiers often considered best with +1 Strength however the swordsmen make a good anvil for your hammers!

What ya gonna need to remember:

-Our characters are not so killy, exceptions would be say the Witch Hunter for low lv Wizards and the Grand Master, who needs a decent kit too and is pretty expensive...But well worth it at times.
-Characters need to be tough mainly, armour and wward saves around s they give great buffs to your infantry. Pesky trolls blocking your infatry block with a WP? You get off the flaming weapon prayer and BAM, no regens!
-For non-artillery/stank missiles it is generally considered that Archers>Crossbows>Handgunners. Archers can move and fire, skirmish and thus make a great bunker with a -1 to hit. Crossbows have alright strength and a decent range, which I think just beats the handgunners!
-Eever get the Helblaster? Bare bones Engineer for those sweet, sweet rerolls and BS4.
-Greatswords are considered Alright-swords, a bit pricey compared to other elites, and do need some buffs (Metal mage for glittering scales and such)
-Flagellants..Love the look, but REALLY expensive for what you get sadly.
-Militia just...die, alright as detatchments though!

ALSO, we are quite the flexibl army...Go INF heavy, or Cav heavy, or go a gunline or a blend of three, it's pretty darn fun to test them out!

Thanks for the tips! Honestly, after using a lot of skink characters in lizardmen, I am very familiar with not very killy characters, so I can adjust. Was thinking of getting an empire General box and a wizard box, making them all chaosy, so I'd have a bsb to help with leadership, and loadsa magic from the everywhere. Thinking that lore of life or shadow would be good to help the troops survive, with things like regrowth, and myasma, and occam's razor, which I would put on jungle swarms because s 10 swarms with poison is just hilarious. I'll probably pick up a box of state troopers and build them, figure out a color scheme. Still, thanks, I'll pick up the battalion box soon enough, at least after a color scheme is picked.

Good! Oh yeh forgot that the BSB is a must, and ALSO, if you get the chance, slapping on a pistol never hurts on ya captains, make that BS 5 count! If you do take them...Life should be a Min of LV3, and Shadow...IDK how well that plays off in lower lvls! But regrowth on a stank or demi is nasty, ya didn;t hear it from ol' me
Light is pretty darn good to get your troops to hit first, speed of light on halberds? Yes please!
Some sorta killy stuff could be the captagus, fit him cheap enough to live and deal with chaff and etherals (Sword of might perhaps?) and smack them up!

I've been trying out different builds but they all have one thing in common, 2 cannons and 2 blasters. To good to never take.

Try msu of archers as chaff that can still be useful, also pistoliers!

Infantry is easy, swordsmen for busses and halberds for hoards.

Never actually used light too much, more familiar with heavens, because of the lizard wizards, but it seems like a good lore, but kind of like beasts, I haven't used it enough. Also, regarding the BSB, is the Griffin standard worth the points? It sounds awesome, but unsure of it. But, a pistol on the bsb wouldn't hurt, and who knows, might make a challenge character for yucks, so fencer's blades, glittering scales, funny combo, probably not worth it in a competitive game, but fun with friends.

Really? The hellblasters? I always saw them as more fun than great, mainly because they seem like something you want a master engineer with, the cannons sound like a no brainer, because cannons. And I do like pistoliers, might grab 5 because they seem like reavers, fast moving and annoying, I just wish they were core.

Eh....I don't know, generally considered you for for magic armour than magic banners, as you can only pick between the two! Steel banner on Inner Circle knghts is pretty cool from what I've seen...And if ya wanting to do a challenge character, I'd recommend:

Fencer's Blades + Glittering Scales + Talisman of preservation, though the only people that could use that is an Arch Lector, a general, and a Grand Master, who likely needs that armour....Want to make a killy character though?

Grand Master + Ogre Blade + White Cloak of Ulric + Charmed Shield + Potion of Foolhardiness!

Sounds like a fun build, I think for now, I'm going to get the box that lets me make two captains, make a bsb and a captain to use as a general for low point games, pistol, some basic gear, and a battalion box when I can, but probably going to just get a state trooper box, maybe a cannon. Funny thing is I like the circle knights the more I look at them, so I'll be finding a place for them

If you plan on going halberd heavy just buy the bretoninian militia box, better models and slightly cheaper. Also light is nice for cheap councils and making 6pt scrubs great in combat. A hurricanum with speed of light hitting on 2s with 30 s4 halberd attacks is fun for 300pts.

As for blasters, they are only good if you take the engineer, and you may think if the engine dies he's useless, wrong, he can hop to another one! Or even funnier he's another piece of chaff!

Alright, well, I'll rake one if I get the Hellblaster, though right now I'm probably going to stick with cannons, since it will save me some points in L&H and in Rare, which I won't be using much of to start with but still, can expand into the glory of the Stank. So, State Troopers, some heroes, wizard stuff, maybe Pistoliers because looking at them, they just seem like a joy to play, riding around and blasting stuff with handguns, and if I'm starting from the battalion, I'll also have those Circle knights, and I know that cavalry is seen by some as a poor choice, but I can't help but love the riders, it's just fun to have really fast and annoying units ride around and charge into someone's line and disrupt things plans in the making, rear charge longbeards or something fun like that, take that doorf lines.

Hat remember to play your knights smartly, they won't do diddley if they get charged.

Also have you considered a wagon? If you buy the hurricanum kit you can assemble it to be able to use both interchangeably.

Recently started the Empire myself, started with the Battalion and here's my two cents;

- Halberdiers can do some damage to infantry, but I use them as fodder mostly.
- Handgunners / Crossbowmen should be assembled as crossbows, let your shiny cannon kill the heavy stuff, use the crossbows for ranged anti-infantry.
- Knights, use lances and shields, no matter what. It is the best loadout they have. They can take a lot of punishment and they have good killing potential.
- Cannon (Yay, the big guns!) is great for killing killy characters and enemy heavy units.

