I hate making lists

[Fritz]

Now that I'm back to civilization for a few months I'm going to be attempting to put together an Empire list. The problem is I appear to suck at doing so for 8th edition as I have little idea of how games actually play. Here's the working list I have for 2000 points right now:

Arch Lector of Sigmar
-War Altar
-Heavy Armor
-Sword of Power
-Enchanted Shield
-Van Horstman's Speculum

Battle Wizard
-Lore of Light
-Level 2 Wizard

Captain of the Empire
-Battle Standard
-Sword of Might
-Armor of Meteoric Iron

Warrior Priest of Sigmar
-Great Weapon
-Heavy Armor
-Shield
-Barded Warhorse

Warrior Priest of Sigmar
-Great Weapon
-Heavy Armor
-Shield
-Barded Warhorse

30 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-15 Free Company Detachment
-15 Halberdiers Detachment

30 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-15 Free Company Detachment
-15 Halberdiers Detachment

20 Greatswords
-Standard, Musician

20 Greatswords
-Standard Musician

5 Pistoliers
-Outrider with Repeater Pistol
-Musician

It's pretty much the same as I ran in 7th edition, but with the swordmen and detachments consolidated into 2 units to adapt to the 8th edition rules for taking flanks away. Try as I might to not use the Cheese Altar of Doom, it is hands down the best choice for a general. 18" leadership 9 and the ability to make pretty much any character run scared for only 316 points is too hard to pass up. The general concept is to use the Swordsmen and detachments as giant attrition blocks while the Greatswords do the bulk of the killing. The Warrior Priests are attached to the Greatswords so that they gain hatred and the Arch Lector does his usual annoying task of finding the biggest baddest death star he can find, ramming into it, and then refusing to die. I'm considering swapping a Warrior Priest or the Pistoliers for a Cannon, but I'm reluctant to do so as I feel it goes against the theme of the army I've put together.

Any ideas, comments? It's a passable army for how I like to play, but for some reason I'm just not satisfied.

[MorGrendel]

Your right, that does look like your 7th list.
Remember, bound objects require casting dice, I seem to remember you having those.
I don't know if the detachments are large enough, but maybe that's just me fighting so many ogres.

What happened to that other list we talked about?

[Fritz]

15 is as large as the detachments can get without making the parent units bigger. It's a two to one ratio (parent to detachment). How's this: upping the parent unit to 40 and ditching one detachment? 40 swordsmen and 20 halberdiers could be effective. I keep going back and forth on the Warrior Priests. The hatred is pretty nice to have, but they are freakin expensive. Their bound stuff is both nicer and worse than it used to be. They can keep all their remains in play stuff going now, so they potentially can have a ton of remains in play spells going.

[Fritz]

Attempt #2

Arch Lector of Sigmar
-War Altar
-Sword of Might
-Dawn Armor
-Shield
-Van Horstman's Speculum

Battle Wizard
-Lore of Light
-Level 2 Wizard
-Rod of Power

Captain of the Empire
-Battle Standard
-Armor of Meteoric Iron

40 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-20 Halberdiers Detachment

40 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-20 Halberdiers Detachment

25 Greatswords
-Standard, Musician

25 Greatswords
-Standard Musician

5 Pistoliers
-Outrider with Repeater Pistol
-Musician

Great Cannon

[Fritz]

The "other list" Jeff was referring to slightly amended to have large detachments:

The Emperor Karl Franz
-Ghal Maraz
-Barded Warhorse

Battle Wizard
-Lore of Light
-Level 2 Wizard
-Rod of Power

Captain of the Empire
-Battle Standard
-Armor of Meteoric Iron

40 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-20 Halberdiers Detachment

40 Swordmen
-Standard, Musician
-19 Halberdiers Detachment

20 Greatswords
-Standard, Musician

20 Greatswords
-Standard Musician

5 Pistoliers
-Outrider with Repeater Pistol
-Musician

5 Pistoliers
-Outrider with Repeater Pistol
-Musician

The addition of Karl Franz does make the need for a Cannon much less since Ghal Maraz auto-wounds, allows no armor saves, and does D3 wounds per hit. He also has 18" leadership 10. He has the best rules for an epic model that no longer has rules (why GW? Why do you make an epicly awesome Empire character only to kill him off 6 months after you create him?) It just feels weird having a Sigmar themed army without an actual Warrior Priest. 2.5k is a much easier list to make, but I'm getting the impression that not many people play games that big.

