Editing Warhammer/Tactics/6th Edition/The Empire (section)

=== Know your Weaknesses and know your Strengths ===
Empire (as expected) is a "Jack of all trades master of none" type of army, meaning that you can try almost any playstyle with the Empire, but they'll never truly excel at it unlike other races. However even though they are jack of all trades, they still do some army compositions better (like heavily focusing on ranged combat) than others (heavily focusing on melee infantry combat) and don't have access to some (mass fear type of army). 

One thing that Empire player should understand is that your melee infantry isn't usually gonna do amazing damage, no matter what you do. They're all locked at 1 attack only for the most part and if they somehow have more it's usually WS3 S3 so that won't do much damage anyway. How does your empire infantry can win combat then? By static combat resolution. Your guys are cheap, you can bring usually more state militia than enemy can bring his core units for the same price. Sure, chaos warriors will completely destroy any state militia in combat, but can 10 chaos warriors do enough damage to chew through 20-25 militia? Assuming you've bought command squad, each turn you get +5 to combat resolution so chaos warriors are put at high disadvantage every combat round. Add to that the fact that you can charge flank with detachment of Halberdiers or Free Company and suddenly you're making them test for panic and get additional points to combat resolution. Hell you might even kill 1-2 bastards on charge. 

As you can see, Empire prefers quantity over quality in their troops (at least if said troops aren't knights or greatswords or flagellants) which also stretches to ranged combat too. Yes, your crossbowmen and handgunners are gonna hit on 4+ at best most of the time, but you can bring a lot of them and with enough of them you might even break you opponent before fight properly starts. Bunch of handgunners/crossbowmen backed up by Great Cannons and you can completely blast them away if there isn't lots of terrain. Throw in some huntsmen and pistoliers for additional frustration. 

If you actually want to play melee focused Empire army then you'll have to spam Knights and pistoliers. Knights are excellent core choice and on charge they can do a lot of work with WS4 S5(6 if you've upgraded to inner circle) + they'll likely survive being hit back, since they're wearing full plate armour on barbed horses with shields. Knights of the White Wolf can even be used as anvil type of unit, since thanks to their hammers they'll hit with WS4 S4(or 5 if inner circle) even if they didn't charge which still is way better, than what your infantry can do. And while knights charge head on and tank most things, pistoliers do flanking charges with up to 2 S4 ap attacks which will likely make your enemy suffer. 

I'd say the armies against which Empire struggles most are those which focus heavily on fear and terror. Because pretty much no Empire unit (besides knights but only if you take certain lords and flagellants) have easy access to immune to psychology rule. At best you can stay inside your LD9 aura's of Elector Count/Templar Grand Master, but once you start loosing combat against foe's with higher Unit Strength you ain't gonna stick for a while. Against non-undead factions you can counter that by simply trying to blast them as much as you can before they get close, however against undead you can only hope that your guys are gonna win combat.