I Saw Three Trolls (and I'm tired of fighting them)

Good morning gamers!

This post kicks off a three-post series on some random musings I've had on armies of evil - I normally play armies of good (I'm that kind of guy), but despite my pure heart and lawful-good personality, I am the proud father of three stormtroopers. So...I play against a lot of evil armies (and collect a lot of evil armies so my stormtroopers have something fittingly evil to use).

So today's post involves some thoughts I've been mulling around for quite some time. The primary driver for these thoughts is that recently (much to my delight), my son Gorgoroth has started playing the game. After I showed him the new rulebooks, he wanted to read the books - so I said, "Let's start with The Hobbit." So we did - and we're reading it now. Some of the first characters Bilbo meets on his adventures are the three Trolls - Bert, Tom, and William (not Bill - he's called William in the book, so that's what we call him). Shortly after running into these three characters, Bilbo is plunged into the depths of Goblin-town and meets "the Great Goblin" and all his little minions. As we met these characters, my son asked, "What do these guys look like in the game?" So I showed him.



A week later, I saw a steal of a deal on eBay - the three Trolls (no campfire or club arms - whatever) and the Great Goblin + his Retinue + 36 Goblin Warriors for ~$60 (including shipping). I bought it with the full intention of keeping the Trolls for myself and letting my son buy the Goblins for himself. What I didn't know was that my son had $60 on him - and one by one, he bought my Trolls from me...so now when he wants to play, I have to play every 700-point game against something like this:

The Trolls: 400
William the Troll
Bert the Troll
Tom the Troll

Goblin-town (Convenient): 300
The Great Goblin [Army Leader]
Goblin Scribe
Grinnah
20 Goblins

If you've never had to face 4 monsters before, let me tell you this: his army might be small, but it's a pain to fight. For reasons we'll dig into in this post. As a prelude to the Trolls, let's look at Goblin-town for a bit.

Who Do You Ally With The Trolls?
While allying in more Trolls is certainly tempting, anytime you pay 400 points for three models, you're going to be hard-pressed to get a "high" model count. The easiest way to bloat a model count is to use an army that has cheap units - and Goblin-town sits on the very top of the list for cheap models now (good or evil compare). With 35-point captains and a 40-point 3-Might caddy in Grinnah, you can field 13 models for under 125 points. If you have 300 points left over, that allows you to get pretty close to 30 models. This still isn't "high", but it's higher than any other armies from The Hobbit that you could choose and about the same as you'd get with Moria (the only other army that is Convenient allies with the Trolls).

This variation of Goblin-Town relies on using the Goblin Scribe - a great way to a) use more models in your collection, b) mess with your opponent's auric/strategic heroes by opening up flanking attacks, and c) can distract fire from your Trolls (which is HUGE for getting them into combat alive). While this does make it more likely that you're broken (giving your opponent lots of terrible troops to kill in order to break you), you get the fun of frustrating your opponent's plans (especially on Domination/Capture and Control/Heirlooms scenarios) and you get to screen your Trolls with chaff. The Trolls are just courageous enough to stick it out if you do get broken (and any Goblins who have tagged along should stay because of them).

In addition to the Scribe, you get Grinnah and the Goblin King (aka the Great Goblin). With a hefty 6 Might between them (and two options to Heroic Strike - though Grinnah's F3 makes it risky), you can call lots of Heroic Moves if you need to with these guys (though you'll probably want to Strike with the King - depends on what kinds of enemy heroes you're fighting). This is good, since your Trolls have 6 Might between them and can use them for better things. Guarding these two heroes (and the Trolls by proxy) are 20 vanilla Goblin Warriors - perfect chaff models, fun to run, built-in spears so long as they're supporting themselves (who are the only models that they can support, since you can't support someone with a base larger than your own). I will note that we could get one extra Goblin Warrior (with a 2h axe) if we dropped Grinnah and took a normal Goblin Captain instead, but we'd lose 1 Might to get 1 extra model and we'd lose access to Heroic Strike with Grinnah (and having three 3-Might models with Heroic Strike is awesome).

Okay, so that settles the Goblin-town side of things, let's get into talking about the Trolls...

William the Troll - The Best of the Best
William is definitely the best of the three Trolls and is probably the best of the Troll characters in the game (and consequently one of the most powerful heroes in the game). For 150 points, he's a fraction of the points of what many other nasty Evil heroes cost (Sauron and the Balrog are better in every stat, but come in at 2-3 times the price) and will also be cheaper than most Good heroes who can match his stats (Elendil, Gil-Galad, Beorn) or on-par with nearly-similar heroes (Glorfindel, Aragorn, Dain, Thorin).

William has F7/S7/D7, which not only means that a prolonged fight against him by most heroes (who will be F5-6) will end with both characters out of Might and William ready to win ties and tear his foes apart. With 3 Attacks/Wounds/Might, he's a powerhouse to be reckoned with - and a mess to fight in close combat. His greatest asset (if he wins the fight) is a unique Brutal Power Attack: Mince 'Em Fine. If William wins the fight, both he and one figure he was engaged in combat with roll a D6 and each adds their Strength to their D6 roll: if William's sum total is higher, he does Wounds equal to the difference to his opponent. With a starting advantage of +3 (S7 vs. S4), William has the potential to deal enough wounds with this ability to outright kill many heroes he faces.

