So, the new edition hasnt been too kind to Goblins. They lost access to their beasts outside of bats, prowlers lost their options, marauders are now pretty normal cavalry. And of course the topic of thid thread, blackshields got nerfed. Hard. Theyre no longer elf haters, they lost a point of strength, and they only have the weaker version of feint. Question is... are they even worth taking anymore? Theyre twice as expensive as normal goblins, for +1D and +1C. Spear upgrades are back to being useless. And theyre not even great as support for a drum, now that the vanilla drum can get passed on.

They used to have their niche as the high strength, defense and courage goblin elite infantry. Now, theyre just moderately tougher. Anyone have any ideas as to how to use them?

Well, they got hatred for dwarves right? I would imagine that makes them a situational elite that would be worth bringing as a bodyguard for your general and an answer for both elven bow-fire and dwarven armor.

_________________
"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

They do, which is kind of annoying if youre not fighting dwarves. As it is, Im not sure theyre going to be a useful addition to a TAC army... and spear upgrades have gone back to being useless again too. Just use normal goblins for that...

Yeah, I haven't actually had a game with any yet, but I've modelled some up.
Goblin warrior with shield is (5 defence 2 courage) Blackshield warrior comes with a shield (6 defence 3 courage) for 3 points more. Not sure if 3 points is worth 1 defence and 1 courage. I'd have thought that would be worth 2 points and the dwarf hatred so situational it's hard to see it as being a whole extra point.
Still, as I said, I haven't used them yet, so maybe it pays off?
For 40 points you could either get 8 goblin warriors with shields or 5 blackshields.
In a swarm army I'd tend towards more bodies, but I guess we'll see.

You can still take beasts as long as you have the required shaman.

Why are spears worse? I think they're better than they used to be, you can now support 2-H weapon users, get a bonus from a banner, target a different enemy...

_________________
My LotR and 40k blog, Realm of Battle board, dwarves, gobs, space wolves and battle reports. http://simbattleboard.blogspot.com/

You misunderstand. Im not saying spears in general are worse, but upgrading blackshields with them makes no sense. Last edition made spear support attack at their own strength, which finally made giving blackshields a spear semi-useful - theyd support at S4. Before, you could just stick a normal speargoblin behind a blackshield for the same effect. Now, with S4 gone, were back to normal goblins making more sense for support.

I still don’t follow?
A spear equipped model supports using its own fight value and strength (page 84) so a blackshield supporting anybody uses its strength of 4.
A spear guy with strength 4 is better than strength 3 so why not give them a spear?

_________________
My LotR and 40k blog, Realm of Battle board, dwarves, gobs, space wolves and battle reports. http://simbattleboard.blogspot.com/

They no longer have Str4, just str3 iirc.

Ahhh! I missed that! So it's not the spear rule you thought was worse, it's their strength!

Gotcha!

Thanks for explaining to me!

_________________
My LotR and 40k blog, Realm of Battle board, dwarves, gobs, space wolves and battle reports. http://simbattleboard.blogspot.com/

Exactly. Last edition they finally made the spear upgrade useful, now theyre back where they began. Worse even, since even spearless guys arent really worth it.

Do you mean the spear upgrade in general, or for Blackshields?

_________________
Gondor: 2339pts
Rohan: 1318pts
Dwarves: 2482pts
Elves: 1091pts
Mordor: 2305pts
Isengard: 1762pts
Moria: 1463pts
Evil Men: 381pts

Just for blackshields.

Hatred makes them pretty good vs Dwarfs, but I'd avoid them in favor of the cheaper goblins and prowlers vs other factions.

Overall, I don't think Moria got worse as a faction. Cave Trolls got better, Warg Marauders are more or less the same with the drop in points (+1 total wound, but loses effectiveness as parts die, and the mount can be killed from under them), the Balrog is fantastic now, and Prowlers got better. The only units that got worse were Blackshields, Shaman, Groblog* (not necessarily worse unless you're running multiple shaman), and Durburz (Because of the points increase).

Losing wargs and spiders isn't a big deal, because you'd mostly want them if you had Ashrak or Druzhag, and they can still bring them in their warbands without losing the army bonus.