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I have heard much about the changes to skirmishers in the new rules, and to my (granted amateur) point of view, it seems that skirmishers are now totally useless for everything they used to do.

No more 360 degree LOS means the cannot charge or shoot in any direction. I have a really hard time grasping this one; what, did they all get breastplates with helmets chained forward? Now that we use true LOS, why is it that guys on one end of a skirmish unit can't just look to the side and... well, see?

Fixed 'semi-ranked' formation means that maneuverability is only slightly (if any) better than ranked units.

So with that in mind, what are skirmishers supposed to do in 8E?

Their traditional roles as flank guards gets severely compromized by their limited LOS and the new charge rules (don't get me started... ). It's too easy to charge a unit past their LOS and once there, there's all the skirmishers can do about it. What's worse is that now there is no good way to guard against flyers getting behind your line... or dwarf miners... or skaven tunnelling teams... or beastman reserves... These are things that shooting skirmishers held behind the line were good at dealing with... and now they're not

Screening? Oh, wow, they give a massive -1 penalty to hit targets on the other side of the unit. That's... severly underwhelming.

Maneuvering through tight spaces quickly? Nope, now they move in formation. But they don't get any of the traditional benefits from formations, only the penalty of being forced to reform and wheel and what not as normal units do.


So why take skirmishers anymore? It seems to me a smallish shooty block will do the same job, cheaper. Am I wrong? How am I wrong? Please tell me!


EDIT: I see rumors of 180 degree LOS on another board. Is this extended to charging as well, or is it just for shooting?

I'd have to agree, from my inexperienced impression. My whole concept of "all-raider Ungor army" for Beastmen has crumbled in a few weeks even as I was painting them.

I sincerely can't see a good value-for-money for skirmishers anymore. Well, they don't "skirmish", in fact. They just "take more horizontal space", like today's overweight teenagers.

From what I remember, they can move through tight spaces just as easily because they can reform as much as they want as they move.

The rules for them are pretty stupid for a variety of reasons. They weren't some unbalanced game breaking force to be reckoned with. So totally hamstringing them makes no sense.

Also the logistics of their new formation is just asinine. Who's going to measure half an inch between models.

GW dropped the ball on this one pretty hard...

Just for simplicity, I'm glad they move as a loose block now... it took me forever to move them individually before.

I thought they got free reforms when moving?

I believe they can march and shoot...

And I also thought models behind other models get a -2 to hit (not -1) for being behind "hard cover"?

They're stubborn in a wood... they get supporting attacks just like a normal block (but no rank bonus, of course).

So all in all, not useless, but less powerful for sure... with the boost to blocks, it made sense to tone down skirmishers. I haven't heard/read about the 180 degree LOS, I thought it was just normal LOS. So that's a major drawback to them now, but again, they were pretty good before and obviously the ruleset was trying to emphasis blocks again. I personally like the changes, but that's just because my skirmishers were driving me crazy with movement, and I wanted something simpler to game with.

Will post more once I've tried some out in 8th!