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As the title suggest I need help, as I am starting to play fantasy soon (I travelled a lot before so I could not do much) I need your help

The basic Idea is that I want a heavy shooting army with lots and lots and LOTS of warmachines - as many as I can field

but here is the kicker

I don't want to be a typical stand back and shoot army (gun-line or bowline) I want to be tactically viable or tactically adaptable (maybe moving warmachine)

so I want to have

- lots of shooting troop choices particular elite shooters (there are plenty of elite cc units but not many ranged)
-lots of war machines (catapults, cannons, bolt throwers - it doesn't matter I love em all)

the rest really doesn't matter I don't mind evil or good races I don't mind magic I don't mind undead or horde armies (thought I prefer warmachine that work most of the time and dont blow up all the time - SKAVEN ) I would prefer not too use special characters

any suggestion of where to look would be great - I know tomb kings can be very shooty (catapults and lots of unded archers who can shoot twice normal and magic phase- that alone sounds scary even with poor bs - but new book is coming so they could be viable and the casket of souls, what a perfect shooty war machine even though its magic based) but the rest I have no idea

please do help me

For the most variety for warmachines and shooting, I would suggest dwarfs, empire, and O&G (plus they have a shiny new book coming the beginning of March). I have a dwarf army and have been day dreaming about lots of goblins on spiders with bows, night goblins with bows, fanatics (not exactly a warmachine or ranged attack, but they kind of get shot out of the unit ), chukkas, lobbas, and doom divers. Too bad I can't buy everything I want or I would have an all gobbo army too.

Well TK only have the Catapult for some war machine action and it's a rare so up to 3k you can only field 2 at any one time. Their bowman are nice though always hit on a 5.

Dwarfs will have the most reliable war machines with runes and master engineers and engineers to help save them from blowing themselves up, if you like rerolling misfires with your cannon or rerolling the scatter dice for your catapult go dwarfs, their core choices are awesome too and hammereres are sweet, I love the rune system.

Goblins are nice, their stuff is cheap so you can take a lot. Night goblins can provide pretty good shooting thanks to the volley rule and fanatics are great fun and their hits are distributed as shooting.

Don't know too much about Empire.

Skaven should also be mentioned. The Warp Lightning Cannons are a cannon with a small template at the end with a potential 10 damage but more then likely 4-8 which is great for a stone thrower. The plague catapult should be mentioned, strength 2 is meh but no armor saves and the big round template. Plus weapon teams like Warpfire Throwers, a projectile flame weapon and if a unit even takes 1 wound it forces a panic test. And ratling guns, feeling lucky? Roll the dice you get a 4, there is 4 hits, roll again there is a 2, that's 6 hits, roll again a 6 that's 12 hits, you can stop there or keep rolling but if you roll a number you have already rolled then you misfire. Engineers with Doomrocket, uses large round template at Str5, roll 4-10 dice too see how far it goes, there is a chance for misfire on rolling 3- 1s. Doomwheel rolls around shocking friend and foe. Plus the Skaven magic lores of ruin and plague have some incredible damage potential.

I think the big challenge you will find is that taking a *lot* of war machines will reduce your elite/combat element to the extent that it may not be able to afford to advance at all. Or to do so will make your war machines available to be scooped up for VPs.

Dwarfs have a lot of variety on war machines, made greater by the ability to customize them with runes. Empire have the steam tank for mobile war machinage (though it is technically classified as a chariot now). If you want to think a little outside the box, lizards have dinosaur based war machines- the baby steg has a bolt thrower, razordons and salamanders are mobile living artillery...

Wood elves have the shooting and mobility down, just not the warmachines. There is no army in the game that can be a combat oriented shooting army with lots of warmachines. Before you start your army, pick an army with models you like. If you hate the models you will never enjoy the army. So my best advice to you is to pick an army first, then make it fit your playstyle next. It may not be as strong as you want it to be, but you will enjoy it way more.

Red_Zeke wrote:I think the big challenge you will find is that taking a *lot* of war machines will reduce your elite/combat element to the extent that it may not be able to afford to advance at all. Or to do so will make your war machines available to be scooped up for VPs.

