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Hello, so a bit of background; I'm new to warhammer, I have a battalion box, generals box and mage box (all ready to be painted!) but I want to expand my army into a stronger/larger force so I can play with others.

I've had a small game vs my friends dark elves where my army was heavily padded for points and got demolished, astoundingly demolished. So I lack experience and my faith in my choice of army is slightly demoralized .

But I made a few lists, read a lot of posts, talked to guys at the GW shop and this is what I have come up with

LORDS - 275 points
Battle Wiz Lord (275) level 4 - ironcurse (might put this on war priest), preservation talisman, dispel scroll - Life Lore

HEROES - 265 points
Captain (131) - BSB - full plate, crown of command, luckstone, joins with the halberd unit
Engineer (65) - NO UPGRADES
warrior priest (69) - shield and heavy armor, joins with the halberd unit

CORE - 585 points
50 halberd (450) full command with 2 10 halberd detachments
5 Inner circle knights (135) with musician

SPECIAL - 628 points
3 Demigryphs (192) with champion and musician
3 Demigryphs (192) with champion and musician
Great cannon (120)
Great cannon (120)

RARE - 250 points
Hellblaster Volley Gun (120) - this baby is one of my most loved toys that I desperately want to use
Celestial Hurricanum (130)- I read a strategy involving large infantry blocks moving forward with this, it is also one of the pieces that made me want to pick empire as my army when I started playing

Current total - 2003 points

So there it is, this is what I have come up with, my only dislikes from my understanding is that it wastes some of the units I already own and will cost a bit to buy. Hopefully its legal, I think it is but I am still learning the rules.

I did have a similar list that replaces the demigryphs with 30 greatswords + detachment but I want some form of cavalry that I can break units with.

Thank you for reading =)



EDITED - I added the points of each unit in brackets, the points include all upgrades/detachments
also heres a screenshot of my army in excel, it might be easier to read http://i.imgur.com/WtlYsPA.png

EDIT: changed the demigryphs into 2 units

EDIT: changed 30sword and 30 halb with detachments into one halb unit with detatchments also added archer bunker

EDIT: boosted the halberd unit and added some knights

It looks good but I would drop the swordsmen and add more halberdiers and archers. Two large infantry blocks can be hard to manouver well around terrain and can be picked apart too easily. (If you have a lot of Swordsmen models laying around, I don't think anyone would mind if you put them in the back ranks and used them as halberdiers)

Read up on this tactica and see how you can use archers and detachments as efficient redirectors and flank chargers etc.: http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php?topic=42921.0

I'm not a fan of archers at the moment (i used 19 old bretonnian models to get points vs my friend) and i wasnt a fan of the bs/str of them vs his dark elves.

I'll give them another look though, and I havent attached the arms so I can easily clip off the halberd parts for my swordsmen that I currently own


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW by more halberds do you mean make the single unit larger, or do you mean have another unit?

Looks pretty good imo. If you can find the points, a favourite trick of mine is to give my BSB (or warrior priest) the Van Horstmann's Speculum. The look on their face when you cpatain effectively turns into a chaos lord


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and go with lore of Life, always lore of Life

 Brother Payne wrote:
Looks pretty good imo. If you can find the points, a favourite trick of mine is to give my BSB (or warrior priest) the Van Horstmann's Speculum. The look on their face when you cpatain effectively turns into a chaos lord


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and go with lore of Life, always lore of Life

I did think of this setup for the captain, but I was sort of on the fence about it.

The archers aren't there to do any damage, if they manage kill 1-2 models in a game you should be more than satisfied with their damage output

They are there because they are very mobile, being skirmishers . That also makes them a bit harder to shoot at. They are also a great wizard-bunker because if you miscast and have to place a template on your own unit, less models will be hit because they're spread out.

By more halberdiers I mean adding more to the unit. If they're 40-60 strong they have more punch in a horde formation than two 30-man groups.

Good luck and welcome to the Empire!

Break the Demigryphs into two units. Ranking them doesn't help much because they do not get a lot of supporting attacks. From what I've seen you want to use units of three or four in single ranks. Not having a standard for them shouldn't be a problem.

GrafWattenburg wrote:
The archers aren't there to do any damage, if they manage kill 1-2 models in a game you should be more than satisfied with their damage output

They are there because they are very mobile, being skirmishers . That also makes them a bit harder to shoot at. They are also a great wizard-bunker because if you miscast and have to place a template on your own unit, less models will be hit because they're spread out.

By more halberdiers I mean adding more to the unit. If they're 40-60 strong they have more punch in a horde formation than two 30-man groups.

Good luck and welcome to the Empire!

arent hordes hard to maneuver? Thats why I didnt make just 1 big unit of soldiers initially

Seajay wrote:

GrafWattenburg wrote:
The archers aren't there to do any damage, if they manage kill 1-2 models in a game you should be more than satisfied with their damage output

They are there because they are very mobile, being skirmishers . That also makes them a bit harder to shoot at. They are also a great wizard-bunker because if you miscast and have to place a template on your own unit, less models will be hit because they're spread out.

By more halberdiers I mean adding more to the unit. If they're 40-60 strong they have more punch in a horde formation than two 30-man groups.

Good luck and welcome to the Empire!

arent hordes hard to maneuver? Thats why I didnt make just 1 big unit of soldiers initially

Not as hard as 2 "mini" hordes of 30

altered the army slightly, got some points to work with in the Core

I'd bump up the horde to at least 50 (if not 60) and then take some knights.

Looks great with that huge block of infantry to hold the line! Lastly though, are you sure about life? ITs a fantastic lore, but I think you should try different ones before settling on it first.

 EmpBobo wrote:
Break the Demigryphs into two units. Ranking them doesn't help much because they do not get a lot of supporting attacks.

Did Monstrous cav not get FAQ'd to have Monstrous Support? Or am I missing something?

Your updated list looks very solid! Those 3 points over the limit won't be tolerated in a tournament or similar though, but just drop a single Halberdier and you're good to go.

Regarding the lore choice, I personally recommend trying a few different ones over your games, a lot depends on your opponent (metal can be brutal against WoC or Brets for example).

You have a solid list going on but look at van Horstrum's speculum. It's a great trick making your opponents Deamon Prince as weak as an empire captain and you becoming the Deamon

One thing I have found is that if you are going to use detachments that are not shooty, is you need to have at least 15-20. Shooty units can screen and redirect as well as CC units can using their parent units steadfast but you wont be counter charging with shooty units you will stand and shoot with them.

The problem lies with that if you hope to negate ranks with a counter charge you have to have a FULL rank beyond the first. So having only 10 man halberd detachments which can screen no better then shooting units, but cant stand and shoot, if it looses one model it can no longer negate ranks.

I would have a few models to buffer so you can negate those ranks or switch to archers

Thank you for the replies, I'll think about using archer detachments. As for for the speculum I think I might take that based on who I am fighting rather than always have it and maybe never need it.

I was thinking about lores some more, what do people think of using beasts to boost the demigryphs.

Seajay wrote:
Thank you for the replies, I'll think about using archer detachments. As for for the speculum I think I might take that based on who I am fighting rather than always have it and maybe never need it.

I was thinking about lores some more, what do people think of using beasts to boost the demigryphs.

Decent idea but imo go life or if you're looking for buffs go light as they're more versatile. Try not to tack a lore w one trick in mind (unless it's REALLY good)