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For my group to pick armies we have a few questions:

1. What are the top three armies for accurate ranged damage?

2. What are the top three armies for artillery blast template strikes?

3. What are the top three armies that have units that are known for taking a lot of damage before they die?



Thanks

If you try and play Fantasy like it's 40k, you'll be greatly disappointed.

Just the same...please help with my questions above.

Fantasy is significantly better balanced than 40k, and these artificial rankings don't really do you much good. Seriously. You and your group will find much more enjoyment out of picking armies whose complete packages appeal more to them rather than trying to get the 'best' at something.

I can understand wanting to know what armies focus on what, and that's definitely a thing. Not every army can do the same thing as well as others. Still, I'll reiterate that this is not 40k. I don't mean that in a demeaning or snobby way, it's just a flat out different game, where ranged is support and close combat is king.

So, with the caveat out of the way, I guess I can answer your question.

Armies that can do heavy ranged well (in vaguely descending order): Dwarfs, Wood Elves (but you don't want to play them), Empire, TK, O&G... Skaven...

There's no real artillery blast template strikes. Stone throwers use small blast templates, some magic uses templates, but they're not going to wipe out units on their own. If you want heavy war machines, Dwarfs, Empire, and O&G are your go-to armies.

Armies that can take a beating and keep going: WoC, Lizardmen, Dwarfs are solid at that.

Again, keep in mind that this is a very different game, and if you're basing your army choice of artillery blast templates that don't really exist in Fantasy as they do in 40k, you'll be in for a nasty surprise. But there ya go.

The biggest issue from your three questions is that none of them help guide you to a single army.

Ranged damage and ACCURATE ranged damage are two very different things, and will depends infinitely more on who you are playing and what your engagements look like. Fantasy uses a modifier system that, by and large, everyone is bound by; the 40K mentality of "I always hit on "x" " does not apply. One round, you might need 6's to hit, the next 4's, and the next 8's (yes, it's possible). The only army which can safely say they "always hit on "x" " would be tomb kings, and only with some units, and still it's going to be on 5's. Dwarfs and Wood Elves get an honorable mention for their special rules as well.

There is not a single piece of blast artillery in the entire game I would declare as an artillery blast template strike, nor would I declare any of them (aside from some dwarf machines) to have any sort of reliability. Artillery and shooting, in general, are very much support roles, as they have always been. To that end, though, Empire and Dwarfs have the greatest selection of artillery. However, some will argu that Skaven have the best cannons in the game, and Bretonnia have the best stone thrower in the game. Few would disagree that the cheesiest artillery in the game comes from the Ogres.

As for taking damage, there are two ways to look at this. First, you can be physically difficult to kill, from having a high toughness, great armour, difficulty to hit, or some combination therein. Second, you can be so numerous and expendable that the unit, as a whole, can lose bodies by the dozens and still not really care. Warriors of Chaos will give you the toughest standard troops in the game, at a price. Excellent armour, toughness, and strength comes standard on all of them. Ogres get an honorable mention here for being able to physically take wounds without a model always dying (a big plus in many ways) and for being T4 all around. For the ability to die without caring, Skaven and Orcs and Goblins come to the forefront. Plenty of cheap, expendable bodies ready to fling in your enemies general direction.

However, I must agree with what others have said. This is not like 40K. You will find gunlines boring to play as and against, artillery useless or lack-luster for the majority of the game (turn 3+), and no amount of toughness or armour is over the top. 3+ armour saves quickly turn to 6+, T4 ends up getting wounded on 2's, and combats are decided by far more than just the number of dead bodies on the ground. Fleeing troops are all the tastier when you know they have been sweating behind "impenetrable armour"

1. Top three armies for accurate ranged damage would have to be Wood Elves (but only at short range and you don't want to play wood elves). Dark Elves are solid with BS 4 special choice Reaper Bolt Throwers and some decent shooting from their core selection in darkshards and dark riders. Empire is also great with laser guided cannonballs and engineer supported hellblaster volley guns. Dwarfs are also an excellent choice for range damage with runed up warmachines they hardly ever miss.

