Warhammer Fantasy Battle

For those of you who do not know Warhammer is a model using turn based game of fantasy battle usually played on a table top. No doubt to those who already know what Warhammer is no Further description is needed.

I am part of a small regular gaming group many of us have played since 3rd or 4th edition and between us we have access to all the varied armys in the Warhammer World with the exception of Beastmen, however I suspect its only a matter of time before one of us succumbs and buys it!

My own personal armies are the Empire, Vampire Counts, Orc and Goblins, Lizardmen and Wood Elves although we run a tournement and regulary switch armys round.

We are only a small group with 4 regular players so we use a small points based league where each player has two armys and plays each army against every other one in the tournament. We give 0 points for a lose of any kind, 1 point for a draw, 2 points for any win, 3 points for a massacre.

This time around were trying a teir based system based on our previous tournements which give a player a number of bonus's (Ill detail them below) they can use.

We also give a number of rerolls based on the players last tournements best Postion

The Empire is one of my personal favorites with there wide number of varied troops, warmachines and characters (in the right slots) they are a tactically flexible army. This flexibility allows them to field anything from entirely mounted armies, infantry strong (especially with the detachment rules), gun lines, decent magic builds (offensive and defensive) and with there flexible core of course you can keep your oppenent guessing.

Downsides are whilst they have a very wide selection of troops there specialists are not the best out there, I also find myself using special characters a lot to match up to other armys, however since Games Workshop made them part of the standard army list this is not such a problem anymore.

Tier 2

Wood elves are a fairly recent edition to our armies and dispite being a 6th edition army book have proved to be a formidable army. The main strength of wood elves lays in there excellent core choices, decent archers in the glade guard, scouts, glade riders (good against some armys so so against others) and my personal favourite Dryads.

They have some decent special and rare units but these tend to be more specialised and better when you have a tactic in mind though certain army's find treemen very hard to shift. The magic is generally supportive more then destructive I find 2 level 2 wizards usually works best, though with a level 4 wizard they can be a truely anti-magic force (think reroll failed dispels with a +1 to dispel and a free dispel dice if they use more then 3 dice to cast).

Overall there a decent tactical army which struggle against certain things, monsters that are hard to shoot, high toughness knights, massed infantry with decent saves, steam tanks and of course have that low elf toughness. Though this is offset with the forest spirits though losing the ward save to magic is a bit of a bummer, I suspect from seeing demons with a permenent ward save these just might get it in a new army book. Of course tactically the elves can avoid these if played well with a modicum of luck.

As with a lot of old book the special characters are quite lacking are in my opinion not worth the points, in fact unless you want a specific magic item or spells I find more core a better investment of points. I mean a unit of 8 Dryads is 96 compared to a "bare" hero at 75 I would rather have the Dryads more wounds, better toughness, forest spirit ward save, just as strong well you get the idea.

Teir 2

Our first Tournament this year has the following armys involved

• G has Wood Elves and Brettonians
• R has Tomb Kings and Warriors of Chaos
• M has Dark Elves and Empire
• D has High Elves and Ogre Kingdoms

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