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Is it just me or are the Silver Helms

+ Faster (Move 9)
+ Higher Initiative
+ ASF (so normally rerolling hits)
+ Have the Bretonnian ignoring Barding rule
+ Have the ability to get Move 10 with Swiftness Banner (potential calvary deathstar super fast unit)
+ Same Armor
+ Loss of a 6+ Ward but are in an army that can attain ward saves from lore attribute or take a banner to get a 2+ one against all Magic not the same thing i grant you
+ Have more attacks due to Martial Prowess
+ All for 3 points cheaper than our Knights of the Realm and also CORE

I feel as a Bretonnian player my entire army book was just outclassed by Silverhelms am I over reacting or is this ridiculous I mean literally everything that made Bretonnia special was just ripped off in one fail swoop and given to an army that is not only now the best Calvary army in the game I am sure they are still amazing at Magic, Shooting and Infantry.

Maybe you will get a new book soon. I think Brets as is cant be judged/compared to anything from 8th. Not that they are royal GAK against everything but their book is too old.

Definitely true, but I do not see a new armybook coming out until 2015 or so the current rumors indicate, so my thoughts are Bretonnia is falling to the tier of the Wood Elves soon lol

As a HE player, I must take five Silver Helms to count as a rank. You must only take three. Therefore, your knights are far better at doing what every almost other cavalry unit struggles to do: take on infantry alone.

 The Shadow wrote:
As a HE player, I must take five Silver Helms to count as a rank. You must only take three. Therefore, your knights are far better at doing what every almost other cavalry unit struggles to do: take on infantry alone.

Except you get an additional rank, so rank 2 = rank 3 due to martial prowess

So 9 knights = 3

but 10 Silver Helm = 3 as well (in 2x5 rank)

Also since you can't really attack with the middle after the second rank for Brettonia. So your hitting with 8 instead.

Combat res is usually gained through kills not ranks, so for the most part your HE silver helms will kill more than the KOTR

12 KOTR is 312 (FC) for 11 Strength 5 Attacks at WS 4
15 Silver Helms 345? (IDK what FC cost) for 15 Rerollable Strength 5 attacks at WS 4 on a faster model that will charge more reliably

The KOTR have 1 more rank than the Silver Helms so 1 more static point of combat res, where as the Silver Helms will most likely on average get 4 more kills than the KOTR making them have higher combat res, and either way if the infantry unit the Cavalry charged has steadfast it has steadfast so KOTR are not in my opinion better suited at anything other than having a smaller footprint on the board due to the ranks of 3.

 timofeo wrote:
and either way if the infantry unit the Cavalry charged has steadfast

Ah, no, but that's the point, Bretonnian Knights are far more likely to remove steadfast. Say you reduce the Infantry unit to three ranks (not at all unfeasible over the course of a battle). You'd need 9 KOTR in combat to negate steadfast, whereas a HE player would need 15. The Silver Helms may kill more, but the infantry unit in question will probably be testing on their unmodified Ld (or the general's), so will probably stay put, only to defeat the Silver Helms in the next round since they don't have the benefit of their lances. Bretonnian knights are far more likely to avoid such a fate.

Don't get me wrong, Silver Helms are good, but saying they've supplanted the entire Bretonnian Army is going a bit far.

15 knights(including 3 characters) will have 5 ranks

15 Silver Helms(including 3 characters) will have only 3 ranks.

In addition, the Elves are more likely to take casualties as the enemy can attack RnF, while the Brettonians will be getting hit on their characters. If the champ is in the front the most the unit could lose is 1 model, not counting characters, but then you aren't going to charge something that could easily one round a Brett character.

So the Brettonians will have more ranks and thus more likely to break steadfast.


Empire Knights being core hasn't killed Brettonia and neither will Silver Helms.

Replying to the OP's original post, I have to say that I think the answer is "yes." I mean, the Bretonnians' book is so old it's ridiculous. Wood Elves too, as you said (especially with Skirmishers getting a little nerfed in the new edition, along with outnumbering fear-causing models). They both drastically need new books.

