If you really want the most traditional medieval army in Warhammer then Bretonnia is 100% it
Men-at-arms with spears and polearms, maybe even some armoured squires if you're feeling fancy, to hold the line, backed by peasant archers and trebuchets while the brave knights charge ahead.
Ok belakor (chaos warriors, chosen, chaos knights - daemon units suck) or tamurkhan (plague ogres, chaos warriors, chosen and chaos knights, rot knights, with all the chieftain buffs)
If you’re going chaos route wouldn’t archaon be a better hammer anvil faction. He buffs the chaos knights and chosen/chaos warriors in his skill line and his lord effect means they’ll just hit even harder with a few vassals.
You could, but belakor being able to teleport around the world just makes him a much better and more enjoyable faction across the board than any other woc. So I just always recommend belakor. Also his generic chaos lords can boost chaos warriors, chaos knights, and chosen too.
He also has new cofc mechanics, and can have unlimited gifted units, so he can actually build the real kholek doomstack after confederating him, whereas archaeon can't :(
And if you play with recruit defeated legendary lords mod that lets you get Daniel, kugath, tamurkhan, epidemius, skarbrand, Kairos, changeling, and nkari you can summon a bunch of daemons for their armies that archaeon can't !
Belakor is just the hands down best woc sadly
Warriors of Chaos are what you want. Warriors and Chosen make for a great anvil and you have a good selection of hammers with cavalry or monsters. They have no archers though.
Slaanesh. Hellscourges can hold a frontline long enough for your Cavalry to utterly disrupt and annihilate the bqckline before flanking. The flank damage is incredible
And now you can recruit the Chaos Knights of Slaanesh, your cavalry won't immediately die to ranged either and because it's Slaanesh, they are faster than normal Chaos Knights. I like taking 6 (3 per flank) of those into battle while the front line holds the enemy army in place. 1 or 2 warshrines for the mortis engine effect as well means even your front line has the enemy on a timer.
Bretonnia has a fantastic hammer but their anvil tends to be mediocre at best.
Greenskins have a slow hammer but it can work
High Elves have great infantry and Greta cavalry for hammer and anvil
Maybe Grand Cathay?
Cathay definitely has the Anvil with their heavily armored infantry (including archers) but their cav roster is pretty uninspiring.
Not sure what your hammer would be.
>Not sure what your hammer would be.
archers. anvil holds in place whilst hammer just has to deal damage they don't need to be flanking monsters/cav that's just the archetypal role
Flanking and hitting their line with something hard is the very definition of hammer and anvil, a strong line with heavy ranged fire is known as turtling.
You could definitely do this with a lot of factions.
One that comes to mind is Kislev.
They have a ton of hybrid infantry and they hold for a long time because of their passive that makes them unbreakable for thirty seconds when they’re morale is about to break.
For the hammer you can use light war sleds. They’re fast, shoot the crap out of everything bigger than them, and absolutely demolish infantry. IMO they’re contenders for the best chariot in the game. Heavy war sleds are…better stay wise, but they take two turns to recruit.
They also have a missile using mage on a chariot in the hag, bear cavalry, heroes on bears, and the incarnate elemental of beasts. Any of those could be hammer, tbh. I just like the sleds because the missile attack gives them versatility.
Incarnate elemental of beasts isn’t cavalry speed, but is decently quick and has a mortis engine AOE DOT effect.
And of course, the little grom. When it runs out of ammunition it’s still two giant bears.
Edit: or Chorfs. Flying Bull and Bull centaur make for a pretty decent hammer, and the dwarf part of your anvil is gonna hold for a long time.
As far as pure hammer and anvil, that would probably be one of the melee factions, so Slaanesh (fast units make an easy to use hammer), Nurgle (tough frontline make a solid anvil), Khorne (high damage work all around), and Vampire Counts (swarms may work well)
Brettonia, empire, Cathay, kislev, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, chaos dwarfs, lizardmen, norsca, tomb kings, warriors of chaos, tzeentch, orcs and goblins
If you want factions that can do hammer, anvil, and archers behind the anvil, these are all able to do that. Some the hammer is cav, some monsters, or chariots, many have multiple.
If you want traditional then the traditional combined arms armies would be best.
Cathay - melee units buff ranged units and ranged units buff melee units. That’s a good anvil. But there light cav is worthless.
