how to play bretonnia

[VexingWeeb - Discord]

Anyone have any tips on how to play bretonnia effectively in mutliplayer and/or campaign?

[Silamon]

Use infantry as glorified meat shields. Even the best infantry Bretonia has is mediocre at best. They have decent enough archers and artillery though. The meat of Bretonia is *entirely* focused on the amazing cavalry though. Try and keep a mix of shock cav and melee cavalry, cycle charge the stuff infantry is face tanking with shock cav when you can, melee cav can be good at tying up enemy units and dealing with enemy cavalry too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptN_4yHeTM

[A_COOC]

Don't bother dealing with the Orc Incursions, use the uprisings to farm gold and EXP. If you try and Blitz Marienburg, don't take Grussels, it's not that great and you'll have the Norse on your ass earlier. And don't expect to expand outwards very much early. You'll mainly be confederating early in the game.

[FloatingOrb]

A few points for playing possibly the most thematic campaign from the first game.
1) you are not a conquerer, you are a crusader. Fight the evil greenskins (i also recommend farming incursions) then take out the vampires. Usually you can time it with confederating the other brettonians and moving on to the skaven. Late game join the empire against chaos.
2) pegasus knights arent worth the cash. Mounted yeomen are a trap, you need the meat shield. Multiple armies do not have stacking upkeep for brettonia. Damsels of Life are REALLY GOOD!
3) 2-4 peasant archers are really solid snipers. Bad stats, but theres like a billion of em.
4)seiges are miserable. I recommend having an army of 4-6 trebuchets to shell the defenders, but knights into lance formation, and just shoving it into the defenders throat.
5)economy is actually really strong but finicky. I recommend getting every trade source you can since brettonia can actually trade with lots of people. Farms in small cities, industry in large ones. Marrienburg is really a no brainer to grab, it is so profitable. Caveat is if you are playing a campaign to support the empire, in which case give it to karl.
6) the elves are douchebags. IDK why, but they love to rain on your parade. I trust skarsnik more.
7) KILL SKARSNIK

[Silamon]

A note for campaign, save your The Green Knight uses for important battles if you can. The dude is a BEAST, has incredible stats, a great usable ability, and he is ethereal which makes him nearly immune to physical damage. When you summon him he stays for a certain number of turns, I forget its like 10ish though... Anyway you only get to summon him a few times per campaign so use it wisely.

[VexingWeeb - Discord]

Thanks for all the replies guyz :3

[Galgeubuze]

with mighty cavalry, how do you take cities? hard time with siege battles

[Old Dirty Bingo Caller]

Originally posted by Galgeubuze:

with mighty cavalry, how do you take cities? hard time with siege battles

As someone said above, have an army with 4-6 trebuchets. Crush the walls/gate ( it is recommended that you make at least 2 holes in the wall) and now you can use your knights to full effects. Paladins and life-damsels help out too.

[Zeta_Enigma]

Some tips and info I would give for campaign (I play on very hard/legendary) are:

1. Take Marienburg, I always take it on turn 1 but there are mutliple strategies on getting it early, this city will help your economy tremendously and is easy to turtle.

2. Remember that in times of crisis, you can go well beyond the peasant cap as long as your economy is as strong as it should be.

3. Louen is an absolutely incredible tank and benefits a lot from ward save items.

4. Lore of Heavens damsels (you start with one) have two spellss i think are really powerful, especially in sieges: wind blast and chain lightning.

5. Peasant bowmen are extremly cost effective

6. Yeomen archers are amazing and can take the ai's attention really easily in campaign.

7. When you are sieging, make sure you break down both gates, if one is left poorly defended you can use knights and pegasus knights to quickly overwhelm it.

8. You might benefit a lot by making peace with norsca after you defeat their first invasion. (until you finish uniting Bretonnia, then slay them for ze lady!)

9. Don't underestimate the skaven because they can mess you up badly if you give them the opportunity. I would advise fighting them with powerful stacks rather than multiple weaker stacks due to their ambush mechanic.

10. Expect the wood elves to conspire against you.

11. Dwarves and Empire can easily become your greatest friends and you can sometimes ask them for gold.

12. Remember that the green knight will always appear next to your chosen first legendary lord.

13. The fey enchantress surprisingly does a lot of damage in melee due to her mist and is really powerful overall, just keep her away from high damage units.

