Halbed/Spearmen/Swordsman review

Every empire armies core is made up of blocks of these guys. I will do some maths hammer to back this up later, but halberds are the best option.

30 is a good size for a block. Not enough to be a huge points investment and enough so you can survive many casulties. Bus if need be.

Always take detachments. If you have points, a 15 strong halberd block into a flank will break the steadfast of the stuff you beat in combat and can sometimes turn the balance in combat. Also having a throw away block that cant panic your other blocks is great. 10 Man archer blocks are also great to screen and as throwaways

First try at a list

There are a few things every empire needs which i will start with.

3 Mortars 225p
2 Cannons 200p
2x5 pistoliers 180p, Musicians 14p=196p

Standard artillery and vanguards.

Archlector 125p

Wizard lord 175p

Captain 50p
    bsb 25p
    Full plate 8p
    Shield2p
=85p

Captain 50p
    Pegasus 50p
    Full plate 8p
    Shield 2p
    Steal spell taly 35p
    Lance 4p
=149p

Warrior Priest 90p
    Heavy armour 4p
    barded horse 14p
=118p

30 Halberdiers 150p
Musician 4p
10 Archers 80p
15 Halberds 75p
=309p

15 Knights 390p
Flaming banner 10p
Musician 8p
=408

2x30 Halberdiers 150p
10 Archers 80p
Musician 4p
=234p
x2=468p

=2458p, leaving 40p for magic items.

This is an attempt to make an empire army that is not a gunline. Given time i could make this way better.

Archlector hangs out with the halberd block with detachments.
Warrior priest with knights.
Giving 3 prayers and 3 extra DD, which makes up for the lack of a second caster. 4+ ward, unbreakable halberds seems choicec

Captain also goes with halberd block.
Pegasus runs around by the opposition caster and and tries his luck. Also picks out warmachines, flankers, skirmishers...


Pistol   Knights            Archers       Archers               Captacus    Pistol
                               Halberd  Halberd Halberd
                    
                      Warmachines  Halberd detach


I think i have an overinvestment in knights. Drop the warrior priest, inner circle and the size down to 12. It should be used to hit a flank hard and break steadfast. Then i could take maybe a second caster and a couple more detachments/sacrifice blocks

Master Engineer review.

Great another character that you cant write much about. He improves a warmachine greatly, and has some cool experimental weaponry, but he costs to much.

Battle Wizard review

The stock standard hero level caster.

These are not mandatory as you have prayers for support spells but you cant go wrong with them. Take lores that have good signiture spells.

Warrior Priest review

Just like a stripped down arch lector. An extra DD and hatred in a key unit are great but for 90p+ not so much. Somehow there wont often be points and ecerything else you want/need.

One use is in with a Knight unit. Rubber lances are a pain and some of the prayers are great on your counter attacking unit.
If your taking a walter or simply want hatred/prayers on another big block the Warrior Priest is also decent.


Overall there is just so much to buy, so even though the Warrior Priest is good, most builds wont be able to afford one.

Captain of the Empire review

Im sick of reviewing today, so this wont be anywere near as good as i want to do.

Take one captain every game to use as a bsb. Give him a magic banner if you want one. The griffon standard is good. If you dont take it, jsut go for a good ward save.

The second option is a captacus. It is great in most builds. Give him van hortsmans and a good save and charge into the hardest combat character you can find. The casket of sorcery is also a great choice and can really piss some opponents of. 50% chance of stopping the mindrazor the corsair horde depends apon is great. Casting it back for free is even better. Still like all items that rely on a 50/50 chance it is by no means a must have.

Great weapon-Sure
Halberd-Decent but you would probably be better of either going more aggresive or defensive
Hand weapon-For a massive 4 S4 attacks, equals 1 casulty.
Pistol-Forget

Longbow/Handgun-Stuff of

Light armour-Rubbish
Heavy armour-Better
Full plate-Great
Shield-Great

Warhorse-Sorry ned, foot or peggy only for me
Pegasus-Great if combined with the right gear
Lance-Great on a captucus.

