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Admittedly I could use some help making an empire force manageable.

I first began playing empire back in third edition, and it was my first love in the war hammer world. Due to the difficulties of finding people to play against I ended up taking a break from 6th to 8th when I moved to a city which had a lot of fantasy players. This of course inspired me to rebuild by first love, the imperial army.

The empire has changed a lot over the last couple editions, and so I began constructing an Ostland themed army. (poor county) Massed infantry is the core of that army, hoping to utilize the detachment system to its fullest. The hope had been to construct a army around the infantry system with only a scattering of "elite" forces, 1 cannon, maybe one unit of knights etc.

(for obvious reasons this has been fairly disastrous) so i wanted to tactically ask empire players on dakka,

Have you had success running multiple infantry blocks? how do you keep your front rank priests from getting chopped to pieces? With a level 4 wizard on the table, have you had more success with a basic general or an Arc Lector?

The one thing that worked really well with the new rules and the detachment system for the empire was the triple horde of halberds. A friend of mine tried this against me and it was pretty effective. Basically, one HUGE unit of halberds (he used 2 sets, one parent unit at 60, the other at 80) then 2 detachments of 30/40 halberds. A pile of characters in the parent units gave all sorts of special rules to everyone. The trick to this system was to use the detachment hordes as speed bumps that can take a lot with them. He never thought that the detachments would actually break anything, but by the time my high elves made it to his larger units... the outcome was beyond question. Get enough S4 attacks that get re-rolls to hit and you will whittle down almost anything.

Cool thing about it was that the smaller units were like 150 points each.

I do like that idea, a sort of double pincer thing. I was planning to run a huge hoard of 100 halberds with two massive detachments. the trick is maneuvering those monstrosities while staying with in the 3" requirement.

However, a parent unit of 100, with two detachments of 50 is very pricy. (630 for the parent, and 300 for each detachment) at 60 in the main unit with 30 in each detachment that would only run 390 and 180 a piece, much more doable.
I'm assuming the celestial wagon is a bit more effective as a support it sounds as well. Focus on more damage out put and use the extra dice to try and get a priest ward off... ?

Big blocks of troops, particularly Halberdiers is the Empire standard in the current edition. Add in a Warrior Priest and you have a really solid unit.

A lot of people complain about not being able to get detachments working, but I've not found much of a problem. Though without any option for a supporting charge detachments now work much better on the defensive. Would be a lot harder to pull of with massive units like the ones you guys are talking about, though.

Castitas wrote:

(for obvious reasons this has been fairly disastrous) so i wanted to tactically ask empire players on dakka,

Have you had success running multiple infantry blocks? how do you keep your front rank priests from getting chopped to pieces? With a level 4 wizard on the table, have you had more success with a basic general or an Arc Lector?

Yes, I have had some success with all-infantry Empire. While there are some downsides to it, I don't quite see the obvious reasons why it must be disastrous. For example, I had a game against a HE "bowline", 4 bolters, 2 magic bolters, archers + Shadow magic for the T debuff, chaff to hold me up. Even though people don't rate HE archers very highly, this combination took a heavy toll but I just ran forward and arrived with just enough men to win the combats.

Another game against MSU HE, I had a big block of 60 Spears led by an AL with stubborn detachments and pushed it right down the centre, with the detachments as a kind of bulldozer or cow catcher in front...it was amazing. They don't necessarily defeat stuff but they hold it up very well (in this game they did defeat some chariots as icing on the cake).

An all-infantry force with Greatswords and Halberdiers also worked well against Vamps. Charged some Wolves, overran into some Werewolves or whatever they are, crushed them and reformed (right flank). Held Grave Guard at bay with Halberdiers + detachment in the centre. Rear-charged Grave Guard with reformed Greatswords, and poof.

One of the biggest drawbacks of this approach is that it is sloooow. When 8th was still new, I had a very similar match as the first, only against DE. At that time, my units were about 35 strong, and subsequently got shot to pieces by what felt like hundreds of repeaters, skirmishers, and light cav that I couldn't ever catch but since you're already considering 60-100 men...

In my experience, Warrior Priests are very hard to keep alive, even when they are positioned on the corner of the unit. A War Altar, while certainly more prone to get hurt by warmachines is a much better investment, and often a bit cheaper, too.

Sorry, missed answering the specific questions in my first post...

Castitas wrote:
Have you had success running multiple infantry blocks? how do you keep your front rank priests from getting chopped to pieces? With a level 4 wizard on the table, have you had more success with a basic general or an Arc Lector?

1) I've had a lot of success running multiple infantry blocks. It's honestly the strongest Empire set up, if you add in steamtanks and demigryphs. Without them it's still really strong - halberdier hordes with warrior priests are really powerful.

2) Basically, you don't keep your warrior priests from dying. You do what you can, put them on the edge of your units, buy champions to take the enemy challenges instead of your Warrior Priests, hand out the cheap magic items, and try to get their ward save up each turn, but basically there's a limit to how tough you can make a guy with 2 T4 wounds. Just pile them in there, and figure most of the time you can expect to get two combat turns out of them, and that should be more than enough to justify their points.

3) The arch lector is very good, though being a Warrior Priest and your general he tends to be target #1, so you have to commit points to keeping him alive (the Speculum is a great option), and accept there's a really good chance he'll die anyway. The general is also good, Ld9 with Hold the Line is really powerful, though he'll never kill much and is basically as squishy as the arch lector. The other option is to not bother with any of the lords other than your wizard, and let one of your warrior priests or even a lowly captain be your general - Ld8 isn't that bad when you've got Hold the Line.

There is a guy over on the Warhammer Empire.com sight that has written some really good tactical articles on using foot troops and detachments. Do a search for the Griffon Formation. Also check out oncebitten's video battle reports on you tube.

Both the articles and especially the video battle reports really helped me develop a viable strategy.

Once Bitten plays a solid Empire infantry list with just the addition of a few key support pieces. The steam tank is really the most important piece of his army. He is able to keep his opponents elite infantry blocks out of combat with it until he can bring enough force to bare on them to beat them.

You really have to build the army around one or two blocks of infantry.

I think success with Empire is about picking your battles and fighting combats with the right buffs in place. You are likely to only have at most two blocks of troops to fight key battles and then the rest of your army should be about delaying your opponents units so that you do not end up getting double charged or hammered by elite units.

Two blocks is not a lot. Of course it all depends on the exact nature of the support but neither a STank nor ICK are foot troops. The Griffon formation doesn't claim to be all-foot either, I gather there's a number of ways you could build such a list.

It also heavily relies on diverters, and if that works, it can go both ways. Not saying it will, just something to watch out for.

You definitely be successful with an Empire Foot Army. I personally like swordsmen (halberds are a good choice too) regiments with handgun detachments, a unit of pistoliers nearby, or a volley gun next to them too.