The New Empire - 2250pt list for Nationals

I've started throwing around some ideas for a 2250pt (standard tournament sized) list for the Nationals at Easter. Gotta say at this point - Army Builder is great!

Spent some time in deep conversation with some experienced players gathering ideas and getting opinions on changes and additions to the fluffy list of yesterweek. I'm limited by the models that are painted but my own limited experience and ignorance is proving something of a blessing in disguise (and I still have this fluffy-ish streak running through me at the moment).

There are a number of no-nos that I'm implementing, simply from a place of where I want to take my own game, the challenges I'm seeking, and the feeling out there in community of what sucks to face off against:

- no War Altar
- no Steam Tank(s)
- no Inner Circle Knights

Pretty easy to avoid that stuff, so here's my initial list that will be getting some playtesting love over the next month as I struggle to figure out how to use an extra 250pts of army without just handing it over to my opponent :)


Arch-Lector - General, Dawn Armour, Van Horstmann's Speculum, Hammer of Judgement, Barded Warhorse: Speculum looks like fun - you don't have to use it if you don't want to; 2 prayers is great - bit of Soulfire here, bit of Unbreakable there, or a bit of 4+ ward on the General; Dawn Armour is very cool of course; the Hammer is an interesting one - toughness test for each hit or wounded automatically with no armour save.

Captain - BSB, Sword of Might, Barded Warhorse, Icon of Magnus: the higher strength is much better than a Biting Blade although on the face of it the net effect is the same; hopefully a 2+ save keeps him alive!; the Icon will help in the real-world of tournament play with all that fear-causing nastiness.

Warrior Priest - Sword of Battle, Barded Warhorse: we sure do like our Barded Warhorses :); Sword gives him an extra attack, takes advantage of Hatred and is another magic weapon should the need arise; the Priest himself represents my 3rd bound spell.

Wizard - L2, Scroll, Wizards Staff: Mr Suicide is back! Hooray! Total offensive magic phase is now 4PD and 3 bound 4 prayers (not bad). Defense is 6DD and a scroll (adequate - I hope).


The rest of the list is my FluffyCon list with a couple of important additions:

- a 5-Archer detachment for the Crossbows
- another Great Cannon (3 warmachines in total)
- 5 more Swordsmen, making it a block of 25



So the army still particpates in all phases of the game. I'm told the Arch-Lector is mean so it will be interesting to try him out. Comes in with 54% Core, 28% Characters and 17% Special (I know that doesn't mean much to some people - percentages are far from the be all and end all of calaculating for the purpose of comp) and the choices I've made indicate to me that I should be receiving the base score for Empire or a small boost from some judges (agree or disagree?). At least, I'm hoping I don't get a minus!

I think most importantly I'm really looking forward to trying the list out and playing some more games using Empire - they're doing much better than the Dwarfs ever did in terms of my motivation to keep using them. Hopefully by the time I'm done with Empire (DogCon 2010 is currently the last tournament planned for these guys) those Vampires I occasionally mention will be about ready...