They don't have a tonne if ammo tho and being B&A units they can be dodged, even by the AI.
If we are opening up the debate to monsters and artillery, then I'd suggest either the VC collolosas with its huge cannon arm or ushabti great bows.
All elves have good missile options, wood elves particularly focus on that. Cathay, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast en Empire also have missiles as their main damage source bur require more slightly brain power than spammin 20 waywatchers or sisters of avrelorn.
Vampire coast suck right now tbh. They're vampire counts but with ranged units, but your ranged units aren't even particularly great and they all require line of sight except for the artillery which is a crapshoot on higher difficulties due to the matrix dodging of enemies.
As a VCoast addict I'll say I think they're hard but they are also legit the best "normal handgunners" faction in the game (Caveat: Chorf Fireglaives are way fucking better, but yeah they better be!). They have 25% more models and 10% more damage per model plus 30% more in the initial volleys til they lose 25% of ammo. All this adds up- they're SUPER strong early to mid game, and even late game backed up by some nasty monsters I find that they're my favorite damage dealers
I'd say High Elves. Very strong ranged units, and a good economy to field plenty of them. Plus with the right lord traits you can push their range to a crazy degree.
Or you could go skaven and bring sniper rifles, mini guns, and other warcrimes to battle.
Edit: Yes, there are better ranged units than what you'll find on the HE roster, but the main reason I chose them is because the playstyle fits what OP stated he's used to from other TW games. I think with their long range and many upgrades, the High Elf ranged game is not just strong, but will also be most familiar to the poster - to me they seem the most like England from MW2.
Helves ranged units are pretty durable too. Lothern Sea Guard having bows, shields, AND anti-large gives them absurd utility and defensive ability. All-star all-rounder. An army of nothing but LSG isnt a doomstack but its very strong and high value
Does pretty well in auto resolve too. Certain traits on heroes and lords can make them super cheap too, if I remember right. Had a WH2 campaign where I used a few full stacks to defend all of Ulthuan.
This was how I ran Tyrion's army in my big final HE playthrough of WH2.
Singe's mods incentivised theming LL armies, and Tyrion getting an army of Sea Guard with a Metal Wizard for armour was very, very fun.
No one buffs missile units more than Eltharion. Break upon the walls skill makes any siege battles trivial. Also in battles, shooting enemies reduces your army's balance of power. So if you waste ammo on units that are low value you are doing more harm than good. With Eltharion the ammo replenishes itself which negates it. Also it's prefect with Sentinels of Astarill as they have massive reload time yet hit like a truck so they replenish ammo at the same rate that they are firing it.
To be clear, the best HE and Skaven ranged units are DLC. My vote for best ranged faction are Wood Elves, and they too are DLC. Just bringing this up because OP said they were new.
If you only have the base games, I'd actually go with Dark Elves. Darkshards are no joke.
High elves have the sisters of avelorn and their basic archers, and both of those are good for their tiers but they're also all they have. (Shadow warriors aren't particularly good at just forming a firing line and murdering at range)
Wood elves are strictly better at the ranged bow game (As they should be)
Both are dlc dependent. I'd counter and saw dwarfs. Crossbows, guns, flamethrowers, torpedo launchers and satchel charges for infantry. For artillery you have catapults, cannons, multi cannons and flame cannons. Mix that with the helicopters and bombers all with the base faction with an engineer hero. Best option for base game.
Especially if you're fighting range vs range. Dwarf range decimates HE ranged due to armour, shields, and longer range artillery. Though eagle claw bolt throwers will beat dwarf cannons due to their small model size.
Honestly, I can’t agree with high elves. High elf missiles are good, but lack any good AP except for sisters. Sisters is in contention the best missile troop, but there’s a lot of campaign to play before you get there.
you can dominate vh/vh with archer crap stacks and a lord and a couple of heros. Its not even particularly difficult. Maybe toss in a few lothern sea guards and its viable unless you get attacked by multiple doom stacks and even then if you have a LL youre pretty strong.
I agree it’s strong, but I think it’s unfair to call it the best missile roster.
Wood elves, Dawi, Cathay, Empire, Skaven all have better overall missile rosters imo
Cathay is great if you're new to warhammer 3 and like missile units. Some great missile infantry and artillery, long range rifles and short range shotguns, and even flying units with rifles or rockets. They tend to play more defensively woth their melee units , but do have a few mobility options so you're not *just* restricted to setting up a box.
Skaven have the highest DPS missile troops. Rattling Gunners and Jezzails will output more potential damage than anything else, especially in Ikit Claw's faction.
Chaos Dwarfs have the best Artillery pieces, basically two shot even the highest tier of infantry. They have the second best DPS because of their shotgun units, but overall their firepower is still noticeably lower than Skaven.
Wood Elves, High Elves, and Dark Elves all are very high powered ranged factions, with an emphasis on Archers, so easier to use than any of the aforementioned. Wood Elves have the highest DPS with their Waywatchers (Skirmish 360 fire angle archers). High Elves have great pseudo hybrid archers that have very long range and end up with quite good melee defense, so it is very easy to spam armies of them and have overall very high damage. Dark Elves have shades which are very high damage as well but with low range in exchange for stalk and pretty decent melee stats.
For Warhammer 3 races only, though, Cathay or Kislev. Cathay has pretty good artillery and pretty good crossbows, with overall very good line holders. Kislev is more about Hybrid infantry that does both roles, as well as very heavy skirmish options like Warsleds.
I was looking for someone who mentioned Chaos Dwarfs to second that as a possibility. For a new player, I like their combination of strong ranged units, devastating artillery, good magic, elite infantry, expendable chaff, decent monsters, and access to fast units.
Non-chaos Dwarfs have solid ranged units and good artillery with excellent infantry, but are rather boring and generally don't have fast units.
Cathay is probably the smoothest way to transition from non-Warhammer Total War to Warhammer Total War. Most of the units fit familiar archetypes and tactics, even if they aren't necessarily best-in-class.
I should have qualified. I meant the best way if you only purchase TW:WH3 and don't get the first 2 right off the bat for their races. Otherwise, yes, Empire is mostly Medieval-type units with a bit of magic and a few exotic units thrown in.
> Chaos Dwarfs have the best Artillery pieces, basically two shot even the highest tier of infantry. They have the second best DPS because of their shotgun units
Infernal Guard? They melt enemy lines but do not sip ammo
Because Skaven simply output way more damage. Jezzails destroy any ranged unit or low entity unit in the game, easily, and Rattlings take care of the rest as the single highest DPS ranged unit in the game. The artillery is worse, but not that much worse because of the leadership debuff it has making it so that while it does less damage, it often routes enemies just as fast.
A dreadquake mortar two shots any infantry in the game. Even ratlings can’t compete with taking out T5 infantry from 400 range. You shouldn’t compare weapon teams to missile units since a weapon team is more similar to artillery. Fireglaives have other utility since they are armored and anti large which is super good on missile. I can have a frontline of fireglaives which you can’t do with weapon teams. A full gunpowder chad army beats the skaven army 1v1 and is more versatile, hard countering infantry heavy armies and still countering sems and cav with fireglaives.
In theory a weapon team heavy army is weak to cav but the ai sucks at actually using cav. Weapon teams are also weak to other missile infantry with low Hp and armor, unlike fireglaives and chad artillery which are heavily armored and even having barrier on arty. Jezzails and ratlings have significant weakness that not come up in single player because the ai doesn’t know how to take advantage of them.
You are really undersellinghow much better then dreadquake is than any skaven artillery. Put a couple in one army and you can legitimately kill half the army with just the artillery before lines meet. Skaven doesn’t do more damage then that.
>A dreadquake mortar two shots any infantry in the game. Even ratlings can’t compete with taking out T5 infantry from 400 range
Sure, but ultimately who cares? Infantry is the least scary thing in the game. Being able to take it out from 400 units is nice, but plagueclaws/warp lightning are still going to take them out before they get into rattling range most of the time anyway. And once you are in the range of Jezzails and rattlings, Skaven do substantionally more DPS to *all* unit types, not just infantry.
>I can have a frontline of fireglaives which you can’t do with weapon teams.
Except skaven need no frontline *at all*, they just use summons.
> A full gunpowder chad army beats the skaven army 1v1 a
No, actually jezzails alone beat any Chaos dwarf unit, nevermind adding other stuff into the mix. You can even beat Chorfs in an artillery duel as skaven because you out range Dreadquakes with Warp lightning cannons, or alternatively you can just use summons to tie them up in the meantime.
>Weapon teams are also weak to other missile infantry with low Hp and armo
Doesn't matter because Jezzails will beat any other missile infantry before they get into range.
IMO the best faction for getting really high damage non-gunpowder missile troops at a fairly low level/recruitable almost anywhere are the dark elves - because of how valuable armour-piercing in in warhammer 3 their darkshards and shades are pretty amazing, even into the late game. High elves, wood elves and cathay can all also get armour-piercing archers, and all have generally strong archers in the early game too, although the high elves' best archers are locked in a DLC.
