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Can any army pull off an all cavalry army and still be competitive?

I'm thinking Empire, High Elves, and of course Brets. I'm leaning toward Empire as I feel they have better knights, but I'm thinking High Elves will have better mounted support units.

Are Brets even still an army?

All cav with no support can be done by several armies, but they won't be competitive. All cav supported by war machines, however, can do okay (not sure about a GT-type scene, but in local tournaments they can).

Brets are still an army

The get around steadfast by being able to make a rank with 3 men, plus you can prevent wounds by filling it with characters..

I was thinking of a Who Lets the Dogs Out Chaos army with Chaos hounds as troops, as i'm thinking I'll need units with the Vanguard special rule.

Is there any benefit to having cavalry in ranks?

Marauder horsemen are troops too, so you can use them to add to your core. A friend of mine tournis with a mounted DE army supported by 2 hydras, fairs well.

Are Brets a competitive army? Expensive to buy? It seems to fit the theme I'm going for. I've never really looked at them, since I've always assumes they were a bitch to paint well.

They can be if you really know what you are doing with them. They don't often appear on the table so many players can struggle against good players, but they are expensive point wise, can be difficult to manoeuvre, and anything with killing blow will ruin your day, and most armies have an elite unit with the rule. But, if it's the army you like best then go for it anyway.

I was thinking of making an empire army all mounted. I play skaven so no cavalry at all for me which sucks but I have about 500 points of empire right now just started buying to build my list.

Its basically (from what I remember off the top of my head):
Battle wizard (or the lord guy I forget the names army book isn't on me) on pegasus with some magic items
Grandmaster on warhorse with some magic items

2 warrior priests with heavy armour and warhorse maybe shields
Captain of the empire bsb warhorse and some other stuff

12 knightly order
16 or 18 inner circle knights
15 or 16 reiksguard knights
3 demigryphs
2 units of 5 outriders

That's just what I remember off the top of my head. Not sure if I would run the knights in giant buses or not. Also have to think about possibly bringing a celestial hurricanum its still mounted

Not sure how competitive it will be but thats why I am going to build a more rounded empire army too but this could be fun to try

"Giant buses?" Is that the term for cavalry in ranks?

Is there a benefit to this? A liability?

Don't forget Orcs&Goblins.

Wolves, Boars, Spiders, Chariots, Mangler Squigs and Pumpin' Snots.

Nobody mentions Dark Elves?

They can do some seriously strong stuff with tons of 5 man units of Dark Riders and Warlocks, as well as blocks of Cold One Knights for hitting power.

phydaux wrote:
"Giant buses?" Is that the term for cavalry in ranks?

Is there a benefit to this? A liability?

A bus would be large units 5 wide. So a skaven slave bus is a unit of maybe 50 slaves 5 wide 10 deep.
There is a benefit to having cavalry buses. You can load up the front rank with a few heroes and then they will last in combat longer than say a minimum unit of 5 which won't last long.

Outriders and pistoleers Are in units of 5 because they are chaff units.
Chaff units are units used to destract other units, block charges or just be a general nuisence to the other teams units

Brettonia can use cavalry buses more effectively because they can have units minimum of 3 wide instead of the 5. This means the front rank can be filled more easily with heroes and characters to that the opponent can't attack the regular cavalry in the unit only the characters and heroes. So that's just something to think about.

You can do a cavalry heavy chaos army as well my friend has used one against me and it worked pretty well too

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nobody mentions Dark Elves?

They can do some seriously strong stuff with tons of 5 man units of Dark Riders and Warlocks, as well as blocks of Cold One Knights for hitting power.

They have been mentioned, abbreviated as DE

Warriors of Chaos works.

I think they'd make a fun all-cavalry army. Warhounds, marauder horsemen, chaos knights, skullcrushers.

"A bus would be large units 5 wide... Brettonia can use cavalry buses more effectively because they can have units minimum of 3 wide instead of the 5. This means the front rank can be filled more easily with heroes and characters"

Hmmm. Thanks.

So is the typical Bret "short bus" a unit of six, 3x2? Is there ever a need for a "long bus" of cavalry 3x3?

Oh I wouldn't use a small unit of brettonia knights.
You might want to consider going 3 wide and 4 deep. Load up the front rank with heroes.

