How Many Gobbos Per Unit?

How many gobbos should i have in a unit if i am looking to use them as tarpit type units,

my idea for my grobi army is to use the core goblin units as tarpits in the center of my army while the faster stronger things him my fore in the flank(pump wagons, trolls,chariots and perhaps fast cav(if they runn out of small inits and war machines to pester. so how many and should i horde them?

40 is a nice unit size for gobbos, but 50 is even better if it's a largeish game. Units that can't fight worth a damn like goblins should almost always go for as many ranks as possible. Also, if they're Nightgobbos, go for the nets. They are a very cost-efficient option.

Theo

I'm in agreement with theorox. Nets and 40-50 should be sufficient for your purposes without becoming this monstrous unwieldy block. If you find that even 50 get slaughtered too quickly, consider a couple of cheap Big Bosses in the front rank to force enemies to allocate attacks.

30 could suffice for many games, but they won't be steadfast that long and can't take shooting very well. T3 and almost no save means stonethrowers and stuff will have a field day, so unless you have many blocks to spare big blocks are needed.

Theo

frontage of 5-7 or 10?

also, sup rothgar

For tarpits it's best to have a frontage of 5 models. This way you maximize the amount of ranks you have and you'll hold the enemy longer. A horde is the way to go only if you have a unit of 100 Night Goblins or so.

- Cheers, Skarsnik. /)

Hey Charioteer. Welcome to the green side.

Definitely 5-wide. You're milking the Steadfast for as long as you can get it.

so 40-50 5 wide and 8-10 deep, i am going with spears and shields if it makes much of a difference,,,

Please, look at my battle reports. 40-50 is not enough. Unless you are playing non-stop fluffy soft comp like games, you need hordes of goblins.

My last 8 games, I've had 90+ hordes and in these games:

1. lost 60 in one round of combat to ogres.
2. lost 30+ to vc blood knights before breaking when my bsb died to a coven throne.

You can see the dead unit here sitting on the hill in the lower part of the pic. I was starting to rank them back up when I remembered to take an end of game pic, so a few more was dead than that pic shows. I started with 96 + 3 characters.



3. watched as 2 IF winds of death killed about 50 of them in 2 magic phases(this works per rank, so having just 50 in 10 ranks, would have caused just as many casualties).

4. got down below 20 fighting vc again

Keep in mind that we only got 3 turns played in this game and this is what my 90 strong + 3 character unit of ng's looked like after turn 3.



5. got obliterated by empire shooting over 5 turns to look like this at the end of turn 5.

I was down to 21, those back rank guys in rank 3 pushed back a bit were casualties.

Your anecdotal "evidence" is crazy Shimmer, with the sort of fighting you put your night goblins through it's little wonder they die in droves. Night Goblins aren't meant to be able to tackle an entire ogre army in one charge.

40-50 is perfectly fine, the optimal size for a unit that doesn't cost too much but still has ranks enough to hold out for a long time. You can go smaller (20-30) and have it as a flanker or fanatics delivery system, or go crazy big (60-100) which isn't really worth it at all unless you are playing fluffy or if you're making use of the poison banner for some really wide horde based poison shooting (this is actually used in competitive builds).

I would recommend starting out at 40, nets and standard/musician (a champion for 10p isn't worth it unless you have characters in the unit).

This post has been edited by Squigkikka on Mar 16 2012, 10:46 PM

how many points were you playing? the more pts the more gobbos i suppose. i take it that 40-50 goes for less and upto 2500.

We play usually 2500. We have been playing 3k lately. But I only added the arachnarok and dropped some stuff to fit in black orcs at 3k.

Combo charges with a couple of ogre units are common. Every ogre player knows to combo charge with his mournfangs. I had even killed a fang from that unit before it charged in.

It's very easy between impact hits, re-rolls from their banner, impacts from ironguts, a bucketful of attacks from 2 ranks of ironguts and stomps to take dozens of casualties. Him making a very long charge with his thundertusk was just icing for him. He would have killed like 50 without the thundertusk.

Your mission as a greenskin player is to have that happen to your night goblins and not your savage orcs or black orcs.

Or not happen at all if it can be helped by using diverters.

Or, have it happen and sacrifice 185-ish of Night Goblins to set up counter-charges instead of losing 350-ish of Night Goblins.

Also bear in mind that your unit 10-wide is showing twice as much frontage for the enemy to attack them. The potential for combat-loss is much higher than on a 5-wide block.

When you have 90 Gobbos in one unit, you almost have no choice but to field them 10-wide - 18 20mm ranks don't fit in a deployment zone.

I know NG's are a sacrifice unit, but man, you are throwing them into the real fire.