Leadership

Leadership is very important in Warhammer Fantasy. The main source of leadership will be from your Lords and Heroes. Keep these characters near the center of your army. This is specially true if you are fielding an army that generally has a low leadership score.

Movement and Placement

The next most important skill is manoeuvring your forces so they are in the right place at the right time.

Magic Tactics

Magic is a major part of the Warhammer Fantasy Armies battles.

One thing to be aware of, is that there is a lot more magic dice in the 2010 rules. Now you get 2D6 magic dice per turn. This means that you could have anywhere between 2 and 12 magic dice, with an average of 7.

The Role of Magic Users

The magicians have three roles, they can cast spells that protect or enhance your forces, they can cast spells that damage the enemy forces, and they can dispel your opponents spells.

How many dice?

More dice you roll the higher you chances are of you rolling a miscast. Also rolling too many will reduce the number me dice for other spells. He you roll too few dice then you will fail to cast and end the magic phase. I suggest the best number me dice to roll is enough for the average to cover the cast plus one.

Remember the average roll of a single dice is 3.5. We will round this down to 3. The average of 2 dice is 7, of 3 is 10 rounded down, of 4 is 14 etc. So for a level 2 wizard to cast a 16+ spell you need to roll a minimum of 14 (16-2), so 4 dice plus 1 (5 dice) should cover it most times. If it is important to get the spell off, add an extra dice (6 in this example).

War Machines

Not being out done by magic, science has created war machines that can be just as devastating as spells.

Where to Place Your War Machines

War machines tend to be long-range and need line of sight (the operators need to be able to see the target). This means that placing them where you can see the greatest amount of the table. A hill will do perfectly. If no hills are available, then you want to place your war machine where they can see as much of the table as possible between the buildings and woodlands and all.

The exception from the line of sight is for guess weapons. Guess weapons do not need line of sight. So you can place them out of sight from enemy artillery.

Measure Before You Decide

In 8th Edition Warhammer rules you can measure the distances before you pick a target. As this is allowed, then you are highly recommended to do so.

Bolt Thrower War Machines

Bolt Thrower War Machines are huge great bows and arrows! They have a good range and, if they are well placed, should be able to cover most of the table.

Cannon War Machines

Warhammer Fantasy Dwarf Cannon

Cannons are used by the realms of men and Dwarfs. The lob a heavy cannon ball that land and then bounce forward. The damage they cause is the line between the first impact and the cannon balls final resting place.

Fire Thrower War Machines

Not all the Warhammer war machines are long ranged. You will come across war machines that have a range of 24″ or less. These are infantry support weapons and are designed the be placed on, or just behind, your front line.

Deciding on the first landing spot

These days you able to pre-measure the distance that the cannon ball lands and this makes the use of the cannons so much easier to use. Basically it takes the guess work out of using the cannons. The usual process is to pick a valid target and call out how many inched that you  want the cannon ball  to land at. As you Would be able to pre measure the distance the opponents usually will not bother that you have not pinpointed the exact location and allow you  to move straight on to rolling the artillery dice. this does speed up game play too.

Stone Thrower War Machines

Stone Thower war machines have one of the longest ranges, and they have a large impact area, which is great against large targets (as measured in surface area ), and can be effective against monstrous creatures with a lucky roll of the dice!

Gun lines

Closely linked the use of War Machines is the tactic of the gun line. This tactic is basically to have a wall of fire power and wait for the enemy to come to you, and hope that you can kill enough of they through shooting before they get in to close combat.

Dwarf players are known to use this tactic, but other armies like High Elves, with their longbows, are known to use this tactic too.

Close Combat Tactics

If you have a unit who are in close combat with two or more enemy units, you will find that some models have a choice of target. If one of there targets have a lower initiative, it is usually better to target this unit as it will reduce the number of returned blows. Concentrate on striking at the weakest unit. This will maximize the number of kills for the combat resolution.

> Also see: Warhammer v8 Close Combat Master Class

Creating Regiment Bases

Regiment Bases are neat a way to manage a large number of models in a unit. In the following video I will show you how you can make simple regiment bases that will slot in to movement trays.

> Also see: My vid on creating regiment bases