War Wagon

[Velkhana's Summer]

Has anyone found any combos that works for this thing besides a light wizards net. Any spell that can make it perform more like a chariot against light armored troops?

[Morindacil]

No idea. I often just ignore it. When I have it as Markus Wulfhart, I would just use it as any normal chariot when I can or simply put it behind my melee frontline and fire into the lizard-beasts. The height of the wagon allows it to fire over your allies.

[Barser]

Didn't they buff them in last patch? I havn't used them since, but they where not very good before atleast.

[chaosbringer42]

You can use it against most lizardmen armies, because its faster than anything they have except flyers and the cavalry they almost never use. Literally use it to kite enemies while your huntsmen eat the army alive.

Other than that... its only good vs enemies that mostly use melee infantry (it dies too fast to any ranged or any cav that can catch it), and is worthless in melee itself. Its pretty good for flanking fire (they are fast enough that you can start a chain rout by getting behind enemies and letting them just shoot the enemy line, its sadly better than charging into melee).

Then you have war wagon mortars which are worthless.

[PuttBlug]

Best use for a war wagon is to break it down for parts, use the wood to get fires burning for warmth and to scare off beasts and melt the metallic parts for bullets. Otherwise it's completely useless and even detrimental as it takes 1 army slot that could be filled by a much more useful handgunner or artillery piece.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by Pastor LuL:

Best use for a war wagon is to break it down for parts, use the wood to get fires burning for warmth and to scare off beasts and melt the metallic parts for bullets. Otherwise it's completely useless and even detrimental as it takes 1 army slot that could be filled by a much more useful handgunner or artillery piece.

Basically this lol...

Slow terrible dps and low ammo. Cant even kite skinks lol. Terrible unit.

[cb4n28]

The primary advantage it has (besides the speed) is that it's guns are automatically elevated over the heads of your line so it gets a good angle of fire in more situations than most gunpowder units


If you know how to deploy your handgunners though this isn't really a big advantage

[Tricks]

War wagons sound cool in theory but in reality they're mediocre missile chariots. You're better off just choosing another unit of outriders, handgunners, artillery, or cavalry. Their advantages are supposedly that they can be used as handgunners with more mobility and elevated position, but the limited ammo and low damage make it not worth it. Same thing when used to replace outriders... yes, you will lose fewer models and therefore damage when they're attacked, but I've seen at least one battle where they ride around taking no damage but also being unable to actually make any difference in the battle whatsoever with how low their damage is.

Originally everybody said, hey, the mortar wagon is artillery that can be moved around the battlefield quickly so it's less vulnerable. Except if you're playing against AI, 99% of the time the AI is incapable of effectively countering normal artillery, so there's not much reason to give up ammo and firepower for such a trivial advantage.

[Velkhana's Summer]

its pretty good at disrupting enemy formations with charges while the gunners get free headshots, thats the non memeiest thing ive done with them that made them seem like a unit

[Happy]

Put it behind a unit of Hand gunners for extra...well... Handgunners that can shoot over things. R.I.P anything armoured in front of all that within charging distance.

[ChaosKhan]

Look at it like this:
They are faster than about any infantry unit, have the mass of chariots and flexible sustained firepower. The problem with Warhammer 2 is, that it's no game which really encourages flexible troops though, so having a unit that is good in a lot of situations usually results in a unit being worse than specialized troops since it's not hard to use units to their strenghts, especially against AI. What's extremely important with flexible units is to know what those troops can do and what not, so you can use the most viable approach depending on the situation.

Ideally, War Wagons should be used as some kind of kiting gunline. You just drive them forward, pull the archery fire with some other mobile unit like a lord and kite approaching infantry under sustained fire to your infantry line. That is not something Handgunners can do, since they would get caught. After that they can just wheel around and act as some kind of infantry disruption tool. Since driving through infantry won't stop them from firing, they can still keep delivering their payload, while impacting the opponents formation and hunting usual ranged units. Generally, there are a lot of things War Wagons can do, but none of those things have significant impact on the battle. They can fill gaps and provide support in certain situations, but that's it. I think they are a viable replacement for Outriders and Pistoliers, but that's not because WWs are good, but because I find those 2 troops are utterly useless.

Think of War Wagons as some kind of force multipliers and no standalone unit and it should be fine. There are no real "combos" for them, since combos only matter for troops that can carry hard, like Handgunners, Mortars, Tanks and Demis.