Starting a Warhammer Fantasy Battle Army

Introduction
So dragons, magic and sword fights sound better and more fun the loud guns and tanks? Well done then my friend and welcome to the world of Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Now you face a tough decision, what army to choose? Well this is what this article should help you to decide, I will give you a basic idea of how to choose an army that you’ll find fun and entertaining to play.

But this is not here to tell you what army to choose or which will guarantee a win or to slaughter your opponent, but to give you an idea of the choices and their strengths/weaknesses in an aim to make your choice easier.

This game I find more tactical than 40k, you’ll need to think more as you can have large unwieldy blocks of troops and combat plays a much bigger part here. The games will range in any sizes from as small as 500pts – 10,000pts!! Of course these are extremes and most players will play at the size of 2000pts.

If you plan to start with other people (ie friends) then I suggest you all try to start different armies, nothing is as boring as fighting a clone of your own force.



In the following article you’ll find –

·




Choosing An Army

Are you an elf? Dwarf? Human? Orc? ……


The next step is to decide an army that you will find –

1.Enjoyable – Both painting and playing
2.Like the look of – No good getting an army you hate the models of

Now many people will say this will suit you or that will, ignore them. Only you can make that decision, so learn as much as possible on each army then choose the one that suits you the most. But in saying this talking to GW staff and veteran gamers will also help.

So how do you choose? I suggest you take time to browse the GW site, each race has it’s own little section with details on it and the current range can be viewed in the online store. Also watching games and reading the army books in GW stores will also give you a good idea of what you want or what each is capable of. But all the while think of the ways of war that grab you the most, if the thundering charge of cavalry sounds your thing then a mostly infantry army won’t be the best one for you.

Some ways of choosing an army, these may not be the way you want, but here’s the ways I know of –

·Models – Some players will look at the models and see which range they like the best, maybe for conversion possibilities or otherwise.

·Game play – Others test an army, doing this with another army (called “proxying”) gives them an idea of how it will perform.

·Background – Some consider the background of the army to be the best part, whether it be for their own expansion or just the official fluff grabs them

·History – Maybe some prefer to recreate a historic force, most races can be linked to a country or race (aka Bretonnians = French). Some like to attempt to recreate a force from their favourite period in time, who wouldn’t like to see Joan d’ Arc leading a lance of knights in to battle for the Lady?

·Fun – Or for fun. Many will look at an army and decide to play it on the principle of fun; you should enjoy your army. Most of these players don’t much care for winning (and are usually Greenskin players ;) ), but are all for the enjoyment of the game.

·Winning – The last way is for competitive players, mainly ones who will enter a lot of tournaments and will master every aspect of their armies. Lots will choose the army with the best win rate; these can sometimes be called “power gamers”. But not all are.

Any army that catches your eye I suggest you test them, ask at a GW or a friend if you can try them out. Much better than buying an army and discovering the army isn’t for you.



Choices, choices, choices…

As for the choice of armies, ask yourself these questions. They will give a basic idea of what army may be best suited for you.

1.Thundering cavalry charge sound good?
2.Or maybe raining arrows and cannonballs from afar?
3.Mass troops more you thing?
4.Guerrilla warfare?
5.Maybe small fast elite units suit you sir?

If you think question one would be answered yes, then the following armies may suit you -

·Bretonnians
·High Elves
·Dark Elves
·Empire (Knightly Orders)
·Tomb Kings (Chariot based)

If you think question two would be answered yes, then the following armies may suit you -

·Dwarfs
·Empire
·Wood Elves
·Skaven
·High Elves
·Dark Elves

If you think question three would be answered yes, then the following armies may suit you -

·Dwarfs
·Empire
·Skaven
·Orcs & Goblins
·Chaos – Mortal and Daemon
·Tomb Kings
·Vampire Counts
·Lizardmen

If you think question four would be answered yes, then the following armies may suit you -

·Lizardmen
·Beasts Of Chaos
·Wood Elves

If you think question five would be answered yes, then the following armies may suit you -

·Dark Elves
·High Elves
·Chaos – Mortal
·Lizardmen


So who’s who?

This section gives a basic outlook at each army as well as their main weaknesses and strengths, a small paragraph written about each will hopefully help.

