My friend and I just had an intense, 2-hour combat. His 12 goblins and 3 orcs went against my 8 Grim Hammers and 4 Iron Guards. Each of the Evil warriors could respawn once, but my Dwarves started in the battlements of the Ruins of Osgiliath.

In a slightly different practice round before, his archers spined at least 3 of my troops.

This game, only 1 Dwarf fell to arrows, but the insane area of denial they provided made the game long, grueling, and me unable to leverage my defensive bonus.

At one point, my surviving troops mounted a full assault on his lines and made short work of the Goblins initially, and it finally looked like I'd secure victory. But soon, they found themselves rolling 1's and 4's and the Goblins rolling 5's and 6's.

That's really nothing but Lady Luck, but I feel the battle could've ended quite differently if I wasn't constantly dodging shots. I have a pack of Dwarven Rangers that I think would've been able to win the day, but they are not painted yet.

Any suggestions on how to work around archers?

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Forlorn, I remove my Iron Guard from the pile of Goblins; just staring at that 6 with disbelief.

use the battlefield to your advantage. Trees, buildings, anything that can shield from volley fire while you march against enemy lines. If the opponent has lots of dangereous archers (i.e. elves), an heroic march can be useful to cut the distance.

Use terrain to get cover on your approach, or failing that, just make. Beeline for them at top speed. If you have lots of might in your army then heroic March, but if not, don't worry. You will always take a couple of casualties from bowfire, and if you don't have any of your own, then sometimes you'll just have to endure the storm I'm afraid.

Do you think Dwarf Rangers will be able to return fire effectively? In my upcoming game it's 3 versus 2 players but a very similar setup, and I'm allied with some Rohan and Gondorian troops.
If I can effectively shoot back that would be great, if not can my allies cover me?

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Forlorn, I remove my Iron Guard from the pile of Goblins; just staring at that 6 with disbelief.

it depends. Return fire against whom? and how many archers?

on a side note, I think that, as far as S2 bows go, both Rohan and gondor got better (cheaper) archers

Return fire against Uruk Scouts and Goblin and Orc bowmen. Probably around 12 of them, but they can respawn as per house rules.

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Forlorn, I remove my Iron Guard from the pile of Goblins; just staring at that 6 with disbelief.

If there aren't any crossbows in the mix then you could actually out range them as your bows are 24inch range where theirs are only 18inch range

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RIP Christopher Lee

As a general rule of thumb always bring archers, I recently played a game against Urak-Hai where they didn't have archers and I had a full 12 rangers of Gondor and every time they were forced to move position I would snag few key orcs, thin their lines with volleys or pick off key spear support.

That sounds smart. I thought that since they had throwing axes, it would be fine and dandy. I was very wrong.

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Forlorn, I remove my Iron Guard from the pile of Goblins; just staring at that 6 with disbelief.

Throwing weapons are great when you get the thick of the scrum, that way you can get lucky and kill a orc while you are charging it and charge another, but you need archers to cover you.

Dwarfs are great for this because they are just naturally tough archers.

At least half a dozen archers are pretty essential to shoot out Boromir/Glorfindel's horse. If your opponent brings big mounted heroes, then you half their effectiveness by dismounting them.

How effective is dismounting? As I haven't played a lot (even though I've had models forever I've just got a gaming group together as school is over) I've never had any experience with calvary and the only mounted anything we have is Theodred.

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Forlorn, I remove my Iron Guard from the pile of Goblins; just staring at that 6 with disbelief.

The best defense against archers is to knock them down with a sorc blast, return fire with your own archer, use the terrain, and/or charge in and close the gap as quickly as possible. I've played games where the archers doe quickly and games where the archers linger for the entire match. My advice would be to disable the archers sooner rather than later.

by dismounting, not only remove the extra movement of a cavalry model, but also remove any benefit the hero would have from charging.
Boromir is already dangerous as he is. On a charging horse he would have 4 strike to win the fight and 8 strike to wound. On foot, he will have 3 of each.

Cavalry has lots of bonus when charging. By adding one attack when charging and knocking to the ground (twice the strike) even a simple rider will get at least 4 strikes to kill.
Horses and warg riders have a def of 4, which means 5+ to wound from most archery, while the rider will have usually have a def of 5 or 6, and a hero can reach D7 or D8.
that means that killing the horse is usually easier, and even if the rider is still around is now less dangerous