Total War Warhammer/Tactics/Bretonnia

"For the Lady, as one!"

– Game battle chant for unexpendable units

"We're blessed!"

– Game battle chant for expendable units

This is the tactics page for the Total War: Warhammer version of Bretonnia.

Why play Bretonnia?

• Because you like the chivalry ideals from ancient legends and don't care about the peasant half.
• Because you enjoy throwing disposable peasant fodder at a problem until the knightly heroes show up to save the day.
• You love the sight of infantry being thrown flat-on-their-back by the force of cavalry charges.
• Because you really do believe that magical swords distributed by women in ponds are the best justification for supreme executive power.

Pros

• Cavalry: The widest selection of heavy cav in the entire game, each being able to fill out different purposes. While a minority of other faction's cav units can go fisticuffs with your horse boys, you are the cav faction.
• No $$$ required.: It's the only completely free faction. All you need is to download either the Bretonnia FLC or the Repanse FLC and you get the entire faction. (Minus 3 legendary lords if you only get Repanse.)
• Air Superiority: You can dominate the skies if you invest in it. Louen combined with Hippogriff knights or Pegasus Knights can win most if not all sky engagements, and after that you can pick and choose your fights from the sky.
• Numbers: Your peasants cost about as what you invest in their infrastructure, AKA Nothing! You and Cathay are more or less the only order factions that can effectively use swarm tactics due to how cheap they are.
• High Armor: Aside from Peasants, knights and high tier units have more armor than most and can be quite resilient.
• Good economy: Your economy is easily the strongest in the game. Farms bring in insane amounts of cash and can be built literally everywhere. The way CA intends to counter this is through the Peasant Economy, that reduces income from farms when you have too much infantry on the field, but being a good Bretonnian, you don't really use Peasants except Archers anyway. Add in trade and a de facto monopoly on wine if you control Bordeleaux, and your treasury will never be empty again.
• Easy Diplomacy: Everyone from the Order factions likes and trusts you, even the High Elves. This makes for easy trade deals and alliances, keeping your heartland safe from any outside threat.
• Lack of Supply Lines: While other factions get a percent increase in upkeep for every Lord they recruit, Bretonnia doesn't. Field as many armies as you like! Follow every army with another army consisting entirely of peasants who lack upkeep for some easy battles.
  • Warhammer III: Sadly this feature is no longer unique to Bretonnia, as the Supply Line mechanic has been cut altogether in the third entry. While this doesn't directly hurt Bretonnia, it is but another example of how dated and powercrept their core mechanics are compared to pretty much the rest of the roster.

