Warhammer 3 Cathay Unit Roster Tier List 

Really interesting to see a faction where pretty much all units are viable to some degree, with some melee infantry being S-Tier. The Yin-Yang system really is great for faction balance.

What disappoints me about Cathay's roster, namely the cavalry, is there's no cavalry archer option to give them harmony when fighting away from the main line. It could be a fun tactic to have pairs of cav archers and cav units flank with harmony.

Running down broken troops becomes even less in this game when you consider your mostly fighting daemon factions and most of there units degrade rather than break and run

I never thought I'd see the day when Legend puts MELEE INFANTRY into S tier. These are truly extraordinary times.

I really loved my Cathay campaign from an army composition perspective. Celestial dragon guards and crossbows were amazing at their jobs. A couple terracotta sentinels to intercept big demons and help the frontlines here and there. Longma riders to fly right over any enemy units and hit archers/artillery or the infantry flanks. And sky junks for some good artillery power that is very protected by virtue of being flying, and makes an excellent source of yang harmony for your frontline allowing crossbows to keep some distance. It's been a long time since I played a varied army where it felt every unit did its job really well. May be my favorite faction from an army standpoint.

dang thats some good chinese pronunciation

The sky junk has the added benefit of being able to absolutely destroy units from above. Do not put them on fire at will and shoot their rockets from right above the enemy line at a slight angle. They will just about completely wipe out units in 1 volley if you get the angle right and all the rockets hit. Don't shoot their ammo from afar, most of the rockets miss, shoot units from just above after the lines engage.

Honestly looking at how good the units are, the mechanics they employ and how balanced everything is its sad how the Warhammer 1 stuff is falling behind, the Empire especially.

My experience with the crane gunners is to use them as a specialist missile support unit in the sense that they amplify the damage that the other missile infantry can dish out against armored units. This is especially the case when going up against the Stonehorn monsters that Greasus likes to throw at me. Basically, I keep one unit of crane gunners in an army to give a target the armor-break debuff and let the jade crossbows have a field day with them. I've found Cathay's roster to be heavily optimized towards combined arms tactics. One other tactic that I've been using in my Cathay campaign is to use the sky junk as tower bait to shield the rest of my army. Granted, the lords and heroes are better suited for this role but the sky junk's 10K HP is just too good to pass up from time to time.

Love the Tier-lists Legend. Eagerly awaiting a "Chaos God of Settlement Battles"-tierlist for each faction as well. (aka. "Get this tower for faction X")

One of the most important things about the Great Longma Riders in my opinion is that they have high armor AND shields, which gives them incredibly good resistance to missiles, while being able to pick and choose their fights due to being aerial units with extremely high speed. There's very little that can really be done to stop them from doing as they please throughout a fight, and while they don't really have a specialty in terms of countering other units, they also generally don't actually have any weaknesses and need to be killed the hard way.

only started getting better after going through all these videos, I never knew there was this much aspect to look at when building an army in Warhammer, I thought I knew it all but was shocked after going through your videos. Thanks for all the guidelines and advices. Keep up the good work!

Awesome, thanks Legend! These tierlists, and especially the analysis, are immensely valuable. Looking forward to the next one.

Those rockets carried me early on in my Zhao Ming campaign.

Literally searched for this exact video last night from you specifically , uploaded perfect time haha well done

Love these vids. Especially showing where they are recruited from in game as still new to the Faction. Cheers Legend

I think what makes Sentinel's especially good is that they're unbreakable, and their animations are actually quite good for dodging missile attacks. They jump and swing about quite a lot just attacking. Just having a massive, fast, unbreakable, and killy monster that can do both stand and hold or chase and disrupt is incredibly useful for Cathay.

Been waiting for this. Thanks

Just started a Cathay playthrough, so really useful tier list Legend, thanks mate.

Loved the video! Would love to see this for all the factions!

