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Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts

2020-10-16T21:54:36Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

This is the tactica for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of the Vampire Counts.

==Why Play Vampire Counts?==
*Because you want the realms of the living to drown in the night as the dark creatures consume their souls and bodies.
*Because you really, REALLY wanted Dracula to win in the novel.
*The enemy can't dive your backline if you have no backline!
*Because you aren't quite sick of zombies yet.

===Pros===
*'''God Tier Lords''': Every Lord in your army is a caster of the Lore of Vampires, the strongest lore of magic in the entire game. Combine that with impressive melee stats and incredible mount options across the board, and Vampire Lords are among the most powerful in the entire game. Plus, with all the Bloodlines being playable you have plenty of even more powerful lords to choose from.
*'''Fantastic Heroes''': Vampire Counts also have amazing heroes on both the battlefield and the campaign map. Vampires are casters that can fight almost everything and win using their high melee stats and regen. Wight Kings are superb tanks with high HP, a silver shield, and a nifty anti-infantry bonus. Necromancers are essential both on and off the battlefield, granting AoE regen to allies — improved further and adding a few buffs with a corpse cart mount. Outside of fights, have a group of ten Necromancers with the "Lore Keeper" trait run amongst your cities, granting 100% off construction costs, 100% research rate, and a massive "Boost Income" bonus. Banshees are great agents that have access to "Assassinate", "Damage Walls", and "Block Army". The "Devious" trait gives a stacking boost to action success chance and a lower action cost.
*'''Healing''': Other factions have healing, but you are one of very few that can bring back dead models. This means that casualties aren't the biggest concern in the world for you as you can always just bring them back with a good Invocation of Nehek cast. Pro tip: Don't click that "end battle" button; instead, spend your remaining winds of magic to revive everyone and win the fight with zero casualties.
*'''Cavalry''': Blood Knights are among the best cav in the entire game, and, combined with the ability to revive models, can be oppressive. Even Black Knights are pretty damn good for what they do.
*'''Monsters''': You got plenty of large damage dealing monsters for numerous occasions. From fliers to ground monsters to bats and dogs to harass skirmishers, you got a beast for nearly every occasion.
*'''Inexpensive''': Most of your infantry choices are pretty cheap, which allows you to really lean into your more expensive troops and still have enough cash left over to get frontline to hold them in place. You can expect to outnumber your enemy in most battles, so be sure to use that. An early technology renders zombies and skeletons completely free of upkeep.
*'''High Infantry Models''': The zombie and skeleton units boast one of the highest model counts in the game. Pair that fact with your ability to bring back dead models and you have a blob to reckon with.

===Cons===
*'''No Ranged Units''': None whatsoever in the first game, meaning you are always forced to go all-in; otherwise, the enemy will just pick you apart. You do have plenty of tools to deal with enemy ranged, but you can still feel the inability to put out reliable damage from a distance. It also makes your siege defenses an absolute joke. The second game allows the recruitment of a small number of Sylvanian crossbowmen and handgunners after you unlock a Von Carstein Bloodline lord but they honestly aren't worth it.
*'''Flimsy Infantry''': Believe it or not, literal walking corpses animated like puppets don't make the best fighters. While Zombies and Skeletons can hold the line, don't expect them to win without help. Your cav, monsters, heroes, and lords will be doing most of the work in winning the battle.
*'''Reliance on Lords''': Lords are important in all armies, but yours literally keep your shambling mounds moving and fighting during the battle. If they die, the rest of the army is sure to follow.
*'''DLC''': Yes, a weakness pretty much everyone has but still worth mentioning. Mortis Engines and Corpse Carts are very useful in your average battle – almost essential – and sadly you need to fork over dough if you want to get these key units.
*'''Slow Infantry''': Zombies, walking skeletons, and possessed suits of armor are slow. Who knew?
*'''PC Killer''': Large number of units with high model counts combined with vampire-focused maps specializing in fog and your frame rate can easily take a dive, even on beefy rigs. The campaign map isn't safe as vampire corruption covers the land in fog and particle effects. Lowering or outright disabling volumetric fog is a must.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts

2020-10-16T21:45:23Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Pros */

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Vampire Counts

2020-10-16T21:08:58Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:52:10Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. Relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped. They also have their red line skill completely separated from all other units. The only benefit is a large arc to your shots allowing you to fire over walls easily.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue while charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough; they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful and nice range with very slow rate of fire and below-average accuracy. Best used to destroy towers and walls in sieges so your cavalry can get in and to deal AoE damage to enemy infantry.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above: slightly better stat-wise but also come with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:51:28Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Artillery */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. Relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped. They also have their red line skill completely separated from all other units. The only benefit is a large arc to your shots allowing you to fire over walls easily.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough; they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful and nice range with very slow rate of fire and below-average accuracy. Best used to destroy towers and walls in sieges so your cavalry can get in and to deal AoE damage to enemy infantry.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above: slightly better stat-wise but also come with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:47:29Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cavalry */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. Relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped. They also have their red line skill completely separated from all other units. The only benefit is a large arc to your shots allowing you to fire over walls easily.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough; they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:29:44Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. Relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped. They also have their red line skill completely separated from all other units. The only benefit is a large arc to your shots allowing you to fire over walls easily.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:23:37Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Universal Traits */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:22:14Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Being large units also means being significantly more easy to hit with enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
*'''Expensive Knights''': The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:11:59Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Heroes */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T20:03:37Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Cons */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
*'''Fatigue''': Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue when charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 75% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T19:55:23Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Heroes */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''': A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 75% physical resistance, unbreakable, and inability to be killed or wounded after battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T19:44:09Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Universal Traits */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy. Also, charge bonuses begin dropping rapidly after contact. Only the tip of the formation will get full damage.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat. CA has stated that it is used to charge through deeper formations to get to the backline but always expect to see a couple of horses stuck in the center of the enemy.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''':

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

2020-10-16T19:25:23Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Why play Bretonnia? */

This is the tactics page for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of Bretonnia.

==Why play Bretonnia?==

Because you want to see the glorious knights of old ride down heretics, traitors and scum and you don't care how many peasants have to die to make it happen.

===Pros===
*'''Cavalry''': The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are ''the'' cav faction.
*'''No $$$ required.''': It's the only completely free faction. All you need is the base game and the Bretonnia download or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse)
*'''Air Force''': You can really dominate the air if you wanted to invest into it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
*'''Numbers''': Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You are more or less the only order faction that can effectively use swarm factions due to how cheap they are.
*'''High Armor''': Aside from Peasants, you got a lot of armor on you, meaning your knights and more high tier units can be quite resilient especially with good micro.
*'''Good economy''': Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
*'''Easy Diplomacy''': Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
*'''Lack of Supply Lines''': While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.

===Cons===
*'''Piss Poor Infantry''': Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farmer's tools at worse, have bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats and even your "elite" infantry get their booties smack by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the frontline in most cases.
*'''Bad Artillery''': Don't let the memes fool you, trebuchets suck in this game. relatively low accuracy and large models mean they are easily sniped.
*'''Anti Large''': Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti large monsters to try to wipe your cav out.
*'''Micro-Intensive''': To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Also: The lance formation is a trap, don't use it.
*'''Very easy campaign''': It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you actually are not doing a whole lot, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
*'''Convoluted Vow System''': The Vow system is as strightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, restricting in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill lategame Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elves armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(espcially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quichote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.