Cons

• Piss Poor Infantry: Your Peasants fight with shitty cheap weapons at best or farming tools at worse. With bad leadership, armor, and defensive stats, even your "elite" infantry gets their booties smacked by most mid tier infantry. Playing Bretonnia means conceding the front line in most cases.
• Anti Large: Any opponent with a functioning brain will get anti large against you. Expect halberds or big anti-large monsters to try to wipe your cav out. Large units are also more susceptible to enemy missile fire and in melee skirmishes the AI can fire with impunity (it usually tries to avoid friendly fire like the plague).
• Single Entity Monster: Yep, despite having generally good anti-large bonuses, Knights of the Realm and Pegasus Knights won't be good at killing SEMs, since they will only be able to hit them with few models at a time, while SEMs are very good at dealing huge damage to models.
• Micro-Intensive: To make the most out of your cavalry, you will need to micromanage your Knights a lot. Nothing like speedrunning carpal tunnel to make you like a faction.
• Very Easy Campaign: It's fair to say that if you are not necessarily a fan of sandbox campaigns where you do not do a whole lot of map painting, Bretonnia can become very dull very fast. Once you have united Bretonnia, there is little to actually do outside of maxing out Chivalry and... that's basically it. Repanse de Lyonesse balances this out with a more unique starting position but not by much.
  • Warhammer III: Well, it is safe to say things have since grown livelier in the third game. Between Be'lakor, Grom, Kemmler, the Red Duke and Ikit/Malagor in the vicinity (not to mention the Wood Elves if they get annoyed), it's not rare to see Bretonnia reduced to a wasteland by turn 30. Alberic, having moved to Lustria to offer a smidge more variety, often finds himself getting the short end of the shit-stick when the Lizardmen, Vampire Coast or Skaven get a little riled up. Repanse has a slightly better lifespan on average, though it's rare to see her expand beyond her starting zone to any meaningful degree. In fact, most of the Confederation techs for Bretonnia are pretty useless now, since only a handful of factions will survive long enough for you to confederate them.
• Convoluted Vow System: The Vow system is as straightforward as it is convoluted and, at times, constrained in the most annoying of ways due to the weird restrictions it places on your Lords' ability to access the better units in your roster. It's not very fun trying to kill late game Greenskin, Chaos or Dark Elf armies only with Knights Errant and the garbage tier peasant infantry,(especially against their legendary lords) yet you will need to do this to get access to even the most basic of your better cavalry. While it's indeed very fluffy, you will after a while struggle to find enemies to even fulfill your vows, making you feel like Don Quixote chasing after Windmills. Picking the wrong vow at a bad time will slow down your campaign considerably.
• Fatigue: Until you get some research countering this and some perfect vigor units in the late game, expect your horsie boys to tire quickly. Cavalry tire faster than melee infantry when running and lose a significant amount of fatigue while charging — and expect to be doing a lot of both.
• Expensive Knights: The upkeep on knight units is very high even after you fulfill the necessary vows. Expect peasants to take up most of your early game armies until the economy train gets rolling.
• One-Trick-Pony: Bretonnia is known for exactly one thing: Cavalry. While you have mediocre archers and artillery, you will never be able to match the infantry of virtually any other faction, and you have no monsters and only one skimisher unit. If you tee up against a Bretonnian, you'll already know the core strategy they're going to be using against you.
  • On a battle level : Your different legendary lords offer only minimal differences in your army composition (at most, Alberic's army will have more Squires while the Fay will have more Battle Pilgrims), so expect to be easily countered in multiplayer, and all your armies to be pretty similar, making your campaign a series of battles with little variance between them.
  • On a campaign level : Much like the other non-updated races from game one, no lord-unique mechanics for you! While the chivalry mechanic itself is unique to Bretonnia, none of the legendary lords really offer much to differentiate themselves from one another, and the Chivalry meter itself isn't particularly engaging. Not to mention, excluding Repanse (who starts in Nehekhara), the three other LLs will have very similar campaigns after the first twenty turns or so.
• Horrible Replenishment: No Lord or hero skills or technologies to get a good replenishment rate (except for Louen, who gets a skill to let Knight units in his army have an actually good replenishment, and Repanse, who gives an okay rate to her army with one of her skills). If a unit loses models, it's more often than not a better idea to disband the unit entirely and recruit a new one. Yes, it's that bad.
  • Warhammer III: The third game eventually did something to correct this, by giving damsels a skill to increase replenishment casualties, but even then it just brings their replenishment to "not bad" rather than "good". And if you can't recruit enough Damsels or can't get one to an army enough, you're shit out of luck.
• You've been powercrept to shit: CA followed GW's examples, and Bretonnia has not gotten any new units or mechanics since their original release way back in the first game, nor has their roster been buffed to compensate for the global increase in power. With the third game and until their update, your supposed "elite cavalry" is actually not the best anymore. Your best ground cavalry, Grail Knights, will struggle against nearly every other race's elite cavalry (a majority of which will either beat your Knights or at least trade roughly evenly, because your Grail Knights are still balanced for Game 1 and don't have armor-piercing damage, while nearly all other factions elite cavalry do and have better stats) without having to suffer from the rest of their roster being shit. Paladins and Louen, once amazing character-killers/tanks, get folded by any generic demon character.
  • Warhammer III: Patch 3.1 did Bretonnia a few favors and gave them a sweeping series of buffs to help get them up to the current snuff of the playing field. Mass buffs across most cavalry helps Bretonnian charges leave a hell of a mark while the Blessing of the Lady changing from a Physical Resistance buff to a flat Ward save give knights much better staying power against the daemonic hordes and their Magical Attacks. Though their roster remains fairly anemic by modern standards, pretty much everything they do have also received a bit of a retooling (mostly buffs) so that each unit stays impactful.

Universal Traits

• Blessing of the Lady: If one of your armies does a lot of good stuff (conquering enemies, never retreat, not using cowardly tactics such as ambushes) it earns the favor of Bretonnia's favored deity. The Blessing is really spectacular as it gives a flat 20% physical resistance to all your units. Beware: retreating once means the loss of the Blessing until that lord earns it again.
  • It got changed in Warhammer III to be 15% ward save (flat damage resistance) instead, since Daemonic factions have easy access to magical damage, which made the former iteration of the Blessing useless against them.

