As a veteran total war player, who logged over 6000 online battles in Empire Total War (yes I know Empire got a bad wrap, but in my experience thought it was one of the best) I will give you guys my best advise. HIDE HIDE HIDE ok yes some places you can't hide, and clearly a different game (starting position seems to be closer) but even when hiding was the most important thing no one ever did it. In a nutshell, my strategy is to allow the enemy to see only my general and a handful of units on one side of map, then hide all my troops on the other (mix up a bit if possible) The enemy will most always assume your General is with your main force, so they inevitably maneuver their back to your hidden force (setting up hammer and anvil with out even moving) To truely make this OP, I call for the "triple ambush", so when one ambush is sprung, the enemy attempt to counter, you then spring ambush two, again the enemy send more troops to counter this if possible, but almost NO ONE can forsee a third ambush, which will put you in an advantageous position. A bit of basic advise, use your weakest units as either set up or first ambush, then elite units used last. This produces a situation where your best units are always fresh and fighting weaker injured units, too often I have seen in reverse, players using best units first then relying on weaker units to win the match. Try not to fight decisive battles, rather pick your enemy apart in small engagements where you have created the advantages in your favor, then when your enemy is weak, reform and deliver the killing blow. Good ambush units are: hidden artillery, shock cavalry, sniper units, and of course elite troops with moral buff. Good anvil units are: beginner line infantry, tank units, spears, or mass mob type units. Hiding your formation and troop make up makes it very difficult for the enemy to form a plan, you want to make them the donkey, you are the cart driver, leading the donkey with a carrot. Patients is everything, an ambush isn't lost unless you spring it too early or the enemy visually sees exactly what it is and where it is. Master Sun said - "Keep your plans dark as night, then strike as the thunderbolt"
I comment on my own comment 🤣 NERD! But seriously, advance and retreat on the OBLIQUE This means diagonally, checker board formation, units that attack have support, this is called "tied in" Units that retreat also have support, if units are alone they are "left open" The trick is to always be Tied In and to always be forcing the enemy to be Left Open Master Sun said - "seize that which they cherish, then attack where they least expect" So take ground, seize a flank or high ground, even if far away, it will make your enemy scared, force them to move, then attack strong, at the very point they didn't realize Master Sun said - "a strong force is as a mill stone cast at an egg, a weak force is as an egg cast at a mill stone" Produce your advantage with strategy, then once you have your moment, release all your violence upon that threshold. Master Sun said - "by nature, round logs or rock will roll, on flat ground they do not move, but skillfully deployed troops are as great boulders rolling down a mighty mountain side, this is a mater of potential energy" Use all the energy around you, everything from chat, to unit placement, terrain, tactics like stall or advance, up hill down hill Master Sun said - "there will always be strategy, if the general sees no strategy, then he is lost, and must be removed of command or defeat is immediate"
Last rule for those Master Sun students, all his rules are breakable 😲 Imagine two perfect Generals, both following Sun Tzu, who would win? 🤔 Well it would have to be the one who breaks the rules, and does the opposite, as the one who followed the rules would surely never suspect that such a master General would actually break the rules 🙃 Think outside the box, do what your not supposed to do😋 as Master Sun said - "there is no constant dynamic in war, the only constant dynamic in war is change itself" Hope you enjoy 🤗 good luck
A simple and straightforward idea, but it's surprising how many people don't know about it or how to use it effectively. This is a great video that really explains it well!
No most people dont use it becouse it makes entities stuck in the fight wich makes them constatly run back into the fight you are trying to pull away from. Also cav units in general make your armies just weaker and its better to just not bother. There is a reason why the cavalery tacticks died in the early 19=th century. You can say that the real world has a real ranged and artilery meta problem.
@@komessandtomikcoll2154 not to dismiss your points, more of a 'well, yeah, but' reply. From my experience I'd say it's question of how well the anvil is placed. If the enemy unit has formed a proper battle line, as Zerk has demonstrated, then pulling away is not a problem at all. It's charging into loose blobs that really causes problems. For auto resolve I do agree.
@@MaSOneTwo Well the way charges work it gives your units a temporary damage bonus but if you pull them out after a charge (as you may know knocking down a unit makes it not take damage) they dont deal enough but if you leave them in the fight to use that damge they get surounded and stuck this is not a flaw of the strategy (even if it is outdated) more of the problem of how mass and animations work in total war games
This would work if charge worked correctly in tww3. Right now cav units are bugged, they just don't deal any damage on impact, instead they throw enemy models in places instead of killing them.
They're not bugged. The game doesn't say anything about impact damage. They get a boost to damage and attack from charging. My plague cultists are definitely outputting a lot of damage from a charge.
The main issue on this topic currently in the game is that cavalery is absolute dog-sh*t at the moment. Their charges are ridiculous and barely do anything. Any lance cavalery making a rear charge barely tickles the enemy.
Allegedly it's because for the horse cav to deal damage, the rider's weapon has to physically connect with the enemy, but before that happens the horse collides with the model and sends it flying which according to TWW logic - makes it immune to damage.
@@Anterwaare306 Soo... in TWW Logic i can survive a car crash as long as the impact throws me back? BRILLIANT... I thought the impact of shock cavalry was devastating... apparently its just a funny flight.
@@samueldickenson2062 Who cares? You are playing an unbalanced version of the game by choice. Stop complaining that you have to spam ranged units on legendary. Stop playing Legendary if you don't like the mechanics of higher difficulty.
To be honest, it's why even having cheap cav (like the Yeomen cav of Brettonia) is a good way to use rear-charges for that pure leadership damage. Never be afraid to keep "throw-away" units in a army. The cheapest/weakest units are always the best to use for tying up and slowing down the enemy. Same goes for countering enemy hammer/anvil. Some cheap crappy Yeomen stopping Empire Knights or Kislev Griffon Legion for even just half a minute can be a decider in your frontline fight. Because a hammer without it's anvil is basically just swinging into the wind.
if you find a lone regiment(say at the end of a battle) and you got 2 cav, you can 100% set up a hammer and anvil to quickly dispatch of them if they're some sort of lancers with charge defense and anti large, you can bait the bracing with one cav, stop and turn around at the last second and then immediately follow up with the second cav to deal the entire charge bonus, then follow up with the hammer it becomes a hammer hitting a hammer, but the principle is the same and thats how my horse archers destroyed lothern sea guard in my campaign don't forget that during the initial impact of the charge if your enemy isn't braces they're not gonna be able to deal damage back so often times you can just charge and immediately come back to minimize damage taken(say its a very damaged regiment), while still getting benefit from hammering
This strategy was historically very effective from ancient times well into the age of firearms. It was extremely effective against phalanx types of formations that were extremely dependent on maintaining perfect alignment and cohesion to be successful. On the surface it seems like a pole arm unit should be less susceptible to the hammer and anvil but in practice the longer the weapons you fight with the more important that you are all facing and moving together so you don't impale your own accidentally. On the other hand a phalanx or pikes can make a great anvil /wall of spears for you to hammer the enemy into.
The only problem here is that it's not as easy as you'd think, best case scenario it's extremely effective, worst case scenario the enemy cavalry will prevent you from ever even performing the maneuver in force, and somewhere in between those you just run into the enemy reserves and you might do some damage but you will inevitably lose momentum, which is largely what cavalry relies on. In order to succesfully perform a flanking maneuver you also need the right terrain, and you need to have a good idea of what's around you. Considering such a move would raise a lot of questions, what does the terrain look like in the enemy rear? Can the cavalry even get there in time? How are the roads? Which roads should you pick to advance your cavalry into their rear? Does the enemy have cavalry of their own? Where are they? How many are they? Then there's the fact that detailed maps aren't nearly as common for a large chunk of human history, so any force trying to outflank the enemy might have to essentially rely on vague directions unless they know the land well. In addition to all of this the success of a flanking maneuver relies entirely on it getting to where it needs to be on time, and then having enough momentum to carry the day. If they arrive too late or are intercepted or god forbid get lost which happens a lot more than you think even in modern warfare it might be of little use. It's easy to do in TW because you're God himself with a direct line to every single one of your men on the field, but in reality it rarely works that way.
