8th Ed. 80 goblins running from 20 saurus? Pls help

[Kawell]

Me and my dad have been paying a few more games and what keeps happening is he will have a unit of 80 goblins in combat against about 20-30 saurus. As expected, the goblins loose the combat and use their unmodified leadership as they have more ranks. They fail and run away, then my saurus catch and kill them in the pursuit roll.

Is this right? are we doing something wrong or is it just that goblins suck so much they will always die.

 

[Arli]

Yea, that's right. The goblins are granted steadfast due to the ranks. But their leadership is so low that they fail the test. He could stop that by placing a character in the unit or by keeping the unit close to the BSB so that he could reroll the test.

 

[rychek]

Goblins vs Saurus is some of the weakest core units in Warhammer against some of the better core units in Warhammer. The goblins don't stand a chance unless aided by something with higher Ld than their own. Goblin Big Bosses are cheap, cheap, cheap, so adding one or three doesn't cost much and can make a huge difference in their ability to stick around after the first round of combat.

 

[david l]

Yup, that is correct.
Instead of one unit of 80 goblins, he would be better with 2 units of 40 each. And they really need an Orc general nearby to keep them in line.

PS They do not test on "unmodified leadership", that phrase was removed by the Errata. Instead they ignore the CR modifier for the test. Makes no difference for your current purposes, but as you get more into the game it can. Get the FAQ/Errata documents from the GW website.

 

[Kawell]

hi,

Thanks for helping me. I thought i might have been doing it right but i just wanted to make sure. Thanks so much for your help.

 

[Caneghem]

Even in very small games, every army must have a general. If the big unit of goblins was within 12 inches of the general, they can test on his leadership.

 

[Caprasauridae]

Not going to contribute anything useful, but just pointing out that I can see 20 Saurus hack down 80 running Goblins, maybe not every single one of them, but enough so that they scatter and never return, as it is said in the rulebook. But 15 Goblins running down and killing two Mournfangs sounds pretty incredible. I have seen this happen, though.

 

[PlasmaDavid]

That's just a challenge, it's up to you to create the narrative to fit the results!

The image of Saurus going crazy and tearing up every gobbo they can reach and a huge mob of gobbos piling into the rear ranks and causing utter chaos is pretty funny.