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Rather than the typical slow moving wall of flesh, I tried out a more offensive build for empire. Played 3 times as proxied, looking into buying models now.

2500 Points

General of the Empire: 1+ save, dawn stone (re-roll armor), great weapon, crown of command (stubborn).
Captain: Armor of Destiny, BSB
Level 2 Beast Wizard, Scroll of power
Level 2 Beast Wizard, Rod of power
Warrior Priest: Heavy Armor, Shield, Dragon Helm, Speculum, Shrieking Sword, Barded Steed (1+ armor, 2+ ward vs fire, causes fear, swaps stats)

30 Knights with great weapons, full command, Rangers Banner (strider).
35 Halbardiers, full command, razor banner (armor piercing)
45 Free Company, full command
25 Swordsmen, full command
10 Archers, marksmen
2x Mortars
1 Cannon

This is what I see my Empire leaving home with when involved in boarder disputes with nearby provinces. This is meant to be a more barbaric, and less civilized empire army. Will build as Ulric, if I can get enough of the models.
The lore of beast, and magic item/banner selection is supposed to help represent that.

-Matt

Hahah. Nice. That's a helluva block of Empire Knights. My one recommendation would be to try to get those guys the Ironcurse Icon to help out even a little bit against enemy warmachines, since 30 Knights are _quite_ a target. Note: Ancestral Heirloom only allows a unit of State Troops to take a Magic Standard. Knightly Orders != State Troops.

Would you try running these guys in Horde or ranked deep for SCR?

I'm surprised you opted for a smaller unit of Swordsmen in lieu for bigger Free Company. Also, no detachments?

30 knights: misdirect into fodder or avoid all together.
35 halberdiers: charge against with no fear of being flanked from detachments
45 free company: mortar fire or other template barrages
25 swordsmen: no detachments, throw strongest unit at them.
10 archers: ignore
2 mortars: priority targets
1 cannon: kill after mortars unless it poses bigger threat

There's my thoughts on how to face your army.
3x10 cavalry are HUGE on the table and thus can't maneuver well. They should be 10 at the most in a 2x5 formation.

You have NO detachments which are what make Empire infantry able to withstand combats. I have no idea how you came about the idea of 45 free company who have no armor, WS3 and S3. They will get eaten up easily.

I just don't see this performing well against a list designed to accept all comers.

aerethan wrote:
You have NO detachments which are what make Empire infantry able to withstand combats. I have no idea how you came about the idea of 45 free company who have no armor, WS3 and S3. They will get eaten up easily.

So right, that's the reason I don't play free company (except sometimes as detachments).

Any shooting unit will have great fun going through them, not to mention warmachines, but I'd save those for the halberdiers.

I would go with 1 unit of 18-20 Knights (running 6 x 3 or 6 x 4 if you include the characters) and two units of 5-6 (single rank obviously). Horde is a bit pointless with large models like Knights imo, you will very rarely get the full 10 wide unit completely engaged and will be very wide and easy to misdirect. That many Knights is still going to be a nightmare to deal with though, particularly as they are stubborn, its hard to get wounds past their armour in the first place and they will consistently do wounds on things in return. They can just sit in front of a block and slowly chop it to pieces if they need to. The main trick is going to be making sure they actually get into something which is going to be worth their points, you partially get around the terrain issue with Strider Banner but you would be better off with a couple of smaller units which can try and remove the fodder for you so the big block can hit things.

Assuming you do run 3 wide I would seriously suggest you find the points for another character to go with the unit, even a naked captain wound be fine. This will mean that you have 4 characters in the unit, but only 3 can go in the front rank, so your BSB can hide in the second rank where he will be mostly safe. This would let you take a magic banner or something like the Mask or Eeee if you wanted. Obvious places to drop points are the Razor Standard on the Halberdiers, the Archers and possible one of the Wizards. Not sure how the points work out, but you would also be better off taking a single Lvl 4 wizard than 2 Lvl 2s, this might also be useful if you run into issues with maxing out your heroes limit (but there is no way that Lord is 600 points). Also assuming you run Beasts make sure you check that you can cast some of the buffs on units other than the one you are in, that might mean you need to put a Wizard in with the Knights (just use the same trick above to keep him safe rather than the BSB). The other option would be Light as ASF +1 attack will make that Knight bus insanely scary.

don't like list....
not magic..not fighting

steam tank run into 30 w wolf and they are done...s6 grind hits..they have 2+ armour -that means in this case they have 6+ and they are easaly beaten in combat...


or

unit in file of 5 halbardiers,20 hgunners det,and 20 sword det..with bsb griffon baner,arch lector and Wiz lv 4 lore of life.. with gray staf he deffenetly boost toufness to 4+
and if you play horde with that knights-you'll lose trough combat res...

Jin wrote:Note: Ancestral Heirloom only allows a unit of State Troops to take a Magic Standard. Knightly Orders != State Troops.

I may be mistaken (I often am) but I think knights can take a magic standard regardless of who is the general.

And I love the idea of a horde of knights...

@Zeke - reading up on the book again, so they can indeed. Whoops, my bad.

/Horse's arse, I am it

Your infantry blocks don't NEED detachments if you can support them with other units, but as is, with that giant block of Knights taking up a lot of room, maneuvering units in support will be tough. I'd split up the Knights into smaller units. I'd also split up the Free Company into detachments.