You Write the FAQ/Errata: Bretonnia

[teddet]

Okay, so my idea is, GW calls you up and says, we want you to write the book. FAQs can change point values and some rule wordings, but not stats, and you can't add units. Then, because they're feeling generous, they hand you a copy of the Empire book and say, use this as a baseline.

Where would you price our units? Which Bret rules would you rewrite?

1. Blessing: I would keep it the same, but make it also give devastating charge.
2. Lance Formation: Ranks of 3, Horde formation at 6. It makes it weaker than currently, but more in line with the book.

Units:

1. Bowman: Points seem reasonable given low leadership and lack of other buffs.
2. Men-At-Arms: 4pts
3. Knights Errant: At 20 pts, they seem fair compared to the new empire knights (they have a better charge, but weaker armour, leadership, and a built-in penalty)
4. KOTR: 24 points. With devastating charge and the Lance, they're probably worth a couple more points than current knights.
5. Questing Knights: 25 pts. Given their limitations, I'd put them on par with Inner Circle Knights
6. Squires: 15 points with spears
7. Peg knights: 60 pts. (in line with other monstrous cav -- Flying is the equiv of more attacks/better save)
8. Grail Knights: 30 points. That's still very expensive for a T3, 1W model, but will let you field enough to put out a lot of attacks.
9. Treb: 120 pts (seems that 120 is a points cost GW likes)
10. Reliquary and peasants: probably in the neighbourhood of 8pts/model.

Thoughts? Am I making brets too cheap?

[Duke Ramulots]

I think thats an errata, not a FAQ(frequently asked question).

[Havock]

What you are asking is mroe akin to 'how would you rebalance the book until we get a new one?'
The Bret book is fine as is, some points could use a bit of shaving/adding: Men at Arms should be cheaper with a veteran option to give them Ld7-WS3, ie. 'normal' infantry. Knights could drop a point or so, nothing too drastic, lance formation is strong. It really is. Spam el cheapo paladins, put them in the front rank of units.

Reliquary should just be redone as a whole (buff unit ala corpse cart?) or taken as an upgrade to normal M@A, possibly along the lines of optional command upgrade, allowing them to benefit from the blessing or something like that.

Pegasus knights are fine as is, hell, I find them to be on the pricey side considering their defensive stats.

[Mr Ogre]

Prevent the Blessing from protecting you in combat.

No. Really. Originally, it was there to prevent ignoble artillery and bow related misfortune and impaling. Now it seems to allow you to take on big stuff which really you should be doing anyway, you chivalric great nancy with a much reduced risk. So make it something which affects enemy Bow Skill, or can prevent artillery targetting you (ala 5th and 6th Edition).

Make more of the Vows. 'I'm immune to psych me, hurrrr' whilst tasty, should really have a bonus attached for making the vow mean something. Maybe link it to virtues? Kind of like Space Wolf Sagas, but with an actual downside (I'd favour something such as the Virtue of Jobbing Monsters meaning unless you actually engage said Monster, and it's rider in a duel, you lose VPs or some such drawback). Something akin to Witch Hunters, now I think about it. So Monster Jobbing could prevent better than a draw if you don't engage their most expensive model. Not very chivalric or inspiring for the Bretonnian Lord to declare 'Look lads! A Dragon! Quick, keep it busy whilst I duff up this dratted Eagle'). Would probably need more of a boost to balance this out!

This is purely from a background perspective!

[Gazak Blacktoof]

I don't think the lance formation is necessary because of the way supporting attacks now work. You can now have a unit of 10+ cavalry and they all get to fight. Devastating charge, or something else to mark them out as horse-lords would be fine.

The trebuchet should just be a Strength 3 stone thrower with additional crew. The strength is excessive and needs to come down. If it retains a strength more than 3 it needs to be much more expensive.

The blessing is very good in its current form and it can be frustrating to fight against. However I see no reason to change it. It didn't work particularly well as a ranged only defensive measure, because it meant the army didn't pray against certain armies. Brets never used to pray when playing against chaos, or undead, which was more than a little strange.

I don't think the points costs of many models are far off where they should be. I don't play brets, but I play against the regularly, so I couldn't say exactly where all the tweaks need to be made, but certainly the cost the hippogryph needs to come down to be in line with the wyvern and empire griffons.

[Lance Tankmen]

i like how it is now and am quite glad to know GW wont bother us for a while, i enjoy my gromril great helm too much to lose it, some things are over priced, i really dont think any are under priced but then again bret is my only army for the moment. If the trebuchet is underpriced then thats the one bonus we have til our books updated, otherwise i think brets are.. not balanced but doing fine. i friend actually thinks they are over powered?! i told him " yep been over powered since 2003".

