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I have around 1500 points for every warhammer fantasy army including chaos dwarves.

I was wondering what people thought were the most important components of 1500 point armies so I could make sure they were apart of each of my lists.

I do not want any DeathStar Hordes for points denial, rather general army compositions that create a well rounded, fair, and fun battle.

I appreciate any feedback!

If your goal is to create lists that are fun and decently balanced against each other, I would suggest picking out the most iconic and unique units. It doesn't matter how Swordmasters and White Lions compare to each other if you only include the one you think is cooler. A larger amount of smaller units means more decisions to make as to how to deploy and move them.

You should also make a whole bunch of different terrain pieces with two or three different geographical environments that are easy to mix and match. A lot of them can be fairly small so you can combine them in different ways.

If you are gong into hosting and making up multiple lists, go easy on the magic and the artillery. One level 2 is ok for most armies, you need more with undead.

My staples for histing warhammer

2k points limits, so you can have more toys.

- 1 general on monsterous mount with defensive items
- 1 BSB, modestly tooled up
- 2-4 total magic levels in wizards or equivalent.
- 0-1 other large monster
- 1+ cavalry blocks in two ranks
- 2+ infantry blocks in four or more ranks
- 1+ archer block
- 1-2 large skirmish units
- 0-1 cannon
- 1-3 artillery of any kind
- 1-3 msu, lone lesser characters, lone small monsters or equivalent.

Warhammer "should" have massed infantry, some cavalry, some fast moving light troops, some artillery, some magic, and a nasty monster all together. With some factions you cant do all this. Dwarfs for instance, but by and large you should have a wide range of tools in your host armies and avoid lists which tailor to a particular portion of your armies composition. The resultant lists will not be strong against the metagame, but will be awesome against each other. Play on a large table with blocking terrain and an extra turn to play the maneuver game, turn it into a partial RPG and avoid clearly broken combos and spells.

For hosting you could even allow players to choose their spells so long as they self police, so no Curse of Years or Dwellers.

Rosebuddy wrote:
You should also make a whole bunch of different terrain pieces with two or three different geographical environments that are easy to mix and match.

Good Idea!

I have gone in the direction, as you suggest, picking the most iconic units, or at least some of the most unique. Although there are some exceptions for special themes and based on deals I've got.

Here are the most notable features of the armies I have, not including heroes.

Empire: swordsman, handgunners, spearmen, free company, mortar, pistoliers, great swords, steam tank

Dwarves: warriors, quarrelers, hammerers, ironbreakers, cannon, grudge thrower, gyrocopter

Bretonnians: Knights of the Realm, Knights Errant, bowmen, pegasus knights, grail pilgrims, trebuchet

Lizardmen: saurus warriors, skink skirmishers, saurus cavalry, jungle swarms, salamander

High Elves: 2 lothern sea guard units, great eagle, ellyrian cavalry, swordmasters, bolt thrower

Wood Elves: eternal guard, dryads, tree kin, hawk riders, great eagle, waywatchers

Dark Elves: 2 units of dark shards, corsairs, bolt thrower, doomfire warlocks, hydra, harpies

Ogre Kingdom: bulls, lead belchers, iron bellies, man eaters, yhetis, gnoblar trappers, sabertusks

Orcs and Goblins: orc big uns, orc arrer boys, night goblin spears and bows with fanatics, spider riders, black orcs, rock lobber

Tomb Kings: skeleton sword and shield, archer units, cavalry, chariots, ushabti, bone giant

Vampire Counts: skeletons, zombies, black knights, grave guard, varghiests, vargulf

Daemons: plague bearers, plague drones, plague beasts, nurglings

Warriors of Chaos: warriors, marauders, marauders cavalry, knights, ogres, giant

Skaven: clan rats w/ weapon teams, slaves, stormvermon, rat ogres, jezzails, doom wheel, warplighting cannon

Beastmen: gors, ungor skirmishers, bestigor, two razigor, two chariots, centigors, jabberslythe

Chaos Dwarves: Infernal guard, hobgoblins, bull centaurs, magma cannon, hobgoblin wolf riders

Feel free to make suggestions, I am still up for adding to this collection. I have huge collections for dwarves, skaven, and undead to pick units from.

 tjnorwoo wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
You should also make a whole bunch of different terrain pieces with two or three different geographical environments that are easy to mix and match.

Good Idea!

I have gone in the direction, as you suggest, picking the most iconic units, or at least some of the most unique. Although there are some exceptions for special themes and based on deals I've got.