For your bsb i would go with Full plate,enchanted shield/ward. Survivable and your re-roll ld bubble
Captacus' are just as easy to kit out. Full plate,shield,lance and your choice of items, maybe a good ward save. For a casketer you just need to be able to survive well and take out small units, which the lance allows you to do. For the speculum you get good armour and a strength bonus. The pegasus should allow you to charge 90% of the time.

Wizard lord review

There is really not much to say, take a lvl 4 every game. Having access to every lore is great. For magic items spell destroyers are great, but if you fail your 50-50 roll its a wasted 25p. A good ward save could be handy as could the crystal ball

Arch lector of sigmar review

Now onto the coolest lord of the lot, the Arch lector of sigmar. For 125p you get a guy that generates two dispell dice and can cast two prayers as well as granting hatred to the unit he is in. This is still a lot of points for someone who cant even fight as well as a chaos warrior. He does have ld 9 as well, so he does work very well as a general, especially in a key unit. You have to be careful with him in combat, and he is a bit more expensive than a general, which are the only reasons not to take him over a general.

Great weapon-Why not. He is only I4 and S6 will let him actually get a casulty.
Second warhammer-for an astonishing third attack. Its only at S4, so pass.

Light armour-So your giving your >125p lord a 6+ save. Pass
Heavy armour-Better but still not much.
No option for full plate sucks. I will be going straight to magic items for these guys.
Shield-Yes, along with good armour. Its still worth taking if you take a great weapon.

Warhorse-No. Your ld bubble is best in the centre, you dont want this guy charging into difficult combats and a warrior priest is better in a knight unit.
Barding-If you were stupid enough to take this guy on horse barding is a must.

War Altar of Sigmar-is meh. Firstly it is 100p which is heaps for empire. You can get another warrior priest for this price. It does have a 4+ ward though and a weak armour save along with a great amount of wounds, taking about 4 cannon or 6 bolt thrower hits to kill. Its unbreakable which makes it a great tarpit. The best ability is being able to cast any lore of light spell with a casting value of 5 which is so awesome. A unit of knights wiht movement 16!, an extra attack each, striking first and maybe getting re rolls. A captucus marching 40". There are endless possiblities and another couple of spells. The big problem with the war altar is it doesnt fit in well. A chariot by itself is weak, even with a ward save. If empire could get chariots, then this would be awesome but they cant. So you will be stuck with a 250p unit, that is epicly awesome but isnt really that tough to take down. Also you have to remember that your prayers and hatred are being wasted.

In conlusion the arch lector is great. Put straight in a large unit of halberdiers they are great, giving ld9, hatred, prayers and DD. In most builds this would be my second lord choice straight after a lvl 4. You can also go the war altar route, its just a lot of points and is wasting the lectors abilites.

Templar Grand Master review

The Templar grand master is the choppy choppy lord for the empire. For roughly 20p more than a similarily equipted general you get +1 WS, +1 I and +1 A as well as making a knight unit itp instead of being able to take a magic standard on a state troop unit. This does make him quite capable in close combat, although he wont be able to take on all the really good combat heroes. The itp bonus is alright but unnecessary as your knights are ld9.

The reason not to take the templar master as that while you can take one and a general, there are far better ways to spend points. As i said in the General review a guy riding around with your knights does not make for the best ld bubble.

If you want the best close combat character empire can get, the Grand Master is for you. If you want your general to ride around with your knights he is also for you. If neither of these apply, take a general instead.

Empire general review

Simply put the General is the leadership lord. Most combat lords and even a lot of combat heroes would slaughter him in combat. What he brings is a 12" leadership 9 bubble. As most empire armies will be losing combat to most opponents this ld 9 is a must. The special ability that lets a state troop unit get a magic banner is also handy.

The selling point of the general is his price. He will never be an effective killer so it is best to keep him as cheap as possible but a good save is handy.


Great weapon-Good. Being able to kill something is great
hand weapon-one extra S4 attack. Forget it.
Pistol-You might get one wound with it a game so no.

