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What is more useful - Outriders or Pistoliers and how do you use each?

outriders can be a real pain in the butt for most opponents

The extra move allows you to position them in a way which hopefully keeps you from needing to adjust their position, as they are still move or fire weapons. Plus the higher BS allows for a more reliable damage output.

Pistoliers are less useful since march blocking has pretty much disappeared, the low bs, short range and rapid fire means that you find your self typically hitting on 5's at best or more often 6's. That being said, they can be fun poking at the opponent, however don't expect them to do much of anything other than annoy your opponent

They do totally different things.
Outriders vanguard just into range, in a position where they can park and shoot all game. The firepower is better than handgunners, but worse than hellblasters (including cost for engineer). So, only take them if you've already got max hellblasters or already have maxed rare choices.

Pistoliers operate alone. They do less damage but they get outside of the opponents charge arc and harass the rest of the game.

Personally, if I had the kit, I'd build pistoliers. Empire has enough static things, a bit of mobility makes it more fun.

-Matt

I use both in a lot of games as units of 5 with musician but if i am short on points i take the pistoliers over the outriders. The outriders can be nice but i honestly find my pistoliers get to do better things. vanguard up and pistol shot then flee and rally, move up shoot again, flee and rally, and just keep doing it until they either finally decide to try to kill you (in which case you could always flee and just hide back behind the rest of your army) or ignore you (which is silly, because you'll just keep plinking out shots). For the outriders I normally just get into a good spot, and just sit there and shoot for as long as I can.

As has already been said, pistoliers and outriders don't really compete with each other, in fact they're actually kind of complementary.

Outriders are a stand still and blast unit. Deploy them, vanguard them up in to a decent position in range of the enemy, and just stand there shooting, turn after turn. Measure their value by what they kill. In this role they compete against crossbowmen and more directly against handgunners, and will kill a lot more than an equal number of points of either of those (though they've got a lot less wounds, and so are more fragile to the enemy's ranged attacks).

Pistoliers are a nuisance/delaying unit. Vanguard and then march them right up in the face of the enemy, sit just inside 6" of the enemy, so he can't move around you. Let rip with your pistols, kill a couple of guys if you're lucky, but don't worry because that's not why you're here. You're here because now that major enemy combat block can't just march forward, it has to charge you, and when it does so you flee (and with the 5" gap between you are very likely to get away... just don't try this trick on enemy troops with swiftstride or high base movement like Ogres). They fail the charge and they lumber forward a few inches, ideally on a weird angle away from your main lines. Next turn you reform and charge right back in again, unloading all your pistols for another kill or two, and more importantly forcing them to charge you again. Well, if it all works, they might catch you, and you might fail to rally (always buy that musician), but if it fails, well then you've lost 90 points. And when it works you've kept a major enemy unit from contacting your lines for a couple of turns, and allowed you to gang up on the rest of his stuff.

Pistoliers compete against 5 man detachments of archers. The archers are much cheaper, but can't delay, only redirect and doing so will destroy them. Given the lack of rolling involved in making the cheaper unit work they're probably the more efficient option, but way less fun than pistoliers.

 Castitas wrote:
Pistoliers are less useful since march blocking has pretty much disappeared, the low bs, short range and rapid fire means that you find your self typically hitting on 5's at best or more often 6's.

People always say this and its just weird. I mean, who honestly has trouble getting a fast cav unit with a 16" march move within 6" of the enemy? I don't think I've ever failed to get them inside half range...

 sebster wrote:
Pistoliers compete against 5 man detachments of archers. The archers are much cheaper, but can't delay, only redirect and doing so will destroy them. Given the lack of rolling involved in making the cheaper unit work they're probably the more efficient option, but way less fun than pistoliers.

I disagree completely as theres no competition here. You can say archers are cheaper, but they go down at the same time as their parent unit. To me this mean's its just an extention of the parent unit's cost. I'd rather spend the points on a full unit of archers, since the 35 points give me a throw away drop, which is exactly what the pistoliers and outriders both are. All 3 options are pretty much your first drop. Who cares where they are on the board, or where the opponents deploy afterwards, They can vanguard and move to get in position faster than anything else. Archers does help, as it does count to core and drop.

It might just be my local meta, but Empire suffers from an average of 8-9 drops. Spending more points on a single drop just doesn't make sense to me... Especially when I'm facing WoC lists with 13, and VC lists with 12-17 drops.

8-9 drops seems about right for empire. That's because you're going to have typically, a wizard lord, a general, a bsb, a warrior priest, and maybe a back up wizard. (5 characters, 1 drop), and then 2-5 warmachines (again, 1 drop).
If empire goes heavy cav (knights making up core, with reiksguard as specials, along with pistoliers and outriders) then a few infantry shooter units as a wizard bunker, you can get to ~11-15 drops.