• Lance Formation: The Mighty Duck's Flying V is a trap. Not anymore! It now add mass, making it way better at the intended function of smashing through infantry lines. You may still want to carefully choose when to use it or not, but it now has its own merits and it can really make a difference if used tactically.

• Vows: Your most crucial campaign mechanic. Your Lords need to fulfill vows to the Lady to get access to your best bits. You can still recruit them, but they will cost considerably more upkeep (up to 5 times as much as you would pay normally). These vows are essentially mini-quests that become more difficult with each Level, of which there are 3. You always get to choose between 3 such quests but beware: once you take a pledge, you cannot change it. The main problems with the vows comes when sometimes the conditions of the vows cannot be fulfilled anymore (for example, one quest requires your Lord to defeat a Greenskin Legendary Lord, of which there are not many around by the time of the late game), keeping your Lord stuck with a Vow that he cannot fulfill, and damning your army to only use Knights Errant for the rest of the game. Be wary of that. Picking the wrong vow at the wrong time can screw with your campaign more than you would like. The only exceptions to this is Louen Leoncoeur, who starts with all vows already unlocked, and Repanse, who starts with the first two already completed.

• Knight: Knights, forming the meat and potatoes of your armies, are literally in a special class all their own. They are unbothered by the plight of their Peasant foot soldiers and do not suffer leadership penalties when peasants start running away.

• Peasant: Expendable with extra steps, really. As the trait implies, all of your peasant units have this perk, which itself is really just a flag for Knight units to interact with. Peasants get a leadership buff if they're within range of a Knight unit, but that's about all that can be said for them.

Legendary Lords and Subfactions

• King Louen Leoncoeur: Your dedicated Duellist/Tank lord. The Royarch of Bretonnia and a bona fide Grail Knight rumored to have even kissed the Lady of the Lake. Whether this is exactly true or not doesn't matter, in Total War: Warhammer he is an expensive, balls out, wrecking ball of pure Grail Knight awesomeness. There is little that can give him much trouble, he flat out stomps nearly anything and anyone that dares to face him head on. If you like, you can even put him on a royal Hippogryph. Still, very expensive for what he does.

On the campaign map, he starts in the main Bretonnian faction of Couronne and, more importantly, has all vows already unlocked at the start. his start primes him for a crusade against Marienburg and Norsca. His Lord Effect gives his entire army a bonus to Leadership and Melee Attack when fighting Chaos forces (Daemons, Norsca, Warriors of Chaos, Beastmen and Chaos Dwarfs).

• The Fay Enchantress: Your caster Lord wielding the Lore of Life, a buffer/all-rounder caster. Comes with a few buffs, and while she has little armour, she can be surprisingly decent at killing infantry, since her Mist of the Lady ability deals constant damage to all enemies around her at no cost.

In campaign she starts in the lower half of Bretonnia, being situating around Estalia (currently an Empire clone without mods), the Wood Elves, Dwarfs, Beastmen, Grom the Paunch, and possibly Skaven if they move north. In the early game she can recruit extra peasants and has stronger casualty replenishment, with her personal army focusing on Grail Guardians and Battle Pilgrims.

• Alberic de Bordeleaux: Your dedicated Anti-large Lord, buffing his army's Knights of the Realm to make them even deadlier against monsters, and Foot Squires to make them actually useful against enemy elite infantry. His Trident of Manaan gives him the ability to use a water-based Wind spell twice per battle, and greatly reduces attrition damage taken at sea, so feel free to go pirate/black ark hunting with him.

He is the money maker of Bretonnia in the campaign, getting a bonus to trade, especially since he is closest to Ulthuan. His other bonuses reduce recruitment time for cavalry, increase recruit experience for knights, and Knights of the Realm have better melee defense. For most of WH1 and WH2, players would often assign him to sitting next to a big port city like Marienburg since he was more useful for boosting income than he was at fighting.