For the Sky Junk’s unlimited ammo thing, Serious Trivia was using the Sky Junk in a battle in their Cathay playthrough and prevented the main cannon ammo from running out by constantly spinning and the gunners did eventually stop firing.

Thanks for another tierlist. Can't wait for more!

Wanted to see this one a lot! Thank you, Legend!

I still watch your videos even though I’ve went back to playing warhammer two.. Thanks for being the best dude, you make me interested in discussion about a game that I don’t even play anymore!

Jade Lancers can be useful later in the campaign for secondary stacks, if you upgrade them. There's a tech later down the research tree that gives them the devastating flanker attribute that most slaaneshi units have. Having that massive charge bonus increase for flank and rear charges makes a pretty noticeable difference to how much damage they'll do.

What an insane roster! Can't wait to see what other cool units get added into it as time goes on.

With the skyjunk, if you manual fire it, it is absoloutely INSANE! The accuracy becomes literally perfect with manual fire. If you playing coop and u give or take control of 1 sky junk and just manual fire it all game u can get some crazy value on it

Appreciate what you do, Legend. Thanks again!

Legend putting infantry into S tier. It is a new dawn folks.

Just did my first TWWH3 run, did the recommended starter campaign with cathay, iron dragon. I'm really glad to see my experience more or less completely reflected in your tier system. Even though I haven't played in like a year, I still had the right instincts!

Glad to see ur doing more tier lists and def support ur decision in stopping livestreams until ca fixes this shit. Were with u on this.

While there are many problems with WH3, I am absolute enthralled with the system they have for Cathay and I hope they can create something similar for the empire to reflect their files upon files of disciplined state troops and how halberdiers and swordsmen fight together. Melee units can be viable IF CA are willing to expand on the good things they've done and toss the waste into the trash.

Always happy to see a tier list.

I’m a huge dwarf fan, I love outgunning the enemy, and having good infantry to hold them at bay. Cathay has everything the dwarves do, and even several things they don’t, a good monster unit, viable cav, and most importantly of all decent magic!

Thank you sir, Greatly appreciated. Keep them coming sir. Maybe Ogres or Tzeench next.

I'd say Terracotta Sentinels are quite good in Miao Ying's army too. They may not get the same passive bonus but her healing obviously is going to work very well with single entity, unbreakable monsters. I wouldn't say they should be doomstacked, but a few of them will be very tanky.

Excellent list Legend. I've just passed turn 120 in a Miao Ying legendary campaign and I agree with pretty much everything except perhaps the Crane Gunners I would put on C tier. I think lore of Yang Dragon-Bloods are the best lord choice too.

This is so good. Thanks for this content

I got the video I was hoping for, thanks legend.

a. I've found both the peasant and jade cavalry to be useful in sieges. Very useful for capturing points or diverting enemy resources because they think you're capturing a point. They fill a role because overall the Cathay army is low mobility and/or flying. b. Crane gunners are there for two reasons. 1. Shooting lords. 2. Making crossbows deal more damage (against shielded units). So fielding them at a 1 to 4 ratio with crossbow men will increase your damage total against shielded factions. c. Sky junks are also great because of the harmony amplifier. So using 1-2 of them for an army is great. d. Terracotta sentinels are great for Bastion armies since you can recruit them from the bastion itself at Tier 4. Their higher mobility than most cathay units (non-flying) makes it a good reserve/backline/counter attack unit while it's definitely packs more punch than their horse cavalry.

Fantastic verbal content, thank you. Next time, it might be good to show the units - e.g. arrayed for a custom battle? (I haven't got the game yet, so am curious what the units look like)

I've played Cathay almost nonstop since release - I agree with all of your rankings here. Keep up the good work Legend!

Thanks for the video, always enjoy the content. Cathay is the only faction I haven't tried yet. They will be my next game, and then I'll get to the last faction of the Daemon Prince. I've had fun with all of them and will probably do the extra LL campaigns for Kislev, Ogres and Cathay if we don't get the grand campaign soon. I expected word by now on that or the blood DLC. I wouldn't be surprised if they are afraid to release the DLC while there are so many bugs, though. The optics of charging for blood when the game isn't functioning for a lot of people would be really bad.