Dwarfs too, for that matter, but it sounds like they are leading the charge for a new book. As good as the HE were before, they are now even better, which is ridiculous. Like you said, great cavalry now paired with superior magic, great shooting, and really skillful (if not tough) melee warriors. Bretonnia is going to need some serious firepower in a new book to keep up, I feel.

 The Shadow wrote:
The Silver Helms may kill more, but the infantry unit in question will probably be testing on their unmodified Ld (or the general's), so will probably stay put, only to defeat the Silver Helms in the next round since they don't have the benefit of their lances. Bretonnian knights are far more likely to avoid such a fate.

KOTR use lances and are S3 as well, not sure where your argument is going here.

The Silver helms will likely have rerolls to hit, that should put them with more kills.

i hear they are going to errata the silver helms to get a blessing from the lady.

Don't forget frontage: Bretonnian knights get more attacks out of a smaller frontage than do the Silver Helms. That'll make a huge difference in round 2 or 3 if they can't break the unit on the initial charge round.

Even with the new HE cav, Brets will still be a solidly balanced overall book, along with a couple of other books they're the very middle of power level and are really what the designers should be looking at.

Brets still have several main advantages that HE knights don't- the first is the Blessing, which is a massive bonus especially for an army that doesn't really mind about going first and can also play the ranged game quite happily.

The second is that HE characters don't have anything like the tanking potential that Bret characters have- the T4 over T3 is massive, as is the ability for Brets to fill the front rank of their main combat unit with T4 1+ re-rollable characters with an inbuilt 5++ against anything that will challenge the armour save (admittedly one of those saves will only get a single re-roll from the Luckstone, but seeing as Brets aren't an army for protracted combats that won't matter too much) so the actual knights won't get hit and you have a load of ranks behind for breaking steadfast. If HE want to try and run a full on knight bus, they'll still have T3 2+ knights with no ward save in the front rank.

 tmarichards wrote:
Even with the new HE cav, Brets will still be a solidly balanced overall book, along with a couple of other books they're the very middle of power level and are really what the designers should be looking at.

Brets still have several main advantages that HE knights don't- the first is the Blessing, which is a massive bonus especially for an army that doesn't really mind about going first and can also play the ranged game quite happily.

The second is that HE characters don't have anything like the tanking potential that Bret characters have- the T4 over T3 is massive, as is the ability for Brets to fill the front rank of their main combat unit with T4 1+ re-rollable characters with an inbuilt 5++ against anything that will challenge the armour save (admittedly one of those saves will only get a single re-roll from the Luckstone, but seeing as Brets aren't an army for protracted combats that won't matter too much) so the actual knights won't get hit and you have a load of ranks behind for breaking steadfast. If HE want to try and run a full on knight bus, they'll still have T3 2+ knights with no ward save in the front rank.

Wait, do you really believe that bretonnia are middle of the pack? As they sure as hell don't seem to be. Hell the last tournament actually gave bret players extra points for how bad the book is! Every game is an uphill struggle as most of the units are either useless or overpriced, with no decent footmen making the watchtower mission almost impossible. I love my brets and they are by far my favourite army but don't say they are a middle ranked well balanced book, as they are clearly not. However when they get a new book, when then we'll show those other armies how it's done

They consistently do well in the UK, with a number of players pulling out some good results (we had at least 2, possible 3 players who were in with a good shout of going to the Master but just missed out, and Tom Hale is currently sat in a Masters qualification spot- admittedly there is still a long way to go, but it demonstrates my point).

It does of course help that in most relevant tournaments (ie, non-GW ones) we don't play Watchtower, or any of the rulebook scenarios for that matter, but none of them are really suitable for competitive play so it's a moot point.

