I think the Empire need some love

Hey,

I have just realised that I havnt played a game with my empire since ages ago as I've become too distracted by all the elven goodness and the challenges they bring (plus all the painting that I need to get excited about!).

One of the reasons that I put the Empire on the shelf for a bit was that I realised that I had gotten stale with them. I knew what I was doing and I got a little too obsessed with controlling all elements of the game with them. For instance, when you're floating 2 alector, lvl4, stank lists as a viable option I think it is time to step away for a bit and come back to the army with a fresh perspective.

 I need to figure out what my non-negotiables are.

This was a lesson learnt from many different High Elf list re-writes, but ingrained at vermintide III. At Vermintide I realised that there is only 1 spell I need to cast, so why do I invest all these points in doing other things? Also stripping back to a smaller points level, and then going for extreme MSU meant I had to think long and hard about what I needed what to do what.

With Empire this is a little tricky as there are a few optimised choices and the temptation is to just duplicate these options (hence double stank, artillery park lists etc). This is great for redundancy, but can lend itself to boring lists.

So with Empire my non-negotiables are:
- the lore of light: no other army out there needs these buffs as much as empire + it provides a flaming attack.
- monster killing: Empire troops are subpar at monster killing, so double cannon it is :P
- road blocks: Vital to controlling an opponent's movement and to give you space to breath.
- Grinding power: crap troops means you need to be able to survive a round or 2 of combat and still kill stuff
- Speed: one of the main weaknesses I have had in the past is a lack of speed meaning I have been left watching units outrun my blocks to safety
- range threat: sometimes you just have to force an opponent to you.

So with that in mind I think that boils down to something like this:

ALector: Alter, GW, AOMI            256
lvl4: Shadow, scroll                235
BSB: FPA, ench shield                98
Captasus: FPA, Sh, Dhelm, SoMight            135
Engineer                    65
38 Halberds: FC                    210
2x5 archer detach                80
30 Flagellants                    300
12 Whitewolf knights: m, sb            300
2 Cannons                    200
5 outriders                    105
Rocket battery                    115
Stank                        300
2399

So a respectable amount of shooting to force opponent's close. Speed in the knights who also have grinding power with their s5 and 2+ as.  No VHS because, to be honest, the last time I actually got to use it was in 7th when I was playing demons every week and it gave me something for when I was sirened into what ever I was being sirened into.

I opted for outriders over xbows because the outriders can redeploy, and have that AP for helping ping wounds off knights etc.  Rocket battery + engineer is the best equaliser of combat pressure in the game.

Also trying to keep things cheap so the lot of something (say the captasus) is no major blow.

SO that's that. IF i cannot get the High Elves painted in time then this will be my early year event list.

Next post will be picks of the new look dryads.