LOTS of Archers ?

[Cirion RedDragon]

The Linehammer debate has rekindled my interest in something I've been kicking around for quite a while but have never actually tried, and that is fielding a TON of Archers - like 100 in a 2000 point game, which would make them over half the army.
Not all in one unit, of course, even Linehammer tables are going to have at least some terrain, although people will be more reluctant to place much because it'll make their now much bigger and wider units more difficult to move, but there'll be a tower or wood somewhere around the middle.
No big deal, split your 100 Archers into several units and space them for maximum killing fields effectiveness.
The point of the exercise is to have ALL of them fire at the same unit in the same turn.
If we go by background, fluff, RPGs, novels, video games and such,100 Elven arrows ought to score 100 hits/kills, but that's not how it works in battle games, where Elven arrows are basically Nerf darts, unlikely to hurt anything tougher than a Goblin.
Unless you do saturation bombing, as described above.
Statistically , 100 arrows shot by WS 4 Elves should hit at least 66 times, S3 vs. T4+ should cause 33 wounds, let's say the Chaos Warriors have a save of 4+ (armor, shield, banner/Chaos gift/other magic stuff), meaning about 11 of them ought to go down, better results possible shooting at less tin can troops.

[Halinn]

Bring a handmaiden general, have some of those be a big block of sisters for the armor bane, and a BSB with razor standard for one of the archer blocks likewise. Alternately, or in addition, a mage with plague of rust will also help to bring more models down.

[Tethlis]

100 archers are very unlikely to all be in short range, so the 100 is likely to be 50 hits. S3 vs T4 is ~17 Wounds. So you're looking at ~8 kills on a Chaos Warriors.

If we're talking 2-3 turns for infantry to reach combat, 2 turns for cavalry, I'm not sure the 100 archers can do enough damage to different targets to neutralize them before they start crashing into your archer units. A force with a couple units of Chaos or Empire Knights, chariots/steam tank, etc. are going to bounce a lot of arrows, and start gathering points pretty quickly.

We all would have been much better off if mundane bows had at least some effectiveness vs armor. But GW really doesn't want anyone doing heavy shooting this edition.

[Morgen]

Was just looking at it today actually. The idea being, if people complain shooting is weak well then they're obviously not taking enough shooting! The only thing that doesn't shoot in this army is either a bird or a horse.

Roughly 73 shooting attacks, several with higher strength, many with some amount of AP or decent armor bane. Still manage an Archmage to usually have curse of arrow attraction and ruby ring.

24" S5 AP-3 Cumbersome, Multiple Wounds (x3)
30" S5 AP-0 Magic Attack, Armor Bane (1), Volley (x4)
24" S4 AP-0 Armor Bane (2), Volley Fire
24" S3 AP-0 Armor Bane (2), Volley Fire (x27)
24" S3 AP-0 Volley Fire
30" S3 AP-0 Armor Bane (1), Volley Fire (x21)
18" S3 AP-0 Quick Shot, Volley Fire (x14)
48" S6 AP-3 Cumbersome, Move or Shoot, Multiple Wounds (2), Rapid Fire, Through & Through (x2)

73 Potential Ranged Attacks (Assumes Eagle Claws shoot single bolts for higher strenght & AP)

If magic goes well it adds roughly:
1/2 Magic Missiles each round
reroll 1's to hit against primary target from Curse of Arrow Attraction in 80ish percent of games

Of course all but 5 of the shots are made at BS 4, but it's a large volume of fire while still also having great eagles, 3 flying heavy chariots and an archmage in a list. Obviously not everyone would be able to shoot every round but with proper deployment it can roll a lot of dice in a shooting phase. It would love a hill and enjoy a large target rich environment.

