Total War: Warhammer/Tactics

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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. Asa 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Halberds: Great weapons for spears, really. Same thing with great weapons, trades a shield 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.
• Cavalry: Boys on horse (or other fun creature) back. Mobile and has high charge but tend to fall apart fast int prolong melee.