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Another new player question

I'm looking at the rules for archers, and it seems that anything past two ranks is a waste, at least for shooting, so is that the best way to field them, units with 2 ranks of 4 or 5?

That's mostly right. It depends also on what army you are (High Elves get two ranks default, Goblins coming in a minimum of 20) and what the terrain situation is (lots of hills or not lots of hills).

Units of 10 or so are nice because you'll have space to deploy them even if you don't have a hill.

What kind of archers are you talking about here?

malfred wrote:What kind of archers are you talking about here?

Tomb kings skeleton archers

I know a guy who uses units of 20, it works pretty well. He deploys them 10 wide to shoot usualy and moves them into 5x4 when he needs to fight. Dont take a unit like that lightly.
Ive also used DE warriors in a similar way, people always under estimate them.

Missile troops should be in units of about ten (you can have the odd one or two more for a change). In a single rank only. If you get to place thme on a hill you can collapse the frontage into two ranks and ighen up your line. But dont count on that so keep the units small so they dont get in the way. With some exceptions missile shooting is inferior to melee combat, so dont overinvest in shooty troops.



For completeness: High elves do not get to shoot in two ranks. The only real exceptions are Tomb King archers Gnoblars, Gobbos and Chaos Dwarves, both do well in full ranks of 20+ models. Use them as block infantry that just happen to have a missile attack. In the event of Chaos Dwarves the extra ranks are a real bonus, and are prefered. You get the full stability of block of dwarves plus a lethal missile attack, the best 'archer' unit in the game.

I've seen people do blocks of 20 for TKs, but they don't make
them ALL 20. Some are just 10 models.

No, you dont need to, but undead are undead. They do best in large numbers. The fighting abilitiy of any skellie is less important than their numbers, even Tomb Guard. All the units will hold, but if you have ten you have problems, if you have twenty the opponent has problems, if they dont slaughter enough of your archers they lose get outnumbered and run away.
I dont know any other archer unit that does that.

While you can take standard ten archers for Tomb Kings too, why waste the opportunity to have a hybrid missile-melee unit that can look after itself. Even with Arrows of Asp you want get much good shooting from a frontage of ten archers, nor as much effectiveness as when they get into combat. After all what are Arrows of Asp for but shooting on the move, shooting enemy light units while your block of skellies moves 4" towards melee combat.

TK also get more value from a big unit because a single incantation allows the whole unit to shoot in the magic phase. A big unit of 20 can put out a lot of shooting (and remember that any back ranks can all fire at a Large Target or an enemy unit on a hill), and is really tough to kill and get points for. 20 in two ranks on a hill puts out all those shots without taking up too much frontage, and even 20 in a big long row on the ground can work, though you have to practice the tactics to make sure it doesn't become an obstruction to your other units.

20 skellies are, as noted, also decent as a secondary combat block if you need to use them that way.