==Universal Traits==

*'''Blessing of the Lady''': If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using [[Lawful Stupid|cowardly tactics such as ambushes]]) it earns the favor of Bretonnias favored deity. The Blessing is really unspectacular, it gives a flat 20% physical resistance.
*'''Lance Formation''': It's a trap. Your cavalry can assume a lance formation, giving them increased speed and charge bonusses, but actually you're better off not using it. Why, you may ask? [[Derp|Because the way the game works, the Charge bonus, which the majority of your units heavily relies on, only gets applied to the models that actually hit the enemy.]] Maximizing the impact of your charges is crucial to your success on the battlefield and as an added disadvantage, the lance formation makes it also considerably more difficult to retreat from melee combat.
*'''Vows''': Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware, because once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the lategame), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be aware of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exception to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked.

==Lords==

*'''King Louen Leoncoeur''': The high King of Bretonnia, an balls out awesome knight that can do anything and is rumored to even have kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive wrecking ball of pure awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does. On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start.
*'''The Fae Enchantress''': Your caster Lord, of the Lore of Life. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her '''Mist of the Lady''' ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.
*'''Alberic de Bordeleaux''': Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing your Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His '''Trident of Manaan''' gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea.
*'''Repanse de Lyonesse''': Bretonnian Jeanne de Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an [[Errantry War]] against the [[Tomb Kings|undead of Nehekhara]] because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions with little fuss.
*'''Sir John Tyrewald''': Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.
*'''Bretonnian Lord''':
*'''Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts)''':

==Heroes==

*'''Paladin''':
*'''Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts)''':
*'''Henri Le Massif''': Repanse's big boy right-hand and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogriff mount.
*'''Donna Don Domingio''': A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
*'''The Green Knight''':

==Unit Roster==

===Infantry===
'''Important Note''': All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will nonstop build Peasants, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or see your economy go haywire pretty soon.

*'''Peasant Mob''': Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshild unit. They won't last long in any fight and even lose against Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
*'''Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms''': Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meatshields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for.
*'''Battle Pilgrims''': Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
*'''Grail Reliquae''': An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
*'''Foot Squires''': Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infanty will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles.

===Missile Infantry===

*'''Peasant Bowmen''': Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in large bulks, they are actually not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors, normal, Fire and Pox arrows.

===Cavalry===

*'''Mounted Yeomen''': Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exacly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make their useful is if you recruit their '''Mounted Yeomen Archer''' variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
*'''Knights-Errant''': Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
*'''Knights of the Realm''': Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Require the first Vow to be completed. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them.
*'''Questing Knights''': The line backers. You can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry with out bonusses against Large Units. Need the second vow to be completed.
*'''Grail Knights''': Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, [[Awesome|never tire]], even inspire units around them and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Need the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
*'''Grail Guardians''': More defensively minded versions of Grail Knights, with extremely high melee defence. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of your shock-cav heavy armies, you can use them. Grail Knights are generally more effective as offensive units. Require the third vow to be completed.
*'''Pegasus Knight''': Flying, fast, anti-large killers, very good at killing monsters and large units, but will die if anything sneezes in their direction.
*'''Royal Pegasus Knight''': Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to the ''Fear'' and ''Terror'' traits. Require the third vow.
*'''Royal Hippogriph Knights''': Plenty of health, hit very hard, beasts on the battlefield, costs a ton and require the last Vow unlocked.

===Artillery===

*'''Field Trebuchet''': Powerful, nice range, very slow rate of fire and average accuracy.
*'''Blessed Field Trebuchet''': Upgrade to the above, slightly better stat-wise, but also comes with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Wood Elves

2020-10-16T18:16:42Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Why Play Wood Elves */

This is the tactica for the [[Total War: Warhammer]] version of the Wood Elves.

==Why Play Wood Elves==
You have a love of nature and really want to share it with others. Namely by siccing very angry trees on the other civilizations of the world.

===Pros===
*'''Sheer Speed''' - The majority of your army is quite fast. Even the most basic infantry available to you, Eternal Guards, will outpace a significant portion of the footsoldiers available to most other armies. You'll be able to dance around the plodding pace of slower armies like the <strike>dwarves</strike> Dwarfs <sub>(that's a grudgin')</sub> or lizardmen.
*'''Excellent Missile Infantry''' - The Wood Elves have an abundance of fantastic missile units. Ranged infantry, cavalry, fliers, lords, heroes with access to dedicated poison, anti-armor, magic or rapid fire missiles gives you immense flexibility against any threats you may face.
*'''Savage Melee Combatants''' - Wood Elves have access to some pretty heavy-hitting, if squishy infantry options that can scythe through hordes like lawnmowers. Additionally, Wild Riders are capable of dealing some of the most damaging charges in the game thanks to their ''immense'' charge bonus.

===Cons===
*'''Fragile''' - The Wood Elves are debatably ''the'' frailest overall faction in the game. A few niche units like the Tree Kin or Treemen can hold their own in prolonged fights, but the rest of your army will wither away in a sustained assault. A successful Wood Elf army must strike with surgical precision and do so swiftly and from afar.
*'''Absent Artillery''' - Though you have plenty of long-ranged missile units to choose from, you have no dedicated artillery platforms. This isn't a ''major'' issue primarily because you have so many archers that can fill every role the artillery would perform, but you will lack a notable source of hard-hitting burst damage.
*'''Limited Roster''' - Wood Elves have fewer unit choices than a number of other playable factions. This limits your army composition into fairly predictable builds that does nothing for players looking for adaptable playstyles.
*'''DLC Faction''' - Where other factions are simply part of the base games, with their rosters expanded by DLC Lord Packs, the entire Wood Elf faction is paid DLC and has not received any new units or legendary lords since the game one factions received regiments of renown. Thankfully, the upcoming Lord Pack for TW:WII will finally address this issue, though as paid DLC for a DLC, it'll certainly set a new standard for premium content.

==Universal Trait==
Wood Elves don't really have much in the way of extra abilities or perks, there is one particular thing they have going for them though:

*'''Hide (Forest)''' - What did you expect? They're ''Wood'' Elves. Hell, some of their units are literally just tree people. The only units in the entire elven roster who can't hide in forests are the Great Eagle, Hawk Riders and Forest Dragon.

==Lords==
You have a pretty small selection of lords, the smallest out of every other faction in fact. Two of each, and you'll almost never pick any of the generic ones.

===Legendary Lords===
*'''Orion''' - Orion is a hybrid ranged/melee beatstick who specializes against infantry. At a distance, he's one of the best ranged lords in the game and deals ''hefty'' anti-armor damage, perfect for sniping large monsters and individual lords/heroes. He's also blisteringly fast for a foot lord and can even keep pace with some of the slower cavalry found in other armies. This pairs well with his impressive melee attack and charge bonuses; it's a common tactic to skirmish at range with a few well timed missiles to then follow up with a charge. Though he's not a caster, Orion also has access to a powerful bound vortex spell, ''Hounds of Orion'', which will easily burn through most (elite) infantry when the burst damage is needed. All in all, a solid, well rounded lord that you can't go wrong with.

*'''Durthu''' - Everyone's favorite genocidal tree ([[Drycha|no, not that one]]) is your best dedicated duelist. In a similar vein to Orion, Durthu is a hybrid lord who has access to the lore of beasts; a surprisingly useful set of supporting or offensive spells that can turn either himself or supporting treekin into terrifying combat monsters that will deal death to many a foe. As a massive monster, Durthu can wade through infantry and cavalry with relative ease and can go root-to-toe with a majority of the single-entity monsters in the game. Unfortunately, this presents a set of notable drawbacks for Durthu. First, as a giant monster, Durthu is particularly vulnerable to both anti-armor weaponry and anti-large weaponry. This size also makes him an easy target to missile fire. Secondly, he's also vulnerable to fire damage, something something many factions have relatively easy access to. If caught in a crossfire of several such tools, Durthu will melt away with frightening quickness, so you'll need to take extra care and support him with life magic should he get stuck in.