Longbow/Handgun-If you were placing your general behind your main lines with missile troops this would be good. Unfortunately you would wont your general to be able to deal with any fast cavalry or the like that get into combat with you so a combat weapon would be better.

Warhorse-Generals are normally best on foot but if you have a plan for it take it
    Barding-If you were taking a horse it would make sense
Pegasus-Better on a captain
Griffon-200p, get real. Just say no to monstrous mounts.
Lance- is alright. As you have a good armour save a great weapon would be better in a lot of cases.

May take 100p of items-good. Take some cheap defense, a cheap weapon maybe and your pick of talismans/enchanted items depending on what you want.

The best use for a General looks to be in the middle of your army on foot. Dont expect him to kill anything and pay as little points possible and you cant go wrong. You could run him with a unit of knights but then you may as well take the Templar master. Knights are best as a counter attack unit, meaning they are towards the flanks a lot of the time and then your ld bubble is being wasted.

A new challenge

After reading several army books and doing some pondering i decided i would like the challenge of making a strong build out of a weak army. Empire is my choice of races, as there is a lot of variety in it and there must be some good builds.

Before i get to building i need to sort out whats what so i will be doing many reviews.

2000p Warriors of Chaos

Sorc Lord 235p
Lord lords 35p
Puppet 35p
4+ armour 50p
=355p

Exalted Hero 110p
Hand weapon 4p
MoT 10p
Disk 20p
Armour of Morslieb 35p
Shield 5p
=184p

Exalted Hero 110p
Hand weapon 4p
MoT 10p
Disk 20p
4+ ward tali 45p
Shield
=194p

12 warriors 180p
Khorne 30p
Shields 12p
Halberds 12p
Musician 6p
Flaming pendant 10p
=250


12 warriors 180p
Khorne 30p
Shields 12p
Halberds 12p
Musician 6p
=240p

2x5 Warhounds 60p

4x5 Horsemen  260p
Flails 20p
Armour 20p
Shields 20p
MoS 40p
=360p

20 Marauders 80p
Flails 20p
MoS 10p
=110
x3 =330p




Lords = 355p
Heroes = 378p
Core = 1240p
=1973p

So not great, but what more can you do at 2000p for Warriors of chaos. There is just no points for all the flash stuff. Such a huge percentage has to go for the lvl 4 and the disk guys. Then the horsemen and war hounds are compulsory. That leaves two units of warriors to do the heavy lifting and 3 units of marauders to be anvils that can pack a punch. Still dont have a clue how to beat high elves apart from multi charging, but my high elf opponent plays more msu than i do. Marauders are good, but i have the feeling i need more.

If i was waac... v1.0

I posted a pretty average skaven list a week ago. Now i am going to have another go to write the ultimate list.

The plan is to have tar pits, powerful shooting, war machine hunters and something to smash apart anything that I don't have enough shooting for.

Grey Seer 240p
Power Scoll 35p
2 Warpstone tokens 30p
=305p


Warlord 90p
Shield 2p


Lords = 307p

Warlock Engineer 15p
Doom rocket
=45p

Chieftain 45p
BSB 25p
Shield 2p
=72p

Heroes = 117p

30 Skaven slaves 60p
Slings 15p
x6 = 450p


10 Stormvermin 70p
Musician 5p
Warpfire thrower 70p
x5 = 725

Core = 1175

10 Gutter runners 120p
x4=480p

Special = 480p

2 Warp Lightning cannons 180p
2 Plague claw catapults 200p

Rare = 380

=2459p

First of this list has 6 cheap tar pit units that will gain a few kills each. Hell a lot of armies don't even have 6 units, let alone 6 worth tar pitting. Then there is the msu stormvermin. These can redirect the stuff that smashes the slaves, and a couple of units can work together to mop up scraps. With them is 5 warpfire throwers A couple of these can ruin a unit and are used to fire into the tar pitted unit.
The gutter runners can each take out a war machine pretty quickly. They are pretty useless against other stuff, so they can redirect and stall units.
Finally there is the artillery that can smash apart anything.

I am worried that this army is to reliant on marchines

Army by army analysis.

