How do I keep brettonian knights from dying instantly?

[thecactusman17]

Miracle of miracles, I won today. Not a huge win, and against an opponent almost as bad as I am, but I won none the less.

First off was some statistically better-than-average rolling on my wards.

I played a 1000 point game, with two 9-man squads, 20 archers in a huge block, and 3 heroes--a paladin, a BSB, and a Damsel (found a model I liked, thank God).

Just having the damsel helped immensely, as I was no longer terrified of his magic (enemy was high elves with archers, spearmen, scout archers, a Wizard, and two bolt throwers). In the shooting phase, the archers proved to be a tasty target, and too large to kill in one fell swoop from long range. By deploying my knights behind cover, I took the Blessing and let the archers flee off the board after wasting his opening salvos.

I began my march forward in a giant pincher, with my uber-squad on one side and my other moving up to draw off the bolt thrower fire. The uber squad hit his scout archers, then locked on their flank with his spearmen. Irrefutable challenges forced his nobleman into a fight with my Paladin, preventing lots of S4 attacks against my 2+ save nkights. The "damsel" shut down his magic phase by preventing the only worthy target unit from being selected. I meat grinded him on this end of the table, and on the other side charged in my knights against the large block of archers on it's narrow flank. When they broke, I ran them all down and pushed forward into the rear of the spearmen. On the next turn, they turned back around and then moved back toward his bolt throwers (not in the same turn) so that he did not have easy LOS on the large squad over the smaller one. The game ended here, with two squads of knights about to bear down on his last heavy weapon choices.

Wish more of my games went this way.

[Yhcrana]

Too be honest losing a few games makes you realise what works and what doesn't.

I wish I lost more when I was learning too play warhammer. In my group of friends I win the majority of my games. This meant I never really changed my lists or tried new things.

Then I went to a tournament and got taught how to play the hard way with a series of losses and hard fought draws. I ended up coming in the bottom third which was a huge shock to me as I thought I was good at warhammer, apparently I am fairly average.

To be a competetive player I believe you have to lose a few times to really understand your army and what worked and what ddn't.

This is the same principle I had with learning Jiu Jitsu, I lost too better martial artists than me every week without fail. Over time I got better really quickly and then eventually I was a challenge to the experienced martial artists and then I was capable of winning.

Losing makes you analise what you did and how to improve or adjust. Winning does not.

Anyway that is my philosophy rant for the day. Keep playing and you will get better and as you said, you just won a game by adjusting and improving on what you did last time.

Congrats on the win.

[Boston Dance Party]

I lose because my army was based around a historical theme, I am asking how I can improve them. From what people have explained to me, I am doing everything right. Clearly, there is something wrong.

I am unsure how I can set myself up for flank charges. This is probably the biggest issue. With 3-4 columns of knights on the board, there is no obvious way to flank charge anything without getting flank charged in return. Never mind a combo. Putting my archers forward as bait means that My knights are going to sit there in the rear, doing nothing until someone is stupid enough to charge the obvious bait units. Moving my knights up means I'm in charge range or missile range of something. Taking the blessing means I stand there for a turn, getting shot and charged. Trying some weird maneuver means that I end up in the enemies charge arc either not close enough to do anything or close enough to get charged in return, and almost never puts me on the enemies flank.

I will play "Damsels", i refuse to play with any of the GW models for mages, damsels, engineers etc. It does not look right in my army, which is intended to look realistic. Likewise, I will not use Pegasus anything or griffons. I realize these may be good units, but expressing my disdain for the models and the piss-poor fantasy setting of WHFB would likely get this thread shut down.

I want a good GAME. Please, explain to me how i can PLAY a better GAME. I am genuinely interested in advice.

Here's what you do, quit warhammer fantasy and play a historical wargame, plenty of realistic models and historical themes for you there.

[Kloud]

#1 Find an old radio that can play cassette tapes.
#2 Find MC Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" tape.
#3 Listen to the song "Pray" Particularily the line "You got to Pray just to make it to today, I say we Pray, Pray,........."

As a Bretonian player, you ALWAYS Pray. I play High Elves, and people cry "Always Strikes first" is broken, but the "Blessing of the Beardy Lady" is a whole other level of cheesy. It's too good not to take. Other armies spend good points to get 6+ and 5+ Ward Saves, and you get it for free, on your entire army. (almost entire)

Make absolutly sure you completly understand the "Lance Formation" Rules. The Lance Formation is incredibly powerfull. With the small frontage on your units, you should always be launching two of your units into one of your opponents units. This will Generate a huge amount of attacks being thrown into the enemy unit. and is a garantee you will outnumber your opponent for an additional +1 to CR.


once a unit of knights has made it behind your opponents army, now he is in a real tight spot because if he turns a unit around to deal with them, that unit will likely get charged in the rear by another unit of your knights.

I can kinda tell your somewhat new to Fantasy, so I'm going to go out on a limb, and guess you have no idea what Fast Calvary is good for. Read the Rules for Fast Calvary in your main Rulebook. Read them again, then look in your armybook for your Fast Cav unit, and get one or two units of them. Any questions, ask in the Forums.

And Finally Slap the High Elf Player you beat for taking more than 1 core choice in a 1000pt game., and slap him again for takin spearmen as that 2nd choice.

[Xas]

I'd say learn to roll dice.

If you cant break your normal line troop block with 2 units of lances you are doing extremely poor.

afaik each block has around 7-8A s5 on the charge which should riun weaker infantry. try flanking harder infantry by breaking trough his weaker troops next to them and quad team them once you return.

use terrain to negate enemy canons and bolt trowers.
learn to pass 2+ armor saves


dont play against undead/deamons before you can regularly beat normal armies (because they will block even your fiercest assoult and land you stranded, flanked and overrun quite easily).

If this all doesnt help, buy new dice

[ForsakenImp]

Are you remembering that you have a 16" charge with one wheel in it? If you fail a charge, most armies in the game will STILL be too far away to charge you back after you fail it. With double-charging a unit, it works wonders!

Brets do have some extremely tough match ups. All undead matchups will be very hard, as their infantry will not break on the charge, which is the only thing we can do. I'm still searching for ways to match up against them. Lizardmen and dwarves have great leadership abilities, making them almost as hard, but you just have to concentrate forces more- dwarves are slow and should be flank charged, and Lizardmen aren't as great at leadership when you put a big negative on them, say CR3 and wounds.