Army Review: Goblin Town

 

Down, down, to goblin town

Goblin Town in the 2024 edition of MESBG

Previously, Goblin Town was often considered among the more competitive of army lists, and would be regularly seen on or near the top tables at MESBG events. However, with the arrival of the new edition of the game, Goblin Town have had a raft of changes which have massively altered how this army plays, and, many would say, how well it performs on the battlefield.

Indeed, as things currently stand (25-05-2025) the goblins have a 41% win rate on longshanks (games from events hosted on the site), and a 32% win rate on tabletop admiral (where anyone can submit results, including casual games). Within this their popularity has also taken a clear hit, with only approximately 1/5 the number of games played compared to the most popular armies on both sites.

So what has changed to make this list perform so drastically differently? Is it still fun in the new edition? How can we make best use of its new tools? In this post, with the aid of a large mug of tea, I'm going to review the changes to the army, think about what it does well now, and look at how to build some lists. Let's get to it!

 

Turns out the Goblin King is an environmentalist, who knew?

Major changes since last edition

• Points increases across the board.
• Change in role of the Scribe; he no-longer summons more goblins, but instead offers a board-wide heroic move.
• Heroes can now funnel might into the King via the Scribe.
  
• Loss of the Goblin Mercenaries from the list.
• Changes to the ring mean Gollum can no-longer combo with others to bring down big heroes.
• New army special rules offering strong buffs to goblins near the King.

Putting all of this together I feel like it might not be an overstatement to suggest that Goblin Town has undergone one of the largest changes to how they play across all the lists available in the new edition so far.

They still function as a horde army, undoubtedly, but the numbers of models on the board will never be anything like what they were previously, given the points increases and the change to the Scribe. They have also lost their pseudo-mobility to be anywhere on the board with the Scribe change and the loss of the ambushing mercenaries.

Instead, everything now appears to want to revolve around blobbing up near the King. The captains need to be near the Scribe to funnel might to the King, the Scribe wants to be near the King for the board-wide move, and everyone wants to be near the King for the buffs from the songs. It all feels a bit odd - it's a horde who all want to be in the same place, rather than spreading out and controlling the whole board? But maybe the key is to understand that change in style, and embrace it?

Army list review

Special Rules

I feel a song coming on. This is a really cool addition to the list. Every turn, the King can elect to sing a song which buffs goblins within 6". These effects are:

• Goblins treat the King as a banner.
• Goblins cause terror.
• Goblins ignore wounds on a 6+ save.
• Goblins can re-roll 1's to wound.

It comes with the caveat that you can't use the same effect two turns in a row, but altogether these are great. The banner is excellent when you don't have overwhelming numbers in the fights and need more dice to ensure you win them. The terror is fantastic when the lines are close and your opponent takes the priority - watch them fail some courage checks and let you decide the fights instead. Ignoring wounds on a 6 feels the most mediocre, but is an obvious choice when you're not close enough for combat and the opponent is going to shoot at you. Re-rolling 1's to wound is for when you already have the numbers in the fights, but need some help actually killing something. Overall this is a really fun and interesting rule addition to the list, which gives you something extra to think about each turn.

Strength in numbers. This is a bonus to courage tests for charging enemies with terror, while your army isn't broken. Certainly a useful effect given the rather pitiful courage of the basic goblins.

If they won't talk, we'll make them squawk! An interesting rule where The Goblin King or Grinnah can take enemy heroes prisoner if they kill them, thus gaining an extra VP should the prisoner-taker remain alive at the game end. At most, this will be a bonus 2 VPs, more likley it will be 1 bonus VP (as Grinnah isn't much of a hero-killer). Can maybe help to make up for the lack of banner VPs in some scenarios, but overall a bit underwhelming as a rule.

Down down down in Goblin-town. Same rule as last edition - goblin warband sizes are increased. Very useful and very necessary for some of the list building that we'll come to.

Profiles

The Goblin King

A strong opener here. The Goblin King is completely central to what this list does, and indeed he's now a requirement - you can't build a legal Goblin Town list without him leading it. Thankfully, he's really good - 3 attacks at fight 6, strength 5, burly, with a 2-handed weapon, and monster brutal power attacks makes him a real threat to enemy heroes. This is some much needed offensive power, as we'll see that he's basically the only offensive threat in the army!

Defensively he's also pretty beefy. Defense 5 is OK, but his blubbery mass special rule allows him to shrug off wounds on a 3+ (except against elven weapons), which really helps when he only has 1 fate point. Resistant to magic adds to this, making him harder for opponents to control with spells. 

He has a special rule where he can pick up a goblin and throw it for a strength 8 hit, which is always fun to try (if normally resulting only in a miss and a dead goblin). Even better though is his relentless advance special rule, allowing him to move through goblins and even finish a move on top of them. This allows for some fantastic shenanigans, particularly in allowing you to get the king into heroes that your opponent thought were safe and inaccessible.