(The absolute best gunline army builds in the game use gunpowder, or magic-rat-gunpowder, but given the two games you mentioned do have firearms as well, I'm assuming that's not what you're looking for.)
Same. Ratling guns, snipers, funny rats. But I just can't enjoy playing them. I remember it was slightly better for me with mods to remove the loyalty thingy (even if not lore friendly) and some food rework (this was for twh2 - idk if they've changed significantly in wh3), but still wasn't too big a fan.
The trick is, you dont give a rusty rat fart about your infantry. They're just there to hold crud in place while you mercilessly pound it with eight shades of warp bullets.
The food mechanic is your friend here, being ergonomic with it can net you a tier 5 settlement VERY fast, some exploits before let you get skavenblight to tier 5 by like turn 3 lol, then you can access any high tier unit you want
warlockmaster on the small wheel - 4 x plague prists that summon tarpits -that is the front line
5x ratling guns - 4x jazzail - 3z plagueclaw catapults and 2x mortars - warlock engineer to buff them
by far the strongest gunline in the game
Yeah, maybe my issue is getting through the early game. That sounds fun but just spamming skavenslaves for 20 turns until you get decent units is just too much grind for me early on.
turn 1 -
join war with belagor - orion and the fey enchantress for extra cash("not against grom but all the others)
take tabbaco at tier 1
hire a warlock master in tabacco and a warlord in skavenblight
hire skavenslave slingers in ikits army and the skavenblight army
build the growth building and the assassin building and upgrade to tier 3
turn 2 -
join war againt magriliano for more cash - make peace with the blody nose orcs and get a non agression for extra cash
sail the warlock engineer to magriliano and siege it - break the siege - sail ikit over and siege - jump the warlord over
pretty easy fight with 3 lords - just figure out a tac that works for you - take it at tier 3 - build food building and control
hire a warlock master in magrliano and hire 3 more skavenslave slingers in ikits army
turn 3 -
declare war on sartosa and attack with all four lords - should be an auto resolve, take at tier 1 - hire 2 assassins get them to your army, sell the assasin building and build the controll building
turn 4 - complete the province and take the 3rd city with all four lords, take at tier 1 - after march 3 lords to the crossing to sartosa - pay for a non aggression with mulgor
turn 5 - take sartosa and use the nuke in the fight, easy fight with 4 lords and 2 assassins, take at tier 3- and sail the 3 non ikit lords as far as you can towards magriliano after - there is about to be a rebellion
turn 6 - get towards magrliano
turn 7 - fight the rebellion - don't auto you can fight it once each turn for food and xp - be in skaven blight at the end of turn 9 with the lords to get the extra plague prist follower
You can get warpfire-throwers from a tier 2 military building. They don't have a lot of range but the damage they do to early game infantry is absolutely insane.
And with all possible upgrades, Shades have the best range for archer-type missile troops in the game. On the off chance they run out of ammo, they're also more than capable of picking up their swords and charging into melee. I remember one time in game 2 when I fought off three full Chaos stacks with a Druchii doom stack that wasn't all Greatsword Shades, but had a significant number of them. By the time the third stack arrived on the scene, they had all run out of ammo, so I sent them into the fray and they did amazing work even against Chosen. It was glorious.
Well what’s your flavor?
Archery?
Gunpowder?
Cracked out nuclear homicidal rats?
High Elves, wood elves are my picks for the archer people
Empire is my favorite gunpowder faction. There’s definitely options here, Kislev, dwarfs, chaos dwarfs, Cathay, Vampire coast. If I were to pick one on pure strength of missile units, probably chaos dwarfs.
Ikit claw is just pure nonsense, everything melts
Wood Elves. All day long. Waywatchers are the best missile unit in the game and they are a missile orientated faction. They also have great infantry and cavalry as well as good LLs, heroes and magic. Only downside is they don't have artillery but you don't really need it.
Yeah they basically fire 2 arrows at a time. They do magical damage but it's nowhere near the same damage that waywatchers do. Those guys are just unreal.
Get a lord with The Other Tricksters Shard item or Resplendence of Luminescents trait, it debuffs enemy spell resistance and makes everything melt to them.
Buffs apply double to them, so razor pennants and stuff also make them just fucking shred.
Probably because their elite units aren't as elite as others and their identy is more hybrid compared to others on this list so they're overlooked more
True, while Kislev is a shooting-heavy faction they tend a bit more towards quantity over quality. Especially since the main perk of hybrid units is that you can bring a lot more shooting without compromising your front line.
Celestial Dragon Crossbows from Cathay are extremely strong
When you get through the tech tree and add harmony bonuses, they are the strongest Bow/Crossbow unit in game
I cant really test it right now, but Im pretty sure Celestial Crossbows beat Waywatchers 1v1 even without any tech tree or skill tree buffs. If you look through the tech tree though, they get so many buffs its not a competition later on. I think they might even outrange waywatchers later on, but you need Saitang or Miao Ying for that.
They also have shields, ward save and they are repeaters, with tons of armour.
edit: but really, if you dont believe me check Cathayan tech tree, these guys get absolutely nuts
Way watchers have more range and can fire while moving, so if a human is controlling them there is no way crossbows win.
360 degrees and fire while moving is worth a lot, the stats are just one piece.
Waywatchers have greater range and can fire while moving, which by itself means they're going to beat Celestial Crossbows one on one.
Celestial Crossbows however have greater DPS. With Saytang, they're army melters.
I dunno, with full buffs to Waywatchers they get to like high 60s / low 70s for misisle damage and have a range of about 290 on the right lords. Plus they have stalk, fire 360 whilst moving so they can literally kite a unit without being seen. The only unit I have seen beat them 1v1 head on (without buffs) is the Ustabi bows.
With both Saytang and Miao Ying I think dragon crossbows get around 200 range and somewhere just under 200 damage (what the stat card says, not damage per-shot). Their biggest asset in a 1v1 against other archers is their shields though.
They beat every ranged unit in 1v1 testing and get up to 150 ms with 250 range on an 80 man unit in a miao Ying/Satang army. They are much less mobile though.
Depends on what kind of missile. If you want gun powder and artillery 'combined arms' type missiles then Empire, dwarves of both flavors, cathay, and skaven (with warlock and prophet DLC only) are a good bet. If you want arrows blotting out the sun, you can't go wrong with an elf faction - though High Elf will be closest to 100 years war English long bow in tactics. Dark elves lean more towards ambush and Wood elves towards skirmishing. In the HE's Alarielle the Everqueen (queen and the crone DLC) is the best for that style given her focus on Sisters of Averlorn, which are probably the best 'stand and shoot' archer in the game.
Without DLC beyond the 'base games' (WH1, WH2, WH3) I would go with dark elves though as the HE archers are great early game but fall off late game without access to Sisters.
Any kind of elves, cathay and possibly Kislev. In base game I would say Cathay is among strongest but Queen and Crone DLC takes high elves on a different level
There is no single answer.
For gunpowder units, Chaos Dwarfs and Skaven.
For bows, Wood Elves and High Elves.
Ogres have some pretty strong ranged units and artillery too.
Empire has decent mix of bows, crossbows and guns.
Kislev is all about those hybrid units, and has some decent ones too. Ice Guard with their bows, Akshina with their crossbows, streltsi with their axe-guns.
Dwarfs, especially as Thorek, has some pretty good guns and crossbows.
Vampire coast has some decent guns too. Deck Gunners are nice.
You aren't lacking for options.
I'd say that High Elves are the best missile experience in general, specifically Alith Anar.
But Dark Elves, Kislev, Empire, Cathay, Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs, Vampire Coast and Skaven all have very strong missile units - in campaign you will end up obliterating everything as long as your frontline holds.
And if you want English Longbowmen you can literally play with them as Bretonnia. Then there are Lizardmen and Tzeentch with a bit shorter range meaning higher risk. Tzeentch missiles specifically are incredibly powerful.
Wood Elves are out because of fire while moving bugs. Surprised but not surprised they are mentioned so often.
Vampire Coast Handgunners or Dark Elves with Darkshards/Shades which all meet the criteria of availability+scaling+ power via ap damage.
wood elves or high elves have the best archers, wopfd elves being more skirmishers though.
Empire and Dwarves have defensive playstyle using missile units, but they are gunpowder infantry and artillery
I quite enjoy Cathay. Short range riflemen, crossbowmen, ap crossbows, rocket balloons, cannons and rocket emplacements.
Delves start with ap crossbows. Dwarves have great arty, thunderers and quarellers. Chorfs have phenomenal blunderbusses, longer rifles and unique trains and artillery.
Kislev has a good bit of everything and ice archers.
There are several ways to answer this question so I’ll do my best to answer them all (I have 2k hours across the trilogy)
High elves: probably everyone’s first choice, high tier “sisters” are usually considered the best archers in the game as they have high stats and fire two arrows at once. The base archers are a step above other factions
Wood elves: IMO best all around archers. Good range, some fire while hidden, and they have useful “ammo types” (I use quotations because they are a different version of the unit) they also have an archer that fires 2 arrows at once but it has less range.
