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Well, the title says it all - I'm going to face HE with my Empire tonight, and other than "lots of magic, ASF, S5 Elites" I have no idea what to expect. While I'm not much into tailoring, any tipps and tricks would be appreciated! I usually take a WP and a lvl 2 - will they be useless here? Should I bother with buffing my magic? What can my infantry do at all when charging or getting charged is a wash, and when they will lose ranks every round against all those HE breakers? What can my CAV do when there's a Prince with that repeater bow running circles around them?

Is the comment about "lots of magic, ASF, S5 elites" about your opponent's list specifically, or HE's in general?

What kind of list are you using (more or less)?

If the comment from before was specifically about your opponent's list, it sounds like he's using an Archmage and Swordmasters. He'll probably also have a block of Phoenix Guard or White Lions carrying the Banner of Sorcery, which gives him D3 Power dice per turn. Likely to have 2 Repeater Bolt Throwers. The following advice is going to assume this is the kind of list you'll be facing.

Chances are, this guy will be fielding 3 Mages, with 7-8 levels of Magic (so 10-12 PD and 6-7 DD). Don't think you can really overcome that by buffing your magic, so i would try to bulk up your Magic Defense a bit and concentrate on the other areas of the game (How many Dispel Scrolls do you have?).

The only HE units you absolutely don't want to be charged by are HE Cavalry or Chariots just because of their charge bonuses. Otherwise, it becomes a fairly moot point due to ASF. If your opponent has a block of spearelves, you actually would prefer being charged, since that means 5-7 less attacks from them (S3 isn't all that great, but 20 S3 attacks add up). Chances are, though, that he's going to run two minimum sized units of Archers which may cause some amount of annoyance, but aren't terribly difficult to take out.

Keep in mind High Elf infantry mostly have 5+ saves and no elf has better than T3. Handgunners and pistoliers will be your friends. They should be able to drop High Elves like flies. If there's a Prince/Noble running around with the magic bow, his armor save is going to be crap, so just chase him down with some pistoliers.

High Elves tend to lack SCR, so if they fail to break you on the charge, they're going to have a hard time prolonging combat. If you can take a charge with a full block of swordsmen and counter-charge with a detachment, you're looking at CR of 5 or 6 before anyone swings anything - that means they have to kill at least 6 to have the chance of breaking you generally. Your best bet is to play defensively using the bulk of your army, whittling down his more elite units with gunfire and cannonfire. Pistoliers can be used to mage hunt.

Good luck.

Use ranged free company units to effect, the added bonus of being a skirmisher unit means they wont get shot too badly, so take as many as possible, also, you wont beat them in magic, no matter how hard you try, so as Jin said, work on magic defence.
I would suggest a meteor unit like a griffin, but then you run the risk of getting bolt throwered to death (since they are too common among HE armies)

Knight units will work well, a nice strong unit, a good save to make sure ashooting isnt all that effective, and a great charge against T3 units.

Cannons arent really worth taking en masse, but a single cannon will be good against lone mages or if a dragon is present. (you can either shoot the dragon or scare him away from the cannon)
a hellblaster may also have the same effect.
Mortars are a worthwhile machine here, they will be able to cause a nice amount of damage to ranked units very quickly.

Oust-shooting them? not a good idea unless you plan on a pure shooting army with knight units to act as hammers.
allthough massed shooting may work, the elves have range on you, and a much better ability to shoot.

as far as structure goes:

Lords / hero's - 2 wizards may work well as scroll caddies to stop any spells you want gone quickly.
engineers are also worth taking, incase of machine crew being killed, and also for sniping lone mages.

Troops - free company archers, as many as possible.
2-3 units of knights for getting rid of elf blocks.
Handgunners will work well, but also spearmen blocks for units (let them charge you, as you get a nice bonus)

Special - a single cannon and 3 mortars may seem OTT, but they will work.

Rare - a hellblaster for large units / characters / dragons.

Never underestimate the power of the Empire Cannonball. It wrecks dragons, kills bolt throwers, and splats dragon princes pretty darn easily.

That being said, if your restricting yourself to all cav, and not going with anything like cannons, helblasters, or handgunners, you playing against the best empire strength... the massive amounts of models, and the variety in that list. Balance is the key with empire to fighting elite based armies. A good ole pope mobile, 1 cannon, and detachment or 2 is a great start.

Thank you all for the comments and advice. To make a long story short, my rather slow infantry was massacred by four RxB's and 20 archers. His single chariot, 25 Spears and 15 or so SM moved perhaps a grand total of 10", and that includes a flee reaction...