Knights generally have to be in a bit larger size unit like 10-15 to last more than one round of combat.the guy who plays brettonia at my local store runs a list that has 6 pegasus knights, 2units of about 9 knights and he puts 3 heroes in each so the buses are 12 total.
Trebuchet and then a few of the pilgrims or whatever they are called lol fairly effective army for brettonia. Pegasus knights are actually a pretty good unit with cool models


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Peasants not pilgrims haha

I understand that Brets have one of the older codecies. Any word on an update?

phydaux wrote:
I understand that Brets have one of the older codecies. Any word on an update?

I'd assume that everything is going to be either updated or eradicated when 9th comes around, and that's this summer.

Many of the Bret models are $75 for 5 (Grail Knights, Questing Knights). I had planned to use two units of Questing Knights, and that's a lot of scratch.

Would it be considered "bad form" to use Empire models to rep some units?

phydaux wrote:
Many of the Bret models are $75 for 5 (Grail Knights, Questing Knights). I had planned to use two units of Questing Knights, and that's a lot of scratch.

Would it be considered "bad form" to use Empire models to rep some units?

As long as you make them look less like 17th cent Germans and more like 15th cent British and French knights. If I see someone has put effort into converting their army, I usually very happy to play against them.

Another option would be to look at other miniature lines. There are tons of companies that make mounted medieval knights.

You can use the standard Bret KotR kit with no modification for Knights-Errant, Knights of the Realm, and Grail Knights. Use the plain pot and barrel helm heads for the Knights-Errant, the uncrested great helms for Knights of the Realm, and the great helms with the big crests for Grail Knights. (Bonus points if you can get some sort of cloak on the Grail Knights... or you could just use metallic paints for the 'metal' in their heraldry to make them really stand out for no extra modeling effort.)

Questing Knights are the tricky ones, as you either have to find great weapons that are being held in only the right arm instead of both arms... OR remove the left arm that's cast onto the KotR torso. Or use a different torso altogether...

 Vulcan wrote:
You can use the standard Bret KotR kit with no modification for Knights-Errant, Knights of the Realm, and Grail Knights. Use the plain pot and barrel helm heads for the Knights-Errant, the uncrested great helms for Knights of the Realm, and the great helms with the big crests for Grail Knights. (Bonus points if you can get some sort of cloak on the Grail Knights... or you could just use metallic paints for the 'metal' in their heraldry to make them really stand out for no extra modeling effort.)

Questing Knights are the tricky ones, as you either have to find great weapons that are being held in only the right arm instead of both arms... OR remove the left arm that's cast onto the KotR torso. Or use a different torso altogether...

That's why I wanted to use Empire Knightly Orders for Questing Knights. Unless I'm very mistaken that kit has bits for mounted knights with great weapons, and it's $35 for 8 rather than $75 for 5. I suppose I could use the great helms with the big crests out of the Bret KotR kit yo make them look more Bretonnian, since I don't intend to field Grail Knights and I really wanted to field Questing Knights.

Actually, since the QK are supposed to be a bit... unkempt... from their quest, I used the heads from the Knights of The White Wolf sprue included in the Empire Knights set.

The real issue with using Empire Knights with Bretonnian Knights is scale. Next to the big Bretonnian chargers, the poor Imperial Knights appear to be on ponies!

Now, using the torsos and GW arms from the Imperial Knight set on Bretonnian KOTR horses and legs could work. You just have to clean off the obviously 'Imperial' stuff first.

I only play Brets in WHFB however a friend of mine plays an Empire all cav army with a few other toys thrown in (Great cannon)

I find that Brets are competitive if used right, they can also be supported by HUGE bodies of cheap M@A (shouldn't leave home without 40). So even my "all cav" army has atleast one block of Infantry!

Also you can use the kotr kit to convert anything in the Bret book, so they are pretty cheap in that respect.

Most people don't expect to see them either so it gives you the surprise factor

So my thought was to buy one box of Bret KotR and one box of Empire Knights, make 8 KotR and 6 Questing Knights, and use Bret chargers for the command models & Empire ponies for the last rank of each bus.

Then I was that The War Store has no Bret models in stock other than the battalion box!

Now I don't know what i'm gonna do.

If you have no other models the battalion boxes are not a bad deal for beginning Brets since its 8 knight or realm/knights errant, 20 men at arms, 16 peasant bowmen and a pegasus knight. 2-3 battalion boxes gives a fairly good army start, with just needing to fill out with lords, paladins, damsels, and grail knights.

Honestly surprised no one has mentioned but probably the best place to go for ideas about Bretonnia is http://www.roundtable-bretonnia.org and the best place in my opinion to start is with this persons tactics page http://www.roundtable-bretonnia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=85&Itemid=26