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This comes from a BoLs thread, but that thread has slacked off, so I've decided to try again here.

I've decided that I want a second army for all the games I play, as insurance against army book creep/slump, boredom, and having no one to play with (ie. "hey, want to try a new game? Don't have an army? That's ok - I have two!"). Since I already have three factions for Warhammer 40k, two for Infinity, and two for WarmaHordes, I'm looking for a second army for Warhammer Fantasy.

Here are the facts:
• I play Lizardmen.
• I play magic-heavy, with Slaan, Skink priests, and a Weapon of the Gods stegadon.
• Most of the bulk of my army is Saurus, though I employ some Skink skirmishers.
• I generally want a change of pace, but...
• I really enjoy the magic phase of WHFB - it's part of what drew me to the game in the first place - and don't think I'd want an army like Dwarves that's completely locked out of it.
• For me, painting and modeling is just as important as playing.
• I enjoy an army with an interesting story, though they don't need to be the heroes of that story, and certainly don't need to be the heroes in an uncomplicated way.
• In terms of elite vs. horde, I tend to prefer elite forces, though I can be happy with factions that are only average in this regard.
• To give you an idea of my aesthetic and play preferences, my other factions in other games include: Space Marines, Blood Angels, Tau, ALEPH, Nomads, Cygnar, and Everblight.

So, what do you think I should investigate? Feel free to post pictures and impassioned arguments

Thanks in advance for your help.

Have you thought about Daemons? They have a strong magic phase with Heralds even in lower level points which is great for introducing people to the hobby, they are also great for beginners due to their immune to psychology. For list building they are easy, everything is 12 points. And they double as a 4th 40k army put them on round bases with magnets on the bottom and put sheet metal on your movement trays and you're good to go. Get 2 battalions, this will give you a horde of 40 bloodletters which is awesome, 20 horrors for a HoT bunker, daemonettes are so so, I would honestly take 5 seekers and convert them to fiends as they are a great unit in 40k and you could make use of 2 singles in fantasy, then build the other 5 seekers and use them as filler in a 30ish strong unit of daemonettes 6 wide. Then get Heralds to lead all the units (if I had to pick, Skulltaker, Masque and the WoC Tzeentch Sorcerer Lord), this should give you a solid 1700pts, add a greater daemon and you're north of 2000. After that it's up to you I would have said flamers but they became less effective... with the White Dwarf codex update, I don't know how effective the new chariots are or the screamers.

On the 40k side, bloodletters are kinda crap but a 5ish unit of fiends are fantastic and minimum units of horrors with bolt of change is solid as are daemonettes with rending claws and fleet and seekers for the same reasons.

And you'll have an "evil" army to fight all those good 40k armies and lizardmen.

It would be neat to have Daemons to fight my Lizardmen, but to be honest, the aesthetic of the Daemons just... doesn't do it for me. Of course, this is working from the pictures of the GW site. If anyone has got better pictures, I'll take a look at them, maybe show them to my style consultant (wife - seriously, she's never wrong).

Additionally, I kind of think that Daemons aren't too different from Lizardmen, visually. It would be "here are my weird scaly critters, and here are my other weird scaly critters, only the ones on the left are technically good guys and their giant monsters look like dinosaurs." Which isn't that bad in terms of using my collection to introduce newcomers to the game, but it is pretty bad in terms of giving me variety in my painting experience. But who knows, maybe it's the way the 'Eavy Metal team paints 'em - prove me wrong.

Furthermore, a couple of factions were pointed out by the BoLs thread: Vampire Counts, Empire, Wood Elves, Dark Elves and High Elves. What can you tell me about how those factions play and what some of the best examples of their aesthetics are?

I would look here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/470806.page

I was in the same situation last year and thought about what to build for a 2nd WH Fantasy army. (My first army is and will always be Dwarves. What's a magic phase?)

Anyway, I wanted something that played differently than my Dwarves and I got sucked into the world of Bretonnia. Their play style is the polar opposite of my Dwarves where the Brets charge across the battlefield with a bunch of knights and a boat-load of different color schemes. In my opinion, no army in the whole Warhammer game looks as cool as the Bretonnians do when they're all painted up nicely displaying their different heraldry.

