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I just got my greasy fingers on a Bretonnia armybook.
Although I haven't read it thoroughly, at first glance it seems that Bretonnia comes out a bit shorthanded with the new rules.
I think of the steadfast rule, and the striking order on initiativ even when chargeing. It might not be a big deal but it seems like Bretonnia could be defeated by siceing up your units.
would this be a correct observation or does Bretonnia still work as well as before?

Depends on your definition of "as well as before"!

I wish I could give you better commentary, but they're scarce in my area, so don't really have any experience going up against them.

Thanks to lance formation, they are one of the few armies that can stack up enough cavalry ranks to not only disrupt but also negate steadfast in units that they charge. Trebuchets are pretty hard hitting too, so they have that going for them...

well they have to have two heroes and they can be expensive

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:well they have to have two heroes and they can be expensive

But Bretonnias are hero hammer in the first place.

If you aren't taking at least two heroes you're doing it wrong imo.

grayspark wrote:

Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:well they have to have two heroes and they can be expensive

But Bretonnias are hero hammer in the first place.

If you aren't taking at least two heroes you're doing it wrong imo.

I disagree with that statement tbh. Out of all the "hero hammer" armies bretts arent one of the more insane one. Sure they can take a lot of hero's but a dwarf, or chaos lord could probly take 2-3 paladins at once.

Properly built with virtues however, our lords can be pretty scary, Nothing like a dragon or stegadon spending the whole game trying to dodge charges from my Virtue of Heroism (heroic KB) 6 attack that hit on 2's lord. However Taking multiple lords hurts the bretts magic. My other favorite lord build is the magic weapon destroying you cant refuse my challenges lord.

Some of the biggest things bretts suffer from in this edition.

1. Steadfast- This is probably one of the rules that hurts them the most. A rank of 12 knights in lance is around 300 points with command and only 4 ranks. Killing just one drops it to 3 ranks. They will kill things on the charge (and often) but without say a large M@A's block to remove steadfast they will rubber lance the next round of combat.

2. Killing Blow- The face that this effects cavalry now SUCKS! I avoid units with killing blow like the plague with my knights. Not getting armor saves really sucks since thats one thing that makes your Knights so resilient. This one is often overlooked.

3. Strike in Ini on the charge and step up- Another rule that really hurt bretts. In 7th you would charge, get your strike first, kill off an entire front rank (plus more usually) then the unit would lose combat (usually by a lot) and they would break. Now you are getting hit back regardless. However, the 2+ armor does a lot to reduce the sting.


The brett army is far from bad. (actually, it won a GT tourny in my area recently). It requires a ton of finesse and one little mistake can and will cost you the game.

1) take 15 knights, not 12. Attach the required hero. Now you can give up a kill and still have 4 ranks; or give up 4 kills and still have 3 ranks. Unless you are fighting very deep units, this is usually enough; against really deep units, trebuchet.
Combine this with some smaller knight units, and you should do fine.

2) Killing blow worked on knights in 6th and 7th edition, nothing new on that.

3) Yeah, step up and init order has hurt brets, along with a lot of armies. But as you stated, the armor and blessing helps limit what you get hit with.


How is having to take 2 characters bad? Oh no, you have a wizard lord and a BSB. Sounds like every other army that isn't dwarves. How many builds do you see with only 1 character?



-Matt

really, thought only models on foot could be KBed in 7th edition...

anyway another thing to add even though its my most favoritist rule in 8th edition.

Random charge distances hurt bretts a lot also, with fixed charges you could almost always get the charge, with randoms not so much (even though you should still get it most of the time).

Brets are still decent. They aren't the point and click army of the past though.

I haven't played around with any lists in a while but here is the general idea I would have for a good bret army.

2x stone throwers (these things are just ridiculously under priced now)
30-40 archers in 10 man units

2 deep knight units, grail knights and questing knights work best. 12-15 of each

2-3 small knight units for war machine hunting, flanking, and generally being annoying.

