Greenskins best means to fight Terror, Cavalry and Etheral?

[JoeVonFo]

Hi there

I'm trying hard to make Greenskin work for me.
Please note that I'm not calling Greenskin underpowered. I just have a MUCH hard timer making them work, compared to Empire and VC which I've played the most.

I've been practicing them in custom battle vs an AI on very hard and I seem to have 3 problems.
Especially Vampire Counts seem to a tough matchup.

1) My army often times flee the second combat erupts.
I've been running Wurrzag, a goblin night shaman and 2 goblin big bosses with my main army, but even so everything but black orcs seem to rout, the seconds after the main armies clash. In one fight even Wurrzag routed being at about 60% HP, before loosing a single regiment yet.
I am aware that the difficulty setting gives my units -5 leadership, which probably hit Greenskins harder than any other race, but what other means are there to stop my units from fleeing?


2) What units do you use as Greenskins against Cavalry?
So far I havn't been able to find a single Greenskin unit that's actually suited to fight against cavalry.
- The savage big uns' do some decent damage, but often time rout before doing so.
- The Orc boar boyz seem like they're loosing against other cavalry, although they have the desired attributes.
- Black orcs can get the job done, but seem like a overpriced and thereby inefficient way to handle it.
- Goblin spearmen seem very inefficient, but would probably be cost-effective if it weren't for them fleeing, affecting the army leadership in a further negative direction.

My approach to handling cavalry so far, has been to have nasty skulkers standing on the side flanks, and as the cavalry are just about to collide with them I just smoke bombs slowing them down and then swarming them..
Against the AI that seem to work, althought it's not too efficient.

3) How do you deal with etheral units, with the Greenskins lack of magical damage?
Units like cairn wraiths and Hexwraiths seem extremely durable vs greenskins. I try to hit them with foot of gork, that can deal some nice damage to them, but it's rarely enough to take care of them. What other means to Green skin have to fight them?
I'm wondering if maby goblin spears and goblin archers would be the answer?
They seem to flee before hexwraiths way to quickly though.

Thank you for reading :)

[Wyvern]

To answer your questions:
1)Im not sure if your problem is terror or morale. Savage orcs have immunity to psychology until frenzy wears off(which requires their morale to drop below 50%), and Black orcs are just immune to psychology period. If your lines are routing very quickly, they you are most likely doing something wrong, most likely deploying in short, blobby formation(just speculating, but that is my assumption). As Greenskins you want to be outflanking and overwhelming your opponent. Don't get encircled because the flank penalty, especially on very hard/legendary, will hit you harder than others(because your base morale is so bad) In general, with GS, you want to decide your fight in a single glorious charge before things degenerate for too long. I assume youre playing wurrzag, so just gonna point out that you have a huge charge bonus on savage orcs, capitalize on this to make the most of early shock. Obviously, invest in morale tech/skills if you can, and veterancy will help too.

2)Orcs have always had a rough time vs cav, since the majority of their counters are "soft" counters. You need to have your units work together to beat enemy cav. Your first and most significant counter as generic GS is orc boar boy bigguns, who have a true anti-large bonus and AP, you want to combine them with a poison causing unit to mitigate return damage+enemies chance of escaping(spider riders are a popular pick in MP, I'd recommend big boss/squig hopper support in SP) Assuming you are wurrzag, then you're probably better off just using your savage orc boar boy bigguns instead, since the +25 charge bonus will probably compensate for any disadvantage in anti-large damage, they of course have frenzy+skill buffs from wurrzag, and theyre more useful vs non-cav. Otherwise, you need to rely on soft counters like black orcs/bigguns, and if you have the DLC then nasty skulkers are also an amazing counter for their cost, because they have AP and their smoke bomb is something like a 75 or 76% speed debuff for ~20 seconds iirc.