Beastmen. Well the war machines can tear apart the big blocks, the beasts will be outclassed in magic, a couple of units can be left behind for the ambushers. Chariot spam isnt much of a problem. Impact hits are scary, but not to 2.5 point slaves. War machines and stormvermin will crush them. Monster spam doesn't fare well either. They cant kill many slaves and our war machines are mostly high strength.

Brettonia. This army isnt optimised for these guys but should fare well. War machines will half their armour saves and we have enough bodies to weather the first turn of combat. Again war machines can slaughter there big blocks, gutter runners can take out their trebuchet.

Daemons of Chaos could be a little bit of a problem. Having 13th spell cast back at us is nasty, but nothing this list couldn't survive. Big blocks can be slaughtered by war machines and tar pitted. Flamers are nasty though and if letter hordes are not stopped will be very damaging.

Dark elves will be a tough fight. They have black guard which are one of the few things that can smash through a unit of 30 slaves. There magic is even better than skavens. We can still beat them easily if your a better player than your opponent, tar pit the strong stuff and blast everything to death.

Dwarves are one of the worse match ups, as we wont beat them in combat, and they wont come to me so the only thing doing anything are the runners and machines. They are still easily beatable. The runners can take out the machines and our warmachines can bypass dwarfen armour with ease. The difference between this army and dwarves is that skaven can take out warmachines, their blocks are cheap and they have powerful magic.

High elves are another hard match up and may be a challenge to beat. There elites will carve through skaven blocks an their magic is epic. Still they are expensive T3 poor save models so our warmachines should be able to kill most of them

Lizards again are not to hard. Warmachines scythe them down but you have to look out for salamanders and other stuff.

Ogres, die to 13th with ease. Big blocks get tarpitted and shot down, little ones die easy as to machines and stuff. Gnoblars get wasted by machines

Skaven will be hard if they have storm banner. Otherwise its pretty 50/50 depending on player skills and the opponents build. Shoot what you can to death and block the other stuff.

The empire are easy enough. Gutter runners can take out 4 war machines. Yours can destroy your blocks and multi charging stomvermin can take on all empire units.

Tomb kings, lol what? I can destroy most of your stuff, mine is cheaper, your slow etc. Tomb king armies normally only have a couple of important blocks, which can be taken down be concentrated fire. A lot of chariots might be tricky, but not really.

Vamps normally have one super star. I shoot everything at it and its gone in a couple of turns. Anyway i can tarpit it easily enough if i cant destroy it with my warmachines, and kill the rest of the army. You really going to win by taking down 90p of slaves in two turns.

Warriors of chaos get owned by 13th. Skaven machines will deny them their armour saves. Last time i checked marauder hordes coudnt take down a skaven slave unit in 1 turn. Hellcannons are 200p i will just ignore it.

Wood elves umm, umm not much chance to beat this list. My war machines do far more damage than your shooting. You have nothing that kill slaves easily in close combat that isn't at least 5 times as expensive. Again warmachines can kill those

So there you have it, not much presents much of a threat. Nothings auto-win against though, but as long as you play your cards right you can beat pretty much everything. I am sure there are better lists out there, but this looks pretty good. I will say it again though, its to reliant on warmachines. To be truly great and balanced it needs a decent close combat unit, but i cant theory anything to get rid of. Maybe in a years time, when i get around to collecting skaven i can playtest and adjust.

If i was waac... (draft)

I would play skaven. The only thing stopping me is the cost, both in time and money. Fuck painting 250 slaves. I hate painting more than a few models a week. So it would take me about a year to paint them all, and if i went quickly they would look like shit.

Here is a 2500p list.

5x 50 Skaven slaves 250p
Slings 125p
=375p

The average opponent could take out two, maybe three skaven slave hordes. How many builds can take out 250 with it only being a fraction of your army. Thats also a lot of sling shots. These units tar pit for turns, and put out a bit of damage before that. Cue evil laughter.

