Topic: 5 man detachments worth it?

[Mr.Altdorf]

Hey guys going to a tournement soon looking for some input on 5 man detachment? The way I see it can be used for

Speed bumps- delaying for more shooting
Combat rez- not gonna be breaking ranking but the charge and flanking could help with combat
Extra attacks- 5 halberd attacks might be good but then again anyone tougher then empire( pretty much anything lol) will being getting a few more attacks as well

I was thinking ide use 5 with frontage of 3 to save space on the line thoughts?

[Derek Contyre]

Best thing ever, units of 6 man archer detachments...
Everyone hates them, I love them.
Just move them forward everyturn and shoot them at things, get in the enemy's way, angle them so they redirect a charge across your lines and shoot them with cannons lol

I love archers!

[TheBelgianGuy]

What's probably going to happen if you put a small detachment on somebodies flank, is that he's going to kill them in one turn to deny you that combat rez... Unless of course you're facing some lowly skaven or beastmen or statetroops or whatever equivalent you can find, but any hard hitting unit with multiple attacks will slaughter them.

As Derek here says, if you take small detachments, use them as redirectors. Plus Archers, being skirmishers, will probably stay alive a little longer.

I wonder if archers still give hard cover to your statetroops behind them, though?

[Derek Contyre]

They sure do... and to top it off, it is a -1 mod to hit the archers themselves!!!

Another reason to love them

[Maza]

I don't play competitively, but have a lot of fun with archer detachments. Last week I played two small games against skaven, and both games they managed to get a wound through to the packmaster in a unit of rat ogres. So the ogres themselves went stupid.  This is of course very lucky.

But I think you can get lucky from time to time when you shoot at things where one wound makes a difference (weapon teams, for example).

[Derek Contyre]

I don't play competitively, but have a lot of fun with archer detachments. Last week I played two small games against skaven, and both games they managed to get a wound through to the packmaster in a unit of rat ogres. So the ogres themselves went stupid.  This is of course very lucky.

But I think you can get lucky from time to time when you shoot at things where one wound makes a difference (weapon teams, for example).

Oh yeah, archers are awesome at killing off weapon teams.
Even charging them now just to get the wound on them is awesome.

[Joelatron]

I always take 2x5 free company and 2x5 archer detachements (1 each for my 2 halberd hordes).

What they do, (besides catching manglers) is provide a maze of redirects and combat traps that my opponent has to navigate while trying to avoid a horde of halberds to the flank.

The archer skirmish is very useful for this as they can quickly redeploy to counter an enemy move, however I also like having the 5 free company as 10 attacks (or 15 is get keen and timewarp them  ) can deter charges from my opponents own chaff/have been known to actually win a round of combat vs blocks (or at least get a few sneaky kills to not lose by too many and hold).

[Nils Ingvar]

Small detachments aka "The Heroic Five" are always handy. They're likely to die, but the way they can redirect and control the enemy troops giving you the initiative in their charges is priceless. They cost nothing to lose and considering how much damage you can do to the enemy with a detachment easily overweighs their loss.