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Bretonnian ranged weapons |
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Written by Sir William
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Sunday, 02 November 2008 |
The two main Bretonnian ranged weapons are Peasant Bowmen and the Trebuchet. Most opponents look at these peasants as nothing more than cheap core choice fillers, and pay no more attention to them. I will freely admit that Trebuchets can be very unreliable, often scattering far away from enemy units, but they can also be of great use. I will address the uses of each unit separately.
Bowmen
At
6 points per model, these guys are great. They have longbows
(something a surprising number of opponents don't actually realize)
with a 30" range. That means that they can hit anything on about half
of the board. They have Ballistic Skill 3, which isn't great, but it
isn't bad either. They tend to work well with a "spray and pray"
strategy, filling the air with arrows. At half range, half of their
shots will get through, over half, slightly less will make it.
Strength 3 is nothing to complain about, its the same as our knights
on turns that they don't charge! This brings up another point. Bowmen
can do considerable damage, even compared to knights in turns they
don't charge. Our knights generally hit people on a 4+. Within 15",
our bowmen hit people on a 4+. Then, our knights fight with strength 3,
wounding most people on a 4 or 5 +. The bowmen have the same strength
3, for 1/4 the price of Knights of the Realm. Most opponents will not
simply ignore units of bowmen which quickly drop large numbers of his
men, spreading his army out. This can allow your knights to deal with
more isolated threats which can often be easily overwhelmed.
Trebuchet
This
is one of my favorite units. It can literally hit just about anything
on the board. In addition, it will wound almost any units on a 3 or 4
+, with no armor saves. If it happens to hit a monster or chariot, it
can pack a huge punch. When opponents have seen the destruction that
this 90 point unit has caused, it can seriously disrupt his strategy.
He might divert useful units to fight it, and will likely spread out
his units to decrease his chances of being hit. However, that helps to
protect you precious knights' flanks. Between the actual kills it will
achieve, and the psychological impact, a trebuchet is one of the most
useful support units in a Bretonnian army.
I hope this has been useful to you, and that you will incorporate its ideas into your armies. For the Lady!
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 06 November 2008 )
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Discuss (10 posts)
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Bretonnian ranged weapons
Nov 22 2008 03:15
This thread discusses the Content article: Bretonnian ranged weapons
Personally I love my bowmen. The frustration of my knights are screens of skinks and fast cavalry. I find the panic tests caused by the loss of 25% of a unit to shooting to be invaluable. It clears the path to charge.
Bowmen are less useful against ITP armies. However even then there are times when you need to instantly be somewhere remote on the battlefield. Maybe a unit gets behind your lines or a bunch of zombies gets created.
It's usually impossible to get M+A there and even knights have to wheel and don't want to be distracted by a minor threat. A big block of archers (especially skirmishers) gives me the flexibility to alter my focus in an instant.
The Trebuchet has always been far less useful for me than a small unit of grail knights. However I take it for a bit of fun. Opposite to the bowmen it's best at dealing with those chunky ranks of armoured infantry.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 07 2009 15:50
While I hate the treb. I am a fanatic about using archers. I run a block of 30 skirmishing archers with flaming arrows. They can see 360 and shoot through each other. I've been toying around with the idea of also running a block of 25 archers non-skirmished in rank and file formation. During deployment I would put them directly in front of any hill that my opponent has. Since all figures can see units on a hill I would use this to sweep any warmachines. This tactic should also work against large targets for the same Line of Sight reason. While I find it useful, even with 25 shots shooting at an individual warmachine, the chances are not much better then %50 that you will actually hit and kill enough crew to stop it from firing. You should however be able to cause a serious re-evaluation of your enemies targeting priorities when you send 50 flaming arrows per round down range.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 08 2009 00:15
I like "regular" archers as well in combo with trebuchet on each flank.
Trebuchet with its range covers almost whole battlefield,by being on a flank forces opponent to spend some effort and units to take it down and archers ensure that he in 95% cases need to use much more points than archers+machine, which allows my knights to break the rest of the army.
Also sometimes adding banner and defensive stakes provides good protection against any light units, which would like to take this "easy" points.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 08 2009 00:41
to me bowman are worth every point. With them I love to knock out handgunners, fast cavalry, and to take out small units. I tend to run a unit of skirmishers at 15 and two regular units at 10. them along with a trebuchet makes for a effective shooting phase before the charge.
Lately I'm trying out a unit of mounted yeomen to see how they work though I my swap them for a rank of knights since I'm trying them as a 80 pts filler on my list.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 09 2009 19:06
Bowmen are the best! I use, at least, 20 regular bowmen and 15 skirmishers. They play a very important role for me, because I mainly battle against O&G, and they are very useful against Orcs (5+ save) and Night Goblins with Fanatics inside (if they panic and flee, the fanatics die).
The FT has´n´t worked for me yet
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 09 2009 20:52
Just looked through my diff army lists, all comers and more beardy lists have 40 bowmen *beardy list having 2 units of pegasus knights, lord on pegasus and paldin on pegasus) ... peasant based army has 56 bowmen
I think they are invalauble and well worth their points
I target fast cavalry
Small units away from the general am confident i can get 25% casualties on
Single model wizards en masse if i get the chance
Giants
Tomb scorpions
Chariots
and then will go after the rank and file, but the theory is the bowmen deal with the threats to my knights getting there as fast as possible
Also in the near future my main opponent (brother) is going to be high elves so wanted lots in my various army lists to take them out before i charge due to T3 n poor armour
Not got treb models, and dont intend to, dont liek the idea of them in the bretonnian army unless i get to the position of playing siege games again
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 11 2009 14:10
I place my Trebuchet right in the middle of my army. Works wonders, Opponent sees that he would have to go through 3+ knight units to kill it and decides to let me shoot instead. If I ever do hit, it hurts like heck. Last game they were laser guided rocks, I missed once.
Archers? Love them to death. I've 60+ in my 3500 point army.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Jan 12 2009 02:20
"The Trebuchet Story" from my last battle
Target: Empire, War Altar
of course: first turn, hit, S5 , 6 Wounds...
then the second one managed to land in the middle of the shiny empire knights ... 6 dead...
I think the biggest advantage of it is S5 rather than normal 4
And of course USUALLY it misses (2/3) , but sometimes one shot is enough
On the other hand, the beauty of archers is that whatever enemy will send to take them out, it is in 99% cases more expensive then the bowmen, so usually he is leaving them alone. 5-6 turns for 30 archers is all they need
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Oct 30 2009 09:00
Hey everyone I'm not actually a brettonian but thought I'd add something,apologies if it's already covered and I missed it. Braziers are an extremely cost effective way to decimate units with regenerative qualities. War Hydras, Trolls and Vargulfs are examples of such units that can prove troublesome to bret. units without using characters(virtues) and knights that might be needed elsewhere. Because units with regeneration have (almost as effective as) a 4+ ward save this save cannot of course be used against flaming attacks, therefore making extremely viable this cheap option. Even better against large targets like the War Hydra that bowmen get +1 to hit and can make them extremely scary for opposition just like against greater daemons and the like that have a relatively poor save against massed S3 shooting that will wound on 6's.
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Re:Bretonnian ranged weapons
Oct 31 2009 00:20
I almost always field a trebuchet and set it to target opposing war machines. S5 lets it wound on a 2+ if you get a direct hit and then kill it on a 3+ (generally). Also even on a miss I often catch 1-2 crew softening it up for archers to finish. Been very effective so far.
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