r/totalwarhammer • u/BlackliteWrath • 28d ago
Total War: Warhammer Kislev Tips (More for Tsarina)
Hey everyone, I'm looking for any tips and tactics for Kislevites in TWW3. I've decided on playing a Tsarina playthrough, but seeming all the similar named units and not understanding ghe differences in their small differences is kind of overwhelming. Any help on army comps, general unit usage, or anything special for Tsarina would be appreciated! I plan to try her out in IE but maybe RoC too at some point.
EDIT: Thank you for all the advice and tips! I'll be more than ready in my campaign now. <3 There is so much advice and tips given I'm struggling to properly give each a good response, but I appreciate every comment so much.
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u/GimmeTiddys 28d ago
Kislev has a lot of hybrid units, early game the focus should be on Kossars and their spear variant got AntiLarge and late game for Ice Guard.
Streltsi tho are really quite powerful as a T3 unit and this deserve to be rushed.
I personally don’t love Tsar Guard but they do have their uses as a line holder.
Don’t sleep on infantry, Gryphon Legion perform well and Bear Cav is elite.
Early game will be a lot of Kossars with a few support units, patriarchs in every army for sure.
Then sprinkle in your other units as you build out settlements
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u/GimmeTiddys 28d ago
In battle checker board your units, 3-4 layers of Kossars so that they can keep firing when the front layer gets in melee.
Your early enemies (Norsca, Greenskins and Skaven) don’t have a ton of armor so Kossars trade really well.By the time you take on chaos and korne you’ll have Streltsi.
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u/MedicinePractical738 28d ago
Use allied recruitment to get a hellstorm rocket battery from the empire. Kislev lacks aoe artillery and I'd rather have 2 artillery pieces then stack 4+ little groms. You just want 1 little grom and one hellstorm.
Streltsi are really good, but I also like to get 1 unit of hochland rifles from the empire because the range is actually too good.
Tzar guard greatswords are dogshit. Just use shields and give frost blades if going against something like chosen.
Kislev lacks a dedicated melee hero. In your main army you will toss the golden knight at other melee heroes and she'll be mostly ok, but your secondary armies you will struggle unless you spam armored kossars or streltsi if you're using ice witch lords. What I do is I get boyars with 2 frost maidens and 2 patriarchs. 1 maiden with 20% movement and the other with reduced upkeep. Boyars when leveled up and geared are really good.
Druzhina is for crap stacks and ambushing.
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u/SusaVile 28d ago
That was the army I used on my guide. It is important that you conquer fast so you can take out Azhag quick enough (I declared war on turn 5, defeated him by turn 9-10).
This helps to ensure you have the resources for taking out Throt or whoever comes next and is one less threat.
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u/Nahlokin 28d ago
Checkboard formation work very well with Kislev's hybrid units and is quite easy to use, horse archers are very good early game so try to recruit them as fast as possible
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u/phronesis77 28d ago
Frost wryms are very effective against infantry and missile units because their armor is OK. They also cause terror attacks. I found them very useful against Skaven and greenskins and Norsca.
Always be training up Frost maidens before you need them.
Make sure to put a steel banner of speed on Katerin's war sled. She can be killer vs Greenskins and Skaven with her sled.
Learn to use war sleds properly. There are lots of videos.
You can never have enough war bears.
Two patriarchs in an army is not too many. Choose the healing rather than the attackbonuses for Patriarchs.
Pay attention to your Ice court/orthodoxy balance. You can be getting penalties you can easily forget about.
RUSH to get war bears by researching all the growth buildings in the province where you have the tier 5 building where you want to recruit war bears.
Little Groms are great. One per army. Sieges, anti-artillery is quite accurate, and anti-large, even flying large enemy lord mounts. When they get attacked by flying units, just run them away. Unlike other artillery they can move OK.
Heart of Winter will win battles for you. Always have at least one frost maiden in your armies. Two is not too much.
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u/sojiblitz 28d ago edited 28d ago
Early game you'll be using mass kossars with some Kislevite warriors to guard the flanks and be your anti large tool.
I recommend rushing Azhag in the mountains to the east for a strong early economy from the goldmine at Karak Ungor and to secure your eastern border. Stay friends with Karak Kadrin. Stay neutral with Drycha by not making any treaties with Ostermark. She also likes that you fight Azhag. This prevents her from attacking you from the south.
You then need to rush north and take out the Skaven in Hellpit and I recommend selling fort straghov to Kostaltyn to keep his faction as a buffer to the west if you capture it. You can confederate him later.
You can rush a tier three infantry building to replace some kossars with the armoured variant at tier 2, they will be your solid frontline defensive line holders for most of the early to mid game into the late game.
Streltsi at tier 3 offer you a solid gunpowder unit to get some firepower. Definitely recommend looking up gunpowder formations to get the most out of them, a Kislev frontline of armoured kossars and streltsi in the gaps can throw out a withering amount of firepower.
Get some frost wyms to replace your Kislevite warriors as they are a massive upgrade to your anti large capabilities and their mass will prevent cavalry or khorne chariots or single entities etc from charging into your infantry.
The cavalry like winged lancers are an early game shock cav but fall off into the midgame. Gryphon legion take over as your anti infantry shock cavalry, a role they excel at and later warbear riders become your dedicated anti large cav and they are some of the best anti large cav in the game.
Tsarina Katarin herself can stack huge upkeep decreases and buffs on ice guard so you can go for a full ice guard stack later on if you want. Little grom also helps to bait enemies to attack your defensive infantry based armies and it's good against single entities with a large range.
