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Hello all,

Well I have gone and done it. I bought the Empire book and looking over it. I used to play Fantasy back in the day. My store, that I go to, was mainly a 40k store. Now, they are moving to fantasy and I am picking up the game. Here is my history


Played Fantasy when,

Playing with cards was best part of the turn phase.... TOTAL POWER BABY
My general was named Nagash
Brits was invented
where I could take the book of Ashur and give my necromancer Banish undead or even pleague



I want to build a whole calv army but not those ENGLISH BIT DOGS of THAT ARTHUR KING

I was wanting to use Empire. I sat down to make my aryad by god has things change. Can I get some help. I want about 2000 to 25000

Thank you

First off, NOOOOOO STAY AWAY FROM THE LIGHT!!!!

Im not much help as I know nothing about fantasy, except from what Mark of Chaos taught me, not a bad campaign.

I say, follow your heart until someone else corrects me.

Both the Empire and Dark Elves can do an all-cavalry army, this much I know. Eactly how effective their all-cavarly lists are, I cannot tell you. Brettonians are probably the king of the all-cavalry army, because that is their sctick.

Skaven don't even have cavalry.

The Lizardmen can... for a certain definition of 'all cavalry.' If you don't mind some skirmishing skinks for your core, you can Cold One Cavalry and charcters mounted on monsters for your striking power.

Beyond that I'd just be guessing.

Chaos can do all cavalry as well- marauder horsemen core (light cavalry) and chaos knight specials (the heaviest of heavy cavalry).

I would surmise that Brettonia, and perhaps High Elves and Wood Elves, are the only viable Cavalry army in the game. WoC have incredibly hard hitting cavalry, and with the Marauder horsemen, could also be a decent force.

Empire's Cav doesnt have the stat's or attacks to back up their point cost imo. Empire Cav is a support role. They can be a decent hammer with a hero, but I doubt they could handle being the only frontline troop option. Work them into an empire gun/infantry line, and they will do great. but if they are all you bring, I would have a hard time believing they could win.

Not wanting to play brettonian models doesnt have to stop you playing a great cav army. Use their rules with empire models...and you now have an empire themed cav force!

Lizardmen can actually go proper all-cav. Kroq-gar makes saurus cav core IRRC.

1 unit of Saurus Cav, so you'd still need some skinks.

I think the best all calvary army would be WOC, maurader calvary and chaos knights, also hounds are kinda calvary.

HE cant do an all cavalry, you need two units of archers.

*Writes down notes*

*Waits for someone to say something about magic*

Little preamble: Empire and Orcs & Goblins are the most flexible and multifaceted armies in the game. They really allow you to play in all phases (movement, magic, shooting, combat), and are two of the best armies to learn the game with. That said, they are often considered two of the weaker armies, as their LD is not outstanding, and are subject to Psychology. Vampires and Daemons are often much easier to start with, as they’re Immune to Psychology, but you miss out on many of the interesting tactics (like fleeing from charges) and aspect that make Warhammer Fantasy most different from 40k.

You can do a cavalry-centric Empire army. Their knights are not super powerful compared to other knights, but are comparatively inexpensive. They can also be given a great save by being Inner Circle, and their attacks can be made more reliable by attaching a Warrior Priest, who gives them Hatred (re-roll to hit in the first round of combat; which is always the critical one when a unit of knights charges).

Also thanks to the low cost of the knights, and the flexibility of the Empire list, you can support your cavalry with ranked infantry blocks, shooting, war machines, and magic. Or vice-versa. The one army to steer away from (unless your opponents all use nasty Daemons, Vampire and Dark Elf armies) is the nick-named “Order of the Holy Cannonball”, an Empire army comprised principally of knights and cannons, perhaps with a steam tank or two. Those are often regarded as stinky cheese if your opponents field softer, fluffier armies. But if they’re stinky cheese-mongers themselves, it’s really the easiest way for Empire to compete, and paints up pretty darn quick.

O&G can do all Cavalry, with the added bonus of Chariots too (if those are your cup of tea). They can have the most chariots next to a Tomb King army (Having chariot options for Characters, Special, and Rare slots), have two core cavalry units (albeit WS2), can potentially completely ignore difficult terrain (Spider Riders), etc.

Only one major problem with an O&G all cavalry list: Any unit of Cavalry with five-or-more models has a one-in-six chance of doing nothing each turn of the game. While you can take characters to negate this, they range from "Bought a lord that changes odds to 1-in-36 chance" Azhag to "Take D6 S5 hits on the unit" Black Orcs.

Another side-problem is cost: While Spider and Wolf Rider cavalry is pretty "cheap" ($35USD / 10), the Boar Boyz are expensive costing an easy $45 for 5, without command. While not as bad as some army's cavalry can be, that still isn't cheap.

1 unit of Saurus Cav, so you'd still need some skinks.

Correct me if im wrong, but he makes ALL units of saurus cav. core choices
Making it possible for a heavy hitting cav. army, with terradons for flank and machine support.
Only problem is that saurus cav and points heavy, and you wont have alot of magic, so you need to rely on charging in early on.

If you're interested in going with magic, then your only real option for all-cav AND magic heavy seems to be Warriors of Chaos.

Empire, as people have said, don't really have that great of cav, and putting your wizards on the front line in cav regiments would be dangerous.

Lizardmen casters are either skinks or Slaan. Slaan go in infantry blocks, so there goes all cav.

Dark Elves could go all cav with dark rider core and cold one knight specials, but you face the same problem with empire - fragile sorceresses on the front lines. You could alternatively have them flying about on pegasi, but that's up to you.

Bretonnians don't really have that strong of magic.