P.S. For those of you that aren't Jason and Jeff and haven't played this army a thousand times, it is a Sigmar themed army based around the classic Valten model from Storm of Chaos. Yes I'm the one crazy son of a bitch out there that wants to fight hand to hand and forsakes most ranged weaponry with a bloody Empire army.

[MorGrendel]

Refresh me, where are the sigmar-themes in your army? I'm not being sarcastic, so much as I'm hoping to shed a different light; i.e. No priests of Sigmar = no Sigmar theme . . . But Karl Franz = equals Karl Franz theme. Put your standard on a horse, and grab a few innercircle knights and I think your have an army with a very different feel.

Will it win - I can't see how a unit of knights would make you lose . . . but I also would not recommend books as shields (Hehe). Weapons maybe.

[Titus]

I have really only seen shooting work well with Vampire COunts. The premeasureing cannon rules take any skill out of shooting like there used to be, so Jeff does really good with his warp lighting cannons, but other than that, Elves, yeah, no shooting sucks. Bretonnians, eh, not really that great.

[Fritz]

Refresh me, where are the sigmar-themes in your army? I'm not being sarcastic, so much as I'm hoping to shed a different light; i.e. No priests of Sigmar = no Sigmar theme . . . But Karl Franz = equals Karl Franz theme. Put your standard on a horse, and grab a few innercircle knights and I think your have an army with a very different feel.

Will it win - I can't see how a unit of knights would make you lose . . . but I also would not recommend books as shields (Hehe). Weapons maybe.

Karl Franz is simply the rule set. The model is Valten, thought to be Sigmar reborn during the Storm of Chaos campaign. He no longer has any official rules since they killed him off at the end of the campaign (his rules make Karl Franz look like a punk). The rest of the models are Flagellents with some minor modifications. A messiah-type figure surrounded by religious fanatics is the general theme of the army. With or without the Warrior Priests, the theme is still there. It's just weird for me not to have any. I fit the Pistoliers in there by slightly converting the unit champion into a witch hunter (yet another religious fanatic). A Cannon on the other hand...yeah you need a little bit of training to use that and I don't see an ad-hoc mob of religious fanatics having it.

Knights I have no problem with. There are plenty of Knightly Orders devoted to Sigmar. I just don't have the models. I used to, but ATM I dont know where they are and may have gotten lost somewhere in all the moves. I was looking to not buy any more models for this army. I was considering a Game of Thrones themed Bretonnian army for my next project, so I would probably just use some of those Bretonnian Knights instead of the shit-tastic Empire Knights. I was intending to paint up one unit as devotees of the fire god, so the colors would fit.

[Thomas Fitzcharles]

Good Day, All.

AHHHHHH, Do I have to learn and remeber all this stuff before I can play?

Sincerely

Thomas

[MorGrendel]

Nope, Clayson still hasen't read a rulebook . . . he just does what Jason tells him to.

You should know your Army book as well as you can to speed up the game, but other books not so much. I knew nothing of Ogre's until Serban started playing them.

With the main rule book, if you can learn the summary pages in the back, you are generally golden. All of us still need to look up the once and a while rules. Rules change so memorizing anything may be a bad idea.

Competative players, such as Fritz and Jason, agonize over every point as they create a very competative lists with no appearent weakness. Some call this the meta-game, some enjoy it, others not so much. It's less about the rules, and more about the laws of averages. I like to think of it as the people who let nothing go to waste and squeeze that last bit of juice out of an orange or grapefruit.

Theme players, like Serban or Clayson, decide on a theme the want to reenact/capture and go with it. The goal is to make a legal army, albeit unbalanced in way or another. Theme armies tend to not be as competative because they suffer inherent weaknesses. However, this does not make them less fun to play. These kind of players are your fruit salad kind of people.

[Thomas Fitzcharles]

Good Day, Jeff.

Thanks, I have the brenton rule book, I"ll have get the main one. So, if I just stick with brentonians my army will more likely be defeated by a well rounded one. I'd like to stay away from fantasy and magic for the most part. I know I have flying horses.Is there some other human groups that would help balance my army out?

