People have raved about Elven bowfire capabilities, especially the Wood Elf army.
I'm not so sure because after playing Dwarfs and Empire armies they seem pretty good at shooting me as well !
So, I decided to so some analysis into this.
I pretended there was an enemy unit with a toughness of 3, armour save 5+, no ward save. Then I tested some of the popular missile units against this unit (from maximum missile range until they got into charge range). (To even everything out I divided the results by the points cost of the missile troops)
Here are the results (best value for money units at the top of the list)
(pts) & unit
(14.0) High Elf Bolt Thower
(12.6) Dwarf Quarellers
(10.4) Empire Crossbows
(9.7) Empire Hand gunners
(8.3) Bretonnian Peasants
(7.9) Dwarf Tunderers
(7.3) Wood Elf Glade Guard
(6.6) High Elf Archers
(4.7) Wood Elf Way Watchers
It makes for interesting reading doesn't it !
It has to be mentioned though that this doesn't take into account any other abilities other than bow fire. Also, it favours gun powder weapons because I was using an enemy with a 5+ armour save, if the enemy had no armour save the Elves would be higher in the list. Also, bear in mind other factors like being able to move faster than the enemy and thus fire more.