10 Stormvermin 70p
Warpfire thrower 70p
Musician 5p
=145p

x5=725p

2x Catapult 200p

5 Jezzials 100p
x3 = 300

sub=1600p

Grey Seer 240p
Power scroll 35
=275p

Engineer 15p
Doomrocket 30p
=45p

Warlord 90p
Shield 3p
=93p

sub=1738p

Chieftan 45p
Bsb 25p
=70p

2 warp lightning 180p

10 gutter runners 120p
x2=240p

grey seer 240p
2 tokens 30p
=270p

=2498p

I will order this properly tomorrow and optimise it a bit

The basic plan is to swarm the opponent with slaves. There is plenty of weaponry to be devastating to the opponent along with your magic.This army doesn't rely on crutches or stuff like HPAs. It just smashes you again and again with templates and magic. The dreaded 13 should go of at least twice.

I do think this list lacks combat punch to deal with whatever your shooting cant kill and more war machines couldn't hurt, but you cant have everything i suppose



grey seer 240p
2 tokens 30p
=270p


Grey Seer 240p
Power scroll 35
=275p


Engineer 15p
Doomrocket 30p
=45p

Warlord 90p
Shield 3p
=93p

Chieftan 45p
Bsb 25p
=70p







5x 50 Skaven slaves 250p
Slings 125p
=375p


10 Stormvermin 70p
Warpfire thrower 70p
Musician 5p
=145p
x5=725p

5Jezzials 100p
x3 = 300


10 gutter runners 120p
x2=240p


2x Catapult 200p

2 warp lightning 180p

Why i dont like apple

One of my many pet hates is the company apple. They have bullshit anti competitive behaviour, are up themselves and their followers are blind zombies.

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-made-to-specify-design-alternatives-for-samsung-02199756/
Above is one example. As if apple were not the first ones to make a rectangle or a thin device or a flat black front surface or ....

If you look around the internet you can find tonnes of devices that are older than the equivalent apple products with some of the features that apple says others cant use.

Dark Elves

Well my first Warhammer army is WoC. I know that it is not competitive so i want to start a second army after i finish my warriors. Looking through all the army books, i have decided i want something with magic, lots of magic. Whats more I want choice between heaps of lores and want my army to also be competitive and be decent at another phase.

The candidates are:

O&G.Who can say war machines and chariots are nor cool. Night goblin shamans have magic mushrooms and sneaky stealing which can lead to an awesome magic phase of little spells. Plus the lore is very cool, but the downside is you can take brb lores.

Empire can take lots of war machines as well, have great anti magic, decent combat and a lot of fun stuff as well as all eight lores. Sadly however they cant really have a devastating magic phase.

High Elves, pass. My main opponent plays these so nah. Teclis is cool and the elites are great though.

Lizards. Yes slann are great and the army has skinks and salamanders, but i just don't like them.

Skaven, yuck rats.

Daemons are great, but my other main opponent plays them. Kairos and the lores are great, as are flamers, the blue scribes, fiends and master of sorcery but they just dont tickle my fancy. They can have the devastating magic phase i want though with glean magic and D3+1 Pd spell though.

That leaves me with Dark Elves. They can spam casters and have awesome magic items. Plus they just happen to be one of the two most competitive armies in the game along with skaven. Apart from executioners and corsairs and witches and Cob and assassins whats there not to like.

So here is my first go at writing a 2500p list. I like Stelek's max magic armies but i want something balanced.

Supreme Sorceress 225p
Lvl 4 35p
Sac Dagger 25p
=285p


Supreme Sorceress 225p
Lvl 4 35p
Power scroll 25p
=285p


Sorceress 100p
Lvl 2 35p
Dark star cloak 25p
=160p

Sorceress 100p
Lvl2 35p
Tomb of Furion 15p
=150p

Thats a lot of power of darknesses. Power scroller gets death. The others take metal and shadow depending on what i feel like.

Now for a mage bunker. 40 Dark elf warriors are my pick as they are sacrificed , and are also what i would use for wars of attrition.

40 Dark elf warriors 240p
Shields 40p
Command 18p
Banner of Cold Blood 15p.
=313p

Now the compulsory Crossbowmen

4x10 Crossbowmen 400p
Musicians 20p
=240p

2x5 dark riders 170p
Musician 14p
Crossbows 50p
=232p

So now im at 1665p

This army needs some combat punch, something to make use of all those buffs. Black Guard are the prime candidates.