++ Characters [742 pts] ++
Prince [355 pts]
(Cavalry spear , Full plate armour, Shield, General, Lothern Skycutter(Cavalry spears, Eagle Eye Bolt Thrower), Reaver Bow, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Seed of Rebirth, Dragon Helm, Sea Guard)

Noble [147 pts]
(Great weapon, Heavy armour, Battle Standard Bearer [Razor Standard], On foot, Potion of Foolhardiness, Sea Guard)

Archmage [240 pts]
(Hand weapon, Level 4 Wizard, On foot, Flying Carpet, Silvery Wand, Sea Guard, Battle Magic)

++ Core Units [748 pts] ++
27 Lothern Sea Guard [366 pts]
(Hand weapons, Thrusting spears, Warbows, Light armour, Shields, Sea Master (champion), Standard bearer [War Banner], Musician)

11 Elven Archers [110 pts]
(Hand weapons, Longbows, No armour)

10 Elven Archers [100 pts]
(Hand weapons, Longbows, No armour)

8 Ellyrian Reavers [172 pts]
(Hand weapons, Cavalry spears, Hand weapons (Hooves), Light armour, Shortbows, Skirmishes, Harbinger (champion), Standard bearer, Musician)

++ Specila Units [115 pts] ++
Lothern Skycutters [115 pts]
(Cavalry spears, Eagle Eye Bolt Thrower)

++ Rare Units [395 pts] ++
Lothern Skycutters [115 pts]
(Cavalry spears, Eagle Eye Bolt Thrower)

Great Eagle [60 pts]
Great Eagle [60 pts]
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower [80 pts]
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower [80 pts]

---
Created with "Old World Builder"

[Prince of Spires]

My main question about this list is, what will you do once your list gets into combat? Even if all that shooting is effective, you've now killed 30 chaos warriors. Then they hit your S3, T3, no save archers with the rest of their army. What now? Half your army is now useless. They can't shoot because your opponent is in combat with everything that matters. And they can't fight because they're getting stomped into the ground. And even if they can fight, they won't kill anything since they're S3 models.

Having said that, the 11 kills is a very optimistic view of things. Long range has already been mentioned. Then cover also exists. And of course, not all those archers can shoot at the same target at once. 100 archers, to be able to all shoot need to be deployed in a single file, which is 100'' wide, or just about the whole board. If you deploy in 2 ranks, you already lost 25% of your shots. Now, your opponent knows he's up against a gunline (bowline). He will deploy on one side of the board, which means another 1/3 of your archers simply can't reach his unit. Then, only half of those models who can shoot can actually reach the unit you're aiming for, which means you need to spread your shooting between 2 units.

So best case scenario, you kill 3 chaos warriors in 1 unit and 3 in another T1. That's suddenly a lot less impressive for a complete shooting army. If you deploy in 2 ranks (and thus lose half the shots in the second rank), it's 2 and 2. If you add in some cover, you might hit even less. Now you killed 12 chaos warriors in the 3 turns it took your opponent to reach your line (spread across 2 units). How are you going to fight that remaining army?

No matter how much we'd like for it to be different, HE shooting simply isn't good enough for anything more than a support role, unless you're playing friendly lists only. S3 AB1 means that even with our amazing BS, we wound our ideal targets only 25% of the time before saves. That's fine if you're up against unarmoured night goblins, but it's bad if you're facing anything else.

[Cirion RedDragon]

That's where Linehammer comes in.
Assuming a table relatively clear of terrain - see 'wide units', above - maybe even a friendly hill on the Elf side, you just might deploy all those Arrow Boys in 1 unit stretching pretty much from board edge to board edge.
Charge them ?
Come at me, bro.
Let's see how your 10 or 20 attacks do against 100.
And that is not counting the impetuous Lord on equally impetuous teenage Dragon and their impetuous Dragon Prince friends, who will also be joining the fun, in your flank.
Which you have and the Elves don't - because table edge.....
Not a very nice way to play and you wouldn;t want to do anything like that in a friendly game against normal people, but when facing Rules Lawyers or Power Gamers, anything goes, the more outlandish and just barely within the rules by half a hair's breadth, the better.