Lzardmen
Lizardmen are inherently a strong, flexible army, with great capacity for variation in your army's composition. The main strengths of the Lizardman army lie in reliability - your troops are tough and don't run - combat power, and an extremely broad range of adapted infantry specialists. We're also pretty good at magic and can lay down some pretty nasty short-ranged firepower.

Weaknesses of the Lizardman army are poor cavalry options, high cost and low armour, combined with a lack of long-ranged power.

Dark Elves
Dark Elves are a fragile army, used best in a highly maneuverable manner, avoiding combat until they can be assured of victory. A high number of attacks is a specialty of the army, both in hand to hand and shooting, but opponents with high Toughness or good armour will cause problems for the relatively weak elves.

The army isn't especially flexible in terms of composition, though. There are some units, like Dark Riders, that will be present in every game, and some, like the Cauldron of Blood, that will never see the table in a competitive game.

Vampire Counts
Vampire Counts offer low quality but highly reliable hordes of skeletons and zombies, cheap elite infantry and cavalry in the form of wights, many useful auxillary units such as ghouls and spirit hosts, the best magic lore in the game and rock hard vampire characters to lead them. Weaknesses include almost no ranged attacks whatsoever, and an apparent lack of maneuvarability that can be extremely deceptive at times. Coupled with the many, many conversion and modelling opportunities, and no less than five different vampire bloodlines for added flavour, make this army one of the most exciting, rewarding and competitive armies in the game: in the hands of the right general, of course!



Getting Started

Once your race is chosen, the next step is to build it. So if you don’t own the rulebook, get it!! Then buy your armies, army book. I suggest you start off small and go with a 500pt army, paint it play with it then expand it.

But first to paint it you’ll need a few things –

·Brushes – Detail, Standard and Small Drybrush are the best basic ones. One spare for mixing

·Spray – Chaos Black and/or Skull White (depending on the model/army)

·Paint – Chaos Black and Skull White, used for covering missed spray areas and mixing for highlights

Other colours will depend upon you; best bet is to pick three main colours. Maybe get the varying shades, but the starter paint set is a good start.

You will also need tools to clean up flash and mould lines on the models, as well as to remove them from the sprue. Oh and glue is quite essential, as well as flock for the bases.

·Files
·Clippers
·Hobby Knife
·Glue – super, plastic and pva
·Basing Material – Flock, sand, gravel, static grass, pebbles etc

So as you’ll see you do basically need a lot of stuff to start with, it can get expensive but if done well very worthwhile. I’ll show you an average cost in British pounds for your starting equipment, this is all GW stuff but you will find it cheaper elsewhere.

All prices are based on the 2004 Catalogue

Files - £6
Clippers - £7
Glue - £3 (For all types)
Spray cans - £5
Single Paints - £1.75
Basing Material - £3
Hobby Knife – not on the UK site but I think it’s about £5-7
Hobby Starter Set - £15
Paintbrush Set - £6

Total = £51 (not including single paints or extra paint brushes etc)

Armies

This will give you a basic cost of a character model and the current plastic boxed set units, a few of these boxed sets and you’ll easily have a 500pts army in no time. But as for small games unit champions can easily be substituted for a hero alternatively you can get a special unit champion and use them (ie for Dark Elves the Executioner model would look quite good as a hero).

Empire
Mounted Hero £7
Empire Soldiers £15
Knightly Order £15

Dwarfs
Lord £6
Warriors £15

High Elves
Mounted Lord £7
Spearmen £15
Archers £15
Silver Helms £15

Lizardmen
Saurus OldBlood £7
Skink Priest £4
Saurus Warriors £15
Skinks £15

Wood Elves
Mage £8 (2 per blister, one mounted)
Mounted Lord £7
Archers £5

Dark Elves
Sorceress £5
Warriors £15

Orcs & Goblins
Warlord On Boar £7
Shaman £5
Orcs £15
Goblins £15
Night Goblins £15

