What do you think of Flagellants?

[Babarigo]

I've always found this unit a little bit lacluster so I decided to make some tests:

On a clear 1v1 against an Empire Swordsman the Flagellant won with only 700 hp left and 15 models. Considering that the Flagellants cost 600 gold instead of 400 gold for the Swordsmen I think it's not a very good result.
I've tried to use them as flankers so I did another test against one Orc Big Uns.
1 Swordsman to hold to Orc Big Un and using the Flagellant to flank on the rear and the other time 1 Swordsmen to hold the Orc Big Uns and 1 Swordsmen to flank on the rear. The results where better with the flagellant since the holding Swordsmen had 25% HP at the end instead of 10% when Flanking with a Swordsmen. Of course if I take into account that there will probably be ranged units in the backlines that could deal massive damage to Flagellants the result would be very different.

Still I'm not really convinced considering their higher price and their less diverse roles on the battlefield. This is of course without mentioning that they are extremely vulnarable to missile fire. For 650 gold, the DE have Black Ark Corsairs. They are as good as flankers but they have very good armor and can be used as a frontline without being destroyed by low tier infantry like Flagellants. Some physical resistance would be nice just like the Savage Orcs got.

Also even if I not play much mp I watch replays on YouTube and I don't remember seing Flagellants compared to TWW1 where they were much more common.

What are your feelings about his unit?

[Fey Dragonette]

Physical resistance representing their insanity to ignore limited/minor pain/injuries would be cool.

I definitely find them lackluster and only ever use them in Volkmars army

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Originally posted by Babarigo:

IWhat are your feelings about his unit?

I think they're trash.




The price of an expensive unit, the recruitment nastiness of an expensive unit, the melee defence of Zombies. :/

[Hurricane]

Decent under 1 lord and thats it.

Pretty meh unit and bleeds like crazy so dont expect to beat 2v1 stacks using them.

They fight to the death though just very squishy. Fun unit overall specially to just spam them and charge. They are kinda like cheap slayers but no al. Just zerg your enemy amd flank him. Youll win but take losses vrs most the early game.

[Chameon]

In singleplayer, I use them if I'm done with Skarsnik's ♥♥♥♥ early on. Getting up a stack of lots of them, and Skarsnik can't play around them, and you'll just beat through his walls. Yeah, they're all dead, but so'z Skarsnik. I don't really use them for that much else. When I experimented, they were just too inconvenient to reload inbetween shots. It's better to use swords or spears in the same circumstances and vary your forces with archers and etc, and not have to worry about doing more damage to your own guys then the others guys with your volleys.

That said, they're pretty okay against things that depend on fear and terror, like zombies and skeletons. You still need to manually replace them after basically every fight though, and overall they're probably not worth the wins they'd let you squeeze out comparing them to basic swords / spears.

[Kamen Rider]

unbreakable tarpit unit is their purpose

unlike empire swordsman they are better at holding the line

[Wyvern]

Theyre maybe 25-50 gold overpriced but that's about it. They're unbreakable, which is huge for a faction that is so dependent on either hammer and anvil tactics or masses of shooting. You don't bring flagellants to win battles, you bring them to stall while your dakka or cav wins, with strength of the penitent giving them some physical resist+MD when theyre losing, they hold ok, and they'll trade rather effectively vs some softer units.

[Ashantai]

They have their uses, mainly for just getting in the way of the enemy. Unless fighting trash they won't do massive damage especially against armour.

However, they will literally die to the last which makes them useful in cases where you need to keep an enemy back. Siege battles on the defence are good as you can usually global recruit them in 1 turn they can give you a good force for holding a wall.
In battle they're great holding off an enemy whilst your missiles and artillery turn the enemy into paste.

However, they are useless against missiles or cavalry which will shoot them down or ride through them.

One memorable battle I had as the Empire had me against two Skaven armies. 4 units of Flagellants and a mortar held off an entire reinforcing army of Skaven long enough for me to smash the other force and wheel around, though every one of them perished doing it.

So they're useful in small numbers against certain opponents. Forget it against elves or lizardmen, but against Skaven, Orcs or even undead armies they can do good work.

[Harmania]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Decent under 1 lord and thats it.