WoC you can tool out sorcerers to be pretty decent fighters. They all come with chaos armour standard and can all buy magical armour. One can buy an enchanted shield, and any sorcerer on a barded steed gets a 2+ save. They can even take magic weapons, too. Their magic phase can actually be very friendly by using the Infernal Puppet to make your own miscasts less deadly.

JD21290 wrote:Correct me if im wrong, but he makes ALL units of saurus cav. core choices
Making it possible for a heavy hitting cav. army, with terradons for flank and machine support.

Correction: You're wrong. Kroq-Gar allows you to take 1 unit of Saurus Cavalry as a Core choice. You still need to take some additional, non-cavalry Core choices.

In my experience, WoC all-cavalry can do pretty well. Marauder Horsemen are cheap enough to put down a decent amount of minis on the table, too.

Brets are more french than anglo, except for the whole King Arthur thing. And they are one of two armys that can be effective without any infantry whatsoever. The other being chaos.
Empire knights need shooting back up. And infantry is really the better way to go in tactical fantasy, cavalry has no static CR. They have to kill things to win.

I don't ussually stray into the dark realms of WHFB threads...but that title caught my attention...

*point*

!!!TRAITOR!!!

Best all cavlary army in fantasy would be bretonions as they are built around cavlary and knights as they're only two things. On the other hand their army book is quite old and rules might not be as good as newer updated army books.

Spellbound wrote:Lizardmen casters are either skinks or Slaan. Slaan go in infantry blocks, so there goes all cav.

Define 'cavalry.' One could put a skink priest on a stegadon, and be 'close enough for government work.'

Empire can put together an extremely competitive all cavalry army. You just have to understand how to play them well. Light cavalry is just as important as heavy cavalry, and for every 3 units of HC you need one unit of Light Cavalry as a pretty generic rule, and you should always round up.

Most players who use a heavy cavalry army will also bring along some galloper guns or a static cannon or 2.

HiveFleet wrote:Not wanting to play brettonian models doesnt have to stop you playing a great cav army. Use their rules with empire models...and you now have an empire themed cav force!

I second this with all my heart. Bretonnians are an absolutely dashing army to play, but trying to learn to paint them is to end up with many sloppily painted or over-primed white models thrown across the room. I eventually got it down after ruining an entire regiment of horses, so I bought some empire cavalry to represent my knights errant. They look awesome, are easier to visualize as not being KotR, and ARE SO EASY TO PAINT.

I like to say to anyone who has a problem with it that in my army, you have to "earn" your colours; hence the metallic barding on my KE!

I'm not sure about WoC, but I think either them or Brets would lack any shooting at all in an all cavalry army. I think Empire would be the best all cavalry army that could have everything with knights of the realm for basic hand to hand, pistoliers for long range, and I think they can mount their wizards. Plus they have outriders (whatever they do).

ImperialTard wrote:

HiveFleet wrote:Not wanting to play brettonian models doesnt have to stop you playing a great cav army. Use their rules with empire models...and you now have an empire themed cav force!

I second this with all my heart. Bretonnians are an absolutely dashing army to play, but trying to learn to paint them is to end up with many sloppily painted or over-primed white models thrown across the room. I eventually got it down after ruining an entire regiment of horses, so I bought some empire cavalry to represent my knights errant. They look awesome, are easier to visualize as not being KotR, and ARE SO EASY TO PAINT.

I like to say to anyone who has a problem with it that in my army, you have to "earn" your colours; hence the metallic barding on my KE!

I found the advice for painting horses in the GW website invaluable for painting my Brettonians. Mine don't look as good as theirs, but then whose do?

I stick to brown horses. I go with some shade of brown, followed by a couple coats of brown ink (if you still have any). The ink gives them a nice shadowy look in the recesses.

ZF-

The really fun part about painting horses is that some colors look best when building up multiple layers (dark to light) with a glaze, and others look best with a basecoat - wash - drybrush.

I would advise either getting the horse-painting article from the GW website, or find cheap horse minis somewhere (even plastic toy horses would work) and expirement.

If you're willing to broaden your definition of cavalry to include Steam tanks (and be cheesy enough to take 2 of them) and the arch-lector on his popemobile (more cheese, especially in combination with the above), you can make a functional all-cav army. Use your special choices on units of 5 pistoliers with outrider and repeater pistol (for a total of 8 shots per troop), and take a warrior priest and a couple wizards. Your basic problem here is going to be static combat res, since you're ALWAYS going to be outnumbered. Power your steam tanks and popemobile toward the largest concentrations of enemy troops, and once they are well and truly tar-pitted, hammer them from all directions with vanilla units of knights.

This could be an incredibly speedy, flexible list, with a fair degree of staying power (3 unbreakable units plus a bound spell that makes another unit unbreakable), but if your enemy has a lot of shooting (thorek gunline, fex) or against ITP armies like daemons and counts that can't ever break from combat, you're really going to struggle.

I like the <<play a "Bretonnia" Empire army>> idea. The Bretonnia rules are probably the most characterful for a all cav army as the lance is pretty sweet. And if you really do want shooting, the Bret fast cav have bows. Their rules are still pretty solid, the only nerf they got was their questing knights from when 7th ed weakened mounted GWs. lol, your "Empire" lord/noble/general could be a tilean who prides himself on his horses, or a Empire border noble who fights and trades with Bretonnians all the time... a disgraced bret who fled bretonia to the empire... Personnally I don't like the Bretonnia hero models so mine are a smattering of vampires and empire models

I'm with those who want to play counts as Bretonnia, but if that's not your kind of thing, I'm pretty sure Empire can run a pretty good All-Cav list.

Warrior Priests are big in those types of lists, BTW.