# Need some Empire Advice



## Arroth (Apr 24, 2009)

A quick debriefing on the situation- I have a friend who i play warhammer with. He likes to play DOC and long story short, does not, and i mean hates to lose. Well he played a game against me a few weeks back where i used my brand new empire gunline to completely destroy him. He whined alot about how cheesey gunlines are, but at the same time, bragged about how his DOC was his tourny list. After this I find out he is buidling a DE army that will be his competitive list, so he claims. Come to find out, he varied his list to build a flying army so he could do nothing more then destroy my gunline. 

Now, while i hate people who build lists just to compete against 1 persons army, in my friends case.. I will make an exception. He will be using a dark pegasus on all of his lords and heros, and alot of harpies. What can i use as a nasty empire army to counter this? I was thinking of using alot of swordsmen but wasnt sure they would be the best. Can anyone give me any advice? thanks!


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## Trigger (Mar 12, 2008)

Van Horstmans Spectaculum. Love it on engineers!


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## karlhunt (Mar 24, 2009)

All is not lost. Try layering your gunners. The flyers will rush you as fast as they can so your best bet is to be in a position to put as much hurt on as possible. Keep your gun blocks small and try to get a good hill (I know it's obvious). Use detachments of archers and free company. Sadly, flying units have crap armor saves. Now this can happen a couple of diferent ways. first he can land just inside of 20" to get the charge the next turn, if he does this pepper him with as many shots as you can. Try to have units of crossbows about 6" behind your units of hand guns 29" back from the enemy deployment zone. Somehwere in there. Their supperior range will let them also fire into the enemy attack at the same time. Then when your friend charges you use a good old fasioned stand and shoot from the main unit, and the archer detachment. Counter charge with the free company. 2 attacks each should deliver some good wounds and will give the flyers a secondary target to have to wory about.
Second option would be for him to rush forward on the first turn and weather a single volley of gun fire from close range but not have to deal with the stand and shoot. If he does this your close range attacks should be able to cut him down easily. 
third option is to screen behind cover as long as he can then land behind you in preparation for the charge. That's where the archer detachments and crosbows come in. Archers are skirmishers so have 360 sight arc, crossbows are positioned well behind your main line to either give your hand gunners a chance to turn around or fire into the flyers that landed between them and the hand guns.

A few things to remember. 
Hand guns and cross bows are move or fire. 
Characters on Monsterous mounts can't join units so your frined has made them easy pickings (being on a monster they don't get the -1 to hit with ranged attacks either)
Harpies do not fill the core choice requirement so he has to bring some real troops somewhere.

Good luck, do the Empire proud!


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## Arroth (Apr 24, 2009)

Well the thing i love about empire is i can run a gunline or infantry blocks. I have most of the models to do either so i am wondering, which will be better? spears, swords, halberds? should i do a deathstar block of Greatswords? I like the idea of the engineers cause i know he likes to build super lords and that would really throw a wrench in those gears.


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## neilbatte (Jan 2, 2008)

Hochland longrifles, If his toughness 3 hero's want to flap about on a flying horse he's just asking for multiple longrifles to the face, Failing that go cavalry with artillery support. as all his characters go flying off towards your artillery you can smash the rest of his army into bits, The trick with this is to make your shooty bit look scary while keeping it cheap.


> Van Horstmans Spectaculum. Love it on engineers!


 unfortunately illegal as engineers have no magic item allowance.


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## Trigger (Mar 12, 2008)

Thats what happens when you haven't got the army book. I'm sure you can bang it on some shitty hero.


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## Darktheos (May 9, 2008)

Trigger said:


> Thats what happens when you haven't got the army book. I'm sure you can bang it on some shitty hero.


Yeah a level 1 wizard.


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## Spot The Grot (Jul 15, 2008)

Lots of harpies? Has this guy lost his mind? They work as flankers and flank-protectors not as armies.

Characters on pegaseus's aren't too hard , if you get a good shot with a cannon its all over as they are on their own and do not benefit from "look out sir!".

Most likely his army will fly around your while being whttled down and then not doing much when the fighting starts.

Knights could chase them down , 2 S3 attacks isn't much compared to a 1+ save.

Big blocks of troops will be worth it here. Harpies skirmish so don't negate ranks meaning their mobility isn't worth it.


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## warboss nazwart (Sep 15, 2008)

Check out the Orb of thunder


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## adimick (Mar 17, 2008)

Knights, they hurt a lot on the charge, unless I'm rolling the dice. And a lvl 1 battle wizard with Von Horstmann's Speculum works wonders against heros. Had one of those fellows kill a Vampire lord in a challenge, My friend thought I was retarded when I challenged. Either way tell your friend to quit whining when he loses and to just learn from it.


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## D'Haran (Jun 17, 2009)

Your friend is going to die by the hand of sigmar. The the orb of thunder, kill his lone heroes (do this by reducing where he can land without being hit by gunfire, lots of small units work well). Harpies are push overs, you could almost ignore them, but with ld 6 25% wounds on most units will have them running. Things to watch out for are hydras and assassins, force the assassin out as early as possible, and shoot the unit into oblivion (he'll probably have bound spell fly for his assassin so save dispel dice for it), take the time to do a few wounds to the hydras before combat and you should be able to take them down without too much trouble and no breath weapon to worry about.


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