The entire Western World, as we know it, only exists today because Alexander the Great was able to successfully pull of using this tactic against Darius, the Persian "King of Kings" and his much larger army. Darius fled the battlefield, his army suffered a MASSIVE leadership penalty, and Alexander and his Macedonian army won the battle!
@@ThomasTomiczek very much so yes , and it would seem like the vast majority of historical battles were not hammer and anvil , most people get the wrong impression from playing total war and so they become armchair generals who would win wars and suffering only 20 cassualties due to sprained ankles
it was effective yes but it wasnt used as much as you think alot of people like to cite gaugamela for example but that wasnt hammer and anvil , it was alexander running into a gap and then attacking darius , only coming back once he noticed that there was trouble brewing , the vast majority of battles in history were head on engagments with cavalry either doing nothing/guarding the flankls or engaging eachother and then hitting the enemy in the side , backcharging wasnt that common (stop getting ideas from a damn video game)
Double hammer is perfectly valid, it just takes more micro and doesn't do much to protect your backline. Slaanesh pulls it off best because they don't have a backline to protect and can almost always pick their engagements and get out safely. Hammer and anvil is only the norm because the anvil was going to be there anyway so you might as well use it for something other than protecting archers.
@@aurtosebaelheim5942 what I mean is Bretonnia has strong melee cavalry in addition to good shock cavalry, which means it's well suited to using hammer and anvil tactics in spite of having bad infantry.
I used to use this damn near exclusively with some factions in WH2 like the Empire, High elves, Saurians and even Tomb kings. It was such a good way to fight. Sadly you can't use this too much in WH3 because 80% of your battles are in settlements, 15% land and 5% seiges. It's kinda annoying
You can still hammer and anvil in settlement battles, you just have more challenge to manoeuvre into position. But once you sandwich your enemy in a tight corridor, ooooh boy.
These videos are what I was looking for fifteen years ago when I started playing total war games. These tactics videos are great and I hope you keep making them
its op in every total war game which is why i no longer use it , sure its effective but boring i came to fight not to utterly destroy an enemy with no effort
4:18 Kossars? low leadership? For a unit that is meant to be basic chaff they got insanely high leadership 60+ is nothing to sneeze at. Low would be around 40 - 45.
@@eldiablo303 That's not saying much, Kislevs elite troops the tzar guard and ice guard only have 15 more leadership. And seeing as how high quality units are in warhammer 3 the only real 'low leadership' infantry units we come across are blue horrors, nurglings and noblars.
I've played no TW3 so far but got a few hours in other Total Wars. Here are some thougts: -Hammer charges with chariots are was more effective when attaking in an angle, so they cross more infantry ( depends on weight and charge) - lifting the hammer( pull your cav back to hit again could be used to pull the enemys aggression to the cav. If they step back the whole infantry unit starts to turn arround and chase. This is where a line infantery could charge in theire back, or maybe more preferable a volley of arrows from your lokal Archerstack hits in. If your enemy got shields they will ignore it, ' cause in TW units just holds shields in the direction they are facing. - if you got no cav available you can use your skirmishers and bowmrn to great effect. Make sire the enem, cav is binded and there is no late roaming spearmen. Circle the battelline with your Skirmishers, place them 3-5 meters behind the rear of the binded enemy ( which is brawling with your front line) and let them shoot on fire-at-will. This will male sure that: 1. Your enemys rear is facing you, no shields. 2. Your incopetent archers couldn't miss a shot 3. Less wasted arrows when multiple shot at the samw target ( too crowded, if targdt is dead it will hit another one in front of the target) 4 they don't reposition themselfe and try to face the enemy 90° with their formation ( they might be catched in meele and stop fire 5 they shoot all the time and don't stop because no frendly is betwen them and the enemy.
6. If the enemy is routing they will shred the flleing foes with their butterknifes when running through Here are some things to consinder -No more enemy cav alive od not in a bind -no roaming late reinforcements - watch their pathing. They love to catch the frontine's corner and be stuck in a painfull fight. -don't place them too close behind the enemy the last line of shwildwearer may turn arround to face a possible charge -if your front line number is in favour to the enemy be aware to run if one charges back at you
Warhammer 3 was my first Total War Game. And I unintentionally almost always fought with that tactics without even knowing what it's called. It just seemed logical to me. Thanks for the vid.
If you want to further improve yourself in the game, go watch LegendofTotalWar. He will mindblown you of numerous tactics and strategy that you can use in TW warhammer series.
I've used it in all of the series. I haven't played III enough to know if the following is still true but it is how I dealt with opposing cavalry to free my own up. I take a decent ranged contingent, the enemy usually charges their cavalry early (again, depends on AI changes). If their cavalry sits static hit with artillery, if they charge, have an anvil & inflict attrition with ranged. Once they attack get them stuck in and use your hammer on them. Meantime your ranged works their other units that close with your line.
The long time ago, you know Europa Barbarorum and Roma Surrectum II time, I loved my Dacian falxmen do the job of the hammer. Especially with some javelin throws before charging, they were glorious. Memories
As darkstreet said, there is absolutely some hammers for nurgle, that are easy to overlook. Outside of those two mentioned there is also the soulgrinder and regular furies if nothing else.
Little bit about Total war Geometry The amount of ranks you make has an effect on how chaotic the battle is. For instance if you have only 2 ranks(wide) a lot of units will be fighting and therefor either applying damage or taking damage. Technically speaking The widest formation of the same unit type should win . Square formations are More defensive , it takes longer for units up front to get to the back many units try to attack whoever is at the front. YET you dish out diminished dmg , because fewer units fight against more. It's a stalling formation so to speak. How you can use this with hammer and anvil , with only footmen is take high defense unit and have more ranks (usually shield boys) , then take a unit that has more offensive stats around the side and flank(wide). pretty optimal way of engaging. This also applies to Archers, for instance when Fighting enemy archers you want to have LONGES line/arc of fire , because if you have something like Square formation , archers at the back don't fire. The downside to wide line formations is , poor mobility , relative to Square , often maneuvering wide formations makes the Ai waste a lot of time. Additionally Where you strike also makes difference if you can cut a line in half , it is better than striking somewhere near a flank, Reason being units wrap around easier and therfore more units attack fewer units.
That Nurgle hp bar didn't even move during first charge. Ppl say Cav and charge js bugged in WH3 is it true? Like when those guys charge and punt a model away, it seems that knockback doesn't do any damage
The knockback doesn't. It's the bonus to damage and hit buff that you gain for a bit, as well as the flanking and losing bonuses to morale. Don't look at the damage during the impact, look at the damage over the next 3-5 seconds. And plaguebearers have a lot of health. They are so slow. And don't really have armor so they make up for it by having absurd amounts of health. That health bar was definitely dropping faster than it normally would. But more importantly that morale bar just got decimated. And with no morale, demons start evaporating.
Infantry can also be the hammer if you that have any option. You can also flank just for leadership penalty. Plus having single enemy unit fighting two units front and back will make them take damage at a faster rate.
People would say skaven slaves and clan rats suck. But with how cheap they are you can bring extra. And with their speed bonus when they lose morale and health, if they start having trouble, the anvil falls back and turns into a hammer. Never fight an even fight.