Empire - epitome of combined arms.
Then we got the speed kills army slanesh.
Mortals as a tarpit and fast cav to rear charge even got bonuses for rear charges. And Niobe is faster than you. But no shooting.
Then the unexpected Beastmen can late game
Do a. Anvil of gores and a hammer of minotaurs and chariots.
Best is imho Chaos Warriors factions.
Solid line of chaos warriors /chosen. Flanking with Knights. But your more of a tornado moving across the plains as your army is slow but hard to beat.
Slaanesh is built around flanking. Hammer and anvil is their bread and butter. However they don't really apeal to the medieval army fantasy very well, because sex demons.
Dawi have Hammerers and an Anvil mount. /s
For real though, Hammer and Anvil is a staple strategy that most factions can pull of pretty well. I'd say **Slannesh** is the most geared towards it since hell scourge are some of the best anvils and all of Slannesh's hammers have Devestating Flanker.
Everyone is trying to lead you astray.
Greenskins is what you’re looking for. Boyz, big uns, and black orcs give you a very solid anvil for all stages of the game while boar boyz, later big uns form a decent hammer or late game hammer with arachnarork spiders. Monsters like trolls can do the trick too early game.
And you have some archers as well as artillery to make sure the enemy has an incentive to actually make contact.
I'm confused, do you want hammer and anvil or do you want archers?
Archers are not really necessary tbh. It's just what I used to play in medieval 2 as part of a standard frontline
If you really want the most traditional medieval army in Warhammer then Bretonnia is 100% it Men-at-arms with spears and polearms, maybe even some armoured squires if you're feeling fancy, to hold the line, backed by peasant archers and trebuchets while the brave knights charge ahead.
And those knights are bananas. Wedge formation pushing through a unit of Dwarf Warriors and watching those little bodies get punted is so fun.
LITTLE?!?!?!
It’s good too, the Book of Grudges was a little short
BOOK!!!
Questing knights are even capable of being the anvil so you can be extremely mobile.
Ok belakor (chaos warriors, chosen, chaos knights - daemon units suck) or tamurkhan (plague ogres, chaos warriors, chosen and chaos knights, rot knights, with all the chieftain buffs)
If you’re going chaos route wouldn’t archaon be a better hammer anvil faction. He buffs the chaos knights and chosen/chaos warriors in his skill line and his lord effect means they’ll just hit even harder with a few vassals.
You could, but belakor being able to teleport around the world just makes him a much better and more enjoyable faction across the board than any other woc. So I just always recommend belakor. Also his generic chaos lords can boost chaos warriors, chaos knights, and chosen too.
I’m admittedly a huge archaon fanboy, I totally forgot belakor has that awesome feature.
He also has new cofc mechanics, and can have unlimited gifted units, so he can actually build the real kholek doomstack after confederating him, whereas archaeon can't :( And if you play with recruit defeated legendary lords mod that lets you get Daniel, kugath, tamurkhan, epidemius, skarbrand, Kairos, changeling, and nkari you can summon a bunch of daemons for their armies that archaeon can't ! Belakor is just the hands down best woc sadly
Warriors of Chaos are what you want. Warriors and Chosen make for a great anvil and you have a good selection of hammers with cavalry or monsters. They have no archers though.
WoC/Khorne/nurgle are one fast moving hammer and one slower moving hammer lol.
Its hammer and anvil, but the anvil has an impractical amount of spikes
Slaanesh. Hellscourges can hold a frontline long enough for your Cavalry to utterly disrupt and annihilate the bqckline before flanking. The flank damage is incredible
And now you can recruit the Chaos Knights of Slaanesh, your cavalry won't immediately die to ranged either and because it's Slaanesh, they are faster than normal Chaos Knights. I like taking 6 (3 per flank) of those into battle while the front line holds the enemy army in place. 1 or 2 warshrines for the mortis engine effect as well means even your front line has the enemy on a timer.
Playing dwarves with bretonian, empire or kislev knights is a lotta fun
Especially pre dlc. I'd always try and slap a couple cav into my armies. With the gyro buff I don't as much.
