Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

I'm generally in favour of praying before battle because it seems like good value for losing a turn.

I just wondered what the Bretonnia generals tend to do. I was thinking of deploying a bret army in a future battle. I have one but have never used it !!! (I use the knights as Empire sometimes though).

Do we have any Bretonnian generals out there or anyone who used to be ? I'm thinking of trying Brets out, I bought a load (and I mean a load !) of cavalry from eBay which I was using for my Empire army but figured that, if my opponent doesn't mind, I'd make them pretend to be Brets - all they really need to do is eat more garlic

Anyway, I thought I would probbaly pray before battle but want to know what other people's experience is playing as or against Brets.

To be honest, they seem a bit of a dull army. I liek teh army book, it's got plenty of colour to it, just like the Ogres but there just aren't enough options for my liking. Still, I thought I may aswell give it a try.

Sigmar
I used to play the Brets and the biggest thing with them is to get the charge in. If not they can be beat fairly easily, at least with me as the general . Anyway the peasants have a very low WS so I only ever had some for archers. I love the knights and what makes them so nice is the different variations with which you can paint them. A nicely painted Brettonian army always takes notice in tournament play. As for praying, I think its only natural that all Brets pray to the lady before battle but I don't remember for sure.

You will very much like to pray, since there are TONS of reasons for this:

- For obvious reasons, you get a Ward save
- In most games you will want to have your opponent move to you FIRST, just to increase the likelihood that you can charge in turn one.
- Also, if he must start, it is also very likely that most of his shooting and magics will not reach your troops
- at the end of the game, you get the last turn, and this is in my opinion something a lot of players underestimate. You have the ability to seek out table quarters, decide whether it is or is not worth it to try to wipe out this-and-that unit, you are able to decide to either charge an enemy, or not and move towards an objective of sorts (and claim or disclaim!), etc, etc, etc.

If you instead decide to take the first turn, you get:
- ...first move...is that a good thing?
- NOTHING ELSE

You do the math

Sigmar

One of the bret players in my old grp would use a 25 man peason block and a 20 man skiermish archers. Very effective. Most brets say that Men at Arms are too slow to keep up with calvary and that is true, but when they hit comnat with the knights for static combat res, bret wins hands down. He was carfeul to how he set up his charges and used his menat arms very well. He seldom lost. Next he 20 man skirmish formation was in front of his whole force. he march them forwards as a meat sheild for his knights, then fled them or moved them out of his knights and men at arms and then did massive charges.

Just some observations from my limited gaming.

The answer is yes, you must always pray.

The ward save is what makes the Bret army actually survive, otherwise there is too much stuff that would wipe you out. Not to mention some of the reasons that dims mentioned as well.

There are 2 Bret players where I usually play and both ALWAYS pray.

it would not be brokktonnia without the ward save

Lol - i like it

It depends on your army list.

Without praying:

Grail Knights, and any knight characters with the grail vow start with the blessing anyway.

There is an arcane item that bestows the blessing onto her and her unit once per game... meaning take a damsel with it, when she's with a unit that doesn't have it, and badda boom badda bing, they've got it. This can also be used to restore the blessing to a unit that has lost it.

So if you're going infantry heavy, and all your characters have the grail vow, praying isn't quite as automatic.

With Praying:

Grail Knights, Heros and lords with the Grail Vow.

All your casters

Heroes with other vows (for example a Paladinw with the Questing Vow to lead a unit of Questing Knights - the guys with the Great Weapons)

Your core and special knights, KOTR, Knights Errant, Pegasus Knights.

The Grail Reliquae. (Worth Praying for all on its own)

So if you're using a Leoun list for example (Which puts all peasantry to special choices meaning you're probably running almost entirely knights with MAYBE a Reliqaue and/or mounted Yeomen, probably no Trebuchet as he removes the 0-1 restriction on Grail Knights as well) you're probably looking at MSU KOTRealm/KErrant making the blessing nearly required.

Interesting, thanks Brett and welcome to the forum too.

I had just presumed that praying was a near must. Do many people opt for large numbers of infantry in a Bretonnian army ? If so, why would they ? I can't really see much benefit unles you're simply hoping to suprise an enemy who's expecting all cavalry.

Thanks for your comments,
Sigmar

Its not common, but its not unheard of. That icon can also give the blessing to a unit of Men At Arms, so that can be a shocker. Two large blocks of about Unit Strength 30 infantry with 4+ Close Combat AS, and 5+ Ward Saves can be mighty insane.

There's one guy who takes pride in going to the extremes and has more than 150 peasants... that's M@A, bowmen, and the ever glorious Grail Reliquae.

I love the Grail Relique, what a fantastic idea for an army. Hopefully they'll do something crazy like make it unbreakable or something in their next update. but even then, Ld 8 stubborn ain't too shabby.

Don't forget Hatred. I just won a tournament, with a very very tight first game that was basically won by PK holding fast until the GR could get into the fight, then hatred took over, and it was all over.

Whats PK? (For those of us without the known lingo).

KOTR= Knights of the Realm
KE= Knights Errant
M@A= Men At Arms
PB=Peasant Bowmen
MY= Mounted Yeomen
GR= Grail Reliqaue
QK= Questing Knights
PK= Pegasus Knights
GK= Grail Knights