Zerk!!! You forgot to mention the 'brace' buff against large units does not work anymore when they are already in combat and count as 'not standing still'. So the cavalry chargingg spearmen in combat gets a charge bonus This makes spearmen more vulnerable to cav attacks. They still have their bonus vs large tho.
To anyone who found this helpful: consider encirclement. Stuck with mostly slow infantry? Outnumbering the enemy? Tie them up with one, form a column (narrow formation) with the other, and surround the enemy. While Sun Tzu would disagree, a cornered enemy in Total War is a dead enemy.
The only reason you go for hammer and anvil is just to support the main morale debuff being damage sustained. The charges itself are weak, but I think it's due to the Cavalry Update for WH2 so the only way you can deal actual damage with cav is through sustained combat. These two things are making cav useless and less cost-efficient compared to other units like infantry, archers, flying units and so on.
I think difficulty plays a pretty major role in the effectiveness of cavalry. I've just beaten the Kislev campaign on normal and found Winged lancers to be sufficient in the role. However once you raise that difficulty up suddenly shock cav starts underperforming significantly: I think it is do to the melee defense and leadership buff that really make cav underperform. Add on top of that the increased melee attack for enemies as well and suddenly your shock cav is getting ripped to pieces without getting any noticeable damage to compensate.
@@edwardfontaine7108 If your cav is incapable of fighting ranged units in a 1v1 and sword like infantry which isn't anti-large then something is wrong. Same with the impact charges which at best can deal 500 damage from rear or front. Usually it will be around 400 or so.
@@rebidiom2578 Lancers handle Pink and blue horrors just fine. But I've been playing on Normal in campaign. I know that once you amp that difficultly bar up cav become a complete waste. In multiplayer and normal campaign difficulty they are plenty viable though.
@@edwardfontaine7108 have you tried one v one pink horrors with lancers in a straight melee combat. If no then I suggest you do these tests and ponder on why I would bring cav in multiplayer.
I've been quite comfortable throwing them into pink Horrors 1v1. Even without cycle charging. I don't know what about my experience is different from yours but I haven't found them to be completely unusable.
Yeah looks way less effective then WH2 which got cavalry update . But don't think leadership is issue they just don't do damage on charge they knock down ppl but low dmg
I had a fight against beastmen recently. 2 seeker chariots vs basic ungors and gors - only 1 spear unit which I avoided like the plague. My chariots frequently charged in - stuck around for a while before beeing pulled out and took damage - alot of damage. Their unit card displayed in return: 0 damage dealt . As in: My chariots lost a quarter of their hp for crashing into a moving non charge defense unit and did not even touch the enemy despite charge bonus and everything. This is not a stat issue. This is down right bugged.
@@XenomorphsWrath I think unit cards are also bugged. The charge is but I've seen the AI say it had 80 kills when it had 0. I don't think I regenned midfight either. Not always, not even frequently, but that might be why it showed 0 damage.
@@obesechicken13 I did not see the health bar of the enemy unit move either so I am inclined to believe that the knockback actually is negating any damage potential your chariots might have outside of lucky coincidences, though given how much of this game is bugged in its current state I can not disregard your theory. Thanks for sharing I will keep an eye out.
Yeah but in the campaign battles you rarely get the chance to pull hammer and anvil tactics off in the mid-late game once armies start becoming rather large. In the early game, sure there's only a few units so cavalry can be very effective in rear charges, but once armies start becoming 20 units, or reinforcing armies appear, there's no way your cavalry can charge around the back without being intercepted by something else, especially when you need to micro manage other units such as spellcasters, ranged, flying units to go after artillery, and unit abilities etc. But this is speaking from experience in the TW WH 2 campaign, maybe in WH3 it's different. Generally a tried and working tactic from tw wh 2 is a line of archers with single entity 'Anvil' to hold the line and allow the archers to keep firing, that seems to be the most effective against large armies with limited space for manuevering.
Zerk you dum dum. You upgrade your Kossavite Dervishes and get the Winged Lancers and you upgrade your Winged Lancers into Gryphon Legion? No, no, no. You disband your Kossavite Dervishes, spam Kossars all game and wait for the BEARS!
If you know older military strategies from real battles in history from the ages of swords and sheilds with cavalry support you know how to play any total war game and fairly well. Pinsar move coupled with hammer and anvil, all you need is the strength of a wall to hold its position.
People have short memories, I see... Cav units have been useless ever since the mass rework about 1-2 years ago in TWW2; which was *meant* to hobble single large entities, but didn't do much to (most of) them, however it made cav units bog down in melee very quickly/easily, as it's almost a guarantee one of more troops will get stuck in melee, pulling the unit back in repeatedly until they die.
More like this please! And maybe counters? I use uneven flanks (where you out all the quality on one flank and hope to "roll" the enemy frontline) a lot, personally, especially early on when the available cavalry isn't great. It's better to inflict a lot of damage on one flank and break them early, then get flank or rear charges, instead of evenly grinding down the enemy frontline.
Do you have a video on how to position gun units effectively? I almost always fall back to using crossbow/bow units because my gunners can't get shots off in between my infantry line
Hey finally somebody found out why i ALWAYS stop playing TW games. All the battles boil down to Hammer and Anvil. ALL of them. Either you use artillery or ranged as Hammer and bog down the front with heavy units or you use Cav as Hammer and bog down the front with heavy units.
its arguably the most boring tactics for me at this point , i switched over to head on assaults cause the ai knows how to fight in a normal line battle and frankly i came to fight the enemy not see him utterly destroyed in one fell swoop with no real effort on my part
Even better in warhammer. Hammer and Anvil Deluxe. Perform the anvil portion as normal and once the enemy bunches up enough trying to push through your front lines drop a AOE damage spell right into the middle of the blob right before the calvary charge comes in for the hammer. The shock to leadership from both the magic attack and the cav charge will break most units
okay...so how do I use this tactic effectively if my cav cant pull away 100% of the time? I rear charge and they are nearly dead by the time they finally get unstuck and can pull away
Soften up the enemy with ranged or magic, or let your anvil fight for a bit longer. Both sides will take casualties, AND will get tired more, making them less dangerous to your cav. Plus they will break faster. A good rear charge will end up breaking them. Pick the weakest enemy target for the first rear charge: fleeing troops nearby add another leadership debuff And it is said cavalry is seriously nerfed, but I have not played enough recently to tell.
If unit has 73 charge bonus how much of it is bonus to its attack while charging ? Im asking becouse i havent notice that modifer afterall cavalery suuucks
That's like asking why the right mouse button makes units move! ....and then actually explaining how and why the button does this, while talking about the benefits of the left button
I love his tactics videos. I can understand the reasoning behind stuff like hammer and anvil but my idea of it comes from history and what really needs to be shown is how the stats of each units interact beacuse thats the secret to perfect matchup in games.
Me using Skaven Slave anvil and 2 Skavenslave hammers. Even the most trained warriors don't want to fight 1 to 3. And oh look, the anvil can pull away and become a hammer? Mostly because their leadership sucks and they have to, but also because they get speed boosts when their leadership drops a bit. Plaguebearers and rot flies are fun to use too, hard to stop the flyers from getting behind, and plaguebearers are an incredibly durable anvil covered in flesh eating filth. But the plague cultists are great because they supply their own anvil.
Imo leadership has a bit of a problem. It's a bit binary, as in, either you manage to break a unit, then it's great, or you barely miss it, then it does nothing. Imo a unit should get slight buffs to attack/defense depending on their leadership. That way even if you don't quite manage to break a unit with a rearcharge, you will still weaken them somewhat in return.
