Nets for the Horses Total War Warhammer Online Battle 217

Hey what's up guys it's Oakley and you get to see an interesting battle today. It is going to be Bretonnia versus the Empire on a battlefield called Anguille. So yeah it's going to be pretty cool. So let's take a look quickly at my build. Three trebuchets, two spears with a halberd, three peasant bowmen. In the back I have just a Bretonnia knight on a flying hippogriff. And then my other forces, I think I have two grail knights and five knights of the realm. They're going to be sprinkled kind of all over the place, hidden in the woods. I wasn't sure how much artillery or firepower I would be facing. So they're kind of spread out all over the place. I do have a pegasus knight vanguard deployed on the right side hoping to snipe at artillery. And then sprinkled around I also have two paladins and they are also mounted on pegasi looking glorious. That's one of them and the other's over here. Meanwhile my enemy is deployed up through here. He has a big force that he's hoping to charge for. Lots of swordsmen up to the front ranks, crossbowmen behind that, and a spearman force. Then he has a hellstorm rocket battery backed up by halberds and gunners. He has a mounted component here and then another mounted component with a and he's got another unit hidden back here. So we'll go over this real quick. I just wanted to go over the army composition even before the first stones fall. And now we get to see a bit of that. So one of the nice things I like about kind of trebuchets, be it from Bretonnia or if it's rock lobbers, is they seem to do a lot of impact on infantry as opposed to these explosive rounds. So I'm going to kind of just sit myself up over here and yeah you can see he's not doing much damage. I'm focusing fire on his mob of men over here. Doing way more in the return fire, so that's not what you'd expect from Bretonnia which is kind of funny to see. But just kind of lobbing bombs at them. So my goal is to try and take out his artillery but then seeing how he's trying to charge forward at me, especially with the support of his flying heroes, I'm going to retarget. Meanwhile I'm going to pull up on this hill and what I want to do is just get my peasant bowmen inside the force, give them protective cover, nice line of sight, and then I'm going to pull up with my spearmen at arms and other units. I do also have a hidden knight of the realm there for support, halberd, or sorry, men at arms with polearms guarding these units and the rest of my units are still hidden. My opponent really has no clue what's facing him. Meanwhile I've kind of cobbled together a bit of a flying crew here. Two paladins and a pegasus knight can be pretty strong and my goal with them was to try and target the enemy mortars and other units in the background to try and kind of clip my enemy's wings, his ability to strike at me from a distance, and then after that I figured it'd be easy to play with him. Also by threatening the rear, what I hoped would happen is he would have to pull his empire captain, light wizard, and general of the empire back to deal with this, so I was wanting to spread his attention. But my main lord is also dangerously alone in the middle, and one of the things you'll notice is with flying units that you have a hard time kind of protecting them from other flying units, and that's one of the cheese things you'll be seeing in Total War Warhammer, is flying lords can get easily sniped with no way to land these units and protect them. I really need the support of my flying units, so I decide to bring back two paladins in order to support my hero, prevent him from being sniped, and then my pegasus knight is going to go on its lone mission. I notice this guy has been left behind, so that is going to be my objective. I then start to refocus my artillery on some of his more elite sigmar sun units, starting to do well, and my pegasus knights there are just kind of running around baiting the opponent's heroes out of position. You know my main line is still forming up, and then what he does is he does an about face, realizes that I've landed a bit of a nice strike on his artillery. So my pegasus knights do a really good job here, clean up this crew, and I'm like okay I have a little bit of time, his heroes are coming back after me, that means they're abandoning their charge so I can get a little bit more damage done in the front, and I try and get out of there, but then all of a sudden as I'm taking off, this is a really good move on my opponent. Take a look at him, he's going to start casting a spell, and just as my heroes try to get up in the air, I was poised for an escape. Boom, they get a couple nets locked on them, so that was a really clutch move for my opponent. Just as I was about to get out of there, he catches me, net cannot move, and now he comes in with the hero to charge straight into my guys, that's going to be doing a lot of damage. Pegasus empire captain also on the charge, so he's going to start stripping my knights away really really easily, that was really devastating for me. Now my paladins are going to try and swoop back in for support, but now he gets essentially a free kill on my pegasus knights. I did snipe his artillery and force his heroes back, so it's a decent trade, but really not the best. So it should have been pretty obvious when you're running around with a light wizard that that would have happened, and I really should have kept my heroes blobbed together, and as a result I start to lose way way way more men than was otherwise necessary. Here I try and tell them to pull out and attack something else, but now they get absolutely slaughtered and shreked. So it's a good start to my opponent, but also at the same time what I do