[experiment 626]

well,
a) yes, empire characters can carry multiple weapons in their new book! (though oddly enough, high elves can't?!?)
b) crossbows did indeed move to state troops!

my reason for the cannon is i know for a fact that my opponent will be bringing along his corpse cart. so the cannon get's the nod simply because it can potentially 2-shot the cart. (the cart is treated as a monster - not a chariot and it can regenerate!O.O)

the vamp counts army is basically based around the spearhead, so it'll be something like;
2 vamps
corpse cart
10 wolves
vargulf (eek!!!)
10 grave guard w/nasty magic banner
skellies.

the way spanky plays them, he relies on the cart's nastiness + all his bound items to dance his way into combat... he typically uses his power dice to raise some zombies which he again then dances into combat to hold you up and/or get a flank charge in.
so i figured the magic resistance will be handy to stop things like the rod of flaming death, while the rod of power let's me store 2 power dice to then use as dispel dice...

i'm worried about sinking so many pts into the knights though - his vargulf is really nasty! hopefully my warrior priest can hold his own with his nifty 2+ save? though i've also thought of dropping the magic armour & going for hand weapon/shield + heavy armour & van horstmann's speculum?!?
i think spanky might be expecting that though...

cheers!