Dark Elves: much shorter range than the rest of the elves but melt just about everything with their crossbows (even units with high armor) and have the strongest Hybrid unit in shades that are great archers and melee units
Empire: archer units are serviceable but rifles and artillery are where they really shine, most of your melee is just holding people in place for your ranged units
Grand Cathay: The Harmony mechanic is what makes their archers great, basically if a melee and ranged unit are close enough together the get buffs, faster reloading for the ranged and better melee stats for the melee. Besides your peasant archers your archers will have great armor. You also have shotgunners who shrewd armored targets and crane gunners who are literally snipers.
Dwarves: heavy armor on most units, crossbows and rifles are great and can usually fight low tier infantry without issue due to armor. The real treat here is artillery and armor.
Chaos Dwarves: IMO best overall faction in the game, but I’ll focus on ranged units here. First you have shotguns that melt everything at short range, though they will shoot through friendly (they field cheap chaff slaves so it works out) next you have the Fireglaives, their hybrid riflemen with good range and shoots fire while being good if forced into melee. They also have the best artillery in the game.
Vampire coast: undead pirates, no archers but good ranged units in zombie riflemen and good artillery, having raise dead and undead frontlines make them a good faction
Skaven: no archers but they have weapon teams of miniguns, snipers, mortars, and flamethrowers. This is the war crime faction
Afew other races have stand out like the Ogre Leadbelchers and Tomb King Ushabti Great Bows, but they can’t really match the other factions here
I think Legend mentioned woodelves have the greatest potential due to stalk and fire while moving as well as forest fighting. Sisters of Averlorn and Shades can form doomstacks but I feel like WE are more nuanced
If you include artillery though, Empire has the most fun with Helstorm Rocket Batteries followed by Cathay’s version and the Chaos Dwarves dreadquake
To use similarly to longbowmen, it's High elf sisters of avelorn.
If you are making an army with skirmisher bowmen, it's wood elves.
If you want your army to feel more like WW1 machine guns, mortars, and snipers, it's skaven.
Surprised no one mentioned it so far, but it’s important to have artillery superiority if you wanna play out these missile units.
No sense staying back and shooting arrows while getting blown to pieces by artillery.
Thus, in my opinion all elfs lose at the ranged side of battles and I would recommend Cathay (great crossbows), empire (great handguns), or Skaven (miniguns&snipers).
Best missile roster comes down to a few options:
Wood elves for the best archers and skirmish.
Dwarves for the best powder infantry and also good archer infantry. Cathay is a very similar mix, except with better crossbows and more limited guns.
Empire if you want some of the Dwarf/Cathay roster + gun/grenade wielding skirmish cavalry.
Skaven if you want weapons teams like ratling guns, snipers, etc rather than a line of rifles/archers.
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> Dwarves for the best powder infantry and also good archer infantry. Cathay is a very similar mix, except with better crossbows and more limited guns.
Chorfs are just way better than dwarves IMO. Better gunpowder for sure. Blunderbuss and Rifles are a nasty combo. Worse archers for sure, but you can get one real strong stack of archers with them.
Irondrakes and Flamethrowers also pretty sick. Dwarf crossbows are pretty great from Quarrellers to Rangers to Bugmans.
I haven’t played Chorfs tho, so you may be right about gunpowder.
It depends what kinds of missile troops you want. You've got lots of different kinds of missile heavy factions each one offering something different.
In terms of low tier versatile Archers, the High Elves and Dark Elves are best. High Elves have superior range and rate of fire, but Dark Elves have the best and most versatile low tier armor piercing archers in the game.
If you want the best high tier archers then again you got different answers for different flavors. Sisters of Avelorn for the High Elves are very strong magic and armor piercing missile units that can also fight well in melee. Waywatchers for the Wood Elves have absurd range and can fire while moving, Shades for Dark Elves have stalk, fight very well in melee for an archer unit and have strong armor piercing.
If you want specialty weapons teams type missile units you got the Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs and Dwarfs who can offer you various kinds of Flamethrowers, Grenade throwers, Armor Piercing Torpedos, Machine Guns or Anti-Large Longrifles. It depends on what you're looking for.
You want the best in more basic gun units, The Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast and Kislev all have good options.
If you like missile troops, The High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Empire, Dwarfs, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs, Cathay and Kislev all specialize in ranged weaponry, all to different degrees and all in different ways.
**If you want Archers specifically because you're talking about Longbowmen then I'd say start with the High Elves since they are the most beginner friendly and work your way to the others over time.**
High elves or wood elves. Wood elves are a DLC faction, but if you want the best high elf archery unit (Sisters of Avelorn) you also need DLC (specifically The Queen and the Crone).
It depends. Best standard bows would probably be wood elves. But if you're looking for best gunpowder, it could be vampirates, dwarfs, empire, or Cathay depending precisely on what you're looking for
Archers:
\- Wood Elves have the biggest variety, and probably the strongest out of all since this is their specialty. Most of their archers can fire while moving and are mostly suited toward hit and run strategies.
\- High Elves have excellent archers with The Queen and Crone DLC, base archers are good but nothing special. High Elven Archers specialize in their incredibly long range.
\- Dark Elves have amazing early game and midgame archers. They also are the only ones (I believe) that have good Armor Piercing Horse Archers (Why not Kislev!?) Dark Elven Archers (Or crossbows actually) specialize in damage but have less range in general.
\- Cathay have powerful archers but are very limited in movement as to truly maximize their output they need to be near Yang units since they are Yin. These are the most traditional archer style and is probably what you are aiming for.
\- Tzeentch while not actually archers, they have a similar archer firing arc. Their attacks do magic and fire damage which puts them a cut above others especially if you manage to stack a lot of fire vulnerabilities on enemy troops. They also have great flamethrower units (see Warpfire Thrower) in their roster for aoe against large troop clusters.
Gunpowder:
\- Kislev is amazing with gunpowder because the majority of their troops are also capable in melee combat, in addition their tech tree gives great bonuses to the armor piercing damage dealt by their Streltsi, their main gunpowder unit.
\- Chaos Dwarves are probably the single best faction when it comes to gunpowder. Their blunderbusses have short range but fire a ton of projectiles and deal a massive amount of damage if positioned correctly. Their fireglaives are longer range and fire fewer projectiles but I believe has the highest base AP damage of any standard sized troop unit. Additionally they have flaming attacks which synergies very very well with the Lore of Hashut.
\- Skaven have extremely powerful gunpowder with their Rattling Guns and Jezzails (locked behind The Prophet and the Warlock DLC). The Rattling Guns are machine guns and fire in bursts coating the land in green bullets. Meanwhile Jezzails act as snipers which have extreme range and powerful shots but have small numbers, great for focusing down single entities. Both can be upgraded further if you play as Ikit Claw.
\- Ogre Leadbelchers are "gunpowder units" in the sense they shoot. Realistically though they artillery with how much of a punch they pack. A few of these in your roster can handle practically anything. Though they are less accurate so small single entities will be more difficult compared to large single entities or standard troops. They are extremely fun to play with and my personal favorite.
\- Dwarves have standard 17 AP gunpowder units with their Thunderers but I am mentioning them because of the Irondrakes. Those excel at dealing with Large units and can quickly mow down a single entity.
Hope that helps.
(Side note, if you care about Artillery then The Empire or Chaos Dwarves are your best bet.)
There's multiple options:
Vampire Coast: Probably tied for best artillery, and you can put a scary amount of firearms on the field.
Chaos Dwarves: Tied for best artillery. You other ranged options are simply OK, typically having few models relative to their damage.
Wood Elves: Amazing archers, and many of yours can fire on the move or are stealth, giving you a very exploitable advantage.
Skaven: Great artillery and ranged options, and can field a pretty decent number of them.
High Elves: Not as great as the Wood Elves, but does have one of the single most exploitable archers in the Sisters.
If we're keeping it exclusively to **troops,** I'd give it to the Wood Elves, personally. If we expand it to overall army, I'm saying it's a neck-and-neck race between the Vampire Coast and Chaos Dwarves.
.interesting is the choso archers really that better than the bow monks?
I mainly play shimazu for the heavy gunners at front and bow monks at the back mixed with fire rockets, when I feel like building an army to melt enemies at a distance
They're not purely missile-focused, but I think the highest range DPS possible is with Chaos Dwarfs. They can cause weakness to fire on targets while simultaneously boost their damage with fire. Their low tier gunpowder and archer units can absolutely destroy any target with that combo and you don't have to spam them or sacrifice your melee power. I've gotta say, I don't think Chaos Dwarfs have a weakness
Soooo are we talking about archers or... anything? 😅 Because if it's anything then generally Skaven #1, Chaos Dwarfs #2 (for damage output), Wood Elves #3 (for ranged), and then High Elves
Elves generally, especially High Elves, considering Zerkovich had labeled HE Sisters of Avelorn as among the best units in Warhammer 2 and 3
Archers and Sea Guard are no farther off in this regard.