2. Dwarfs and Orcs and Goblins. I mention OnG because the Doom Diver is one of the most devastating template weapons in the doom diver against a. the right target and b. a decent roll. Str 5 ignoring armor in today's meta game of 1+ saves is pretty huge. Not to mention the d6 auto correct.

3. Depends on what you mean. Taking punishment and still being combat effective can be through numbers, armor or toughness.

Through numbers there's no one better at it than skaven. We're talking 50 man blocks that hardly run when in the general and bsb's range and steadfast. skaven have a minor rule of 1 body per 10 points then toys. It's not uncommon to see 250+ models on the table @ 2500pts (most common point level at the moment)

Beastmen are also an army with lots and lots of bodies. But they're an old book that wasn't super good when it was released and has fallen behind the power curve.

Vampire counts are also great at taking shots to the chin and still being highly combat effective. Tough characters that heal and can clear units on their own are terrifying, support them with ranks and some magic and they're nigh unstoppable. With how easy it is to raise troops this edition Vampire Conts can suffer horrifying losses and simply bring them back with an average magic phase.

Through toughness read the comment above me. Ogres are also solid with 3 wounds. Lizardmen are pretty tough cookies too and can bring a TON of bodies on the field as well. I'm talking 100+ skinks with poisoned blow darts that swarm the middle and open charge lanes for their hard hitting special, rares, and characters.