Having said that, I am not sour at all. In fact, I managed to charge his archers and one RxB eventually despite the relatively heavy firepower, as even so he did not wipe out any unit except one detachment completely. With hindsight, I was too intimidated and cautious and my deployment and moves should have been more aggressive. For example, I had to move my handgunners and volley gun to get them into range. The former were completely out of the equation for multiple turns as I had placed them into the illusionary protection of some heavy terrain, and the former didn't advance aggressively enough.

Jin wrote:Is the comment about "lots of magic, ASF, S5 elites" about your opponent's list specifically, or HE's in general?

It represented my knowledge about HE in general at the time of writing. I didn't know that they could form an excellent gunline, and I was too unfocused to inquire about the capabilities of his crossbows. I used:

GM w/ Sigil, Sword of Might
Captain w/ Rod of command, mount, barded, plate, shield, pistol, lance
WP w/ heavy armour, mount, barded, Aldred's casket, Sword of +1A
Lvl 2 w/ rod of power

Russbach River Patrol: 24 Halberdiers, 5 archers, 9 Swordsmen
Hornau Black Guards: 24 Swordsmen, 5 archers, 9 Swordsmen
Eichenbrun Milita: 22 Spearmen, 9 Halberdiers

Hornau Meisterschützen (10 HG w/ Hochland)
Brandstadt Fusiliers (10 HG w/ Hochland)

The Steuben Lancers (6 IC Knights, standard, warbanner)
Young Guns (5 Pistoliers)

Volley Gun

In the future, I'm going to drop one unit of HG in favour of crossbows, as the range was really hurting me. Anyone's invited to shoot them instead of my combat troops. As I said, the remnants did arrive on his baseline, if a little worse for wear, and had he not gotten a flank shot on my knights (running them off the board on turn 1!), things would have looked quite differently. Well, lesson learned! I think I simply presented him targets one at a time. Also, I was running out of space, not during deployment but when it came to maneouvering into a good position. With his combat units' flanks protected by terrain and the chariot behind, ready for a countercharge it was a very well defended position. Still, my volley gun could have been very useful here, and the same as above holds true here: targeting it would have meant less damage to my main blocks.

This position of his combat troops also meant they were pretty much boxed in. The game on that flank actually saw my block of swordsmen hold all three units (Chariot, Spears, SM) in check, as only one could have charged.

I'll also include a cannon or two. I'm not sure how much RxB fire they can take but then again, next time I'll be up against a Lizardmen army consisting of quote "around 30 models" in 2k...I'm pretty sure I'll need more than one cannon...

Cannons are godsends against elves
Take two and shoot them at the RXBs. str 10, D6 wounds will kill the bolt thrower in one shot if you hit it.

They can take a fair amount of fire, more if you deploy them in the forest.

The kind of army you describe is kind of pointless.
Take one scroll caddy, 2x priests, and 1 arch lector (with or without the popemobile)
Then just load up on ranked units and run him down without effort while sniping the bolt throwers with your cannons. Its a stupid list to have to play against.

Egh. That's a lot of RBTs he brought in. Didn't realize he'd be going that shooty. 24 S4 -2Sv shots a turn can really wreck Empire.

What'd he have magic-wise? A Lvl 4 and 2 lvl2's?

If you go up against this HE player again, definitely take a cannon and a mortar in favor of some of those blocks of infantry. They'll help you to considerably mitigate the threat of the RBTs.

Re: Lizardmen - sounds like you're going up a Stego-spam army. Better break out the fear-negating items. And cannons. So many more cannons.

Dunno, he said something to the effect that he expected many cannon and knights. Make of that what you want...anyways, I've just ordered more cannon. I might even be able to hit a fully ranked up unit once in a blue moon - these things seem awfully inaccurate!

cypher, the Archlector looks good but I'm currently in love with my Captain models. The fact that he shot one Swordmaster in the head with his pistol had a negligible effect on the game and its outcome but still is one of those glorious moments. It was just too funny, us having this stand-off on the right flank where whoever moved first would lose, and my captain firing into the Elves! Also, the Grandmaster is pretty badass as far as Empire characters go. Having an ItP unit with decent mobility and offensive power, excellent armour and perhaps some MR (I might give them the standard of arcane warding or the cloth of Magnus) is quite nice I find. Although I might field two units of regular knights in their stead to give me some more options; in that case the lector might be just what I want and need.

Jin, I didn't expect this either. I had read up on HE here and on various other fora but that isn't half as valuable as actually playing against them. I still think I could have punched through his archers, wheeled and rolled up the RXB battery with some better positioning at the start, and then his few combat troops would have been surrounded.

Magic wise he had three level 2's. He also had a general with some kind of bound spell that works like another corssbow...or was it 2d6 damage? Can't remember exactly.

Hey, I'm suddenly in America...?!?