3)Vs ethereal you're just screwed. JJ, but it isn't fun, especially given that all the ethereal units cause terror. If youre using wurrzags army specifically, and have already crushed most/all of the dwarves on the map, I'd spec into the "magic for whole army" skill(this is a serious trap skill early game, where you fight dawi 24/7). It's additionally super useful vs wood elves, norsca, vampires and even brettonia, since a lot of their units will have physical resist. If you have azhag+crown of sorcery, obviously death magic helps. Otherwise you have to swamp them. KIll everything else, and If you can surround ethereal units, that's ideal, since their morale tends to be low(except some of the hero ones) and once they start crumbling, the low hp means they dont last very long past that.

A pretty cool combo with azhag(if you confederate him/play GS classic) is to use doom+darkness followed by aspect of dreadknight on some unit in the brawl to help shatter enemy lines via morale debuff. Otherwise, aspect when overcast and hitting an AOE will make all of your units cause terror, which also means immunity to terror, this can be very helpful in a long, drawn out engagement.

Hope this helps!

[JoeVonFo]

Thank you :)

I should have been more specific though. I'm talking about multiplayer/Custom battles, so I don't have any of the benifits/bonusses from campaign

[Wyvern]

My bad, I sorta glossed over the intro and went right for the points, lol.

In the case of MP, azhag is definitely the best pick vs undead, period, because lore of death spells(fate of bjuna+spirit leech especially) are such good counters to vampire ethereal play, and the utility spells are great too. Otherwise I think I basically covered everything. Beating ethereals largely just comes down to a numbers game, the damage they deal is somewhat poor, so if you can kill all the other stuff and tank their morale, thats probably the best method outside of azhags magic.

[Magni]

Another tip with Ethereal units is to hit them with a hero or lord with a magical weapon in support to whatever unit you have bogging them down. Any magic weapon equipped in the campaign gives the character magical damage IIRC.

[董]

Wuzzags a bit of a hard choice these days, with wyvern finally getting their poison att, generic orc lords been very cost effective. Or you oculd go with grimgor. Wuzzag isnt all that bad its just light armor, with all the lord sniping he goes down really fast.

In regards to mp, Orc vs ud has always been a bit difficult. You will need a lot of orc biguns cav as they r orks most powerful cav to cav melee killer, being ap and anti large. For every blood knights u need at least 2 to counter it, really need to overwhelm and surround kill them asap otherwise the heals gonna cause major pain. Bring giant to fight along your frontline, they r anti terror as they cause it themselves and have major ld to not break.

Ork really rely on rors, the unbreak gobbos, armor sundering gobbos and stalking ap gobbo archers r super cost effective. Remember tho, while a 1100 blk ork will destroy graveguard, a 650 squig hoppers, 800 sav boar can do the same and costs less.

Not much tips i can offer, orc vs vamps has always been hard. Boar biguns vs blood knights an uphill battle by itself. If they bring 1-2 terrorgheist it would be a nightmare to fight.

Best to just avoid vamps altogether if ure using orc, its just not worth it, massive disadvantage.

[Jabroni]

lol TLDR don't get flanked or lose

[Kaia]

Stompy stompy. The Foot of Gork kills ethereal units (whose statline is pathetic once you strip away their damage resistance) dead. Pin in place with goblins and a hero nearby to keep their morale intact (the shaman should do) and bring the pain.

As for cavalry, yeah. Boarboyz suck. I have no idea why CA decided that the core rule for greenskins should be 'make all their units very bad at the job they're supposed to do' but that seems to have been the guiding design philosophy.

Remember that goblins do not actually have charge defense or anti-large. They're wielding spears, but these are just damage sticks. They're not spearmen in the sense you're thinking of.

Against a cavalry heavy army there's not an awful lot the greenskins can do but suffer through it. Casualties will be high. If they've not got much in the way of AP cav you could sick some arachnaroks on them. AP cav will make spider kebabs though so its always a bit risky.

The Little Whaaagh can help. Granting AP buffs, armor and defense penalties and snares to cavalry. Fate of Bjuna isn't quite the death ray it was at release but it still inflicts a lot of damage to those expensive high armor units - bloodknights do not want - and there's nothing they can do about it if Azhag stays in the air, melting a third of their hitpoints every ~20s. How many vargheists can they possibly bring if they're fielding three blood knights? Not enough to cause a problem, I would guess.