Armor is probably the easiest way to avoid incoming damage and Empire are currently the best at taking it on the armor. 1+ armor is king at the moment, although armies are starting to game against high armor saves creating borderline rock paper scissors match ups.

~~~

Just to reiterate that this is not a shooting game. Shooting has a very limited role in warhammer fantasy. Although it is important warhammer is won and lost in the movement phase. Shooting is a great supplement to any army. Clearing chaff and support is a great step in winning any game but cannot be over emphasized otherwise you'll never be able to hold in combat.


Take High Elves for example. Against armies like dwarfs even with their low model counts High Elves just have to make it into combat where they'll most likely win the game. And with high mobility and target saturation this isn't too daunting of a prospect.

So...knowing that the games are not the same...if I liked Space Marines and tanks in 40k..what armies should I move to in Fantasy?

Thanks

J0kerrMT wrote:
So...knowing that the games are not the same...if I liked Space Marines and tanks in 40k..what armies should I move to in Fantasy?

Thanks

So...knowing that ice cream and steak are not the same thing...if I really like my ice cream with caramel sauce..what would I like on my steak?

It's... such a weird question. I'm not sure what kind of answer you're hoping to get.

I will give this another shot using a different angle...on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being bad or the worse and 10 being good or the best) can you rate each area of the following armies:

Melee: How good overall the army is in fighting in close combat
Range: How good overall the army is at hurting the enemy at a distance
Magic: How powerful the magic is at killing enemy units on average
Morale: On average how well the army does on standing its ground in bad situations
Toughness: On average how much units in the army can take damage before removing models

Dark Elves
Melee:
Range:
Magic:
Morale:
Toughness:

The Empire
Melee:
Range:
Magic:
Morale:
Toughness:

Vampire Counts
Melee:
Range:
Magic:
Morale:
Toughness:

Warriors of Chaos
Melee:
Range:
Magic:
Morale:
Toughness:

Wood Elves
Melee:
Range:
Magic:
Morale:
Toughness:

Ok, I think we've hammered the 'this is a different game' thing hard enough.

The Space Marines thing might actually help a bit. You should elaborate on why you like them, but let me take a crack at it.

Space Marines are an elite force. We're outnumbered? Who cares, more xenos to stab. All that rain of fire just bounces off my power armor. In a one on one fight, I WILL murder you. Hope you brought more guns. Oh, and we brought tanks: giant behemoths trundling forward dishing out death. You're going to need some serious firepower to crack our protection, and you better do it soon or we're going to leave you behind as roadkill. FOR THE EMPRAH

So with that mindset, I'd suggest Warriors of Chaos as a strong possibility, and not just because I'm biased. They're an elite force. We're outnumbered? Who cares, more skulls to take. All those puny arrows bounce off my chaos armor. In a one on one fight, I WILL murder you. Hope you brought more troops. Oh, and we brought gorebeast chariots and chimeras and daemon princes: giant behemoths trundling forward dishing out death. You're going to need some serious firepower to crack our protection, and you better do it soon or we're going to leave you behind as roadkill. FOR CHAOS

Eight foot tall murder vikings are a nice parallel to the eight foot tall space marines. They can take a lot of punishment with stupidly good armor all around. They have next to zero shooting, but again, this is a different game (dammit dead horse). Hellcannons can fill your artillery desires. Most war machines in fantasy are actually quite brittle if you can get some troops over there in close combat, as only the feeble crew is able to fight. Hellcannons will actually murder most things in close combat on top of being able to do nasty, nasty template shots. They're actually the closest things to tanks I can think of, besides the Empire's Steam Tank.

Again, elite force. Everything is super expensive points-wise, but you'll be used to that from your Space Marines army. You'll always be outnumbered, but you'll never be outmatched.

You could also take a look at Dwarfs, but I'd really recommend against them as a starting army. They're very, very one dimensional, and they get boring very quickly both to play and play against. They're going to get an update this spring, though, so keep an eye out as they might be right up your alley if they get some variety mixed in. It's a super old book right now. Still, they have fantastic war machines and shooting, and they're pretty tough in melee too with T4 all around and decent armor. The problem is they're very, very slow. Like REALLY slow. Everything is M3. They also have no magic. In bigger games you can take the Anvil of Doom to alleviate the movement problem and give you a few more interesting options, but for the most part you're going to be sitting there and shooting at stuff. And then saying 'go'. It's really not all that exciting for anyone.