Yea, it works the same way or even better... But is that much harder to pull off. You can actually make it super-effective by using 4 cavs to hit from every direction at once; they will route even elite infantry in seconds, and take virtually no damage doing it. Taking proper advantage of this, with large enough maps it is possible to wipe out entire reinforcing armies as they trickle in one or two units at a time with just 4 good cav units.
Its still way weaker than it should be, sometimes even outright useless. For example when using underwhelming units like winged lancers or Empire knights.
@@edwardfontaine7108 not really in my case. they do almost no damage to infantry even in rear charges, and at that point, the micro isn't even worth it. I was so looking forward to play with them, but yeah, they are really bad
@@FilipMoncrief I've been playing with them in a normal difficulty Kislev Campaign and I do believe they outclass Empire knights due to their higher melee attack and charge bonus. I'm well aware that cav in general underperforms at higher difficulty settings. While certainly not OP I haven't found them to be underperforming. I think comparing them to Empire Knights, despite being similar price points, undermines how much better they seem to perform due to their higher quality stat distribution. Maybe that hasn't been your experience but I've enjoyed using them in my early and mid game armies.
Everyone has been crapping on Dervishes, but hammer and anvil charging with Dervishes is really effective against Nurgle, since most Nurgle units are slow and unarmored.
Early game, I try to get up to 3 Dervishes ASAP, their speed makes them great for quickly getting into position for cycle charging, and the leadership hit from a rear charge is much more valuable to me than any real damage done by them. Kislev have some pretty good frontline troops, so the routing lets me constantly reform the battle lines and flank around tough stuff with melee. I don't know what's been changed since Total Warhammer II, but cavalry currently seems to be less effective at actually killing stuff in TW3; I tend to hold them in place until the leadership hit from the impact wears off, then back them off to idle (or move to the next unit in the line if the other Dervishes are too busy).
Hey Zerk, I just found your videos, I normally auto resolve cause my laptop can barely run this game and getting in and out of battle maps takes a century. What kind of setup do you recommend? Also Could you maybe do a tactics video on Chaos Undivided?
@@kainleingod9662 Hard drives use mechanical moving parts, solid state drives don't. SSD's are much faster. Both are storage devices. Not sure you can still buy external drives that aren't SSD's.
A few months ago I had a laptop that would take about ten minutes to load a battle. I bought an external SSD and ran it off there and my loading times reduced hugely, as in, I stopped autoresolving everything.
or just use a line of drwarfs with a thunderbarge or 2 with some hellfire rocket gyros some flame cannons rows of crossbows and Rifles a Bomber or 2 and just play like Empire total war. except you dont need to worry about lining your troops up across the map cuz warhammer says meh 160 guys firing through each other works.
It depends. If you rotate targets, you give each encounter an edge for your troops. If you focus on one, you can eliminate it quicker (hopefully) and then bring more to bear on the others. I would rotate if each encounter is close to even or against your forces. I would focus if there is one encounter that is more pivotal, but the others can be expected to hold a bit better.
For me it depends on the anvil. If they're solid and can hold/win on their own, I'll cycle through target to give each anvil unit a slight edge. Otherwise break a unit to have the melee infantry advantage.
You're going to need an anvil.
"Bear cavalry"
Next, you're going to need a hammer
"Also bear cavalry"
Can't wait until immortal Empires so I can use diplomacy to get dwarves bear cav.
@@dubuyajay9964 kings of war up in here, though there it's badgers. Kings of war is table top made by ex gw devs to make a new whfb, it's pretty great
@@ettibbet5493 I'm referring to the computer game. No tabletop.
That's the Kislev MO, just add more bears.
for sure i will be making full armies of guys mounting bears
Khorne - hammer and anvil
Nurgle - anvil and anvil
Slaanesh - hammer and hammer
Tzeentch - gun
Kislev: hammer and gun
Accurate
Shooting in the back works for hammer and anvil right? :P
Seriously though, tzeentch really NEEDS a sturdy anvil.
@@matthewanderson5198 i want my tzanngors
@@matthewanderson5198 slaneesh first tho lol. Like steel pasties would would make a unit the tankiest in the faction
7:34 I think Zhao Ming's been on the warpstone again
he's teabagging
lmao
As a veteran total war player, who logged over 6000 online battles in Empire Total War (yes I know Empire got a bad wrap, but in my experience thought it was one of the best) I will give you guys my best advise.
HIDE HIDE HIDE
ok yes some places you can't hide, and clearly a different game (starting position seems to be closer) but even when hiding was the most important thing no one ever did it.
In a nutshell, my strategy is to allow the enemy to see only my general and a handful of units on one side of map, then hide all my troops on the other (mix up a bit if possible)
The enemy will most always assume your General is with your main force, so they inevitably maneuver their back to your hidden force (setting up hammer and anvil with out even moving)
To truely make this OP, I call for the "triple ambush", so when one ambush is sprung, the enemy attempt to counter, you then spring ambush two, again the enemy send more troops to counter this if possible, but almost NO ONE can forsee a third ambush, which will put you in an advantageous position.
A bit of basic advise, use your weakest units as either set up or first ambush, then elite units used last. This produces a situation where your best units are always fresh and fighting weaker injured units, too often I have seen in reverse, players using best units first then relying on weaker units to win the match.
Try not to fight decisive battles, rather pick your enemy apart in small engagements where you have created the advantages in your favor, then when your enemy is weak, reform and deliver the killing blow.
Good ambush units are: hidden artillery, shock cavalry, sniper units, and of course elite troops with moral buff.
Good anvil units are: beginner line infantry, tank units, spears, or mass mob type units.
Hiding your formation and troop make up makes it very difficult for the enemy to form a plan, you want to make them the donkey, you are the cart driver, leading the donkey with a carrot.
Patients is everything, an ambush isn't lost unless you spring it too early or the enemy visually sees exactly what it is and where it is.
Master Sun said - "Keep your plans dark as night, then strike as the thunderbolt"
I comment on my own comment 🤣 NERD!
But seriously, advance and retreat on the OBLIQUE
This means diagonally, checker board formation, units that attack have support, this is called "tied in"
Units that retreat also have support, if units are alone they are "left open"
The trick is to always be Tied In and to always be forcing the enemy to be Left Open
Master Sun said - "seize that which they cherish, then attack where they least expect"
So take ground, seize a flank or high ground, even if far away, it will make your enemy scared, force them to move, then attack strong, at the very point they didn't realize
Master Sun said - "a strong force is as a mill stone cast at an egg, a weak force is as an egg cast at a mill stone"
Produce your advantage with strategy, then once you have your moment, release all your violence upon that threshold.
Master Sun said - "by nature, round logs or rock will roll, on flat ground they do not move, but skillfully deployed troops are as great boulders rolling down a mighty mountain side, this is a mater of potential energy"
Use all the energy around you, everything from chat, to unit placement, terrain, tactics like stall or advance, up hill down hill
Master Sun said - "there will always be strategy, if the general sees no strategy, then he is lost, and must be removed of command or defeat is immediate"
Last rule for those Master Sun students, all his rules are breakable 😲
Imagine two perfect Generals, both following Sun Tzu, who would win?
🤔 Well it would have to be the one who breaks the rules, and does the opposite, as the one who followed the rules would surely never suspect that such a master General would actually break the rules 🙃
Think outside the box, do what your not supposed to do😋 as Master Sun said - "there is no constant dynamic in war, the only constant dynamic in war is change itself"
Hope you enjoy 🤗 good luck
Yeah stealth in the game kind of broke my friend refuses to play against me after doing a head to head against my alith ananr shadow warrior stack
7:35 Zhao over there dragon t-bagging those poor ogres
A simple and straightforward idea, but it's surprising how many people don't know about it or how to use it effectively. This is a great video that really explains it well!