Another nice thing about Bretonnians, is that as WH Fantasy armies go they are one of the easier ones to build as they generally require fewer models in their units. Playing Brets is an absolute blast, you basically try to soften up things with your trebuchets, archers, and dwellers then pound them with busses of knights and use peg knights to take out warmachines and do mis-direction charges. That's pretty much it!

i have VC's at the moment and i love them, once i convert blood knights and a unit of black knights onto WoC and beastmen i go. Each army appeals to me and i cant just have one of them

I would consider starting one of the armies in the starter set: High Elves or Scaven.

1. Theyre gonna be cheaper.
2. Scaven are maybe the #1 enemy of Lizardmen (at least they used to be in older background)
3. High Elves are elite army (like you say you like).
4. High Elves would test your painting skills (like you said)
5. Both have interesting storylines
6. High Elves have decent magic phase.

maybe dark elves, i just dont like high elves helmets

Re: Skaven - I don't know... aren't they pretty much always a horde army?
Re: High Elves - With Lizardmen as my main army, I am seriously feeling the bad guys for my second army.

At this point, it's down to this short list (roughly, from most interested to least interested):

• Warriors of Chaos
• Dark Elves
• Vampire Counts
• Empire

Here are my questions:

1. Re: Warriors of Chaos - Can they do a heavily cavalry force? Because that would be fun, and a nice change of pace from my plodding Lizardmen. It would also give me some ranged options, which would be nice.
2. Re: Warriors of Chas - If an all or mostly cavalry army is out of the question, do you think the remaining options would play significantly differently from my Lizardmen?
3. Re: Dark Elves - What can you tell me about their playstyle?
4. Re: Dark Elves - Can you point out the best and the worst of the Dark Elf model line?
5. Re: Vampire Counts - Do they require hordes of lesser undead, or can you play them as a more average-to-elite force?
6. Re: Empire - How possible is it to focus on the dungeon-punky, clockwork-and-steam elements?
7. Re: Empire - Do they require hordes of goons, or can you play them as a more average-to-elite force?

 ElectricPaladin wrote:

At this point, it's down to this short list (roughly, from most interested to least interested):

• Warriors of Chaos
• Dark Elves
• Vampire Counts
• Empire

Here are my questions:

1. Re: Warriors of Chaos - Can they do a heavily cavalry force? Because that would be fun, and a nice change of pace from my plodding Lizardmen. It would also give me some ranged options, which would be nice.
2. Re: Warriors of Chas - If an all or mostly cavalry army is out of the question, do you think the remaining options would play significantly differently from my Lizardmen?

6. Re: Empire - How possible is it to focus on the dungeon-punky, clockwork-and-steam elements?
7. Re: Empire - Do they require hordes of goons, or can you play them as a more average-to-elite force?

1. WoC The upside (possibly) is they're due for an Army Book soon. I think, the consensus is that Cavalry armies are going against the grain for this edition because its so much harder to break infantry. I still throw 1-2 small units in my army lists of like 5-7 knights.

2. Im not that familiar with lizardmen. The last time we had a lizardman player in our group was years ago. I don't think Lizardmen have as much variety at Chaos. Chaos has Warriors as their main anvil/hammer unit, but they also have the marauders, as line filler, who are decent in their own right. The shooting is about the same.

I can't accurately give information about the rest. I played Empire in last edition, but things have probably changed since then with the release of their latest Army book..

i do VC's and i have 30 skeles, 40 zombies, and 10 dire wolves with vargheist, mortis engine and a zombie dragon. My feel is a horde army with great magic, really good blood knights sure the unit cost 200 points and the models cost 100 dollars total but 33 bucks and you get HE dragon princes. But i also build them as a horde i imagine a 2 units of zombies and 2 units of skeles with everything else being graveguard would be really good but i cant afford graveguard atm so i can only offer specualtions.

EMPIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Access to all of the lores and can spam wizards like no tomorrow, you can run the magic phase fairly strongly. Not to mention the versatility that they offer: elite units and horde units.

i agree VC's are expensive money wise to run as an elite army, since their elites cost a pretty penny.

Empire is and will always be the jack of all trades army. They do everything well to good, not great but it makes for a great all comers force.

SKaven are a horde army, but you can (not most viable list, but still) do a lot of stormvermin and warp lightning cannons, hell pit abonimations, etc.

Yeah any "horde" army doesn't have to be a horde army... It's 25% core requirement, bring the most expensive core, after that bring the toys. With beastmen you can make that 25% core all Tuskgor chariots, then fill in the rest with minotaur, ghorgons, razorgor chariots and herds, harpies, stick those lords and heroes on their own chariots if you want. With empire take knights as your core. Tomb Kings? take chariots (thought 1 bunker of archers is highly advised for the Heirophant). VC? Well sorry but that's tricky you can leave the zombies and skeletons at home but 40 ghouls is still 400pts which will take you through 1600, so if you want 2000+ you either gotta add more or take a 2nd unit of something.

Orcs and Goblins! Unique magic phases, lots of options and above all, really fun!

If you want bad guys you should look into Orks and Goblins or the dark elves. Both are extremely different then your lizardmen and both employ vastly different strategies.

Dark Elves:
-A magic phase that can go toe-to-toe with lizardmen
-awesome looking evil models
-all units have hatred turn one
-can field all cavalry lists, gun lines, mix, horde hammer
-have a ton of cool monsters...manticores, dark pegasus, black dragon, harpies, and the awesome hydra!
-expensive and elite army that is also t3 so a little finesse is needed

Orks and Goblins
-completely unreliably awesome and will make you smile and say wtf every time you play them!
-can be elite, can be horde
-have amazing funny models like the mangler squigs, doom divers, pump wagons, and a giant ass spider that rocks!
-can filed orks, savage orks, black orks, globlins, and night goblins. No other army has the unit choices like OnG army does except maybe skaven, but who likes rats?

I would go with dark elves since they are the absolute opposite of the lizardmen.

Woc maybe play the bad guys in fantasy. strong magic strong cc rumors of a new book. what's not to like. on top of that warriors are boss looking.

if not maybe ogres big strong hitty smashy stompy giant cannon seems pretty legit.

WoC are exactly like the list he uses now with the slann. Destroy people with magic and march forward with large blocks of T4 S4 well armored core units.

Seems like Vampires would a good fit.

I think Dark Elves would fit your bill mostly. They have an extremely powerful magic phase, can be made of elite units (so low model count) and they do have some cool looking units. They also offer a good conversion opportunity from converting HE models to DE ones. This tends to appeal to many painters since High Elves are more of a 'painter's army' and an all-converted army is awesome.

As for your questions:

3. Re: Dark Elves - What can you tell me about their playstyle?
4. Re: Dark Elves - Can you point out the best and the worst of the Dark Elf model line?

3) Dark Elves have the awesome benefit of being a Top-Tier army, meaning that pretty much any way you write a list, it will be good. This doesn't mean you can throw in anything and it'll work, but it does mean you can write a variety of types of lists and as long as the list itself is good, you'll do well. I.e. Dark Elves can do a shooty army, a Khanite Army, a Monsters-Heavy Army etc etc. Any style you like is pretty much viable.

4) Are you on about their prowess on the battlefield, or which ones look the best? Let me know and I'll answer

 The Shadow wrote:
4) Are you on about their prowess on the battlefield, or which ones look the best? Let me know and I'll answer

Yes

And while I'm at it, here's something I did over the course of the day...

To help me figure out which faction to go with for my second army, I've put together a small, 1k list for each of them. The idea is to give me an idea of what list building would be like for each faction and, on some level, what their tactics are.

If there is a stupidly obvious critique to the list, please make it. However, what I'm MOST interested in is this:
--> does the list actually express something true about this faction?
--> Will it do what it's supposed to do?
--> To sum it up, are my conclusions about the faction - as expressed by the list - accurate?