Take the ETC comp for example- as a hard comp pack, with cuts to the top armies and buffs to the lower tier, Brets are left with no changes because they don't need a leg up (if the the top are getting cut back), and nor do they have anything that needs toning down. The same could be said for any other tournament which uses comp- some armies get buffed, some armies get cut back, Brets are consistently an army that gets neither.

Alternatively, if you don't want to use the ETC as an example (which is fair enough, a lot of people don't), Rankings HQ provides some interesting reading. In the UK, Brets are currently ranked as 9th out of the 16 armies with 2433 points. In top place (and surprising nobody) are Ogres with 2829 points and propping up the table with 1925 points are Wood Elves- this puts Brets pretty much in the middle, with only a hundred or so points either way between them and Dwarfs, Dark Elves, Chaos Dwarfs and the old High Elf book (Warriors are 200pts ahead, but they're still going through a certain amount of flux in the UK because there was a fairly substantial bandwagon effect to them)- when there is a variation of almost 1000pts between the top and the bottom, 100pts is still a fair bit but it's not an enormous difference.

It's of course open to difference in metagame- for example, in Australia Brets are ranked 14th, but their top 3 is made up of O&G, High Elves and DoC. However, the fact remains- enough people do well enough with them that they are generally considered to be a solid army, albeit one that is having increasing trouble in the metagame (mainly because without Armour Piercing, S5 is becoming less and less relevant when 1/2+ saves are becoming the norm in an edition that revolves around monstrous cavalry).

Brets are being discontinued like specialist games, sisters of battle and black templar. You guys might not believe it but this is the direction GW is going profitable lines only.

tgf wrote:
Brets are being discontinued like specialist games, sisters of battle and black templar. You guys might not believe it but this is the direction GW is going profitable lines only.

Yeah, they're getting squatted.

(I've been trying to get this rumor started for a year now, help me out and pass it on!)

Brets didn't get replaced dude. I have been running mine for awhile now and so far a lot of people have been surprised by how competitive they can be in this current edition. Sure, there book is old, but they are still a very solid army, and though Silver Helms are Core again, I have recently gone against a new HE army running the "Silver Helm" Spam and just obliterated them. Reason why is that sure they have Martial Prowess, however like all HE's (and most Cav in general), Men-@-Arms give them fits. My horde of 50x Men-@-Arms w/a Prayer Icon Damsel wiped out a unit of 15x Silver Helms, and 2x lances of 12x KOTR where able to charge in and destroy the other unit, with my Bret Lord killing his in a challenge ( Virtue of Knightly Temper combined with Gauntlet of the Duel is pretty sweet ). Brets are still a fun, solid army in this edition, the biggest change needed right now is what every new army book has gotten so far:

*More Heros
*Updated Point Values
*Updated Rules to go along with 8th
*New Units

Thats really what it comes down to mate. My Brets always perform well and so far I have proven many people wrong, as I placed 2nd both times in the last two Fantasy Tournaments at my store, with the main reason being the person who comes in first usually massacres at least one opponent, where all of my games are usually bloody fights with few models left standing. We have the greatest advantage with our Cav because of the Lance formation, and even then, you dont have to run them in it. Plus, Bret models are in my opinion, some of the best in the game. That being said however, I do agree that GW needs to stop being idiots and actually update a book that deserves it the most. Do your job for the Gamers and not the money GW!!!

Silver Helms are better than Bretonnian cavalry because, well, the cavalry in every new book is superior to Bretonnian cavalry (except Tomb Kings).

Bretonnians get by with shenanigans that combine their reduced frontage and still decent characters reduced frontage... the knights are basically just there to add ranks. This doesn't make them good, basically it means there is a handful of very specific lists that are good enough to play against the strongest lists, and only really if the Bretonnian player is quite skilled.

So really, complaining about Silver Helms likely outperforming Bretonnian Knights is kind of missing the point - Silver Helms are good but they aren't that good, the point is more that Bretonnians really need a new book.

Agreed.

