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How would you tier out the WFB armies?

Top tier:
High Elves
Lizardmen
MSU Ogres
Brettonian (minimum men at arms)
VCs
Tomb kings

Second tier:
Shooty death kill dwarves
Wood elves (great at point denial but can struggle to kill stuff)
Empire
Hordes of chaos

Third tier
Beasts of chaos
Orcs and Goblins
Dark elves


The third tier armies need to have 'tricks' or be in the hands of a very good general to consistently win and win well vs a range of armies- HOWEVER they are probably the best armies to start with as they teach newbies how to play with skill, not just point and click.

u forgot Skaven

I'll have to disagree with WG a bit here:

Top
VCs - The new book gives great character options, magic and a choice for excellent hammer/point denial units such as black knigh bunkers with the reg banner, or 10 wraiths. Very tough army.
Bretts - The All Knight Army and especially the RAF is still very nasty list barring psychology problems now and then.
Empire - Popemobile and 1 or 2 tanks make a very solid base to form an army. Definetly top tier if these are around.
HoC - Dragon + golden eye + hellcannon = ugh. All knight + hellcannon may work well too, altough the former is the real offender/top tier.
Lizardmen - Mainly skirmisher with 2nd gen frog or combat oldblood are both very good lists. Lots of good options to complement the skink horde.
Wood Elves - 2 Trees + bsb makes a hard nut to crack, altough that's not the only viable option. Generally excellent at points denial.
Chaos Dwarfs - 2 Earthshakers + full bolter entourage + fire/metal magic makes a pretty nasty list. Add to it with ld10 20-40 points fodderunits and well...
Dwarfs - Anvil + sensible defensive choices makes a hard army in my opinion (if you can wield unerrated Thorek for some reason, the list gets even better).
High Elves - Star Dragon or Teclis makes a neat base for the army.

2nd
MSU Ogres - Psychology and lack of static res makes this army a bit unreliable now and then, but the big guys have their pros too.
Skaven - 7th edition nerfed these guys a lot (ratlings die easier, units take lots more panic tests etc), but the heavy magic + shooty is still pretty dangerous list for example.
Tomb Kings - A very balanced list overall. Nothing really broken.

3rd
Beasts of Chaos - No rank bonus from forming up in many situations + poor psychology makes this not-so-good army.
Dark Elves - A dated list with many poor options.
Orcs and Goblins - Altough the greenskin can wield loads of nice stuff, the animosity really pushes this to the low tier.

It has to be said that if many armies don't wield the couple broken/excellent options all the time, the lists would shuffle around tiers a lot (such as empire choosing something else than popemobile to lead, welfs skipping treemen etc.).

I'd say non decked out SAD skaven are second tier.

Didn't put in daemons as they are about to be rereleased.

@Chaoslord: you mention an RAF in the Bretts blurb. I'm not up on WFB terminology yet, what's that mean?

Interesting, I usually see things tiered out in 4 tiers, at least for 40k. There also seems to be quite a bit in the top tier. Does that mean that Fantasy is better balanced between armies than 40k?

The latest edition of Fantasy is pretty recent, isn't it? Which of the top/bottom armies are in line for a new armybook soon (and presumably will be fixed somewhat)?

I do like the breakdown of what puts each army in the tier it's in.

Also, is Dogs of War a viable army by itself?

Let me start off by saying I'm not a huge fantasy player, but I might be able to lend a hand.

The armies do tend to be a bit more balanced as is the game system itself. I've heard many good things about the current edition of Fantasy and the little bit that I've dealt with it it's been solid.

As far as the low tier armies getting redone I believe Dark Elves are just around the corner. Orcs and Gobbos was done not too long ago and so was Beastmen so they probably won't get much love for awhile.

Dogs of War by themselves I don't think has ever been very effective and it's expensive $$$ wise.

Mnemoch wrote:@Chaoslord: you mention an RAF in the Bretts blurb. I'm not up on WFB terminology yet, what's that mean?

Interesting, I usually see things tiered out in 4 tiers, at least for 40k. There also seems to be quite a bit in the top tier. Does that mean that Fantasy is better balanced between armies than 40k?

