Empire Tactica Part 1: Empire General

Well first of all, this is going to be a series of Empire Tactics articles with a difference: the major difference being that I have never won a game with them.

Who am I to dare suggest tactics, you may ask? Well who indeed. But while blundering my way across the war board to failure after failure I have at least managed to gain a firm understanding of what DOESN'T work. Hopefully at least these articles will provide food for thought rather than prescribed answers.

But the articles will also be a showcase of my Empire army. It isn't huge but I do like it. Empire is one of the few armies I don't let anyone else use. For some reason I just really like using them.

We'll be looking at the units one by one but today, let's start the characters off with the:

Empire General

The Empire General provides a good bit of Leadership bonus for troops within twelve inches, but beware... Putting him on a horse is a major bit of double-edged swordage. Because for the Leadership bonus you want him to be in the centre of the army but on a horse, in a unit of knights, that isn't going to be where he ends up.

I'm inclined to think here that there are two options: firstly to use a general on foot in the centre of the army, sharing a unit perhaps with the Battle Standard Bearer. You can then have a captain on horseback leading your knights if you like and he's no longer restricted by where he goes. Or second, have your general providing a 12" radius for his Leadership on one side of your army and the Battle Standard Bearer providing his rerolls on the other. That way, the army needn't be too compact and you still get the protection you need.

When buying equipment for heroes there's always an interesting set of choices. Certainly there's some pretty good stuff you can get without dipping into the magic item section at all, in the way of great weapons, shield and armour. Think carefully about how many extra men you could get instead of paying for that ultra-expensive magic item. What is your tooled-up character going to achieve and will he make his points back?

Plan his mission ahead of time (especially if you know what opponent you'll be facing) and tool or don't tool him up as necessary.

PART TWO