Sincerely

Thomas

[Fritz]

Competative players, such as Fritz and Jason, agonize over every point as they create a very competative lists with no appearent weakness. Some call this the meta-game, some enjoy it, others not so much. It's less about the rules, and more about the laws of averages. I like to think of it as the people who let nothing go to waste and squeeze that last bit of juice out of an orange or grapefruit.

I take a bit of exception to that characterization. I'm playing an Empire army with hardly any shooting. The competitive players (check out warseer if you want to see those ass holes) consider it a requirement to take at least 2 mortars and 2 cannons. I found a theme and I'm trying to stick to it. I also have some very glaring weaknesses (low natural leadership, no true elite infantry) and my choice of theme adds more (difficulty stopping multi-wound creatures, refusal to go wizard heavy). I do, however, enjoy the meta-game of making lists and do try to cover some of those weaknesses while trying to stick to my theme. I'm also not sure I would characterize Jason as straight min-maxing competitive player. Yes, he rules-lawyers a bit, but his lists are based around what he likes, not necessarily what is "the best."

The only reason I'm even mentioning it is because I've seen that competitive archtype you are talking about and frankly they are never any fun to play against. They crush your carefully themed army mercilessly and no one has any fun in the process. When the new more powerful flavor of the month comes out they switch over without question. If Jason and I were truly this competitive archtype we would be going with magic heavy High Elves, Warriors of Chaos, or Skaven as those are considered the "high tier" armies currently.

Frankly the only real difference between any of us is just the level of experience we have with the game system. There is not a single one of us I wouldn't consider a theme player. Even Kevin, the king of cheeky lists is a theme player (all Savage Orcs, or hordes of Men-at-Arms?! That's theme in the extreme). Not one of us plays solely to win, nor do I think we would tolerate someone like that.

[Fritz]

Good Day, Jeff.

Thanks, I have the brenton rule book, I"ll have get the main one. So, if I just stick with brentonians my army will more likely be defeated by a well rounded one. I'd like to stay away from fantasy and magic for the most part. I know I have flying horses.Is there some other human groups that would help balance my army out?

Sincerely

Thomas

Not at all. You actually have to stick to one army book. You can not mix and match Bretonnians with any other group, even other humans. Each army book is intended to be stand alone, with inherent strengths and weaknesses. All Jeff is talking about is people who don't care about the themes and stories presented in the army book or the look of the models and only take what they think will help them win.

Such players often label certain choices "useless." For example, in the bretonnian book, competitive players may consider Mounted Yeomen useless for whatever reason. Just stick with what you think looks cool model-wise and you can make the rest work.

[Thomas Fitzcharles]

Good Day, Chris.

Thanks, that helps. Will I be at a big disavantage if I don't use magic?

Sincerely

Thomas

[MorGrendel]

I take a bit of exception to that characterization. I'm playing an Empire army with hardly any shooting. The competitive players (check out warseer if you want to see those ass holes) consider it a requirement to take at least 2 mortars and 2 cannons. I found a theme and I'm trying to stick to it. I also have some very glaring weaknesses (low natural leadership, no true elite infantry) and my choice of theme adds more (difficulty stopping multi-wound creatures, refusal to go wizard heavy). I do, however, enjoy the meta-game of making lists and do try to cover some of those weaknesses while trying to stick to my theme. I'm also not sure I would characterize Jason as straight min-maxing competitive player. Yes, he rules-lawyers a bit, but his lists are based around what he likes, not necessarily what is "the best."[/quote]

Please don't take offense, I consider Competive a step between Theme and Tourney. I would never dare call any of us (even Kevin - well most the time) Tournament Players. I was just trying to explain the meta-game, and I consider any player/army that has attention to point distribution as competetive (in the good use of the term, not douches on warseer). You and Jason are surgical in your point use, especially in 40K. The flip-side would be to call other list point-sloppy, and I think that is an unkind brand for a theme list, as some theme will intrinsicly suck (See Troll/Moulder list).

That said your armies tend to be themed as well, and though they may lack certian advantages, they rarely have glaring weakness beyond the given weakness of the particular army/race. They tend to be focused, and will dominate at least one phase. Jason's armies tend to be the same - see wizard that always cast at ultimate force, but can not miscast. You both generally bring the same list to the table every time, with a few tweaks here and there (replace drop-pod transports for APC transport, Replace priest with wizard, repalce 1 firewarrior from each unit with drones for leader) , and for that reason,because you know your list so well, I consider your lists competitive in the good way.