No most people dont use it becouse it makes entities stuck in the fight wich makes them constatly run back into the fight you are trying to pull away from. Also cav units in general make your armies just weaker and its better to just not bother. There is a reason why the cavalery tacticks died in the early 19=th century. You can say that the real world has a real ranged and artilery meta problem.
Agree, perfectly explained some of my point. Total war warhammer has done Calvary dirty.
Even dogs are better than cavs cause it’s not large.
@@komessandtomikcoll2154 not to dismiss your points, more of a 'well, yeah, but' reply. From my experience I'd say it's question of how well the anvil is placed. If the enemy unit has formed a proper battle line, as Zerk has demonstrated, then pulling away is not a problem at all.
It's charging into loose blobs that really causes problems.
For auto resolve I do agree.
@@MaSOneTwo Well the way charges work it gives your units a temporary damage bonus but if you pull them out after a charge (as you may know knocking down a unit makes it not take damage) they dont deal enough but if you leave them in the fight to use that damge they get surounded and stuck this is not a flaw of the strategy (even if it is outdated) more of the problem of how mass and animations work in total war games
This would work if charge worked correctly in tww3. Right now cav units are bugged, they just don't deal any damage on impact, instead they throw enemy models in places instead of killing them.
That has been a "feature" of TWW from the start.
I'm not into a coding much, but how hard it would be to add dmg on inpact then units hit ground after someone send them fly?
@@Scionrus Best I can do is remove knockback so charge bonus works better. Problem is units are invulnerable while flying from the impact (lol).
They're not bugged.
The game doesn't say anything about impact damage.
They get a boost to damage and attack from charging.
My plague cultists are definitely outputting a lot of damage from a charge.
Did you just watch the video? That Kislevite cavalry melted the Nurgle's sturdy plaguebearers.
The main issue on this topic currently in the game is that cavalery is absolute dog-sh*t at the moment. Their charges are ridiculous and barely do anything. Any lance cavalery making a rear charge barely tickles the enemy.
Agree. Used this tactics a lot in Rome. This game it wasn't as effective in my view. So I said forget it, I'll just get me some dragons.
Allegedly it's because for the horse cav to deal damage, the rider's weapon has to physically connect with the enemy, but before that happens the horse collides with the model and sends it flying which according to TWW logic - makes it immune to damage.
@@Anterwaare306 Soo... in TWW Logic i can survive a car crash as long as the impact throws me back? BRILLIANT... I thought the impact of shock cavalry was devastating... apparently its just a funny flight.
Also, leadership is so high for AI in harder difficulties that the tactic is useless in campaign.
Except Mournfangs and Khorne ones, because they cause feat and some other debuffs which are just too insanely strong.
I need this as an entire playlist ... just various tactics you can try out in TW.
more please!
Kings and Generals channel is good for that, it’s more historical but they’re starting a more fantasy based channel as well.
He’s definitely got some older videos from TW2 that have some great tactics!
This tactic doesn't actually work all that well on higher battle difficulties as cavalry are weak, and human players make it very hard to do.
@@samueldickenson2062 Who cares? You are playing an unbalanced version of the game by choice. Stop complaining that you have to spam ranged units on legendary. Stop playing Legendary if you don't like the mechanics of higher difficulty.
To be honest, it's why even having cheap cav (like the Yeomen cav of Brettonia) is a good way to use rear-charges for that pure leadership damage. Never be afraid to keep "throw-away" units in a army. The cheapest/weakest units are always the best to use for tying up and slowing down the enemy. Same goes for countering enemy hammer/anvil. Some cheap crappy Yeomen stopping Empire Knights or Kislev Griffon Legion for even just half a minute can be a decider in your frontline fight. Because a hammer without it's anvil is basically just swinging into the wind.
hard to hammer and anvil when the enemy infantry just passes through your frontline.
It does require a reliable infantry anvil to hold the enemy into place and then hammer them down
@@BiteSizeFeed No, the enemy ai literally just pushes through infantry lines to get to archers and arty. They literally push through them.
@@NanoT_T Depends which game, I play Shogun 2, and it works just fine
@@BiteSizeFeed can't say I've had this issue, assuming you're talking about Warhammer III?
@@Encer-xs9ec Dunno, its Nano that is having this issue
if you find a lone regiment(say at the end of a battle) and you got 2 cav, you can 100% set up a hammer and anvil to quickly dispatch of them
if they're some sort of lancers with charge defense and anti large, you can bait the bracing with one cav, stop and turn around at the last second and then immediately follow up with the second cav to deal the entire charge bonus, then follow up with the hammer
it becomes a hammer hitting a hammer, but the principle is the same
and thats how my horse archers destroyed lothern sea guard in my campaign
don't forget that during the initial impact of the charge if your enemy isn't braces they're not gonna be able to deal damage back so often times you can just charge and immediately come back to minimize damage taken(say its a very damaged regiment), while still getting benefit from hammering
Наконец то, человек который просто и наглядно объяснил тактику и нюансы с ней связанные
This strategy was historically very effective from ancient times well into the age of firearms. It was extremely effective against phalanx types of formations that were extremely dependent on maintaining perfect alignment and cohesion to be successful. On the surface it seems like a pole arm unit should be less susceptible to the hammer and anvil but in practice the longer the weapons you fight with the more important that you are all facing and moving together so you don't impale your own accidentally. On the other hand a phalanx or pikes can make a great anvil /wall of spears for you to hammer the enemy into.
The only problem here is that it's not as easy as you'd think, best case scenario it's extremely effective, worst case scenario the enemy cavalry will prevent you from ever even performing the maneuver in force, and somewhere in between those you just run into the enemy reserves and you might do some damage but you will inevitably lose momentum, which is largely what cavalry relies on. In order to succesfully perform a flanking maneuver you also need the right terrain, and you need to have a good idea of what's around you. Considering such a move would raise a lot of questions, what does the terrain look like in the enemy rear? Can the cavalry even get there in time? How are the roads? Which roads should you pick to advance your cavalry into their rear? Does the enemy have cavalry of their own? Where are they? How many are they?
Then there's the fact that detailed maps aren't nearly as common for a large chunk of human history, so any force trying to outflank the enemy might have to essentially rely on vague directions unless they know the land well. In addition to all of this the success of a flanking maneuver relies entirely on it getting to where it needs to be on time, and then having enough momentum to carry the day. If they arrive too late or are intercepted or god forbid get lost which happens a lot more than you think even in modern warfare it might be of little use. It's easy to do in TW because you're God himself with a direct line to every single one of your men on the field, but in reality it rarely works that way.
@@TheThingInMySink So, basically: It is so effective in TW3 because the AI sucks at blocking it.
The entire Western World, as we know it, only exists today because Alexander the Great was able to successfully pull of using this tactic against Darius, the Persian "King of Kings" and his much larger army.
Darius fled the battlefield, his army suffered a MASSIVE leadership penalty, and Alexander and his Macedonian army won the battle!
@@ThomasTomiczek very much so yes , and it would seem like the vast majority of historical battles were not hammer and anvil , most people get the wrong impression from playing total war and so they become armchair generals who would win wars and suffering only 20 cassualties due to sprained ankles
it was effective yes but it wasnt used as much as you think alot of people like to cite gaugamela for example but that wasnt hammer and anvil , it was alexander running into a gap and then attacking darius , only coming back once he noticed that there was trouble brewing , the vast majority of battles in history were head on engagments with cavalry either doing nothing/guarding the flankls or engaging eachother and then hitting the enemy in the side , backcharging wasnt that common (stop getting ideas from a damn video game)
Bretonnia: here we have our hammer cavalry and our anvil cavalry!
