Welcome to the Round Table of Bretonnia!

MIDGAME TACTICS

This is where serious battle is joined.  You put your plan against your foes and see who comes out on top.  You've done some damage, hopefully you've won the support battle, you've seen your foes plan and hopefully out maneuvered him.  This is where surprises are revealed and battles are truly decided.  One note is if you have won the support battle already by turn 3 there is no need to enter this phase while you still can whittle down your foes with magic and shooting while maintaining a strong position.  Some games I don't enter here until turn 5 when the enemy has been shot nearly dead.  Other games I can skip this phase all together and go straight to end game if I control the support lines.

Movement 

Bring the lance home.  Get into combat with what you can kill and avoid or hold up what you can't.  This phase is often quite short and involves charging or pulling back.

If you have a unit where you want it... Kill it.  Charge it.  Break it. Run it down.  No mercy.  If you don't have a unit where it is easily killable you have a few choices.  Force it, bait it, stall it, and avoid it.

Force it is just that.  You charge in anyways.  You may not kill it on the charge but you have the power to grind it down.  Be careful with this tactic while it may grant you the victory over the unit in time, you must be careful to prevent the enemy from bringing more into the combat that could sway the tide.  If you will kill them eventually and they have no support this is the tactic to use.

Bait it.  You lure the unit further away from the main force so that it is isolated.  Once it is without support it should be easy pickings.  Make your knights retreat a step or two, try to bring the unit with you.  If you fall back your foe may think that he has a chance to defeat you and follow.  Once without support hit him hard and fast.  The problem with this tactic is it is based on deception and your foe may not fall for it.

Stall it.  You may be able to charge and inflict damage but have no chance of breaking or being broken by it.  Often this is those pesky ranked up units, steadfast units.  In order to prevent them from having free reign across the board you lock them in combat.  Then you have a tickle fight for the rest of the game.  Or until you get support to bail them out.  This is best used if you are certain that you have support nearby.

Avoid it.  If your foe has a deathstar unit running around that you have NO hope of breaking...  Avoid it, but don't just send nothing after it.  Keep a unit threatening it at a long charge range if possible.  This makes your opponent think that you are just trying to whittle him down before combat (which is true) and makes him likely to advance and chase the threatening unit around.  It's bait that should never be caught.  It keeps his biggie out of action until you are ready for it.

That are the 4 basic things that your battle line may be doing but what about your support?  Your pegasus knights have swept the back lines so now what do they do?  They add things to any of the previous tactics but most likely the break it philosophy.  Unsure if a unit will break if charged?  Have the pegs charge in the back as support.    Special mention must be made to how wonderful they are at avoiding and baiting targets.  Best unit for baiting and playing cat and mouse in our army.  Also they make good bail out units if they can get a rear charge.

Magic

Well when you've got your knights stuck in and are ready for the magic phase it is time to change magic tactics.  Instead of just causing the damage the focus has shifted to support.  Keeping our guys alive and making sure the enemy gets hit harder are now key.

I find the lore of life spells to be better in the opening but I find the lore of beasts to be better in mid game.  It has superior support magic.  It makes your knights hit harder and live a touch longer.  Anyways your spells should be simple here. Buff and more buff. 

Since the lore of beasts has such an awesome signature spell you can have more than one of them in your army.  If you have this spell, spam it with as few dice as possible.  Often now is not the time for a miscast.  As an exception... if you have a damsel in combat... Throw the dice to try for the miscast.  There's a good chance it will hurt them more than you.

After you have exhausted your buff spells check if you have any hex spells.  Cast them in any combats you are worried about.  It's like buffing your guys indirectly so they are useful as well.

The key thing to consider here is which support magic MUST you get off?  Cast that one last with the most dice possible.  If you're lucky you have drained your foes dispel dice and he can't stop it.  If he is saving dice to dispel you throw a bunch of dice at it to finish things off.

As an example: I have three wizards, 2 beasts and one life.  I really, REALLY, want to get off the +1 S and +1 T spell on a unit of Knights of the realm because I am worried that combat might go poorly.  I first try to cast it from one beasts wizard at bare minimum needed for it to go off since they both know this spell it's safe to try this.   It's me testing to see if he views the combat the same way.  He throws his dice to dispel it.  I realize that he considers this combat iffy as well and wants to help his unit survive. I have enough dice remaining to try and cast about 2 more spells, say 6.  I try to cast flesh to stone on two dice.  I am testing to see if he will dispel this so his damage is greater against me.  If he throws dice at it,  I have more dice to cast my final spell than he has to dispel.  If he doesn't I have at least one buff off and a legitimate chance of casting the second one with 4 dice.

