Battle Brothers: Dedicated Archer Guide 2022

The whole point of archer is winning ranged fights and forcing enemies to attack. Attackers are at huge disadvantage in BB because they have worse terrain and take free round of attacks. Also archer(s) save your low rdef bros from taking arrow damage thus saving tools and improving your efficiency. With archers you are able to win harder fight than without and at the same time do not take much armor damage.

You may win ranged fight using ranged fighters the same way you win melee fight using melee fighters. Unlike melee fighters your archers easily outclass AI archers. Your archer may win 1 vs 5 or even 1 vs 10 ranged fight because of the following:

1. Your archer have max rdef meaning only 5% chance of being hit.
2. Your archer hit chance will always be high thanks to enormous ranged attack.
3. Ranged enemies can’t surround you so you’ll usually fight 1 vs 1-3.

You need rskill, rdef, some fatigue and HP. The more rskill the better. Same with rdef because there are debuffs and champions. Default origin starting bro is good enough for early game archer. Try to find hunter(s) with high base and 2-3 stars in ranged skill for lategame.

• Bow mastery – usually bow mastery is a bad perk, but +1 range is important for this build.
• Anticipation – core defensive perk.
• Nimble – another defensive perk.
• Lone wolf – decent boost to both ranged attack and ranged defense.

• Footwork – allows firing from point blank range. You do not have to retreat when enemies charge at you. You may taunt melee enemies with your archer and run away with footwork.
• Killing frenzy – more damage is always good. With decent bow it greatly increases chance of oneshoting goblins.
• Berserk with recover – even more damage.
• Gifted – small boost to attack and defense.
• Pathfinder – increased mobility is always good. Especially with 7 AP aimed shot.
• Student – archer do not need potion of oblivion so it is free experience.

Determined. Confident morale adds 10% stats which is huge. You cannot improve your morale in ranged fights because enemies die too far away from you.

There are 2 enemies who do not charge in melee: brigands and goblins. I’ll only write about goblins because they have famed loot, but the same tactic may be used vs brigands. In all other fights swordlance + bow hybrids usually perform the same or better.

At first learn how to restart fights. If you have first move with impatient bro or high ini fencer you may retreat using white flag and enemies will not chase you. This is important to minimize damage if there is shaman in enemy camp or if you are retreating from fast enemies like necrosavants.

1. Restart fight till you get your own hill nearby.
2. Move on the hill and hide your melee bros 3+ tiles behing your archer(s).
3. Slowly move back with your archer(s) and shoot from max range. Goblins will move forward downhill to shoot your archers/backline.
4. Either kill overseer or engage him in melee. Without morale buffs goblins will quickly run away.

When your archer is not yet good enough to solo kill enemy archers.

1. Move back with archer and north and south with others.
2. Enemies will split and you’ll be able to engage them more or less safely.
3. It will hurt but not as much as frontline charge.