Shooting: Getting the Most out of Archery, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

This post begins a new five-part series on shooting in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. This is a part of the game that, until recently, has received mixed reviews in our gaming group because shooting has been viewed as unreliable by many of the  factions of our players. This post will provide an overview of how shooting works and some of the fundamental considerations you should think about when using it in the game (as well as re-doing a post we did back in February 2016). Our next posts will be an in-depth look at throwing weapons (a very particular kind of shooting attack), going through two case studies on emphasizing shooting in army lists with my beloved bearded folk (Kingdom of Moria) and their arch nemeses the Greenskins of Moria (showing in both of these lists how placing a greater emphasis on archery can make both of these factions more powerful than they would be otherwise), and wrapping up the discussion with some thoughts on how to employ skirmish units in your armies (with special guests!).

So, let’s get started by understanding shooting…

What’s New About Shooting?

Shooting hasn’t changed much between releases – in fact, we’ve really only seen the following change in it as follows:

• Models with bows of various kinds (but not crossbows) can no longer “volley fire” (extending their range to double their normal shooting range and no closer than 18” to their position, but only hitting on 6s), meaning that archery has to be used once you’re actually “in range” (not as much standing back and shooting). I talked about this when the new rules came out back in October 2018 – I think I’ve become okay with it since then.
• Some models got different bow profiles (Uruk-Hai Scouts got Uruk-Hai bows instead of Orc bows, upping the Strength of the weapons and making Uruk-Hai Scouts more dangerous than they were before). Hobbit archers went back to having short bows, which is a bit of a bummer.
• Models that move and shoot in the same turn suffer a -1 penalty to their To Hit difficulty (not to their roll – an important distinction) – I’ll be calling this the “scoot-and-shoot” penalty in this series. The scoot-and-shoot makes moving and shooting on the same turn (often referred to as “kiting”) less reliable than it used to be, but only marginally so.

Besides that, everything we wrote about in the 2016 post is true – archery remains yet-another-way of dealing damage to an opposing force, and while some armies can have a higher tendency to get stuff done with archery (either by having more bows/throwing weapons than other armies, having good Shoot values, having stronger bows than other armies, or any mix of these three elements), there’s a level of chance involved in shooting that is both exciting and risky – let’s talk for a minute about why that is.

Why Rely on Shooting?

A "Lurtz-ball" - 13 18" Strength 3 shots at whoever wants some (arriving wherever you want them) - OUCH!

There are three phases in the game where you can do damage to your opponent: the Move phase, the Shoot phase, and the Fight phase. While basically any model that you include in your army can do damage in the Fight phase, choosing models that can do damage in the other two phases is a subject of much debate among players these days. Doing damage in the Move phase might mean the inclusion of throwing weapons (more on them next time), chariots/camels/Mumakil that do impact/trample damage (limited to a very few number of factions), or magical spells that deal hits to their opponents, but doing damage in the Shoot phase requires the purchase of one thing: a shooting weapon of some kind (be it a siege engine, a bow/crossbow, or a throwing weapon).

Shooting in my gaming group is generally considered to be good for Elves. And Rangers. And Shire. And Iron Hills. And mounted Rohan lists. And that’s about it. Some armies (like Isengard) might have a pocket of archery (some crossbows around Vrasku, a siege ballista or two, a group of Uruk-Hai bows with Mauhur/Lurtz), but in general, armies that are brought to our tournaments tend to bring little to no archery (unless they’re brought by yours truly). Why?

Because archery can be one of the most disappointing things in this game. 

Break that charge!

There’s nothing like having an Elf gun line ready to tear into the horde of Orcs that are racing across the field. You draw arrow to ear, and shout “Leithio I Philinn!” Then you drop a bunch of dice on the board and a bunch of them hit! How exciting! Then, you roll to Wound – looking for 5s or 6s in most cases. And of the 10+ dice you originally fired, you score a whopping . . . 0 Wounds. What!?!?!?!