[boogada]

I use them to try to tie up an expensive unit or two while artillery fires into them.

[Big Moustache]

I unlock Volkmar's quest and they are gone.

[Babarigo]

Yeah I should have mentioned that they are unbreakable but still I don't find them good to serve as an anvil. They have 10 Melee defense, that's extremely low, you can't hold the line with such poor defensive stats. Even if they are unbreakable they take so much damage in melee that they will in most of the time be completely wiped out before a unit of Spearmen with shield routs. The Flagellants cost 225 gold more than a unit of Spearman with shields.
If I give chevrons to the Spearmen with shields to be lvl 9 for a cost of 583 gold, they will hold a unit of Orc Big Uns for 5 minutes and 20 seconds and leave the Orc unit 20% HP. The Flagellants will be completely killed within 2 minutes and the Orcs will have 55% HP.

If I take an Halbadier unit, who costs only 75 gold more, the performance is not even close. The Halbadiers have expert charge defense which allows them to negate charges of every unit in the game. The armor piercing values also mean that they can significanlty arm high tier infanty where the Flagellants just get trashed.
Of course the Flagellants don't have anti large nor charge defense which makes them very vulnerable to cavalry charges.

The only case where they are better is agaisnt a fear based army with additionnal leadership debuffs. Probably the Vampire Counts since they also lack of ranged units. Still in everyother case Spearmen and Halbadiers are more cost effective while being more polyvalent.

If they had their melee attack ad melee defense inverted combinded with strenght of the penitent that gives them +14 melee defense and 15% physical defense when they are loosing they would hold their line for ages and be able to outperform the polearm units of the Empire.
The thing is that they don't have the stats of the role they would be the more suited to fulfill. They have a mix of offensive charateristics and defensive ones. At the end they can't do neither of them effectively.
On the other hand they perform very poorly offensively. They end up with 15% just to root a unit of shielded Men-at-Arms. The Savage Orcs destroys them for 50 less gold.
I don't think there is a so poorly cost effective unit in the Empire roster.
Does someone have a replay of an online match where they were used properly? I'd like to see if the best players mange to do something good of them.

Anyway, I hope they are going to get some love at the upcomming patch just like the pistoliers did in the past and who are now a pretty decent unit.

[Sn3z]

In campaign the problem with the unit is it has no other higher tier unit that replaces them, they act like reserve slots for Empire knights and are best used to tie up early game fast cavalry as Empire does have some issues until they can get to the heavy stuff but they will suffer so a good replenishment rate is in order, they do give pistoliers/militia/crossbow some targets. I have been using more laterly flagellants and pistoliers but eventually switch to knights and outriders.

I always say get cavalry(Empire knights) before putting artillery into your army that way you can skip over flagellants, flagellants have more synergy with artillery based army but Empire strength in composition comes from its cavalry in late game this fact hurts flaggellants as they are so much more of a dead end in composition, also seems as you be facing most likely VC in the early game getting cavalry is more of a priority then artillery.

If Empire was to get some missing units perhaps Flagellants would have better prospects. The unit seems over tiered aswell but I think if CA were to move it to T2 they would have to have another building requirement like the blacksmith T2.

[Coldhands]

I like Flagellants against the Vampire Counts, because they'll hold much longer than swordsmen against tides of skeletons and zombies. So I generally send Volkmar & Co. east to lead the charge against the undead, but I tend not to use Flagellants anywhere else.
They feel like they've got a little too much glass and not quite enough cannon to be real useful anywhere the enemy doesn't have a lot of fear effects. Or maybe they just cost too much.

[Iriath Zhul]

They're very very good when augmented by Volkmar, against undead. Since they don't break under fear, so they can go toe-to-toe as long as the undead do. I found them extremely useful against Vampires and Tomb Kings. ESPECIALLY since fodder infantry tend to have low melee defence so the Flagellants rip them apart.

[Kinja]

If you're asking about multiplayer only i have no experience with that since i don't really care for it. For campaign tho Empire is probably still my most played faction across both games and imho they're a pointless unit unless it's early game and you're playing Volkmar. There's just so many all around better options that they simply don't deserve even one of your 20 army slots imho. Which i guess sort of fits with the TT, where i'v only seen them used very rarely as well.