Double hammer is perfectly valid, it just takes more micro and doesn't do much to protect your backline. Slaanesh pulls it off best because they don't have a backline to protect and can almost always pick their engagements and get out safely.
Hammer and anvil is only the norm because the anvil was going to be there anyway so you might as well use it for something other than protecting archers.
@@aurtosebaelheim5942 what I mean is Bretonnia has strong melee cavalry in addition to good shock cavalry, which means it's well suited to using hammer and anvil tactics in spite of having bad infantry.
0:23 "first of all, you need an anvil" *proceeds to day pantsu*
you know, i'm something of a blacksmith myself
jokes aside though, great guide
I used to use this damn near exclusively with some factions in WH2 like the Empire, High elves, Saurians and even Tomb kings. It was such a good way to fight. Sadly you can't use this too much in WH3 because 80% of your battles are in settlements, 15% land and 5% seiges. It's kinda annoying
Most of my fights are on land maps. Rn I’m playing as kislev, I would put land for 75% but that’s for my experience so far.
You can still hammer and anvil in settlement battles, you just have more challenge to manoeuvre into position. But once you sandwich your enemy in a tight corridor, ooooh boy.
@@FrebrezeBird what the heck lol. How are u getting such a high land battle ratio? Are u not capturing any settlements?
@@thraxbottom549 he prob struggling
@@thraxbottom549 auto resolve. Don't care if I lose a unit or 2, settlement battles are incredibly boring.
These videos are what I was looking for fifteen years ago when I started playing total war games. These tactics videos are great and I hope you keep making them
Great guide! I learned the hammer & anvil tactic in three kingdoms where it is very OP
its op in every total war game which is why i no longer use it , sure its effective but boring i came to fight not to utterly destroy an enemy with no effort
u forgot the fact that flanking will cause more damage due to reduced melee defense. thats another good reason to use it.
True!!
I love this game and I am in love with your channel. Thank you! Hehe.
snake dragon lizard thing just vibing at 7:34
4:18 Kossars? low leadership? For a unit that is meant to be basic chaff they got insanely high leadership 60+ is nothing to sneeze at. Low would be around 40 - 45.
Probably low relative to other Kislev units?
@@eldiablo303 That's not saying much, Kislevs elite troops the tzar guard and ice guard only have 15 more leadership. And seeing as how high quality units are in warhammer 3 the only real 'low leadership' infantry units we come across are blue horrors, nurglings and noblars.
60 is on the low end for non-expendable infantry.
60 is the amount empire swords have and we all know how well they hold a line...
@@edwardfontaine7108 for their price, in that roster, yeah they kinda hold great.
I've played no TW3 so far but got a few hours in other Total Wars. Here are some thougts:
-Hammer charges with chariots are was more effective when attaking in an angle, so they cross more infantry ( depends on weight and charge)
- lifting the hammer( pull your cav back to hit again could be used to pull the enemys aggression to the cav. If they step back the whole infantry unit starts to turn arround and chase. This is where a line infantery could charge in theire back, or maybe more preferable a volley of arrows from your lokal Archerstack hits in. If your enemy got shields they will ignore it, ' cause in TW units just holds shields in the direction they are facing.
- if you got no cav available you can use your skirmishers and bowmrn to great effect. Make sire the enem, cav is binded and there is no late roaming spearmen. Circle the battelline with your Skirmishers, place them 3-5 meters behind the rear of the binded enemy ( which is brawling with your front line) and let them shoot on fire-at-will. This will male sure that: 1. Your enemys rear is facing you, no shields. 2. Your incopetent archers couldn't miss a shot 3. Less wasted arrows when multiple shot at the samw target ( too crowded, if targdt is dead it will hit another one in front of the target) 4 they don't reposition themselfe and try to face the enemy 90° with their formation ( they might be catched in meele and stop fire
5 they shoot all the time and don't stop because no frendly is betwen them and the enemy.
6. If the enemy is routing they will shred the flleing foes with their butterknifes when running through
Here are some things to consinder
-No more enemy cav alive od not in a bind
-no roaming late reinforcements
- watch their pathing. They love to catch the frontine's corner and be stuck in a painfull fight.
-don't place them too close behind the enemy the last line of shwildwearer may turn arround to face a possible charge
-if your front line number is in favour to the enemy be aware to run if one charges back at you
3:30 Just like me and your mom am I right?
Warhammer 3 was my first Total War Game. And I unintentionally almost always fought with that tactics without even knowing what it's called. It just seemed logical to me. Thanks for the vid.
If you want to further improve yourself in the game, go watch LegendofTotalWar. He will mindblown you of numerous tactics and strategy that you can use in TW warhammer series.
6:28 XD that Khorne Minotaur fully committed to that torpedo launch
I've used it in all of the series.
I haven't played III enough to know if the following is still true but it is how I dealt with opposing cavalry to free my own up.
I take a decent ranged contingent, the enemy usually charges their cavalry early (again, depends on AI changes). If their cavalry sits static hit with artillery, if they charge, have an anvil & inflict attrition with ranged. Once they attack get them stuck in and use your hammer on them. Meantime your ranged works their other units that close with your line.
Missed these types of videos. Hope you do more again
good video; these types of educational videos are your best content in my opinion. thanks.
7:36 that is some excited little dragon there
You are a gift to the community, Zerk! This is an amazing video for newer players who don’t have all the basics down yet. Great work!
The long time ago, you know Europa Barbarorum and Roma Surrectum II time, I loved my Dacian falxmen do the job of the hammer. Especially with some javelin throws before charging, they were glorious. Memories
Nice sword trick by that plaguebearer at 2:35 lol
As a TW3 Nurgle player, it's just two anvils. There is no hammer.
That's why you make friends with somebody that can provide you with a hammer and you provide them with an anvil.
The changer for example...
dont hate on the cav bugs or the cav frogs they are insanely op with armor piercing
As darkstreet said, there is absolutely some hammers for nurgle, that are easy to overlook. Outside of those two mentioned there is also the soulgrinder and regular furies if nothing else.
the 2nd anvil is as good if not better than a hammer, bigger surface area to strike with too
Rot flies, plague toads, plague cultists, your haralds.
You still have options if you want.
Little bit about Total war Geometry The amount of ranks you make has an effect on how chaotic the battle is.
For instance if you have only 2 ranks(wide) a lot of units will be fighting and therefor either applying damage or taking damage.
Technically speaking The widest formation of the same unit type should win .
Square formations are More defensive , it takes longer for units up front to get to the back many units try to attack whoever is at the front. YET you dish out diminished dmg , because fewer units fight against more. It's a stalling formation so to speak.
How you can use this with hammer and anvil , with only footmen is take high defense unit and have more ranks (usually shield boys) , then take a unit that has more offensive stats around the side and flank(wide). pretty optimal way of engaging.
This also applies to Archers, for instance when Fighting enemy archers you want to have LONGES line/arc of fire , because if you have something like Square formation , archers at the back don't fire.
The downside to wide line formations is , poor mobility , relative to Square , often maneuvering wide formations makes the Ai waste a lot of time.
Additionally Where you strike also makes difference if you can cut a line in half , it is better than striking somewhere near a flank, Reason being units wrap around easier and therfore more units attack fewer units.
Meanwhile Brittonia just banging hammers together.
7:34 that dragon vibing in the background.
Awsome video format!
Nice work, good explanation and cool drawing :)
Cute little syncronised Minotaur chop in the bottom right @6:44 !
That Nurgle hp bar didn't even move during first charge. Ppl say Cav and charge js bugged in WH3 is it true?