• • In WH3, he got a new faction and a new starting position in Lustria with the possibility of confederating with Brettonia later, similar to Imrik's campaign. If the player doesn't intervene, his AI tends to ally with Marcus Wulfhart and tag team battle everyone else on the continent. His Lord Effects also got updated. He now starts with total immunity to sea attrition, increased Melee Defense for his whole army, and that bonus is increased further for Knights of the Realm.
• Repanse de Lyonesse: Bretonnian Jeanne d'Arc, if Jeanne didn't meet a tragic end and lives way, WAY longer. Some 500 years after driving the servants of Chaos from Bretonnia, she now leads an Errantry War against the undead of Nehekhara because... reasons (probably because ultra-conservative Bretonnian lords don't want a PEASANT GIRL leading Lyonesse). In combat, she is a Questing Knight lord, being a dedicated infantry slayer and granting bonuses to help your troops win the grind.

Unfortunately, as an Errantry War faction, she can't confederate with the other Bretonnian lords, but she can with other Errantry factions in the Southlands with little fuss. She is an old faction total war crusader, giving a bonus to peasant units and Questing Knights, refilling their water supply from fort to fort as they purge the desert of filth

• • The last one got made completely redundant when Warhammer III added a Landmark near her start position that gives desert attrition immunity to the faction holding it.
• Sir John Tyrewald: (campaign only) Not a mainline Legendary Lord, but a buffed unique vanilla Lord with a unique model, a tweaked skill tree, and prepackaged with his own Legendary Hero (Donna). Leads the Knights of Origo, who will confederate with Repanse early on barring early elimination shenanigans.

Unit Roster

Generic Lords

• Bretonnian Lord: A discount King Louen. Out of the box, he does all the same things as the Legendary knight lords, minus their fancy buffs and bound spells. A decent melee character who can help you save gold to spend on more knights (hard to go wrong with more of those).

• Prophetess (Heaven, Life, Beasts): Lord version of a Damsel. Saves you on lord and mage in MP making her a cheaper option if you want to focus your gold on other aspects of an army. In the campaign, recruiting a new lord is the fastest way to get a wizard early game.

Heroes

• Paladin: Bodyguards of your lords, but most notable as gooners with a roaming pack on Pegasus mounts being a dive bombing threat to most units.
• Damsel (Heavens, Life, Beasts): Your wizards. They have an aura that reduces magic damage for your nearby units.
• Henri Le Massif: (Chevaliers De Lyonesse only) Repanse's right-hand big boy and the only Paladin in the game with access to a Hippogryph mount. Deals a lot more AP damage. Fun trivia: Big Hank still counts as a large unit even when on foot.
• Donna Don Domingio: (campaign only) A tweaked vanilla Paladin with an alliterative name, a sweet scarf, and an allegiance to a faction that's likely to confederate with Repanse early on.
• The Green Knight: The first Legendary Hero. A ghostly hero that lasts for 15 turns (25 in WH2) every time you summon him. He is basically a Paladin that trades the bonus vs large for drastically increased damage and defense, 70% physical resistance, unbreakable, and the inability to be killed or wounded after the battle (what with already being dead). The downside is that you only gain a summon after reaching certain chivalry thresholds (at least until you reach max chivalry).

Infantry

Important Note: All infantry units, as well as Mounted Yeomen, use up slots in your Peasant Economy. If your unit count for Infantry units exceeds the limits of the Peasant Economy, you get less money from Farms, the more, the worse. Not that you mind, because Bretonnian Peasants are really shitty. It's important to keep in mind, because the AI doesn't have this limit and will build Peasants nonstop, so you need to disband many armies when you confederate the various Bretonnian factions or your economy goes haywire pretty fast.

• Peasant Mob: Grab your pitchforks and torches, because this is all you're going to get! Your free, expendable meatshield unit. They win the title of worst infantry in all three games, being defeated even by Zombies and Skavenslaves. Still, they're free. Use only in a pinch.
• Men-at-arms/Spearmen-at-arms: Your okay-ish infantry, mainly used as meat shields to establish a front line. They'll do their job alright, but don't expect them to do a lot. Come in all varieties you could ask for. Will loose to their Imperial Counterparts in a one on one.
• Battle Pilgrims: Now these guys are pretty interesting. They do a much better job at holding the front line than Man-at-Arms could ever hope to and even deal decent damage, especially when combined with a Grail Reliquae. Decent morale, good enough armor, plus a shield for good measure.
• Grail Reliquae: An odd piece, even more so when you realize that these are four guys imitating a horse for a deceased Grail Knight. They won't last long in prolonged combat, are especially vulnerable to ranged units (especially Warplock Jezzails) but buff your melee infantry like crazy, most notably is the +16(!!) bonus to leadership and immunity to Psychology. If you have an infantry-heavy army, one or even two of these won't hurt, but remember to keep them in the second line.
• Foot Squires: Your "elite" Infantry, not as terrible in the damage department as Men-at-arms, but nothing special. They hold longer than the other options, but don't have a shield and most other basic infantry will still make mince meat out of them. I personally recommend just sticking with Battle Pilgrims, because the latter is not as expensive, doesn't require a T4 Barracks and not as vulnerable to missiles. They are considerably more effective in multiplayer, where they are decent and very cost-effective can openers to be used against units like Chaos Warriors.

