The Nautican Dilema

The difficulty with fielding a Nautican army is quickly becoming apparent. With it's lack of cavalry, ranged missile weapons and artillery the Nauticans are always going to suffer in the first couple of turns as it attempts to close the ground between itself and it's enemy.

The problem has been eased somewhat by the laste addition of Crest Riders, Coral Hunters, Chariots and the Tripoon battery. However, closing that gap is still a big issue for a Nautican commander.

Ok, so what about non missile heavy enemies or enemies with no ranged attacks such as Vampires, Daemons, Warriors of Chaos and to a slightly lesser extent Ogres ?

Well, that becomes another problem the Nauticans will face. Being short of fast movers and missiles they cannot expect to dish out much hurt to these armies before the clash of steel echoes around the battlefield.

Further more, all of the above non-missile heavy armies are significantly more powerful in close combat.

So, I hear you ask (if anyone's reading this !) "how am I going to win at Warhammer with a Nautican army !?"

Hmmm... good question and one I've been pondering myself for sometime now.

The answer is, you've going to have to pay a lot more attention to tactics, deployment and army selection than you might have to with some other armies.

The Nautican army will be a tough one to take to a tournament but given that it will probably never be allowed in a tournament we can just focus on friendlies for now.

In a "friendly" a player will usually let you know in advance which army he plans to slaughter yours with ;-)

The Nautican army has a lot of magical items and special characters that negate or dampen down the effectiveness of some enemies. Knowing who you're going to fight will allow you to chose the best items and characters to counter your enemy's strengths.

There are items that specifically target enemies subject to hatred, magically strong armies, high armour save armies and gunpowder weapon armies amongst others. This was all considered in the design of the army and you will find it more tactically challenging to select and fight with a Nautican Army once you dig beneath the surface. Also, this kind of design means that you will nearly always select different units depending on which enemy army you are facing. This is not always the case with other armies which often have units which are inherently strong and are "must include" units. The Nauticans only really have one such unit and they are the Trident Guard. I included them to ensure the Nauticans had a strong combat unit whatever the circumstances they faced.

So, the Nautican army is not the most combat worth of armies and neither are they the fastest moving or an army strong in ranged weaponry. Their magic is better than most but not the best, their special characters are not game winning but are mainly utility units which have special purposes.

The real dilema with the Nautican army is... are you bold enough to take it into battle given all the challenges the army will present you with and are you tactically smart enough to emerge as the victor ?

Thanks for reading,
Sigmar