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Knigths are still worth their pointcost, althou as other people have mentioned. They must be used more smartly in this eddition, I find 20 Empire knigths charnging headlong into combat still kills of hordes pretty fast. As long as they are supported by footsloogers that is.

HawaiiMatt wrote:Yeah, and 10 wide with a ton deep is 30 attacks at 3/6 hit, 4/6 wound, and 1/6 fail the armor. That's .56 kills per 10 attacks.

Oh, ten attacks per rank. I thought you were saying 10 attacks total, so 2 ranks, 5 wide.

Fair enough.

Why wouldn't you go horde on the halberds?

Because you're facing a superior opponent and are looking to minimise your frontage to increase your staying time in the fight. Or because you haven't got 30 halberdiers left. Or because you need reduced frontage to ensure you keep steadfast.

It's situational.

Imperial Halberdiers are S4, so they wound Imperial Knights 2/3 of the time.

Anyways, comparing them in a straight fight against Knights is a tad besides the point. Of course you could play a Civil War or mirror match but that's rare in my neck of the woods. It's better to compare both units against several likely opponents and then add other variables (eg. magic, flanks).

Swordmasters for example are a lot more lethal than most Knights. Nevertheless, you just don't have the option to take one or the other, so isn't this point moot? Swordmasters will rip through the same points spent on State Troops or Greatswords or Flagellants in a straight up fight. I don't see how that makes Knights any worse than those units. Almost all units have a hard counter.

Empire knights (and some Brets) ARE core, and they can be designed and used to win combats. In many cases, this does involve the support of infantry, magic boosts, or a cannonball to the face to soften up the opposition but again, this holds true for all Empire units, and it holds true for a great number of other factions' units too.

At the end of the day, small and big units of knights give me options I wouldn't have otherwise. I don't use them all the time but I'm not sure we disagree fundamentally.

These days, I'm not so concerned about monsters or steadfast blocks. I'm more concerned with the plethora of "I ignore AS", metal or a lot of other spells, Fellblades, many warmachines, killing blows left, right and centre...but then again, Warhammer is a dangerous place for an infantry block, too.

Yeah us Bret players kinda have to make do with knights

Though we have all the tools to make them good in the lance formation and a plethora of magic items that buff their charge damage.

Not sure with empire, haven't played them since 6th ed

Lord Solar Plexus wrote:Imperial Halberdiers are S4, so they wound Imperial Knights 2/3 of the time.

Umm, yeah. All our calculations showed that. I even split it out into to hit, to wound and everything, and showed the 4/6 of rolls wounding. Don't know what you mean there.

Swordmasters for example are a lot more lethal than most Knights. Nevertheless, you just don't have the option to take one or the other, so isn't this point moot? Swordmasters will rip through the same points spent on State Troops or Greatswords or Flagellants in a straight up fight. I don't see how that makes Knights any worse than those units. Almost all units have a hard counter.

Well yeah, point for point swordmasters mow through just about anything. They're a glasshammer, whose crazy damage potential is offset by the high price you pay for a T3, low armour model. Showing they mow through one or more units says little about the target, and everything about why you don't take swordmasters on in melee.

Empire knights (and some Brets) ARE core, and they can be designed and used to win combats.

Yes, but building a unit of knights to do that will cost a lot more than building an equivalently deadly unit of good quality infantry. This is because every knight you invest in comes with very high survivability and high mobility, whereas you aren't paying that premium for good quality footslogging troops.

At the end of the day, small and big units of knights give me options I wouldn't have otherwise. I don't use them all the time but I'm not sure we disagree fundamentally.

Knights provide a great range of options, threatening to flank enemy units, or attack warmachines, they can be used very effectively and well worth the cost to put them on the board. I'm just saying they can't be used to smash straight into the front of the enemy and expect to route them.

You're right that the Empire in general doesn't really have troops that can do that in one turn, though I'd argue Greatswords and Flagellants are much better at it than Knights, requiring less of an investment in points to be able to reliably beat an average enemy unit in a turn or two. They simply pack more expected kills per point invested.

But yeah, I really don't think we're disagreeing. It's just I'm emphasising that knights are not that good at attacking the enemy front on but are still very useful in other roles, whereas you're emphasising the point that they can still make front on attacks. We're both right, it's just different ways of looking at the same situation.

...but then again, Warhammer is a dangerous place for an infantry block, too.

Yep, but then warhammer is a straight up dangerous place for every unit. The only real answer to stop the enemy unleashing the perfect attack on your troops is to make sure you've killed everything he's got before he gets the chance to do it to you. Which, given it's what he's trying to do to you, is easier said that done

sebster wrote:
Umm, yeah. All our calculations showed that. I even split it out into to hit, to wound and everything, and showed the 4/6 of rolls wounding. Don't know what you mean there.

Jeez sebster, isn't that obvious? I was correcting a grave error that only existed in my tired head and so making a fool of me! Pre-senile dementia if you like.

I'm probably just nitpicking. I think that a priori infantry doesn't win any more frontal assaults than knights. Whether Halberdiers or Marauders or Stormvermin can break an opposing unit entirely depends on what they are attacking and how many models both of them start with. Without further qualifiers, the knights' alleged inability to break someone on the charge is nothing special or inherent to cavalry only.