[Duke Ramulots]

i like how it is now and am quite glad to know GW wont bother us for a while, i enjoy my gromril great helm too much to lose it, some things are over priced, i really dont think any are under priced but then again bret is my only army for the moment. If the trebuchet is underpriced then thats the one bonus we have til our books updated, otherwise i think brets are.. not balanced but doing fine. i friend actually thinks they are over powered?! i told him " yep been over powered since 2003".

Your friend may be onto something, my gaming group has asked me to stop playing mine and switch to my orcs and goblins after not having lost more than two of my last fifty games with them(both were watchtower). The other few bret players I know tend to have simmilar success. I dont get why anyone thinks theyre weak.

[Magnusv]

Remove the moronic caveats from the vows. Like Virtue of Stoisim, great I get a knight who can't take anything magical or any kind of special mount and can't join a unit but hes stubborn! Really?
Reduce the price of Peasants although now with Empire going up in points I may be satisfied with my Men at Arms costing less then a much better Empire Halberdier.
Increase the toughness of Grail Knights to 4 or reduce their price to 32 pts
Questing Knights...remove them until something useful is developed.
Knights of the Realm remove the 0-1
Add Heavens to Damsels magic selection and Light to Prophetess
Allow Mounted Yeomen to have light armor and still count as fast cav
Allow 35% points for Lord and Heroes
Remove Mandatory BSB

If this were a question of where I want to see the direction of the Army be developed.

Blessing would be a -2 to roll to go go first.
All Knights would be immune to Psych on the Charge as part of the blessing
Ward Saves remain the same
Magic Items work directly off Blessing


Core Knights are all Errant but can be upgraded to Realm Knights who get +1 WS, Str, and Ld.
Questing Knights lose the Lance but fight hand weapon and shield, blessing makes them immune to panic re-roll fear
Grail Knights become heroes that are selected out of Rares and are added to knights and have their own set of Virtues that augment or debuff units
Men at Arms remain the same
Bowmen can fire in all ranks with a -1 for each rank past 2

[Banville]

I have to agree. I play both Brets and Dark Elves and play against most armies quite regularly and Brets are pretty fine as-is. Their book lacks variety, it's true, but your standard Bret list is still a pretty decent all-comers list. Without shoving in a load of new units and changing up the reliquary I don't think there's much to be done really. Devastating charge I would love to have. The fluff in the BRB states Bretonnians in Lance Formation can even split a ranked unit of Dwarves. However, you can't simply cancel steadfast as it is an integral game mechanic so changes to how the Lance works IF EVEN NECESSARY might have to be more subtle. Similarly, allowing the knights to exit out the back of the charged unit won't work because simply putting one unit behind another will prevent you placing our unit of knights and so cancel out the benefit of the charge. This does open up the idea of cavalry and artillery working in tandem, as they did in real life, though. Threaten an opponent with a cavalry charge; he bunches up his units; lob shells onto the massed infantry. Hmmmmmmm.......

[Magnusv]

Thats my issue with Bretonnia its not touched in almost a decade and even the Wood Elves have seen a book since its release as well as two NEW armies have been created AND received new books (Tomb Kings may have been out just before them but close enough.)

Now everything has HUGE great fantasy aspects and taken a big leap in army design and I am suffering from hardcore Army Envy. I just don't want Dev Charge and be done with it I want Bretonnia to be AS amazing and unique as Empire. Did anyone see Demi-griffs coming or Heroes giving cold blooded to their units? Now Empire has 4 unique units of knights (White Wolves, Rieksguard, and Generic plus Demi-griff) and Bretonnia has 5 not counting the two more units of Empire fast cav vs the mounted yeoman.

I want Heroic Characters and the Best knights in the Old World and New. I want a unique magic list as well as access to some lores of magic. I want more then hanging a special rule on an existing 10 selections and play like I am happy.

[The bearded one]

I don't think the lance formation is necessary because of the way supporting attacks now work. You can now have a unit of 10+ cavalry and they all get to fight. Devastating charge, or something else to mark them out as horse-lords would be fine.

The lance formation isn't beneficial for getting more attacks, it's beneficial for having a small frontage, but most importantly: Cheap ranks. For an army based around big units of cavalry, steadfast would be too much of a trippleslap in the face without something like the lance rule to give bretonnians easy ranks to attempt to cancel it out. Needing 25 knights to cancel steadfast on a unit of 25 enemy models just doesn't work. At 15 it becomes a lot more doable.