If you’ve never run into this dilemma in a round of a game, just wait – it will come. Yes, you can run the maths and say, “Okay, I’ve got 13 Wood Elf Warriors with Elf bows and Haldir with an Elf bow and a Galadhrim Captain with an Elf bow, so that’s 16 shots hitting on 4s because I moved, so that should be 8 hits wounding on 5s, which should translate into 2-3 Wounds.” That’s not a bad line of reasoning – and if you aggregate many, many rounds across many, many games, you should get about 2-3 Wounds each round across the whole of your experience with that kind of list. And that will be good in some games and in some rounds . . . but not in all of them. When you run an archery-oriented army, there will be some rounds when things just go against you (and those rounds tend to be the ones that matter).

So does this mean archery is not valuable? I don’t think so, for a few reasons.

As we already mentioned, there are three phases in each round where you can do damage to someone: in the Move phase, in the Shoot phase, and in the Fight phase. Choosing to not include shooting weapons in your army (or only taking a few) not only diminishes the amount of damage you can do in the Shoot phase, but it also reduces your ability to do damage in the Move phase (with throwing weapons only). While bows are incredibly good at softening up an opponent’s force as they approach your own, throwing weapons disrupt your opponent while maneuvers are being carried out – and this means less planning and contingency execution, which is good for you. We'll talk about this more next time.

Second, while giving up opportunities to kill models in other phases is one way to measure shooting, dealing damage in any other way gives your opponent a say in whether or not they take damage (magical spells can be resisted in most cases, most fights require winning a duel roll). Shooting is the rare exception: once your opponent is done moving his models, he gets no say in whether those models live or die to your attacks (unless they have a special rule that makes them ineligible targets or if he’s got a save, such as channeled Fury or Gift of Foresight). If your opponent “just seems to roll a lot of 6s,” sometimes it’s nice to have something he can’t roll for – and shooting is the only option (Impaler/Trample rules excepted).

Third, not all scenarios require your force to get somewhere. Sure, there are many scenarios that require moving across the board, but some don’t. And in those scenarios, if your opponent brought archers (let’s say, lots of them) and you didn’t bring very many (if any at all), then he can choose where the battle takes place and sit and pepper your ranks as you approach. Having ignored archery in most games when I started building my Isengard force, I can tell you it’s not a lot of fun to have to slog across a field against Elves, Rohan, or Dwarves. There’s an easy solution to this, by the way: bring more archers!

Increasing Reliability: Thinking Two Turns Ahead

Using shooting models, like using mounted models, requires practice. The first few games you play with a shooting-heavy army will probably not go well. That’s okay – learn from them. The key to using any kind of shooting attack is thinking two turns ahead – getting a shot in this round is great, but if you’re exposing your model to a charge next round and you don’t get priority, it might go very, VERY badly for you.

Moria Goblin Warriors (5" movement) can't actually catch Wood Elf Warriors with throwing daggers (6" range after a full move) - so long as the Wood Elf Warriors think two turns ahead.

I loved to do the “shooting thing” with Wood Elves back in the Legions of Middle-Earth days – and believe me, I learned very quickly that D3 models die very, VERY quickly when caught. But since all Wood Elf models can take Elf bows or throwing daggers, you could have an entire contingent of models outfitted with ranged weapons (and that can hurt a LOT). Charges are incredibly powerful when you’re killing enemy models as you engage – and it can really throw an opponent off if enough wounds are done in a single round. If you’re not ready to engage, however, you need to think about moving your troops in such a way as to avoid getting caught up in a fight until you’re ready (and the simplest way to do this is to just back up). We’ll talk more about this in our post on throwing weapons next time.

The Old “Scoot-And-Shoot:” Shooting and Moving (aka "Kiting")

Now that there’s a moving-and-shooting penalty, it begs the question whether you want to camp out your warriors when you shoot or keep them moving. While some shooting models don’t have a choice (siege engines, crossbows, and those that throw stones), new commanders may struggle with whether to get that higher probability of hitting vs. additional movement. To answer this, I recommend all shooting commanders consider the following question during each Move phase:

Are my shooting models where they’re supposed to be?

