I have a goblin list that is 2300pts and is made from what I have. To be clear, I’m NOT looking for advice on how to make the list better. Instead, I’m interested in the types of tactics folk might recommend to get good results out of this army. Imagine you’ve been lumbered with it! How would you use it either generally or for particular scenarios?
Here’s my 2 cents (or, how I would play this list)
You’ll have unit drop advantage over most lists you face. This means a few things:
Make value trades as often as you can (trade one of yours for one of theirs)
Deploy decoys. Some games are won and lost in deployment. Put something fast like your king or chariots down early on a flank. If your opponent counters, you can always bail on that flank in turn 1, hopefully leaving their counter units playing catch up for a few turns to get into relevant positions
Be (reasonably) aggressive with your positioning. You can probably afford to march up your lines turn 1 to apply pressure early. Don’t throw away any units, but if you can force your opponent to commit some of their force early, leaving them out of position and with a good counter as a second wave, you’ll be well positioned to win the game.
Don’t gum up your lines! You have lots of units here. Make sure they all have space to maneuver. Avoid putting units right next to each other if you can help it.
Screening units:
Sharpsticks in front, rabble legion and luggits (and pendant mawbeasts) behind. Protect the units that do the damage. If you’re facing off against other infantry, you can use the Leaper command to charge in your second line along with your front line
Trolls don’t normally need too much protection, but you can do the same thing with them and the cheaper mawbeast troop
Fleabag chariots could work well to slow down a stacked flank from your opponent. They have the speed to threaten faster units. Place them on a far flank and make them as annoying as possible, for as long as possible.
Find the scariest big thing from your opponent and counter-deploy your giant. Bonus if that’s also where the difficult terrain is.
More specific advice would depend on scenarios and what kind of lists you normally come up against. Hope that helps!
I can definitely foresee me buggering up the “don’t gum up your lines!” advice…
Good point about my lines and using the he’s standing on me head order! Should I also consider using the withdraw option if tight on space, especially if looking to get the legion involved?
Absolutely! If you’ve got less than 2” between the units, it’s a guaranteed clear for your legion or the luggits to get in.
That said, I don’t think withdraw has been that relevant in my games so far. Now that you can charge through combo charging units, it’s normally better to just keep everyone engaged if you have space to fit.
… if you don’t mind a recommendation that has nothing to do with available models, I’d replace the Wiz’s lightning bolt with blizzard (4). You easily have the points in other items (I’d probably drop the hammer off the legion and put the pendant on them, tho I get the thought on the suicide Mawbeast troop (they just seem very shootable, while the legion requires multiple hammers to remove)) and blizzard is the current broken spell.
EDIT: Or you could drop the bane chant and keep the items as is? I really dislike two dice BC, when that Wiz could be blizzarding the world until he dies.
EDIT2: You also usually see Mincer Mobs with sharpness or strength, which you could easily achieve by dropping various items. But I’ll move on, too much list shopping as it is!
I appreciate these comments and may come back to these ideas later, but for now I’m not massively interested (in fact I am actively uninterested) in making the list better at this stage. I can fiddle about with spells and items at a later date.
From a tactics view I was wondering what i may be missing in terms of shenanigans and generaly ways of thinking for this type of list.
Looking at you specific ideas in any case:
I don’t see the point of putting the pendant on a block of slow moving nerve to be honest. The mawbeasts are intended as a torpedo and I find it funny. They can’t be routed by shooting, only wavered, and stcky combat means that if they get a charge in then the unit charged is going ot have to face the pendant at somepoint unless they withdraw!
I don’t mind altering bane chant etc. but I’m not that bothered just yet, a one for one swap I might explore later I guess. Blizzard sounds quite interesting, but it is 35pts whilst bane is 20pts. There isn’t 5pts of cheap items so one of the biggies would have to go. Plus, if something is a bit broken I don’t really want to use it.
If one “usually sees” something then I’m inclined not to do it just to be contrarian! Not to say that sharpness or strength on the mincers isn’t a good idea, but I kind of don’t want an optimised list in a weird way. I want to play the list well (or at least well enough to have fun), but it is silly models and rolling dice, so I am currently prioritising interesting / fun over optimal. One reason i like goblins is that they are fundamentally as a species not very good at fighting and are a bit useless! I put a legion in the list because I wanted to make one and think 27 nerve is interesting. I was tempted to boost it further with items and healing just because I found it funny. I’m also considering more legions in the future, because they are big, unweildy, costly and punch like a wet paper bag. They are peak Goblin
I realise my approach is odd. All your ideas are probably good, and I appreciate the response! Once I have been soundly seen off numerous times I will probably start to take them on board.
Worth noting though, I have no problem with others having fun how ever they like to and this is not a slight on those who like to optimise their list. I am also well aware that even with the proposed changes my list would be a very long way from optimised!
You and I are far more similar than you might think I make armies very much based on fitting the models used and intentionally taking off-meta, less-loved units. But I do think when it comes to upgrades that I prefer to take things that will actually do something or to not take them. Here are further thoughts:
Pendant on legion is because multiple units will be needed to kill it, so the pendant gets more mileage. I do think there’s a chance nobody does anything to the legion in that case and the pendant doesn’t go off. On the mawbeasts, I think they just get shot to death, De 3+ Nv 11 is quite low and Sp 6 is slow (so the pendant doesn’t go off). But if there’s no shooting, then yea, you’ve found a cute 4E thing where they have to be killed (so the pendant goes off against one enemy unit). And if they’re shooting the bombbeasts, then they’re not shooting … some goblins? Personally, I’ve never taken the pendant and would use its points for other, more meaningful items that will impact the game more often (also I’d prefer Hammer on the legion because it’s fun).
Blizzard is just better lightning bolt (and needs to be recosted), and I’ve been actively avoiding bane chant (2) as it’s so unreliable. If your Wiz is there to shoot and inspire, I’d rather he shot better and inspired from relative safety. BC2 may mean he’s sticking his neck out a bit and not shooting, for no result.
Tooling the Mincers up with sharpness or strength is to create a dedicated hammer. I’ve been playing a lot of 4E now without a dedicated hammer (I’m playing go-wide trashy Abyssals), and I’m feeling pretty under equiped most games. It’s really nice to have something that can hit or at least threaten to hit, and with Gobs you’ve got to invest to build that hammer. I absolutely know the feeling of not wanting to take an obvious upgrade on a unit, or not wanting to take a 250+ point unit, but I’m finding not having a dedicated beater to also be rough.
Not trying to convince you! But provide some context, from another gamer who likes to take weak things and (hopefully) make them shine.
All fair points! There is nothing more entertaining to me than rolling 30 attack dice with a legion and dishing out a solitary wound!
You’re right that there becomes a lack of hammers, for goblins the main thing is very little hits on less than a 4+ (apart from a few characters, mawbeasts who die usually instantly and blasters that always do!) so the brew of sharpness is tempting. I’ll see how this list goes and if I’m getting hammered each game (pun intended) then I will look at investing in my own hammer.
Following up - I had a game against Ratkin - didn’t win but had fun! Spitters were hilariously bad! Charged the rear of some nightmares (I am aware that combat is not their forte - game situation demanded it). 30 dice, no wounds! The banggit also fluffed pretty much every roll and was useless. The legion (with sharpsticks in front) is pretty formidable though.
Overall, it was a fun list to play and, whilst I will be improving it over time, the tactics mentioned in this thread were very useful (or, in some cases, would be if I had remembered to follow it better).
I make armies very much based on fitting the models used and intentionally taking off-meta, less-loved units. But I do think when it comes to upgrades that I prefer to take things that will actually do something or to not take them. Here are further thoughts: