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Trying to gauge how this Empire list would work out for 8th Edition:

Lords - 10.3%
General - 206
Barded Warhorse, full plate, shield, Sword of Sigismund, Holy Relic

Heroes - 19%
Warrior Priest - 150
Barded Warhorse, heavy Armor, Shield, Sword of Might, Icon of Magnus

Battle Wizard - 130
lvl2, Rod of Power

Captain - 100
BSB, Armor of Meteoric Iron

Core - 44%
30x Swordsmen - 175
Full command
-15x Halberdiers detachment - 75

30x Swordsmen - 175
Full Command
-15x Free Company detachment - 75

10x Handgunners - 90

10x Knightly Order - 290
Full command, Great Weapons, Steel Standard

Special - 24.1%
2x Great Cannon - 200

2x Mortar - 150

6x Pistoliers - 132
Musician, Outrider - repeater pistol

Total- 1948 (52 points remaining)


Thoughts - the cannons and mortars should be doing a lot of work. The BSB is stuffed inside one of the Swordsmen units, whilst the General and Priest join the Knightly Order (now that mounted GW's give +2S, and with I3, they'll likely be striking last anyways) to hopefully hit enemy units on the flanks.

Battle Wizard will probably be a staple of the new Empire armies.

Not sure if it's worth getting rid of the Handgunners, and also wondering if I should try to free up points to get an Engineer.

That list of yours is very close to what I am currently tinkering with. I field very few missile units but that's just me playing mostly against Skaven where they are a waste of points. Against most other armies, your layout will be quite nifty. I'm also going to try out smaller units of Knights to combo-charge with the infantry. Units of 9 + character have worked quite well so far but that is a lot of points in a few units.

My GotE is on foot in a block, as I want that LO,S! if possible. I also use a Wizard Lord. In the past, I've been unable to reliably get spells through or dispell with a lower level wizard against an opposing Lord.

I also won't use Warrior Priests until the FAQ is out. There's just too much uncertainty going on right now.

Re: Warrior Priests - honestly, he's not in so much for his Prayers so much as just added killy-ness and Hatred granting (rerolls = great).

Still not sure what to do with those last few points. Fill out some more knights? More Handgunners?

44% core, 24% special, 0% rare?

Just on the surface level that strikes me as all peanut butter and no jelly.

I know the knights are pretty hitty, but aside from a wizard and BSB bunker, I don't think I'd plan to do any real killing with state troops.

Every empire list i've written in the last 5 games has started 3x cannons, 3x mortars. Sometimes that is where I stop with shooting, sometimes its just the beginning, but max cannons seems to be the right number for monster hunting, and max mortars can really thin out any kind of block, to get it nice and softened for a knight charge.

I think that as soon as you have the right number of standards. (I like 4 theoretically at 2k) Then pistoliers or outriders are a better investment than handgunners.

I haven't been able to figure out something to do with the GotE except enjoy his cheap leadership 9. There isn't a banner I want for my state troops, and he doesn't really fight that well at all.

You could morph the warrior priest and the GotE into an arch lector on horse. He could grab the VHS and at least some times fight well, and hes got that leadership 9 and the hatred that you are getting out of both the GotE and the WP. Just a thought...

Shep wrote:44% core, 24% special, 0% rare?

Just on the surface level that strikes me as all peanut butter and no jelly.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the Rare choices in the army (hence the 0% Rare). Theoretically, those Knights could've been Special choices, but the 3ppm for the +1 S didn't seem worthwhile after some consideration.

I know the knights are pretty hitty, but aside from a wizard and BSB bunker, I don't think I'd plan to do any real killing with state troops.

Every empire list i've written in the last 5 games has started 3x cannons, 3x mortars. Sometimes that is where I stop with shooting, sometimes its just the beginning, but max cannons seems to be the right number for monster hunting, and max mortars can really thin out any kind of block, to get it nice and softened for a knight charge.

Cannons and mortars _are_ rather nice in this edition. I'm a bit hesitant to make it such a focus of a list, though. I never particularly cared to play against my friend's dwarf artillery/gunline and putting the max in here would seem to be doing about the same. Granted, depending on how everything else works out, I'm not closed-minded about potentially adding another cannon or mortar in the list.

I think that as soon as you have the right number of standards. (I like 4 theoretically at 2k) Then pistoliers or outriders are a better investment than handgunners.

I may drop the handgunners and use the points saved + the spare points I have for a second unit of pistoliers.

I haven't been able to figure out something to do with the GotE except enjoy his cheap leadership 9. There isn't a banner I want for my state troops, and he doesn't really fight that well at all.

You could morph the warrior priest and the GotE into an arch lector on horse. He could grab the VHS and at least some times fight well, and hes got that leadership 9 and the hatred that you are getting out of both the GotE and the WP. Just a thought...

Interesting suggestion about the Arch Lector. I'll have to try it out.

Yeah, the rare slots in empire aren't that awesome. But the specials are very, very good.

3x pistolier units
3x outrider units
3x cannons
3x mortars

Thats a formidable suite of units there. charge-bait and fast cav destruction from a potential 6 fast cav units, excellent monster sniping and plenty of large block killing. I don't think running all 12 of those will work at 2000, but certainly the war machines and a trio of pistolier units wold support knights in completely awesome ways.

3x cannons and 3x mortars is only 525 points. I don't see that as 'making a gunline', its just barely over a quarter of the points. Our machines blow up at inopportune times, and they'll scatter oddly as well. I think its important to have as much redundancy as possible in this area, so that you can at least rely on them to seriously soften if not kill one important enemy monster/block.

I don't know why war machines ever got such a bad rep as far as 'sportsmanship' is concerned. Wouldn't any kind of domination be annoying to underpowered opponents? Is it ok to have a 400+ point slaan mage priest dropping uncounterable comets on people, but 525 in troubleshooting war machines is a 'dick move'?

Empire needs to control the shooting, they just can't afford to fight on level playing fields against the evil forces of destruction and their monstrous minions.

Depending on how you're looking at running your formation of troops, Merging the General & WP into the same character (Arch Lector) seems like a solid move. You're not using the banner granted by the General, so it really works out pretty well:

Arch Lector
Heavy Armor, Barded Warhorse, & Shield
Dragon Helm
Holy Relic
Icon of Magnus
Sword of Might

Thats a 1+ / 4+ Save, and it saves you apx 75 points. You can mount the BSB and put him in the Knight unit -- its pretty easy to give him a 1 or 2 + save mounted and also get a ward save on him with the white cloak.

The saved points + your left over points could almost net you an engineer and a mortar if you were so inclined.

Also, Either your hand gunners are incorrect on points, or you have a banner or a champ in the unit. If its just a plain unit of Hand Gunners, make them a detachment so they don't cause panic.

For the Character change to work, you'll probably want to run your knights in the center of your formation, like this (This also assumes the Hand Gunners become a detachment:

S = Swords
F = Free Company
H = Hand Gunner


FFFFF SSSSS HHHHH SSSSS FFFFF
FFFFF SSSSS HHHHH SSSSS FFFFF
FFFFF SSSSS SSSSS FFFFF
SSSSS KKKKK SSSSS
SSSSS KKKKK SSSSS

By hanging the Knights back a bit, you let your hand gunners shoot, and if they get charged, just flee. You'll open up the charge from the Knights (with Characters) and the hand gunners won't cause a panic check because they are just a detachment.

It changes the role of the Knights from flankers to center line hammers, but I think that the Knights can fill that roll, especially if you've softened up the enemy a bit with warmachine fire.

Egh, now that you mention it, the Handgunners had a musician and champion w/ brace of pistols.

Good point on potentially making them a detachment.

Oddly enough, that was pretty much exactly the setup I had in mind for how to deploy.

Alright, gonna bump up the list to 2400 points (seeing as how that's starting to become my preferred game-size lately). I may take this to a tournament,

LORDS - 21.7%
TGM- 235
Barded Warhorse, Full plate armor, Sword of Sigismund, Holy Relic

Wizard Lord - 285
Lvl4, Rod of Power, White Cloak

HEROES - 18.6%
Warrior Priest - 125
Barded Warhorse, heavy Armor, Shield, Sword of Might

Warrior Priest - 126
Heavy Armor, Shield, Van Horstmann's Speculum

Captain - 131
BSB, Pistol, Armor of Meteoric Iron, Dawnstone (re-rollable saves)

Master Engineer - 65

CORE - 26.7% (Detachments don't count toward CORE reqs)
30x Swordsmen - 175
Full command
-15x Halberdiers detachment - 75
-10x Handgunners detachment - 80

30x Swordsmen - 175
Full Command
-15x Free Company detachment - 75
-10x Handgunners detachment - 80

10x Knightly Order - 290
Full command, Great Weapons, Steel Standard

SPECIAL- 20.1%
2x Great Cannon - 200

2x Mortar - 150

6x Pistoliers - 132
Musician, Outrider - repeater pistol

Total- 2399

Plan, would be to deploy pretty much as Endgame suggested. The TGM and mounted Priest go in with the Knights.

The BSB and other Priest would go in with one unit of Swordsmen (the Priest would take on the challenges and give that unit a bit of CC boost). The Wizard Lord may join the other unit of Swordsmen (staying further to the flanks) or that unit's handgunners (which would be places on the far side of deployment).

Effectively 2 Bound Items, and +2 DD every magic phase for as long as the priests are alive.

I know nothing of empire, but is it possible I'll be facing this list at GamesDay? Or do you still have to purchase some of it?

Also, is there a 2.4K tourney happening near you in the somewhat near future? I've been looking for another tourney to go to, there haven't been too many around here for fantasy for some reason (perhaps giving people time to transition to the new rules).

What is the benefit of having bound items (since you need to use PD to cast them) unless it's different for Empire? Also, it's awesome that they still add +1 DD... really helps with the magic defense! I saw an empire game that was set up similarly for magic defense (a level 4 caster, so +4 to the roll, and +2 DD) face a slann and not really have any problems for most of the game magic-wise!!

I bought the Brigade box when it was a new release almost a year ago, I think, since the Warstore had it available as well and with it's standard discount (which on top of the effective discount of the box itself netted me a savings of ~33% cost of individually buying things) and had made some trades in the Swap Shop for a bunch of the older Empire things. I mostly need to buy the characters. So in short, yes, you'll probably be facing this at GD .

The tournament is the Crossroads GT in September up in the Fingerlakes area of NY. It's pretty far away...but it's a weekend-long tournament.

Bound-items aren't necessarily anything to rave about, but it does draw away DD from the enemy.

Jin wrote:So in short, yes, you'll probably be facing this at GD

Uhoh!