That's just an example of how this magic phase is a struggle to get the vital spell off where it is needed.

Shooting

Your targets have now become either units that are being baited or avoided. Preferably the later.  Honestly with the amount of combat that should be going on you have very little targets.

Aim at units that are too powerful and that you are avoiding.  If you are unable to do that generally the best thing is to shoot at valid targets.  Even the Trebuchet.  Special mention must be made of the ability to drop units to 25% or below.  If you have that chance jump on it.  They only rally on snake eyes at 25% so they are effectively killed.

Your shooting phases are likely to be light or nonexistent.  Don't fret they should have done their job already and they'll get targets soon.

Combat

Here is the meat of what you will be doing.  Since this is a subset of the movement phase it is likely that most of combat is just running itself.  In fact there are only two aspects of combat that you can control.  Directing attacks at characters and challenges.

Allow me to draw a distinction between characters.  Soft, medium and hard.  Soft characters are ones that will not do much to you and are easy to kill, like wizards.  Medium have threat potential but not great and mediocre armor, I put Battle standard bearers here usually.  Hard are just that.  They will inflict damage and it will be tough to penetrate the armor.

I only recommend directing attacks at soft and sometimes medium characters.  Avoid hard characters unless you can punch through his armor with your character.  Wizards are great squishy things that you want dead, feel free to direct any attacks at them and similar characters.  Medium characters deserve attacks on the charge and from your own characters.  You need that boost of strength to puncture armor usually.  if you can drop a BSB that's a great help to you.  Of course directing attacks may come at the price of inflicting less wounds on the unit.  Less wounds means less likely to break.  If you are close to removing steadfast and the character doesn't confer stubborn then ignore him.  Kill his unit and make him test on snake eyes.  Soft characters are the exception since they often are very easy to hurt, only direct enough attacks to kill them and no more, your horses can pick up the slack after the knights. 

As for challenges I will narrow it down to 2 circumstances.  Character in the unit and no character in the unit.  If there is no character in the unit... Challenge with your unit champ.  You may wonder why I suggest swapping a possible 3 kills for 1; it's quite simple. My unit champs seldom inflict more than one wound and reducing the counter attacks against the unit is quite beneficial.

If he has a character that is squishy in the unit challenge don't bother to challenge if you have a character or the unit champ in contact with his character,  direct your attacks at the squishy character since they often are easier to kill.  This way even if you fail to break them you've gained points for the character.  If you are worried about them having steadfast and a single kill may make the difference then it is possible to direct the full attacks at the unit but this is a rare occurrence. 

If there is a medium character if you have a character in contact with him don't challenge but direct all attacks at him.  If you just have a unit champ ignore him.  If your character is not in contact with his, challenge with your character.  You should easily wipe out his champ that he will accept with.  If you are still in combat issue another challenge and kill his character.  Once again characters are often worth a large chunk of points

If he has a rock solid character challenge with your champion.  Hopefully kill the champion that accepts and then challenge again.  In essence you sacrifice your champion for a turn to keep more of your unit alive.  In essence you want his rock solid fighting character wasting his power against your simple champion.

One thing that I have noticed is that hard characters tend to run in hard units, medium in medium and soft in soft.  I have never figured out why.  Occasionally I see a soft in a medium but it is rare.  This helps us overwhelm the soft and medium units since characters are the number one danger to our knights.  Against the hard units our goal is to simply survive.

As to whether you should pursue or not.  I recommend pursuit unless they are below %25 unit strength.  Not only do you get 25 victory points for their banner but you often will kill the whole unit. 

Final Thoughts

Midgame is where most serious combat and hence serious damage.  Most of what happens here is based on the opening but it is still important to do it right.  Eliminate things you can and try to hold on till you can deal with things that you can't break.

ENDGAME

When you enter this area of the game it is important to take stock of where you are.  There are 3 different places you may be.  You may be winning handily, you may be close, or you may be losing.  Each area requires different tactics.