I agree that's why I need war-machine that are adaptable, I read in the dwarf codex I can put runes on a war-machines and make it appear in battle any time I want - and enemies cant see or attack it until I do - I can see the point that a lot of warmachine would limit my unit power but if I slightly make the warmachine different (like dwarfs with the runes etc) OR use a gobbo army with lots of moving war machines. I dont mind using troops too benefit my warmachine but the main theme should be war machines for example - if I take empire and take the steam tank (which is awesome) I would focus my whole army too assists and protect the steam engine or the war-machines - so I can take 1 warmachine (steamtank) and everything else is too assist the steam tank.

the whole Idea for the army is that it focuses on war machines and shooting (mobile shooting preferably)

UNREALPwnage wrote:Wood elves have the shooting and mobility down, just not the warmachines. There is no army in the game that can be a combat oriented shooting army with lots of warmachines. Before you start your army, pick an army with models you like. If you hate the models you will never enjoy the army. So my best advice to you is to pick an army first, then make it fit your playstyle next. It may not be as strong as you want it to be, but you will enjoy it way more.

I don't think I hate any of the models, they all look awesome plus they will always get updated - I use to like Dogs of war and the mobile cannons, which were great - I wonder why doesn't empire have cannons being carried on horses? mobile and deadly

actually I owned the dogs of war codex, It was the first army I fell in love with, the idea of a mercenery army that is the combination of all races is awesome and the units were great and fun (PIKES) ah well... dreams end

Red_Zeke wrote:I think the big challenge you will find is that taking a *lot* of war machines will reduce your elite/combat element to the extent that it may not be able to afford to advance at all. Or to do so will make your war machines available to be scooped up for VPs.

Dwarfs have a lot of variety on war machines, made greater by the ability to customize them with runes. Empire have the steam tank for mobile war machinage (though it is technically classified as a chariot now). If you want to think a little outside the box, lizards have dinosaur based war machines- the baby steg has a bolt thrower, razordons and salamanders are mobile living artillery...

Oh yea. I like RZ's idea about the lizardmen too. That is a mobile warmachine army.

Siege wrote:(thought I prefer warmachine that work most of the time and dont blow up all the time - SKAVEN ) I would prefer not too use special characters

It should really be noted that skaven war machines don't blow up any more often than other armies' war machines. It's still 1 in 6 on the artillery die; we just tend to have more war machines

Well other armies have access to re-rolls to stave off explosions.

Actually skaven have a huge advantage as they can still shoot at enemies that are locked into combat with your slaves. Slaves cost practically nothing and if you take 40 or 50 they will easily tie down an enemy unit for multiple turns while you blast away.

And Poisoned Wind Globadiers can throw into any combat, they just have a chance of killing your own dudes, for better or for worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HoverBoy wrote:Well other armies have access to re-rolls to stave off explosions.

Well, Empire and Dwarves do. I don't think Orcs n Goblins do, nor do Brettonians as far as I can recall. Bolt Throwers don't misfire so High/Dark elves are okay I guess. The Hellcannon just hurts itself on a misfire as I recall.

... Not really sure what other artillery there is except Tomb Kings, which I know zilch about.

If you're gunna count Sallies/Razordons as arty; then they don't have anything to stop them roasting/eating their handlers or nailing them to a building on a misfire.

streamdragon wrote:It should really be noted that skaven war machines don't blow up any more often than other armies' war machines. It's still 1 in 6 on the artillery die; we just tend to have more war machines

Their rolls are higher for other war machines. Like a cannon is destroyed 1-2 and misses turns on 3-4/5-6. Warp lightning cannon destroyed 1-2, fires in random direction 3-5 (incl hitting your own guys), misses turn 6. And other races don't have the weapons teams, which are basically specialized Common troops (with misfire potential). So Skaven can misfire with Common, Special, Rare troop choices. If you take them, they have quite a bit higher chance of damaging themselves than any other race. Barring some stupendous miscasting magics.