The Goblin King is the linchpin of the list, and getting the most out of him helps to get the most out of the army as a whole.

 

Grinnah, Goblin Jailer

Grinnah is the same statline as a basic Goblin Captain, but for 10 points more you get Heroic Challenge instead of March (a side-grade, or even a down-grade), and his Swap with me special rule, which allows him to swap places with other goblin models at the start of the combat phase. This can allow for some fun escapes from combats he doesn't want to be in. There's also a suggestion of using the Challenge to draw opponent heroes away from where they want to be, and then on subsequent turns using Swap with me to avoid actually fighting the combat, though personally I've not tried this. Coupled with the potential bonus VP for taking heroes captive, maybe just about worth the points over the captain.

 

Goblin Captain

Yes, for some reason the smallest goblin in the army is a captain! Fight 3,  Strength and Defense 4, these guys are hardly going to be doing work in combat, but rather crucially they are the only source of Heroic March in the whole army. With the 5" movement of goblins and no shooting to make opponents come to you, you're going to need that March to get across the board! Most lists are going to have at least one captain, if not more.

 

Gollum

Gollum used to be a mainstay of the list, but now I struggle to see a role for him. With the ring and 2 attacks he has a potential role trying to assassinate heroes, but with only 1 point of might he can't reliably avoid Sauron's will when wearing the ring, and at strength 4 is he really killing things if he wins the fight? At 40 points he costs the same as 8 goblins, and I think in most games those goblins are going to be more valuable than Gollum. Maaaybe if you're playing at a particularly high points value the extra goblins are superfluous and you throw Gollum in, but even then I don't see much use for him. I'm really hoping that ringbearers get more of a role via new scenarios in the matched play guide, but we'll have to wait and see when that comes out (soon™). 

 

The Goblin Scribe

The Scribe is a really unique hero. His stat-line is impossibly bad, he's immobile, always counts as trapped, has 0 might, 1 will, and 1 fate. Counting as a heavy object, he needs two goblins to carry him around (or, the burly Goblin King). So what is the point of him?

He has a special rule The Goblin King's Command, whereby if the Goblin King declares a heroic move within 6" of the Scribe, then it can be applied board-wide to all friendly models. Furthermore, other goblin heroes within 3" of the Scribe can transfer a point of might to the King. 

On paper it sounds kind of interesting, but in practice quite difficult to use effectively. The board-wide heroic move is definitely strong, but you have to keep the Scribe near the King to use it, which may put him in danger. Gifting might could also be good, given the King is the only strong offensive piece you have - buffing him up with more might is a good idea! But this relies on having goblin captains near the Scribe too. He's also not super-cheap, at 50 points you could be taking 10 more goblins in your force.

All of that said, I think there is a use for him, but it has to be in higher points battles, where you've started to get diminishing returns from just taking more goblins, and where you'll have multiple cheap heroes on the board to use as might batteries. Probably not worth considering until at least 600 points, maybe even more like 700+. 

 

Goblin Warrior

I'm not sure there's much point discussing the ins and outs of these guys, because they're your only warrior choice - so you have to field them regardless! 

On the surface they're quite weak, but chitering hordes effectively gives them all spears, so you just need to rely on having more of these in every combat than the numbers your opponent can bring. The only choice here is whether to upgrade any to two-handed weapons for an extra point. I don't think its worth it en-mass, but I've been experimenting with putting a few in, normally to even out an otherwise odd-numbered army size, and they occasionally do something useful. You're never going to be taking a horde of two-handers though, mainly stick to the basic option.

 

List building

As we've seen from the profiles, our army lists are going to need to revlove around having large numbers of warriors to get more dice rolls than our opponent in the fights, while relying on the Goblin King to carry the army against bigger threats. However, there's going to hit a point of diminishing returns where it will be difficult to make the numbers count against other large armies, and the Goblin King is going to need some extra might to keep fighting when opponents can bring multiple big heroes - at this point the Scribe becomes a natural choice.

 

At 500 then we're just bringing a few heroes and as many goblins as we can fit into the list. I've thrown some two-handers in there too, just to keep the army to an even number of models (it feels more efficient for breaking/quartering), but you can leave those at home if you don't see value in them and just take an extra goblin for 55 models. As Games Workshop armies go, this isn't too heavy of a buy-in - two boxes of Goblin Warriors, and the Goblin King & Retinue box, all in plastic for a shade under £100.

This is a lot of models on the board, and not many other armies are going to be coming close to this - even the other horde armies like Usurpers of Edoras, Survivors of Laketown, and Depths of Moria (sans Balrog) are probably not quite bringing 50 models at this points value. Outnumbering your opponent across the board will be key to winning games, but also recognising that the strongest part of the army will be the King and his 6" bubble, and using that hammer where it is needed.

