Help Vs. Night Goblin Army

[Gigataur]

In a slump with 1500 pts against a Night Goblin army.

Here is what I run:
Lords+Heroes:
lvl 4 Archmage w/ High and BoH
Lvl 2 Archmage w/ High and Dispel Scroll
Noble on Steed w/ barding, lance, dragon army + BSB

Core:
x2 grps of 5 Reavers
x1 grp of 8 Silverhelms

Special:
17 PG w/ FC and BotWD

The past couple of games I have been bunkering both mages with my Phoenix Guard

Rare:
2 Great Eagle
1 Bolt Thrower

He runs

x2 Divers
block of 60 or so night goblins w/ shortbows with bunkered fanatics. Also has BSB in there.
6 Trolls
2 Manglers
group of 30 Squigs and 10 handlers.
group of 5 wolf riders for chaff

Overall Questions and Concerns against this army:
-Basically I can't stand back or he will bombard me with doom divers/arrow me which auto-wound on 6's.
-How much should I fear fanatics? with d6 strength 5 hits each that come out when im within 8 inches of his NG's. I feel he zones me out with them.
-Should I throw reavers into manglers? How would you recommend dealing with them? They are random movement but he can dictate the direction until they run into something.
-Recommended Lores against this army?
-Should I go directly for his doom divers with my eagles or should I try and re-direct/try and open up his units in the flank by fleeing with them and winning the maneuver game.
-Silver helms get massacred every game by his doom divers since they go through armor. Would a different core selection be better?

Thank you for taking the time to read this! I am relatively new to high elves (playing them for 2 weeks now) so any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[Prince of Spires]

Well, for starters, the BoTWD is a waste of points on the PG. Even more so with the mages in there. Their natural 4++ save means that they already get most of the benefit the BoTWD gives, and your opponent doens't have any magical attacks anyway. So there's not much point to it. I would drop that and maybe replace it with the flaming banner to counter the trolls (normally I give them the razor banner, but vs goblins you're not going to run into armour saves anyway, so the flaming banner has more use if you want to tailor your list).

Then, I don't think a single RBT is worth the points. It only hits 50% of the time and there aren't that many interesting targets in the list anyway. RBT's are fearsome when there are 3 or 4. 1, not so much. Also, I feel there is a case here for sisters of averlorn instead of the RBT. Build in flaming shooting attacks will put some serious hurt on those trolls.

I personally think that the lvl 2 mage (I guess 'archmage' there is a typo) is too much at 1500 pts. Those points can be better spend on another unit of some sort. He will not be doing a lot of casting anyway and boots on the ground count for something as well.

I also think you have too many redirecting / distraction units compared to combat units. 2 units of reavers and 2 eagles is a lot of redirectors for 1500pts. I would even consider it a lot at 2500pts (but it would be what I would run I think). So I would drop 1 eagle personally and put his points into the unit created with the points from mage 2. (those 185-ish points will get you 14 WL for instance)

Small point on equipment: the lance is probably not the best choice for the BSB. He will be in combat for multiple turns most likely (goblins have big units after all). And you don't want him swinging @s3 in a second round.

As for strategy (assuming the points I mentioned above were implemented):
Fanatics is the easy part. You have eagles and he has only 1 unit of NG, so only one place where the fanatics can be. T1, just fly up one of the eagles in front of the NG unit (landing 8'' away from the unit to have some chance of survival). This releases the fantatics and give them a better chance of dealing damage to his units then to yours. And they will definitely get in his way a lot more then in yours. Which means he's likely just to release them in a direction out of the way. Yes, the eagle will die. It's a fact of their live.

I would send 1 unit of reavers to step on one of the manglers. It's a fair tradeoff points wise and you eliminate one of his big threats.

The other unit of reavers either distracts something or runs as fast as possible at the doomdivers. Same goes for the SH. You could actually change the helms to archers. Goblins have enough t3 stuff to shoot at to make archers decent. But if you don't, just run them either at the doomdivers or into the first combat you can find or within their minimum range as fast as possible. If you do change them to archers, then you can more easily wait him out.

Out of curiosity, how do his arrows auto-wound on 6's?

I would not place the mages in the PG unit. It's one of your main combat units. Not really a place for a mage. I would place him in either the sisters or the archers unit (depending on if you brought one and which one you brought).

If you did bring archers and sisters, shoot them at either the trolls (shoot the sisters first vs regen) or the remaining mangler. Whichever is the bigger threat. The mangler will take 12 shots from the sisters on average.

The PG (with flaming banner) and the WL can then deal with pretty much anything else on the table.

As for lores, High is fine vs goblins. Lot's of low S attacks is great. And you are very likely to get something cast as he will probably save DD for convocation. After all, if you can get that cast once on his big unit of goblins then you've won most of the game already (it should result in about 40 dead goblins and a serious panic test). But the rest is actually pretty good vs goblins too.

Rod

[SpellArcher]

What Rod said.

Drop the level 2 and get more shooting to deal with the Manglers etc..

I'm guessing he has Poison banner on the BSB. Does he really have no magic?

[Prince of Spires]

O, right. Forgot about the poison banner. In that case, he will be a T4 model with a 5+ armour save on foot. Get into contact with the unit asap then and take him out. Even a unit of reavers (in 3X2) should be able to do so on the charge(unless he's on the corner of a unit of course). 5 attacks, hitting on 4+ with a reroll, wounding on 4+, 6+ AS and 3 horse attacks.

Without the reroll the goblins will be in trouble. Well worth losing a unit of reavers over.

As for magic, I assumed a shaman in the list somewhere as general...

Rod

[Prince of Spires]

Another trick you could try with high magic (mentioned elsewhere) is to walk between worlds stuff into the manglers or fanatics. They explode when you step on top of them. But since you're ethereal you take no damage from them.

Rod

[afterglow82]

Another trick you could try with high magic (mentioned elsewhere) is to walk between worlds stuff into the manglers or fanatics. They explode when you step on top of them. But since you're ethereal you take no damage from them.

Rod

Nice! very rarely see a night goblin army these days, but I'm definitely remembering that one just in case!