with both my heroes is I charge into his handgunner line, because I know that's going to be a big threat to my heroes. I try to pull out of there again, but boom he casts another net. I don't know what the recharge rate is on that, I wasn't expecting it to be so quick, but now he catches two of my heroes, he has a roaming demigryph knight with halberds, which is great at taking out units, and now he's going to go after my paladin, so this is really scary for me. Oh and another net goes down on me again, so I didn't know you could chain stack those, that's really quite frightening. So my paladin is stuck here trying to support, he charges in with his general, so I'm losing flying units left right and center. I pop an ability on him to regain his health, trying to save me. My hero meanwhile comes and snipes a crossbowman, so while this is all going on I'm like, I have to get an advantage. So I all of a sudden pull out with all of my cavalry, I don't think my opponent was anticipating this. Grail knights from the near by woods just swarms through the front lines. Meanwhile I'm going to hold the back lines with my spears, and look at the glorious charge of Bretonnia out across the open fields, swarming in. So the enemy yes, may be trying to snipe at my heroes, they've killed one paladin, and the other one's trying to kill two, but they've done all this at the abandonment of the army. And so now look at these tremendous blows I'm getting in, my lord also pulls out of this fight, he's going to go after Sigmar's sons. My artillery is targeting this force and now I start to get in on him. Had I had a similar net I would have pinned his guys, but nonetheless I'm left to just charge in with my knights. Look at this glorious charge of the Rohirrim type scenario here. Oh god I love knights so much. All these empire swordsmen going to waste, caught up against cheap Bretonnia spearmen and I'm going to go after them. And now we have a bit of a dance of the heroes, so my enemy is really pissed at what I just pulled off on him with this charge. My trebuchets are getting shots off and he's going to try and tackle me. I do punch back at some of his light wizard, but now with his lord coming in here I know that I'm no match, so I try and use my speed to get out of there. His net almost catches me, but by accident it catches some of my trebuchets which is totally fine. And then I try and pull out of there. Meanwhile I'm just trying to buy time. My knights have mercilessly slaughtered his entire army out in the open. This is not where empire footmen want to be caught out, so they slaughtered his whole force. And I'm now just trying to dodge away with my hero here. I have bowmen and other units trying to lend supporting fire. It seems to be working, this empire captain is starting to lose a fair amount of health. And what I'm trying to do with my hero is tell him to attack something on the ground, because if I can get him to land then he's safe. Unfortunately I was not able to and there should really be an ability to land your heroes at will, because you get ridiculous scenarios like this where I'm dodging around with lots of nearby troops, so it's kind of unfortunate. And all of a sudden he causes my hero to retreat. Meanwhile the back lines of the empire is not much. It's kind of starting to rally over by this mortar, but yeah. I pop a bunch of abilities on my hero, get some more healing potion going on, and yeah I do bring him up to full strength, but look at this war party he has chasing behind him. And he catches me ******* again with the net, just as I was about to get out of range. Although it does give me opportunity to concentrate fire with all of my crossbows, and I also have trebuchets targeting him. My paladin did also come back to try and get in the But my lord ******* gets caught in another net, and so this is not looking good. Like I said with all the support on the ground you'd think you'd be able to do something, but no unfortunately it's not going to be the case. I'm getting kind of desperate with all my trebuchets. They've been told to target his lords up in the air, so let's take a look at that. Most of the shots missing, but some of the archers and then are either starting to hit him. He's got an arrow in his heel, so my paladin sacrificing himself to hold the enemy steady while I fill him full of arrows. Light wizard sent to kill my lord, and yeah we'll see how this goes. Not looking super promising, but I do land a couple direct hits on his hero, but somehow their health is stabilized. I guess he did pop a couple potions, and now I'm caught in the odd position with circling lords overhead, and I'm going to try and shoot them down with some anti-air fire here. My paladin does come back, but now I'm caught where this would be okay if I could just hold out and shoot at them all day, but my enemy still has some remaining units that are starting to coalesce together. So I sent out my knights, knights of the realm sent forward, and now I'm going to issue forth. He's got the magic gun unit here, silver bullets hand gunners with ethereal shot, and I didn't quite think they had range on me, but I didn't quite want to test it, so what I do is I pull out of there. This is not the engagement I can take preemptively, so I pull out of there before he does too much damage, and I'm going to wait for more guys to come in. So I'm pulling all of my knights. Let's go ahead and watch some of this. More knights of the realm, and now we're going to do a classic, you know, splitting up maneuver. More reinforcements going to be coming in. The enemy heroes are still circling in the distance, but it's not going to be enough to save his artillery here. That gets just clobbered. So I take that force out, and then I know he has