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EMPIRE DEPLOYMENT COMBINATIONSDetachmentsSome units make extremely effective combinations together. Detachments are obviously an example, but regular opponents will soon forget about charging regiments with detachments and concentrate on killing your missile units more and avoiding your nasty swordsmen unit with the two halberdier detachments. Losing these detachments might sound daft, but if the parent unit is powerful enough or has a few tricks up it's sleeve then it could be a good idea because people just eventually wise up to dealing with detachments. Of course this all depends on how you play them, many people use detachments to great effect so you've go to decide yourself when your regular opponents have just got your number when it comes to those detachments. Taking cheap units of about ten free company or halberdiers can also have duel purposes, apart from the usual support charges, against missile armies like wood elves they also make extremely effective bullet shields. They are unlikely to be charging you anyway so turn those defunct detachments into human shields, considering their inevitable destruction doesn't cause panic tests this is even better. Archers and 360 degree shooting If you are ripping your hair out at the annoyance of beastmen ambushers and various flyers and skirmishing units, or expect to regularly encounter these problems, then you can still deal with these problems thanks to the diversity of the empire. First off, beastmen ambushers tend to screw any plan you had and even the best deployment can go out of the window when beastmen turn up behind your army and the rest of it is a few turns away from the front of your army. What you need is wisely deployed cannons and a helblaster along with some archers. Archers are brilliant because they can shoot in all directions, even if only with longbows. When beastmen turn up behind you, these guys will be hitting on 5's thanks to short range in you deployed widely, and killing the weak ungors on 4's. Once you've killed a few of the weak ones with the longbowmen, then you turn the helblaster on them, at short range it's killing ungors on 2's and even their toughness 4 cousins on 3's, which should devastate at least one unit of the buggers if you don't misfire. For me at least my helblaster is strangely reluctant to misfire against ambushers, still you should have a backup plan due to their notoriously unreliable reputation. Cannons are far more useful using grapeshot against these ambushers, placed right these mini-helblasters become quite useful. Put together these things will go some way to help alleviate you of the empire vulnerability to ambushers. The best defence against ambushers is a good preparation and deployment beforehand. Also these units are useful in most other games so you don't have to change your army list against beastmen. Typical annoyances Those damn stealth skinks, skirmishers, scouts and flyers in general, can become a problem for you, the most vulnerable empire armies are the ones that can't be bothered preparing for the eventuality. These things are a pain, they can't be hit very well by shooting, they can get around the line of sight of shooters and go for your cannons flies to big smelly brown things. But sadly your regular opponents will use them more against you as time goes on and all armies have them, and the number of them seemingly increases with each army book. The best weapons to use are ones that don't need to hit, helblasters are priceless, anything that attempts to get within grapeshot range of cannons won't forget it either. Magic missiles are also very useful, a fireball is far more effective than a whole unit of handgunners against these things usually. Archers with their own skirmishing ability are best employed hunting these gits down, chameleoline skinks are so bad in combat that archers can even beat them! Rather than wasting your time shooting flyers with handguns, invest in magic or helblasters, a cannon can often put several of them down as well if you target it's fire to hit several with one cannonball. The next best thing against skirmishers or unlucky flyers is a charge from a unit of pistoliers, if you want the pistoliers to survive a stand and shoot reaction and still be able to beat the enemy (most skirmishers have some for of weapon) then you had best make them a healthy 6 strong with a repeater pistol to boot. Probably not wise to try this on dogs-of-war duellists that carry pistols of their own. Pistoliers also make excellent hunters of other fast cavalry, those pistol and good charge range means that if you deploy them on a flank the enemy fats cav won't be deploying there if they have any sense. Protecting artillery Cannons can sometimes protect themselves with grapeshot, but most of the time your opponent has things designated as artillery hunters against you. Sometimes it is just unavoidable that your cannons will get charged and beaten, if destroyed the war machines crew will cause a panic test on all nearby friendly units so just putting them between two units of handgunners won't cut it. Place your artillery close to the back of your own deployment area, this mean if charged they can flee off your board edge and not cause panic tests on your own units from getting wiped out. Against skinks I've found it's probably better to stick around and fight them, many a time has a unit of chameoline skinks charged a cannon crew and regretted it. Effective use of archers to screen artillery from certain directions can help stop flyers and skirmishers from charging your artillery too. Deploying artillery together is usually a bad idea unless they have something like a very nice hill with a wall to deploy behind. Split up the artillery and don't keep them within 10" of each other, anything that can kill one of them can probably beat the other with little effort too. And that's all, hopefully you found this useful! Brought to you by Teutogen (AKA Adam wass, also known behind his back as something that he is yet to find out about), yes, THAT one that prowls the GW and Portent message boards, known widely and acknowledged by thousand for his intelligent posts, witty remarks, legendary put-downs, feared armies, unrivalled understanding of the game, hilarious humour, great looks and so much other self-professed stuff. But I won't go on too much. | |
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