home

Author Topic: Dealing with Night Goblins  (Read 2495 times)

Offline mikeguy101

  • Members
  • Posts: 6
Dealing with Night Goblins
« on: July 01, 2015, 11:58:46 PM »
Hi everyone I have a game coming up against a player who runs Night goblins. I have never played against Night Goblins before and I was wondering if their is anything that I should watch out for or if anything that we can bring is particularly good against them?


Offline Sceleris

  • Members
  • Posts: 164
Re: Dealing with Night Goblins
« Reply #1 on: July 02, 2015, 04:42:35 PM »
Depending on the points you are playing you'll run across one of two main tatics. 

First is one massive (60-100) archers with a whole bunch of characters in it - Black Orc for ld, probably crown and immunity to animosity, BSB with spider banner for poisoned attacks, wizard for some magic and heroes to tie up killer characters in challenge.

Other is multiple units purely to spam fanatics.  Often found hiding behind trolls (if you charge the trolls you pretty much auto end up landing on the fanatics and dying horribly!).

V former - Spells that target units work nicely. Kill the characters and unit will vanish.  Make it make as many panic tests as possible - they will fail ld 9/10 tests (even with rerolls) eventually.

V Multiple units - drop expendable chaff (peg knight, pistoliers) in middle and watch fanatics go crazy


Offline CarolineWellwater

  • Members
  • Posts: 396
Re: Dealing with Night Goblins
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2015, 12:28:14 PM »
(( mikeguy101,

Make sure your opponent knows that Night Goblin LD is lower than normal-Goblin LD.  I can't count the number of players that fail to realize that important fact.  While Night Goblins, in many ways, are more dangerous than Goblins... their LD is crippling. ))

Offline Lord Alisk

  • Members
  • Posts: 36
Re: Dealing with Night Goblins
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2015, 06:05:02 PM »
I have a (modest) night goblin army which I use from time to time, and there's a guy at my club who used Night Goblins regularly, though I've only played against him using my dwarfs, so my advice will based around non-Empire combat experience.

One question is how 'purist' your opponent is - i.e. is his army purely night goblin (or night goblins + trolls, snotlings and giants), or does he use a limited amount of other things. If he's a 'pure' night goblin general, then his army will of course be that bit weaker.

As I run a 'pure' night goblin army, I'll assume your opponent is doing the same.

I personally run huge buses of night goblins with the front rank crammed with big boss (hero level) characters. A night goblin big boss with a great weapon costs about 40 points, and is sort-of dangerous, and as the unit will have nets, these heroes will be fairly hard to kill in hand-to-hand. Though they won't threaten knights particularly, they can chew through infantry fairly well, and will leak less combat resolution than you might expect.

Obviously there'll  be lots of fanatics, which can sting you if you're not careful, so make sure to take some pistolliers or captains on pegasi to pull them out early.

Mangler squigs are utterly brutal if they get into your lines, so they are the number one priority for shooting (they go down pretty easily). As they're so deadly it is actually really rare that a mangler squig does its 'thing', but part of the reason for taking them is that they distract shooting from other things (squig herds, specifically).

Squig herds will be the main combat threat. They die in droves (T3, no armour), but hit very hard (2 attacks, S5), and can really lay waste. When I play against night goblins with my dwarfs i redirect squig herds like mad with gyrocopters, so I'd advise doing the same thing with pistolliers/huntsmen/etc whilst you can shoot them up. They're extremely vulnerable to being charged in the rear, because then you'll be fighting the goblins, nd if you defeat them in combat the unit will normally disappear (the unit explodes if it ever fails a break test), so if you get the chance to rear-charge them you really should go for it.

Also, I find that squig hoppers (and characters on giant squigs) are more of a threat than usually given credit for. Because they move randomly you get no charge response, and can mess up artillery and missile troops pretty well. Also, they instant-kill any fleeing troops they make contact with, so be careful! When I use my night goblins, I use a tricked out war boss (lord level character) on a giant squig, and find him actually fairly dangerous to small units, making charges in the flank, etc.

Trolls can be a real menace, but I find that the squig herds are more of a threat in combat. You might see single trolls wandering around as (unreliable) indirectors, or huge units, or somewhere in between. I get the sense that people who like trolls go all-in with them. Personally I think that because it isn't that difficult to get flaming attacks, trolls are too vulnerable, but then my main army is dwarfs, who get a *ton* of flaming attacks.

Goblin magic is pretty good actually, and has a fairly useful group of spells. Be *very* careful of one nasti combo - itchy nuisance (nerfs your intelligence) coupled with the boosted version of Curse of the Bad Moon (take a stat test or lose a wound - and that stat test can be the newly de-buffed initiative) - i've seen 30+ models go down to that spell with the combo with itchy nuisance (essentially 5/6 of the models touched by the big template die) - it can just eat units. As curse of the bad moon remains in play it could will hammer your offensive magic too.

Essentially, none of the goblin spells are *that* good by themselves, but it is a good all round lore, and can pull some nasty tricks. Beware of buffed up squig herds too.

Finally, I'd just like to mention the forge world squig gobba. I've really enjoyed using mine in games, and I generally find that it either lays waste or does absolutely nothing (about 2/3 of the time it does nothing). It is seriously hindered by its 24" range nd the fact it cannot move, but if it can shoot it is pretty nasty to lightly armoured troops (typically doing 3d6 or 4d6 S4 AP hits), which isn't to be sniffed at, and because it is actually really dangerous in hand to hand combat, you will need to dedicate shooting or 'proper' combat troops to killing it (normal war machine hunters will just become squig food, I'm afraid).

In summary, if you're playing a 'purist' night goblin army, it will be fairly weak, but can have a lot of tricks to make them more competitiveHowever, if you can neutralise the fanatics, mangler squigs and squig herds, a night goblin army will actually really struggle to hurt you in combat, so all should be well.

The night goblin army is *really* random - it reliies on fanatics, mangler squigs and magic to do damage (and squigs) to damage, all of which have huge damage potential, but are really unreliable. Whenever I play with my night goblins I either feel I win through jammy dice rolls, or are badly let down by all manner of random nonsense happens. I guess what I means is that you'll be less in control against night goblins than you nromally will be - sometimes the goblins will get lucky and hit absurdly hard, and sometimes the fanatics will kill far more goblins than enemies, and the squg gobba will fart itself to death. There's a lot of luck involved with goblins, so be warned!

That said, if you can neutralise the main threats you'll be fine. JUst take more chaff/redirectors than you normally do, and all should be well.

Good luck!

David