Tomb Kings
Liche Priest £8
Skeleton Warriors £15

Vampire Counts
Necromancer £8
Zombies £15
Skeletons £15

Skaven
Warlock Engineer £5
Warlord £6
Clanrats £15
Night Runners £15

Hordes Of Chaos – Mortal
Chaos Lord £7
Chaos Warriors £15
Chaos Knights £25
Marauders £15

Beasts Of Chaos
Beastlord £5
Beast Herd £15

Bretonnians
Lord £7
Battle Standard Bearer £6
Knights Of The Realm £15
Men At Arms £15
Men at Arms Archers £15


Glossary

These are some terms you’ll find useful for viewing army lists and the such online; these are the usual army shorthand –

Games Workshop
WFB/WHFB - Warhammer Fantasy Battles
GW - Games Workshop
WD - White Dwarf
WFRP - Warhammer Fantasy Role Play
40K - [Warhammer] 40,000
LOTR - Lord of the Rings
GD - Games Day
GT - Grand Tournament

Characteristics
M# (# being a number) - Movement
WS# - Weapon skill
BS# - Ballistic/Bow skill
S# - Strength
T# - Toughness
W# - Wounds
I# - Initiative
A# - Attacks
Ld# - Leadership
ASv - Armour save
WSv - Ward Save

Tabletop
hth - Hand to hand (combat)
btb - Base to base (contact)
TDARR - Templates, dices and Range Rulers
WYSIWYG - What you see is what you get
BRB - Big Red Book or Basic Rule Book

The Races themselves
(Slang names in Brackets afterwards)

DE - Dark Elves (Or Druchii)
HE - High Elves (Or Asur)
WE - Wood Elves (Or Woodies)
CD - Chaos Dwarves
Brets - Bretonnians
TK/TKoK - Tomb Kings/Tomb Kings of Khemri
Dw - Dwarves (not common) (Or Stunties)
O+G - Orcs and Goblins (Or Grobi)
VC - Vampire Counts
DoW/DOW - Dogs of War (Or Mercenaries)
RoR - Regiment(s) of Renown.
Emp - Empire (Or Humies)
Lizardmen (Or Lizzies)

Race generic stuff
BSB - Battle Standard Bearer
Mu - Musician
Std - Standard Bearer
Ldr - Champion (or General if on Army List)
Cmd - Full Command Group (Mu, Std, Ldr)
add'l - Additional hand weapon
2H - Double handed weapon
lt/LA - light armor
hvy/HA - heavy armor
(lt or hvy)/s - armor with shield
Bd - Barded Warhorse
MU1, MU2 etc. - 1st level spell caster, et al. (Magic User)
BT - Bolt Thrower
ST - Stone Thrower
Scroll Caddy - Low level wizard, brought for their ability to carry dispel scrolls.

HW - Hand Weapons
GW - Great Weapon
LBow - Long Bow
SBow - Short Bow
CB/XB/Xbow - Crossbow

Bretonnians
GK - Grail knights
QK - Questing knights
KOR/KotR - Knights of the Realm
KE - Knights Errant
M@A/MAA - Men at Arms
LotL - Lady of the Lake (Not common)
PK - Pegasus Knights
PB - Peasant Bowmen
Treb - Trebuchet
Peg - (Royal) Pegasus (as in Lord w/Peg, 3 pegs would mean 3 pegasus knights. Not very satisfactory, but I'm just reporting on usages I've seen)
BWH - Barded War Horse (as in Lord w/BWH)
Pal - Paladin
GV/QV - Grail/Questing Vow
V. - Virtue (as in V.of the Ideal, sometimes just V. Ideal)

Dark Elves
RXB - Repeater Crossbow
DR - Dark Riders
COK - Cold One Knights
COC - Cold One Chariot
COB - Cauldron of Blood
WE - Witch Elves
Exe's - Executioners
RBTs - Reaper Bolt Throwers
BG - Black Guard

GoP - Gauntlet of Power
ToK - Temple of Khaine
CoP - Cult of Pleasure

WoP - Word of Pain

High Elves
SH - Silver Helms
DP - Dragon Princes
SW - Shadow Warriors
WL - White Lions
PG - Phoenix Guard
SM - Sword Masters
RBT - Repeater Bolt Thrower
LSG - Lothern Sea Guard
Reavers - Ellyrian Reavers