demigryph knights over here, so I feint an attack on this side, and then I pull out once his guys get triggered, and I already knew that was going to happen, so I had preemptively pulled these guys over on the side. So he does land a couple strikes, shoots two, three of my guys, but now I'm in a position to charge on all fronts into the back of these gunners, so watch this ----. Boom! That is awesome. Just deserves. Charging through the front, doesn't even matter that it's against halberds. All kinds of units coming in here. Yeah, the royal altdorf griffites are in, but I've clobbered this massive units. The enemy hero is going to try and come in and save the day, and now the empire captain is going to pop some abilities. I don't know what he did, but my guys are terrified all of a sudden. I guess with the general of the empire, my guys start to shatter despite having the enemy within their grips, but grail knights try and come in to save the day. He casts a net on me. Once again, that ability seems to be a bit overpowered. Casting double nets on all my guys stops my entire charge here, and then commits everything to this fight, so I circle around through the back. I'm trying to target the enemy hero with my trebuchets. They pull out of there and let the griffites do the work. Oh, one of my own knights goes flying, and now I'm forced to throw everything into this fight. We'll see how this goes. My bowmen are going to come in, and now he decides to go after my paladin, knowing how much of a morale boost he has in keeping me alive. I try and bait him into my peasant bowmen. Now they're unloading on this empire captain, so he's just going to land and tear me to pieces, but that's an opportunity for my trebuchet forces to start to do their work. The entire empire force at this point has been destroyed except for the griffite, still at 18 men, but their health is low. I do finally spot an opportunity to go after this pesky light wizard. I get the drop on him, and I'm finally going to take him off. He preemptively casts a net on me, and again is able to get away. Then he does a little switcheroo on me, and comes in with his two other heroes, and destroys my paladin. I was getting pretty pissed about that net ability. It seemed to always screw me over, never able to take out the lords, but in the background here, the griffites are starting to go down slowly but surely. It's taking me a long time. A lot of my units are starting to break griffites. I was still at 18, but having lost a fair amount of health, they're going to start dropping here really soon. I do bring in more and more of my units, but at the same time, his guys are starting to come back, and yeah, it's not looking super good for me as I try and catch one of his empire captains on the ground. I'm doing a fair amount of damage, but the griffite's here to save the day, and the empire general is going to be enough to seal the deal for the empire. So that's it for the battle, pretty much. It came down to hero use from my opponent. My cavalry charge, I have to say, was really freaking awesome. The slaughter of the empire army here out in the green fields was just so representative of a Bretonnia move. Hiding in the forest, charging out, and smacking the side of that, it was great. I obviously ended up losing because the heroes got stripped away by a really nice play from my opponent using a variety of different heroes. The net of ementoc, I believe, seems a bit overpowered. I probably could have beaten this had I balled up my flying heroes a bit better. That's something you see online a lot, is these death balls of flying heroes. I don't like to do it because it's super cheesy, so what I would have done is had pegasus knights, my hero, and then two paladins, and that definitely would have destroyed my opponent, but what he could have done is use the net of ementoc to just, if I was in a death ball, to nab all of my guys. So it'd be interesting to see how that would play out, but at the same time, he had an opportunity to shut down that death ball if I attempted it. So it's a cool play on his behalf. I think he has a very powerful build-ish, given how micro-heavy he was using those guys. If he's able to focus on the rest of his army at the same time, it could be pretty strong, but just the sheer waste of forces up through the front lines really destroyed him that go around. Let's go ahead and end the replay and take a look at some of the final stats here, kind of see how things played out. Holy ----! 250 kills on the grail knights. Everyone here getting loads of kills, just massacring his infantry. Yeah, my guys just got all around really good kills. Look at his force! Almost no one, look at his, you know, 90% of his army here got no kills, and it all came down to the griff knights here, holding their own. And even the heroes didn't have that much, it's just my morale with the general sniping there ended up collapsing me, which is a very viable, if cheesy, tactic that you'll see used in Total War Warhammer pretty frequently. But anyways, I do like this matchup of Bretonnia versus the Empire. I can't wait till we get a potential Bretonnia update in the future. I mean, this is, you know, a good battle with bare bones against someone who has access to a whole roster, different types of heroes with cool spells that they've rolled out with, plus, you know, regiments of renown. Can't wait till Bretonnia gets its own treatment in the future. But anyways, that is it. I hope you guys did enjoy. I have a really sweet spot for Bretonnia. I don't know why, I just love the glory of the knights. I guess I got a hankering for a return to Medieval 3, perhaps. But anyways, hope you guys did enjoy this one. Stay tuned for more, and see you in the next one. Peace out.