Missile Infantry

• Peasant Bowmen: Your only source of missile troops, but a decent option, just on the merit of cost-effectiveness alone. When used in bulk, they are not to be underestimated. Can come in three flavors: normal, Fire, and Pox arrows. pretty much your only source of reliably poison which makes them a good support unit.

Cavalry

• Mounted Yeomen: Very bad. Like, really, really bad. Why would you use these? They are horrible in melee, have terrible leadership, use up slots in the Peasant economy and their charge bonus isn't exactly anything to write home about either. There is literally no reason to use them in campaign. Knights-Errant perform better for almost the same price. The only way to make them useful is if you recruit their Mounted Yeomen Archer variation, mounted cavalry able to fire on the move, but even then...
  • They are significantly better in Multiplayer where running farms are never a problem and Gold is a serious limiting factor in list building. They still aren't very good in melee but fill a vital role as the fastest units in the Bretonnian roster which is necessary for a throwaway harasser unit.
• Knights-Errant: Your first real piece of cavalry, and an okay one at that. They don't need any vow taken and should form the basis of your early game armies. They cannot take a hit and should largely rely on their charges to deal the majority of damage. Phase them out as soon as you can.
• Knights of the Realm: Your classic Bretonnian Knights. Heavy armour, shield, a great charge bonus, these are the staple of your army and really easy to get. Use them, love them. Require the first Vow to be completed.
• Questing Knights: The linebackers. If you can manage them good enough, they can even replace your melee infantry quite easily. AP attacks mean they are great against any form of melee infantry without bonuses against large units. Require the second vow to be completed.
• Grail Knights: Your definitive elite. There is little that can give them a lot of trouble. They hit hard, move fast, never tire, inspire units around them, and get a bonus vs. large. Your dedicated monster and single entity unit killers. Require the third vow to be completed, so they're exceedingly hard to actually unlock.
• Grail Guardians: More defensive versions of the offensive Grail Knights with extremely high melee defense, so high in fact that they can hold their own against units that normally counter cavalry. If you don't like the micro-intensive playstyle of shock cav heavy armies, you can use them. Require the third vow to be completed.

Flying Cavalry

• Pegasus Knight: Flying, fast, anti-large killers that are very good at killing monsters and other large units but will die if anything sneezes in their direction and cannot push through a blob to escape. The only high tier unit that requires only the first vow to be completed.
• Royal Pegasus Knight: Slightly better than the above stats-wise, but also come with perfect vigour (never tire) and immunity to psychology. Require the third vow to be completed.
• Royal Hippogryph Knights: Plenty of health and hit very hard: absolute beasts on the battlefield; however, they cost a ton and require the third vow to be completed.

Artillery

• Field Trebuchet: Powerful and nice range with very slow rate of fire and below-average accuracy. useful as an artillery to deal AoE damage to enemy infantry but not as a siege weapon, its large hitbox and low HP causes them to lose fights against even the weakest towers.
• Blessed Field Trebuchet: Upgrade to the above: slightly better stat-wise but also come with the bonus of not inflicting friendly fire. Hitting your own units still causes the artillery morale penalty so try not to hit your peasants late into the fight.

Tactics

Multiplayer Strategies

A lot of the general strategies against these factions is going to boil down to one simple task; Cycle-charging cavalry. Your cavalry is your bread and butter in every matchup, so the key take-away in this section will be units in particular you'll need to look out for.

