Interesting findings with New HE and Night Goblins

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Saintofm
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Interesting findings with New HE and Night Goblins

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Working on a story that involves high elves and so I got the new book. To work out the kinks of the story I did a 2000 point storm of magic game, normal battle otherwise, between High Elves which largly consisted of core, and goblins, which largely consisted of that by the shere fact it takes alot of goblins to make up 500 points.

Plot at this point of my epic tale of epicness: A City in Cothique takes in a bunch of refugees from a colony in the Southern Lands. They were first attacked by dark elves, and when they took their fill, then by a coalition of Savage Orcs and Night Goblins took the city by storm.

They end up following the intrepid elves back to Ulthuane and it’s an all out brawl since then. At, most of the refugees have already gone inland, and both gobblin and orc have split up to go 'lookin' for dum fun!" In this case:


High Elves
Heros: High Helm, no Magic items, shield. In unit of 40 Sea Guard with Full command and sheilds

A level 1 mage with a dispel scroll and fireball is next up in the same unit.

Captain: Great Weapon and heavy armor in a unit of 40 spearmen with full command.

20 Silver Helms with War banner and Full command and shields

18 Shadow Warriors

Storm of Magic:

A custom Wyvern.

Basically the wyvern from the storm of magic list with all upgrades save for killing blow (D3 impact hits, a tail attack, and a S3 breath attack).

He is mounted by two elves:

1 is a Captain with light armor and a shield and a Sword of Strife (+2 attacks) and has a 2x thrown weapon attack, and another that has light armor, 2 hand weapons (useless mounted, but wasn’t sure if the wyvern was going to last).

The Night Gobblins had the following:

Lords: A Level 4 Night Gobblin Great Shaman with Chaneling Staff, and Talismon of Preservation. His spells were Vindictive glare (never had a opertunity to use it), Gift of the Spider God (Forgot I had that), Gork ‘ll Fix It (to wonderful effect against silver helms), Curse of the Bad Moon (never got it off, scrolled one turn infact).

Joining him was a BSB with the Bad Moon banner (or what ver it is, additional -1 to hit it with shooting and chargers test for dangerous terrain).

They were both in a unit of 50 night goblins with sheilds and spears, netters, and 3 fanatics, and a full command.

The next core was a unit of 30 tooled up night goblins with short bows. Like an idiot I had them behind the main horde of 50 but oh well.

The last character was a Night Gobblin Big Boss with light Armor, Enchanted shield, Talismon of Endurance, and Sword of Striking on a great Cave Swig.

He was in one of 2 units of 13 squig Hoppers.

There were 12 River Trolls, and something from Forge World called a Sqige Gabba which is an monster that is treated for all intensive purposes like a war machine (complete with 3 crew and 4 that can be added on.

For storm of magic, I had 3 home brew mangler squigs. I have no idea how the storm of magic thing works with them as I don’t have an apple product that can read them, BUT, I just did a slightly stronger version of the Great Cave Squig and added 10 points to the normal manglers price tag.

This is what I found:

I honestly didn’t expect much from this comically driven war machine. It has a 24 inch range, requires line of sight, and if you don’t find an unfortunate enemy to fit the bill it will target a friendly unit (has to and hit something every turn). Every turn you can add up to 3 dice (representing smaller squigs that have been shoved down the brute’s throat). The magic numbers you want is between 10 and 16 as that shoots, dealing as many armor piercing S4 hits as you rolled for dice (and since you hurled the ammo, you start off with 0 for your starting number of dice attached to the guy). This ended up removing a rank from a spearmen (killing 10) one turn, and reducing the shadow warriors from 18 to 7 another turn.

This makes it surprisingly good against horde armies as you are bound to get in that sweat spot and do massive damage.

However, I was constantly worried I would role a 1-4 (everything within 6” from the Gabba but not the gabba takes a S2 hit that ignores armor. And when I mean everyone, that includes the crew.) This is bad for if the crew are all killed, no more shooting attacks (although the squig sticks around as he’s nailed in place).

Get a higher scror that’s between 5 and 9, well you save those dice and add them to what ever you choose to role next time.