1-2 units of 40+ men at arms, for steadfast.

Characters to suit. (lvl4s can take life magic right?)

I wouldnt use huge units of grail or questing knights tbh.

Mathematically, PER POINT Knights Errant and Knights of the Realm are the most killy...

I know you cant judge the value purely on that, but at 34 points a piece grail knights are just grossly overpriced.

Isn't the Rare allocation only 25%? I can't see fitting a massive Grail Knight unit with a decent banner and so on (running to 500-600 points) and 2 Trebuchets in the one list at 2500.

I am interested in investigating flanking knight units though.

You can squeeze 2 trebuchets and 6 grail knights into smaller games.

I say always start with the 2 trebuchets, and then worry about the other specials and rares.

Grail knights do something extremely well. They mess with greater daemons and characters riding monsters like nobody else can. Since they can all challenge, and you only need 3 for steadfast, you can actually tie up a character monster for a very long time... long enough to bring another unit around to help.

-Matt

GAH! I hadn't thought of that use for GK's before! I love it!

Generally, I use KE for my deep lances of 15. KOTR go 9-12ish, QK 6-9 if in use, and GK - when I can field them - 6. Double Trebs... well, I need to get them before I can use them...

Shivan - yep, it was US1AND US2 in 7th and 6th. Meant that characters riding monstrous mounts could still be KB'd.

HawaiiMatt wrote:You can squeeze 2 trebuchets and 6 grail knights into smaller games.

I say always start with the 2 trebuchets, and then worry about the other specials and rares.

Grail knights do something extremely well. They mess with greater daemons and characters riding monsters like nobody else can. Since they can all challenge, and you only need 3 for steadfast, you can actually tie up a character monster for a very long time... long enough to bring another unit around to help.

-Matt

Just put a virtue of heroism lord on a peggy in your army and that greater deamon will be playing run away from the scary Knight all game....

Nothing more hillarious then seeing a bloodthirster spend the entire game trying to avoid my lord.

I agree with the grail knights being able to tarpit really well. However, whenever I use them i always feel that they did not do what they should at their points cost. Im almost always more pleased with the extra unit of KotR or Knights Errant PLUS boosting another unit of lesser knights.

I do want to experiment with Questing knights though. While they always strike second (which isnt a big deal since all knights are I3 anyway), the tend to not bounce off units after the charge, since they retain their strength 6 attacks. One unit run 5x2 seems like it could be decently killy.

ShivanAngel wrote:

Just put a virtue of heroism lord on a peggy in your army and that greater deamon will be playing run away from the scary Knight all game....

Nothing more hillarious then seeing a bloodthirster spend the entire game trying to avoid my lord.

I agree with the grail knights being able to tarpit really well. However, whenever I use them i always feel that they did not do what they should at their points cost. Im almost always more pleased with the extra unit of KotR or Knights Errant PLUS boosting another unit of lesser knights.

I do want to experiment with Questing knights though. While they always strike second (which isnt a big deal since all knights are I3 anyway), the tend to not bounce off units after the charge, since they retain their strength 6 attacks. One unit run 5x2 seems like it could be decently killy.

Virtue of Heroism? I think you'd be dead before you swing.

I've seen empire knight with great weapons do pretty well, and inner circle ones as well. Swapping 2+ armor for 3+ with blessing is a slight improvement, and the +1 movement is good.
So they look roughly the same as Empire knights, only you can go in a lance; which I would for the ranks. They should be worth the 28 points each. Now if only you could get hatred like empire.

-Matt

The reason i ran them 5x2 is I thought you had to be using lances when you charged to get the lance formation bonus....

Going to have to re-read my army book when i get home from work.

I was curious about this as well. Is it possible that (by the math) you could get more and efficient attacks/CR by going in a formation OTHER than Lance? Has anyone worked this problem in 8e?

Ten knights in lance get 8 guys doing full attacks with mounts (the one in back gets to slide over to an edge, IIRC), one guy doing a supporting attack, and one guy completely out of it. 9 lances, 8 horses, and three ranks before casualties, likely to be at least two.