3x20 Black Guard 780p
Musicians 21p
1x Standards 14p
Flaming Pennant 10p
825p

=2490p

This army packs loads of magic damage between death, shadow and metal along with tonnes of buffs and hexes. The black guard should be able to kill anything after your magic's gone of. Your crossbowmen and riders can shoot weak stuff to death. This list isnt optimized and has way to many points in magic, but i would consider it different

Lore of Death review

Lore of Death 7/10

Spirit Leach 7/10
+Snipes
-Random

Leach is the first of many sniping spells in this law. Its pretty useless as it is very random, a 40% chance of doing at least one wound and even less for two or more. Combined with other snipe spells it can be very dangerous and can draw out dispell dice

Probability tree determining the chance of rolling greater than your opponent. Left is opponents roll, middle chance of rolling higher, right probability of those rolls happening


1 5/6  0.1388
2 4/6  0.1111
3 3/6  0.08333
4 2/6  0.05555
5 1/6  0.02777
6 0/6
         =0.38

Aspect of the Dreadnight 3/10
+Helps wins flank combats
-Fear is useless with re rolls and general

In 8th edition fear does next to nothing in the middle of the line where things matter. However on the flanks, away from Bsbs it could be handy on your horsemen. When you charge equally or even more capable flankers lowering their weapon skill to one is very handy. Your opponents have a good chance of passing those tests so it still isn't that great.

The Caress of Laniph 8/10
+Good chance of more than one wound
-Low range

Yay, a snipe spell that can cause heaps of wounds reliable. The average roll is 7 and toughness of most casters is 3 or 4. So 3/4 hits, and then 1 or 2 wounds. Unless you roll really low you should get at least on wound and there is a great chance that you roll a lot higher, which should kill most casters


Soulblight 9/10
+excellent synergy
+effect many units

Enemy death stars,  especially elves hate being T2. Combine that with -1S and suddenly those units don't look so dangerous. If your enemy doesn't play deathstars all the better. The buffed version is all in 24" which msu hates. One of the main reasons for msu is hexes to be less effective. This buff is best used on something that would be a lot weaker with both lower strength and toughness. If you want to make something either high strength or toughness normal at either of those stats, this spell is not for you.

Doom and darkness 7/10
+ Steadfast with re rolls isn so great with this
+Cheap

We all know what its like killing 20 of something and then they have a re rollable ld 8/9 tests. Well make that 5/6. Not so great now. Across the board that is several more units failing their tests. Its even better when say combined with hellcannon fire and when your snipe spells have killed of the BSB.


Fate of bjuna 7/10
+Reliable kills most things
-Short range

First of this spell wont kill casters as they wont get in range on most occasions. If a BSB gets in range without a ward he is gone unless you roll very badly. Most BSB are two wounds and T4/5 which is dead to one of these spells. There is a chance it wont but you have other snipe spells as well

Purple sun of Xereus 9/10
+Insanely powerful
-Very high casting value
-Fails on elves and WoC
-Can backfire

I will start with the negatives. Firstly there are so many WoC and armies out there. On those only 1 in 6 models will die which makes this spell not so great for its price. And its price is huge. 15+ for a small template or 25+ for a large one. Now you would always want to roll the big one but for that you need 7 dice. That means quite often that you can cast nothing else. So not much sniping which is the reason for this lore. So on early turns this is your go to spell then later on that great debuff is your spell of choice. Also if the spell backfires a lot of pain is coming your way, so think before you cast. If it doesn't backfire, most armies can get slaughtered.


This is one of the best laws in the book for warriors of chaos. Sniping spells remove bsb and casters so even against steadfast enemies you can make them flee. That debuff can make your warriors so much more effective and purple sun wrecks havoc amongst most armies. A lot of the spells are either situational or very random so this lore isnt always the best choice. Depending on your build this lore of heavens should be your go to or occasionally shadows