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I was just wondering in general what people thought was the better unit

Darkshards. You have combat specials which outshine witches. And Darkshards are pretty good at pulling wounds at range.

General rule of thumb is unless you have something truly awesome in core like heavy cav, you take the best unit with shooting. GW is notoriously terrible at balancing shooting units in all its systems as they don't seem to understand that it's effectively risk free. There are exceptions to the rule, but it's fairly safe to abide by.

Eyjio wrote:
General rule of thumb is unless you have something truly awesome in core like heavy cav, you take the best unit with shooting. GW is notoriously terrible at balancing shooting units in all its systems as they don't seem to understand that it's effectively risk free. There are exceptions to the rule, but it's fairly safe to abide by.

What? Shooting core is good? That's almost never the case with most armies that I play.

With Empire I would never take handgunners or crossbowmen over halberdiers.

As for Witch Elves or Repeater crossbowmen, it depends on what you're doing with them.

I see Witches run in two different ways. Either small bumps of 10 for fast damage output before they die, or a large unit of about 30+ with the cauldron. The cauldron gives them a ward and lets them reroll all their rolls to wound.

Repeater crossbowmen are great in units of 10 to clear out enemy chaff units, or you can make them a bit bigger and give them the flaming banner to shoot at hellpits and trolls to knock off regeneration before your bolt throwers shoot.

Either are good choices.

Right now I'm running a unit of 28 Witches and 2 units of 10 plus some dark riders to satisfy my core at 2500.

 Turalon wrote:

Eyjio wrote:
General rule of thumb is unless you have something truly awesome in core like heavy cav, you take the best unit with shooting. GW is notoriously terrible at balancing shooting units in all its systems as they don't seem to understand that it's effectively risk free. There are exceptions to the rule, but it's fairly safe to abide by.

What? Shooting core is good? That's almost never the case with most armies that I play.

With Empire I would never take handgunners or crossbowmen over halberdiers.

As for Witch Elves or Repeater crossbowmen, it depends on what you're doing with them.

I see Witches run in two different ways. Either small bumps of 10 for fast damage output before they die, or a large unit of about 30+ with the cauldron. The cauldron gives them a ward and lets them reroll all their rolls to wound.

Repeater crossbowmen are great in units of 10 to clear out enemy chaff units, or you can make them a bit bigger and give them the flaming banner to shoot at hellpits and trolls to knock off regeneration before your bolt throwers shoot.

Either are good choices.

Right now I'm running a unit of 28 Witches and 2 units of 10 plus some dark riders to satisfy my core at 2500.

Dark riders ARE shooty core, at least they should always be if you're running them properly. Empire should always be looking to take at least small units of archers/crossbowmen/handgunners as detachments for halberdiers as well for chaff clearance and because it gives them shooting, however their other common core (Inner Circle) would fall into the exceptions. Let's go through the list though, see if you agree:

Beastmen - no shooting core. Pretty straight forward.
Bretonnia - Heavy Cav core. The heaviest cav core frankly .Even so, small units of archers for chaff are, again, a good idea - especially bret ones because those stakes are awesome.
Chaos Dwarfs - You basically can't run non-shooty core.
Daemons of Chaos - You CAN run them without Horrors, which is the closest thing to shooty. However, unless you're doing a theme or you have some grand plan, you probably should take horrors.
Dark Elves - Your best core is Dark Riders with crossbows and shields. I mean... it just is. The other stuff isn't bad but you have the option for shooty fast cav - why on earth would you not take that? Alternatives are Dark Shards, which may as well be called Dark Riders for lower point games. The other core is fine, but not the best option.
Dwarfs - You can take Warriors. You can take Longbeards. However, if you're not running at LEAST two units of quarrellers/thunderers, you've gone wrong, because they're incredible.
High Elves - Archers, Reavers with bows. Silverhelms too, but you should still take shooty core.
Lizardmen - Saurus Warriors are underrated IMO, but skink skirmishers are a unit every army wishes it had. Poison shooting on cheap skirmishing scouts is nasty.
Ogre Kingdoms - No option.
Orcs & Goblins - One of the few exceptions to the rule. Can take archers but... eh, they're bad.
Skaven - No option.
The Empire - Mentioned about, support for Halberdiers, also exception for heavy cav.
Tomb Kings - Archers should be your core. All things which don't fire in your core are errors.
Vampire Counts - No option.
Warriors of Chaos - The other exception; the only shooting is bad and everything in their core is so exceptional it doesn't even matter.
Wood Elves - ...yeah, come on.

Basically, every army with good shooting core takes it.

Thanks guy....I tend to lean toward the dark shards but the witches get such praise. I have tried them and just have not been impressed....however I have not run the cauldron yet with them which I think that is the best option for them unless you do use them as msu units at ten or so.

@Eyjio: just to clarify, Skaven do have options for ranged Core: slings on Slaves or Night Runners. Or weapon teams, I guess.
And Core Skink Skirmishers are, praise the Horned Rat, not scouts.

Warpsolution wrote:
@Eyjio: just to clarify, Skaven do have options for ranged Core: slings on Slaves or Night Runners. Or weapon teams, I guess.
And Core Skink Skirmishers are, praise the Horned Rat, not scouts.

Oh right, forgot them. Haven't seen any for ages honestly, I completely forgot about the options. I guess they can be yet another exception, because slaves are nasty and there's no real substitute for storm vermin in another slot. I also completely messed up on skink skirmishers, I don't even know what I was thinking there nor why I suddenly thought they could just scoot up - probably for the best I've not taken them off the shelf in a while.

If you want dark shards, I'd also take some minimum sized witch units to help them.
Most quick units that would make a run at dark shards aren't going to like taking ~24 murderous poison attacks with re-rolls to hit. It's really good for 110 points.

Another option is to advance witches behind dark shards.
Advance and fire, fire, then back up and fire. When charged, flee. Witch won't panic (frenzy), and the enemy will be dealing with the poison beat down. The enemy might not have the charge range to redirect into the witches, at which point the shards get a chance to rally, and the witches can march point blank into the enemy, putting enough distance between the witch and shards that the over-run won't hit the shards (giving them another turn of shooting).

It's a pretty effective and allows for decent damage to be done before the shooters are lost. You're basically trading your stand and fire on turn 2/3 for a rally a turn later, combat with witches, and then a shooting phase and a possible stand and fire.