===Generic Lords===
*'''Glade Lord''' - Your generic elf dude/dudette, glade lords are flexible and very customizable lords who can lead from the front or afar. They are specialized duelists at heart and will excel at hunting enemy lords/heroes if you can separate them from their armies but, unlike Durthu, tend to be vulnerable to getting tied down by hordes of enemies. Normally your cheapest lord, you can invest in a steed/eagle to maximize their mobility (take the steed if you want to utilize forest terrain) or place them atop a Forest Dragon to allow them to fight a much wider selection of enemies.

*'''Ancient Treeman''' - Ancient treemen function somewhat like Durthu (understandably) in that they are hybrid lords with respectable melee damage output and access to a supplementary lore of magic. However, unlike Durthu, the regular ancient treeman has access to the significantly more useful lore of life. This makes them fantastic centerpieces for a treeman-style/focused army who can hold their own far more effectively than your spellsingers, but this comes with the same inconveniences plaguing Durthu. As a large, flammable monster, treemen are very weak to flamming attacks, anti-armor attacks and anti-large attacks. Even if he's healing himself, he can and absolutely will melt quite quickly if focused down (and believe me, he will be focused). You will absolutely need additional screening units to help protect him in combat.

==Heroes==
You have three flavors of generic heroes, each with their own uses.
*'''Branchwraith''' - If ever there could only be a single unit that could be defined as a "hybrid", branchwraiths would be strong contenders for the title. Not only are they capable melee fighters in their own right, but they have access to a variety of handpicked spells from both the lore of life and lore of shadows. This gives them equal measure of frontline support and damage. Penumbral Pendulum gives you a strong sweeping wind spell that excels at softening harder units for your Wardancers and Rangers. Their additional access to earthblood gives them a cheap multi-target heal that, when paired with Shield of Thorns, will make your frontline units extremely resilient for a brief period of time.

*'''Waystalker''' - These guys are lord/hero hunters, pretty much strictly designed and specialized for that singular purpose. They can easily vanish from your foe's view thanks to their Master Ambusher ability which, combined with their speed, also allows them to easily kite footlords while blasting them with arrows. A few limited use abilities, like the Arrow of Kurnous, can allow them to deal decent damage and disrupt infantry in a pinch. It can also be reserved for sniping and destroying artillery pieces. Despite being built to hunt characters, Waystalkers are actually only decent melee combatants and will falter against melee-focused foot lords. Only send them in if they're completely out of ammo and/or properly supported by reinforcements.

*'''Spellsinger''' - Your cheap, dedicated mages. Spellsingers, like the purestrain generic mages of other factions, only exist to cast spells and nothing more. Keep these gals behind your front lines and out of harms way if you want their support to last you the battle. If you can spare the coin, consider placing them on elven steeds or unicorns so that they can quickly respond to changing conditions on the battlefield and quickly escape should enemies come for them. You have three flavors to choose from:
**'''Beasts Spellsinger''' - A dedicated vector for the mixed lore of beasts, spellsingers of this category are ideal for summoning feral manticores behind enemy lines and/or supporting fellow elves/trees with buffs. A spare flock of doom can deal decent damage to clusters of infantry as well, though you'll get better AoE damage going with a shadows spellsinger.
**'''Life Spellsinger''' - Your cheapest source for lore of life spells. All in all, you really can't go wrong with her; healing magic is invaluable and can absolutely mean the difference between a winning/losing engagement on the field. You'll get a lot of mileage out of her if you pair her with treemen/forest dragons.
**'''Shadows Spellsinger''' - The lore of shadows is your most offensive choice for your spellsingers, and it's not a bad one. Your two primary offensive spells, the Penumbral Pendulum and the Pit of Shades both deal impressive AoE damage and thus specialize in clearing out armored frontlines. The Pit of Shades also holds the distinct honor of being the only stationary vortex spell in the game. This ensures that it'll never randomly roll over your own troops, but it also cannot potentially flow into neighboring enemy formations to cause greater damage, so it's a bit of a trade off there. If nothing else, you can use it to create a zone of denial in chokepoints.

==Units==

===Infantry===

====Melee Infantry====
*'''Eternal Guard''' - Eternal Guard are the closest thing to a defensive front line unit you have. Available shielded or unshielded (you should ''always'' take shielded Eternal Guard, precious other units in your army resist ranged attacks), these stalwart warriors are in that perfect twilight zone of being cheap and somewhat expendable while also remaining rather competent combatants capable of holding their own against other units above their weight class. Though they'll often lose in drawn out fights against stronger, higher tier melee infantry, they can pin them down long enough for your archers or dryads to flank and make up for their sub-optimal damage output. Eternal Guard, being exclusively armed with spears, are excellent anti-cavalry/monster screens and, when braced, can easily halt enemy charges in their tracks. No matter your focus, be it cavalry, missile units or treemen, you'll want your line held by a few of these guys.
**'''Winterheart Guards (RoR)''' - Eternal Guard, only with charge defense against everything, an encouragement aura for nearby allied units and ''unbreakable''. These guys will hold the line until the bitter end, something they'll ensure takes a long time due to their increased defensive stats. You'll want these guys somewhat centrally located in your front line to ensure their leadership buff affects as many Eternal Guard as possible.

*'''Wardancers''' - These lovely ladies serve as dedicated infantry blenders, a job they do really, really well. They are exceptionally quick for infantry themselves, able to outrun a majority of the targets you'd throw them at (only a select few infantry units can even keep pace with them, namely Skinks). They do their best work against unarmored foes, so you should generally avoid sending them in against particularly hardy front line units. This is because, like a significant portion of your army, Wardancers are frail. Really frail. They take damage just as quick as they (try to) give it, so if they enemy they're fighting just won't die then they'll begin to. They do have an active skill that trades some of their melee attack for a defensive buff, which can help them come out on top in a DPS race, though they'll still be left far worse for wear without support. Pairing Wardancers with Eternal Guard is recommended to alleviate this; while the Eternal Guard pins down and tanks a particularly dangerous enemy, the Wardancers step in and carve them to pieces.

*'''Spear Wardancers''' - Wardancers who specialize against large foes instead of infantry formations. Where regular Wardancers simply appreciate having Eternal Guard tank the hits, Spear Wardancers actually synergize with them extremely well due to their shared offensive niche. Just like the regular Wardancers, have the Eternal Guard intercept cavalry or monsters before sending these gals in. Spear Wardancers have an activated ability that grants them additional missile resistance, but it comes at the cost of their melee defense.
**'''Loec's Tricksters (RoR)''' - If you thought regular Wardancers were glass cannons, you haven't seen these ones at work. This regiment of renown exchanges the normal Spear Wardancer activated ability in exchange for one that pumps up their melee attack in exchange for their defense (literally the opposite effect of the regular Wardancers ability) which, when combined with the addition of Frenzy, makes them do ''obscene'' damage to large units. Unfortunately, this also means that a stiff breeze will slaughter them to the last. Hold these ladies in reserve for a critical fight, such as engaging the enemy lord or a key monster in their army and support them with magic to make sure they survive the ensuing melee.