 

At 600 we might think about the Scribe, but I think at 700 we're definitely taking him. When you already have 78 models on the table, whats another 10 going to do? Better to start making use of the board-wide heroic move, and at this points level we have enough other heroes that we can make good use of the might-battery rule to buff up the King.

 

Scenarios  

Given the above list-building, we'll go through the 6 scenarios from the rulebook, ordered roughly from what I think are best to worst for Goblin Town in the current edition (though very match-up dependent).

Domination I think this is our favourite scenario. No banner VPs so we don't lose out there. We can deploy our King and his song-buffed horde right at the front of the deployment zone to contest the central objective, while using our superior numbers to retain the other two objectives on our side of the board. It's going to be difficult for any opponent to push us off the objectives, especially in tournaments with timed rounds which will make standing off and shooting us less favourable than contesting the objectives.

Hold Ground A vast amount of the points for this scenario are in holding the central objective. With our new rules for songs, we like the idea of getting the King towards a single central objective and using weight of numbers of song-buffed goblins to hold it. In larger games where we've taken the might-less Scribe, we want to deploy him first, then aim to get the rest of our warbands into a useful place to aid him - board-wide Heroic Moves are going to help in making sure we get our goblins onto the objective, rather than getting them blocked out by faster armies. Lack of a banner for VPs is our only negative here.

Reconnoitre There are positives and negatives for recon. We're slow moving, so it will be difficult to get too much stuff off the board, but we're also a massive horde likely preventing the opponent from easily maneouevering around us. I think on balance this is decent for us in many match-ups, and we're likely to be able to use overwhelming numbers to get more models off the board than our opponents. Good use of well-timed board-wide Heroic Moves from the Scribe may come in clutch here.

Fog of War I think we quite like Fog. We'll have the numbers advantage to flood an objective (although we probably lack the mobility to defend objectives from our opponent). Grinnah is pretty good to protect, as we can keep sneakily swapping him away every time he gets into a combat we don't like the look of. Unfortunately, our captains are fairly weak, so it might be quite easy for our opponents to kill their target. Overall though, should be fairly decent.

Destroy the Supplies This is a scenario that I think we've got drastically worse at with the edition change, having lost the goblins appearing from board edges and lost the mercenary ambush. It makes it more difficult for us to get behind out opponents lines to take their supplies, while we still lack the mobility to effectively defend our own supplies. The spread-out nature of wanting to attack and defend all the different objectives should be good for a horde army, but now we're focused on blobbing up around the King, this doesn't work as well for us as scenarios with fewer objectives. Plus we can immediately start down on points due to banner VPs. I think this scenario might turn out to be a tricky one for us, despite our overwhelming numbers. 

To the Death Quite match-up dependent, but again feels like one we might struggle with. Banner VPs hurts us, and VPs for killing enemy heroes is a problem for armies like ours with multiple weak heroes. The good thing going for us is that many armies will struggle to take VPs for wounding/killing our general, such is the caliber of the Goblin King. But still, one we might struggle with.

 

Final thoughts and reflections

Starting off the game with the Escape from Goblin Town boxed set gave me two options for army lists in MESBG - Thorin's Company, and Goblin Town. As much as I enjoyed painting up all the different characters from Thorin's Company it seemed like Goblin Town was a more sensible choice for an army to try to learn the game with, as it should be somewhat more forgiving than an all-hero force where every miniature has their own specific special rules to learn. 

With that decided, I had my first games down at my local club with the ugly goblins, and set about learning how to play MESBG. I took them to my first event near the end of last year, where I had the dubious honour of winning two prizes - the best army award, and the wooden spoon for placing last. Given my apparent lack of prowess with this army, you may wish to take what you've read previously with a large pinch of salt...

 

"The battle of the shrubbery" - the final game of the day to decide who would take home the spoon, where goblins and orcs fought bitterly over an objective hidden behind a hedge. It is perhaps beyond our scope of mortal understanding to know why the dark powers deemed this small piece of greenery so important...

As they're effectively my first army I think Goblin Town will always have a special place in my heart, despite what other factions I persue in the future. They're certainly my most played army, and I've been tinkering around with different ideas for lists in casual games. I haven't taken them to any tournaments yet this year, but that's more to do with my lack of tournament attendence than anything to do with Goblin Town themselves - so beware, Goblin Town may be coming to an event near you soon!

I'll finish by saying that I don't think we'll be seeing Goblin Town place highly at any big events any time soon, but I also don't think they're completely terrible, and I think they can still do fine at smaller, less competitive events - so have some fun with them!

My horde of ugly best army winners - still a bit sad about losing the mercenaries.

At a local game, the Goblin King finds out that he should have brought more bodies to the fight, and less Scribe/Gollum!