Empire might have some stuff worth looking at. They're a great army and have versatility out the rear. They also have the aforementioned Steam Tank, which might catch your eye. If you don't mind having mediocre infantry (but a solid amount of it), they're definitely worth a look. You can do a lot of very different builds and they're a great first army as they can focus on nearly any aspect of the game and pull it off well, so you can explore different things. Ranged? Gunners, crossbows. War machines? Great cannons. Literally "Great Cannons", and they are indeed great. Melee? Demigryph Knights are beastly as anything, and tough to crack to boot. You want cavalry? They got cavalry. You want a big horde of troops? They got those too. You want elite choices?

They won't do anything quite as awesomely as a specialized army, but they'll make up for it by having support with other aspects that those specialized armies don't have access to.

And I'll take a crack at two of these:

J0kerrMT wrote:

Warriors of Chaos
Melee: 11 - RIP AND TEAR RIP AND TEAR RIP AND TEAR RIP AND TEAR
Range: 2 - Hellcannons are the only ranged unit
Magic: 6 - Good lores, and even our sorcerors have armor, but other armies can do it better... still great as support
Morale: 8 - Solid leadership all around and you will win most combats you're in anyway if you move smartly
Toughness: 9 - When your core troop choice starts with a 4+ armor save base and T4 and the rest of the army follows that theme, you know you're tough

Wood Elves
Melee: 3 - Elves are pretty terrible at melee compared to other armies. Their high speed lets you pick your fights, but there's very few fights you actually want to pick in the first place.
Range: 7 - This is their strength, but it's mostly in S3 shots. No war machines. Think guerilla fighters with AKs in the jungle
Magic: 5 - Lore of Life is great, but you need a lord level caster to get it... their own lore is pretty laughable
Morale: 8 - Great leadership, and forest spirits are immune to psychology, at least you won't run from the things about to plaster you to the wall
Toughness: 2 - Elves are stupidly fragile with paper armor and limited ward saves... forest spirits are a little better here, but any flaming attacks (and there are many) and they will go up in smoke, and they still have no armor

While I don't want to take your quiz and get inolved in ratings arguements, it sounds to me like you are a...

CHAOS DWARF PLAYER.

Here's the deal with the dark stunties..


1. Accurate Ranged Damage.

90 point characters allow you to reroll the big randoms in Warhammer Artillery, the Scatter or Artillery die. This gives you a big boost to accuracy, as re-rolls are a big boon when compared to a take it or leave it die roll. Even better, you can Hellbind your artillery, which means you pay out the nose, but the shots become "alive" and steer themselves towards the enemy.

Getting away from Warmachines, they have expensive (but amazing) infantry level guns. They even have guns in their Halberds.

2. Templates? Chaos Dwarf armies love them some templates. Small templates. Large Templates. Flame Templates.. and you can re-roll them for a price!

3. Taking Damage and Toughness? First off, the whole army is T4 unless you take some hobgoblins. Even better, they can all wind up with 3 or 4+ armor saves and gain a 5+ ward (invul) vs flaming attacks, which are fairly common. Then consider they have T5 characters (Even wizards) and all their big machines and monsters average out at T6-7 with 5+ wounds, it's a very resilient group of stunties.

4. Magic. I know you didn't mention it, but they have great magic access, being able to take Death or Hashut.


The Catch?

Rarity. The models are either hard to collect (for cheap), expensive to buy (mostly FW or old oop), or require conversion time (best option imo. Buy dwarves and make em evil). Then there's the fact that they come from a splat book. (BUT, it's a splat book that is GW approved for tourney play, and I've yet to see a con disallow them) From time to time people will grumble about them being OP or imbalanced, especially when a 10 wound Demon-Train is kicking the crap out of their dudes or you are using the Blood Chalice on them.

On the plus side, you can really choose to use them as either Dwarves or Chaos Dwarves or a cool converted WoC army. (WoC can take them to an extent per the Tamurkan book, so if you just buy some Warriors of Chaos core troops, you have three armies in one.)

Thanks for the advice so far...I will not be playing Choas Dwarves as they have no section on the website..but thanks for the advice.

I am now looking at the following armies:

Dark Elves
Melee: 7
Range: 5.5
Magic: 8
Morale: 8
Toughness: 4

The Empire
Melee: 7
Range: 7
Magic: 6
Morale: 7
Toughness: 7

Vampire Counts
Melee: 7.5
Range: 3
Magic: 8
Morale: 9
Toughness: 7

Warriors of Chaos
Melee: 10 (adjusted to stay in 10 scale)
Range: 2
Magic: 6
Morale: 8
Toughness: 9

Bretonnian
Melee: 5
Range: 2
Magic: 4
Morale: 5
Toughness: 5