*'''Wildwood Rangers''' - The Wildwood Rangers have an... interesting role. They're your only dedicated source of melee armor piercing damage, which they deal a lot of, but they also specialize against large targets. While these two perks often work fantastically against monsters and cavalry, it tends to pay off less on the armored masses you may often find yourself against. That said, they are still your only real choice for killing armored infantry in melee. They're certainly not bad at the job, mind you, they're just not great at it either.
**'''Wardens of Cythral (RoR)''' - Take the Wildwood Rangers, give them silver shields, armor sundering and a ''beefy'' charge defense against large targets and send them on their way. These guys are better suited to prolonged fights against large foes than Spear Wardancers, particularly because they have actual stats in their defenses. With support, these guys can chunk most armored targets relatively well in good time.

*'''Dryads''' - The first of your treekin soldiers, Dryads are better suited to tanking and dealing physical damage than your Eternal Guard, but are notably weaker against magical and fire based attacks. Dryads also have virtually no charge defense and cannot deal with enemy cavalry remotely as well as the Eternal Guard either. Having said that, Dryads do have two notable selling points over Eternal Guard: They are immune to psychology (so Fear and Terror) and they have vanguard deployment. Cleverly hidden trees can easily fall upon a squishier back line to disrupt/shut down artillery and archers while formations of Eternal Guard distract the heavy hitters long enough for your angry trees to come into play.

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]

Total War: Warhammer/Tactics

2020-10-16T18:06:25Z

2601:6C5:300:B1D0:9CEA:5E56:2803:7C3D: /* Lores */

{{/vg/}}
{{stub}}

Welcome to the general tactics dump for [[Total War: Warhammer]] and it's sequels. Something to help with noobs and lower the bloat on the main page.

==Basics==
In many ways, Warhammer II plays like your standard Total War game. It features real time battles with an army of roughly 20 units max on each side. There will be at least two armies on the field and whoever is able to completely shatter the other side first wins.

Each army has it's own collection of Infantry, Missile troops, Cavalry, Artillery and Monsters to play with, each offering a different play style. For instance, Dwarfs offer a defensive solitary play style focused around heavily armored infantry and strong missiles where as the Beastmen are an aggressive hit and run faction designed to get in, hit the enemy and break leadership, then get away before the enemy can counterattack. The asymmetrical play style of the factions is a massive part of the appeal.

The battle maps also play a huge role in how battle play out. Some maps are heavily forested, meaning missile heavy armies may struggle due to increased cover for the enemy. On the flip side, some maps have a lot of water, debuffing units unless they have the aquatic trait. It is smart to take a look at your terrains before you plan how you're gonna win.

If you play tanked multiplayer, there will be a limit to how many of a certain kind of unit you can bring, mainly to stop you from missile kiting your enemies to death with a mass horse archer spam. As such, focusing on what you might need for the match up is key.

==Units==

Every faction has a mix of different kinds of units. While they are all different, they each fall under one of these categories.

*'''Lords''': The generals of your army and your most important unit. He can buff leadership and other stats and usually tends to be a beast in combat either through melee or magic. Problem is that if they die, the whole army suffers for it so you have to protect this man. You can also only bring one.
*'''Heroes''': Your secondary leaders, usually coming in both melee and mage form. Not as much as a badass as your lord, but are usually cheaper and you can bring more than one.
*'''Melee Infantry''': Simply put, the foot boys you are throwing into melee. These infantry tend to be slow but also tend to be pretty good at holding the line and dealing damage in prolonged melee compared to missiles and cavalry. Their job is usually to engage the enemy front line and either hold long enough for your other elements to do their job, or break through and begins pouring into the enemy backline.
**'''Swords''': Generally tend to be more DPS focused. If you are buying sword infantry, you get them because you want them to deal damage to the enemy frontline. A special mention goes to dual sword infanry, which make short work of expendable units and attack very quickly.
**'''Spears''': Your more defensive option. Not as good at killing things but better at holding the line than swords. They also usually come with an anti-large bonus, meaning they do more damage when fighting bigger targets. Many also come with some kind of kind of charge resistance. Units with both will completely turn the tides on enemy cavalry.
**'''Great Weapons''': Infantry that usually carry two handed weapons like great swords and great axes. They tend to have majority AP damage, so they do more damage than normal sword infantry, but also don't have shields so missiles are very effective against them. Most units with great weapons also tend to have a low attack speed, leaving them vulnerable against hordes.
**'''Halberds''': Great weapons for spears, really. Same thing with great weapons, trades a shield and lower attack speed for more AP damage.
*'''Missile Troops''': Your ranged boys. Good at dealing damage from a safe distance but generally suck in melee. They tend to come either with arc fire or line fire. Arc fire like archers can shoot over allied troops and don't need line of sight, but do less damage. Line of sight troops like guns tend to do way more damage, but need to actually see their enemy before they can shoot, so if allies or terrain is in the way, they might not get a shot in. Luckily, their difficulty in positioning correctly is negated by one simple fact: while only the melee troops in actual contact with the enemy will attack, all 120 units of archers will attack at the same time.
**'''Bow Infantry''': Often, but by no means always, the lowest tier of missle infantry you can recruit. Usually trades raw damage for greater range, the ability to fire indirectly and rate of fire.
**'''Crossbow Infantry''': Basically the same as bow infantry, but they trade range for rate of fire (although not much) and more armour-piercing damage. Notable for covering a large variety of different units, such as the rather mediocre Imperial Crossbowman to Darkshards.
**'''Gunpowder Infantry''': Loud, smelly, and more often than not more dangerous for their user than the enemy (a mechanic entirely missing in-game), these are all kinds of primitive guns. They hit hard, don't care about armor and usually come in unpleasant numbers for the receiving end. The only major downside to them being that they can't shoot indirectly, so you have to make use of clever unit deployment and/or flanking to get the most out of them.
**'''Hybrid Infantry''': Sitting comfortably in between ranged and melee infantry, all of these guys (and gals) can switch between ranged and melee combat at the press of a button. The Elf factions in particular use a lot of them (with Great Weapon Shades and Lothern Sea Guard being outright the best options) so be prepared to not charge them blindly with cavalry; nearly all of them are more than capable of dealing with lower tier cav on their own.
**'''Weapon Teams''': Exclusive to Skaven, these are Clan Skyres crazy contraptions of the shooting, burning and drilling variety. They trade unit size in exchange for an ungodly volume of firepower; once they are properly set up, there is hardly anything stopping them. On top of that, they are also armoured and have large HP pools, giving them a surprising resilience against counter fire from enemy ranged units. Beware of cavalry, for what they posses in offensive power, they lack on the defense.
**'''Others''': Some kinds of missle only show up on one kind of unit and even then there is only one faction that can use them, so i'm putting slingers, javelins and that sort of things into this umbrella category. Mostly rather weak weapons that either benefit from being used in great numbers (slings and javelins) or really strong weapons that suffer from limited ammo-capacity (Norscan Axe Throwers come to mind).
*'''Hounds''': Technically, these units can be any kind of very fast, cheap melee cavalry and not just doggies but whatever. These cheap puppers are used to harass and interrupt Artillery crews, chase off routing units, chew on squishy casters and Heroes and sometimes take out a ranged infantry unit. They're not tough by any means of the word but they're fast and can hold a unit back in a few crucial moments. Some of them are specialized to the point where they can be used for other roles, like the Poisoned Warhounds that can charge into the backs of the enemy line to apply a rough debuff.
*'''Cavalry''': Boys on horse (or other fun creature) back. Mobile and has high charge but tend to fall apart fast in prolong melee.
**'''Shock Cavalry:''' Lance cavalry with loads of Charge Bonus but little in the way of defense; charge them into the sides and backs of the enemy, retreat after 10-15 seconds and repeat until the enemy is mashed, red pulp on the ground... Or crushed bones, or green shroom-mush or what-else. One of the reasons you bring Spears and Halberds is to keep these dudes away from your lines. They're also often decent at countering other Cavalry units.
**'''Melee Cavalry:''' Rare mounted troops that excel in longer engagements (but not forever; they're still cavalry). They usually use Great Weapons, Halberds or Sword'n'Board. Almost never used alone; they're better at quickly engaging and messing with a line battle you're already engaging with with you troops.
**'''Skirmish Cavalry:''' The deeply annoying yet totally crucial lighter cavalry. Skirmish Cavalry ''can'' fight in melee but usually work better as ranged, mobile units harassing the enemy's ranged units with melee attacks, countering enemy Shock and Melee Cav with ranged attacks and higher movement speed, and shooting into the back of the enemy line.
*'''Chariots:''' Those sweet ones that swing low. Chariots are a bit rare and are used to break through enemy lines with impunity, cycle-charging like a maniac. They are dismantled very quickly in prolonged melee and tend to not do a lot of damage unless they're charging. One of the hardest type of unit to use properly because they need to be micro-managed at every turn. Also out of every unit, chariot suffered the most when they are out of vigor (aka exhausted), which lowers their speed to the point they can't knock over as many infantry as it wishes during charging and gets caught easily in the crowd as result. So always remember in campaign to not get attacked during march stance while fielding those bad boys.
*'''Monsters:''' A category that covers a bewildering amount of different units, every Monster does something different for the faction it's found in. Usually they are either infantry-slayers, monster/cavalry-eaters or huge battering rams meant to break up the enemy's line. A few factions even have "artillery" monsters balance their exorbitant cost by being able to hold their own in melee. Some monsters (like Giants) are cheap and cheerful units you can just throw into the enemy for a spell, while others (like the Dread Saurian) can easily eat up a fourth of your money in multiplayer matches. The only faction without access to a monster is the Dwarfs (Gyrocopters does not count).
**'''Monstrous Infantry''': Monsters that generally come in a small units size and feature slow, relatively tanky monsters designed to help out in the front line. Here's a tip, do NOT throw them in alone, team them up with other infantry. That way the enemy units will have to split their damage across 2 different units instead of being able to focus your monsters down.
**'''Monstrous Cavalry''': Faster, harder hitting but also squishier than the infantry option, they are meant to be used a lot like cavalry. Use them as heavy flankers and for pure raw charge bonus and can even be decent in prolong melee. Their downside often comes in the form of cost, frailty and lower model count compared to most cav.
**'''Single Entity Monsters''': Big super monsters meant to be a gigantic problem for the enemy and generally have impressive stat lines along with a combination of fear and/or terror. However these guys tend to be expensive and have a massive target that says "Shoot me" in every language in the Warhammer world, so use them wisely.
*'''Fliers''': Your flying units, ranging from cheap fliers meant to bog down missiles and artillery to fucking dragons. Their edge is that since they can fly they can engage on their terms and you can get them anywhere in the battle they need to. Their downsides comes in needing breathing room to take off again and generally frailty. Even dragons aren't a unit that can stand being in melee for too long, so you got to micro them well. Be warned: soaring around in the skies means ranged units can fire freely without being blocked by either the terrain or their own troops. Many fliers are also large units and can be easy pickings. Wait for them to be preoccupied or flank them so they have to reform their formation before firing.
*'''Artillery''': Your good old catapults, bolt throwers, cannons or what ever crazy contraptions your race can bring to the table. Can lay down an absolute whooping from very long range, some being table to take down even the scariest monsters with fairly little problem. However, they are garbage in melee, are ridiculously slow, are somewhat expensive, and need extra room and a clear line of sight to even fire, which means they need protection more than just about any other unit type in the game. However, it pays off by racking up hundreds of kills before the enemy even meets your front line. Important to note is that while the contraptions themselves offer cover to their crews, they aren't invulnerable and can be destroyed by ranged units and magic.