Movement 

If you are winning you have two options.  Avoid the enemy or finish them off.  Avoid them is quite obvious.  You just do not engage in combat and pull your units out of range of the enemy.  This is definitely the safest of the options.  Not terribly exciting but it is effective.  It isn't terribly effective if there is a lot of shooting in your opponents lines.  It is the simplest thing to do though just avoid anything left.

I recommend this if your knights are badly damaged with only one or two guys left.  It is called points denial and it keeps a win from becoming a loss.  If you still have more than 25%  in your unit don't be afraid to flee with an attempt to rally.  It is often better to flee  and attempt to rally then to try and outfight something you can't outfit.

The other thing that your units can do is what I call mop up.  This is designed to turn a win into a crushing victory.  Basically you hunt down the units that are almost dead and turn them fully dead.  Again if they are less than 25% then you probably don't need to hunt them down.  Chase down the units that are dinged up with the units that are not dinged up badly.

It is a little more risky because your dice may betray you but it can turn a normal victory into a crushing victory.  Basically these two tactics are your big options.  Avoid or destroy.  Avoid the difficult enemies and crush the weaker ones.

If things are going badly for you have two options.  One is try to turn it around and the other is to simply survive.  During a friendly game I say go for broke and try to turn it around.  This is where the odds are against you but you are still going to try and crush enemy units.  Aim as much of your army as you can against single units.  Do as much damage as possible but keep your forces together to consolidate the force that you have left.  If you have enemy units that are almost dead finish them off first, unless their points won't bring you back into the game.

If you are in a tournament setting with different levels of victory then you are simply trying to survive oftentimes to save points.  In this circumstance you should keep your units alive and aim for objectives and the points.  So use avoidance tactics.  Denying your foe points is often a big thing during tournaments and keeping your own points as high as possible.  Do this by hitting what is safe to kill and avoiding what may defeat you.

If things are close the game becomes more difficult.  First thing to do is take stock of what shape you're in.  If you're in healthy shape, or if you're completely banged up.  If you're in bad shape consider using the avoidance tactics and settle for a draw.  If you are in rather healthy shape it's time to hit as much as you can to get the edge.  Aim for the weaker units and avoid the stronger units.  Take out the units enough to get ahead and play it safe.  Aim for the weakened units that should break easily.  Then know which units you can lose in order to kill more than you lose.  If you can lose a trebuchet to kill a 200 point unit consider it a fair trade.

Also do not forget objectives in certain scenarios.  Move units that are not busy surviving or killing to take objectives.  Bowmen are a valid choice for this tactic.

 Magic

Magic has gone round in complete circle.  Once again our magic has become elimination of enemy units just as it was in the opening.  If a unit is fleeing and close to 25% bring them below that so that it becomes almost impossible to rally.  See the "opening" phase for more information on elimination of enemy units.  The biggest difference is that your targets are no longer just small fast units.

 It is now the units that are closest to death that are your targets.  Also consider the point value of what you're zapping magically.  If you have the remains of a unit that cost 400 points, and the remains of a unit that cost 200 points...  Aim for the most expensive unit that is likely to be killed.

If you can get a unit running there is a chance it won't stop.  Aim for panic if elimination is not a valid option.  Once again I believe that it's gone around to fighting like in the opening.  I do NOT recommend throwing more dice than needed to cast a spell.  A miscast could well cost you the game.  In fact if you don't have any targets that are weak enough to be killed; don't cast spells.  Don't risk your wizard.

For magic defense it is preventing the magic missiles and other damaging spells from going off.

Sorry this section is short but it is likely that most wizards are either dead or are trying to prevent themselves from dying.

Shooting

Shooting is almost identical to magic except no worries about a miscast.  Shoot to eliminate units or to prevent rallying.

If you are out of range use your peasant bowmen to take objectives. This phase has reduced efficiency except for elimination and prevention of rallying in this phase.  Occasionally panic checks can be caused and they can give you some points but they are unreliable at best.

Combat

Combat should be completely overwhelming of the foe in this stage of the game.  Give them no chance to survive.

If large dangerous combats cannot be avoided then do whatever you can to defend the characters that might be in the unit.  If the enemy unit doesn't have a character but might be dangerous to yours, challenge with the character to reduce incoming damage.   Now your character is simply interested in survival.  If the enemy unit can't hurt the character easily but the unit might be threatened (like spearmen) Don't challenge.  Let your character absorb the attacks to protect the unit.  Do the best thing to keep the most of your units alive. 

