With Daemons, Vampires and Dark Elves immerging as the big 3 at the moment, I was wondering who my bestial brethren would consider as having the best fighting chance against them.

Obviously, they must have a decent magical defence, something capable of taking on the big gribblies, good leadership or immunity to fear/terror, be able to cause damage from missiles and break through in hand-to-hand.

Personally, I think Bretonnians can tick all those boxes more than my other candidates of empire and dwarfs, but like I said I'm trying to provoke a discussion on the subject...

I think, that the big 3 have one advantage: they are good and can do it different ways.

Your example of brets is maybe good against ItP armies, but a few units dark riders make them run around in circles, while being shot by armour piercing shots and being flanked by hydras and dragons.

Why do you think of brets against dwarves, as dwarves are easier to cope with those.
Better leadership, Lord on shield bearers seems better equiped at taking out big monsters and the organ gun and cannons can do their stuff too.

I admit the dark riders can bait and flee from the knights, but they can't avoid the peasant bowmen shooting at them and I would be confident in avoiding a flank charge from hydra/dragon. I can see the benefits a lord/shield-bearers can bring the dwarfs, but the dwarfs in general are too static for my style of play, although they do have all the tools for the job - as do the empire, who would be my second choice.

Other potentials could be Lizards or High Elves and I'm sure that people will champion their rite to take down the big 3, but my experience with them and their style of play discount them from my selection of potentially stronger opponents...

Against DoC and VC, Bretons are not a good choice IMO, because Knights most important job, break the enemies with charge... by the way Unbreakable DoC or VC units can easly hold a breton Knight charge... and then they can break Knights with SCR and support charges from the nasty hitters in the fallowing turns... and with Invoc spam, a unit of zombie or skeleton can hold a Knight unit nearly end of the game...

Againts DE, Bretons are great... T3 Heavy cavalry is wonderfull thing... A Breton Knight of the realms Champion can defeat DE Assasin easly than any high toughness hero...or an unit of Knight of the Realms can destroy Witch elves and their damned champions with +d3 Attack, and Bowmen fire can rip this puny elves easly... Hero with Virtue of heroism can kill Hydra with lucky Killing Blow... or double charge form 2 unit of Knight can destroy a Hydra ... Darkelves can throw a Lordy character on Dragon against Bretonnia... Dragon Terrorize the peasants, and Lord can select his match-ups... But this is the general problem for Bretonnians: Flying Terror causers...

Here are the best armies against "the big 3" as I see it:

Brettonians-
Before you laugh, I am talking about a build with solid magic and lots of peasants, especially archers with flaming arrows. Taking a prophetess and two damsels is key, as Lore of the Heavens is a game winner. Two Trebuchets and some Peg Knights are also a must. This army wins through shooting backed up by inexpensive combat res units, with one knight hammer unit in reserve to contend with the faster support units. It has good leadership protection for a horde army and is strong in all phases of the game. Finally, a hero on a pegasus with the right gear can seriously put the hurt on a large monster and is dirt cheap for what he does. The only reasons you do not see this army more often is that it is a monumental effort to paint and most people who play Bretts are way too fixated on their knights to give peasants serious consideration.

Lizardrmen-
Two Engines, some saurus blocks, and maybe a lord with the Blade of Realities on foot are all this army needs. Just get in there and spam the engines once you are tied up in combat. The flaw in this army is that it does not stack up very well against anything that is not the big three, so its a purely metagaming choice.

Skaven-
With the ability to have multiple unbreakable units and tons of cheap CR5 blocks all over the place, they have all the right tools to deal with VC and DoC. Toss in the shooting and magic and you have created an issue for the DE players as well. Only drawback I see in this army is having the will to paint 200 slaves and resisting all of the overpriced toys available to the army.

High Elves. They are a damn solid army imo. Eagles to distract, good archers, bolt throwers for shooting then hit them with Swordmasters and Dragon Princes, and maybe a Star dragon or just magic them to death.

Bretts imo are just awful for taking down the big three... Every time I draw a Brett opponent in a tournie with my Daemons, I switch into easy mode. Its how can I get max points, not whether I can get a win...
Bretts rely on the charge to win games, Daemons/VC survive the charge and then break knights in the next round due to fear outnumber, pretty much every damn time... DEs just redirect all the lances and AP crossbows are pretty fantastic for killing Knights.
I'm not sure about Phazaels Brett army idea but its not the standard Brett fare and sounds like it has the right idea.

Lizards and Skaven have/will have good tools to take on the big three, as Phazael said

FYI I ran the kind of Brett list I am describing last season in our league. Another guy I help with his army builds ran it in a couple of GTs, though it took a while to convince him to run more magic. He has a perfect record against DoC and VC with it (as do I), including several wins over my DoC army. Peasants are the single most underestimated unit in all of fantasy.

Big 3 big strengths.
Fear/terror/fear
ITP/high leadership
Don't take break tests or fair amount of stubborn
Choppy characters

Variable strengths
Movement (magical/flight or otherwise)
Magic - not in all builds
moderate to large number of low strength attacks.
Regenerating troops - depending on the build

Weaknesses
Lots of T3
Generally a 5+ or so save
Can't flee from disadvantageous charges
Expensive characters - lots of points in one basket.