I actually think, and this is mighty impressive considering the age of the book, that most of the pointcosts in the bretonnia book are spot on with what they ought to be in the 8th edition environment, with only marginal adjustment required. The lance rule works phenomenally well to help this cavalry-centric army to counter the bane of cavalry; steadfast, and most units are priced quite fairly. The trebuchet is way too cheap, but apart from that, the bretonnian armybook is actually pretty good. All it could need is some variety and fun stuff.

[Snake1311]

i like how it is now and am quite glad to know GW wont bother us for a while, i enjoy my gromril great helm too much to lose it, some things are over priced, i really dont think any are under priced but then again bret is my only army for the moment. If the trebuchet is underpriced then thats the one bonus we have til our books updated, otherwise i think brets are.. not balanced but doing fine. i friend actually thinks they are over powered?! i told him " yep been over powered since 2003".

You contradict yourself there, nothing underpriced but trebuchet underpriced? Make up your mind :P
The treb is an obvious offender, but there are other issue int he book as well - for example, paladins are too cheap/effective comapred to anything else.


To the OP: I was almost looking for stuff to pick a problem with, since most people are massively biased and don't know how game balance works....but I have to say I'm impressed!

- you've balanced buffs and nerfs
- the point costs are reasonable
- used BRB rules whenever possible; no spam of special crap

So good job!
And you've reigned in the excessive wishlisting and tangents with some imaginary restrictions, which should help keep your thread on topic.

I would add:
- a slight point increase on paladins
- maybe allow light for damsels & prophetesses (although now that empire has gone more towrads the whole holy thing, this isnt mandatory)

But really, best Bretonnia thread I've seen so far.

[DareX2]

I would also consider getting rid of the 0-1 restrictions on various units, since that seems to be a trend in 8th. I do like the idea working Devastating Charge into the bret list, though. It's in keeping with the army book, and I don't think there's a single unit to date that has this special rule. Also perhaps allow the Prophetess/Damsels to use the Lore of Light? It always seemed strange that they lacked access to this lore. I've also thought that maybe Peasants should stay at 5 points but get a rule like "Glaive-guisarme: Men-at-Arms carry weapons that are useable as both halberds and spears. Choose which weapon is being used at the start of combat. This choice persists until the unit is no longer in combat."

[Mr Ogre]

Blessing....only give the option if you win the roll to start first. I mean, my Ogres aren't going to give you five minutes grace for all your knees bent running around business. We're going to jump at the chance to catch you off guard before you've finished your Hail Marys!

[theunwantedbeing]

Remove the 0-1 stuff and the unit size restrictions as well.
Also change all the Lance Magical weapons to say Lance. [special rules]
rather than Provides +2 strength on the charge [special rules].

Possibly remove the bit about multiplying the cost of Virtues if you take multiples of them across the army.

[Lantern]

Up until last night, I thought my Bretonnians were perfect as they are, but after having my unit of Grail Knights sliced in two by sword masters, I might finally agree on a toughness increase . For the most part, I don't feel we need new units ( I can't see what they could add), just some fine tuning. A simplified blessing based on rank perhaps, with Knights of the Realm at 6+, Questing Knights at 5+ and Grail Knights at 4+ ward saves (baring in mind, Phoenix Guard have 4+ wards, cause fear and Speed of Asuran). I had suggested in another thread that perhaps reworked Knightly Virtues that applied minor effects to the unit the character is in, similar to how the current Virtue of Noble disdain makes the character Hate models with ranged weapons whilst granting the unit an immunity to 25% casualty based panic tests. That said, I'm happy if Games Workshop take thier time with a new book.
On a last note though, I saw someone suggest increasing the Trebuchet to 120 points. I'm normally quite happy to view points costs within the context of thier own books (in an army with no war machines, a great war machine is worth more than an equivalent in say, a Dwarf army where it would have to compete with cannons, flame cannons, organ guns etc), but with the two new empire war machines/magic machines costing 120 points each, whilst doing far more than than the Trebuchet, I think pricing might be slightly more difficult.

[Duke Ramulots]

Why would you put grail knights against GW weilding ASF troops?

[Lantern]

Because by this point in the game, I had little left and had been outmanoeuvred to a Charge or be Charged position - the whole game went soooo badly, I was laughing from it. That and most of his army was great weapon wielding ASF troops. The unit that wasn't could stand and shot around 40 shots before hitting me with 5 ranks of ASF spears. Lesser of 2 evils at that point. The bulk of my army (3 full lances) failed a panic test on turn 1, taking my main mage and scaring a large unit of Grail Pilgrims off with them. I have never lost like I lost last night, not in 15 years of using Bretonnians.

[Duke Ramulots]

Sounds like you took a right kick in the nads on that one.

[Lantern]

There still sore - ill get him next time, learned a lot from that loss , even after all these years.