[Csjarrat]

Linehammer with 100 T3 no save troops is laughable though. Any shooting or magic missiles are gonna seriously reduce your width and a unit that wide will have huge amounts of it's models out of LOS or range to shoot anyway. Totally pointless

[TyrrenAzureblade]

In my game yesterday, a unit of 20 archers managed to remove a unit of 5 Chaos Knights in two rounds of shooting. Not quite making their points back, but it really helped remove an element that was threatening my center, and really helped me commit to sweeping into their right flank and completely avoiding a 25 model block of Chaos Warriors with their Sorcerer Lord by just continually moving across their back line away from them. They spent the rest of the game picking off models here and there when they had the chance, managing to soften up some Chaos Trolls.

So far, 20 Archers have felt good enough in terms of points and effectiveness. They post up, don't move, and basically perform an Overwatch role, picking targets of opportunity while my blocks move up aggressively. They're still good for chaff, and in the case of that last game, managed to roll well enough to destroy a heavily armoured cavalry unit so it never saw combat. That really makes me wish they could take the Razor Banner though.

All that said, I don't think shooting is the thing that's going to win us games all on its own. It's a supplement. The more games I get in, the more I think building lists like we did in 7th, with bare minimum core and focusing on our Special and Rare choices, is what's going to get us wins. And for me, that means Archers, Silver Helms, and Reavers to fill out core. I think I might try two units of 20 Archers and see how that goes though, it might be beneficial to deploy a unit on either flank to shoot into the center of the board and cover a lot of area.

[Giladis]

All that said, I don't think shooting is the thing that's going to win us games all on its own. It's a supplement. The more games I get in, the more I think building lists like we did in 7th, with bare minimum core and focusing on our Special and Rare choices, is what's going to get us wins. And for me, that means Archers, Silver Helms, and Reavers to fill out core. I think I might try two units of 20 Archers and see how that goes though, it might be beneficial to deploy a unit on either flank to shoot into the center of the board and cover a lot of area.

If I am playing seriously I have given up on anything other than 2x9 Silver Helms in 7+2 formation with FC and MR(1).

[TyrrenAzureblade]

All that said, I don't think shooting is the thing that's going to win us games all on its own. It's a supplement. The more games I get in, the more I think building lists like we did in 7th, with bare minimum core and focusing on our Special and Rare choices, is what's going to get us wins. And for me, that means Archers, Silver Helms, and Reavers to fill out core. I think I might try two units of 20 Archers and see how that goes though, it might be beneficial to deploy a unit on either flank to shoot into the center of the board and cover a lot of area.

If I am playing seriously I have given up on anything other than 2x9 Silver Helms in 7+2 formation with FC and MR(1).

Yeah good call, I've been focusing on infantry lists myself, with a unit of 5 Silver Helms to disrupt in the flanks, but that sounds solid. I do worry about how expensive they are for single wound models in such big formations, but theory only takes you so far, you need to play the game and see how it actually works in practice. I once made the mistake of charging Dwarf Hammerers in their front with my Cavalry Prince and Silver Helms, and won't be making that mistake again.

[Giladis]

I once made the mistake of charging Dwarf Hammerers in their front with my Cavalry Prince and Silver Helms, and won't be making that mistake again.

Since I also play Dwarfs I can assume your opponent had the combo MRoHesitation+RoConfusion and then proceeded to wreck face

[TyrrenAzureblade]

I once made the mistake of charging Dwarf Hammerers in their front with my Cavalry Prince and Silver Helms, and won't be making that mistake again.

Since I also play Dwarfs I can assume your opponent had the combo MRoHesitation+RoConfusion and then proceeded to wreck face

It was a low points game, so he did not have the runes, but still proceeded to wreck face. Our generals were in a challenge and I managed to eventually win a combat by 1, and he broke, fled, and I ran the unit down with my Prince. Sheer luck but grateful!

[The Peacemaker]

Mass ranged works but you still need a couple counter charger like knights. Or preferably something with fly so it can zoom over to where it's needed