==Stats==

Each unit in the game has a unit card, which shows the player what they are generally good and bad at. Noobs might be confused as to what the fuck all these words and numbers mean, so here is the breakdown!

*'''Health''': Fairly simple, how much health the unit has. If the unit has more than one model per unit, you can divide the total health by the number of models to see how much health each model has. It's important to know that the threshold at which a model actually dies is surprisingly high and the game itself speads the damage units suffer evenly among the models in that unit.
*'''Armor''': This stat helps mitigate damage coming at your unit. If they are hit by a missile, melee attack, or a spell, a RNG roll goes off to see how much of the non-AP damage goes through the unit's armor (between 50 and 100 percent). Every point of armor is a percentage of reduction, NOT a flat amount. The more armor the unit has, the lower percentage of non-AP damage that will get through. More info on AP and non-AP damage below.
**'''Shield''': If the unit has a shield, this is where it's factored in. Shields help block missile fire coming at you. It comes in two tiers (technically three, but you never see gold shields outside of campaign buffs). Bronze shields block 33% of missiles where are a silver shield block 55%. Keep in mind this only works on small arms fire and not artillery because a shield isn't gonna fucking save you from a cannon!
*'''Leadership''': How much morale the unit has. The higher the number is, the less likely your unit is going to rout and run for the hills. Run off the battlefield or rout three times and that unit is gone for the rest of the battle (but not necessarily dead). If it reaches 100, the unit may as well be unbreakable.
*'''Speed''': Fairly simple, the higher the number, the faster the unit.
*'''Melee Attack''': This determines the likelihood of your attacks hitting the other unit. The higher the number, the more likely the attack is to hit against an enemy. This number is often rolled against the next number in this list.
*'''Melee Defense''': Widely considered one of the most important stats in the game. Melee defense is the likelihood your unit has to block the attack of the other unit attacking it, causing it to sustain no damage; However, before either Melee Defense or Melee Attack is applied, there is a base chance of hit of 40% (35% in WH2) before Armor is applied. There is also a minimum of 10% (8% in WH2) and maximum chance to hit of 90%. If you have a choice to buff either Melee Defense or Armor, take Melee Defense. Because what's better than mitigating damage? Not taking damage at all!
*'''Weapon Strength''': How much damage your attacks do. This stat tends to be split into multiple categories. There are also two hidden mechanics: damage on weapon sweeps is split evenly between all enemies hit and weapon strength does not factor in attack speed.
**'''Weapon Damage''': How much damage is going to be rolled against the enemy armor to see if it gets mitigated or not. Generally, if this makes up the majority of your Weapon Strength you want this unit fighting unarmored units.
**'''Armor-Piercing Damage''': Or AP damage for short. If your attack gets through the other unit's Melee Defense, this is the amount of damage that's going to get through no matter what. If the Weapon Strength is mostly Armor-Piercing, then you want these guys going up against heavily armored units to tear through them.
**'''Anti-Large Bonus''': Damage that is not factored into the roll unless they are fighting something the size of a horse or bigger. If they have this stat, throw them against cav or monsters. Applies to both Melee Attack and non-AP damage.
**'''Anti-Infantry Bonus''': Same as Anti-Large, only meant against infantry or smaller. If they have this stat, they are infantry blenders. Applies to both Melee Attack and non-AP damage.
**'''Magic Damage''': Certain units and some Legendary Lords inflict their attack as magic damage. This is useful against enemies with physical resist like Plague Monks and absolutely needed against supernatural enemies like Cairn Wraiths (whom are known for having 75% physical resist, being a ghost and all). Be wary, though: more units in the game have magic resistance than physical resistance, including every dwarf unit (they were created to resist the winds of magic after all). Of course, this is also the damage types of many of the spells in the game.
**'''Fire Damage''': Like Magic Damage, it deals extra damage to those weak to its damage type (AKA units associate to trees like Treeman, Tree Kin, [[Dryad]] and [[Durthu]], because fuck them racist elf loving trees, right?). Unlike the tabletop version, flaming attack deal extra damage against units that are capable of regenerate health (vampire, trolls, ghouls) instead of just stopping their regeneration. Apparently, CA hates fire damage for some reason and stated in the game that [[derp|flaming attacks are weak to heavy armor units despite Irondrakes being able to deal AP damage on the tabletop, due to their flame being able to melt armor]]. We'll just have to wait and see if CA is willing to fix it. Also, like Magic Damage, some units such as Dragon Princes and Irondrakes have Fire Resistance against its effect. Both Physical resistance and Fire resistance will apply for fire melee damage and fire missile damage.
*'''Charge Bonus''': A bonus to both Melee Attack and Weapon Damage (split between Armor-Piercing and non-Armor-Piercing based on percentage) that lasts for 15 seconds after running into an enemy. It starts decaying immediately upon contact with enemy and is almost negligible after 10 seconds. Note that walking into an enemy unit is not the same as charging, you have to actually run into them. You also have to cover a small distance in order to build up the charge bonus.
*'''Ammunition''': A stat unique to ranged units that tells you how much ammo they have. If the unit has 20 ammunition, then they can make 20 shots before running out. This stat goes down as they shoot, allowing you to keep track of how many shots you have.
*'''Range''': Simple enough: the higher the range, the farther a unit can shoot.
*'''Missile Strength''': The same as Weapon Strength, only this stat doesn't worry about Melee Defense. If it hits, it's doing damage (including if it hits your own troops). It also has all the subcategories of damage listed under Weapon Strength. The value given in the stats is actually over 10 seconds, not per shot (because what constitutes a single shot of a flamethrower?).
*'''Mass''': An important stat that isn't mentioned anywhere inside the game but is still important. Units come in two kinds of sizes: small (anything on foot) and large (anything that's mounted or at least as tall as a man on a horse). The larger the unit, the larger the mass. What's important is how mass affects charges and such, because it determines how one unit able to withstand them. Lowly infantrymen (and heroes and Lords on foot) will get knocked around alot when that Necrosphinx - a massive ancient Egyptian robot wielding two fucking swords - starts attacking them. Knocked down models are unable to move and fight, which can give you an edge. The enemy Lord can't bother you if he ragdolls after every hit. Mass also determines how easily a unit can push through a blob of units, whether it is to retreat or whether it is to attack the ranged units by plowing though the melee infantry line. Nothing can stop a two-ton War Mammoth when it decides it doesn't want to be there.