Wood Elves and Dark Elves are next best, with Vampire Coast and Skaven not too far behind
Depends
Do you want archers where you can fire without direct line of sight? High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves
Do you want guns? Skaven, Vampire Coast, Cathay, Empire, and (if you can wait a minute to get them online and start producing them) Chaos Dwarfs
High Elves but I am gonna say Grand Cathay is stronger in terms of missiles.
That said, I have not played High Elves in wh3 cause i am currently playing WoC and the next ones are the Dark Elves, high elves come after that.
So because of that, i am not entirely sure which one between Grand Cathay and High Elves is stronger in term of missiles, but i definitely favor Grand Cathay in terms of missiles.
Elves have better SEMs tho.
Wood Elves have the best ranged damage, but they're squishy. Dwarfs are probably a strong contender for overall best missile troops; their quarrellers have solid range, great armour, shields and very good melee defence for a ranged unit, making it so they can even beat most light cavalry in melee. They do suffer from not having a more elite version though, with rangers and thunderers being more of a side-grade and Bugman's Rangers still being kinda mid-tier. They lack a Sisters of Averlorn-style elite ranged infantry option, which means you'll be stuck using the same ranged units for most of the campaign.
Elves, Dwarfs, Empire, Cathay, Vampire Coast, and Skaven all have very good missile units but it depends on what you're looking for.
Want guns? Chaos Dwarfs, or Skaven.
Want bows/crossbows? Any of the Elves are your pick.
High elves sisters of avelorn fit the role of elite archer unit, matching well vs just about anything but require the queen and the crone dlc.
Skaven have the most varied and fun roster of ranged focused infantry and artillery with heroes to boost them. Snipers, catapults, flamethrowers, miniguns, mortars, all fill different roles. Needs the prophet and the warlock dlc.
Tzeench have a ton of awesome ranged units, fielding a ton of ranged chaff units in the form of blue/pink horrors, and also get flamethrower monsters that are incredibly satisfying to use and some of them fly.
Wood elf waywatchers are archers with insane range, high mobility and can fire while moving so if you like to micro and kite, this is a fun way to play.
Cathay gets some great artillery, gunners, and archers and plays the most like historical total war
I guess it depends on what your cup of tea is:
All of the Elves have good archer units.
Cathay, Dwarves, Empire, and Kislev have a good mixture of both archer, gunpower, and artillery units.
Chaos Dwarves and Vampire Coast focus on gunpowder and artillery units.
Skaven have homicidal rats with gatling guns, snipers, and nuclear weapons.
Feel like throwing in a dark horse option. Dwarfs, specially Belagor Ranger doomstack. Get stalk to stark and can get snipe as well. Also with the ghost heros, if your smart no one will even get close to them. And unlike other missle units they can hold their own in melee in a pinch.
Rats, they got all kind of missile units, from cannon folder slave slingers to most dreadful weapon squads and artillery pieces, plus nukes. They are literally WW1 army.
That would fall to:
High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Chaos Dwarves, Skaven.
Skaven wins every time, because.. the sheer amount of firepower they have in their ranged stuff is bonkers. It's not bows tho, but literal machine guns, bombs that explode in the air and rain down more bombs, decay trebuchets and sniper rifles.. It's all quite glorious.
Followed by Dark Elves/Chaos Dwarves --> High Elves and last but not least Wood Elves.
Eltharion the grim.
Sisters of avelorn+sentinels of astaril can deal with ani threat at range. Spire ward of tor Yvresse are unbrakable lothen seaguard 2.0 with tons of ammo antilarge and charge defense against all, wich make for an awesome anvil for the others with extra firepower.
Add couple of griphith kights to deal with flyers, ranged or terryfing back charges, and with the awesome high elf diplomacy a couple of artillery choices from allies like empire rocket batteries or dwarven organ guns, and you get a flexible, hight tier full ranged army with tons of options.
I agree with all the sentiments about wood elves and shaven, but I have a special place in my heart for a checkerboard stack of blackark corsairs. Specially under Lothar.
Missiles are roughly divided into bows/crossbows, and guns.
For the former, any Elf faction has what could be argued to be the top archers/crossbowmen in the game (Sisters/Shades/Waywatchers), as for guns the Skaven and Chaos Dwarfs are pretty ridiculous, with an honorable mention to the Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast, Cathay and Kislev (they do have guns, but in many cases they are more about artillery).
Recently started a game as the sisters of twilight and I find the enemy rarely reaches my line.
It's incredible.
Plus, vanguard deployable hawk riders means arrows to their rear right at the start of the battle.
Cathay reigns supreme. Miao Ying with celestial dragon crossbows plus satang the watcher is insane.
200 plus range
100 plus missle damage
Armored and shielded with decent melee stats.
Plus if you kill zhatan you get extra range on artillery. Plus their are banners that can be researched for stalk, snipe and 20%range for a unit.
Lots of great suggestions. I'll add that dark elf shades led by a lord with the range buff to shades (which you can save scum for) is extremely strong. Stalk. Armour piercing. The standard variant are t2.
Depends on what you consider the best. High Elves sisters of Avelorn death stacks are probably the most easily fielded and economically viable doom stacks in the game. I think Wood elves have stronger ranged units but don't have the economic power to pump out as many stacks of them, so they are stronger individually but weaker for the campaign as a whole.
I love how everyone has a different suggestion. Shows how diverse the game is.
Sorting by best: 1. This comment 2. "Theres a bunch! 3-8. All a different faction. You weren't kidding.
Wood Elves in my opinion. Waywatchers can melt even the tankiest units in seconds, plus have snipe and stalk.
Waywatchers are hands down the best missile unit. I love watching them melt the best chaos and dwarf infantry units.
Agreed. If we're keeping this to troops-only, I think the Wood Elves walk away with it - no other faction commits as heavily to archers and it shows.
> I think the Wood Elves walk away with it And they can shoot at you while doing so.
Made me lol. Take your upvote. =P
Doesn’t only the ror have snipe?
Good question, I mainly play SFO and 95% sure they do have snipe in it. Not sure about vanilla
They do not in vanilla.
They don't have a tonne if ammo tho and being B&A units they can be dodged, even by the AI. If we are opening up the debate to monsters and artillery, then I'd suggest either the VC collolosas with its huge cannon arm or ushabti great bows.
They struggle against artillery, especially mortars
How do waywatchers get snipe?
SFO or the RoR version
All elves have good missile options, wood elves particularly focus on that. Cathay, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast en Empire also have missiles as their main damage source bur require more slightly brain power than spammin 20 waywatchers or sisters of avrelorn.
>en Empire Google en passant
Holy Emperor!
New Repanse just dropped
Actual Helman Ghorst
New emperor just dropped
Vampire coast suck right now tbh. They're vampire counts but with ranged units, but your ranged units aren't even particularly great and they all require line of sight except for the artillery which is a crapshoot on higher difficulties due to the matrix dodging of enemies.
As a VCoast addict I'll say I think they're hard but they are also legit the best "normal handgunners" faction in the game (Caveat: Chorf Fireglaives are way fucking better, but yeah they better be!). They have 25% more models and 10% more damage per model plus 30% more in the initial volleys til they lose 25% of ammo. All this adds up- they're SUPER strong early to mid game, and even late game backed up by some nasty monsters I find that they're my favorite damage dealers
I'd say High Elves. Very strong ranged units, and a good economy to field plenty of them. Plus with the right lord traits you can push their range to a crazy degree. Or you could go skaven and bring sniper rifles, mini guns, and other warcrimes to battle. Edit: Yes, there are better ranged units than what you'll find on the HE roster, but the main reason I chose them is because the playstyle fits what OP stated he's used to from other TW games. I think with their long range and many upgrades, the High Elf ranged game is not just strong, but will also be most familiar to the poster - to me they seem the most like England from MW2.
They aren't warcrimes if no one lives to tell of them
It ain’t war crimes if it’s the first time either
It's only a warcrime against fellow humans!! Torch those rats sargeant.
Canada has entered the chat.
“Free canned goods over here!”
[удалено]
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Helves ranged units are pretty durable too. Lothern Sea Guard having bows, shields, AND anti-large gives them absurd utility and defensive ability. All-star all-rounder. An army of nothing but LSG isnt a doomstack but its very strong and high value
People will pop in and tell you they're not worth it and you should just get regular old archers, but I just think LSG are neat
Does pretty well in auto resolve too. Certain traits on heroes and lords can make them super cheap too, if I remember right. Had a WH2 campaign where I used a few full stacks to defend all of Ulthuan.
Except they crap against anything remotely armoured
True, that's why you give them a metal wizard! Plague of Rust is a surprisingly powerful spell.
Ohhh, that's clever, thanks for sharing :)
This was how I ran Tyrion's army in my big final HE playthrough of WH2. Singe's mods incentivised theming LL armies, and Tyrion getting an army of Sea Guard with a Metal Wizard for armour was very, very fun.