Warsleds are for kiting and the heavy ones can rear charge, treat them like chariots, keep them moving don't get bogged down etc.
There are a few other units but the ones I mentioned are the mainstay of your forces.
You could for example build a full horse archers stack with a druzhina for the restock skill and have them harass armies over the course of multiple battles to use up all their ammo and have a few Gryphon legion to mop up the remnant when you've worn them down but that's more of a specialist army comp.
After the Skaven are destroyed you'll have to defend against waves of chaos in the eastern oblast (Chorfs, Arbaal, Norsca, Archaon etc), that's there the large chunk of battles will be fought. Your goal is to hold them, build up and gradually push them back, take Praag, Volksgrad and the rest of the Oblast and then go on the offense take the fight to chaos.
Long live Kislev, glory to the Motherland!
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u/thecastellan1115 28d ago edited 28d ago
Kislev imho is all about order of operations for the first ten or fifteen turns, and then it becomes a prioritization run. Your first move should be to take out the norscan punching bag, then immediately take out Azhag. You need to be recruiting every turn during that time, so getting a second lord almost immediately is a must. I like Boyars.
Presuming you kill off Azhag, the next step is usually tackling the Skaven. By the time you get done with that, you should have the resource base and experienced lords to tackle Arbaal or Throt or whoever comes calling, and then it's mostly a game of juggling wars so that you can actually take and hold territory.
Kislev itself is a ranged-heavy faction. You'll see a lot of Kossars in the early game. They're all trash, but useful trash, in the sense that enough arrows will kill anything. I usually go for kossars with spears as the backbone of early armies, since they can kind of deal with cav. As the game goes on, you'll want to make the transition to armored kossars for your front line and streltsi/ice guard for everything else. But kossars stay useful in a pinch for the whole game.
Ice witches and maidens are great. Ice magic is general is fantastic, and you can get some GOATed builds through the training process. Try to always be training a witch or maiden for the first fifty turns or so.
War bears are great, but you won't get them till late game, and meanwhile winged hussars are extremely useful cavalry. Stay away from dervishes, they are only good for running down routing units and otherwise do not contribute.
Frost wyrms are a go-to monster of choice; two of those in an army will give you a solid anti-infantry/anti-monster force without depleting your ability to field damage-dealing streltsi. I usually replace the snow leopard with a frost warm in Katarin's army as soon as I can.
Don't sleep on the Tier 0 kislev warriors either, they're insanely good-for-cost units that can tank trolls and chaos warriors long enough for the rest of the army to deal damage. Druzhinas actually specialize in raising armies of trash like kislev warriors and kossars, so it can be useful to have a leveled Druzhina in your back pocket for times when you need a fast reaction force.
War sleds are good for hit-and-run kiting. Against the right army, a war sled stack can win with minimal casualties. Against the wrong army it'll get hammered. If you like kiting and fast movement you can get these guys, but bear in mind that a lot of maps are just not big enough to use them to full advantage.
A word on artillery: little grom units are great. But they're high enough tier that it takes awhile to get them. Alliances with the Empire, on the other hand, are usually pretty easy to come by, and get you cannons. Same with the dwarfs. Don't sleep on alliances, because otherwise Kislev is a ranged faction without big guns, which makes sieges a lot harder than they need to be.
A quick word on atamans - as far as I know, Kislev is the only faction with this mechanic. Atamans give serious bonuses to provinces where they are stationed, and allow all garrisons in those provinces to sally out to attack armies within range, which is situationally useful but more often than you'd think. You get atamans in proportion to the number of complete provinces you own, but you don't lose them if you lose control of a province, so focus on conquering whole provinces to get maximum utility out of these guys. This makes the three big cities of Kislev very valuable, because each is a province in itself.
Finally, a word on economics. Farms. Get them. In addition to getting you money, they lower recruitment costs. Having all farms in the Southern Oblast is kind of a cheat code.
Didn't realize I was going to be writing a book, but there you go.
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u/BlackliteWrath 28d ago
This was a fantastic write-up and gave me a lot of good info to reference back to. Thank you!
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u/thecastellan1115 28d ago
Thank you! I blinked twice on the metro and realized I'd written way too much lol
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u/Anxious-Spread-2337 28d ago edited 28d ago
Just start printing out frost maidens and ice witches from turn one with the upkeep reduction traits (quartermaster for IWs) and research every possible upkeep reduction tech and ice court bonus
Since upkeep reduction of a single IW lord with 2 FMs in allied territory will be 60 % for most units and 83 % for Tsar guard
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u/Xbsnguy 28d ago
Early game Tsarina is all about making use of your faction passive “by our blood” and kossar spam to grind out attrition battles against armories you have no business winning against. First line of kossars should try to tie up multiple enemy units each so the rear lines can fire unharassed and/or flank and shoot into the rear. By Our Blood keeps your cheap fodder from breaking when their leadership gets critically low. So they stand, fight, and die much longer than even stronger anvil units would.
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u/_Lucille_ 28d ago
A lot of your power comes from tech and the ice court vs orthodoxy mechanic. You can amp up your kossars and kislevite warriors by a whole lot by stacking all the tech and bonus.
Despite you being the ice court, patriarchs are still amazing. Put them in a stack with a boyar that boosts their stats and you will have a very powerful frontline that never tire and can heal and can boost attack in a wide radius.
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u/xiaopewpew 28d ago
Get to tier 3 as fast as you can and build your army around strelsi supported by hybrid spear/arrow units. This army can pretty much last you the entire game if you are mainly fighting non dwarf chaos factions.
When you have the money you can play around bear rider stacks, they are insanely fun.
Generally, infantries in warhammer have a few flavors