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So, just a quick question, looking to make sure of this rule. The arrowstorm rule says that if you have twenty or more models in the unit, you quadruple the unit's attacks. So, in a unit of twenty, would I really have to roll eighty dice, if everyone was in range? (84, i guess, if there's a villein).

And would they have to be rolled individually?

I realize the answer to this might seem obvious, it just seems like a heck of a lot of rolls to me, and I want to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly.

What unit?

Brett bowman and yes that is how I read it as well.

Yep, pretty clear. Wishing now I hadn't dumped those 400 unpainted bowmen i used to have

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that it was brettonian bowmen.

 mikhaila wrote:
Yep, pretty clear. Wishing now I hadn't dumped those 400 unpainted bowmen i used to have

That... would be a lot of dice rolling.

As an aside, I did a test, seeing how twenty bowmen did firing at ten plaguebearers. (I chose plaguebearers because they seemed to have a good chance of surviving an arrowstorm, with their special rules.) 84 shots caused 26 wounds, of those, 15 were either saved or sloughed off, leaving 11 wounds... still enough to wipe them out without battleshock. Not sure if that's good or bad.

That's not surprising. Age of Sigmar has extremely high casualty rates....

You wouldn't necessarily have to roll them individually. With a pretty poor statline you can roll a big block and be confident of not overkilling most units (and if you do, meh). There's an argument for splitting your fire out as much as possible to do damage wherever you can.

It's a double-sized unit pulling off a once-per-game ability, and outside said ability it's pretty damn useless. The trick to beating it is some fast cavalry - send in a unit of seekers, or dark riders, or, hell, a death-or-glory charge by a minimum sized unit of knights. You probably won't manage to catch them before they let loose the arrowstorm but it's worth a try*. Anything which makes combat with a peasant bowmen unit will rip it to pieces in pretty short order. I

Knights have a decent chance of surviving - 84 shots equals 28 hits equals 14 wounds - that's 7 wounds through armour, which is 3 knights dead. In a similar double-sized unit, you've got 7 left - you might lose another dude from battleshock - and 6 knights charging peasant bowmen will break them pretty fast.

On the charge, 6 knights cause an average of 7 kills between lances and horses, which is over half the unit evapourating by the time battleshock comes into play, and the peasant's good-for-nothing skinning knives will only average half a wound, which is not going to trouble 2-wound, bravery 6 knights.



Oh - and that was a lucky unit of peasants. 84 shots, hitting on 6s - normally 5s but cloud of flies - should only really have landed 14 hits, and 8 wounds on average (if you've got a brazier for flaming arrows). By the time you've applied a 5+ save and Disgustingly Resiliant, you're doing well to kill 4...

* Seekers definitely can. With a 14" move, 2d6" run and 2d6" charge, you'll not catch them in longbow range before they're up and in your face....

That is some solid research, thanks. I'm thinking I messed up when recording some of those rolls for the peasants. Might have counted some fives, which would explain how lucky they were.