I love the feedback on the sky lantern. I was really let down on how it performed when I first used it haha

On the compass: It'll probably be considered more useful in the "Immortal Empires" campaign, when you want far more stacks going around. No doomstack of them, mind you (each mastery units gives a flat 15%, and the bonus max out at +100%, so no reason to have more than 7 units with said trait in a given stack), but getting one or two astromancers in an army and filling the rest with compasses (and probably the mage general, although the lord magistrate has some nifty abilities as well. Maybe an alchemist too for the damage boost abilities, depending what you fill the rest of the stack with) can be very useful in that it saves hero cap to field others stacks with similar abilities.

I would say the artillery for Cathay is probably the most awesome in the game, maybe only second to Dwarven artillery. The cannon is fantastic for sniping single entities while the rocket battery dishes fantastic damages to large swaths of infantry. On top of all this, the animations, sounds and looks of both these two artillery pieces firing are absolutely amazing. The design team did an awesome job.

Thank for the tier list guides

Please do these tier lists for every faction it's very useful

Ty very much. I hope for Ogres next :D

Would be interesting to see you build a good mixed unit doom stack at the end of the tier videos.

Been waiting on this one I really fw Cathay 🔥

Late on in the campaign I find having a couple of units of Iron Hail Gunners around in my armies is valuable, they're very very good at bodying single entities that rush your lines, moreso than even Celestial Dragon Crossbows because of their high projectile speed, slightly higher damage, and unit count giving them a lot of burst damage when they can concentrate fire on monstrous cav or single entities. I'd say no more than 1-2 per army but the AI really loves to rush you down later on and having that close in counter is really helpful.

I think it's worth mentioning sentinels can be recruited at tier 4 at bastions and with that 65% upkeep reduction it's good to have a fast hard hitting single entity. They give cheap Jade warrior armies power late game.

@LegendofTotalWar do you plan on making a Cathay Tutorial/ 20 turn guide? Also, has there been any news on the grand campaign map?

Nice I just started my first Cathay campaign!

Was just watching the skaven tier list. What a treat

Can't wait for the chaos tier lists!

Iron hail are great flank watch, either when your flanks crumble to pressure they'll push back hard or they'll tear into cav that gets too close to your front. They can also flank for massive dmg. Great all round damage early on but pretty redundant later in campaign.

The sky junk is S teir. You need to consider the angle of the shots. Once frontlines have been established the fire rockets are basically useless but the sky junk can shoot directly into the frontlines without really worrying about friendly fire. It has consistent value

Hey LTW, I hope you're doing well. Just a question that Im not sure if you've answered elsewhere, but are you going to do Saving Your Disaster Campaigns again in the future?

Hope we get to see a tech tree tier list at one point. Only played 3 races so far but there seems to be an insane difference in power there

So I'm by no means an expert, just finally had time to start a Kislev campaign and enjoying it a lot. Love the campaign focused lists and you clearly know your stuff. Another great RU-vidr has recently talked about the problems with infantry though, I'm curious to know what the difference of opinion comes down to. He basically demonstrated that infantry are way more sluggish and slow to react than previous TW Warhammer games and that they are dislodged and thrown out of formation by everything bigger than them, including the wimpy Dervisher cavalry. Thus they struggle against bigger monstrous infantry too much, lose formation structure and most infantry fights become big unit clumps with little ability to disengage quickly. A good amount of infantry is highly ranked on this channel so I'm curious as to the divide in opinion, and if more knowledgeable players can shed light on that?

I have come to realize that iron hail gunners are there to fill the harmony up for your frontline since they are supposed to position closer than intended when you're playing an aggressive cathay style on early game. Having one on each flank would significantly boost your chances of winning

Do a "reasons to remove demon portals" tier list :)

Sky lantern might be bad, but when it single handedly wins the battle for the AI by trapping Kairos in an invisible lantern wreckage prison, they seem pretty OP.

