Those War Machines And Cavalry, Can we kill them?

I have played Empire many times, and one thing always gets in the way. Yep, you guessed it. The Steam Tank. A Toughness 10, anti-magicky, Unbreakable ironclad monstrosity that can happily make a gaping hole in a Necrosphinx at 300pts? How do we kill it? The Volley Gun and Rocket Battery hurt as well, and our lack of Chaos Knight-style cavalry makes our Horsemen easy pickings for Inner Knights!

My sole saviour has been my Casket. It kills State Troops by the dozen, and thanks to detachments, units tend to be packed together in an Empire army, so lots of flying souls. It always comes unstuck when the Steam Tank of Volley Gun turns my Hiero into a colander.

You've answered your own question, the Casket is best for taking outunits with low wound counts, as such its perfect for warmachines and the steamtank (and no atmour save allowed).

If facing off against an Empire army the tragets for my Casket are 1. Cannons (the only thing that can reliably kill it and my necrosphinx), 2. Steamtank, 3. Anyother warmachine.

After that it's great against the pope mobile or small units. The catapult is there to get rid of large infantry blocks. Its also worth remembering that with the Stanks steampoint rules once you get it down to half wounds it becomes pretty much imobile unless your opponent wants to risk losing it so I'd fire the casket at it maybe once or twice then move on.

As far as their knights go they don't like catapults concentrated bowfire or any ranked infantry unit that you can gets lots of attacks and killing blow off with so why send your cavalry up against them in the first place?

Hope that helps.

Except of course the steam tank has 10 wounds! And an engineer is leadership ten so the most wounds you'll ever do it are 6. Not exactly to be sniffed at, but that still leaves it with 4 wounds, and that's assuming they fail the test by much anyway. It's still probably your best option though, along with catapults since they have about the same chance to cause the same number of wounds, you just have to worry about hitting them.

Except of course the steam tank has 10 wounds! And an engineer is leadership ten so the most wounds you'll ever do it are 6. Not exactly to be sniffed at, but that still leaves it with 4 wounds, and that's assuming they fail the test by much anyway. It's still probably your best option though, along with catapults since they have about the same chance to cause the same number of wounds, you just have to worry about hitting them.

Though the thing with the steam tank is that, once it's down just 2 wounds it starts to become risky to actually use it, thus while it can reliably get 1 steam point even at 7 (or is it always rolling UNDER the current wound level?) wounds left that pretty much turns it into a glorified cannon. Watched a friend play with it just yesterday and because an Ogre cannon took one wound off it and he rolled a 6 on his subsequent steam point generation it took a wound, was left way out on the flank and wasn't able to move.

In the end, it didn't do anything for the whole game because of that one bad roll.

I have a question, I haven't played against the empire yet. But a friend of mine is going to. I flipped through the book he got and I read that steam tank doesn't take Ld tests. The LoD says it's a test. So I want to know why this works on the steam tank?

Errrm, that's a good question. I may have to ask my Empire playing friend to check that...

Nope, he checked his book and it has a leadership of 10, large target, unbreakable, terror, impact hits (d3 per sp), unit strength 10, but nothing about not taking leadership tests. Older edition (by which I mean older than 7th) or getting mixed up with unbreakable perhaps?

must be an old edition thing then.

The Steamtank automatically passes all Characteristic tests, apart from Initiative, which it failsautomatically. However, note that for game purposes a Ld test is not a Characteristic test, as the latter are those rolled on a single die.

So yeah the Steamtank can be wounded by the Casket, altough I think it has Ld 10, (pah) so ideally you should drop a doom & darkness on it before.

scorpions, carrion, horesmen and stalkers can all reliably take out warmachines in my experience and as for the steam tank if you get incantation of vengence, cast it on the tank and it ciunts all ground (open as well) as dangerous=, meaning it fails on a 1 er a 2 and takes D6 wounds if it fails since it is a chariot

plus you will reduce it's movement value by D3 (im assuming this works on the 3 inch per steam point, much like the anvil of doomk halfs the steam point value instead of the overal total) if you get what i mean.

against steam tanks:

against war machines:

against 1+ knight tins:

i do correct myself, please ignore my mention of the incantation of vengence in my presvious comment. As it turns out its better than i thought, after playing a game against the dreaded tank i discovered it cannot move over dangerous terrian, the incantation of vengence turning all open ground to dengerous teriian so yeah deal with the tank by stopping it from moving

Why can it not move over dangerous terrain?

No idea if it's applicable now with the new book, but in the old one I believe it had a rule that prevented it from ever moving into or over difficult terrain. Dangerous Terrain is by definition also Difficult Terrain (I would imagine... Though don't quote me on it), someone else might know the details.

it is not applicable in the new book, it is now a chariot so it follows what i previously said and will fail on a 1 or a 2 and take d6 wounds

The only place I see where a chariot fails a Dangerous Terrain test on a 1 or a 2 is in a marshland, in which case Chariots, Cavalry and Monstrous Cavalry all fail on a 1 or a 2, but the Chariots are the only ones that suffer D6 wounds....

I cannot find anywhere else in the rulebook where it says Chariots fail all dangerous terrain tests on a 1 or 2 ????

With the steam tank anything that can avoid the armour so SSC, death wizards, stalkers, casket, Colossus with a bow and HKB models. So decent S6 rolls can eventually whittle it down as well, 50% chance of a wound.

Warmachines are easier to deal with, fast flankers, entombed units, SSC, death wizards and light wizards have got two great spells for warmachines. Phas ofc 4+ chance to nullify the shot if its not using BS and -1 to hit if it does, ofc problem being that unless you boost it your only protecting one target. The Net spell though is great as it instantly shuts down a warmachine since they fail strength tests automaticlly.