Keep everything possible alive while killing everything possible while in that confine.  Take survival over damage if at all possible.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Here the game has usually been decided before hand and it is just mop up for one army.  The trickiest part is keeping your victory in hand.  If you're losing it's an uphill fight to bring it into a draw.  If it's close then you have to make a choice, settle for a draw or try for the win.  Settle for a draw if your position is inferior and aim for the win if your position is superior.

 SNEAKY TRICKS AND TACTICS

Despite being the honorable knights we still have a sneaky trick or two that we can pull out.  Sun Tzu stated that "All warfare is based on deception."  These tricks deceive our foes and catch them off guard.  Even the simplest of tricks can throw a huge wrench in the foes battle plans.  Feel free to use some of my more common tactics and to develop your own.  There are more advanced tactics out there but what kind of magician reveals all his secrets?

Well protected wizards.  The damsel is arguably the best protected wizard in the game.  Our magic users are all but safe against anything but themselves.  Lore of life will also heal them if it goes off.  By keeping at least one wizard safely tucked away in a knight unit we can benefit from her dispel ability and earning her worth by defense.  If in a unit that miscasting will not terribly damage them, M@A for example, feel free to throw many dice at the spell since the next lore of life spell you cast will heal you from the likely wound you will suffer.  Also our blessing is still on the ladies to help save some of those wounds. 

Cheap heroes.  80 points gets us a 2+ save, the blessing, a lance and T4 with 2 wounds.  This characters are in essence unit champs on steroids and can help add survivability to an unit.  We get our ward save cheap and our 2+ save is cheap as well.  A chinsy guy can well throw the battle in your favor.

The Virtue of Heroism.  People know about this and fear it.  It is our great equalizer. You can drop just about anything with this ability.  Just having it nearby lets you negate certain large threats allowing you to focus your fire on other targets.  It is dangerous to characters and dragons alike and it always has a use.  It is rare to find an army without this virtue and there is a reason.  It's incredible for messing up enemy plans.  They may put a lot of faith in monsters and the virtue just kills them outright.  Often times monsters are one of the fastest things in the enemy army and dropping them gives our knights an advantage in the speed department.  Most people put some serious points in the damage output of monsters and rely on them for damage.  Remove that easily in one attack and it demoralizes the foe.

Fake charge.  Everyone knows Bretonnians charge right?  Prepare a charge into a flank and then "forget" to charge.  It gives them a chance to redeploy to face you, leaving their other flank open to a different charge.  You can also just lead a unit around like this while you whittle it down to make your victory more certain.  I like to use this one early so I can wear down units to make my charges more certain.  Just sit right outside of their charge range and wait for the right moment.

Battle line shift.  A personal favorite here.  Move 16 inches with every knight unit as far to one flank as you can.  You have basically shifted your line from in front of the foe to their flank.  They seldom have enough on the flank to deal with an entire force of our army and it will take too long to redeploy. Their flank guards vs. our flank with support from our main force.  Those are good odds for any Bretonnian, if used correctly this can be a game changer and can win you games.

Through the center.  If there is a unit that you can break mid lines go through it and reform so that you are facing the back of an enemy army.  He seldom will want the force of bretonnia hitting him in the rear and he will be forced to reform to have you but that leaves his back opened up to the majority of his army.  There is no winning situation for this and he will be in trouble no matter what he does.

The hero wall.  Since we have the smallest frontage of any unit we could place a unit with three characters in the front.  This means that no matter where we are fighting they will be fighting characters and can't harm our unit of knights by normal means.  Since our normal knights are obviously weaker than characters this preserves the unit while allowing them to contribute supporting attacks.  Due to the higher strength of Questing knights they are perfect for this.  The only problem is that you have a LOT of points in one unit and if there is a counter to the unit then you are in trouble.

Character on the edge.  When I place my characters in my knight units and my M@A I place them on the edge.  Wizards in M@A will receive fewer attacks against them from smaller units since they must align so the maximum number of models are in base combat.  The wizard will only be corner to corner with one model so only 2 will normally be able to attack.  For knight characters (and unit champs) I place them on the edges.  If I challenge with them then the enemy will lose some attacks because they can't target him.  Also if wizards or other characters are placed on the edges of enemy units I at least get one model with multiple attacks going against him.

