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Why did you make your choice?

Chose Wood Elves, was considering Tomb Kings. Just a lot that can go wrong very fast, and you need to make the whole army work together.

Wood elves, because crushing your opponent feels so much sweeter when you know you earned it.

To be fair, he asked which codex is most tactical, not which one is most underpowered.

I went with empire. Jack of all trades master of none.
They require that extra bit of tactical soundness to put it all together well.

 Ailaros wrote:
To be fair, he asked which codex is most tactical, not which one is most underpowered.

Given the way Wood Elves have to go about winning a game I tend to agree with him.

"Which Army is..." polls inevitably turn into a popularity contest anyway, so I voted for Brets, they are pretty tactically rewarding, as simply trying to play them point and click will get you killed in a hurry

It is an opinion piece so of course the popular opinion will dominate. I find gaining that insight to be interesting.

 EmilCrane wrote:
"Which Army is..." polls inevitably turn into a popularity contest anyway, so I voted for Brets, they are pretty tactically rewarding, as simply trying to play them point and click will get you killed in a hurry

Warriors of chaos and sometimes ogres are a bit point and click though. This is even when they aren't using magic.

I paly skaven. I don't use them in super big units sometimes or at least not with the slave units. Let me tell you with two 20 model slave units at different times I flanked 2 demigryph knights in a tournament. Sadly I only tied combat both times and the re-formed and destroyed the slave units. Still though when your unit of awesome dudes almost gets destroyed by a 40 pts unit esp. twice you know you've screwed up.

Big units are hard to maneuver anyway. You will get destroyed with movement if you try it.

I chose wood elves for the same reason lots of people did. It requires a lot of moving around your opponent. In my opinion moving effectively is one of the bigger parts of fantasy. Possibly I figure armies that are beginner friendly aren't that great. At least I respect people more when the learning curve is steep and they truly earn their victories. For instance a dark elf player often uses some bits of movement against me and forces things like my doomwheel or hellpit abomination to go in a certain direction by angling a unit in its flank so that the random movement unit can't pivot. It's perfectly legal if a bit stupid in a realistic sense.

I suppose my thing is that straight forward armies are easier tactically or at least for the low and mid experienced gamers. For great players i'm not sure.

Flanking, movement and other things that relate to getting into position are some of the biggest things in the game. That said some things are just stupid like warriors and the buffed up flying daemon prince.

O&G. They have units of vastly different speeds. They have tons of war machines that can hurt themselves if they aren't careful. They have Animosity which can get ugly. They have Fanatics/Manglers which can rip apart their own troops. They got Trolls which can stand around and drool or rip arms off stuff. They got giants who can fall over and crush them. They got ranged troops, lots of cc troops, horde troops, a giant hoodah spider. One of their main Orc spells (or, 1:12 spells they can get period) moves units, which can be very tactical.

I.e., if you can manage all that stuff, it's pretty damn rewarding.

I chose Beastmen. They are slightly underpowered, so you can't just point and click, and they're flanking special abilties add some real tactical options to the game.

My second choice would be OnG per Rustfield's reasons above.

 Ailaros wrote:
To be fair, he asked which codex is most tactical, not which one is most underpowered.

Yes well if we are honest wood Elves have very little in the way of combat units so it is all about moving shooting and drawing your enemy into killing fields.

 captain collius wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
To be fair, he asked which codex is most tactical, not which one is most underpowered.

Yes well if we are honest wood Elves have very little in the way of combat units so it is all about moving shooting and drawing your enemy into killing fields.

Pretty much. It's very unforgiving and depends on combining all phases flawlessly to pick apart an opponent. It's not really a question of underpowered or overpowered.

And if anyone picks WOC (my main army) I'll smack them through the internets. I love my WOC, but man are they straightforward.

Wood Elves and Brets are an obvious choice here. By virtue of their being underpowered, you do have to be a lot more tactical to win.

I put a vote in for VC though. In a Vampire Count army, your General is so much more important than usual, so you've got an extra element to consider. For example, it's all well and good moving your General up field with a unit of cavalry to go kick face, but that leaves the rest of your army unable to march. There's more thought to be put into it.

I read it as which army is most tactically rewarding. Reason I chose wood elves wasnt because they were underpowered. I chose them because(to me) you have to think with more tactics to use them effectively.

I saw someone picked WOC. Come forth so I may smack you.

 Ailaros wrote:
To be fair, he asked which codex is most tactical, not which one is most underpowered.

In fantasy the terms are fairly synonymous, in the case of my beloved Wood Elves, all my units are at best what would be crappy units in any other book with a 20% surcharge on top of that and no access to armour.