The latest edition of Fantasy is pretty recent, isn't it? Which of the top/bottom armies are in line for a new armybook soon (and presumably will be fixed somewhat)?

I do like the breakdown of what puts each army in the tier it's in.

Also, is Dogs of War a viable army by itself?

The RAF (as in "Royal Air Force") means an army which has multiple units (3-4 usually) of pegasus knights. They make a very fast and hitty force who can take slower opponents out piecemeal. Regarding which armybooks will get an upgrade soon or somesuch, the dark elves are in line next after the daemons and presumably they'll get powerboost. After that it's still in the air. As for the dogs of war, they are playable but powergamingwise they are on the bottom tier. Good analogy would be empire without the broken/great stuff altough I'm sure the DoW-players will disagree.

At the Australasian 'Masters' tournament 2007 where the top tourney players in Oz and NZ are invited and then their trip paid for by sponsors (so they invariably turn up) the winner was a DOW player...

How about DoW units in other armies? Is it worth giving up a rare choice for them? Something like DoW cavalry for a dwarf army?

DoW units are no longer allowed for the USGT's this season.

Generally the most used (or abused) DoW unit was the Cannon they let you take. Most people would bitch about it incessantly if you took one. Generally I found that if you used DoW to fill an actual hole in your list, people complained. I even got admonished by people for wanting to take two units of DoW Heavy Cav for my Dwarf army.

DoW tends to be a lot of hit or miss. If you've ever played L5R the card game, way back in the day during the Yoritomo's Alliance, DoW were a lot like that. A lot of has beens, never will bes, and wanna bees... but... they all do something. Maybe not something useful, but something.

And... they're mercenaries. I never did understand why someone would complain about a general hiring mercenaries. It's a very gauche thing to do in battle. And, they do tend to be on the pricey side. Aside to Voodoo Boyz: These whiners are probably the same people who kit out 800 points on their general and don't bat an eyelash... but heaven forbid you bring along Bronzino and his Galloper Gun.

Anyway, there are two sets of DOW... the generic DOW units, and the Regiments of Reknown. Except for 4 specific Regiments of Renown, the generic DOW units are better. From my experience with DoW, and the Regiments of Renown in particular, you have to be willing to think outside the box... sometimes way outside the box for DoW to win. Why? You lack a lot of magic attack, and magic items access the other armys have.

You can do decent magic defense because dispell scrolls are a generic item; however, your characters really lack any sort of ward save, and decent combat magic equipment. Worse, if your paymaster dies, your entire army takes a panic test.

Anyway, long story short, I'd put DoW as a tier 3 army. They can win... and they have a lot of special units that have crazy, unpredictable effects on the battle field, but the are not an easy army to start with.

The thing about fantasy is that there are *some* broken builds out there, but in general the armies are a lot more evenly matched than the lists in 40k. A good general can win with just about any list and a bad general can lose even if running the RAF. I agree with the tier system above but keep in mind that the distance between the top tier and the bottom tier is a lot smaller than it is in 40k.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Thats pretty darn true, depending on what your opponent brings, (such as tri falcons) it can be gameover right after deployment...

@Ozymandias
Funny that you should say that there's fewer top and bottom tier than in 40k, since half or more of the fantasy armies have been put in the top tier (by the two people who've posted their opinions, anyways).

Mnemoch wrote:@Ozymandias
Funny that you should say that there's fewer top and bottom tier than in 40k, since half or more of the fantasy armies have been put in the top tier (by the two people who've posted their opinions, anyways).

It IS neat knowing that most armies can compete.

Well, yah. If you want a top teir 40k list theres like eight to use? And a couple are from the same darn codexes.....

Though they do have cool names. Like nidzilla and flynig circus.

Yup, the playing field in whfb is indeed pretty level. Even if you take hard lists, there's still lots of options. Also, one can level the playing field even more with some simple additional composition rules if that's deemed necessary.

Mnemoch wrote:@Ozymandias
Funny that you should say that there's fewer top and bottom tier than in 40k, since half or more of the fantasy armies have been put in the top tier (by the two people who've posted their opinions, anyways).

That's not what I said. I said that the distance between the top and bottom tiers is closer than it is in 40k.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

You're quite right, I must have misread.