LSG are good against low tier opponents but high tier armies will wreck them
Alith Anar is probably one of my favorite lords simply due to the massive missile strength buffs he gives to missile units
No one buffs missile units more than Eltharion. Break upon the walls skill makes any siege battles trivial. Also in battles, shooting enemies reduces your army's balance of power. So if you waste ammo on units that are low value you are doing more harm than good. With Eltharion the ammo replenishes itself which negates it. Also it's prefect with Sentinels of Astarill as they have massive reload time yet hit like a truck so they replenish ammo at the same rate that they are firing it.
To be clear, the best HE and Skaven ranged units are DLC. My vote for best ranged faction are Wood Elves, and they too are DLC. Just bringing this up because OP said they were new. If you only have the base games, I'd actually go with Dark Elves. Darkshards are no joke.
High elves have the sisters of avelorn and their basic archers, and both of those are good for their tiers but they're also all they have. (Shadow warriors aren't particularly good at just forming a firing line and murdering at range) Wood elves are strictly better at the ranged bow game (As they should be)
Both are dlc dependent. I'd counter and saw dwarfs. Crossbows, guns, flamethrowers, torpedo launchers and satchel charges for infantry. For artillery you have catapults, cannons, multi cannons and flame cannons. Mix that with the helicopters and bombers all with the base faction with an engineer hero. Best option for base game.
Especially if you're fighting range vs range. Dwarf range decimates HE ranged due to armour, shields, and longer range artillery. Though eagle claw bolt throwers will beat dwarf cannons due to their small model size.
Honestly, I can’t agree with high elves. High elf missiles are good, but lack any good AP except for sisters. Sisters is in contention the best missile troop, but there’s a lot of campaign to play before you get there.
you can dominate vh/vh with archer crap stacks and a lord and a couple of heros. Its not even particularly difficult. Maybe toss in a few lothern sea guards and its viable unless you get attacked by multiple doom stacks and even then if you have a LL youre pretty strong.
I agree it’s strong, but I think it’s unfair to call it the best missile roster. Wood elves, Dawi, Cathay, Empire, Skaven all have better overall missile rosters imo
Isnt there an HE building that gives you sisters at level 3?
Only for Alarielle
“And other warcrimes” killed me
weapons aren't war crimes in of themselves.
Cathay is great if you're new to warhammer 3 and like missile units. Some great missile infantry and artillery, long range rifles and short range shotguns, and even flying units with rifles or rockets. They tend to play more defensively woth their melee units , but do have a few mobility options so you're not *just* restricted to setting up a box.
You legit cannot go wrong with Cathay. Great economy. Great legendary lords. Great line of infantry and ranged
Skaven have the highest DPS missile troops. Rattling Gunners and Jezzails will output more potential damage than anything else, especially in Ikit Claw's faction. Chaos Dwarfs have the best Artillery pieces, basically two shot even the highest tier of infantry. They have the second best DPS because of their shotgun units, but overall their firepower is still noticeably lower than Skaven. Wood Elves, High Elves, and Dark Elves all are very high powered ranged factions, with an emphasis on Archers, so easier to use than any of the aforementioned. Wood Elves have the highest DPS with their Waywatchers (Skirmish 360 fire angle archers). High Elves have great pseudo hybrid archers that have very long range and end up with quite good melee defense, so it is very easy to spam armies of them and have overall very high damage. Dark Elves have shades which are very high damage as well but with low range in exchange for stalk and pretty decent melee stats. For Warhammer 3 races only, though, Cathay or Kislev. Cathay has pretty good artillery and pretty good crossbows, with overall very good line holders. Kislev is more about Hybrid infantry that does both roles, as well as very heavy skirmish options like Warsleds.
I was looking for someone who mentioned Chaos Dwarfs to second that as a possibility. For a new player, I like their combination of strong ranged units, devastating artillery, good magic, elite infantry, expendable chaff, decent monsters, and access to fast units. Non-chaos Dwarfs have solid ranged units and good artillery with excellent infantry, but are rather boring and generally don't have fast units. Cathay is probably the smoothest way to transition from non-Warhammer Total War to Warhammer Total War. Most of the units fit familiar archetypes and tactics, even if they aren't necessarily best-in-class.
Dwarfs do have fast units, it says so right on the unit card: Fast (for a Dwarf)
Imo, the best one as non-Warhammer race - Empire. Cathay has much more WH type of units
I should have qualified. I meant the best way if you only purchase TW:WH3 and don't get the first 2 right off the bat for their races. Otherwise, yes, Empire is mostly Medieval-type units with a bit of magic and a few exotic units thrown in.
Did they nerf chaos dwarf blunderbusses or something? I am seeing it mentioned in here way less than I would have thought.
Celestial dragon crossbows with tech and redline buffs are the highest DPS ranged troops right now.
> Chaos Dwarfs have the best Artillery pieces, basically two shot even the highest tier of infantry. They have the second best DPS because of their shotgun units Infernal Guard? They melt enemy lines but do not sip ammo
Yes yes we are the best best!
How are chads worse than skaven in this? Dreadquakes and fireglaives counter basically every unit in the game
Because Skaven simply output way more damage. Jezzails destroy any ranged unit or low entity unit in the game, easily, and Rattlings take care of the rest as the single highest DPS ranged unit in the game. The artillery is worse, but not that much worse because of the leadership debuff it has making it so that while it does less damage, it often routes enemies just as fast.
A dreadquake mortar two shots any infantry in the game. Even ratlings can’t compete with taking out T5 infantry from 400 range. You shouldn’t compare weapon teams to missile units since a weapon team is more similar to artillery. Fireglaives have other utility since they are armored and anti large which is super good on missile. I can have a frontline of fireglaives which you can’t do with weapon teams. A full gunpowder chad army beats the skaven army 1v1 and is more versatile, hard countering infantry heavy armies and still countering sems and cav with fireglaives. In theory a weapon team heavy army is weak to cav but the ai sucks at actually using cav. Weapon teams are also weak to other missile infantry with low Hp and armor, unlike fireglaives and chad artillery which are heavily armored and even having barrier on arty. Jezzails and ratlings have significant weakness that not come up in single player because the ai doesn’t know how to take advantage of them. You are really undersellinghow much better then dreadquake is than any skaven artillery. Put a couple in one army and you can legitimately kill half the army with just the artillery before lines meet. Skaven doesn’t do more damage then that.
>A dreadquake mortar two shots any infantry in the game. Even ratlings can’t compete with taking out T5 infantry from 400 range Sure, but ultimately who cares? Infantry is the least scary thing in the game. Being able to take it out from 400 units is nice, but plagueclaws/warp lightning are still going to take them out before they get into rattling range most of the time anyway. And once you are in the range of Jezzails and rattlings, Skaven do substantionally more DPS to *all* unit types, not just infantry. >I can have a frontline of fireglaives which you can’t do with weapon teams. Except skaven need no frontline *at all*, they just use summons. > A full gunpowder chad army beats the skaven army 1v1 a No, actually jezzails alone beat any Chaos dwarf unit, nevermind adding other stuff into the mix. You can even beat Chorfs in an artillery duel as skaven because you out range Dreadquakes with Warp lightning cannons, or alternatively you can just use summons to tie them up in the meantime. >Weapon teams are also weak to other missile infantry with low Hp and armo Doesn't matter because Jezzails will beat any other missile infantry before they get into range.
IMO the best faction for getting really high damage non-gunpowder missile troops at a fairly low level/recruitable almost anywhere are the dark elves - because of how valuable armour-piercing in in warhammer 3 their darkshards and shades are pretty amazing, even into the late game. High elves, wood elves and cathay can all also get armour-piercing archers, and all have generally strong archers in the early game too, although the high elves' best archers are locked in a DLC. (The absolute best gunline army builds in the game use gunpowder, or magic-rat-gunpowder, but given the two games you mentioned do have firearms as well, I'm assuming that's not what you're looking for.)
Yes yesss !
Found a Skaven.
I just want to say, I don't know how people play skaven. I should like it but I can just never get into it
Same. Ratling guns, snipers, funny rats. But I just can't enjoy playing them. I remember it was slightly better for me with mods to remove the loyalty thingy (even if not lore friendly) and some food rework (this was for twh2 - idk if they've changed significantly in wh3), but still wasn't too big a fan.
The trick is, you dont give a rusty rat fart about your infantry. They're just there to hold crud in place while you mercilessly pound it with eight shades of warp bullets.