Ten knights in traditional ranks get 5 guys doing full attacks with mounts, and 5 supporting attacks. 10 lances, 5 horses, and even one casualty knocks you down to one rank, so you no longer disrupt.

Of course, with Grail Knights the Lance wins hands down - 18 lances, 8 horses vs. 15 lances, 5 horses.

Vulcan wrote:Ten knights in lance get 8 guys doing full attacks with mounts (the one in back gets to slide over to an edge, IIRC), one guy doing a supporting attack, and one guy completely out of it. 9 lances, 8 horses, and three ranks before casualties, likely to be at least two.

Ten knights in traditional ranks get 5 guys doing full attacks with mounts, and 5 supporting attacks. 10 lances, 5 horses, and even one casualty knocks you down to one rank, so you no longer disrupt.

Of course, with Grail Knights the Lance wins hands down - 18 lances, 8 horses vs. 15 lances, 5 horses.

What this fails to take into account, though, is attacks back due to frontage. The Lance has a 75mm Frontage vs the 125mm Frontage of the traditional ranking. The Lance is much better for maximizing your own attacks while minimizing who can hit back.

Good point!

A normal formation of 5-wide cavalry can be attacked by 7 norkmal 20/25mm models, or 5 of the 40mm monsterous models! Where a lance can only be attacked by 5 normal or 3 monsterous models, which can make a huge differance... especially when facing a horde of monsterous models!

Even better, most units can be charged with two lances and still get most of it's attacks in, where a normal formation likely won't have the room to do so. Against a horde, there might even be room for THREE lances to charge at once...

Ya, but if you charge the front of a monsterous horde, you deserve whatever is comming to you (which I think would be a total beat down).

Generally though, I think that Brets work ok in this edition. I find that I need to play a lot better and put more effort into planing my deployment and what unit matchups I want a lot more than I would with my Elves or Empire.

The lvl 4 life mage is a must. Simply put, I have never won a game without one so far. That makes the build fairly simple and there are not many options as far as I can see it. But, I think that this is a common occurance for many armies right now, particularly the older books.

I always liked the unit of 12 Grail Knights, Fey Enchantress, and 3 paladins. I pity the fool who accidently gets in the way of that lance of death.

and all it takes is 1 Lore of Metal caster to kiss your massive unit good by.

Not when i am comming in with a 2+ward against magic, thx to the blessing and the magic resistance of the fey encantress

*cough* dwellers *cough*

I actually like the Brets in the new edition. I've had solid luck with them thus far. I still use the "small" lance formations ( I have 4 units of Kotr, 8 strong, with a character in each. And a unit of Grail Knights with the same build) but I find that if you can get a double charge the odds of having the same amount of ranks as the enemy is pretty high. Also, Bretonnians are a very resilient army with their good armor save and blessing save. I have to disagree with the comment about a life mage being a must. I used one for about 5 games and I could never get what I needed. I've recently switched to a Lvl 4 , Lore of beasts, book of ashur mage. The augments he gives to units/characters in CC usually can make the difference in a round of combat.(Which is where i want to be!)

I guess to answer the questions though, I believe that Brets don't suffer from the new rules. In my opinion, with this current edition, I think any army has a chance against any army. At my FLGS we have a wide variety of WHFB players with all different kinds of armies and this has definitely proved to be the case.

My two coppers...

Yeah I hate lore of life on any mage that cannot guarantee what spells they are going to get.

Its a great lore if you roll throne, it becomes mediocre if you dont.

I have dropped the level 4 entirely and just use a level 2 with +1 to dispel..

Whats really hilarious is a Lvl1 mage that rolls Throne of Vines

good thing you can swap for Earth Blood.

Life is a lore for masters, loremasers that is

HoverBoy wrote:Life is a lore for masters, loremasers that is

I agree completely, OR wizards that have an item that let them pick their spells.