The Empire's New Clothes

For me the new Empire Book is pretty important in the context of Warhammer Fantasy battles.

Under 8th Edition The Empire had become a very competitive army that had various tools to make it a strong all-rounder e.g. difficult to shift units, a strong magic defense, access to a breadth of spell decks, solid warmachines, cheap characters, flyers (through the Captasus) etc.

Where other races had the hard edges knocked off their list builds The Empire was generally restricted by a warmachine cap and by a limit to a single Steam Tank. Crucially it had the best warmachine, the Great Cannon, in the Special slot and a workaround that transferred Flagellants from Rare to Core.

So the past 18 months have been a golden time for The Empire. Whereas they had previously been an uncommon army, now they regularly populate the top tables. Here in Wellington, Jack has won Homecon I and Runefang V with them in the past six months.

However one thing that was evident was that more and more with The Empire there was a single build. Yes, some people might use Swordsmen while others used halberdiers, there might be variation in the choice of lores, but the army typically was:

Arch Lector on War Altar

BSB in 1+ Armour on Barded Horse with Stubborn Banner

Level 4

Pegasus Captain with Casket

Level 1 Scroll Caddy

Big block of State Troops

Bunker unit for Wizards

Large unit of Knights

2 Cannons

Steam Tank

Other units as per General's individual preference.

Every competitive list looked like this. Every one.

Why this new book is important is that we will see if Games Workshop can provide a variety of competitive builds rather than the single one we see now. For it to be a success it must challenge some of the current 1+ choices while giving a leg up to those currently not seen. And it must do this while not adjusting its overall power too much.

If you take the four books released in 8th Edition to date - Orcs and Goblins (small boost), Tomb Kings (static), Ogre Kingdoms (big boost) and Vampires (too soon but likely moderate decline) - the power levels have looked to balance towards the centre. The Empire was just above this centre - but one-dimensional. This is not an exact process and depends on the local meta and whether any comp levers are pulled.

I am heartened that there have been some howls over the weekends as more information is released. This suggests that a few sacred cows have been sacrificed which will see the army re-balanced but importantly remove 1+ options. This means post-release all options in the book will be considered as the "new" build is determined. Hopefully, this will take years and even then not full coalesce as GW have got things right.

The devil as they say, will be in the detail. I'm excited about this release.