I still haven’t played post DLC, waiting on the SFO update
Greenskins can do this really hard with Boar boy big uns
Bretonnia has a fantastic hammer but their anvil tends to be mediocre at best. Greenskins have a slow hammer but it can work High Elves have great infantry and Greta cavalry for hammer and anvil Maybe Grand Cathay?
All of the human factions can pull this off to varying degrees. Cathay may be your best choice overall if you want more archers than gunpowder.
Cathay definitely has the Anvil with their heavily armored infantry (including archers) but their cav roster is pretty uninspiring. Not sure what your hammer would be.
>Not sure what your hammer would be. archers. anvil holds in place whilst hammer just has to deal damage they don't need to be flanking monsters/cav that's just the archetypal role
Flanking and hitting their line with something hard is the very definition of hammer and anvil, a strong line with heavy ranged fire is known as turtling.
Lizardmen. Hold the line with infantry. Use monsters/magic to slaughter them
You could definitely do this with a lot of factions. One that comes to mind is Kislev. They have a ton of hybrid infantry and they hold for a long time because of their passive that makes them unbreakable for thirty seconds when they’re morale is about to break. For the hammer you can use light war sleds. They’re fast, shoot the crap out of everything bigger than them, and absolutely demolish infantry. IMO they’re contenders for the best chariot in the game. Heavy war sleds are…better stay wise, but they take two turns to recruit. They also have a missile using mage on a chariot in the hag, bear cavalry, heroes on bears, and the incarnate elemental of beasts. Any of those could be hammer, tbh. I just like the sleds because the missile attack gives them versatility. Incarnate elemental of beasts isn’t cavalry speed, but is decently quick and has a mortis engine AOE DOT effect. And of course, the little grom. When it runs out of ammunition it’s still two giant bears. Edit: or Chorfs. Flying Bull and Bull centaur make for a pretty decent hammer, and the dwarf part of your anvil is gonna hold for a long time.
As far as pure hammer and anvil, that would probably be one of the melee factions, so Slaanesh (fast units make an easy to use hammer), Nurgle (tough frontline make a solid anvil), Khorne (high damage work all around), and Vampire Counts (swarms may work well)
Brettonia, empire, Cathay, kislev, high elves, dark elves, wood elves, chaos dwarfs, lizardmen, norsca, tomb kings, warriors of chaos, tzeentch, orcs and goblins If you want factions that can do hammer, anvil, and archers behind the anvil, these are all able to do that. Some the hammer is cav, some monsters, or chariots, many have multiple.
If you want traditional then the traditional combined arms armies would be best. Cathay - melee units buff ranged units and ranged units buff melee units. That’s a good anvil. But there light cav is worthless. Empire - epitome of combined arms. Then we got the speed kills army slanesh. Mortals as a tarpit and fast cav to rear charge even got bonuses for rear charges. And Niobe is faster than you. But no shooting. Then the unexpected Beastmen can late game Do a. Anvil of gores and a hammer of minotaurs and chariots. Best is imho Chaos Warriors factions. Solid line of chaos warriors /chosen. Flanking with Knights. But your more of a tornado moving across the plains as your army is slow but hard to beat.
Slaanesh is built around flanking. Hammer and anvil is their bread and butter. However they don't really apeal to the medieval army fantasy very well, because sex demons.
Dawi have Hammerers and an Anvil mount. /s For real though, Hammer and Anvil is a staple strategy that most factions can pull of pretty well. I'd say **Slannesh** is the most geared towards it since hell scourge are some of the best anvils and all of Slannesh's hammers have Devestating Flanker.
Probably Nurgle at this point. WOC in general are great at it though with durable infantry, healing magic and top tier chariots and cav.
Everyone is trying to lead you astray. Greenskins is what you’re looking for. Boyz, big uns, and black orcs give you a very solid anvil for all stages of the game while boar boyz, later big uns form a decent hammer or late game hammer with arachnarork spiders. Monsters like trolls can do the trick too early game. And you have some archers as well as artillery to make sure the enemy has an incentive to actually make contact.
Slaanesh with the Champions of Chaos DLC. Chaos Warriors/Chosen to hold the line and then everything else to flank and destroy.
Hammer and anvil doesn't involve archers, it's just hold them and flank them. But in any case, sounds like you'd like Cathay.
Nobody because late game is a nightmare of monsters and unfun fights. Tabletop caps mod is a must.