14. Upgraded and high rank grail guardians can do very well against any non anti large infantry.

15. Use solo lords to collect treasure around the map, bretonnia has easy access to many treasure spawns.

16. Make use of venerate the lady and peasant's day commandments, especially peasant's day when you unlock Alberic's upgrades.

17. Dont be afraid to use ambush stance, the chivalry loss is minimal and a successful battle may be worth more.

18. Always focus on confederating before anything else on the tech tree.

[Zeta_Enigma]

19. to make use of paladin's "guardian" trait that reduces damage taken on any lord or hero around him. Also paladins are great anti large.

20. Use lance formation for maximum shsock and awe if you are confident the unit you are attacking will break quickly. Use normal formation for cycle charging.

[VexingWeeb - Discord]

Originally posted by Silamon:

Use infantry as glorified meat shields. Even the best infantry Bretonia has is mediocre at best. They have decent enough archers and artillery though. The meat of Bretonia is *entirely* focused on the amazing cavalry though. Try and keep a mix of shock cav and melee cavalry, cycle charge the stuff infantry is face tanking with shock cav when you can, melee cav can be good at tying up enemy units and dealing with enemy cavalry too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IptN_4yHeTM

very helpful,finally won a game with bretonnia in mutliplayer for once XD

[Wyvern]

In MP, if you wanna be competitive you focus on your cavalry play. Your best lord choice by far is the fay enchantress, with louen in a somewhat distant 2nd, though very solid in some matchups, and then everybody else being basically pointless. Usually you'll wanna go fairly light/cheap on the infantry mob and invest very heavily in cavalry, heroes or hippogryph knights. Trebs and pegasus knights are basically pure garbage and not really worth bringing. The only somewhat exception to the cav rule is dwarves, where you might find it's better to go very wide and infantry heavy, with just a few mid tier cavalry units. That does not mean you cant make great use of cav in that matchup though. It's important to stay on top of your micro when playing brettonia, but also to be an aggressive and willing to make ballsy plays like charging spears/halberds head on to achieve a full line break to reach backlines.

As an example, vs high elf defensive boxes, I'll often throw a unit of grail knights in lance formation into the enemy unit of spears to break its bracing, then throw a second unit of grail knights in lance formation into those same spears to force the breach and let the knights stream through and compromise the backline.

If you really want your core/center line/anvil to hold its ground well, I recommend bringing fay enchantress with grail guardians or, barring those, beastslayers of bastonne as a dirt cheap substitute, your men at arms are just there to bog low end garbage down and little else. Also, dont forget to use archers. Brettonian archers are incredibly cost effective and can bring great utility with their specialized ammo.


Also, while zerkovich's guide certainly isnt bad, it is quite a bit dated, I do believe that one was from the days of WH1 or very early WH2, so some things are not entirely the same anymore.

[Silamon]

Originally posted by Wyvern:

snip.


Also, while zerkovich's guide certainly isnt bad, it is quite a bit dated, I do believe that one was from the days of WH1 or very early WH2, so some things are not entirely the same anymore.

It was released in 2017, so it is after WH2 came out. And while it is a bit dated I think it is still a pretty good overview of the units.

[Fuzzyballs01 ꦙ]

they're a cavalry focussed faction
spend big on cavalry and artillery
their economy depends on their farms, so you can choose between expensive quality armies and
cheap dead armies
I use a unit mod so the infantry is less crappy, but still can't beat Empire 1vs1
it's better than what they had originally

[Old Dirty Bingo Caller]

Originally posted by Fuzzyballs01:

they're a cavalry focussed faction
spend big on cavalry and artillery
their economy depends on their farms, so you can choose between expensive quality armies and
cheap dead armies
I use a unit mod so the infantry is less crappy, but still can't beat Empire 1vs1
it's better than what they had originally

Soo cheating.. good one..

[Silamon]

Originally posted by Old Dirty Bingo Caller:

Originally posted by Fuzzyballs01:

they're a cavalry focussed faction
spend big on cavalry and artillery
their economy depends on their farms, so you can choose between expensive quality armies and
cheap dead armies
I use a unit mod so the infantry is less crappy, but still can't beat Empire 1vs1
it's better than what they had originally

Soo cheating.. good one..

Mods are not cheating unless they give you really op units, or maybe breaking the balance in multiplayer.
If he is playing singleplayer and wants more useful bretonnian infantry, that is not cheating...
I would be interested in what mod that is btw, I like brettonia theme wise but I am terrible at managing mass cavalry