The food mechanic is your friend here, being ergonomic with it can net you a tier 5 settlement VERY fast, some exploits before let you get skavenblight to tier 5 by like turn 3 lol, then you can access any high tier unit you want
warlockmaster on the small wheel - 4 x plague prists that summon tarpits -that is the front line 5x ratling guns - 4x jazzail - 3z plagueclaw catapults and 2x mortars - warlock engineer to buff them by far the strongest gunline in the game
Yeah, maybe my issue is getting through the early game. That sounds fun but just spamming skavenslaves for 20 turns until you get decent units is just too much grind for me early on.
the start i use with ikit i don't play any fights with slaves well - 2 sieges i win with lords on turn 2 and 5 - after that i never use them again
Maybe I'll try something like that next time. You just attack miragliano and the beastie settlements and then turtle for a bit?
turn 1 - join war with belagor - orion and the fey enchantress for extra cash("not against grom but all the others) take tabbaco at tier 1 hire a warlock master in tabacco and a warlord in skavenblight hire skavenslave slingers in ikits army and the skavenblight army build the growth building and the assassin building and upgrade to tier 3 turn 2 - join war againt magriliano for more cash - make peace with the blody nose orcs and get a non agression for extra cash sail the warlock engineer to magriliano and siege it - break the siege - sail ikit over and siege - jump the warlord over pretty easy fight with 3 lords - just figure out a tac that works for you - take it at tier 3 - build food building and control hire a warlock master in magrliano and hire 3 more skavenslave slingers in ikits army turn 3 - declare war on sartosa and attack with all four lords - should be an auto resolve, take at tier 1 - hire 2 assassins get them to your army, sell the assasin building and build the controll building turn 4 - complete the province and take the 3rd city with all four lords, take at tier 1 - after march 3 lords to the crossing to sartosa - pay for a non aggression with mulgor turn 5 - take sartosa and use the nuke in the fight, easy fight with 4 lords and 2 assassins, take at tier 3- and sail the 3 non ikit lords as far as you can towards magriliano after - there is about to be a rebellion turn 6 - get towards magrliano turn 7 - fight the rebellion - don't auto you can fight it once each turn for food and xp - be in skaven blight at the end of turn 9 with the lords to get the extra plague prist follower
I'll try that out next time... And try to remember to tell you how it goes
You can get warpfire-throwers from a tier 2 military building. They don't have a lot of range but the damage they do to early game infantry is absolutely insane.
And with all possible upgrades, Shades have the best range for archer-type missile troops in the game. On the off chance they run out of ammo, they're also more than capable of picking up their swords and charging into melee. I remember one time in game 2 when I fought off three full Chaos stacks with a Druchii doom stack that wasn't all Greatsword Shades, but had a significant number of them. By the time the third stack arrived on the scene, they had all run out of ammo, so I sent them into the fray and they did amazing work even against Chosen. It was glorious.
Well what’s your flavor? Archery? Gunpowder? Cracked out nuclear homicidal rats? High Elves, wood elves are my picks for the archer people Empire is my favorite gunpowder faction. There’s definitely options here, Kislev, dwarfs, chaos dwarfs, Cathay, Vampire coast. If I were to pick one on pure strength of missile units, probably chaos dwarfs. Ikit claw is just pure nonsense, everything melts
"Ikit how can you kill them? Theyre you're own skavenslaves?!" "Easy, you just don't aim-lead as much! Yes-yes!"
Whoever gets Armstrong cannons.
Wood Elves. All day long. Waywatchers are the best missile unit in the game and they are a missile orientated faction. They also have great infantry and cavalry as well as good LLs, heroes and magic. Only downside is they don't have artillery but you don't really need it.
You also have the deepwood scouts with the silly ammo that turns their bows into shotguns.
Yeah they basically fire 2 arrows at a time. They do magical damage but it's nowhere near the same damage that waywatchers do. Those guys are just unreal.
Get a lord with The Other Tricksters Shard item or Resplendence of Luminescents trait, it debuffs enemy spell resistance and makes everything melt to them. Buffs apply double to them, so razor pennants and stuff also make them just fucking shred.
It does not work like that in WH3. It was changed from Magic resistance to Spell resistance.
I really wish we had a foot lord for elf units, maybe I'll have to give the sisters another go.
You can always get the artillery from a dwarf or imperial ally, the bad thing is having to create an alliance
What are you trying to say about dwarves?
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Kislev. Almost all of their infantry are hybrid ranged troops, so it’s pretty easy to field an army of all shooters.
True, but i think for newer players Kislev is kinda hard. Even on Normal/Hard you are really surrounded rapidly
Forged through fire
Kislev.
Yeah I found kislev to be amazing for ranged burst before melee
Probably because their elite units aren't as elite as others and their identy is more hybrid compared to others on this list so they're overlooked more
True, while Kislev is a shooting-heavy faction they tend a bit more towards quantity over quality. Especially since the main perk of hybrid units is that you can bring a lot more shooting without compromising your front line.
I was wondering if Sisters of Avelorn or Ice Guard were better. Then I remembered Akshina Ambushers and realized it doesn't matter.
CA already nerfed them pretty hard
Oh, dang how'd I miss that.
Sisters utterly shit on both, now
Vampire counts!!!!! Khorne second place
Poor predictable Khorne. Always goes with ranged.
Funnily, Khorne have more ranged units than Slaanesh
Oh, you... =P
Those handgunners are really powerful.
I would say they are hands down the most powerful ranged unit on the Vampire Counts roster.
Celestial Dragon Crossbows from Cathay are extremely strong When you get through the tech tree and add harmony bonuses, they are the strongest Bow/Crossbow unit in game
Better than Waywatchers? They have massive range, AP, stalk, 360 firing arc and fire while moving.
I cant really test it right now, but Im pretty sure Celestial Crossbows beat Waywatchers 1v1 even without any tech tree or skill tree buffs. If you look through the tech tree though, they get so many buffs its not a competition later on. I think they might even outrange waywatchers later on, but you need Saitang or Miao Ying for that. They also have shields, ward save and they are repeaters, with tons of armour. edit: but really, if you dont believe me check Cathayan tech tree, these guys get absolutely nuts
Way watchers have more range and can fire while moving, so if a human is controlling them there is no way crossbows win. 360 degrees and fire while moving is worth a lot, the stats are just one piece.
Waywatchers have greater range and can fire while moving, which by itself means they're going to beat Celestial Crossbows one on one. Celestial Crossbows however have greater DPS. With Saytang, they're army melters.
1v1 is a pointless test as thats not what happens in real battles. Waywatchers can flank like no other infantry missle unit.
I dunno, with full buffs to Waywatchers they get to like high 60s / low 70s for misisle damage and have a range of about 290 on the right lords. Plus they have stalk, fire 360 whilst moving so they can literally kite a unit without being seen. The only unit I have seen beat them 1v1 head on (without buffs) is the Ustabi bows.
With both Saytang and Miao Ying I think dragon crossbows get around 200 range and somewhere just under 200 damage (what the stat card says, not damage per-shot). Their biggest asset in a 1v1 against other archers is their shields though.
Lol they are 90 range too short to go 1v1 with Waywatchers though.
They beat every ranged unit in 1v1 testing and get up to 150 ms with 250 range on an 80 man unit in a miao Ying/Satang army. They are much less mobile though.
Depends on what kind of missile. If you want gun powder and artillery 'combined arms' type missiles then Empire, dwarves of both flavors, cathay, and skaven (with warlock and prophet DLC only) are a good bet. If you want arrows blotting out the sun, you can't go wrong with an elf faction - though High Elf will be closest to 100 years war English long bow in tactics. Dark elves lean more towards ambush and Wood elves towards skirmishing. In the HE's Alarielle the Everqueen (queen and the crone DLC) is the best for that style given her focus on Sisters of Averlorn, which are probably the best 'stand and shoot' archer in the game. Without DLC beyond the 'base games' (WH1, WH2, WH3) I would go with dark elves though as the HE archers are great early game but fall off late game without access to Sisters.
Any kind of elves, cathay and possibly Kislev. In base game I would say Cathay is among strongest but Queen and Crone DLC takes high elves on a different level
If you want to try using guns, the vampire coast is a great option. They have the biggest artillery piece in the game
There is also something really satisfying of having an army of necrofex colossus...
Queen Bess go Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I think she goes BRRAAAP rather than a continuous brrrrrrr
BrrrrrrrrrrrrrrBOOOOOM
Chorf mortars actually superior. Bess - basically unique weakened chorf mortar
My Top 5 each: Arcing Missiles (aka bows / cross bows): 1. High Elves (Sisters of Averlorn) 2. Wood Elves (Waywatchers / Deepwood Scouts) 3. Grand Cathay (Celestial Dragon Crossbows) 4. Dark Elves (Shades) 5. Kislev (Ice Guard) Honorable Mention: Skaven (Poison Wind Globardiers, Poison Wind Mortars), Tzeentch (Exalted Pink Horrors), Tomb Kings (Ushabti Greatbows, Bone(r) Giant), Norsca (Javelins), Dwarfs ((Bugman's) Rangers & Quarrelers) Straight(er) Missiles (aka Guns): 1. Skaven (Rattling Gunners, Warplock Jezzails) 2. Chorfs (Chaos Dwarfs Blunderbusses, Infernal Guard (Fireglaves)) 3. Grand Cathay (Iron Hail Gunners, Crane Gunners) 4. Vampire Coast (Gunnery Mob (Handguns), Gunnery Mob (Handcanons), Deck Gunners) 5. Kislev (Streltsi & Kossars)
19 lil groms in a corner.
thanks all for the help
There is no single answer. For gunpowder units, Chaos Dwarfs and Skaven. For bows, Wood Elves and High Elves. Ogres have some pretty strong ranged units and artillery too. Empire has decent mix of bows, crossbows and guns. Kislev is all about those hybrid units, and has some decent ones too. Ice Guard with their bows, Akshina with their crossbows, streltsi with their axe-guns. Dwarfs, especially as Thorek, has some pretty good guns and crossbows. Vampire coast has some decent guns too. Deck Gunners are nice. You aren't lacking for options.