Like when those guys charge and punt a model away, it seems that knockback doesn't do any damage
The knockback doesn't. It's the bonus to damage and hit buff that you gain for a bit, as well as the flanking and losing bonuses to morale.
Don't look at the damage during the impact, look at the damage over the next 3-5 seconds.
And plaguebearers have a lot of health.
They are so slow. And don't really have armor so they make up for it by having absurd amounts of health.
That health bar was definitely dropping faster than it normally would.
But more importantly that morale bar just got decimated.
And with no morale, demons start evaporating.
Infantry can also be the hammer if you that have any option. You can also flank just for leadership penalty. Plus having single enemy unit fighting two units front and back will make them take damage at a faster rate.
People would say skaven slaves and clan rats suck.
But with how cheap they are you can bring extra.
And with their speed bonus when they lose morale and health, if they start having trouble, the anvil falls back and turns into a hammer.
Never fight an even fight.
Zerk!!! You forgot to mention the 'brace' buff against large units does not work anymore when they are already in combat and count as 'not standing still'. So the cavalry chargingg spearmen in combat gets a charge bonus This makes spearmen more vulnerable to cav attacks. They still have their bonus vs large tho.
@7:35 that dragon was totally tea bagging.
Please do more of these. They are amazing :D
To anyone who found this helpful: consider encirclement. Stuck with mostly slow infantry? Outnumbering the enemy? Tie them up with one, form a column (narrow formation) with the other, and surround the enemy. While Sun Tzu would disagree, a cornered enemy in Total War is a dead enemy.
Kislev's army: I NEED MATERIALS!!!
The only reason you go for hammer and anvil is just to support the main morale debuff being damage sustained. The charges itself are weak, but I think it's due to the Cavalry Update for WH2 so the only way you can deal actual damage with cav is through sustained combat. These two things are making cav useless and less cost-efficient compared to other units like infantry, archers, flying units and so on.
I think difficulty plays a pretty major role in the effectiveness of cavalry. I've just beaten the Kislev campaign on normal and found Winged lancers to be sufficient in the role. However once you raise that difficulty up suddenly shock cav starts underperforming significantly: I think it is do to the melee defense and leadership buff that really make cav underperform. Add on top of that the increased melee attack for enemies as well and suddenly your shock cav is getting ripped to pieces without getting any noticeable damage to compensate.
@@edwardfontaine7108 If your cav is incapable of fighting ranged units in a 1v1 and sword like infantry which isn't anti-large then something is wrong. Same with the impact charges which at best can deal 500 damage from rear or front. Usually it will be around 400 or so.
@@rebidiom2578 Lancers handle Pink and blue horrors just fine. But I've been playing on Normal in campaign. I know that once you amp that difficultly bar up cav become a complete waste. In multiplayer and normal campaign difficulty they are plenty viable though.
@@edwardfontaine7108 have you tried one v one pink horrors with lancers in a straight melee combat. If no then I suggest you do these tests and ponder on why I would bring cav in multiplayer.
I've been quite comfortable throwing them into pink Horrors 1v1. Even without cycle charging. I don't know what about my experience is different from yours but I haven't found them to be completely unusable.
Bracing units hold line really nice too like empire halberds, they always seem to punch above their weight when holding a line.
omg Zerk did you just draw that anvil so perfectly? damn
is it me or are cavalry charges less effective in wh3? i noticed that most units have a higher leadership compared to those in wh2, maybe that's why..
Yeah looks way less effective then WH2 which got cavalry update . But don't think leadership is issue they just don't do damage on charge they knock down ppl but low dmg
I had a fight against beastmen recently.
2 seeker chariots vs basic ungors and gors - only 1 spear unit which I avoided like the plague.
My chariots frequently charged in - stuck around for a while before beeing pulled out and took damage - alot of damage.
Their unit card displayed in return: 0 damage dealt . As in: My chariots lost a quarter of their hp for crashing into a moving non charge defense unit and did not even touch the enemy despite charge bonus and everything. This is not a stat issue. This is down right bugged.
@@XenomorphsWrath I think unit cards are also bugged. The charge is but I've seen the AI say it had 80 kills when it had 0. I don't think I regenned midfight either. Not always, not even frequently, but that might be why it showed 0 damage.
@@obesechicken13 I did not see the health bar of the enemy unit move either so I am inclined to believe that the knockback actually is negating any damage potential your chariots might have outside of lucky coincidences, though given how much of this game is bugged in its current state I can not disregard your theory. Thanks for sharing I will keep an eye out.
Never knew charge bonus lasted 30 seconds, slowly weakening. That info alone made this video worth it.
Yeah but in the campaign battles you rarely get the chance to pull hammer and anvil tactics off in the mid-late game once armies start becoming rather large. In the early game, sure there's only a few units so cavalry can be very effective in rear charges, but once armies start becoming 20 units, or reinforcing armies appear, there's no way your cavalry can charge around the back without being intercepted by something else, especially when you need to micro manage other units such as spellcasters, ranged, flying units to go after artillery, and unit abilities etc.
But this is speaking from experience in the TW WH 2 campaign, maybe in WH3 it's different.
Generally a tried and working tactic from tw wh 2 is a line of archers with single entity 'Anvil' to hold the line and allow the archers to keep firing, that seems to be the most effective against large armies with limited space for manuevering.
that isnt a tactic thats just cheese
Zerk you dum dum.
You upgrade your Kossavite Dervishes and get the Winged Lancers and you upgrade your Winged Lancers into Gryphon Legion?
No, no, no.
You disband your Kossavite Dervishes, spam Kossars all game and wait for the BEARS!
If you know older military strategies from real battles in history from the ages of swords and sheilds with cavalry support you know how to play any total war game and fairly well.
Pinsar move coupled with hammer and anvil, all you need is the strength of a wall to hold its position.
People have short memories, I see...
Cav units have been useless ever since the mass rework about 1-2 years ago in TWW2; which was *meant* to hobble single large entities, but didn't do much to (most of) them, however it made cav units bog down in melee very quickly/easily, as it's almost a guarantee one of more troops will get stuck in melee, pulling the unit back in repeatedly until they die.
I only started last month, what do you mean?
How was it before?
Mass feels more different in WH3, infantry have a lot less mass so it's easier to pull cav free now.
@@Shero1337 if true, that is very good news. Using cav in TWW2 atm is particularly painful.
More like this please! And maybe counters?
I use uneven flanks (where you out all the quality on one flank and hope to "roll" the enemy frontline) a lot, personally, especially early on when the available cavalry isn't great. It's better to inflict a lot of damage on one flank and break them early, then get flank or rear charges, instead of evenly grinding down the enemy frontline.
"They're the thing we are going to smash into shape. It just so happens that in this case, we want our enemies to be flat and dead."
🤣
My inner bretonnian is fired up. Their anvil is also cav so it turns into a weird sandwich.
4:23 I never noticed the kossars are so jacked
OMG that collision on the rear charge looks so bad, I think I prefer Rome 2's collision over this.
For the same reason that corner camping is the best defense.
Do you have a video on how to position gun units effectively? I almost always fall back to using crossbow/bow units because my gunners can't get shots off in between my infantry line
Hey finally somebody found out why i ALWAYS stop playing TW games. All the battles boil down to Hammer and Anvil. ALL of them. Either you use artillery or ranged as Hammer and bog down the front with heavy units or you use Cav as Hammer and bog down the front with heavy units.
its arguably the most boring tactics for me at this point , i switched over to head on assaults cause the ai knows how to fight in a normal line battle and frankly i came to fight the enemy not see him utterly destroyed in one fell swoop with no real effort on my part
Even better in warhammer. Hammer and Anvil Deluxe. Perform the anvil portion as normal and once the enemy bunches up enough trying to push through your front lines drop a AOE damage spell right into the middle of the blob right before the calvary charge comes in for the hammer. The shock to leadership from both the magic attack and the cav charge will break most units
okay...so how do I use this tactic effectively if my cav cant pull away 100% of the time? I rear charge and they are nearly dead by the time they finally get unstuck and can pull away
Soften up the enemy with ranged or magic, or let your anvil fight for a bit longer. Both sides will take casualties, AND will get tired more, making them less dangerous to your cav. Plus they will break faster. A good rear charge will end up breaking them.