AoG - armor of the gods
VoD - vambraces of defense
AoP - armor of protection
BoH - book of hoeth
GP - guardian phoenix
RGH - radiant gem of hoeth
BWD - banner of the world dragon
BoS - banner of sorcery
APF - amulet of the purifying flame
SoH - Sword of Hoeth

FotP - Flames of the Phoenix
FoK - Fury of Khaine
CoAA: Curse of Arrow Attraction (High Elf Spell)

Wood Elves
GGuard - Glade Guard
GGian - Glade guardian
GR - Glade Riders
WHR - warhawk riders
GE - great eagle
WD - Wardancers
WW - Waywatchers
TM - Treeman
BW - Blade weawer
FD - Forest dragon
HoDA - Hail of Doom arrow
BOL - bow of loren
HS - Hunting spear
PoK - Potion of Knowledge
AoA - Acorn of Ages

Oak, Willow, Birch and Ash are all Dryad Aspects. Wardancer aspects are sometimes abbreviated, but mostly just referred to by their effect ("Wardancers go unbreakable," "Wardancers go +1 STR," "Wardancers go Killing Blow.") "Dodge" refers to a Wardancer's 6+ ward save.

Chaos Dwarves
BB- Blunder Buss

Tomb Kings of Khemri
LH - Light Horsemen
HH - Heavy Horsemen
LP - Liche Priest
HLP - High Liche Priest

Dwarves
IB - Iron Breaker
LB - Longbeard
Gyro - Gyrocopter
Rof* - Rune of *
MRof* - Master Rune of *
GA - Gromril Armour
FC - Flame Cannon
DW - Dwarf Warriors
OG - Organ Gun (never seen this one used before, but why not?)
Grobi - Greenskins (more of a fluff term, but often used)

Thane of Pain - Thane w/ Master Rune of Swiftness, Rune of Cleaving, Rune of Stone, Gromril Armour, Shield

Orcs and Goblins
BOs - Black Orcs
NGs - Night Goblins
SOs - Savage Orcs
FoG - Foot of Gork (Not common) or Fists of Gork (Still not common.)

Vampire Counts
BKs - Black Knights
BDs - Blood Dragons
GG - Grave Guard
VonC - Von Carsteins
IoN - Invocation of Nehek
The Library - Book of Arkhan and the Cursed Book
BoB - Banner of the Barrows
BC - Black Coach

Dogs of War
None Currently

Empire
VHS - Van Horstmann's Speculum
EC - Elector Count
WP - Warrior Priest
STank - Steam Tank
GM - Grandmaster
WL - Wizard Lord
GS - Greatswords
IC - Inner Circle (Knights)
HB - Helblaster
FC - Free Company

Lizardmen
FSoD - Flying Skink of Doom (Skink Chief w/Cloak of Feathers)
JSoD - Jaguar Saurus of Doom (Saurus Scar-Vet/Old Blood with Charm of the Jaguar Warrior)
BoRT - Blade of Revered Tzunki
TGs - Temple Guard

Skaven
WLC - Warp Lightning Cannon
GR - Gutter Runners
GRT - Gutter Runner Tunelers
SAD - Shooty Army of Death

Chaos
SoC - Staff of Change, not to be confused with Storm of Chaos
Spells
Lore of Life:
MoM - Mistress of the Marsh
FoT - Father of Thorn
HW - Howler Wind
MoS - Master of Stone
MoW - Master of Wood

Those things Unique to Ulthuan.org and things that fit no-where else
DD - Deeply Disturbed
Loremaster - the administrators
AoD - Arena of Death
Anarcist - A particularly irritating Loremaster adept at pointing out everyone's little foibles.
MSU - multiple small units, a tactic druchii.net devised
MSE - Multiple Small Elites. Similair tactic to MSU but relies more heavy on elite units.