Although perhaps top tier should be redefined as the top half with so many lists making it into top tier.

So these are specific army builds?

I wonder if we can get an article going on this thing, where
everyone agrees on the tiers. So far we have:

Chaoslord:

VCs - The new book gives great character options, magic and a choice for excellent hammer/point denial units such as black knigh bunkers with the reg banner, or 10 wraiths. Very tough army.
Bretts - The All Knight Army and especially the RAF is still very nasty list barring psychology problems now and then.
Empire - Popemobile and 1 or 2 tanks make a very solid base to form an army. Definetly top tier if these are around.
HoC - Dragon + golden eye + hellcannon = ugh. All knight + hellcannon may work well too, altough the former is the real offender/top tier.
Lizardmen - Mainly skirmisher with 2nd gen frog or combat oldblood are both very good lists. Lots of good options to complement the skink horde.
Wood Elves - 2 Trees + bsb makes a hard nut to crack, altough that's not the only viable option. Generally excellent at points denial.
Chaos Dwarfs - 2 Earthshakers + full bolter entourage + fire/metal magic makes a pretty nasty list. Add to it with ld10 20-40 points fodderunits and well...
Dwarfs - Anvil + sensible defensive choices makes a hard army in my opinion (if you can wield unerrated Thorek for some reason, the list gets even better).
High Elves - Star Dragon or Teclis makes a neat base for the army.

2nd
MSU Ogres - Psychology and lack of static res makes this army a bit unreliable now and then, but the big guys have their pros too.
Skaven - 7th edition nerfed these guys a lot (ratlings die easier, units take lots more panic tests etc), but the heavy magic + shooty is still pretty dangerous list for example.
Tomb Kings - A very balanced list overall. Nothing really broken.

3rd
Beasts of Chaos - No rank bonus from forming up in many situations + poor psychology makes this not-so-good army.
Dark Elves - A dated list with many poor options.
Orcs and Goblins - Altough the greenskin can wield loads of nice stuff, the animosity really pushes this to the low tier.

It has to be said that if many armies don't wield the couple broken/excellent options all the time, the lists would shuffle around tiers a lot (such as empire choosing something else than popemobile to lead, welfs skipping treemen etc.).

vs. WG:

Top tier:
High Elves
Lizardmen
MSU Ogres
Brettonian (minimum men at arms)
VCs
Tomb kings

Second tier:
Shooty death kill dwarves
Wood elves (great at point denial but can struggle to kill stuff)
Empire
Hordes of chaos

Third tier
Beasts of chaos
Orcs and Goblins
Dark elves

You two seem to disagree (slightly) on Wood Elves,
Hordes of Chaos, and Tomb Kings.

i put my ideas in order of best to worst army as well as tiers. all things equal, i would expect these top 6 armies to be contenders in any tournament. the second tier armys are likely to win 2 out of 3 games and the bottom tier army's need exceptional players to win a tournament.

Top tier:
Brettonian (RAF)
High Elves
Vampire Counts
Lizardmen
skaven (SAD) still strong even with having to hide RG's
Wood elves (treemen dryad lists)

Second tier:
MSU Ogres
Empire (pope-mobile gun lines)
Hordes of chaos (slaanesh or tzeench magic heavy)
dwarves
Tomb kings

Third tier
Dog of War
Beasts of chaos
Orcs and Goblins
Dark elves

Where would you place non-specialist type armies?

So for example, Asrai Wood Elf, Empire heavy cav, etc.

malfred wrote:Where would you place non-specialist type armies?

So for example, Asrai Wood Elf, Empire heavy cav, etc.

i was just lumping them all together by army books.
to me its much more important to have access to a "cheesey build" army then it is to have a "balanced army". for example Skaven can build a non SAD army and get good marks in composition and still play somewhat competitively but dark elves cant really build a tooled up army for a non comp tournament.

I'm sure there will be the typical cries of "use better tactics" or "a good general can win with any army" but like i said, all things equal a RAF beats an O&G army 9 out of 10 times, becasue 1 book allows you to tool up better then the other.But like many dakka posters, I'm probably just talking out my ass.

But that's why you're here!