==Passive Abilities==

Some units have special passive abilities that have a variety of effects; the most common will be listed here.

*'''Causes Fear''':Not to be confused with "Causes Terror", Fear inflicts a penalty on the enemy units' leadership, making them more likely to flee. Most monstrous and/or supernatural enemies have this ability, and some Lords and Banners have it as well. If a unit causes Fear, it is itself immune to it. Like Terror, it falls under Psychology, so some units are immune to it.
*'''Causes Terror''': Units that cause Terror can randomly cause enemy units to flee outright, regardless of their morale, although they can come back. If a unit causes Terror, it is itself immune to it.
*'''Frenzy''': A unit with frenzy gains a significant bonus to their melee stats as long as their leadership is above 50%.
*'''Aura of Command''': Found on every Lord and Hero, they project an Aura around themselves that increases Leadership for friendly units. Most Lords and Heroes also can be skilled to make their Aura of Command better and/or to include more bonuses.
*'''Aquatic''': Aquatic Units fight better and move faster in wet terrain, such as rivers and swamps. Unsurprisingly, most Vampire Coast units have this.
*'''Stalker''': Stalkers remain invisible to the enemy until a certain distance, regardless of line of sight. The only things that can break their invisibility are close distance and if they start to attack. Certain units can fire while invisible without breaking it.
*'''Strider''': Striders ignore any movement and vigour penalties from terrain; they will always move with 100% movement speed, but also can move through obstacles, such as trees.
*'''Berserk''': Once a unit with Berserk falls under a health threshold, they will start a rampage, causing you to lose direct control over them. They will always attack the closest enemy unit they can see. It wears off after a few seconds or if their morale gets broken. Lizardmen call this ability Primal Insticts, it does the same.
*'''Vanguard Deployment''': An interesting ability with a lot of potential uses; it allows for a unit to be deployed outside your normal deployment zone. Several Legendary Lords can aquire traits and skills that give units this ability (or in the case of Skarsnik, basically your entire roster for the first half of the game).
*'''Sundering strikes''': A very rare ability, melee attacks made by a unit with this ability reduces the armour of the enemy hit with it by 30% for 20 seconds.
*'''Ethereal''': All supernatural enemies (such as Ghosts) have this. Ethereal units take next to nothing in damage from physical attacks and only Magic Damage does damage against them.
*'''Ward Saves and Resistances''': Not technically a passive ability, but the game does not do the best job at explaining it, so i'll explain it here. Ward Saves are a flat damage reduction against everything that your unit or character gets hit with, Resistances only against certain kinds of damage. Many characters can have these and in the campaign it is advisable to get them wherever possible.
*'''Poisoned Attacks''': Poisoned attacks reduce the enemies melee stats and movement speed for 10-20 seconds. Some units have different kinds of poison that work in the same way and usually cause the same effects with greater severity. Fun fact: table top version's poison deal constant damage to a unit model each turns, it was changed to stats debuff in this game due to how broken it is when it was put in practice in an actual total war game (In Total War Attila, The Antean faction has a unit called Poison Archers that fires constant damaging poison arrows. If used right, it can annihilate an entire enemy line even on the hardest difficulty).
*'''Regeneration''': Units with Regeneration heal themselves over the course of a battle, up to a maximum that varies greatly on what faction you play, but is usually 60% of the HP stat. Usually more "neat to have" than outright useful, but some units (Like Malus Darkblade) can have outright broken regeneration, so keep that in mind. Important: Regeneration does not replenish dead models on a unit that has more than one.
*'''Unbreakable''': An unbreakable unit will never flee and always fight to the last man, regardless of losses and the situation on the battlefield. Can be a two-sided sword, as most unbreakable units are very expensive elite units that you most of the time really do not want to lose. Iconic units with this trait are the Dwarf Slayers (because slayer oath) and Empire Flagellants (because they are Sigmar's Zealots).
*'''Expendable''': Your meat-shield ability. Expendable units do not cause a leadership penalty when they flee from the battle to other units except other expendable units. Very important to keep in mind with the more horde-centric factions of the game like Greenskins and Skaven; this makes tarpits possible without having your main line completely collapse.
*'''Undead''': The Undead work differently from regular units in that they are functionally Unbreakable (meaning that they will never flee), but their Leadership status comes in fives steps that are distinct from regular units (here from good to bad): "Stable", "Weak Binding", "Critical Binding", "Crumbling" and "Disintegrating". Starting with "Crumbling", the unit will continually lose HP at a slow, but steady pace. "Disintegrating" is the severe form and only occures when the battle is completely lost or you handled a unit very poorly, the unit will then very rapidly lose all HP and die.

==Magic==

Magic works in a similar way to the TT game, although there are some differences, but, played right, Magic can be a devastating force that can turn a loss into a victory.