Lizards are not the most tactically rewarding but skink cloud is quite challenging to get right so it can be quite enjoyable.

Beastmen gets my vote

Empire. Simply because no one unit can really do much by themselves. Synergy is absolutely required.

My vote is for my wood elves, plainly because I can personally say they are amazingly tactically rewarding. I know that when I win its because I can say, without boasting, that I played well. That's the best part of warhammer to me.

I have to say Dwarfs. If anyone has ever played with or against a Rangers army or an army made up of primarily a mixed variety of infantry, it isnt so easy. But victory is great when you know your Rangers and Miners have totally flanked the enemy and driven them into Hammerers, or off the field. There is more to the Dwarfs then just a castle of Cannon.

I voted for TK, they are a hard army to master but if it all synergised on the table you can have a good tactical force which is rewarding when you strike a win.

I honestly don't get why Empire would be considered though, they just as much as the dwarfs can spam cannons therefore have no need to worry about using tactics as much as armies do but that's just imo.

Why are so many people choosing HE?

 warpspider89 wrote:
Why are so many people choosing HE?

More people chose HE than chose Brets or Beastmen, do people really think HE really require more tactical acumen than Brets or Beastmen?

 EmilCrane wrote:

 warpspider89 wrote:
Why are so many people choosing HE?

More people chose HE than chose Brets or Beastmen, do people really think HE really require more tactical acumen than Brets or Beastmen?

HE players think they're special because their army is T3/5+ for the most part... Of course, HE's are also the most outright resilient of the three elven races now with 2+ saves in Core & Special, Frosties and their new ability to grow ward saves.


Personally, any of the books still stuck in 6th or 6.5ed are pretty damn challenging, simply because they're over-paying through the nose for most of their characters & units, while also sometimes dealing with antiquated rules. (*cough*forestspirits*cough*)

Of the 8th ed books, I think Tomb Kings take the cake due to how much the entire army relies on the synergies of their magic lore & character interactions within individual units.
Mono-Tzeentch & mono-Khorne Daemons are also ridiculously difficult to make things work. (Tzeentch more so since you have only 1 model that's really capable in combat...)

I have to say Ogres.

They may appear to be a Clink and Point "Hulk SMASH!" army but that couldn't be further from the truth. That is actually the fastest way to lose with Ogres.


You need to have your army synergy planned out ahead of time and use your superior speed and maneuverability to pick your combats. Think about what turn you need to pop the Hellheart in, weigh the risk of failing to catch people with it, etc...

Use Sabretusks to control the opponent's movement phase.

Use effective Target Priority with your Ironblasters to take out enemy threats.

 Grey Templar wrote:
I have to say Ogres.

They may appear to be a Clink and Point "Hulk SMASH!" army but that couldn't be further from the truth. That is actually the fastest way to lose with Ogres.


You need to have your army synergy planned out ahead of time and use your superior speed and maneuverability to pick your combats. Think about what turn you need to pop the Hellheart in, weigh the risk of failing to catch people with it, etc...

Use Sabretusks to control the opponent's movement phase.

Use effective Target Priority with your Ironblasters to take out enemy threats.

Whilst they obviously have more depth than point and click, you can't seriously believe they are more in depth than WE or Brets can you?

WEs lack the ability to follow through on their tactical play. You can pull off all the maneuvers you want but if you don't have the ability to hit hard enough to take advantage of those maneuvers there is no point. Not much tactical reward if you can't actually use your tactical play. WEs really can hope for a draw or a very slight win at best.

I haven't ever played Brettonians so I can't really speak to that, and only played against them three or four times, but I think they'd definitely be a contender. However, lacking that experience I have to go with Ogres.

I would tend to disagree with this, Wood elves definitely have the combat potential to take advantage of good play, if anything, wood elves rely on their combat more then their shooting in most armies. If a battle is a victory for me, its usually because I managed to get off a devastating charge with treekin into a flank and an eagle into rear when the blob is stuck in combat with a treeman. Archery kills chaff, not win games.

The problem doesn't lay with a tactical error in the army, it lays with the fact that the best units in the army (Tree spirits, treekin especially) are so very vulnerable to the likes of cannons (FLAMING cannons!) and the like when they are our main hitting power. Our combat is powerful, its just over costested and as survivable as wet tissue paper in the case of the elves.

Now Ogres I can't understand, while they take some tactics to play, every army does. I can't see them using half as many as wood elves, or if they do, I can't see them NEEDING to like wood elves do. This is mainly due the fact basic Ogres are so good, along with iron blasters on the chariot cannon. Simply having eagles raises an armies tactics rating by .... because the amount of sneaky tactics you can pull with them in astounding.