• Beastmen: Another particularly fast faction, the Beastmen are largely unarmored, so a few squads of Peasant Bowmen with Pox arrows can get some surprising value against a majority of their units, further crippling them for your famous cavalry charges. Anti-Large cavalry will serve you quite well in this matchup. Grail Knights and even Pegasus Knights will serve as the tip of your spear against Minotaurs, Cygors and Ungors, while Knights of the Realm or even Questing Knights can mop up the rest of the Beastmen roster.

• Bretonnia: A mirror matchup against Bretonnia will go exactly like you'd expect it to go. You'll want to do everything you can to make sure you initiate combat first, and if that means sacking a peasant mob or two to bog down opposing Grail Guardians so that yours can get the charge bonus against them, then that's what it'll take.

• Chaos Dwarfs:

• Warriors of Chaos: Hoo boy, that's a lot of armor. Warriors of Chaos are one of the slowest armies in the game, so you should have no difficulty outmaneuvering their forces to make that optimal charge. Despite your relative inadequacies at frontline engagements, Battle Pilgrims and Foot Squires can still deal not inconsequential damage to their forces while holding them in place for your Cavalry. You'll want to try to shut down any Hellcannons they bring, as that'll be the primary source of ranged pressure on your forces. Without that, you're free to run circles around them from dusk until dawn.

• Dark Elves: Mobility is the name of the game here. Both you and the Dark Elves are good at it, so it will largely come down to who can micro their army better. Just forget about peasant spam. Even Bleakswords will shred them, to say nothing about Witch Elves and Sisters of Slaughter which will show any infantry you bring their own assholes in seconds. Peasant archers are a good choice in theory to put pressure on their light cav, but they are extremely difficult to protect if you aren't a seasoned player. No, this match will come down to your cavalry play. Luckily you have a HUGE advantage in the heavy cav game, since all they have in that department are Cold One Knights which are pretty much garbage. A solid airforce can be a powerful tool here, since the Dark Elves don't have much of an aerial presence. Masters on pegasi are pretty cost-inefficient (but can still threaten with their anti-large) and your flying knights or Paladins will easily shred dragons. Even Rakarth on Bracchus can't stack up if you goon him out. Plus, Pegasus Knights especially will have a pretty solid shot of dodging Scourgerunner projectiles and catching up with them to deliver death. Grail Knights are a great choice against Doomfire Warlocks or any other light cav, as long as you can tie them down. This is one of the few matchups where their elite infantry (read: Black Guard of Naggarond) can really threaten, so isolate them and goon them out with your lords/heros asap. Louen is probably the lord to bring here to support your airforce, your caster lords are just too squishy to stand up to their ludicrous amount of ap.

• Dwarfs: Toss up, but with an advantage to you. Dwarfs units are slow, they don't have cavalry of their own, so your cavalry will be able to move unopposed, especially since Slayers can be counter-charged easily. On the other hand, a good chunk of their units have Defense Against Charge, high mass, and their gunline can wreck you.

• Empire: It can be a bit tricky to have a plan against the Empire due to their sheer versatility, but there's one thing you know for certain; your Cavalry is better than theirs. Peasant bowmen will not deal remotely as much damage against the rank and file as the gun-wielding Empire missile units would against yours, but they can still get some honest work done against them. Foot-Squires can also best Empire missile units in combat if you can manage to get them there relatively unmolested, but don't imagine for a second that they'll hold the line against their dedicated melee troops. Trebuchets are also a solid backline option to help punch holes in the Empire's formations for your cavalry.

• Grand Cathay:

• Greenskins: You're in luck, Greenskins don't really have anti-large units. Their huge monsters (araknarock spiders, rogue idols) can be tough, but your anti-infantry cav should have a good time. What's better, is that the leadership of the Greenskins is surprisingly lower than what you might expect; a few successful flanking charges against their front line units can break them quite readily.

• High Elves: The battle of the noble arrogant assholes, and believe it or not you actually have a very sizable advantage. The Asur have NO chance against you in the Cav fight, so grab some Grail Knights and watch as they run amok. Silverin Guard tend to be popular here as their Charge Defense, Anti Large and Magic Resist make them a semi decent counter to Grail Knights, though if you swarm them in peasants then you don't have to worry about them resisting your charge. If you don't want to risk your knights against the spear wall then grab some Field Trebuchets and kill them from afar. Dragons can easily be taken care of by either archers or double paladins. Plus Paladin support plus healing from the Fey Enchantress can make your Grail Knights all but unkillable for the Elves. Sure you have no chance at winning the infantry fight in a vacuum, but if you care about winning the infantry fight why the hell are you playing Bretonnia?