Remember that I'm not actually committing to buying these lists, just trying to get an idea of the

Here it goes:

ElectricPaladin's Warriors of Chaos @1k

Heroes
• Chaos Sorcerer (Level 2)
• Exalted Hero w/Chaos Runesword, Daemonic Mount, Shield

Core
• 12 Chaos Warriors w/Shields (Full Command, Mark of Nurgle)
• 6 Marauder Horsemen w/Flails & Throwing Axes (Full Command)

Special
• 5 Chaos Knights (Full Command)

I've got to admit that building this list has turned me against Warriors of Chaos and towards… Dark Elves at this point. It really does look like with the Warriors of Chaos I'll get a very similar list building and game experience to my Lizardmen: mostly melee, mostly tough and hard, magically powerful (though not quite as much). Sure, I could go hordes of marauders, but that just doesn't appeal…

Anyway, this list uses the chaos warriors as my anvil - hence the mark of Nurgle and defensive armament - while the knights, accompanied by the exalted hero, act as a hammer. The marauder horsemen are also capable of hammering, though I see using them mostly as a fast, mobile harassment unit.

Before I could expand this list, I think I'd need to decide what kind of chaos list I want: monotheistic, pantheistic, atheistic? But given that, I think I would want to add a chaos warshrine or two for more weird blessings of the dark gods goodness, and then a hellcannon, because it looks and sounds awesome. More knights, because they're totally badass, and possibly another unit of marauder horsemen.

Although I don't think Warriors of Chaos are BAD, I do think they are just a lot like Lizardmen, enough that I am at this point inclined to look elsewhere.

ElectricPaladin's Dark Elves @ 1k

Heroes
• Sorceress (Level 2) w/Crown of Black Iron, Dark Steed, Tome of Furion

Core
• 10 Dark Riders w/Repeater Crossbows (Full Command)
• 12 Warriors w/Shields (Full Command)

Special
• 5 Shades w/Bloodshade, Light Armor
• 5 Shades w/Bloodshade, Light Armor

Rare
• 10 Witch Elves (Full Command) w/Banner of Eternal Flame

I'm pretty sure there are some problems with this list - for example, I'm not sure if the shades really need bloodshade leaders - but the idea was to epitomize the speed and viciousness of the Dark Elves. The warriors are my anvil - hence the shields - and the dark riders are my hammer, while the shades are meant to deploy advantageously and harass the enemy at range. The witch elves are a secondary hammer, and also meant to take out whatever my opponent most wants to keep alive. The banner of eternal flame is meant to help them take out regenerating targets. Flame and poison, together again for the first time!

To expand this list, I'd add a cauldron of blood! Then some heavy cavalry. I'd also either upgrade my sorceress to a HIGH sorceress, or just add a high sorceress - possibly with a more impressive mount, like a dark pegasus or manticore… or dragon - and keep the ordinary sorceress. After that… I dunno. More soldiers, certainly, to keep up with the Core requirements of a larger list. And then a war hydra? A bolt thrower? I feel like I have a lot of options.

I think I'd enjoy this list. It has speed and maneuverability, which my Saurus lack, and although the sorceress isn't quite as magically powerful as my Slaan, she's still in the magic game enough to make me very happy.

ElectricPaladin's Vampires @ 1k

Heroes
• Vampire w/Great Weapon, Heavy Armor, Nightmare, Dread Knight, Summoning Creatures of the Night

Core
• 10 Crypt Ghouls (+Ghast)
• 10 Crypt Ghouls (+Ghast)
• 20 Dire Wolves

Special
• 5 Black Knights w/Lances (Full Command w/Banner of the Barrows)
• 10 Fell Bats

Ok, I've got to say that as of right now, vampires are out.

It isn't that the core choices are ineffective, unkilly, or bad. It's that they don't have any options for increasing their effectiveness except size, which makes this a horde army. No tough Saurus warriors with great armor saves and toughness. Heck - not even shields. As the size of the army increases, so to must the size of the undead hordes. I can minimize that, to a certain extent, with expensive units - some of which are attractive in terms of both rules and models - but I don't have any other options. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the style I prefer.

