Squishy Bretonnians

[Alskiyevskij]

So I've planned to play a couple of games with my friends this Easter. I'll primarily face Empire, Wood Elves and Bretonnians. I think I can handle Empire and Wood Elves, but I'm a bit worried about the Bretonnians.
He usually plays an all knight army, no peasants or trebuches what so ever.
I was wondering if anyone has faced them playing with the new rules.

His army is very fast and hard hitting with some pretty nasty characters. If my general finds himself in a challenge, he'll most likely get his fanged butt handed to him by the famous Jaques, Scourge of Lesser Cultured Creatures and Consumer of Fine Wines. Jaques is his general who re-rolls everything, causes D3 wounds and what not. Even though our vamps are pretty fighty, fast etc. I haven't managed to avoid him and I usually lose the challenge and then the whole game. Jaques is very determined.
So I was thinking about the Carstein ring, the new rules are pretty cool.

Dealing with the rest of the knights, I am, of course, thinking zombies, zombies and zombies. But a Bretonnian charge can potentially annihilate a decent block of zombies. So then I'll have to go magic heavy.

Does anyone have any experiences with the Bretonnians? Should I make my general ethereal/flying and just let him run around on his own, hopefully tarpitting his army with zombies and Vanhel's Danse Macabre? Or just meet them head on, with fighty vamps and Grave Guard?

 

[Incognito]

I would say your best bet would be to try and fight each part of his army at a time and keep the rest occupied with throw away units such as Dire Wolves, because by the sound of it his army is relatively small and if you outnumber him you can taken him down in CR.

 

[The Dead of Night]

They have a lot of nasty options. For example a bsb that ignores the rank bonus of any unit in b2b contact and a virtue that ignores enemy outnumber. Often these are found in the same KotR unit.

If you can take a frontal charge without crumbling, then charging their lance in the flank will go a long way to winning your combat. It can be tough though.

Blood Knights will show his grail knights a thing or two (as long as you get the charge, you'll probably need vanhel's). However even black knights are an excellent choice. ignore terrain, S4+2 on charge and killing blow with M8 are fantastic, and make them a wonderful flanking unit for a game like this.

 

[mannfred]

I'd agree with The dead of Night, fight fire with fire, make the Blood Knight Unit a bit bigger than normal and even Ghosts to tie up the non-magical Knights

 

[Darbagal]

Lore of metal can be good if you want to do magic. Combine with cheap units to hold him for at least a while, redirect him off the board into forests etc. Get as much terrain as possible on the board.
Summon creatures of the night can also be intersting to put some more flyers directly behind his lances for marchblocking and potentially rear attacks.
The other option is of course to try to build a combat lord yourself. Infinite hatred for rerolling, a good weapon for killing (either frostblade to kill him fast if you hit him) or something with killing blow or multiple wound damage. Dreadlance+ red fury is also a combo that has been discussed. Keep BSB close to for additional benefits of standard. Hopefully magic can help you to go first even if he gets the charge.

 

[The Dead of Night]

Wraiths would be fantastic unit. They cant break ranks, but they can take a charge with the best of them, they are invulnerable to all but grail knights and characters and they could dish out a very large number of S5 attacks (unfortunately attracting the full 5+ ward).

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

If you want a Character Killer the following is quite nasty:

Red Fury
Infinite Hatred
Beguile
Sword of Kings
Gem of Blood
Walach's Bloody Hauberk

You of course really need to get the charge but if you do you'l get four attacks, re-rolling, unless he passes a -3 ld test you can re-roll to wound and every unsaved wound generates another attack plus with the Sword of Kings you can cause a Killing blow yourself.

If you want to go all out with your Lord and Blood Knights swap Infinite Hatred out for Dead Knight (with the Huberk will give you 1+ armour save) and I would also think about swapping the sword of Kings / Gem of Blood for the Blood Drinker as this will heal not only you but your Knights. Then also have a Hero with the Drakenhoff Banner in thier and give the Blood Knights the Banner of Strigos. you will end up with a unit that on charge (5 wide, no kastellan) generates 12 re-rolling S7 attacks and 5 re-rolling S5 attacks for which every wound will heal the lord or bring one of your Knights back. If and when they hit back they've got to deal with T4, 2+ save and regeneration and T5, 1+ save and regen on your Lord.