• Khorne: This is probably going to be a challenging one. You beat Khorne in general mobility as all of your cavalry is faster than his. You beat him in ranged because his only ranged unit is a single-entity artillery-chariot while your trebuchets come with multiple models and you have archers. Your cavalry also has several anti-large options while Khorne has none. However your peasants will get shredded by almost everything in Khorne's roster, his cavalry units are much tougher and harder hitting even if they are slower, and he has plenty of ways to tangle up your ranged units in the form of Hounds and Furies. Bloodthirsters will be a big problem as their Terror will easily rout off your infantry and with that anti-large bonus they'll put a big dent on your knights, who will have trouble surrounding them. This might not be a bad matchup to bring Hippogryphs and Pegasus Knights. Used defensively they can fend off Hounds and Furies, can isolate Bloodthirsters in the air and surround them with anti-large damage, and in the case of the Hippogryphs still hit pretty hard against infantry. Skull Cannons will be ill-equipped to shoot them down and only Bloodthirsters can contest the sky.

• Kislev: Ice magic with it's wide AoE slows is pretty damn good against your mobile elements, and Ice Guard with glaives are a big middle finger to everything you like to do. Peasant spam is also difficult to pull off due to the sheer amount of short range shooting inherent in Kislev's roster, and their dervishes are just as fast as your yeomen, and can trash around peasant archers. It'll be up to your airforce to carry and hope they don't get charged by anti-large bears who would like nothing better than to rape you with their lances.

• Lizardmen: First thing, leave the kids (peasants) at home. None of your infantry options stand a ghost of a chance against the Lizardmen; even the lowly Skink Cohorts are capable of besting them in combat and that's not even mentioning how quickly their massive Dinosaurs will chow through the pitchfork-wielding masses. Assuming they don't immediately just route the field from the sheer amount of fear/terror caused by all the monsters. Instead, double down on your strengths. Bretonnian cavalry will easily outpace anything the Lizardmen could ever field. Key units to build lists around would be your Grail Knights and (Royal) Pegasus Knights, who not only specialize against large targets, but are also immune to fear and terror. Though you can't expect their support for long, your peasant bowmen can really hinder the Lizardmen frontline and combat potential with the Pox variant, allowing some of your higher tier cavalry a touch more staying power for when you need to hold the line.

• Norsca: Don't even think about it. Norscans are just as mobile as you are and have an abundance of Anti-Large damage that will burn through your Knights as if they were gasoline-soaked tissue paper, both of their LLs completely wipe the floor with yours and there is no hope of winning the infantry fight either. And that's not even taking their monstrous options into account, with Fimir smashing through your precious few heavily armoured units. Evade them where you can and better pick something else.

• Nurgle: With all the poison, debuff spells and high mass of Nurgle units, it's actually gonna be very difficult to get a good charge in since your cavalry will most likely get stuck, surrounded and then die on your first charge, so it will be an extremely micro-intensive battle. Your Peasant arrows will obviously be of the fire variant and will need a frontline of men-at-arms (halberds or shielded, you need the anti-large bonus for any monster that gets close). Otherwise it's a simple "keep your cavalry units moving around until a unit gets separated from the rest, then gank it, repeat until your cavalry is too damaged for that, then bring them to your frontline so they can finish the job with support from what remains of your cav" deal. If your enemy decides to simply blob up his units to not let you get a charge in, bring a coupel of trebuchets for area damage.

• Ogre Kingdoms: Don't expect your flimsy infantry to stick around for long after they're hit with the first ogre charge. This may be a matchup where you're best off getting your knights stuck in early and keeping them there. Cycle charging is alot less effective against an enemy who can dish out a tremendous amount of hurt by counter charging your cavalry every time they cycle charge back into the fight. That and your forces have better stamina in a protracted brawl thanks to lore of life and perfect vigor Grail Knights. Your anti-large air cav will reign uncontested due to Ogres lacking air presence, and they should be useful for tying up Ironblasters and Leadbelchers. They're also the only units you got who can reliably charge ogres without getting counter charged in return.

