Editing Warhammer/Tactics/8th Edition/Empire (section)

===Core Units===
*'''State Troops:''' These guys will likely be the backbone of your army, and are fully integrated into the Detachments system, so it is good to learn what makes them tick. They come in six flavors:
**'''Halberdiers:''' Halberdiers give you +1 Strength to your attacks, which makes them ideal for detachments so they can get into your opponent's juicy flanks. Taking shields isn't worth it; halberds are two-handed, so the shields can't be used in the Combat phase. These and spearmen are your typical 50-man horde unit.
**'''Spearmen:''' Spearmen let you fight with an extra rank, so these make natural parent units. Shields are generally worth it for a 5+ save, giving them some survivability at the cost of a parry save.
**'''Swordsmen:''' Swordsmen give you +1 WS and a shield, which increases their hardiness. They can be used either as the parent unit or a detachment, generally geared towards the former.
**'''Handgunners:''' Handgunners give you Armor Piercing and a unit leader with access to a Hochland Long Rifle, which lets him aim separately and snipe your opponent's characters; a repeater handgun, which adds two more shots to the gunline's massed fire; or a brace of pistols with too short a range on a melee-averse unit (pfft). They're Move or Shoot, so take care where you deploy them, since they shouldn't be moving around much. Can be used either as a parent unit or a detachment, and should be kept small and in two ranks where possible so everyone can shoot.
**'''Crossbowmen:''' Trades Armor Piercing for an extra 6" range. The loss of the specialty guns means you're probably better off with Handgunners unless you're taking a whole boatload of them and try to blast as much of your opponents army on the first turn. They are still Strength 4 though, good for punching elves off their dainty little feet.
**'''Archers:''' Instead of Armor Piercing or extra reach, Archers have Volley Fire, so the guys in the back rows will be more useful than ablative armor. Still not all that useful here, because why would you be deploying your ranged units in more than two ranks to begin with?  More usefully, they can move and fire during the same turn, which makes them more responsive to enemy developments, and they're considerably cheaper than Handgunners or Crossbowmen. Can be used either as a parent unit or a detachment.
*'''Free Company Militia:''' Wielding two weapons and without armor, these guys will live fast and die young. If you take them, remember that. You can field militia units as detachments, but they cannot be parent units. In theory they're good at piling a lot of attacks onto an enemy horde, but remember that supporting attacks are limited to 1 per model.
*'''Knightly Orders:''' Cavalry ain't what it used to be, so if you take them, take a dozen or more in a unit. Can be upgraded to Knights of the Inner Circle for +3 points each, which gives them Strength 4, but you can only take one unit of them in your army. There are dozens of "Order of the Thing" and "Knights of the Adjective Noun" out there, and at various times GW has introduced rules to make fluffy units of them, allowing the use of various different weapons and adding buffs and debuffs to make each order unique. These are all outdated, but with a few tweaks they'll work in 8th edition. These days, tournaments are largely a thing of the past, but if your opponent hates fun or RAW are being enforced for some other reason, they only come in two flavors, represented by the orders that get parts in the kit alongside the Reiksguard:
**'''Knights Panther/Knights of the Blazing Sun:''' Come with a shield and lance, which bumps their armor save up to 1+, and they get a +2 Strength bonus on the charge.
**'''Knights of the White Wolf:''' Fluffwise: AWW HELL TO THE YES! They are Vikings with greathammers from the deep forests of Middenland, what's not to love?. They are the closest you'll get to [[vikings]] in an Empire army. To become a Knight of the White Wolf you have have to kill a wolf with your bare hands and skin it. They wear no helmets, 'cause they are just that [[awesome]]. They wear the fur of the skinned wolf on their armor, so they look pretty badass. Crunchwise: No thank you. They come without shields, so they lose that 1+ armor save, and because they're wielding great weapons, they hit last. Sometimes that doesn't make much difference but sometimes it really will. Especially for a hard hitting and fairly expensive unit it just sucks to occasionally get hacked apart before they even get to strike. If you're taking them for fluff in your Middenland army, you maybe should consider Knights Panther. They fill the fluff equally good. But let's not be all negative; they might hit last, but keep the Strength bonus throughout the combat (and the combat will almost certainly take more than one turn) and if you're up against something that's going to hit before you anyway you may as well hit '''''hard'''''. But I'd still say that you should go with Knights Panther/Knights of the Blazing Sun.
T