This goes back to thinking two turns ahead – consider the following scenarios:

"Hey guys - those silly Orcs can't see us right now!"

The Wood Elves in this image are shooting from behind a stone wall at some Orcs. If the stone wall is near an objective (or if there are models that might be able to shoot back at them), you’ll want to stay where you are because these Elves can defend the barrier (great for keeping them alive) AND retain good protection from retaliatory attacks AND are protecting an objective. Even if there are no objectives and no archers that can hit them, staying behind this wall might prove useful in that by staying there, a turn or two of heavy casualties might dissuade the Orcs from charging their position. If no such luck occurs, you can always start backing away and make their models hop over the wall (or stand behind it and jeer at you).

"Run and throw - run and throw!"

In this second example, we have open ground between some Dwarf Rangers and Moria Goblin Warriors – and the Rangers are in big trouble if they get caught. In this case, you want to be moving as much as you can, keeping just out of charge range and just within throwing axe range (we’ll cover this more in our next post). By doing this, you won’t be caught by the advancing army and will hopefully cut down the numbers difference dramatically.

In the end, I don’t find the moving and shooting penalty to be all that big of a consideration – in fact, the moving and shooting penalty in some ways incentivizes activities. Centaur and I are playing through the old Fellowship of the Ring journeybook and we recently finished the last mission with the Moria Goblins. It’s been great fun. What I discovered (most particularly while shooting at the Fellowship as they raced down the stairs of Dwarrowdelf) was that Moria Goblins hit models normally on 5s, but hit models protected by Blinding Light on 6s. As a result, there’s no point in having those Goblins stand still – you keep them moving (since there’s no real penalty to doing so, since their scoot-and-shoot makes them hit on a 6). While most armies don’t have this “luxury,” armies that run archery reduction actually encourage their opponents to keep their archers moving, getting them to better shooting positions, new firing lanes, or claiming objectives. Not intuitive, but very useful.

Protecting Your Archers: Two Approaches

There are two approaches to “protecting” your archers that I run: having a dedicated shieldwall to protect them (archers carrying spears in the second rank for when the enemy force arrives) and archers standing on their own, using spears (in most cases) to protect each other should they get attacked. Let’s look at two examples of this – Numenor and Rivendell.

Tiberius's 700-point mono-Numenor go-to list - 33 models, 8 Might + free Heroic Combats, 10 bows.

Numenor: Warriors of Numenor are Defense 4 with bows and Defense 5 with shields. Defense 4 is easily killed by all three “standard” bows (Strength 2/3 bows will wound on 5s, S4 crossbows/great bows wound on 4s). This isn’t good. While Strength 3 bows will wound Defense 5 on exactly the same value, both other groups get their difficulty raised by 1, so you’re less likely to be killed by the enemy’s archers should you get in a lethal tennis match with them. As a result, I equip one-third of my Warriors of Numenor with bows and spears and one-half of my Warriors of Numenor with shields, allowing a 1-to-1 pairing of shields to bows/spears. The remaining one-sixth of the army has shields and spears (one with banner). This creates two things:

• First, most of my shieldwalls have archers in the back rank, allowing them to advance slowly, sending arrows into whoever lines up to charge them;
• Second, one of my shieldwalls can move very quickly, escorting a mega hero (Elendil if you have him, Isildur if you’re running a Last Alliance list) into combat quickly so he can get to work paying for himself.

This kind of approach means your army will likely be advancing at two different speeds – based on how your opponent built his army will determine how quickly you should move (and whether you have to or not).

Tiberius's 700-point mono-Rivendell go-to list - 30 models, 7 Might, 9 Elf bows.