Pick the weakest enemy target for the first rear charge: fleeing troops nearby add another leadership debuff
And it is said cavalry is seriously nerfed, but I have not played enough recently to tell.
You can't, cavalry is trash in anything but multiplayer and this video tips only works there.
If unit has 73 charge bonus how much of it is bonus to its attack while charging ? Im asking becouse i havent notice that modifer afterall cavalery suuucks
Finally cavalry has become overpowerd again and im loving it
That's like asking why the right mouse button makes units move!
....and then actually explaining how and why the button does this, while talking about the benefits of the left button
What about checkerboard formation and doomstacking?
I love his tactics videos. I can understand the reasoning behind stuff like hammer and anvil but my idea of it comes from history and what really needs to be shown is how the stats of each units interact beacuse thats the secret to perfect matchup in games.
Me using Skaven Slave anvil and 2 Skavenslave hammers.
Even the most trained warriors don't want to fight 1 to 3. And oh look, the anvil can pull away and become a hammer? Mostly because their leadership sucks and they have to, but also because they get speed boosts when their leadership drops a bit.
Plaguebearers and rot flies are fun to use too, hard to stop the flyers from getting behind, and plaguebearers are an incredibly durable anvil covered in flesh eating filth.
But the plague cultists are great because they supply their own anvil.
physical damage : yes
morale damage : THAT'S A LOT OF DAMAGE
Question, why leave gaps between your units? Wouldn't a stronger line be made by keeping your units shoulder to shoulder?
Magic is one of the reasons
It can also give your ranged units a better firing lane, and gives your heroes some room to maneuver.
Ai rarely threads gaps, so you cover more ground. Its also easy to shift over if you need to
It's a multiplayer thing. Wind spells destroy lines of troops.
I pretty much never get to do this. AI always has hounds or flying units or chariots or something or other that just hammers my own cav hammer.
Good luck with that working every time.
As someone who exclusively plays legendar difficulty, I very rarely use the hammer anvil tactic as 90% of my units are ranged. Might give it a try.
I quit legendary difficulty because of this. You have to cheese your way to victory. It’s getting boring and u don’t using the whole game to have fun
@@procrastination_at_perfection I simply like melee units more than range so I never play legendary.
Imo leadership has a bit of a problem. It's a bit binary, as in, either you manage to break a unit, then it's great, or you barely miss it, then it does nothing.
Imo a unit should get slight buffs to attack/defense depending on their leadership. That way even if you don't quite manage to break a unit with a rearcharge, you will still weaken them somewhat in return.
What about the charge bonus cooldown?
7:35 ZHAO MING DISCO DANSE !
this works incredibly well with lizardmen and their dino cav
Your units looks so crisp and clean. Mine look all blurry. What are your graphics settings?
Mmmoooore tactical breakdowns
Chaos warriors of Khorne shields and bloodletters/minotaurs are the best at this
7:38 is that dragon teabaging enemy in the air?
...cavalry?
Gonna be taking some notes on this. In the Dammaz Kron.
What if you sandwich 1 unit of infantry with 2 shock cavs? similar sort of thing?
Yea, it works the same way or even better... But is that much harder to pull off.
You can actually make it super-effective by using 4 cavs to hit from every direction at once; they will route even elite infantry in seconds, and take virtually no damage doing it.
Taking proper advantage of this, with large enough maps it is possible to wipe out entire reinforcing armies as they trickle in one or two units at a time with just 4 good cav units.
Its still way weaker than it should be, sometimes even outright useless. For example when using underwhelming units like winged lancers or Empire knights.
Winged Lancers are pretty solid Shock cav I've found.
@@edwardfontaine7108 not really in my case. they do almost no damage to infantry even in rear charges, and at that point, the micro isn't even worth it. I was so looking forward to play with them, but yeah, they are really bad
@@FilipMoncrief I've been playing with them in a normal difficulty Kislev Campaign and I do believe they outclass Empire knights due to their higher melee attack and charge bonus. I'm well aware that cav in general underperforms at higher difficulty settings. While certainly not OP I haven't found them to be underperforming. I think comparing them to Empire Knights, despite being similar price points, undermines how much better they seem to perform due to their higher quality stat distribution. Maybe that hasn't been your experience but I've enjoyed using them in my early and mid game armies.
it can work unless they are turn with dragons you can't hammer anvil dragons and giants but you can snipe them, so hammer anvil snipe camp = win
Love you man ! Worst gamer approves ! :)
Everyone has been crapping on Dervishes, but hammer and anvil charging with Dervishes is really effective against Nurgle, since most Nurgle units are slow and unarmored.
Early game, I try to get up to 3 Dervishes ASAP, their speed makes them great for quickly getting into position for cycle charging, and the leadership hit from a rear charge is much more valuable to me than any real damage done by them. Kislev have some pretty good frontline troops, so the routing lets me constantly reform the battle lines and flank around tough stuff with melee. I don't know what's been changed since Total Warhammer II, but cavalry currently seems to be less effective at actually killing stuff in TW3; I tend to hold them in place until the leadership hit from the impact wears off, then back them off to idle (or move to the next unit in the line if the other Dervishes are too busy).
another solid one is the bull tactic used by shaka zulu if you wanna do a video about that
Hey Zerk, I just found your videos, I normally auto resolve cause my laptop can barely run this game and getting in and out of battle maps takes a century. What kind of setup do you recommend?
Also Could you maybe do a tactics video on Chaos Undivided?
Get an ssd to your laptop. You need it to play TWW.
My laptop is old too but after getting ssd the game loads in and out pretty quick.
@@lovebaskett is that different from a external hard drive?
@@kainleingod9662 Hard drives use mechanical moving parts, solid state drives don't. SSD's are much faster. Both are storage devices. Not sure you can still buy external drives that aren't SSD's.
A few months ago I had a laptop that would take about ten minutes to load a battle.
I bought an external SSD and ran it off there and my loading times reduced hugely, as in, I stopped autoresolving everything.
@@sudburymagic send me the name and model of the one you have? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Also do I relocate TWW to the SSD?
Is there some minimum distance that unit needs to run to get charge bonus? I'm trying to find out how far I need to pul back before striking again.
Aaahhhh, good old Parthia days vibes
or just use a line of drwarfs with a thunderbarge or 2 with some hellfire rocket gyros some flame cannons rows of crossbows and Rifles a Bomber or 2 and just play like Empire total war. except you dont need to worry about lining your troops up across the map cuz warhammer says meh 160 guys firing through each other works.
Is it better to rotate between targets with your hammer, or keep smashing the same one until it breaks?
It depends. If you rotate targets, you give each encounter an edge for your troops. If you focus on one, you can eliminate it quicker (hopefully) and then bring more to bear on the others.
I would rotate if each encounter is close to even or against your forces. I would focus if there is one encounter that is more pivotal, but the others can be expected to hold a bit better.
For me it depends on the anvil. If they're solid and can hold/win on their own, I'll cycle through target to give each anvil unit a slight edge. Otherwise break a unit to have the melee infantry advantage.
Attacking enemy from rear with horses ... I never imagined that. Thanks man !
This just makes me more keen for my dark elves an empire to be back in the game.