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Hello Everyone,
I've written up my thoughts on the competitiveness of OnG at the moment in my tournament environment as I was reflecting on the army (my first love) after reading about OnG winning the SCGT.

http://littlewaaagh.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/the-state-of-waaaghh.html

I live in NZ so our tournament scene is relatively small and dominated by a handful of players so I'm curious to hear about how the Greenskins are going in your local tournaments, what sort of comp systems are being used and how you see your local "style" of warhammer.

Keen to hear your thoughts. Jeff

Theres a lad form the north who consistently does well with all goblin lists

O&G just won the biggest tournament in the UK (around 180 players) which has very little comp.

Admittedly he had a perfect run of match-ups (Brets and 5 Warriors) but he still had to win those games.

The biggest reason I think that O&G don't do well in a lot of metagames is that people use them badly wrong. Animosity absolutely must be limited if the army is going to work, but a number of players seem to take the view that it's part of the army and something that you just have to live with.

Also, there's a common misconception going around that O&G work best as a combat army- they really, really don't. As soon as you start to push forwards with the army it becomes much harder to keep everything in general and BSB range, and because you tend to have very few mainstay units (but lots and lots of chaff) from limiting Animosity it becomes much easier for the opponent to get around you.

Instead, O&G work best as a counter-attacking shooty-chaff army.

Good post tmarichards.

I fully agree. O&G need to rely on shooting. They got extremely effective shooting plus staying at long range makes animosity less of a problem (due to no enemy being in range of a charge move).

True though, Bret + WoC is a dream matchup and pretty much a cakewalk for O&G - even with my 100% Goblin list, I roflstomp those armies in every match due to the extremely effective shooting, Mangler Squig etc.

In short, every good O&G army starts with maxing out your points allowance for rare units. 2 Rock Lobbaz, 2 Doom Divaz, 2 Mangler Squigs, Pump Wagons...then fill up with tarpits, anti-animosity and a bunch of lvl 1 NG shamans + 1 lvl 2 or 1 lvl 4.

So am I seeing that NG are more or less doomed to only take bows in competitive settings? All my spear wielding and HW guys aren't worthy? :/

second Q.. quelling animosity, I'm thinking black orcs are about the only way around this, short of units of less than 5 models..

HW+Shield NG still make a good tarpit due to the 6++. What makes Short Bows attractive is that they still hit as hard as elves.

I suppose the bows and poison banner go well together, while I tend to take the +1 LD banner for LD9 as I run a gobbo boss which I suppose would make hw's a better fit. Suppose my spearmen can always hang out as unit fillers for HW guys.

The poison better is pretty damn expensive.Even with a horde of 80 NG archers, you got 50 shots. Most of the time, those hit on 6s, thus on average, you got ~8 automatic wounds w/ the poison banner compared to (vs. average T) 4 wounds w/o the banner. Not paying 28 Goblins for 4 more wounds

I saw some guy in a tourney I went to running a list with a Catcherweb Shrine + Lvl 3 Shaman, a Level 4 Orc Shaman and then tons of Lvl 1s. He could quite consistently generate about 4 Power Dice a turn. With Sneaky Stealing as well, his magic was very effective, and he did pretty damn well. Came second, iirc.

He did have lots of Lobbas and Divers though, that is the way to go if you want competitiveness

O&G just won the biggest tournament in the UK (around 180 players) which has very little comp.

Admittedly he had a perfect run of match-ups (Brets and 5 Warriors) but he still had to win those games.

See I would argue that SCGT 13 comp was very favourable for OnG, they had no pool choices whatsoever, no shot cap to come under, NG PD weren't counted (fairly standard though tbh), and Dwellers/13th/Final Trans were heavily nerfed to allow his characters in the NG deathstar to shrug off hits which would have otherwise murdered it. Contrast this with the very heavy restrictions placed on traditionally strong armies such as Lizards and Skaven and you have created a totally different playing field (probably more level) than you would see in an uncomped environment or even using SCGT 12 comp. As you point out his draw was perfect as well.

That all said I 100% agree with your assessment on people playing OnG incorrectly. Pushing your toys up the board doesn't work and there's no requirement to do so when 2xDD,2xRL + Foot is enough to make nearly any army come to you and those that don't have to tend to have other exploitable weaknesses. I still think the potential for things to go absurdly wrong so much faster than other armies precludes them from performing in minimally comped environments.

Cheers. Jeff

The local tournaments do not use a comp system. I have never seen the greenskins do well locally in a tournament but also they are rarely played in tournaments locally.

I do not think this means much because they are under represented compared to skaven, vampires, ogres, warriors and dark elves.

 Sigvatr wrote:
The poison better is pretty damn expensive.Even with a horde of 80 NG archers, you got 50 shots. Most of the time, those hit on 6s, thus on average, you got ~8 automatic wounds w/ the poison banner compared to (vs. average T) 4 wounds w/o the banner. Not paying 28 Goblins for 4 more wounds

Which is why I dont use it. For less points, you can have the bad moon banner, which makes them stubborn, permanently considered in soft cover and anything that charges them has to take dangerous terrain. Basically, a really unattractive unit to go for, especially when you factor in fanatics.

