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Last night we tried out the new rules for the Empire.  I took a 2250 list that I had made with ogres in mind, and re-costed it to see what happened.  The identical list came up 86 points cheaper, so I added a Master Engineer, and my opponent let me have 4 more points so I could take pigeon bombs.

I had a general on warhorse with holy relic & sword of sigismund (full plate & shield, naturally) in a unit of 30 swordsmen with full cmd, detachments of 5 handgunners and 10 free company.  Lvl 2 light wizard in a unit of 24 spears with shields & full cmd, detachments of 5 handgunners and 8 free company.  Helblaster (attached Master Engineer with pigeon bombs) & Steam Tank. One captain on pegasus, full plate, shield, sword of power.  6 inner circle White Wolfs, full cmd & war banner, 6 knights panther, full cmd, 6 knights Blazing Sun, full cmd, and 6 pistoliers, musician, outrider with repeater pistol.

I faced a Tomb King army led by Khalida.  2 Scorpions, one tomb swarm (4 bases), 4 carrion, a screaming skull catapult (upgraded to cause panic), 3 Ushabti, 5 chariots, 3 units of 10 archers, 3 liche priests (one heirophant).

TK won both table sides & first turn.  He moved his archers up, managed to use his carrion to block line of sight to most of my units, and therefore had to put most of his archer fire on the steam tank.  Thanks to poison, smiting, and my bad rolls, he managed to put three wounds on the Stank before my first turn!

I attempted to generate 3 steam points, rolled a 5... no steam points, and another wound!  Suddenly I had a 300 pt unit whose effectiveness was seriously compromised.  No charges, the knights, pegasus, & pistoliers headed for his flanks.  He totally shut down my magic phase (I had Burning Gaze and the Flare, and only got off one flare the entire game, when he rolled double ones on a dispell).  The Helblaster only did 2 wounds on the carrion (long range & skirmish), the pigeon bomb exploded somewhere over the battlefield, and my handgunners all missed. 

The carrion charged the Helblaster.  I begged him not to, since I wanted the Engineer to die either from a pigeon or from a Helblaster misfire, but he was too worried and came in anyway... so I stood & shot with the pigeon.  We couldn't decide whether that was legal, but the description says it is a missle weapon, so...  Anyway, the carrion broke the unit and flew them down, pursuing off the table.  (He then forgot about them for two turns, which was nice.)  The swarm came up and charged the Wolves, a scorpion came up and charged my general's free company, and the Ushabti charged the pistoliers, who stood & shot and did 4 wounds.

After that, though, it was just a matter of me chewing through his army.  The 1+ AS of the knights kept them safe from the shooting & swarms, and combat res crumbled the swarms, scorpions, and eventually the carrion when they too charged a ranked unit.  The pistoliers held against the Ushabti on snake eyes, and the pegasus joined that combat.  The Panthers hit his chariots in the flank and they died to CR.  My knights and pegasus got to his lines, and did terrible things to the archers.  Khalida charged into my Blazing Suns using Urgency, and then crumbled after two turns.  The Steam tank never did a thing- I generated 2 steam points, and used them to fire the cannon, but overshot both times. 

 

I can't comment on some things- obviously I didn't take an archlector or a rocket battery. Knights are the same cost & effectiveness, and the state troops are a bit cheaper- we should be able to bump up the numbers on the detachments with the points saved, or buy another magic item or two.

The Steam Tank: maybe it is immune to poison & we just missed that part. In spite of the horrible showing in this game, I think the new rules are an improvement, and I just needed to roll fewer 1's when making my saves. (My knights had no trouble saving against poison all game.) I will keep it in my list for now, and keep testing it.

The Helblaster has truly been castrated. It has the potential of doing as few as 6 shots per turn (heck, it has the potential of doing zero shots per turn!) with all the range, cover, skirmish, and other shooting modifiers. Attaching a master engineer to up the ballistic skill is just asking to lose a hero, since it has three chances to misfire every time you shoot it, and two chances to blow up on every misfire.
A unit of three leadbelchers is a better value, they are more maneuverable, can stand-and-shoot, don't suck in close combat, and a misfire likely won't wreck the units effectiveness for that turn.

The pigeon bombs scared my opponent white, once he realized that there are no to-hit penalties and I could target his Heirophant as long as I had line-of-sight. That was the real reason he sent the carrion after the Helblaster- to get rid of the pigeon bombs!

Now that White Wolves have great weapons instead of cavalry hammers, it is all-important that they get the charge.  They are slightly less effective in continuing rounds of combat, since they now strike last; but they weren't as bad as I had feared, as the 2+ AS is just as good as always.

I miss the fusillade rule.  A lot.  Pistoliers now should avoid close combat until they can launch a supporting flank or rear charge.

That was an interesting TK list to say the least.
I really am sad they castrated the hell blaster it wasn't nearly as overpowered as one would think from seeing it on paper. Oh well at least with cheaper state troops i can expect to see a human horde someday soon. What kind of T and W does the Stank have now anyways?

He's brand new to Fantasy, and I just sold him my unused, barely assembled Tomb Kings army box that had been sitting in my closet for years, and a couple of other vets have more or less donated things to him since no one around here ever got into the Egypt thing. He's been trying to make that list work for three or four games, and actually won twice, against Lizardmen and against Orcs & Goblins- but both of those games were also against newer players. The vets have been crushing him, and telling him to get some solid infantry and maybe a bone giant in there.

Steam Tank stats: S6, T6, W10, 1+ AS.

The Steam Tank stats make me sad...

I think they wrecked the Helblaster so veterans would want to buy the Rocket Battery. I know that if the volley gun still worked as in days of yore, I would not be tempted by a scattering weapon. At least the Helblaster reliably hits the unit you aim at.

A new WHFB report?!

Interesting stuff, thanks for the quick report. I also thought it was odd that the stank was getting poisoned, but who can say I guess ... Nice work grinding the undead up, I look forward to hearing about your further Empire experiments.

- Boss Salvage

Tonight: mostly the same army vs Ogre Kingdoms! I am thinking about swapping the Helblaster for the rocket launcher and dropping the pigeon bombs.

Note: we discovered that the Steam Tank is not affected by poison. The relevant rule is the 'poison' rule (p.94), not the 'war machine' rule.