First, the Basics: Like in the Lore, how much Magic you can use depends on the Winds of Magic and how strong they are blowing. On the campaign map, there are visual indicators for how strongly the winds blow but you can also just hover your cursor over any given place on the map and get a number. This number indicates your base power reserve on the battlefield. Certain Lord and Hero traits, followers, and skills can increase your reserve. If it isn't obvious enough, you need a spellcaster Hero or Lord on the battlefield to use one of the many varieties of Magic. All spellcasters know a Lore of Magic; this determines what spells they can learn and use. Some Lords know two Lores or, in the case of Teclis, have an assortment of spells from all Lores. To use spells, you simply select the desired ability and follow the on-screen on placing it. The system is intuitive enough that it doesn't need much explaining and the in-game spell browser even has a video of every spell in action. Once you cast a spell, the cost of it will be deducted from your available power which will regenerate over time at a rate based on your remaining power reserves. Your available magic outside of your reserves is capped at 30, but the amount of spells you can cast is limited via the overall power reserve; once it is drained, you won't get more unless you use abilities like Arcane Conduit. More on Arcane Conduit later. Spells have a chance to be miscast, inflicting minor damage to the spellcaster. You can, at an additional cost in spellpower and a higher chance of a miscast, double click to overcast a spell for more powerful effects, provided you have the spell skilled out.

An exception to the afromentioned rules are bound spells; these are spells that come from magical items your Lord or Hero pick up after a battle or are spells from a different Lore of Magic certain characters can learn. Bound spells do not cost spellpower or affect power regeneration and have a fixed cooldown, but can only be cast a fixed number of times. For example, once leveled up, a High Elven mage of any Lore can cast Fireball four times for free except for a 90 second cooldown between each cast.

There are a lot of Lores of Magic to choose from, generally speaking, they can be put into three categories: The Generic Lores (Fire, Light, Death, Beasts, Heavens, Life, Shadows) Faction specific Lores (Skaven Spells of Plague, Skaven Spells of Ruin, Skaven Spells of Stealth, Lore of the Big Waaagh!, Lore of the Little Waaagh!, Lore of High Magic, Lore of Dark Magic, Lore of the Deep, Lore of Nehekhara, Lore of the Wild, Lore of Vampires) and character-specific Lores (Lore of Metal).

The generic Lores are accessible to most factions with some missing here and there. The Empire generally has the broadest variety of Lores (namely, all, plus Lore of Metal through Balthazar Gelt) to choose; Bretonnia and the Wood Elves the least. Faction specific Lores are usually only available for one faction, with some exceptions through bound spells and special characters. And finally, character specific Lores are only available to certain unique characters. Each Lore comes with a passive attribute that affects units map-wide. Before we dive into a deeper description of the Lores themselves, a word on Arcane Conduit and Greater Arcane Conduit.

Arcane Conduit is an active ability that replenishes your power reserves and increases the power recharge rate for 30 seconds, after that, it goes on a 60-second-cooldown. Use this ability! Extra spellpower is never bad and the power you have on hand cannot decay away; only your increased recharge rate reverts to normal after the effect ends. But it's never bad to just use it. It is a no-brainer. The premier mage characters even have access to Greater Arcane Conduit, which is simply a permanently active version of Arcane Conduit. Certain magical items as well as some Lore attributes can increase your reserves and recharge rate as well.

Onto the Lores then.

