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Joined: Wed Aug 20, 2003 12:30 am
Posts: 939
Location: University of Essex, Colchester, UK (soon to be Brighton, Sussex, UK)
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Hi there!
A while ago I wrote this for asur.org. It is a basic guide to army composition for Warhammer Fantasy armies. I thought someone might be interesting in reading it. Some principles are not transferable to Epic, BFG and other gaming systems, but some others are. So, in case someone is interested, there you go 
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Hello all,
Looking at several army lists in this forum and the way they are posted I have come to suspect that a lot of people design their armies without a clear battle plan in their minds and why each unit and character selected (as well as the specific uses of the units and specially characters) is in the army list and how they will complement each other. As a consequence I thought that it might be worthy to put up some guidelines that I have found to be effective when designing an army list.
BASIC PRINCIPLES IN ARMY DESIGN
1) Army design
When selecting an army the following steps should be followed
- Select a tactic
- Select the units to perform the tactic
- Select the characters to complement what the army lacks
- Deploy the unit in a smooth surface and make a few moves to see how they different units will complement each other as well as to see if you need to get more units or your deploy area is too pached and the units interfere with each other's movement.
2) Think about a tactic and THEN select the units to perform it
In a lot of cases players design an army list and then think about how to use the list. This is a mistake. It is way easier to think first on what you want your units to do and how to do it and then select the correct units to do this. If you want to play defensively a lot of cavalry will be worthless, and if you want to play offensively a lot of infantry and magic will not pay back. Think about what basic tactic you want to implement (flank attack, hammer and anvil, refused flank, counteratack...) and select the correct formations to perform it. Different army compositions and unit ue are more suited for one or another tactic.
3) Do not overinvest in any particular unit
HE units are expensive, true, and it is easy for a unit to cost more than 200 points. However, in small games such investment tends not to pay back in usefulness. He are better in combined arms than in head on combat so here we go to the second point
4) Take many units, specially support ones
For what has been said in point 1 you would usually be doing better if you had 7 units or more, not counting characters there. Support formations play a great role in boosting your numbers and achieving combined arms results in there, so it is useful to take at least one support formation for every main battle unit you take. It is even better if the radio is 2:1 or more.
5) Characters
When designing the characters you should think about what role they play in your overall strategy. They must have an assigned a specific role to counter problems that your units cannot cover or to boost one of your capabilities, like firepower (both magical and regular missiles), hand to hand combat, leadership or defensive capability like defense against enemy magic, characters or missiles. Taking a character and equipong him with the maximum points allowance in magic items simply "because he is a ard nut to crack" is not always a good option. Cheap characters like a mounted hero with a 2+ or 1+ save and a lance or great weapon is more than enough in a lot of cases and can be used as a sacrificial unit. This brings us to the next step
6) No unit should be vital in your strategy so that you cannot recover if you lose it
You must be prepared to use all your units as sacrificial taliban teams if that helps you to win. In this same sense no unit should be vital to your battle plans and you should be able to adapt to the los of a unit of your own. Cheap characters and units help in achieving this. Your battle plan can be certainly weakened when you lose a unit, but that should be part of your army design and you should be able to adapt to the loss of your heavy hitters or MBU.
7) When posting army lists specify the tactic to use
This is useful when commenting on army lists. If the people commenting on your army list know how you plan to deploy and use the army the comments can be way sounder and useful. It helps improve your army list and make better comments for it, so it helps everybody.
Well, hope this small list of tips helped people in some way when deciding on their army comosition and tactics to use.
Regards,
Elmoth
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Commanding legions forward while sitting in a nice armchair.
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