I can give you the skinny on Dark Elves, although I will be more likely to give you a range of scores, rather than a specific number.

Melee - 7: Dark Elves can be very nasty in melee, however it is very different than that of Chaos warriors. All Dark Elves have ASF and generally higher I than their opponents, which means you'll be re-rolling your missed hits frequently. Combined with a decently high WS, this means most of your attacks will be hitting. However, Dark Elves do not have a very high S, and have to rely on special rules to put wounds through to targets, such as Poisoned Attacks. Luckily, all Dark Elves have the Murderous Prowess rule, which allows re-rolls of 1s on to-wound rolls (upgraded to all failed wounds if the unit has a Cauldron of Blood). This allows for some seriously effective synergies, such as Witch Elves with a Cauldron of Blood. Other hitting power comes in the form of monsters, which can add some much needed muscle to a Dark Elf combat.

Range: 5-6: Dark Elves have access to repeater crossbows, bolt throwers and maneuverable fast cavalry that can put a lot of shots down range and at a very good quantity. However, this shooting is generally low strength, and while it has Armor Piercing, you will not be crushing armored or high Toughness targets with this. Still very useful.

Magic: 8: Dark Elves bring their own good lore into the mix, as well as having access to all 8 core lores for WFB. This gives you a ton of magical variety and power.

Morale 8: Being Elves, they have a nice high leadership, however...

Toughness: 4: While your leadership is solid, Dark Elves all have a low Toughness and very little in terms of heavy armor.

Thanks..updated my previous post with the numbers...now I just need empire and Vampire counts.

Hopefully I am not throwing a spanner in the works, but my experience with Warhammer over 40k is that SO many of the armies can have effective multiple builds OR many, many builds that are perhaps less effective.

I am planning an entire Knightly Order Empire army, all Knights and Demigryphs. This probably not optimal, but damn I think it is a cool theme, but I could very easily face an Empire Gunline that is all handguns and artillery. Dwarfs can do the same sort of thing, an Engineers army of cannons, flame cannons and thunderers and then you can face an elite horde of Iron Breakers and Long Beards.

Oh and WOC can do a Marauder spam list of literally hundreds of drunken Vikings and the next minute an insane Monster mash.

Warhammer Armies I feel are far more versatile than the 40k options who are sometimes badly pigeon holed.

I completely understand...I am just looking for the average in general feel of the army. Thanks

I'll take a shot at the Vampire Counts.

Vampire Counts
Melee: 7.5
Range:3
Magic: 8
Morale: 9
Toughness: 7

With Melee abilitly you have to look at both the characters and the rest of the army. The Vampire Counts live and die by their characters. Vampire Lords with the right build can be some of the most deadly characters in the game. But the core of the army (with the exception of the poisoned attacks of the Ghouls) are basically just there to take up space and keep the vampire hidden until he can get into combat and dominate.

Range attacks are limited to Terrorgeists and Banshees, very short range attacks whose damage output is based on your enemies leadership. Great against low leadership armies, almost useless in higher leadership metas.

Magic: Vampires have great access to magic. Nearly all of your characters will be mages of some sort with access to two of the best lores in the game. (Shadow & Death) The vampire lore is pretty much required to keep your horrible core units alive, and as such takes away from some of your magical punch.

Morale: Unbreakable. Nothing in the army will ever break in combat however your models will crumble based on how much you lose any individual round of combat by. So basically you don't have a whole unit turn and flee but instead it can be slowly worn down.

Toughness: Most of your army can be raised from the dead with little effort. You also have ways to heal your characters through magic or the vampiric special rule. Cavalry with great armor saves and a core unit (Ghouls) with 4 toughness. Not to mention ethereals who are not harmed by non-magical attacks. All in All, I find it to be a very tough force.

The biggest drawback of the Army in my mind, is that if your General dies and you don't have another caster of the lore of vampires to pick up the slack your army will crumble away each turn. (Makes leadership checks and loses wounds equal to how much it lost by, and most of the leaderships in the units are 6 or less)

Awesome...this is all great...now if I can get someone to do this for empire?

Empire's going to be a lot more all over the place. Really the best way to describe them is the jack of all trades army. The subjective numbers will vary entirely on what you focus your list on.

I was told that about all the armies...and I have people here doing there best and doing a good job.

So yeah, just need someone to do the empire using the army in general...like the other armies where done.

Thanks!

J0kerrMT wrote:
I was told that about all the armies...and I have people here doing there best and doing a good job.

So yeah, just need someone to do the empire using the army in general...like the other armies where done.

Thanks!

Er, I'm trying to tell you that moreso than the other armies, Empire is going to be all over the place. Just stick 5s across the board then. Other armies naturally focus on one thing or another, Empire is the army that YOU choose the focus.

No offense...I will get a 2nd opinion on that one...so far I have gotten people to rate each criteria and give a reason for each rating for the other armies...so I probably can get one for Empire too...thanks though.

Empire of Man

Melee: 6/8
Range:7
Magic: 6
Morale: 7
Toughness: 5/9

Not too much different from what you've been told.

In general, Empire melee will need 4's to hit and 4's or 5's to wound. Notice the "/8" This indicates a Chicken/Knight list. Their melee generals aren't super killy, although Runefang is silly good.

I gave a 7 on range for two reasons. Affordable and engineer driven artillery and ranged troops in Core, Special, and Rare.

The magic rating of 6 is in spite of the fact they don't have their own OP lore like Dark Elves nor do they have any great items to aid in casting like the Book of Hoeth or Dagger of Sorcery . There are a few reasons for the decent grade however.

1.) They can cast all the lores of battle magic.
2.) They have Warrior Priests who can single dice spells that give ward saves and hatred.
3. They also have access to a Loremaster, so there's that.

Morale is low to mid. They have 7's in the units for the most part, which Empire Generals boost quite a bit by adding a 3rd die with Hold the Line.

Toughness is a 5. Even their big kits are only T5, with the toughest creature in the book being a 350+ point mount for a Lord. Armor saves are usually only a 5 or 6, with the exception being Knights and Chicken Knights, who are hard to crack.

Thanks again...going to push it here..

What about the Brettonnian army?

persoannly I am just getting into this game myself, and I have to say the most attractive looking to me are brets and VC.

if someone could do a rundown of VC vs brettonnia for me :3 (I had decided, but then I looked at the named characters and amazing things Vamp lords can DO!)

I would like to add one thing to the above mentioned lists.

HQ units:

just as a whole the top end "heroes/ generals" as my favorite part about these games are the "HQ" units and their abilities.

J0kerrMT wrote:
Thanks again...going to push it here..

What about the Brettonnian army?

If you have never played WHFB before, I would strongly advise against getting a Bretonnian army. The army is definitly one that needs a more experienced hand in this current edition. Or until a new army book drops

None the less...if some good samaritan would help with a break down, see other armies above, for Bretonia..that would be awesome.

Last one I swear.

Thanks again.

I can do Bretonnia as well.

Bretonnia

Melee: 5
Range:2
Magic: 4
Morale: 5
Toughness: 5

Melee: The only thing that the Bretonnian's have going for them in close combat is their lance formation, and given the prevalence of large units with steadfast this has been very much nerfed. You have to pick your battles carefully and if you don't win on the charge, it is likely that your knights will get beaten to death on the subsuquent rounds due to loss of the str bonus from the lance. Furthermore, there are a number of races who attack faster than the knights, and can kill them before they get to swing, even on a charge.

Range: Bretonnian range is pretty lackluster. Peasants with Str 3 bows. The only thing keeping this from being a 1 is the Trebuchet which is arguably the best stone thrower in the game. Too bad stone throwers aren't nearly as good as cannons.

Magic: The only thing that Bretonnian's have going for them in the magic department is access to the lore of life. It is a strong lore, but you will be needing it to get Regrowth to keep you very expensive 1 wound knights alive.

Morale: Peasants leadership is 5, but they can use the leadership of the nearest non-fleeing knight (7-8 range). There are some tricks this gives you to play with leadership bubbles, but in general they break way too often for the point cost.

Toughness: Toughness 3 pretty much across the board. The only thing that gives them some life is that being a cavalry army it is pretty easy to get 2+ Armor saves.

All in all, Bretonnia is sufffering from a very old book. The only army that they really have a leg up on is the Wood Elves. 90% of the army will be knights and so any list you can make is going to be pretty much the same. It is an army that gets boring to play very fast. In fact I traded mine away for that very reason.

Hopefully a new book will help them, but I don't even think there is one on the horison yet.

Can you do High elves for me? (don't want to start a separate thread here) also can you add in named HQs (generals) and or custom ones? my army will most likely be decided on who I deem to have some of the most bad ass HQs. (herohammer FTW!!!)