Hey legend great tier list! i've learned a bit but i also want to share how i've felt with cathay. both peasant units should be S tier imo due to one very important fact, replenishment, they're the only units that really get a replenishment buff through techs which helps a lot in the chaos wastes. Expecially since there is no replenishment hero in cathay's roster right now. Also peasant spearmen are surprisingly strong when you give them the yin-yang buff. Also the ability to replace with quicker recruitment. Cathay is difficult to recruit abroad and having these units available are great. The rocket artillery i found are very very inaccurate and if left unmircroed with blow up your own army when the AI summons bloodletters on your archers. I think you under rate the cav, yes they're terrible on their own in a fight, but I found the very useful to give my artillery yin-yang, protect my flanks since cathay is a range-based armies usually and to run down enemies after a victory to weaken them for the next battle is very useful as well. I try to keep 1-2 cav in my armies for their utility in this way, also they can help with siege battles in being the other side threatening to take capture points is nice as well, or at least they draw a couple units away from the main army.

Do you think you're going to do first 10/20 etc turn guides for the new factions?

playing my first legendary difficulty campaign as cathay atm, so this list comes in handy :)

Hey Legend do you think Cathay could pull off some Skaven tactics if they were to get yin/yang based heroes and use the ancestral warriors spell to summon lots of those as a frontline while having an entirely missile base army like you do with Skaven?

Loving all these bell shaped tier lists

Thing to note about the Cathay arty units is that they are actually pretty fast. One thing about the compass… lol maybe don’t doom stack it, but if you do have a Yin Lord, and an astromancer on one. You can get a solid lord snipe with the slow and double bolt. Also it’s yin harmony and so let’s you have that balance if you’re hanging back or hiding Yang units.

I have read somewhere that the war compass also have the melee harmony alignment (the white one I think it is) making it very useful at giving your missile and artillery units the harmony buff without having them to stick too close to your melee lines. It is still early in my campaign, and I have noticed I tend to leave quite a space between my melee line and archer troops. Because any heavy units (cav, chariots, ogres, and Id imagine, monsters) that charges my jade halberd knock them down and punch through a fair bit... Does the Astromancer on a war compass also have that melee harmony modifier ? If not, I might consider keep getting maybe 3 war compass in my army.

One thing I didn't hear you mention about the War Compass is that it is a Yin unit, so you can stick it in your backline with your ranged and artillery units to give them their harmony bonus. I usually had one in my army to hang out with my artillery to give them their bonuses

The only thing I've used the Peasant Horsemen for, is sniping capture points in non-wall sieges. And occasionally providing harmony to another unit and frankly Peasant Long Spear are much better at that.

even though it can be slow if you are in a prolonged battle the sky junk is absolutely amazing. in a seige it is the fire rain rocket but with better line of sight. with unlimited ammo it can just sit above your infantry and permanently provide them with the ying/yang buff while doing a bit of extra damage on its own plus bonus points for being generally fun to use. I have found the skyjunk to be the most satsifying to use effectively.

Haven't played Cathay yet, but looking forward to

I use Crane Gunners as counter units to enemy range. You have shields and you generally outrange the enemy shooting units, and as a result I tend to find them quite suited for the role.

Would you consider the extra ammo from Miao Ying or the Armor buff from Zhao Ming to be better? Would any units be majorly affected, like the iron hail gunners or crane gunners with these buffs?

Great tier list, please do ogres next

@LegendofTotalWar Can you do multiplayer Kislev tier list?

"Gyrocopters sucks" CA: "I'll fuckin' do it again"

Do you reckon you'll do a new tierlist for previous factions, considering the very hard battle difficulty changes will surely make melee troops more effective?