Flagellants and Greatswords cost around the same as knights (300 - 330 points for 30, ~280-300 points for 10 knights and a banner). You probably want to add a WP to either knights or GS. Flagellants are cool but suffer from the same problem as knights, ie. the lack of a weapon bonus in round 2+.

It's a bit moot to compare units 1:1 though. I know you've gotta start somewhere but there's so many variables involved. My Flaggies did kill an HPA in one round last game - but then again, they stood on an Anvil of Vaul and were boosted by SoL. I'm pretty sure my 10 knights with WP and BoTEF could have done the same with SoL.

Lord Solar Plexus wrote:Jeez sebster, isn't that obvious? I was correcting a grave error that only existed in my tired head and so making a fool of me! Pre-senile dementia if you like.

Sorry if I sounded a bit snippy there, I hadn't meant to but reading my post again it sounded a little rude.

I'm probably just nitpicking. I think that a priori infantry doesn't win any more frontal assaults than knights. Whether Halberdiers or Marauders or Stormvermin can break an opposing unit entirely depends on what they are attacking and how many models both of them start with. Without further qualifiers, the knights' alleged inability to break someone on the charge is nothing special or inherent to cavalry only.

Sure, it's not a hard limit on cavalry, nor is it a guaranteed rule

Flagellants and Greatswords cost around the same as knights (300 - 330 points for 30, ~280-300 points for 10 knights and a banner). You probably want to add a WP to either knights or GS. Flagellants are cool but suffer from the same problem as knights, ie. the lack of a weapon bonus in round 2+.

Yes, but with the greatswords you're getting Str 5 attacks every turn, and you get far more supporting ranks than you do with the knights, assuming the same frontage you should be getting more than twice as many ranks for the same points investment. Flagellants may match knights for attacks and damage output each turn (horses included), but they get extra rules that increase their damage slightly and like the greatsword you're getting more than twice as many ranks, all else being equal.

I'm not saying that knights cannot break enemy units. I'm not saying that other units always will. I'm just saying that almost universally across every army book, if you want a unit of troops that can take on a large block of enemy infantry and beat them front on, then good quality infantry with lots of killing power are a much better first option than knights. This is because you pay a premium for knights for their mobility.

No biggie, sebster, I wasn't offended. 'Twas my mistake and I forgot to put a smilie behind my sentence there.

If anyone is interested in some examples of how others use knights (or cavalry in general), I recommend Seredain's thread "Cavalry Prince" over on ulthuan or the 8-page thread "How to make knights win combat?" on warhammer-empire. In essence, people who like to field cavalry plan their list around that. Some use them as character delivery systems, some use them as deathstars supported by characters, some boost them with the Lore of Beasts and many combine several roles. Makes for some interesting reading even if your particular faction cannot replicate a certain approach completely and, so I surmise, even if you prefer to field infantry.

I will only be satisfied with cavalry in Warhammer when it does what it would do in real life i.e. impact hits.

A horse does not fight in the same way as a normal combatant ("Have at you with my hooves, you villain"), it runs the enemy down and tramples him into the ground. They should drop cavalry attacks and replace with automatic impact hits.

Flashman wrote:I will only be satisfied with cavalry in Warhammer when it does what it would do in real life i.e. impact hits.

A horse does not fight in the same way as a normal combatant ("Have at you with my hooves, you villain"), it runs the enemy down and tramples him into the ground. They should drop cavalry attacks and replace with automatic impact hits.

Hear, hear!

Wehrkind wrote:

Flashman wrote:I will only be satisfied with cavalry in Warhammer when it does what it would do in real life i.e. impact hits.

A horse does not fight in the same way as a normal combatant ("Have at you with my hooves, you villain"), it runs the enemy down and tramples him into the ground. They should drop cavalry attacks and replace with automatic impact hits.

Hear, hear!

Horses must be awesome ninjas to always trample what they try run over.
How about if you call the mount attacks "trample attacks" instead.
I'd bet at some point in real life, somebody was able to avoid the hooves.

-Matt

Ah Matt, allow me to clarify...

...no they wouldn't hit everything, but in much the same way a volley of arrows will hit something when fired at a large enough regiment, a bunch of charging horses will most definitely trample something when they crash into enemy lines.

See the cavalry charge in Return of the King. That is what cavalry was for.

I envisage it working as 1D6 S4 hits per complete rank. So yes, a random number of hits like a chariot.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Horses must be awesome ninjas to always trample what they try run over.
How about if you call the mount attacks "trample attacks" instead.
I'd bet at some point in real life, somebody was able to avoid the hooves.

-Matt

You have never had a horse run into you, have you? It isn't fun; even a glancing hit will knock you around pretty well. Think about how it looks when a line backer slams into a quarterback, now make the line backer weigh half a ton.

Flashman makes a good point: horses kick and stomp and bite in combat, but the real shock of cavalry is what happens when a line of half ton animals with another 2-350 pounds of rider and armor slam into your lines, with another line behind them perhaps. It really knocks your line about for the first few moments until either your unit breaks or the horsemen lose their momentum and get stuck fighting largely stationary. The cavalry wins if the target infantry break, but the infantry generally win if they can hold it together after the charge.

GW's rules do not really represent any of this, other than lances giving a bonus to Str on the charge. Better rules would be along the lines of Flashman's idea.