What's you go-to army layout-strategy?

TheWattman#7460

There are many different armies in the game, but overall, they contain roughly the same setups. Varying types of melee infantry, missiles, cavalry, artillery and auxillaries like monsters and stuff. How do you organize such things? Do you have a standard layout for armies across all races or do they vary from race to race?

For example, my army-layout follows these rough lines in a 19-unit army, when recruitment availability allows me:

Core of the army consists of roughly 6 - 8 units of heavy infantry, usually sword & shield but anti-large spears are also involved
Around that I tend to have 4 units of cavalry, 2 melee and 2 missile when possible
Then we have 2 - 3 units of artillery depending on what is available (for Empire I go Great Cannon and 2 mortars)
2 - 3 spots are further filled with long-range missile infantry
The remaining spots, about 2 - 5 depending on race, are reserved for heroes or monsters

To use some in-game examples:

Empire - 3 Sword & Shield, 3 Spear & Shield, 1 Halbardier, 2 - 3 Handgunners, 2 Knights, 2 Outriders, 2 War Wagons with Mortars, 1 Steam Tank, 1 Great Cannon, 1 Demigryph with Halberds. Hero either replaces one 1 Handgunners or Steam Tank

Lizardmen - 6 Temple Guard, 1 Ancient Salamander, 1 Salamander Pack, 2 Cold/Horned One Riders, 2 Terradon Riders (Fire bolas), 2 Kroxigors, 1 Carnosaur, 2 Solar Engine Bastiladons, 1 Stegadon, 1 Troglodon.

What are your compositions?

Valkaar#2507

I don't know...I like to widely theme and vary my armies. I don't care much for a bunch of clone stacks across my empire if I can help it. So what I run has a lot of variance based on the Race and LL I'm using.

In general though, I prefer tanky melee over skirmish builds or glass cannon alpha strikes.

So I lean more towards heavy infantry, heavy cav, magic, and monsters if I'm going on the offense. Exactly how much of each will vary. Bretonnia will be over half cavalry. The Lizardmen will between 0-2 Horned Ones by comparison. Usually 0 😆. My Imrik stacks have way more SEM's than my average Vampire Counts stack. It's really hard to say 'this is my one favorite composition' across the board.

I suppose if I'm feeling defensive, I do have more of a 'go-to' set-up. Usually 2-4 artillery pieces, 3-5 archers, and all the rest a mix of heavy infantry and flying units specifically (not cavalry) to intercept flankers, shut down counter range, or tie up an enemy I want to get shot up a little bit more.

So I'd say my defensive builds are a little more 'formulaic' than my offensive builds.

TheWattman#7460

Valkaar#2507 said:

I don't know...I like to widely theme and vary my armies. I don't care much for a bunch of clone stacks across my empire if I can help it. So what I run has a lot of variance based on the Race and LL I'm using.

In general though, I prefer tanky melee over skirmish builds or glass cannon alpha strikes.

So I lean more towards heavy infantry, heavy cav, magic, and monsters if I'm going on the offense. Exactly how much of each will vary. Bretonnia will be over half cavalry. The Lizardmen will between 0-2 Horned Ones by comparison. Usually 0 😆. My Imrik stacks have way more SEM's than my average Vampire Counts stack. It's really hard to say 'this is my one favorite composition' across the board.

I suppose if I'm feeling defensive, I do have more of a 'go-to' set-up. Usually 2-4 artillery pieces, 3-5 archers, and all the rest a mix of heavy infantry and flying units specifically (not cavalry) to intercept flankers, shut down counter range, or tie up an enemy I want to get shot up a little bit more.

So I'd say my defensive builds are a little more 'formulaic' than my offensive builds.

I will say I will vary my builds depending on the race and the specific lord, but usually mods are required for that (I run over 200 regardless, but Im using basegame as a discussion base). Like Kroxigor variant mod for Nakai, a female-based army for Alarielle and more red skinks for Tehenuain. Like if you wanna go full lord-specific, its kinda necessary. Hellebron's executioners and witch elves only go so far for example.

mecanojavi99#6562

Depends on the race but I always tend to gravitate towards the same core lineup is something like this:

5 infantry units, preferably with shields, in the front, to hold the line

3 missile units behind the shield wall if they are archer type units (can shoot over them), if they are handgunner style then placed in front of the shield wall, so they can shoot the enemy before the enemy frontline arrives, when that happens retreat them behind the shield wall.

3 antilarge units if available, 1 on each side of the formation to cover the ranged units and another one on the front with the shield wall, to fight any big besties that charge frontally.

1 artillery piece if available right behind the 3 ranged units and covered by the antilarge on the sides.

Cavalry either far on the sides to intercept possible charges or hidden in a forest until the enemy has engaged my shield wall, then I proceed to either go after the enemy arty and ranged and/or rear charge the enemy frontline.

Unless my entire army can vanguard I don't like to vanguard a lot unless they are stuff like ranged cav, so I can start to dent some of the enemy units.

Characters are placed depending on that they are, ranged ones on the back with the ranged units, mages in the middle to be protected behind the shield wall but still close enough to the enemy to use their spells, frontline characters in the thick of it or going after the enemies characters, finally, duellists/assassins far away from the main force until I find an opening to send them in to go after the characters.

