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So I played my first game of fantasy yesterday. I put my orcs and goblins up against my buddies dwarves and had a grand time. After the game he gave me about 25 goblin archers he had lying around. My question is, are they worth fielding? My night goblins did well in the game but I dont know how archers would fair. Thoughts and ideas?

20 goblin archers could do fine againgst anything toughness 3, or even toughness 4 if its a low model count unit.

It would be a unit you would take either as a back field detterent, or to whittle down blocks before combat.

Play a huge horde and get poison on them

They also make an ok bunker for your general

Niteware wrote:
They also make an ok bunker for your general

I was actually thinking about using them as a bunker for my shaman.

The point cost is minimal but the effect can be much greater. They can kill chaff that would otherwise ruin your battle plan, protect a character and become outright nasty with the poison banner and the poison spell from Little Waagh! on them. Okay, you still need to hit but poison on 5's can be brutal.

I am in the huge horde with poison banner catagory. I typically will field 100 plus the banner and a 2 hand weapon boss with the iron curse talisman. Save three and it pays for itself.
20 across, 5 deep, Doesnt fail very often, good for shooting, stand and shooting and then fun for grinding in melee.

Try 100 with the Poison Banner.

Col. Dash wrote:
I am in the huge horde with poison banner catagory. I typically will field 100 plus the banner and a 2 hand weapon boss with the iron curse talisman. Save three and it pays for itself.
20 across, 5 deep, Doesnt fail very often, good for shooting, stand and shooting and then fun for grinding in melee.

And that's good for ~10-11 poison wounds when you volley fire, and another 3-4 wounds on the stand and fire?

Tomb kings, who have 6" more range, and can magically pick up multiple shots 2, and always hit on a 4+ ignoring all modifiers, can barely make it work.
I've seen the spider block be tried before, and it always seems to totally fail. As soon as anything hits it in combat, they kill the 5+ armor save BSB, and leave you with a giant, low leadership crappy block with a huge frontage.

-Matt

I knew a guy who modeled an Arachnarok Spider with a huge rickety tower on his back to represent a Folding Fortress.

...which he then stuffed with something like 300 goblins, the Spider Banner, and a cabal of Shamans to carry the Dispel, Hex, and Feedback scrolls to keep Dwellers at bay.

It basically never worked, of course, but it sure was funny.

Beyond that, I usually drop the shields on my Night Goblin blocks (2X40 and 2X30) and give them bows.
A 6+/6+ is nice, but I'd rather have the potential to reach out 16" and pin-cushion those annoying little units that are trying to get in the way of my annoying little units.
Plus, with war machines, Squigs, and chariots, I can sorta' castle-up with a Night Goblin mine-field.

I use a couple of small blocks loaded with fanatics to lure in units. Sometimes backfires, but thems the breaks.

I usually run two blocks of 20, 10 wide if front of my other units to bait charges and pick off small units. When the enemy charges it, they inevitably move within 8 of the units behind the archers, allowing me to release through he archers into their path with more control (the archer unit means I can position the fanatics better) and they suffer 2d6 per fanatic before combat, sure the archers get wrecked y my own fanatic, but they are 60 points and it usually ends up crippling a big enemy block

I prefer arrer boyz for a bunker, but night goblin archers are a good support unit. Be sure to take night goblins, because they are cheaper and the opponent wont know if the unit contains fanatics or not.

If you want to be really tricky, I've had some luck with small blocks of regular goblins, with shields, bows, and Skulkers. Put them on your flanks to pepper the enemy for a turn or two, then charge into the flank with Sneaky Stabbin' for 16 AP attacks that re-roll hits and misses. Not bad for 100pts + a shaman.

Warpsolution wrote:
I knew a guy who modeled an Arachnarok Spider with a huge rickety tower on his back to represent a Folding Fortress.

...which he then stuffed with something like 300 goblins, the Spider Banner, and a cabal of Shamans to carry the Dispel, Hex, and Feedback scrolls to keep Dwellers at bay.

It basically never worked, of course, but it sure was funny.

Beyond that, I usually drop the shields on my Night Goblin blocks (2X40 and 2X30) and give them bows.
A 6+/6+ is nice, but I'd rather have the potential to reach out 16" and pin-cushion those annoying little units that are trying to get in the way of my annoying little units.
Plus, with war machines, Squigs, and chariots, I can sorta' castle-up with a Night Goblin mine-field.

this got me thinking... what if the rules allowed for the deployment of the tower on top of the arack's back?.. as when I read this thats what I thought you meant, and was having a "OH MY GOD WHY HAS NOBODY DONE THIS" moment. Until I found rules implying you must mean that the arack and tower represented the folding fortress, and not this super mobile platform of death that I was thinking.

if only...

Yeah, there's a reason they'd never allow such things.
The second big drawback to the Fortress-concept is that it has such a limited range (the first, of course, is Dwellers).
Even if the Tower could count as a 15-level building, I'm sure most armies could stay out of range easily enough. 16" is not very far.

Now, with Warplock Jezzails, 36" will carry you a lot farther...

 squall018 wrote:

Niteware wrote:
They also make an ok bunker for your general

I was actually thinking about using them as a bunker for my shaman.

Not just shaman, night goblins can field the cheapest possible BSB at 55points (60 points for ld7 common gob), bunker him on a 60point unit behind your main line and be mostly safe from harm in an army that really needs ld re-rolls (frenzied savages, stupid trolls, max ld9 warboss).

Sprinkle with a fanatic/nasty skulker on top if you have the points and think you may have to worry about ambushers.

Also, those 20 goblins give you a watchtower legal unit which you wouldn't really have in your army otherwise.