Undead vs. ranged

Hello,

are Undead very disadvantaged due to having only very little ranged attacks? Or is that all working out fine if and when they managed to get into close combat without being shot first?

Thanks!

Undead have more ranged attacks than I get (Marauders) as all their heroes can buy a bow. BS2 and a bow is still infinitely better than BS3 and no bow! They also have models with good movement stats. Dire wolves and vampires move pretty darn quick so you should be able to close in fairly quickly.

We have an Undead player in our group, who, after his first game where he was shot to pieces within 2 turns, was a bit... unhappy (I have equipped 8 (of 15) minis with bows - is that deemed excessive/cheesy?).

I guess he needs to get into the mood first, i.e., using Hiding etc.

Btw, we're talking 500pt lists without any experience (i.e., starting fresh).

8 out of 15, not that's not cheesy at all. If it's within the allowance of the rules, I never call it cheesy. Arm all 15 of your guys with bows. Definately, with heavy range you just need to get some good spells, ranged weapons if you can, and learn to use the terrain to your advantage.

On the other hand, if ranged weapons are truly ruining the experience for that player, you could always think of reducing the number of bows you use. But that should only come after he's given a good try and learning to cope with ranged weapons.

Catferret makes very good points too (I'm also a marauder player who relies on brute force over ranged weapons). Use Dire Wolves and Vampires to hold up the models while your slower troops cross the gap. That's how i run my beastmen and hounds in my Marauder band.

Lots of ranged attacks should not be too much of a problem for the undead if you use enough terrain .
Seriously, the amount of terrain makes a huge difference to the effectiveness of ranged attacks. More terrain means more possibilities to hide, more modifiers to the ranged attacks due to cover etc. etc. Simply adjust this till everyone gets a fair chance.
Another good tactic for the undead is to use expendable henchmen (that means zombies) in the first line if you have to expose yourself to ranged attacks, that way your opponent has to shoot the relatively unimportant "meatshields".

We had a player with an Undead warband who had great shooting. His necromancer had the spell that allowed him to make zombies of any Hero who actually died in the after game resolution in a campaign. He had an Elf Zombie with an Elf Bow, and a Reichlander Zombie with a brace of Dueling Pistols... the zombies couldn't get better at using them of course, but they didn't need to. Having a Zombie Sniper in a tower shooting arrows into people half way across the table is just annoying...

We play with a lot of terrain on our table. This reduces missile fire some, and gives people a lot of cover to use to make their way across a table. That is often one of the best solutions to having warbands without a lot of missile weapons. It doesn't make bows useless, but it makes you work to get that good shot. Your undead player may want to see about adding terrain. More terrain is good!

At the last campaign I played, the undead player had one of the best warbands in town! He had a sprinting vampire who run as fast as he could in turn one and hid in some corner of a building so he could charge out on turn 2 or 3 and take out all archers one by one!
And like other people said before me, maby you should ad some extra barricades and walls in your streets.
Good luck with you "marry band of lifless warriors"

I play against an undead player quite a bit,
As shadow warriors i have the advantage of range, but with 13 zombies heading your way its always a worry!
He tends to get me into a corner and then i am in trouble.
Sadly he has one super zombie which was one of my heros from an early warband, a t4 w2 zom with high ws is nothing to ignore.
tho luckly he lost most of his equipment as it was chaos bits n bobs (an early house rule chaos warband)