Ok now I've given some advice how about a bit back, I have not played Brets in years so I have no idea how they currently function, please can someone give me some kind of idea's in regards to weaknesses and strengths.

 

[Vic]

I'd agree with The dead of Night, fight fire with fire, make the Blood Knight Unit a bit bigger than normal

I wouldn't recommend that - here in my meta we have 3 guys that play Bretonnian Armies (something like 1x grails, 2x Questers, 2-3x Errants, 1-2x Realms or so) and standing against their 16" charge with 14" charge unit that cannot flee isn't very healthy.

I wouldn't go with zombie horde either, because zombies are just too squishy for their mounts and you can't break them with 5-6 static CR from zombies(3 ranks, outnumber, banner and eventually flank), vs. say, 6 errants that will be immune to psychology the 1st round, so can't fail their fear test to charge, and will have 11 attacks on 3's and then 3s again, making an average of 5 kills the turn after they charge, so you barely stand a chance with a flank against their weakest unit, but the bretonnians will have too many charging lances to stop them.


As other ppl mentioned it's good to use spirit hosts and wraiths, because brets don't have a lot of magical attacks and will only generate 2 static CR (outnumber + banner).

Another usefull thrick is to divert his most important lances (or at least those trying to flank your main force). 5 strong Dirve Wolf units and Raise Dead are perfect for this - you can easily take out of the game at the very least 2 units, that will come back after 2+ turns.

Another interesting thing to try is the new Black Coach - especially if you have enough PD to feed it for killing blow (the 4th ability), because this way you can easily beat almost all of his units on charge, even those with characters (except grail knights ofc).

Great choice for character could be mounted Wight King (even if in infantry) with Sword of Kings and Gem of Blood. Bretonnians rarely declain challanges (if they do they loose their blessing for the unit), so he can divert at least 2 strong (s5 ) attacks from your infantry block, and will most likely generate at least 1 CR from the challenge, 2 some luck or with the gem.

For the core of the army I'd always suggest 20-25 strong units of skeletons, but it's a personal choice - since everything can be raised back with the new book, almost all of our infantry will work. Just don't forget to watch out his grail knights! (banner + war banner + BSB + virtue of duty + outnumber + 12 WS5 S6 attacks, 3 from the paladin and 7 WS3 S3 attacks can break even descent blocks in 1 turn!)

 

[Synthesis]

For the grail knights I'd fall back on my personal favourite trick from my game a couple of days ago when I just couldn't avoid them charging something on the the side of my line (at the bottom of turn 5, as they'd spent the whole game killing and overruning 5-7 man zombie units).

I created a new unit of 5, happily IoN'd it up to a grand total of 67 zombies (gogo cazry magic), and then vanhel's the unit to allow it to cover my flank....the Knights charged and wiped out a total of 57 zombies with wounds + CR, next turn the zombies inherited WS7 from my lord and only 7 of them died; to be raised back at the end of the next turn to full.

This unit happily picked up 'Tarpit of the year' for this little stunt.

Although this is by no means a foolproof tactic (it was nothing short of a miracle), there isn't a great deal that proves to be effective against grail knights beyond just not getting charged/hitting them in the flank and praying.

 

[Disciple of Nagash]

A Red Fury, Bears Anger, Book of Arkhan Lord shoule be able to dent them Grail Knights..........

 

[Trevy the Great]

Ummm....you can't improve the armour save given my a Flayed hauberk.
I think the way to do it would simply be to let the Knights hit Tarpit units, like Skeletons or Zombies, and then flank them unit Vanhel's or fast units like Dire Wolves.

 

[Rasmus]

For the love of god never ever charge a unit of zombies into a ongoing combat or charge in a unit to help the zombies. The reason being that your opponent will mow down the zombies and create enough CR to ensure that you lose the battle. I have just tried it against a brettonian player.

/Rasmus

 

[The Dark Lord Mr Fluffy]

A few sneaky black knights that charge through immpassable terrain is always a bit off putting, and into a flank would be a fine beginning of the end of the Brets. Mainly I'd use them to stop him going mad charging all the time