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I have had my unit of 34 inner circle knights take on 2 treemen, another unit of buffed knighs and they have been surrounded multiple times in the last few weeks but have always come out on top.

But then I faced someone new and he had these fanatics which are little guys with horribly large weapons. They wiped out 26 knights and made them flee wihtout me even getting into combat.

Those things are really nasty. So I wanted to know how people deal with them?

My frist thought was a small unit of like 5 cheap horses to ride out in front to try take all the hits, but then they could end up getting in the way later or simply dying to ranged weapons first.

How do I beat mere goblins with weapons like this running at me.

Take a Captasus and trigger them early. Land in between their units so that there's a chance of them running wild the O&G player's lines.

Captasus

Im pretty new so can you briefly explain what that is?

Because it sounds exactly like what I need.


Ok so its an actual flying beast thing I see. hmmm any no hugely list changing options?

Captain on pegasus. Captasus. Keep him cheap and pop the fanatics early. When an enemy unit comes within 8" of the unit with fanatics he HAS to send them out. No choice on the matter, and if you land with one of this one units behind you then he may not even target the Captasus.

Hmmm alright I may get some conersion skilling in and get this set up next time I face the darn things haha. So a bare bones captain on pegasus.

Cheers guys

Otherwise, you have two basic choices:

- Shoot them
- Send some chaff to jump on them

The first option is clearly better--some outriders could probably even do it for you, but depending on what you have or what you run, archers could also do it. Fanatics are only scary if they hit you--they have no protection against shooting in the form or armour or a ward save.

The second option will kill them, but they will do 2D6 hits against you, which will pretty much wipe you out. I don't know much about Empire lists, but I don't think you really have a "chaos warhound" equivalent unit to just send to die.

Charging THROUGH them (if they're already released and are out in front of you, in the way) is not as bad as it sounds, particularly if you have a decent armour save (which you should do). Don't let them tie up your costly hard-hitting units--they only cost 25 points each, and if you let them really throw you off your game, you are playing right into your enemy's hands.

Fanatics are very powerful, but you can take advantage of their rules.

He MUST release them if you come within 8". He also does not have to release them in the direction of the unit that triggered them.

Using the captain on a pegasus to trigger them early is a good idea. Because then hopefully they'll be loose closer to him than they are to you.


Also, if he has any Manglers, try to pop them early. He can control their movement till they hit something. There are 2 ways to kill Manglers, either have a disposable unit sit on them or shoot them. Literally, sitting a unit on them will cause them to pop. I do it all the time with Sabretusks. A cheap unit of pistoleers should be able to take care of it.

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:


The second option will kill them, but they will do 2D6 hits against you, which will pretty much wipe you out. I don't know much about Empire lists, but I don't think you really have a "chaos warhound" equivalent unit to just send to die.

5 man archer detachments, slow and don't count as a deployment drop but real cheap.

One ten man unit of huntsmen set you back 80 points and thanks to scouting and a march should be able to set off lots of fanatics even if he is running multiple units of them. Make sure that the way you move them you set off multiple units at once and then if you manage to pass the panic at leadership 7 or 8 you should be able to still move any survivors to try and set of more or take out the mangler.