Rivendell: High Elf Warriors are Defense 5 with bows and Defense 6 with shields. As laid out above, being Defense 5 is generally “fine” when fighting ranged weapons (S3/S4 ranged weapons will still hurt, but not TOO badly). As a result, I give half of my bowmen (rounding up) spears, which means my normal shieldwalls are highly mobile (all melee models), able to race across the field with a powerful hero (like Elrond or Glorfindel) and contest objectives, split up/flank an enemy position, that kind of thing. The primary goal is to make sure you don’t lose your archery firing lanes.

Picking Targets (and Heroic Accuracy)
With these two tactics for protecting your archers, how do you pick your targets? Let's say that the following two groups of archers are being charged by some Orcs:

8 High Elf Warriors with Elf bows + 4 Warriors of Numenor with bows = even numbers by the time the Orcs arrive...

The Orcs have a mixture of D4 and D5. For the Elves, their bows wound all of these Orcs on the same roll (5s), but I would just shoot at the front rank because your bows are the same Strength as your swords (so you might as well wound them before they get to you).

The Numenoreans have a different dilemma, since their bows wound certain models more easily than others. To hit D4 models in the second rank, you could try to have someone with Heroic Accuracy around to make you more likely to hit, but I would actually just risk hitting the front rank guy without calling a Heroic Accuracy (you have S4 melee damage instead of S2 range damage, so you'll wound any of these models a little more easily in melee, but not dramatically).

Are there good times to call Heroic Accuracy? Perhaps to hit a Vault Warden Foe Spear (who is 3 Defense points lower than his Foe Shield counterpart, and so the To Wound requirement is much lower). Besides that, I wouldn't worry about it too much - I talked about it in a post earlier this year if you care for further reading.

What About When You Just Can’t Wound Things?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t address the largest complaint I’ve heard about shooting in MESBG: what happens when I just can’t wound anything? While this is incredibly frustrating (especially if you’ve built your army around shooting), I’d encourage players to continue working on their shooting strategy (thinking two turns ahead). While some scenarios require you to get places, most of those scenarios have the chance of ending after someone is broken OR will end when one team gets reduced to 25% of their starting force OR after a certain time limit has been reached. None of these will be big penalties if you skirmish for the first half of the regulation time limit – take your time, posture your army, think ahead, and nibble away at what you can.

"Archers in the front - you won't get shot!"

In this picture, the Wood Elf bowmen can stand in front of the spearmen, relying on Galadriel's Blinding Light to keep them safe from enemy archery. Once the battle is joined, the archers can engage as melee models, backed by a rank of spearmen to make their battle line harder to shift.

Then, in the interest of being a good opponent, find smart ways to get in there and fight hand-to-hand. It doesn’t take much for bows to pay for themselves – a bow only costs 1-2 points/model, so if you kill 15-20 points worth of models, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t paid for the gear in the first place. While you could measure the cost of your bows on the models that are required to field them, this assumes that you’ve ignored Centaur’s maxim for archery in MESBG: Archers are swordsmen. While some armies can pay for all the archer models with the units they kill, most can’t – but that’s okay, because eventually your models should be joining the fight (as we just outlined).

Finally, if your archers aren’t wounding anything, build in contingency plans. As I showed above with Numenor, my bowmen double as spearmen for the main army blocks. While whittling down an enemy shieldwall helps the melee guys a lot, it’s not a big loss if there aren’t a lot of dead models by the time battle is joined - F4/S4 models tend to carve through things alright, and since these archers are also F4/S4, they can pay for themselves pretty well in melee too. This isn't true for all forces, but there are a good many who have archers who are just as good in melee as they are at a distance.

Augmenting Bows: Throwing Weapons

Our next post in the series will take a look into throwing weapons. This post will be an update to something I wrote back in July 2015 (when I was just beginning to appreciate the power of throwing weapons - lots of changes since then). Not only are there two different kinds of throwing weapons now, but not all throwing weapon units are created equal. We'll be going through ALL of the throwing weapon profiles, understanding how they work and why/how you'd want to employ them in your army. Should be fun - until then, happy hobbying!