New player. Shooting tactics?

[toco]

Hi all, I've been playing my first Warmaster battles. 1000 Points.

Now I struggle to see the usefulness of shooting. These units don't do a lot of damage. Can you please tell me how to use shooting units correctly? What are good tactics with shooters? Should I buy a lot of shooting units for them to be useful? One cannon battery seems useless... One Orc rocklobber even more useless...

Thanks already for all instructions.

[Dave]

You're not going to be removing stands unless you can arrange it so multiple units are shooting at the same enemy unit. This get's easier to do in the higher point games (more shooters on the table). For the most part though, they're there to break up brigades with drivebacks, confuse the enemy, and, most importantly, shoot support for combats that you will fight (as if they take hits they'll be driven back and won't be support anymore).

[Clawlessdragon]

As  Dave says, shooting (and magic) is not overpowering in this game... more a means to break up units and hopefully cause confusion.
In addition, as you have to shoot the closest enemy unit, it is very hard to get 2 or 3 units of shooters in range, shooting at the same target (to be effective)... the exception could be Dark Elves and their double shots at close range, or shooters on horseback... as you could fit 3 units on horseback in the space of 1 unit on foot (9 shots instead of 3... or even worse if Dark Elf riders... within 15cm.....3 units = 18 shots)  devistating, if the shots don't kill you, the drive back is most probably send you back over 20cm and therefore kill you anyway.

Those are exceptions, in the main shooting does not much at all, the focus is on hand to hand.

[marell le fou]

You mainly have two schools it seems, for the use of firing units.

Some players want to use them in first line, to be able to use their fire when they are charged, and then they die.

Some players want to use them as individual units, who fulfill their own role in the battle.

The second way is harder but i think is more interesting. You seek to divide the ennemy bridages or regroupments of all sorts to divide the ennemy units and scatter them.

You want to break his perfect line of front to attack him. Or to divide the units he was assembling to charge you.

[toco]

Thank you all. I'll try using them to disrupt enemy lines.

[Hammerskelp]

Hi Toco,
welcome aboard the Warmaster Revolution.
- - - - -
The beauty of Warmaster is that there is no 'right' way to do things. 
Even after years of playing...you can still fiddle about with your brigade deployment to find the 'ideal'.    If you find one... let me know! 

There is an alternative way to use cheap missile-armed infantry.
You could forget about shooting.  [Shock...Horror]

I tend to put skinks (in my Lizardmen army) and goblins (in my orc army) in the rear rank, behind solid line troops.

They offer +3 to close combat results.  If you think about how many dice you need to roll against something like knights to get +3 to your result.  You'd need to roll on average 12dice!   

Skinks and Goblins are nice to throw in front of artillery too. (Although we don't put that on their recruiting posters!)   The artillery must shoot the closest target... even if that is a single stand of goblins, limping forward at 10cm per turn, ordered by a goblin Shaman.

Enjoy your games.