Anyhow, I would drop both fast cavs as close to last as possible. I know where I'm going to want my infantry, center, or slightly off center. I know where I'm going to want my cannons and hellblasters (cannons with good lines of fire for the whole table, hellblasters near my center).
What I don't know, is where I want my heavy shooting and stalling units. Those need to park and shoot or respond to my opponents main strength.

As for archers, you could run them narrow and deep for the steadfast; but often you are better off being wiped out than holding in combat and being wiped out at the end of your own turn. For redirecting, I would rather have small units of free company (cheap). They get a few more attacks (if they get to attack that is), and by virtue of not skirmishing, take up less space on the table.

-Matt

Archers never get steadfast, they're skirmishers matt.

I was just remarking that to me detachments don't make sense as they contribute to the points per drop rate. That's my largest issue with them. To me they're basically an extension of the parent unit's base cost.

It might just be my local meta, but having below 9 drops can really hurt against certain armies.

I'm considering a high mobile empire force and looking at both of these options, as having a place. I am also looking at all other types of knights.

Where wouild you put the wizards in these units, would they fit it when the standard knight units? and keep the fast cav, speedy. Or would it be viable to spend less time shooting to have cheaper bodies to bunker the mage in. LVL 4 likely heavens, either beasts or fire 2nd mage.

If your going all mounted, you'd have to put wizards with your knights. If a character joins a fast cav unit, and doesn't have the fast cav rule, the unit loses the fast cav rule.

I might be lacking some specific vocabulary here ...
what do you guys mean by "drops"?

I guess it's related to some kind of comp score, but still, i'm lost here

TanKoL wrote:
I might be lacking some specific vocabulary here ...
what do you guys mean by "drops"?

I guess it's related to some kind of comp score, but still, i'm lost here

A drop would be a deployment placement.
If I take
2 Lords, 3 Heroes
1 Core Choice with 2 detachments
2 small units of knights
2 units of Demi-gryphon riders
2 cannons and 2 hellblasters
1 steam tank

I would place units 8 times during deployment (All warmachines go down at once, all characters at once, and the parent unit with detachments go down together).
Each deployment (be it 5 knights, or 50 halberds + 2x handgunners, or all my warmachines), is commonly called "a drop".

-Matt

makes sense ... thanks

HawaiiMatt wrote:

TanKoL wrote:
I might be lacking some specific vocabulary here ...
what do you guys mean by "drops"?

I guess it's related to some kind of comp score, but still, i'm lost here

A drop would be a deployment placement.
If I take
2 Lords, 3 Heroes
1 Core Choice with 2 detachments
2 small units of knights
2 units of Demi-gryphon riders
2 cannons and 2 hellblasters
1 steam tank

I would place units 8 times during deployment (All warmachines go down at once, all characters at once, and the parent unit with detachments go down together).
Each deployment (be it 5 knights, or 50 halberds + 2x handgunners, or all my warmachines), is commonly called "a drop".

-Matt

Essentially this. Its most commonly used around here because there is an extremely good couple of GT player in my local area who use this to their advantage. They almost "abuses" the 35-40 point unit drops in WoC and VC (or the more expensive, but more damaging DE) to bring what they call "throw away drops". These allow them to essentially put his army on the board completely after you have already committed most of your army, and since Their armies tend to be highly mobile, it makes for an extremely difficult list to deal with. Most armies tend to have 8-12 drops, while empire does tend to be a bit on the low side, especially if your bringing in detachments. To combat this, my local area tends to bring a bit more drops than average, and large death stars are few and far between.

I've found that as far as "throw away drops" a single unit of archers, pistoliers, or outriders are all I can afford. I don't see the point of a throw away unit (such as 5 archers), unless they are drops themselves.

Outriders and Pistoliers are 2 different units.

Pistoliers are true Fast Cav. Used to block enemy charges and annoy.

Outriders should be treated as a unit of semi-mobile Handgunners. Move them into position and start shooting the enemy. Hold position unless charged. Point for point they are the same amount of damage output as the equivalent points in Handgunners. They just have the ability to move faster if they need to.

I too like both types of Fast Cav. We play a lot of smallish games lately. A unit of Outriders in 1k is a very credible threat. Pistoliers are also very useful because of their speed and mobility (which I consider to be two different things). Against everything but a carpet of rats they have a good chance to sneak behind the enemy lines and cause all kinds of mischief there. The other day I even march-blocked a block of Orcs, boy, that was fun, especially since they failed animosity the turn before.

I also like to run my Outriders with a Champ with pistol & repeater pistol. Had a game against HE where they just ran rings around Swordmasters and the Champ killed 2-3 each turn.

Now I could say don't count on it or expect miracles but that disclaimer is the Empire's second name, so I won't.

As to archer detachments: Very, very useful, drop or not. I'm not entirely sure what drops matter if the opposition outdeploys you regardless. Get some chaff archers, they're more mobile than Free Company, and just get in the way. Really helps winning the chaff war IME.