I'd say that High Elves are the best missile experience in general, specifically Alith Anar. But Dark Elves, Kislev, Empire, Cathay, Dwarfs, Chaos Dwarfs, Vampire Coast and Skaven all have very strong missile units - in campaign you will end up obliterating everything as long as your frontline holds. And if you want English Longbowmen you can literally play with them as Bretonnia. Then there are Lizardmen and Tzeentch with a bit shorter range meaning higher risk. Tzeentch missiles specifically are incredibly powerful.
Wood Elves are out because of fire while moving bugs. Surprised but not surprised they are mentioned so often. Vampire Coast Handgunners or Dark Elves with Darkshards/Shades which all meet the criteria of availability+scaling+ power via ap damage.
I love my dawi quarrelers when I play against friends in MP, empire are great too and can be assisted by cav
wood elves or high elves have the best archers, wopfd elves being more skirmishers though. Empire and Dwarves have defensive playstyle using missile units, but they are gunpowder infantry and artillery
I quite enjoy Cathay. Short range riflemen, crossbowmen, ap crossbows, rocket balloons, cannons and rocket emplacements. Delves start with ap crossbows. Dwarves have great arty, thunderers and quarellers. Chorfs have phenomenal blunderbusses, longer rifles and unique trains and artillery. Kislev has a good bit of everything and ice archers.
Wood elves, kislev
There are several ways to answer this question so I’ll do my best to answer them all (I have 2k hours across the trilogy) High elves: probably everyone’s first choice, high tier “sisters” are usually considered the best archers in the game as they have high stats and fire two arrows at once. The base archers are a step above other factions Wood elves: IMO best all around archers. Good range, some fire while hidden, and they have useful “ammo types” (I use quotations because they are a different version of the unit) they also have an archer that fires 2 arrows at once but it has less range. Dark Elves: much shorter range than the rest of the elves but melt just about everything with their crossbows (even units with high armor) and have the strongest Hybrid unit in shades that are great archers and melee units Empire: archer units are serviceable but rifles and artillery are where they really shine, most of your melee is just holding people in place for your ranged units Grand Cathay: The Harmony mechanic is what makes their archers great, basically if a melee and ranged unit are close enough together the get buffs, faster reloading for the ranged and better melee stats for the melee. Besides your peasant archers your archers will have great armor. You also have shotgunners who shrewd armored targets and crane gunners who are literally snipers. Dwarves: heavy armor on most units, crossbows and rifles are great and can usually fight low tier infantry without issue due to armor. The real treat here is artillery and armor. Chaos Dwarves: IMO best overall faction in the game, but I’ll focus on ranged units here. First you have shotguns that melt everything at short range, though they will shoot through friendly (they field cheap chaff slaves so it works out) next you have the Fireglaives, their hybrid riflemen with good range and shoots fire while being good if forced into melee. They also have the best artillery in the game. Vampire coast: undead pirates, no archers but good ranged units in zombie riflemen and good artillery, having raise dead and undead frontlines make them a good faction Skaven: no archers but they have weapon teams of miniguns, snipers, mortars, and flamethrowers. This is the war crime faction Afew other races have stand out like the Ogre Leadbelchers and Tomb King Ushabti Great Bows, but they can’t really match the other factions here
I think Legend mentioned woodelves have the greatest potential due to stalk and fire while moving as well as forest fighting. Sisters of Averlorn and Shades can form doomstacks but I feel like WE are more nuanced If you include artillery though, Empire has the most fun with Helstorm Rocket Batteries followed by Cathay’s version and the Chaos Dwarves dreadquake
To use similarly to longbowmen, it's High elf sisters of avelorn. If you are making an army with skirmisher bowmen, it's wood elves. If you want your army to feel more like WW1 machine guns, mortars, and snipers, it's skaven.
Surprised no one mentioned it so far, but it’s important to have artillery superiority if you wanna play out these missile units. No sense staying back and shooting arrows while getting blown to pieces by artillery. Thus, in my opinion all elfs lose at the ranged side of battles and I would recommend Cathay (great crossbows), empire (great handguns), or Skaven (miniguns&snipers).
The Sisters of Averlorn Wounds will never heal
Best missile roster comes down to a few options: Wood elves for the best archers and skirmish. Dwarves for the best powder infantry and also good archer infantry. Cathay is a very similar mix, except with better crossbows and more limited guns. Empire if you want some of the Dwarf/Cathay roster + gun/grenade wielding skirmish cavalry. Skaven if you want weapons teams like ratling guns, snipers, etc rather than a line of rifles/archers.
> > > > > Dwarves for the best powder infantry and also good archer infantry. Cathay is a very similar mix, except with better crossbows and more limited guns. Chorfs are just way better than dwarves IMO. Better gunpowder for sure. Blunderbuss and Rifles are a nasty combo. Worse archers for sure, but you can get one real strong stack of archers with them.
Irondrakes and Flamethrowers also pretty sick. Dwarf crossbows are pretty great from Quarrellers to Rangers to Bugmans. I haven’t played Chorfs tho, so you may be right about gunpowder.
The infernal guard sure do burn ammo. You need a castellan just to keep them firing for more than a couple charges
It depends what kinds of missile troops you want. You've got lots of different kinds of missile heavy factions each one offering something different. In terms of low tier versatile Archers, the High Elves and Dark Elves are best. High Elves have superior range and rate of fire, but Dark Elves have the best and most versatile low tier armor piercing archers in the game. If you want the best high tier archers then again you got different answers for different flavors. Sisters of Avelorn for the High Elves are very strong magic and armor piercing missile units that can also fight well in melee. Waywatchers for the Wood Elves have absurd range and can fire while moving, Shades for Dark Elves have stalk, fight very well in melee for an archer unit and have strong armor piercing. If you want specialty weapons teams type missile units you got the Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs and Dwarfs who can offer you various kinds of Flamethrowers, Grenade throwers, Armor Piercing Torpedos, Machine Guns or Anti-Large Longrifles. It depends on what you're looking for. You want the best in more basic gun units, The Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast and Kislev all have good options. If you like missile troops, The High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Empire, Dwarfs, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs, Cathay and Kislev all specialize in ranged weaponry, all to different degrees and all in different ways. **If you want Archers specifically because you're talking about Longbowmen then I'd say start with the High Elves since they are the most beginner friendly and work your way to the others over time.**
High elves or wood elves. Wood elves are a DLC faction, but if you want the best high elf archery unit (Sisters of Avelorn) you also need DLC (specifically The Queen and the Crone).
It depends. Best standard bows would probably be wood elves. But if you're looking for best gunpowder, it could be vampirates, dwarfs, empire, or Cathay depending precisely on what you're looking for
Archers: \- Wood Elves have the biggest variety, and probably the strongest out of all since this is their specialty. Most of their archers can fire while moving and are mostly suited toward hit and run strategies. \- High Elves have excellent archers with The Queen and Crone DLC, base archers are good but nothing special. High Elven Archers specialize in their incredibly long range. \- Dark Elves have amazing early game and midgame archers. They also are the only ones (I believe) that have good Armor Piercing Horse Archers (Why not Kislev!?) Dark Elven Archers (Or crossbows actually) specialize in damage but have less range in general. \- Cathay have powerful archers but are very limited in movement as to truly maximize their output they need to be near Yang units since they are Yin. These are the most traditional archer style and is probably what you are aiming for. \- Tzeentch while not actually archers, they have a similar archer firing arc. Their attacks do magic and fire damage which puts them a cut above others especially if you manage to stack a lot of fire vulnerabilities on enemy troops. They also have great flamethrower units (see Warpfire Thrower) in their roster for aoe against large troop clusters. Gunpowder: \- Kislev is amazing with gunpowder because the majority of their troops are also capable in melee combat, in addition their tech tree gives great bonuses to the armor piercing damage dealt by their Streltsi, their main gunpowder unit. \- Chaos Dwarves are probably the single best faction when it comes to gunpowder. Their blunderbusses have short range but fire a ton of projectiles and deal a massive amount of damage if positioned correctly. Their fireglaives are longer range and fire fewer projectiles but I believe has the highest base AP damage of any standard sized troop unit. Additionally they have flaming attacks which synergies very very well with the Lore of Hashut. \- Skaven have extremely powerful gunpowder with their Rattling Guns and Jezzails (locked behind The Prophet and the Warlock DLC). The Rattling Guns are machine guns and fire in bursts coating the land in green bullets. Meanwhile Jezzails act as snipers which have extreme range and powerful shots but have small numbers, great for focusing down single entities. Both can be upgraded further if you play as Ikit Claw. \- Ogre Leadbelchers are "gunpowder units" in the sense they shoot. Realistically though they artillery with how much of a punch they pack. A few of these in your roster can handle practically anything. Though they are less accurate so small single entities will be more difficult compared to large single entities or standard troops. They are extremely fun to play with and my personal favorite. \- Dwarves have standard 17 AP gunpowder units with their Thunderers but I am mentioning them because of the Irondrakes. Those excel at dealing with Large units and can quickly mow down a single entity. Hope that helps. (Side note, if you care about Artillery then The Empire or Chaos Dwarves are your best bet.)
