# Best Formation for Archers?



## Sir Whittaker (Jun 25, 2009)

Gonna start up some Tomb Kings, a missle heavy army, and was wondering what the best formation is for archers? Obviously I intend to start small, but progress through to a much larger force, so what would be the best set up for smaller armires right up to large full scale warfare?

Thanks all.


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## Deathypoo (Jun 27, 2011)

For small games, 10 or 12 is a pretty ideal size. A 5x2 is compact and every model can fire. 6x2 is just sneaking in a little extra 

20 is what I normally run for any game over 1000 points, and multiple units of 20 if I want more. 10x2 means they can all fire, and 5x4 is more compact and volley fire allows 15 to shoot. If a unit gets much bigger than that, it starts to get very points inefficient and clunky to maneuver in my opinion.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

You generally want to be in 2 ranks, but unit size depends on what you want.

Small units- easy to maneuver and you lose less if you get caught in combat but are more likely to be wiped out by shooting/magic so you might lose out on raising. Many small units can give you many raised models per bubble spell (if playing a stupid enemy who doesn't concentrate fire).

Big units- hard to maneuver and can get in your own way, good place to hide characters but if you do get caught in combat you lose a lot.


There are games when big is better and others where it isn't... it just depends on how you play and what you want in your army. I prefer to play against big units so that if you get a flanker into the unit it stops a huge amount of shooting: friend I play occasionally used to used 30 archers + hierophant in a 15-16*2 unit and I just used to stop it by throwing an eagle into them, didn't kill them but stopped them doing much. On the other hand against artillery you want big units to stop units being wiped out.


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