To get in the near future to expand the force (pick 'n' mix of the below);

- Archers, more ranged anti-infantry, but they can move and shoot.
- Steam Tank, people talk about it a lot because it's amazing + it's a good model, makes a good center-piece. Can't recommend it enough, really.
- Demi-gryphs, same as the Tank.
- Pistoliers are fun.
- More Halberdiers to get more wounds on the table.

Lots of great comments already. With Empire we have a super fun selection of heroes (witch hunters, warrior priests, engineers!)

We can also field lots of wizards, and that's fun.

Lastly Outriders are one of my favorite units to play with.

Wizards make everything great, and I like that they have access to all lores, I love my Lizardmen, don't get me wrong, but most of my wizards can only use Lore Of High Magic, which is a cool lore, or Heavens, which is fun.

I haven't heard many people talking about Outriders actually. Most of the time, I just hear about how amazing the Demigryphs are, and they are amazing. I might have to try out some of those, but I think I'd build pistoliers first, I just like the idea of uppity noble kids riding around and shooting stuff while being snooty punks

Yep fluff and models are the most important in my opinion followed by how fun they are to play with.

I like the Outriders because the models are fantastic (especially their cloaks) and the fluff around them is perfect for my army. (I like to have an army that's been out in the field for months, rather than sallying forth from the safety of town walls).

I'll give a quick run down of why outriders are fun in games:

The basic unit costs 105pts and will give 15x Str 4 armour piercing shots every turn at 24" hitting on 5+ usually.

You can use the vanguard move to move them forward just a single inch before the game starts, this ensures they will be in range the entire game even if you have the first turn.

They are fragile but because of their height you can place them behind a friendly unit and they will be able to shoot over them without penalty but will have a -2 when being targeted back.

Models are important to me, but I also like stuff that just seems fun to play with. I like to balance out fun to paint vs fun to play. Fluffwise for my Empire stuff, I'm doing them as a rag tag band of renegades being corrupted by chaos slowly. I can't wait to work on a Steam Tank. Going to give it a Khorn cannon of skulls, it's gonna be great fun to make.

Hmm, I do see them being good, with them being fast cav, I can only think of them as fast moving units to throw bullets down range, so I think I need to rethink that idea. But those are some great models. I'm thinking of using one of their cloaks on a General, could be fun to use.

Oh yes, I didn't mean you shouldn't value how fun a unit is to play with. In fact the opposite. It's really important to me that units are fun to play with (in fact more so than how effective they are).

Outriders are great because you can be really tactical about their deployment. They put down a lot of firepower and although they will be stationary most of the game (as they are move or fire), the fact that they are fast cavalry means once your opponent decides to hunt them down you can make his life very difficult!

If you're looking for a theme with some cool conversion work, I always thought a Church of Morr theme for an Empire army would be pretty awesome. You'd have lots of thematic options too: knights, archers, militia, wizards w/ Lore of Death, Priests, Witch Hunters, etc. Then give everyone a Grim Reaper style makeover with a dark color scheme and lots of skulls, scythes, etc.

Outriders are nice, but Pistoliers are also not to be forgotten; 12 inch vanguard move with 8 inch basic move means you can end up at 4-6 inch of your opponent, fire up 12 shots at BS2 (4 at BS3) and when he charges you, because you're 4-6 inch away, of course he'll charge you, you can just spin around and run off..

Then regroup and swift reform next turn, advance another 8 inch, fire, get charged etc etc etc...

Granted, you get less volume of fire, but they'll be in your opponent's face all game (or until destroyed) and screw up his charges

fallinq wrote:If you're looking for a theme with some cool conversion work, I always thought a Church of Morr theme for an Empire army would be pretty awesome. You'd have lots of thematic options too: knights, archers, militia, wizards w/ Lore of Death, Priests, Witch Hunters, etc. Then give everyone a Grim Reaper style makeover with a dark color scheme and lots of skulls, scythes, etc.

I'm not really a fan of the Church of Morr look personally, but I think it could be interesting, just not to my taste, still, thanks for that suggestion, I might bring it up to one of my friends who might want to do that.

Bottle wrote:Oh yes, I didn't mean you shouldn't value how fun a unit is to play with. In fact the opposite. It's really important to me that units are fun to play with (in fact more so than how effective they are).

Outriders are great because you can be really tactical about their deployment. They put down a lot of firepower and although they will be stationary most of the game (as they are move or fire), the fact that they are fast cavalry means once your opponent decides to hunt them down you can make his life very difficult!

The outriders really are a cool unit, I think I really need to get a box of those guys to at least paint up, I love the head sculpts, I'll give GW credit when it's due, they make some really good models.

Inquisitor Jex wrote:Outriders are nice, but Pistoliers are also not to be forgotten; 12 inch vanguard move with 8 inch basic move means you can end up at 4-6 inch of your opponent, fire up 12 shots at BS2 (4 at BS3) and when he charges you, because you're 4-6 inch away, of course he'll charge you, you can just spin around and run off..

Then regroup and swift reform next turn, advance another 8 inch, fire, get charged etc etc etc...

Granted, you get less volume of fire, but they'll be in your opponent's face all game (or until destroyed) and screw up his charges

I could see how that works out, might make more use of them if I choose to make a fully mounted army. I love the pistoliers, but the one thing that has bugged me is I wish so hard that they were a core choice, it would make me so happy, I know why they didn't do that, it would be kind of nuts, but still, wouldn't that be awesome? They might work for it anyways, because they aren't amazing shots if they use all of the bullets they have, oh well, it's a dream.