===Lores===

*'''Lore of Fire''': Fire, so much fire that it has the potential to make the Salamanders jealous and a Sister of Battle rethink her career choice. Provides a number of handy buffs, and two great AoE attacks. Not much to say, since it is so straightforward. The Lore attribute makes the enemy more vulnerable to Fire damage, which synergizes well with a variety of units and increases its own damage even further (Lores apply during the countdown to cast). It is considered the best Lore of Magic for dealing damage. Archaon the Everchosens preferred Lore, for some reason.
*'''Lore of Light''': Provides some very good buffs, a mediocre but cheap projectile, an extremely useful ensnaring ability that stops any poor suckers from moving so your missile units can shoot them, and a fairly cost effective Vortex that deals bonus damage against Undead. If you want your wizard to primarily buff up your units and stop enemies moving close to your unit, this is your Lore. Also one of the rarer lores, with only four factions (Empire, High Elves, Lizardmen and Tomb Kings having access to it.
*'''Lore of Death''': Basically the opposite of the Lore of Light. Consists primarily of spells that debuff enemy units and some unmissable point-and-click spells. Lore attribute increases your power recharge rate which is never a bad thing. Important to note is that this Lore is the only Lore available to Greenskins other than the Waaagh! Lores. Azhag the Slaughterer uses this Lore (courtesy of his magic crown), as well as Arkhan the Black and that pompous fuck Mannfred von Carstein.
*'''Lore of Heavens''': A bit of an odd lore consisting of exactly one good buff for melee units and three potentially powerful but random damage spells and a very niche Lore Attribute that weakens flying units. If you like cosplaying as Emperor Palpatine or [[Awesome|hurling Meteors]], this is your Lore; Otherwise, a good skip.
*'''Lore of Beasts''': A very diverse, jack-of-all-trades lore that abuses cheap spells, with the most significant spell summoning a Feral Manticore to your side; Otherwise, it tends to be overshadowed by other Lores. If you have access to better Lores, you can skip it. The Lore attribute is interesting as it recharges your power reserve as well as increase your recharge rate for 29 seconds when you cast a spell, effectively giving you a good discount on your cheaper spells.
*'''Lore of Life''': The ultimate defensive utility Lore. It has lots of spells that buff the survivability of your units and has two decent enough damage spells as well as being the only Lore that has multiple healing spells. The Fae Enchantress and Alarielle the Everqueen speciallize in this Lore. The Lore attribute heals all friendly entities (not units, entities!) on the map for some HP which is convienient. However, be warned: healing cannot revive already dead entities in a unit! It is widely considered to be an extremely powerful Lore of Magic if used correctly.
*'''Lore of Shadows''': A hybrid Lore that is best suited for a more subtle approach. Most of the buffs and debuffs are good enough. Pit of Shades is the only stationary vortex spell in the game but overcomes this by vacuuming up nearby units to deal consistent damage to them. What makes it stand out is the Lore attribute granting gives your units a whopping +24% speed boost, which is not to be underestimated.
*'''Lore of Metal''': Certainly the rarest of the Lores (only the Empire's Balthasar Gelt, High Elves and Chaos' forces have access to it), it mainly focuses on debuffing and buffing armor and weapons. It can reduce enemy armor, can increase your own, and can debuff weapons. The take away spell is Final Transmutation, which is a massive AOE damage spell that gives EVERYTHING a middle finger (over a couple of seconds). Did we mention the passive that gives more AP to all your units? Balthasar's preferred Lore as the self-proclaimed (and frequenly proven) "Lord of Metal". Great for fighting factions that love to throw armor at you but only OK against everyone else.
*'''Lore of the Little Waaagh!''': As befitting for da Gobbos, tons of stuff that give your hordes of Goblins a fighting chance against the enemy. Little in the way of direct damage, but useful nonetheless. Curse of the Bad Moon is one of the optic highlights of the game, and a great spell to boot. The Lore attribute reduces the enemies power recharge rate.
*'''Lore of the Big Waaagh!''': As subtle as a truck racing down a highway with 250 mph ON FIRE. Perfectly suitable for da Orks t' get Krumpin'. Foot of Gork is a devastating spell that can potentially end a battle with a single cast. 'Ere we go! is one of the best offensive buffs in the game and, combined with the Waaagh mechanic, this is a seriously dangerous Lore for anyone facing against it. Wurrzag the Great Green Prophet specializes in this Lore. The Lore attribute increases your power recharge rate. Decent enough.
*'''Skaven Spells of Ruin''': The first of the three Skaven Lores, and the most offensively minded. Warp Lightning may be the most cost effective damage spell in the game, the other spells are rather niche but nonetheless useful. Howling Warp Gale can help a lot with flying nuisances such as Dragons, leaving them vulnerable to your considerable arsenal of ranged weapons and artillery. Ikit Claw uses this Lore, Warlock Enginners and -Masters use it exclusively. The Lore attribute lowers enemy Leadership and Melee Attack, giving your front line a bit more room to breathe, which you can then fill with Warpfire and Warpstone Bullets.
*'''Skaven Spells of Plague''': Occupying the gap between pure utility of the Skaven Spells of Stealth and the pure damage of the Spells of Ruin. Whats interesting about this Lore is that it has not one but two spells that summon units and its ultimate spell causes immense damage while simultaneously debuffing the enemy - did I mention that Grey Seers with this Lore can summon Stormvermin? One of the best Lores, even if the most shiny bits are difficult to access outside of Clan Pestilens, since it requires you to level up either a Plague Priest or a Grey Seer for a considerable time to make full use of it - but when you can make use it, the enemy-things will feel it, yes-yes. Lord Skrolk uses this Lore and is the best candidate for using it.
*'''Skaven Spells of Stealth''': The only Lore in the game designed to be used with a spefific sub-faction and, frankly, it does show. It offers a lot of utility and a decent Vortex spell but gets overshadowed in almost every regard by the Lore of Plague and the Lore of Ruin - unless you take the Limitations of Sniktch's campaign into consideration. It's still rather niche and, if you're playing as the other Skaven factions, you're better off using either Ruin or Plague.
*'''Lore of Vampires''': Brutal. Definitively the best Lore in the entire game. Wind of Death will wipe entire units off the floor, averaging hundreds of kills per cast. Some general utility is found in using Raise the Dead to summon units to flank, tank damage, or bodyblock for your more valuable units and its Lore attribute heals (and revives) your undead minions. Its starting ability is also the best healing spell in the game in the form of Invocation of Nehek: a cheap, effective spell that uses excess healing to revive dead entities. There is little that can beat this Lore, which makes it only fair that it is exclusive to the Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast. Count Noctilus and Arkhan the Black can use this Lore as well as all Vampire Lords.
*'''Lore of High Magic''': Another jack-of-all-trades lore that is exclusive to High Elves and Slann. It can do a bit of everything. Healing, direct damage, buffs, debuffs, AOE explosions and a passive damage reduction. Has the main drawbacks that jack-of-all-trades do: they can do a bit of anything but don't excel at anything and, since High Elves have access to ALL the generic lores, it's often better to pick one that fits their specific needs on the battlefield. Eltharion is the only Legendary Lord who specializes in this.
*'''Lore of Dark Magic''': The unique lore of those assholes in Naggaroth. Where as the Asur Lores do have a few spells that help out their troops, Dark Elves say "Fuck that, let's just use our magic to torture the other guys!". Home to a really good debuff that can help swing fights, and the stand out is Soul Stealer, an AOE damage spell that heals the caster. Unfortunately, aside from those two, the others are just subpar damage spells, a debuff to armor, and a magic recharge spell that hurts the caster. All in all, it has a few stand out options but not one you really want to go all out in. Malekith specializes in this lore.
*'''Lore of Nehekhara''': If you couldn't guess by the name, it's the Lore of the boney bois. It is a buffing lore, through and through, which can give additional damage and anti large, protections, and missile power. Given the fact that your average Tomb King soldier is a literal pile of bones that barely knows which end of the sword to poke the bad guys with... yeah, this can help out a lot. Settra and Khatep use this lore a lot. Overall it's... ok? The damage spells are VERY subpar, and with access to the Lores of light and death, there's really no reason to pick it. The passive heal is nice but won't let you compete with Vampire healing.
*'''Lore of the Deep''': A Lore made up by CA and designed specifically for the Vampire Coast. It has three specific purposes: 1: Damage and dishing out LOTS OF IT (Vangheist's Revenge is one of the coolest looking spells in the game and can seriously lay down the pain), 2: Buffs to missile troops, which helps any gunpowder faction and 3: Summons. You can summon zombies, zombies with guns, and giant crabs to really push the fight in your favor. Cylostra was given this lore by Stormfels, and Luthor Harkon gets it in campaign when you fix his fractured mind. Is it a fun lore? Absolutely! It's a blast! Are the other lores for the Vampire Coast more practical from a competitive standpoint? Sadly, also yes.
*'''Lore of the Wilds''': Beastmen got shafted in a lot of ways in their race pack. Their unique Lore of magic was NOT one of them. Wilds has some surprisingly good damage spells that can really help the goat men clear through crowds. Also, a passive that make restores vigor is never one you can complain about. Oh, did we mention they can summon a Cygor? As in literally have one crawl out of the ground and throw shit at the bad people? Yeah, people like to complain about the shit missing in the Beastmen DLC (with good reason, mind you) but, in terms of their unique magic, Beastmen actually got it pretty good. Obviously, it's Malagor's favored lore.

Spells themselves, just like in the tabletop game, come in six flavors: Buffs/Debuffs, Projectiles, Breaths/Winds, Vortexes, Bombardments, and Direct Damage.

===Spell Types===

*'''Buffs/Debuffs''': Pretty self explanatory. You cast them on a unit or group of units, and it improves or weakens a unit's stats. Overcast buffs usually have an area of effect that affects multiple units; you can these spells cast either on one unit or just out in the wild. To be affected by any buff or debuff, a unit must have at least half its models within the area of effect.
*'''Projectiles''': Similar to a ranged attack, it fires one or multiple projectiles in a straight arc at a target of your choosing. They tend to be cheap and very accurate, but need a line of fire to work. Best used by Casters who have access to a flying mount and to snipe monsters or single characters.
*'''Breaths/Winds''': Basically a directional AoE attack. Winds hit the whole area their indicator... indicates, while Breath spells expand in a roughly tear sized shape. The indicator can sometimes be deceiving; some spells have a much larger range than the indicator suggests (most notably overcast Wind of Death from the Lore of Vampies AKA the best spell in the game) and it comes down to experience how each spell works best but, fret not, there is not much to it. Like all AoE attacks, they can cause friendly fire. What the game doesn't tell you immediately is that you can change the direction of your Wind or Breath Spell by holding the left mouse button before casting. Also, the Wind spells can deviate from the straight line the indicator shows, which can be quite annoying, but they'll never go as off-course as Vortexes.
*'''Vortexes''': Big pie plates and usually the most potent damage spells in any given lore. Most of them move randomly over the map while they are active but all cause massive damage to units that have a lot of models in them.
*'''Bombardments''': Think of them like off-map artillery from other RTS games. You pick an area, and a certain amount of projectiles come down from the sky, inflicting damage. Very straightforward and not hard to use.
*'''Direct Damage''': Direct Damage spells work differently from the other damage spells; they directly inflict magic damage to a units HP stat rather than its models, like a damage-over-time effect and don't inflict friendly fire. However, unlike the others, individual models can resist them. Usually your more reliable character sniping spells (with Spirit Leech from the Lore of Death being the most effective for its cost), although there are some that work better against whole regiments (Like Final Transmutation from the Lore of Metal or Flensing Ruin from the Skaven Spells of Ruin).

[[Category:Total Warhammer]]