Hey guys,

Just won a very tough mini battle 1v1 300pts each last man standing vs my who was using dwarves. I had 10 goblin archers shooting volleys every turn until our lines clashed then I moved them into the fray for support.

The my friend just fielded dwarf warriors with Gimli. I did not kill a single dwarf with a bowshot. And this is a regular occurrence, unless I'm fighting a cav heavy force where I might drop a horse or 2.

I guess my questions is basically are goblin bows even worth it? I could have had another captain or another 10 soldiers.

Maybe it's just the small scale battles we are doing and I'm not fielding enough to have effective volleys. Maybe I just suck with dice.

Your thoughts? thanks in advance.

Sure they are worth it, they cost the same as a goblin without bows so no reason not to take them. Does he take archers?

He took 8 dwarf bows and put them in the middle of his 2 columns with shields in front. And he killed 2-3 goblin shields every turn with normal fire. So it ended up 6-0 for bow kills for the dwarves.

A shoot 5+ goblin will hit 1 in 3 shots, a s2 bow will wound a d7 dwarf 1 hit in 12, so *on average* you're looking at 36 shots to kill a dwarf or 72 if you're firing a volley.

So no, they're never going to kill much of anything and certainly not many dwarves. What archery does do is give you some flexibility. If I've got more or more effective archery I can force you to move and come to me, because if you don't I just keep plinking away and nothing changes except you lose a model or two. If I can force you to move I can make you come fight on a part of the board you don't want to fight on, which is good fun.

Dwarves should have D6 members (archers, banners, two handed weapons, rangers) and direct fire will kill a dwarf per 18 shots or about 90 points of archers killing ~10pts of dwarf. Meanwhile 10 dwarves shooting back should hit 5 times, a kill one or two taking out 5 or 10pts of goblins. It needn't be a terrible exchange for the goblins.

So your saying that they are useful? I guess having only 2 more bows than him is what made it so difficult. Perhaps if I ditched my troll and used the extra for a ton of extra bows it might be effective. Even though my troll did a pretty good job

They are okay, but they will never kill more than a couple models. If you want the extra ranged attacks that shooting gives you, invest in prowlers. They hit more and come with throwing weapons standard. I've found that prowlers are definitely good, and against str 3 armies a shield doesn't help anyways. Goblin Warriors with Orc Bows, I can never get them to be useful. Goblins are already able to be kited because they are slow , being able to kill a single model every other turn won't help you dictate the battle too much. Also captains with bows are a waste

Goblin bows? YES PLEASE!

You can't look at goblin bows in a vacuum. You can't say that "blablabla they only kill this many models per this many shots". That's not a fair thing to do. The strength of the goblin bows lies in volley fire and sheer numbers:
1. A goblin force in 700pts can easily have 80+ models, so over 25 shots. If you are facing an opponent who doesn't have bows (exception here being an all-hero force) you autowin because you force them to play on your terms and where you want them to be. If your opponent has bows, you still most of the time force him to play on your terms because you have a much bigger volley. Say you're fighting wood elves: you outshoot them. WE will have 17/18 bows in the same time that you have your 25/30 even - that's a game over before it starts in many cases.

2. Double volleys mean double the chance of killing horses and wounding heroes. With 25 bows you are not supposed to shoot all 25 in a single volley, but shoot 2 separate equal volleys. Why? Because with a 1 volley you will a hero on a 25mm base once and only once. With 2 separate volleys you're hitting the hero twice. Now think of how much more damage Legolas can take from a volley in that way.


Goin back to the initial example of 10 goblin bows in a 300pts list... well, on a small scale your chances drop so you will be doing less damage obviously and Dwarves have too high defence to cause any significant damage. But at the same time compare goblin bows to Harad bows (probably the best shooting army in the game):

Say 12 goblins with bows are 60 points, let's see what happens for 60 points within bow armies:
12 Goblins hit 4 times, kill 1/3 of a D7 and 2/3 of a D6 model per turn
9 Harad bows hit 4.75 times and kill just over 1/3 of a D7 and around 5/6 of a D6 model per turn
7 Elf bows hit 4 times and kill around 2/3 of a D6 or D7 model per turn
7 Dwarf bows hit 3.4 times and kill about 1/2 of a D6 or D7 model per turn.

Given the above you'd think all bows are useless, but since you get about 5 turns of shooting per game even 1/2 per turn gives those 3 extra casualties which will count if the armies are 30 models each - that's 10% of a force removed. If you had twice as many models you would be removing twice as many, but still it would be around 10% of enemy force.

Bows rock. Goblin bows rock.

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Goblin bows are useless if the senario means you have to attack your opponents. I have been in a game where despite having no archers, I was happy to sit back in my well defended area and let him shoot at me, killing no more than 1 model per turn. I had about 60 units so I was not bothered by this and won in the end because he ran out of time to kill me.

As would all bows if your opponent doesn't play the scenario, that was just poor playing on your oppos part, he should have just waded in with all models ASAP.

I agree that they are good! For points calculations remember that the bows are only 1 point each really. No reason the gobs can't fight as well when the enemy gets close. Particularly when you can swarm. I do think it depends on your army and play style though. When I play horde I max bows. Otherwise I generally just take a volley group.

I love having volleying groups sitting on objectives while the rest of the army swarms forth!

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Goblin bows are definitely worth it, but when facing dwarves i NEVER use archers apart from crossbows. There just really isn't much point. It's not the goblin bows that are the problem, its the dwarven defence.

I find that for goblins bows to work effectivley they either have be on prowlers or have a stupidly large amount. i kill more with prowler throwing weapons if Im honest xD.

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Just had the funniest battle. I ended up killing 3 of my friends berserkers and only 2 riders of Rohan with my goblins bows, he was not impressed

I was volley-firing into combat with goblins and killed a ranger of the north. I also made Aragorn expend a fate. They can be good if you have enough.

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Forward Ruby Rangers!!!

Randolf, you realize this thread is a year old? Also, volley fire is no longer part of the Hobbit rules...

Yes yes I do know both of those, but I'm just saying...

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Forward Ruby Rangers!!!