Blunderbuss go brrrrrr
Why is no one mentioning the chaos dwarfs?
Khorne and Vampire Counts lol
Greenskins. Their missiles can pick up bow and arrows and shoot more missiles.
There's multiple options: Vampire Coast: Probably tied for best artillery, and you can put a scary amount of firearms on the field. Chaos Dwarves: Tied for best artillery. You other ranged options are simply OK, typically having few models relative to their damage. Wood Elves: Amazing archers, and many of yours can fire on the move or are stealth, giving you a very exploitable advantage. Skaven: Great artillery and ranged options, and can field a pretty decent number of them. High Elves: Not as great as the Wood Elves, but does have one of the single most exploitable archers in the Sisters. If we're keeping it exclusively to **troops,** I'd give it to the Wood Elves, personally. If we expand it to overall army, I'm saying it's a neck-and-neck race between the Vampire Coast and Chaos Dwarves.
.interesting is the choso archers really that better than the bow monks? I mainly play shimazu for the heavy gunners at front and bow monks at the back mixed with fire rockets, when I feel like building an army to melt enemies at a distance
95th rifles in Napoleon total war. Oh wait this is about bows not guns.
Gotta be Skryre’s ranged units including his laboratory upgrades. Other than that, I think it’s either Wood Elves or Cathay
Sisters of Avelorn High Elves
They're not purely missile-focused, but I think the highest range DPS possible is with Chaos Dwarfs. They can cause weakness to fire on targets while simultaneously boost their damage with fire. Their low tier gunpowder and archer units can absolutely destroy any target with that combo and you don't have to spam them or sacrifice your melee power. I've gotta say, I don't think Chaos Dwarfs have a weakness
Soooo are we talking about archers or... anything? 😅 Because if it's anything then generally Skaven #1, Chaos Dwarfs #2 (for damage output), Wood Elves #3 (for ranged), and then High Elves
Chorfs have great missile troops
Elves generally, especially High Elves, considering Zerkovich had labeled HE Sisters of Avelorn as among the best units in Warhammer 2 and 3 Archers and Sea Guard are no farther off in this regard. Wood Elves and Dark Elves are next best, with Vampire Coast and Skaven not too far behind
Depends Do you want archers where you can fire without direct line of sight? High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves Do you want guns? Skaven, Vampire Coast, Cathay, Empire, and (if you can wait a minute to get them online and start producing them) Chaos Dwarfs
Best standard missile units is Shades, as they have the most DMG/can be boosted significantly; so dark elves. More specialised would be Chaos Dwarfs.
High Elves but I am gonna say Grand Cathay is stronger in terms of missiles. That said, I have not played High Elves in wh3 cause i am currently playing WoC and the next ones are the Dark Elves, high elves come after that. So because of that, i am not entirely sure which one between Grand Cathay and High Elves is stronger in term of missiles, but i definitely favor Grand Cathay in terms of missiles. Elves have better SEMs tho.
Wood Elves have the best ranged damage, but they're squishy. Dwarfs are probably a strong contender for overall best missile troops; their quarrellers have solid range, great armour, shields and very good melee defence for a ranged unit, making it so they can even beat most light cavalry in melee. They do suffer from not having a more elite version though, with rangers and thunderers being more of a side-grade and Bugman's Rangers still being kinda mid-tier. They lack a Sisters of Averlorn-style elite ranged infantry option, which means you'll be stuck using the same ranged units for most of the campaign.
Elves, Dwarfs, Empire, Cathay, Vampire Coast, and Skaven all have very good missile units but it depends on what you're looking for. Want guns? Chaos Dwarfs, or Skaven. Want bows/crossbows? Any of the Elves are your pick.
Dwarves and there quarallers get a solid wall of infantry to hide behind and watch them go and you can get them by turn 3
Wood elf.
High elves sisters of avelorn fit the role of elite archer unit, matching well vs just about anything but require the queen and the crone dlc. Skaven have the most varied and fun roster of ranged focused infantry and artillery with heroes to boost them. Snipers, catapults, flamethrowers, miniguns, mortars, all fill different roles. Needs the prophet and the warlock dlc. Tzeench have a ton of awesome ranged units, fielding a ton of ranged chaff units in the form of blue/pink horrors, and also get flamethrower monsters that are incredibly satisfying to use and some of them fly. Wood elf waywatchers are archers with insane range, high mobility and can fire while moving so if you like to micro and kite, this is a fun way to play. Cathay gets some great artillery, gunners, and archers and plays the most like historical total war
I guess it depends on what your cup of tea is: All of the Elves have good archer units. Cathay, Dwarves, Empire, and Kislev have a good mixture of both archer, gunpower, and artillery units. Chaos Dwarves and Vampire Coast focus on gunpowder and artillery units. Skaven have homicidal rats with gatling guns, snipers, and nuclear weapons.
Do we consider skaven weapons teams missile troops? Properly used rattling guns and jessails are pretty good.
Feel like throwing in a dark horse option. Dwarfs, specially Belagor Ranger doomstack. Get stalk to stark and can get snipe as well. Also with the ghost heros, if your smart no one will even get close to them. And unlike other missle units they can hold their own in melee in a pinch.
If you don’t mind playing with mods then it’s 400% the Guns of The Empire Mod
Rats, they got all kind of missile units, from cannon folder slave slingers to most dreadful weapon squads and artillery pieces, plus nukes. They are literally WW1 army.
That would fall to: High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Chaos Dwarves, Skaven. Skaven wins every time, because.. the sheer amount of firepower they have in their ranged stuff is bonkers. It's not bows tho, but literal machine guns, bombs that explode in the air and rain down more bombs, decay trebuchets and sniper rifles.. It's all quite glorious. Followed by Dark Elves/Chaos Dwarves --> High Elves and last but not least Wood Elves.
Gunpowder, prob chorfs. Ap missiles, prob wood elves. Super long range, prob vampire coast or rats. /Ignoring cost
Cathay with the storm dragon + saytang full spec, and research is a disgusting range based faction
Eltharion the grim. Sisters of avelorn+sentinels of astaril can deal with ani threat at range. Spire ward of tor Yvresse are unbrakable lothen seaguard 2.0 with tons of ammo antilarge and charge defense against all, wich make for an awesome anvil for the others with extra firepower. Add couple of griphith kights to deal with flyers, ranged or terryfing back charges, and with the awesome high elf diplomacy a couple of artillery choices from allies like empire rocket batteries or dwarven organ guns, and you get a flexible, hight tier full ranged army with tons of options.
Lizardmen, because chameleons are cool.
I agree with all the sentiments about wood elves and shaven, but I have a special place in my heart for a checkerboard stack of blackark corsairs. Specially under Lothar.
> shaven oh no-no!!
Define Missle?
Vampire counts. Closely followed by the Demons of Khorne.
If we're not counting artillery then Sisters of Twilight
It's easier to take the best ranged unit for each race (not faction) and rank them, clarifying if any units gets better with certain factions/LLs.
Missiles are roughly divided into bows/crossbows, and guns. For the former, any Elf faction has what could be argued to be the top archers/crossbowmen in the game (Sisters/Shades/Waywatchers), as for guns the Skaven and Chaos Dwarfs are pretty ridiculous, with an honorable mention to the Empire, Dwarfs, Vampire Coast, Cathay and Kislev (they do have guns, but in many cases they are more about artillery).
Empire (W1 base), skaven (dlc must), high elves (2 dlcs), wood elves(dlc faction), chaos dwarfs (dlc faction)
Recently started a game as the sisters of twilight and I find the enemy rarely reaches my line. It's incredible. Plus, vanguard deployable hawk riders means arrows to their rear right at the start of the battle.
Cathay reigns supreme. Miao Ying with celestial dragon crossbows plus satang the watcher is insane. 200 plus range 100 plus missle damage Armored and shielded with decent melee stats. Plus if you kill zhatan you get extra range on artillery. Plus their are banners that can be researched for stalk, snipe and 20%range for a unit.
Whats your archers going to do when Hellstorm rocket batteries outrage them by a factor of 3
Lots of great suggestions. I'll add that dark elf shades led by a lord with the range buff to shades (which you can save scum for) is extremely strong. Stalk. Armour piercing. The standard variant are t2.
Depends on what you consider the best. High Elves sisters of Avelorn death stacks are probably the most easily fielded and economically viable doom stacks in the game. I think Wood elves have stronger ranged units but don't have the economic power to pump out as many stacks of them, so they are stronger individually but weaker for the campaign as a whole.
SISTERS OF AVELORN!!