So how do you build to beat them -
Lots of low strength attacks. (the higher the strength of an attack the better a 5+ ward looks compared to a 4+ armor save - at strength three it's worse thaan light armor and shield.)
Ability to survive a prolonged grinding combat
Protection against fear
Enough mobile Troops to do flee and flank techniques
Character sniping-magic/warmachines/shooting
Ability to shut down key raises/movement magic
Flaming attacks

There are a couple of lists that do these things well - high elves, dwarves, WoC, even empire to some degree. I'm not convinced about brettonians - as they need to break folks on the charge by and large - and most of these lists won't. Bret's have a couple of interesting bits but grinding against VC and DoC is going to hurt them.

I haven't lost to DoC playing WoC or BoC - though I've lost some games with BoC against VC (probably 50-50 against them)

I would take Daemons against all three for the most likely win?

Vampires second. :)

HELF's would do great as they are quite versatile (shooting, magic, LD, HTH) - as would Lizardmen.

Again, you guys are hearing Brettonians and your brain is going "Lots of Knights!!!!" but that is not the kind of Brett army I am talking about. Peasants provide tons of inexpensive CR and (with the knights close to provide leadership) are pretty reliable. Peasant archers (with their severly undercosted brazier upgrade) can gun down just about any DoC combat unit. A hero level guy on a peg with either the KB virtue or the +1 STR d3 wounds sword can put the hurt on large monsters for very fiew points. The army plays completely differently than any Brett army people are generally familiar with. It is a rough fight for DoC and VC because they are so vastly outnumbered and are under immediate pressure from the peg knight unit. Is it the perfect counter to the big three? No, but it really hammers DoC and has a good shot at beting the other two.

BEASTMEN (As you saw at GT bob ;) ).

Genuinely, the new skaven or lizardmen.

Being at the last gaming night last thursday at the store and seeing the "top 2 " players at the store drawn together in the store tournament "rigged?"with their Dark Elf " Blessed are the Cheese Makers" armies. They were discussing the Skaven and they see these as a genuine threat.

I have just purchased the Skaven Book and first impressions are there appears a lot to get ones head round. My army will not be very good against these as I tend to purchase figures I like to paint rather than gaminess. Any tips on building an army around Kweek Head taker will be Greatfully received! :huh:

Well, with Queek you should take at least one stormvermin unit, that's fluffy.
The Doom Wheel and the Hell Pit Abomination both seems like good monsters. A lot of weapon teams are good as well, though the ratling gun have been nerfed, and the Warpfire thrower have got a serious boost. Automatic hits on partials means you will more or less double your amount of hits.
Plague Priest with censer and monks is a good combat unit.

Mrtn

Thanks for the tips. I do have loads of storm vermin around 60 painted figs! I know I can't use all these!

What do you think about the plague furnace as I fancy building and painting this model? and placing it in a big unit of plague monks.

I'm gonna get one. :)

But it will be very hard to limit your army, I want to play 3000+ points all the time, since there's so many fun toys in the book. And the Special slots are highly contended.

Mrtn

We can always play the "Skaven" way and cheat! :P

It will be about 2000 pts give or take 100 pts or so! :P

I picked up the skaven book on sunday on my way home from work and I think it will be a good big three matchup.

Slaves are really pretty darn good for the points- particularly in the generals leadership bubble. Magic is quite nice though no more warp lighting spam by and large.

I think you could do quite well with lots of core troops and character support. IMO the obvious pairing is moulder and pestilens heavy. Though I looked at the list and said if you did an eshin list could you make it work. . .

Eshin seems to be the weakest of the biggest clans. There are some things that should work good, especially against vampires. A banner that give 2d6 S2 hits (and no armour save iirc), giant rats attack in two ranks. All templates (of which there is a good number, WFT, WLC, plague wind catapult, magic thingies and spells) hit automatically, no partials anymore. Magic spells that give death frenzy (+2 A) and poison.

Played the rats last night. I was down to my Bestigors with Doombull by turn 4...

An Abomination basically destroyed one of my flanks on its own, killing a Beast Herd, Mino unit and Chariot by itself. I did get it too half wounds but without Flaming attacks its gonna be a nightmare. It did 8 wounds to a unit of charging Minos in one round of combat... :o I'm thinking a RotTB BSB may be useful to try keep it locked down.

Doomwheel wasn't too bad though my Dragon Ogres panicking off the board due to my Centigors fleeing 17" through them didn't help :P I think if you are smart you can guarantee some Lightning Frenzy on the DOgres though :) However, having a Terror causer on each flank that can charge 360 is not fun. At all!

The list hits like a tonne of bricks. Censor Bearers are damn painful now, 3 S5 Attacks with Hatred hurts. And you can basically guarantee where they hit with screening Slave units which do enough damage on their own... Its definitely alot harder than the old list. Interesting thing to note: Minos cannot hit Slaves and carry on through to the juicy stuff behind, since no Overrun allowed...

The other interesting thing about the Rats though was Clan Rats. I'm not sure if it was just my opponent, but they were basically just Bunkers for Engineers and Weapon teams. They definitely don't seem needed behind the rest of the impact units...

Are you sure? I haven't seen that they would disallow Overruns...

Ahhhh...he means with minos because of bloodgreed. Yup, that's right. Annoying against slaves and undead. :P