SoC - Storm of Chaos (The '04 Summer campaign)
CoL - Conclave of Light
CoD - Conclave of Darkness
CLA - Conclave of the Light Alliance (www.lightalliance.co.uk)
WoC - Worlds of Chaos (www.worldofchaos.co.uk) (Host for the CoD)
BG - Black Gobbo (On-line US magazine)

Links
These are links to the major armies and the biggest forums for them –

<Insert links here>

Also these are tacticas or guides written by members of Warhammer Palace on a number of armies –

Vampire Counts
Tomb Kings
Dwarfs
Dark Elves
High Elves
Lizardmen
Orcs & Goblins

<each will have a link the tacticas in the final edit>



____________________________________________________________________

So that's the article as it stands, but as you can see I still need a paragraph on each army as well as the major weaknesses and strengths.

I'd be very thankful for members to give me this section, as how I really say what they are when I don't play them?

Also any feedback on the article as a whole is welcome.



KU

:thumb: :clap:

I vote for pinning this. It's really good, kudos to KU

First off, consider it pinned.

Second, as well as the paragraphs for each army, I'd suggest having multiple currencies listed for the models.

Oh, and I'll put together a DE paragraph for you, soon as I get a round to it.

Mumble... mutter... growl...

Thanks guys, I'm glad it's liked.

Vriish - Thanks, I'll put those currencies in. But which? £$ and what else? or that enough?

Chilli - Calm down, I stole that part from the COL website (if you hadn't had guessed). I'll put it under generic if you desire :P

KU

Sounds like Chili. Also I would like to point out:

Selective reading their Chili, it could be one of those things that fits no where else.

I am eagerly awaiting the completion of this guide KU as so far it is extremely promising.

Well as soon as members decide to write those little paragraphs for me then I'll edit them in, then add the links etc.

So what am I asking for? I would like members to write a short paragraph on each army with a few of their main weaknesses and strengths.

the reason why I'm asking is because I can't write them as I may get them wrong and make me look foolish.... ;) So I get experienced members to create them for me, I put them in and bam! The thread is complete.

So? Hop to it!!!

KU

Here's one for Lizardmen:

Lizardmen are inherently a strong, flexible army, with great capacity for variation in your army's composition. The main strengths of the Lizardman army lie in reliability - your troops are tough and don't run - combat power, and an extremely broad range of adapted infantry specialists. We're also pretty good at magic and can lay down some pretty nasty short-ranged firepower.

Weaknesses of the Lizardman army are poor cavalry options, high cost and low armour, combined with a lack of long-ranged power.

Gw has a small description of army background, style of play and strength & weaknesses of every army. You can find it here. Hope I helped.

Tsunami - Thanks, never saw that before but I'd prefer it if this was done by veteran players. It just seems to make more sense if other oldies gave advice into the armies, instead of my ripping something from GW.

Anyone else?

KU

Dark Elves are a fragile army, used best in a highly maneuverable manner, avoiding combat until they can be assured of victory. A high number of attacks is a specialty of the army, both in hand to hand and shooting, but opponents with high Toughness or good armour will cause problems for the relatively weak elves.

The army isn't especially flexible in terms of composition, though. There are some units, like Dark Riders, that will be present in every game, and some, like the Cauldron of Blood, that will never see the table in a competitive game.


Sorry it took so long, Ulrik. I completely forgot about this, to be honest.

Only just noticed this little project of yours, Ulrik. Spose I better throw in my specialist paragraph, to stop your little blighters biting the knees off of my zombies again.

Vampire Counts offer low quality but highly reliable hordes of skeletons and zombies, cheap elite infantry and cavalry in the form of wights, many useful auxillary units such as ghouls and spirit hosts, the best magic lore in the game and rock hard vampire characters to lead them. Weaknesses include almost no ranged attacks whatsoever, and an apparent lack of maneuvarability that can be extremely deceptive at times. Coupled with the many, many conversion and modelling opportunities, and no less than five different vampire bloodlines for added flavour, make this army one of the most exciting, rewarding and competitive armies in the game: in the hands of the right general, of course!

Hope that's ok....

Cheers,
DLJ

Thanks guys, those have now been edited into the article. So thats -

- Vcs
- LM
- DE

done, just the rest to come ;)

Oh, thanks... <_< Don't worry Dark Lord Gingernut, I should get more practice this soon... (prays and prays hard!!) so next time we meet my bearded breathren shalln't be biting the knees but be hacking up your vamp :ph43r: ;)

KU