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I know heavy cav took a hit with 8th edition, but would it be possible to run an all Knight Bretonnian army? I figure if any faction could do it, it would be Bretonnia. I'm not looking for anything that would win tournaments, but would an all Knight army be able to at least put up some kind of fight if played well? (By all Knight I mean KoTR, KE, QK, GK, PK, and any of the lord/hero choices). I feel like it would be very fluffy, and more important very challenging and different from my current fantasy army (Lizardmen). Is it doable?

Thanks for any input!!

Brettonians do heavy cavelry quite well because their cavelry have the very thing that is why heavy cavelry arn't great any more. Ranks!

Brettonians actually can cause enough damage to bring the enemy down below Steadfast because their units can have 3-4 ranks. Most cavelry arn't run in ranks because they are too expensive and don't put out enough attacks.

In addition, Bretonnian Knight units are narrow enough that you can easily charge two lances into a 5-wide unit, and three into a 10-wide unit.

I'm glad to hear that their knights are still potent. I have to say, I love the idea of a lance of steel and horse crashing through a wavering horde or goblins or skeletons, etc. Can they be effective without support, though? I don't want to run any men at arms or bowmen in my army. Is that going to hinder my ability to handle some units?

Bowmen and Men at Arms are good, but not mandatory.

You will be wanting some Trebuchets though. best stone thrower in the game for its points.

lizardwolf19 wrote:
I'm glad to hear that their knights are still potent. I have to say, I love the idea of a lance of steel and horse crashing through a wavering horde or goblins or skeletons, etc. Can they be effective without support, though? I don't want to run any men at arms or bowmen in my army. Is that going to hinder my ability to handle some units?

They can be effective without support of infantry, however as has been previously stated Trebuchets are far too good to miss out on, if you do not want any non knightly units in the army things get a little more difficult as you will more then likely want to have some magical damage, so looking at Prophetess with Lore of Heavens and hope for Chain Lightning spell.

I have a list somewhere that's all Knights (no warmachines or peasants) I think its 55 models for a 2400 point list

Could you post it or PM it to me? And I will definitely include a prophetess, although coming from LM I don't want to be as reliant on magic as I usually am. I think I'll run trebuchets with my army though, because they do look very good and I need ranged support somewhere.

Pm sent, you will want to edit it as it was designed for a one off scenario in an ongoing narrative campaign

All knights is very viable, but since you would be skipping Yeomen and M@A you will want to skip Questing knights as they wont have a lot of protection, though they can still be useful if played right and kept away from shooting reigments. As stated though by Grey Templar you just can not skip Trebuchets as 90pts for s5(10) area damage is amazing. (Given the match being played is 2k+ pts) other wise I'd only take one.

Thanks for PMing me!

And yes, I think I'll include Trebuchets if only to split up the enemy army so my knights can focus on single units a little better, and whittle down their army a piece at a time. That's the best way I can see it working anyway, if I charge more than one group of knights at a unit, destroy it, then rinse and repeat. From what I understand I have to kill things veryyy quickly lest me shining noblemen get bogged down by hordes of peasants!

Ya the trebuchets will be there to give you some viable options when dealing with horde regiments. Where as you will have a healthy amount of knights but against say 40-50 strong, they won't be able to get through the unit without first having some losses taken. The other thing is with trebuchets, a decent hit though maybe not direct, can cause significant damage and when you are facing an army with lower leaderships, the panic checks can do a lot for you, especially against O&G. It may not be too much against elves, but still the more dice you force them to roll, the more likely they are to roll poorly.

The other advantage of trebs is that they encourage the enemy to get into CC with your knights quickly. Without any trebs the enemy can hang back and fiddle with charge blocking, movement distance, etc, and make it very difficult on you to get your charges off nicely. With a pair of trebs on the board, every unit that doesn't get stuck in asap, even if it means they get charged, is in mortal danger of getting a boulder dropped on its head.

An all cavalry army is not going to be even reasonably competitive. Terrain alone will be your undoing.

I play Bretonnians. I feel like I play them at least pretty well.

In fact, I have a blog where I have started to post battle reports. I have 5 up now with my Bretonnians.

www.redcrusaderbattlereports.wordpress.com


Here are a few things I've learned about the Bretonnian army.

1. There is nothing wrong with the army. It is perfectly competitive with the right approach and tactics.

2. 2 really scary lances of knights are much better than 3 - 5 weaker lances. Big lances are the key to doing what heavy cavalry does.

3. A balanced list is the key to even mediocre success.

Terrain can be mitigated to an extent. The Ranger's Standard, Braid of Bordelaux, and Twilight Standard allow knights to bypass terrain features at least part of the time. And because they are so rarely used, they often come as a rude shock to an opponent who was depending on a terrain feature to cover his flanks...

I agree with vulcan, I play brets a lot and I normally win, but the army is weaker though than most since you actually have to take smart item choices, to make things work out well. Another reason it's weaker is if you get charged you have no advantage what so ever, where as all armies can fight back if they are charged or not, you are essentially stuck with horses that have 2 attacks since the knights aren't too amazing stats wise that cost a lot of points.

Mitigating terrain is definately something you can do pretty easily and without very many points being spent, and this will facilitate taking big blocks of knights. Also I will say though that 15 knight lances do work the best, since you can get a significant upper hand in the first round of combat, that you normally cannot get with 9 knights or less.