• Slaanesh: PAIN. Their cavalry hits harder than yours, is faster than yours, and deal more damage on charges. Their infantry is fast, extremely killy and, if they have the CoC DLC, heavily armored as well, so there is nothing your own infantry can do against them and even your anti-infantry cav will struggle. They have chariots to mulch your infantry even more. Your cavalry has a slight advantage if you can get a charge in, since Slaanesh units are fragile and your Grail Knights never tire, but still. You do have better flying units than they do, so invest into pegasus knights, royal hippogryphs and flying paladins.

• Skaven: While the Skaven missile units and artillery will put yours to shame, your cavalry is among the most suited to ruining the general Skaven strategy of blowing things up from across the map. Virtually nothing the Skaven have will be able to outrun your cavalry and a few well timed charges can break the relatively fickle leadership of their infantry quite easily. Knights of the Realm can do solid enough work against the general unarmored masses, but you'll want to keep some Questing Knights in reserve for any Stormvermin or Warpfire Throwers they might be packing... Unless the Skaven roll out Throt. A Clan Moulder-lead army can be one of your most difficult matchups, since Mutant Rat Ogres have little trouble blasting through your knights, Abominations are nearly unkillable for your piss poor infantry and Throt himself can frequently give Bonus vs. Large to all Skaven around him.

• Tomb Kings: Don't, despite what a Repanse campaign would suggest. The undead spears/halberds will tie your cavalry down and kill them, while the constructs are tough enough that even your anti-large cavalry will have a lot of trouble killing them, and their Necropolis Knights/Chariots/Nehekharan Warriors will mulch your infantry. You easily outshine them in the flying department, so a couple of Paladins on pegasi, Pegasus Knights and Hippogryphs will be very useful.

• Tzeentch:

• Vampire Coast:

• Vampire Counts:

• Wood Elves: If there's any faction capable of rivaling your cavalry charges, it's the Wood Elves. When engaging a mounted Wood Elf army, it really boils down to who gets the best initial engagement. If you can inflict a decisive charge against the Wood Elf cavalry, you'll neuter their offensive presence significantly, if they're not straight up cleaned off the battlefield. With the Wood Elf cavalry gone, you'll have virtually free reign to outmaneuver and slaughter the elves with your cycle charging prowess. Now, when it comes to dealing with the trees, you have several options; magical attacks and/or fire. Peasant Bowmen are a cheap as chips choice that can actually get quite a lot of value against Wood Elves as a whole (as not only are they unarmored, but a majority of them are unshielded as well). Lastly, though you'll need to screen them quite aggressively if you want them to stay online, your Trebuchet, though inaccurate, can blow holes in the Wood Elven front line and archer ranks long before they get into retaliatory range. Just make sure to keep tabs for sneaky vanguard deployments trying to circle around.

Campaign Strategies

• • Always recruit an extra Lord to follow your main armies around. You don't pay supply lines, so the few hundreds of upkeep it costs you will be dwarfed by the Chivalry gained (since you gain Chivalry for each army that takes part in a battle), and that way you can do the "Raze evil faction's settlement for the bonus to Chivalry" while using your extra Lord to colonize it if you want.

• • The Bretonnian economy is based around peasants. You can only have a certain number of non-knightly units before your economy starts sputtering; however, knights are expensive and your only archers and siege units are peasants. Luckily, Vows enable you to cut the upkeep of knights by significant amounts, meaning all-knight armies will be feasible in the early game if you do enough fighting to complete a lord's vows, and the more settlements you own the more peasants you can draft into your armies. The other unique aspect of the Bretonnian economy is that it is divided into two chains: farming and industry. Building the highest tier of one industry will soft-lock the other out of a settlement's productivity, meaning you'll have to demolish that other building chain. Generally speaking, farms earn much more than industry; the exception is in settlements with a Gold or Iron resource, whose unique buildings benefit from the industry bonus building. However, industry also functions independent of the faction's peasant cap, meaning you can field armies of peasants without losing income. You'll simply be making less than you do with farms.

Total War: Warhammer Tactics Articles
General Tactics	Tactics Magic Banner Immortal Empires
Total War: Warhammer	The Empire Dwarfs Greenskins Vampire Counts Bretonnia Warriors of Chaos Beastmen Wood Elves Norsca
Total War: Warhammer 2	High Elves Dark Elves Lizardmen Skaven Tomb Kings Vampire Coast
Total War: Warhammer 3	Kislev Khorne Tzeentch Nurgle Slaanesh Grand Cathay Ogre Kingdoms Daemons of Chaos Chaos Dwarfs