Mr Mugguffins wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
The poison better is pretty damn expensive.Even with a horde of 80 NG archers, you got 50 shots. Most of the time, those hit on 6s, thus on average, you got ~8 automatic wounds w/ the poison banner compared to (vs. average T) 4 wounds w/o the banner. Not paying 28 Goblins for 4 more wounds

Which is why I dont use it. For less points, you can have the bad moon banner, which makes them stubborn, permanently considered in soft cover and anything that charges them has to take dangerous terrain. Basically, a really unattractive unit to go for, especially when you factor in fanatics.

I can't recommend using this banner either. Giving the unit stubborn is useless as you are always Steadfast anyway - and if you aren't, the unit is worthless anyway. Dangerous terrain checks are a non-factor too, the only good thing is the soft cover. But it's a lot of points and you can't take the +1 LD banner...which is, imo, the far superior choice for the BSB.

Orcs and Goblins seem to be on a bit of an upswing in the US. The same weekend, O&G won the Brawlers Bash (80+ players) in North Carolina. Two weeks before, a strict night gobo army (nary an orc in site) won the West Coast GT (48 players?) in Los Angeles. Both events were uncomped. About the only disappointment I see is that there seems to be a move towards a single tournament competitive list.

Hinge

There's no other choice tbh. The only real strength O&G have are their excellent rare choices (most of them). If you want to be competitive, you need to max out on ranged options - melee O&G just can't cut it.

Hmm.. Do you not think that a melee oriented NG army is viable if enough squigs are present? (I realize trolls fill this roll for most "goblin" armies, but a troll isn't a "night goblin" unit to me, while squigs (with NG handlers) are a better fit for my definition of a "night goblin army"). I mean, they are a steal. in 2400 uncomped, lets say you have 1400 points of squigs... could have 3 units of 50/20 or whatever configs.. I don't have near as much exp as the rest of yooz, but squigs are awfully killy especially if you can keep them from breaking.. (the 1400 estimate was assuming 400 spend on characters, 2 lobbas, 2 divers, 2 manglers but I did forget pump wagons, but the # of squigs is kind of absurd already so could easily trim down to fit in 2 pump wagons and more characters/chariots etc... could drop the rare artillery altogether in the theme I suppose..

Indeed. I have a club mate who runs pretty much 3 massive units of squig hoppers, a couple of NG bunkers (whch he throws the fantics through his own units when need be), plenty of artillery and chariots/pump wagins. actually pretty effective. massed ST5 is always good.

very cool

took my 3k squig list to club today. great results

played my dwarf buddy, he conceded top of turn 3. (bad luck on his shooting have to say.. 1 "hit" on scatter with 4 catapults firing 2 turns.. only 1 cannon hit and did a single wound to a mangler etc.. gyro dying panicked a cannon off board.. skarnsnik kept 1 cannon of board for T1 shooting at least..

played the nurgle demons who took a way ahead of the pack first place last week in tourney, and he conceded turn 2. epidemus and horde of PB's got held back in reserve. He played really aggressively throwing drones in my face t1, same with furies. between manglers, squigs in combat. and artillery/bows/magic at the end of my t2... he had a soul grinder (looking 3 manglers in the face), a skull cannon beasts of nugle,, and a horde of PB's with epi.. while I had suffered no casualties aside from misfiring and blowing up a DD..


First game I got life on wiz hat, nothing amazing...


2nd game.. it happened... I rolled beasts, and transformation of kadon.. (no idea why its such a big deal to me... whole store got a kick out of my gobbo turning into a dragon though)

Transformation of kadon, T1... drained all his dispel dice with skarsnik, vind glare, poison spell etc, and 5 diced it and barely got it on a 17 lol. Totally turned into a dragon... and then the game ended before I could do anything with it at least it ended for the right reason hehehehe

4 mangler squigs is super gamey, but a lot of fun. Probably provide a giant or wagons plenty of room to get across field..

Some of the vets at the store saw my list and want to try it next week, so hopefully will get some more insight on its shortcomings. I'm sure they will have plenty of chaff, heh.


(pardon if my #s off, im drunk)
nurgle list well usually more nurgley..

dp
epi
60 pb fc
herald of nurgle
5 furies x 3
3 drones x 2
6 beasts of nurgle
soul grinder

list i ran was
skarsnik
ng lvl 4 sham earthin rod ironcurse
ng warboss wiz hat

ng big boss gw bsb +1 ld
ng big boss great cave squig LA shield armor ruby ring
ng big boss mask of terror gw
ng lvl 1 sham dispell scroll

80 NG HW FC nets
60 NG bows FC nets 3 fanatics
28 NG FC bows

30 squigs 10 herders
25 squigs 10 herders (was supposed to be 26/9 had to improvize as i forgot ironcurse)
5 hoppers
5 hoppers
spear chukka

lobba x2
diver x 2
mangler x 4


other highlights include, darkening sky with arrows against DP... who took a whopping 1 wound.. who then got 1 shot by a doom diver

Even if the best way to play them is ranged (Bleh)

I prefer my Melee horde filled with a ton of boyz, Black orcs, with some catapult support.