Sky Junks fire all four guns if one hovers over the unit it fights, which is important to get any damage numbers out of those secondary guns. Terracotta Sentinels are essentially speedy Giants with proper armor. And look much better aestetically than Giants, though that´s individual taste.

not to mention you can pretty much rival elven factions by making their range units up to 180+ -200 by technology and lord red's line, it was so good. But I guess their weakness is against a siege focus factions as cathay tend to keep their formation tight due to harmony

Question: when are you NOT rolling around in cash as GC? Lol Great video as always. Basically my exact thoughts while playing with each unit. Now to see if CA can actually make the game playable in the near future...

thank u so much for a new tier list I usually go through all the tierlists when I start a new race campaigns not gonna try Chinese race though

1:40 as well as the AI's melee cheats being lower, they don't seem to get free experience, or at least not the absolutely silly levels of it they used to get in Warhammer 2. So they're not double dipping on melee stats against you.

The Sky Junk is really good for defending Great Bastion gates. They can hover above the wall, giving and receiving harmony bonus with the infantry manning the wall below, and shoot down rockets with the towers (which is also why holding the wall with Cathay is worthwhile).

Thoroughly insightful

Wanted to add something in regard of the sky-junks: they have this very annoing mechanic of being stunned for a brief while when recieving missile damage that can interrupt it's salvo, reducing it's effectiveness when dealing with ranged units or offensive sieges BUT... the Cathay's tech tree gives the player a free banner that gives "stalk" to a unit, ANY unit; so, if you equip it to your sky-junk, it becomes an invisible, big-ass artilliery piece that flies around the map. Now, this doesn't make it invulnerable to missile damage, but it gives you the chance to position it along the frontline of melee units fighting, wait for the enemy missile units to be engaged by your other artilliery/missiles/cav and then start raining fire on the frontline. Or you can directly position it far away enough to escape the enemy's missile units, but in a good enough position to use the spread of your shots to hit multiple units at once. This is particularly efficient if you command the sky-junk direclty and fire manually. You can basically become Barack Obama and play with invisible drones raining fire upon -civilians- enemy units from the comfort of your chair

The Sky Lantern needs some kind of debuff, like armor sundering or maybe blind. That would at least make it a support unit. The Wuxing Compass spells should be bound spells.

I'm somewhat curious about this legend, cause you never mention it in the video. It says that the sky junk, the war compass and the Sky lantern all have +25% Harmony amplifier. Obviously this isn't enough to save the Sky lantern, but would it have any impact on the placement of the war compass or the sky junk?

Hey mate, any chance you'll go back to WH2 and do a Quarrellers doomstack with Thorek Ironbrow? I think it'd be alright to allow one master engineer in for full effect, with Thorek and one engineer, missile damage up to 169 over 10 seconds.

Sky laterns saved me once, I had a mid-late game khorne army coming after a weakened garrison so I global recruited sky laterns (1 turn because I built the building for +agent cap) and hid the troops. Let me just slowly shoot everything to death and end up with a win. Peasant archers would have been routed quickly vs the monsters/cav so it worked out

something to note: Jade Lancers can be upgraded with devastating flanker in the middle of the tech tree, for whatever that's worth

Sky-Junks are also incredible harmony pylons since you can just hover them over melee blobs without any real risk to them.

We need a tier list video of legend's tier list videos

keep up the good work

Any unit that really shines in siege defense? Particularly if you consider the support building buffs for the great bastion gates and also their existing garrisons? I am thinking Celestial Guard are probably most cost effective and also versatile. But I was wondering if Sky-Junks would really shine under these circumstances.

Agree with everything except the celestial dragon guard with helbeards, because while they are quite good, they still take 2 turns to recruit and 4 globaly. And its not that easy to get it down to 2, because i dont think there are enough regions in cathay to build 10 of their barraks and the neighbouring regions are either unlimited kurgan spam chaoswaste regions or ogre territories in which you can only build up to tier 3. Additionaly they dont have the +3 recruit rank and -7 upkeep items that the jade warriors have.