Monstrous infantry I like to place them on top of the frontline, so the shield wall absorbs the damage and the monstrous infantry can focus on dealing damage (this role can be replaced by great weapon units if monstrous infantry isn't an option)

Flyers i usually keep on the back or the sides until I can send them agaisnt the enemies backline.

SEM tend I place in the middle of my frontline and just move around as needed, sometimes to after cav that has charged me or simply to start killing other monsters or enemy frontline units.

Ofolar#2436

My template for Dwarves

Captain_Rex#1635

That is entirely depending on the race and LL.

Large Monsters and SEMs:
I have a house rule to not use more than 1-2 large SEMs like Dragons, Great Daemons, Necrofex Collossi, Hydras etcetera.


Infantry:
But overall my preferred unit type is melee infantry. Usually try having 8-10 of them. But like I said, it’s entirely dependent on the race or LL. With WE, VCoast or Alith Anar and Wulfhart I focus more on ranged Infantry. But yeah… I’m usually trying to have 8-10 infantry units in my armies (melee, ranged or mixed).


Cavalry:
When possible I try to have 2-4 cavalry units in each army. For cavalry themed races or LLs like Bretonnia, Kislev or Malus, I tend to use up to 6. But usually never more than that.


Artillery:
Also entirely depending on the race but usually between 1-5. With the VCoast, Dwarfs or the Empire I usually try to have 4-5 artillery units per army. But as Kislev, Bretonnia, TK, HE or DE I usually only have 1 or 2 max.

Heroes:
Another house rule is to never have more than 2 heroes per army excluding LHs.

ScarletLeft#6788

With the caveat that I'm still fairly new (not very good, and there are some races I haven't played at all) ...

I always build a core (where I can) of three standard infantry units, flanked by a spear units on each side (either formed at an angle, or pulled slightly back and formed into a tight square), two units of archers/crossbowmen behind them and an artillery piece further back (artillery is my go-to allied recruitment if I'm playing a race that's lacking in that department).

From there, I either have a unit of spears or a unit of cavalry to protect my artillery piece. Then, if I have access to missile cavalry, then I have one on each side, along with either shock or melee cavalry. If don't have missile cavalry, then I double up on shock/melee cavalry (when I'm playing Bretonnia, I triple or even quadruple this, and when I'm playing Tzeentch I replace my infantry with melee cavalry).

I tend to like symmetry, so I usually only take a single hero with them and the lord on either side (embedded in the frontline, either slightly forward or slightly back depending on what they're used for). Beyond that, I take whatever I like, or whatever the faction is best at. For Cathay, I always bring at least four Crane Gunners (I'm still trying to make a 19 Crane Gunners Doomstack work, so far I've had no luck). Otherwise, I love monsters and, and I always take two units of the "hounds" equivalent for any race that has them (in fact, for the Heralds of the Tempest, I like to increase the ratio of hounds as Kholek himself grows in power and my army is used more and more just for clean-up and harassment).

Lastly, I like to theme my armies. For example, with Cathay I'll give Shugengans more Logma units, and Magistrates more Sky laterns/junks. For the High Elves, I of course like to give Alastar all of his various "lion" units, and so on.

Bobsyourankle#7897

Take Tik, a bunch of fireleach bolas bomberdactyls, some ripperdactyls and a ground unit.

Use Tik's vanguard deployment to position the bomberdactyls on top of the the enemy lines.

Start battle, use bombs to obliterate the enemy front lines and bolas to kill artillery crews. Send in the ripperdactyls to finish anything left standing.

DeadpoolSW#7283

Frontline of 8 infantry units, usually 1/2 anti-infantry 1/2 anti-large (eg 4 Greatswords, 4 Halberdiers for Empire), but could differ depending on the faction or lord (eg I'd give Volkmar/Arch Lector 8 Flagellants).

In terms of lords/heroes, I stick to one spellcaster in the army (with the exception of magic-heavy factions like Vampires or Tzeentch), and generally stick to 2-3 character per army (including the LL). This can be higher if I like the idea of a lord having an "honour guard" (eg I'd give Franz 2 Empire Captains + his spellcaster, or Grimgor 2 Black Orc BBs + a shaman).

For the remaining 9-10 units, depends on the faction.

Empire I might go 3 missile infantry, 4 cav, 2 arty
Dwarfs I might even have a frontline of 10, then have like 5 missiles, 3 arty
Greenskins I might go 4-6 cav then split the rest between monsters and arty

LennoxPoodle#1380

Around 6 units of frontline, 2-4 AL flank protection, around 4 units missile infantry, artillery at the rear and heavy cavalry around the flanks depends on the faction, but usually a few of each. Monsters are usually lumped in with the cavalry. Then I tend to have a bit of skirmishing or vanguard stuff ahead or hidden somewhere to come out once the frontlines meet. I also tend to keep a few elite unit (usually AP infantry) in reserve to react to the unexpected, together with all characters that don't fall into the previous categories.

saweendra#3399

depends most of the time balance armies

but there is the occasional full rush build , full blob , full kite build so on so forth its how i feel like on a given day and depending on which race i play and against which race i am playing against

DarthEnderX-#6513

Doomstack a solid, mid-tier combination melee/ranged unit like Lothern Sea Guards w/ shields!

GloatingSwine#8098

Depends on the strengths of the faction. Do whatever the faction is strong at doing, rather than trying to warp all the factions to fit a preconceived idea of what a good army is.