This can be dangerous as you’ll have the previous turn’s dice and this one, which means you could get a score of 17+. This is bad as the gobba takes D3 S6 hits from indigestion, put a flame template at the mouth of the large target beasty, and anything underneath takes S6 hits, and you’re squig is on empty again.

I didn’t see much in him at fist as he seemed too much of a variable to be useful, and to be honest he still is, but the fact 2 turns in a row I could do that much damage to two large units of lightly armored troops made me a convert.


River Trolls were stupid most of the time, but between fear, their -1 mod in close combat, and Gork Will Fix it, they not only held their own, even long after they took massive damage the previous turns (2 ranks with guys that have 3 S5 attacks will do a lot of damage). Add in stomp, that was enough to wipe the floor with the high elves. However the kicker is the fact that as long as they had regeneration, they could deflect most of the damage that got though their T4 hides. Take that away such as fireballing them then shooting at them and they are good as dead. This fact alone butchered the spearmen to almost ziltch remaining. Hell, by the time the wyvern rear ended them there down to half and they still caused both to flee.

As fo squigs, they have their uses. The chance to cause S5 impact his makes the random moves forgivable, although they can cover a lot of ground when they want to. Add S5 attacking mounts and you have good times awaiting. Heck, I ended up killing the HE character with the great weapon with the Squig ridding Big Boss (they both dealt 2 unsaved wounds, he was just riding a 3 wound monsterous mount).

Their Biggest problem is the fact they lack armor, so the HE spearman in this simulation ended up holding it together to wipe the unit out.

The other unit had met a similar fate to silverhelms that overrun one of the manglers.

Fanatics didn’t do as well as I was expecting (killing a knight or two, dealing a wound on the wyvern and the one f the charecters on the wyvern).

The main night gobblin horde did well. Between netters, BSB, a few choice spells, and numbers they held their own quite well, taking a number of knights down simply by sheer odds (28 striking goblins are bound to hit a few unarmored bits).

They didn’t fall apart until I rammed the wyvern in their rear, and used a breath attack, although the knights did most of the main damage and they soon crumbled.

The other unit of night gobblin bowmen simply failed a terror test and were overrun.

The Shaman was just impressive. Between Level four, and the fact magic mushrooms add a free D6 to his score (it got a 1 every now and then, but overall it made him a magical tyrant).

Other high elf moments that surprised me was with the sea guard. Even though I didn’t get a good opertunity to see the sea helm in action, I did see the unit hold their own (even with the level 1 wizzard miscasting every now and then). Simply put it all has to do with martial prowess.

In range attacks, 3 ranks of shooting are deadly. Now had half of the survvng fourth rank and you have avout 33 shots, give or take. If half miss, there are half that can still wound. If half of that don’t cut it, against lightly armored foes that can still cause some problems. Even against high toughness foes like my Manglers, one volley managed to kill one of them as like all monsters, they only have so many wounds. If it had armor, a ward save, or regeneration, it could easily have been saved, but as it was without it still lost quite a bit.

This also held true in close combat as the sheer number of attacks was enough to get victory. At this point 4 ranks in horde formation, so I could have them go sword and shield and still be on top as 2 ranks standard+Horde+Martial Prowess means I still get 4 ranks of fighting. Again, they may need to roll high when fighting monsters, but they are bound to get a few lethal blows in.

That was also the main thing going for spearmen. They are a few points cheaper, and that was it. Had they not been thrashed by enemy shooting and magic, I think they could have come out a little better. Instead they were not.

Silver helms also did well. Their barding doesn’t have the -1 to movement so they go full tilt full speed all the time. Granted I went from 20 to 8 by thew end of the game between the gobos, but they did a lot of damage.

Shadow warriors are also good. As they have no cap on their limit you can take a bunch and just kill warmachines that way. 2 turns of shooting, the second with just a handful of archers left, I wiped out all 7 of the crew on the goblin warmachines.

The Wyvern wasn’t toobad I suppose. The charecters on board really didn’t really tip the scales either way, regardless if they were fighting goblins or trolls. I have a little more respect for what I would call a poor man’s dragon, but doesn’t have much fight after the breath attack is used up.

Not conclusive by any measure, but it’s a good view on things.

The Next battle will involve savage orcs with a giant, and Dragon princes /Baron’s Body Guard.
Who needs sanity? I have a Hydra
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