ENEMY TRICKS

So you're playing Bretonnia and are being an upstanding gamer.  You play by the rules, sure you may mess some of them up but it's only by honest mistake.  There are some people that don't play like that and find the best way to win is to try to catch you off guard by bending the rules in their favor.  SHAME ON THEM!!!  If they can't win by their tactics they don't deserve it.  Let this serve as a warning to all gamers of some of the tricks that can be used either intentionally or unintentionally to cheat the system.  Most importantly... If it sounds odd... ask to see the book or the army list.

"Funky movement"  Some people will move units without measuring.  I myself am often in this category.  I find little need to measure out anything when I move less than 10 inches or so.  With knights that move 16, this isn't a big issue.  The issue comes from people moving units near their maximum range and not measuring.  Did that unit move its full 8 inches?  Maybe it was a little more, You can't quite tell.  I had one foe who moved his guys a full 10 inches towards me when they where movement 4.  He moved them just that little bit extra to march block me.  I called him on it because I had measured from my knights to him earlier and knew the distance. 

Also be careful of the "sliding" tape measure.  What happens is they start to move the unit and the tape measure moves with them for an inch or so.  Sure it happens, sometimes the tape measure will move a bit when measuring  but some people do this on purpose.  Best way to avoid this is to give them a spotting finger.  Place your finger where he is going to move too before they start moving the unit.  It is easy to do, good players often will thank you for the sporting gesture and the bad ones start to fume.

"Oh... I forgot that"  This comes up with the negative rules a lot.  Often it is simple oversight but make sure you keep it in mind.  Does that model suffer from stupidity?  Make sure he rolls it.  Animosity?  Better be rolling it.  Fighting a fear causer?  They should be taking fear checks each turn.  Archeons sword hits a friend on a 1 to hit.  These little things help balance the game and if they forget it; it tips the scale to their favor.

"Magic item shuffle" So you are facing two enemy units that are identical except for the warbanner in one.  Make sure the warbanner stays in that unit and doesn't hop around.  Characters are the easiest ones to mix up.  You see two characters over there, both are the same type.  One is dangerous to your knights and the other is dangerous to your peasants.  Some people will switch the characters to their benefit.  Or others will switch their magic equipment depending on what they are fighting.  If it seems suspicious call them out on it.  Ask to see the army list.  Ask to see the army book if a magic item seems too powerful.  This can be a very difficult one, basically impossible in fact, to catch if you are playing closed list.  If you are not make sure you know which unit has what when it is placed.

"Crazy dice" Not all cheats with dice are by having bad dice.  The key thing to watch out here for is for the foe to be consistent.  Does he re-roll all the cocked dice?  Or just the ones that are missed and tap the table for the others to lay flat?  If he is doing that make sure he re-rolls the ones that were being tapped.  Another sneaky trick is not saying what the die roll is for.  I've seen some people casually roll dice on their side of the table while they wait, which is fine, but when they are rolling and suddenly interject with "Passed the panic test" You should question it: did he roll several times and then say it or did he point and then roll?  One smells like a cheat the other is fair, keep an eye out for these things.  Another one is rolling for leadership tests in a combined combat.  If he failed the test did he declare which unit was taking the test before he rolled?  Same goes for passing the test.  One opponent I played failed all but his most expensive units break test.  Not uncommon but the thing was he declared what unit was taking the test after he saw success.  Make him declare before rolling or have him randomize which ones passed the test.

"Doesn't count"  This one goes to the saddest of players.  You have done a roll that you clearly declared what it was for and it is the time for it.  However something "distracting" catches the eye of your foe and he looks away as you roll.  He turns around looks at the roll that you made and dislikes it.  "Sorry I wasn't paying attention.  Could you roll that again?"  This would invalidate a perfectly good roll.  I know sometimes it is genuine but still asking for a re-roll of a good roll is a sneaky trick.  If possible I do not roll if they are distracted.  If I see they are distracted when I am rolling the dice I refuse to touch the rolled dice, I actually put my hands behind my back, until he gets to see the roll.  Hard to say I did anything to the roll when my hands are behind my back.  That and I ask someone nearby to verify my roll if I must roll when they are busy.  That way I have a witness to back me up when I say I didn't touch the dice. 

 These are just a few ways people will try to cheat you out of a rightful victory. Be wary and don't be afraid to ask about certain things.  Good players don't mind the question and it may save you the game against the bad player while you besmirch his reputation forcing him to shape up.  That is a kicker, if someone is found to be cheating people will forever be on their guard against him which forces him to play a fair game.