I may post later with an Empire list, but it seems unlikely. Looking at the army book is solidifying that it's just not my choice

• • •

So, as of the end of this experiment, it looks like I'll be playing Dark Elves. I'll have to chat with my style consultant (wife), because she's seriously never wrong about what I'll like, but there it is.

As for you, what are your thoughts? Any questions, comments, concerns?

OGRES BABY!

Come to the fat side, we have steak. Elf steak. Also the finest Empire Sausages(made with the finest soldiery) Exotic chaos stuff, I think its a heart. The Tentacles make me wonder. Anyway, we also have fine brettonian horses, stuffed with its rider, comes with its very own toothpick.



Advantages:

Cheap. 2 Battalions and 4-5 additional boxes will easily give you a competitive 2500 point army.
Low model count
Easy to paint
Fluff is very characterful
Book is very solid and has good variety in its competitive options, although some of the more esoteric choices are genuinely bad.
Casters are decent at magic while also being ok in melee, they are ogres afterall
Characters are easily converted out of regular stock models
Bits are largely interchangable between kits making them very conversion friendly
Fast. M6 is the basic movement speed

Disadvantages

No good special characters
Vulnerable to magic, especially uber spells of doom
low WS and Inititive, even on elite units



And the last reason is this picture

I love ogres, my first army, I'm a fatty myself. Having said that I think that picture should be a crying ogre saying "I wish my Weapon Skill wasn't 3". While ogres do smash they also whiff a lot. If you want a better melee army go with Beastmen, Gor with beast banner are S4, they are T4 but their weapon skill is 4 and you can get 40 with ahw and full command for the cost of less then 10 ogres with iron fists and full command, they lost the impact hits and fear but do get perma hatred (you will fail a LD test less then 5% of the time with LD10 and BSB rerolls), but ogres do get stomp. However a successful PoS or Purp Sun might take less then 100 pts of beastmen where it will take several hundred ogres.

VC's are a horde and they are my first army a good list needs necromancers since the Vc's have amazing Lords and Heroes but they will get focused down.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
the ghoul list would work great with a strigoi king and since they are not "undead" like zombies, skeleton warriors and i think grave guard they will not suffer when the leader dies as heavily as the undead

Ok, folks. Unless someone has a hail-mary pass, I think I've decided on Dark Elves.

Take a look at this 1k list I can build:

Heroes
• Sorceress (Level 2) w/Dark Steed, Lifetaker, Ring of Darkness, Tome of Furion [NOTE: Not sure which lore - probably one of the killy ones like Death or Fire, or Dark Magic]

Core
• 9 Dark Riders w/Repeater Crossbow (Musician & Standard Bearer)
• 18 Corsairs (Full Command)

Special
• 10 Cold One Knights (Full Command - Banner of Swiftness & Deathpiercer)

My mobile harassment unit is this M9 fast cavalry, slinging out awful spells and a hail of fairly accurate crossbow bolts. With lifetaker on the sorceress, she can use horrible spells and help her unit shoot, which seems unfair. I have a big unit of knights on giant lizard - slightly less fast, but still pretty speedy - to act as my heavily armed and fairly hard to kill hammer. And then, I have my corsairs to act as an anvil.

I don't know if this is actually a great list, but look at what it can do: it shoots quite well, it's fast and mobile, it can hit hard in melee, it participates in the magic phase but isn't as focused on it as my Slaan-based Lizardmen, and two of the three units can take a hit, despite the feared T3 problem.

It's not that the Dark Elves are the "best" army, or anything, but it really seems like they are exactly what I'm looking for in a second army.

awesome post pictures of the models as you do them i love dark eldar in 40k and cant wait to see some fantasy done. I have a unit of crossbow men that i am willing to get rid of they are not finished and a few of them are painted.

Let me know if you are interested if not i will proxy them as something

have fun man. They are definitely going to challenge you in the beginning since you are so used to lizarmen.

I'd go with WoC
lots of variety, especially with chaos marks (example, I play slaanesh so my army doesn't worry about psychology)
troops are good, got what many say is the best character in the game
and you can have a dragon leading your army, I sometimes do