I was thinking about the archery again and wondering if there is a part house rule solution. I'm not very good at specifics, but was interested in your learned opinions!

Rangers and other troops that have special movement skills (like through trees or rocks or whatever) are obviously meant to be good at moving. Perhaps they could ignore the -1 penalty for shooting and moving? That would sort of keep their special niche use as outflankers etc.

Whatcha think as a house rule?

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I think that makes much more sense than GW's decision to render archery pretty much useless... Sounds like the basis for a good set of houserules in my view I'm not that much of a gamer though so would be interesting to see what some of the battle-hardened vets of this site think

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My group is just doing away with the "-1 if you move" thing completely. We are leaving volley fire out to sort of make up for it, but we never really used that anyway.

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If you come to think about it though, the penalty in shooting if one moves, is something completely believable and realistic. It would indeed be more difficult for someone to aim while running/marching/walking. The penalty does not disallow shooting, it just makes it harder to hit your target.

Yet, in spite of believing the rule to be a realistic representation of archery, I would still prefer not to include it in my games.

If that were the case, then why on earth are you restricted to moving half your distance? The whole point of the 1/2 movement penalty is that it represents the model running a few yards, stopping, pulling out an arrow, and then shooting vs running twice as far and not shooting.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
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My heart is with you mighty siimuskhan, the new archery rules are pretty bad actually, and what you propose is a way around it. I think Orc trackers and Hunter Orcs should be included in that excemption should you follow through with it.

Here is what I think should have been done with archery. It is, I think, similar to what Draugy posted in another thread but not the same:

Slingshots - no penalty
Throwing weapons & throwing spears - no penalty
Bows, Shortbows, Longbows, Orc Bows, Elf Bows, Dwarf Bows, Great Bows - can move up to half with no penalty to shooting, can move over half with a -1 penalty to shoot value.
Blowpipes - no penalty
Crossbows - no penalty if they don't move at all. -1 penalty to move up to half. Cannot shoot if moved over half.

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I'm sold. The penalty was already there. You could only move at half the movement if you wanted to shoot decently. Shooting was never overpowered afaic.

That's identical to what I was thinking, but it's so much easier just to ignore the -1 penalty altogether.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
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I have said this before, and I will say it again:
as an archer the new penalties for archery are total gonads
I suffer no penalty to my aim when I walk and shoot, mostly because I load the arrow onto the string before getting to my shooting destination, and the rules before the hobbit represented this very well.
Gw do seem to have forgotten why there were movement penalties to begin with.

Personally I think rangers should either be woodland creatures or have elven cloaks, to represent them acurately without making them ott as they are currently not very competitive.

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If I had wanted to put some restrictions on archery beyond bow limits I would have added a penalty for long range instead of both a movement restriction and a penalty for moving and shooting. This would mean that you didn't have to keep track of which models had moved or how far.

That said........... There is nothing wrong with the current rules for shooting that cannot be fixed by altering your terrain collection. If you find that your archers are having to move too much and/or the enemy gets there too soon then build terrain that slows people down but offers no cover. Boggy ground, loose scree or scrub will force troops to go at half speed or go the long way round, buying more time for your archers to stand still and shoot. Anything that forces jump tests will help too, imagine how long it will take an Uruk pike block to jump across a river. Even a 2-deep spear block will take it's time getting over a wall, not many of them will roll 6s to jump and if they don't roll a 6 they'll be stopping the guy behind from getting over. Once the front line is over they're standing there in no cover getting shot while they wait for the second rank to catch up.

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@Damian - agreed that many people may be playing on unfavorable or unrealistic terrain, but you can't always dictate that. Sometime the scenario is specific about set up. Other times you are playing on someone else's table. We have a variety of terrain at our store and though I'd love to pull out the heavy woodlands each time I play my Elves, my Moria opponent may want the rocky / underground pieces.

I LOVE the chart recommended above by GtW and will probably print that off, but for simplicity sake I think just having your local players house rule to ignore the new -1 gets things pretty balanced.

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No, you can't dictate terrain. It must be set up with mutual consent from both players, but it will be the single biggest factor when determining if archery (and Cavalry) will be effective or not, so it's down to all players to be sporting about it, maybe by alternating the picking and placing of each terrain piece as suggested in the sourcebooks.

Ultimately any rules governing missile weapons can be seen as good or bad depending on how much and what types of terrain are on the table, therefore we as players can balance the shooting in SBG without needing house rules.

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It's still not necessary to have this crippling for archery, even If you play the game how it's meant to be played ie lots of terrain, the -1 doesn't make sense at all.
I rarely use lots of archery in the game myself, nonetheless this just seems like gw being hateful to archery especially when you consider the deployment in the warband scenarios

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It's not just about having lots of terrain, it's having terrain that slows movement but provides little or no cover, then your archers aren't having to move and the -1 penalty is not a problem. Stick a river across the middle your table and even with warbands deployments archery will seem very powerful indeed.

Look at the boards GW did to showcase EfGT, lots of walkways with gaps inbetween. You can jump across and attack piecemeal or take the long way round, either way archery is going to hurt you as you slog around a table with not many 'in the way' opportunities.

Obviously shooting needed nerfing.

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Moving over 1/2 with these archery rules is extremely bad. It gives a massive boost to Elven bowfire. Warhammer Archers can do this, but they also have trouble backing up, which balances out the movement -1 penalty even though they move full.

If you allow bowmen to move over 1/2 and still shoot, even at a -1 penalty, then you would also have to give other models the ability to move 8" if they don't shoot. That way there is a chance they can catch up. But even with that, they'll never catch cavalry. Both of these scenarios will amplify the kiting issue even further.

My call is to just cut it for everything but Cavalry. It is not needed with the 1/2 move rule. In fact, it's redundant.

I would also keep it for Throwing Weapons if you move over a half move. So with a Throwing Weapon you can move half and still throw with no penalty. Over 1/2 and you suffer a -1 penalty. It balances them out with the rest of shooting. Otherwise they are far too powerful compared to a bow, especially with the new Rohan 8" throwing weapons.

After all this rule was designed to combat the Elven and Rohan kiting issues of the days of old. It is also there to balance out Dwarven Rangers and other throwing weapon heavy armies.

So what about:

No movement = +1 to shoot value to represent standing and aiming.

Movement up to half = same as pre-Hobbit rules (ie. no penalty, well, except for not being able to move as far as you could)

Full movement:
For bows etc - can't shoot.
For throwing weapons -1 penalty (perhaps unless you are a ranger moving in your preferred terrain or something).

This encourages the idea that it's best to stand and aim (which I assume is actually what was wanted) by affirming it rather than penalising the alternative.

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I like the idea of revearsing it and we are even going to playtest that this weekend, but we fear that it may be far too good. Elves would hit on 2+, Men on a 3+, including Riders. It's benefit seems far too strong on the other end, especially the high end where Legolas and Tharanduil will autohit every time they shoot something. But, I'll let you know how playtesting goes.

To me, I think the original rule is fine, just penalize throwing weapons and cavalry moving and shooting.

I prefer just using it the same as pre Hobbit.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
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Nice simmuskhan but I think it makes crossbows too strong.

@commonor, wouldn't it be better for ELf Bows and Grey Coimapny to be more competitive again though?

Anyway, as Draugy says maybe the old shooting rules are better.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

Yep. Simple and time-tested. But would that make RoR overpowered?