Here are the most notable features of the armies I have, not including heroes.

Empire: swordsman, handgunners, spearmen, free company, mortar, pistoliers, great swords, steam tank

Dwarves: warriors, quarrelers, hammerers, ironbreakers, cannon, grudge thrower, gyrocopter

Bretonnians: Knights of the Realm, Knights Errant, bowmen, pegasus knights, grail pilgrims, trebuchet

Lizardmen: saurus warriors, skink skirmishers, saurus cavalry, jungle swarms, salamander

High Elves: 2 lothern sea guard units, great eagle, ellyrian cavalry, swordmasters, bolt thrower

Wood Elves: eternal guard, dryads, tree kin, hawk riders, great eagle, waywatchers

Dark Elves: 2 units of dark shards, corsairs, bolt thrower, doomfire warlocks, hydra, harpies

Ogre Kingdom: bulls, lead belchers, iron bellies, man eaters, yhetis, gnoblar trappers, sabertusks

Orcs and Goblins: orc big uns, orc arrer boys, night goblin spears and bows with fanatics, spider riders, black orcs, rock lobber

Tomb Kings: skeleton sword and shield, archer units, cavalry, chariots, ushabti, bone giant

Vampire Counts: skeletons, zombies, black knights, grave guard, varghiests, vargulf

Daemons: plague bearers, plague drones, plague beasts, nurglings

Warriors of Chaos: warriors, marauders, marauders cavalry, knights, ogres, giant

Skaven: clan rats w/ weapon teams, slaves, stormvermon, rat ogres, jezzails, doom wheel, warplighting cannon

Beastmen: gors, ungor skirmishers, bestigor, two razigor, two chariots, centigors, jabberslythe

Chaos Dwarves: Infernal guard, hobgoblins, bull centaurs, magma cannon, hobgoblin wolf riders

Feel free to make suggestions, I am still up for adding to this collection. I have huge collections for dwarves, skaven, and undead to pick units from.

For skaven leave the weapon teams, jezzails and rat ogres at home lol

Skaven base is a bus or two of slaves, 2 warp lightning cannons, abomination (if you don't take cannons), doomwheels are also awesome, small block of clanrats (leave the stormvermin at home at 1500 usually) then a bsb and a wizard plus wizard with doomrocket

 chiefbigredman wrote:


For skaven leave the weapon teams, jezzails and rat ogres at home lol

Skaven base is a bus or two of slaves, 2 warp lightning cannons, abomination (if you don't take cannons), doomwheels are also awesome, small block of clanrats (leave the stormvermin at home at 1500 usually) then a bsb and a wizard plus wizard with doomrocket

I like that strategy, but I'm not going for competitive, just fun with a variety of units.

For the chaos warriors I would probably skip the giant and the ogres because they aren't iconic to me. Spend those points on their characters and maybe some more warriors or a spawn. Pushing the "champions of the gods" angle is a good idea and showing the risks as well as the rewards would be cool.

Once you have a base you like for each army, you could start figuring out a couple of "unit blocks" of certain points values that can be swapped around. By that I mean that if one army has stone trolls for 200 points or w/e you could have some boar riders for 200 points (or a giant!) on standby in case whoever wanted to play orcs didn't like trolls. And so on.

Writing a list for each vampire bloodline would be a nice idea, since you've got the models for it.

Rosebuddy wrote:
For the chaos warriors I would probably skip the giant and the ogres because they aren't iconic to me. Spend those points on their characters and maybe some more warriors or a spawn. Pushing the "champions of the gods" angle is a good idea and showing the risks as well as the rewards would be cool.

Once you have a base you like for each army, you could start figuring out a couple of "unit blocks" of certain points values that can be swapped around. By that I mean that if one army has stone trolls for 200 points or w/e you could have some boar riders for 200 points (or a giant!) on standby in case whoever wanted to play orcs didn't like trolls. And so on.

Writing a list for each vampire bloodline would be a nice idea, since you've got the models for it.

Thanks! I like your idea for more iconic units for chaos. I was thinking the same thing. The reason I was thinking a giant is because he works for 3 armies, 4 if you allow it as a proxi for siege giant for chaos dwarves... The vampire bloodlines would be cool, and so would representing the different clans of skaven. but those are more in line with super stretch goals. At my current pace I think it will take at least 2 or 3 years to finish my last 7 armies. I'm over halfway there!