Yes, there are Bretonnian players that still win regularly. If you look closely, you will find they've been playing Brets for many years and know how to maximize their effectiveness.

This might be one of the reasons GW isn't in a hurry to update Brets. Imagine what players who can win regularly with a sub-par book would do with a BALANCED book!

Indeed, they're going to have the same deal that ogres have right now.

Ogres were for years a sub-par book, the players that could still win with them were pretty good players. Then they got an update to a slightly above average book and people started eating face with them.

The same will happen when bretts get updated, and I expect it may be more pronounced.

I concur.

Bretonnia is, in our local meta, exclusively played by long-term veterans who absolutely know what they are doing and how they can maximize the army's potential.

The Top 5 or even Top 3 always have a Bretonnian player in and they get Best Leadership awards all over the place. Our best Bretonnia player has a sportsmanship rating of 2.9 over the course of the last 7 months

I am glad that Goblins hard-counter Bretonnia else I'd be in a lot of trouble in the friendlies I play vs. them ;D

 Grey Templar wrote:


Ogres were for years a sub-par book, ... Then they got an update to a slightly above average book and people started eating face with them.

This under sells it slightly. It is a generally accepted fact that 8th ed Ogres are at worst one of the best 3 books in the game.

I would say its objectively wrong. Ogres are very vulnerable to 6th spells. Maybe the top 5. But not the top 3.

They are IMO below Lizardmen, Dark Elves, and High Elves.

If purple sun and pit of shades didn't exist I might believe that, but as it is they are such hard counters that are widely available to a large swath of armies.

That's not entirely true, nor unique to Ogres though.

Ranking them below High Elves is a bit odd, given that the previous book was at best middle of the road and the newest one is still up in the air. Putting them below Dark Elves is an arguable point, I would counter by saying that Dark Elves struggle in the current metagame where everything relevant is armoured and fast moving and destroys infantry- at the same time, remember that this is metagame that Ogres single-handedly created and has since been built upon.

Plenty of armies are weak to the bigger spells in the game, the reason Ogres rise above this though is that they have some of the best magic-defence in the game through the Runemaw (which makes the Gutstar almost immune to anything except Purple Sun), Hellheart and Dispel Scroll- most armies only have 1 item that can shut down a phase, Ogres have access to 3.

They are also a very fast and mobile army that can present several dangerous threats that reward being played aggressively, so the window of opportunity to magic them off is very limited because they will be in combats turn 2/3 and, as I already mentioned, have the items to keep themselves safe on the way in.

Simply put, there is a reason why so many tournament players changed to Ogres when the book came out and that Ogres get such consistently good tournament finishes even when used by players who were, with other armies, mediocre.

I find the Runemaw not worth it because it has to go on the BSB and leaving him naked is a bad idea all around. Plus you can't choose the target of the bounce anymore.

And the HH is hardly super powerful. It works for one turn if you roll well, and all it really does is suck power dice away. it can destroy your opponents wizards but that's not going to happen very often.

Well rather than sidetrack the thread further, let's agree to disagree

MarsNZ wrote:

 The Shadow wrote:
The Silver Helms may kill more, but the infantry unit in question will probably be testing on their unmodified Ld (or the general's), so will probably stay put, only to defeat the Silver Helms in the next round since they don't have the benefit of their lances. Bretonnian knights are far more likely to avoid such a fate.

KOTR use lances and are S3 as well, not sure where your argument is going here.

Their strength values are irrelevant. I'm pointing out the fact that, as Bretonnian cavalry can more easily get more ranks and hence negate steadfast, they find it far easier to break through an infantry unit and not get held in combat, where they're likely to be defeated the next round. HE Cavalry almost always needs support, the same isn't true for Bretonnian cavalry.

As a long-time Bret player, I have to disagree. A single unit of cavalry will ALWAYS need some form of support. Rubber lance syndrome is just too prevalent for a single unit to go it alone.

I'll grant you that 2 or 3 cavalry units working as a team can be devastatning, though.