The best targets for this BPA are generic captains: with an average expected score of 3-4 Wounds (and a possible 8 Wounds), this is a great way to take out basic captains in a single go (you're likely to win the fight since he won't be able to call Heroic Strike). Against more powerful foes (Thorin, Aragorn, Durin), you should still do it - you'll probably get more wounds against these guys this way than wounding normally. The only time you really don't want to use this BPA is when you've got no one interesting to kill (no duh, right?) OR when fighting Glorfindel with the Armor of Gondolin (who you'll have to kill normally because rules).

Glorfindel is actually the only hero I would fear fighting with William only because a) you don't get to use BPA against him, b) he's F7 with the same Might/Fight/Attacks as you and has an Elven-made weapon, and c) because he himself causes Terror, which you may fail to charge on occasion (giving him an advantage if he's mounted). To deal with Glorfindel, you actually want to use...

Tom the Troll - The Most Annoying Of The Bunch
Tom's stat line is the worst of the group - basically a glorified Cave Troll hero (and not as good in SO many respects as Buhrdur, who costs less than Tom does). Tom makes up for this in two key ways: first, he has one of the best anti-spam rules by being able to Squash 'Em To Jelly. This BPA can deal a S6 hit against all enemy models engaged with him (which you obviously only want to do if there are more than 3 people in base contact with you, since your normal strikes are S6). Tom can wade into the middle of an enemy's ranks and not have to worry about how many people charge him - it's great!

With F6 and no Heroic Strike (and only 1 Might to boot), you'd expect him to be very vulnerable to F7+ models or models with F5/6 and Heroic Strike. But Tom is actually the best hero in the game equipped to deal with Heroic Strike-heavy armies. Why? Because he has a Lingering Cold.

This awesome Active ability allows him to spend a Will point (he has 3 of them) at the start of the Fight phase to cut one engaged enemy model's Fight Value in half. It took me only a day after getting a Bat Swarm model (gift a while back from my good mate Zorro) that a Bat Swarm (who also cuts people's Fight Value in half) and a Cave Troll will win ties against anyone - and with 5 dice, it's pretty rare that they don't get a 6. Tom works the same way - a F10 model gets reduced to F5 and since Tom is F6, he'll win the fight if he can get a 6 (with 1 Might, you've got a 70% chance of that).

If squared up against a powerful hero, you don't want to use Squash 'Em to Jelly - you want to beat them in one turn so you can save your sneezing for another Heroic Strike (or higher Fight Value) model. While you can always Rend them, the most effective way to deal with big heroes is just to Save 'Em For Later. Besides the fact that stuffing people in bags is fun, the ability to leave a hero (probably an important one) in a Paralyzed state is perfect for dealing with good fighters and leaving them for someone else to deal with (Goblin Warriors for example). If you're close to breaking someone, putting heroes in sacks is great, since they won't be calling Stand Fasts to keep their friends around.

Tom is annoying - well-equipped with unconventional means of dealing with powerful heroes AND hoards of warriors. If you only have two Trolls that you can bring, Tom and William are definitely where it's at - but don't forget about...

Bert the Troll - Don't Underestimate Him
If I had to guess, Bert is the "worst" of the three Trolls - but please don't read this and think that he's bad. There are few (if any) models who can slay as easily as William at less than 175 points and there are no models that deal with high Fight Value models or hoards of warriors like Tom. Bert's BPA also leaves something to be desired - sure, setting someone on fire if you're near a fire is fun (Roast 'Em Slowly), but it's not guaranteed to do anything (though you'll probably get a wound or two out of it). So why take Bert?

The first reason to take him is that his stat line is identical to William's except that he's only got 2 Might points instead of 3 Might points. William costs more because of Mince 'Em Fine, as well as access to Strike/Strength (instead of Strength/Defense). William is also a Hero of Valor, but that doesn't make much of a difference since neither has warriors to lead. In most cases (especially against models who can't get to/above F7), they'll perform exactly the same way.

The second reason to take him is that while his BPA is incredibly situational, stuffing people in sacks with Save 'Em For Later works very well. If Tom is stuck fighting a mob and William is gunning for a big hero, you can have Bert go after the second or third strongest hero (I like generic heroes who you know won't be above F6 and wont' have Heroic Strike) and when you beat them, either stuff them in a sack or kill them outright. Should you get in trouble (I surrounded Bert once with Gandalf, Dwalin, and Oin recently), you can always call Heroic Defense (which Tom has at the cost of his only Might point and William doesn't have at all) and watch your opponent's heaviest hitters fail to do much of anything (my son called it twice...Oin was the only person to land wounds either time).

Third, because Bert is a Hero of Fortitude, it's unlikely that he'll be drawn into a Heroic Challenge (only a handful of Fortitude models have Challenge), so he'll be a reliable Might point caddy for your team to call needed Heroic Moves. While Grinnah in the list above does a pretty good job of that, if you need to split forces, Bert can just as easily make it so your team surges out of turn to get to critical spots.

Putting It All Together: How Do You Fight Them?
I'll say this: I've never killed more than one Troll (and that probably only happened once). Most of the games my son and I play are on short boards, but we recently played on a 48x48 sized board and I still had problems killing them Trolls. Granted, I was playing with a nine-man Thorin's Company build (check out the list here), but I had a LOT of Strike models and still couldn't bring them down. Here are some pointers:

• Armies that like archery will do just fine against them - Tom is D6 (wounded on 6s by most range weapons, 5s by crossbows) and the others are D7 (pretty immune to S2 bows, but wounded on 6s by S3 bows and crossbows) - pack enough archers and you can probably bring one down;
• If you've followed this blog for any amount of time (but in particular my recent posts on Gandalf the Grey, the two posts on Gandalf the White, Saruman, and Galadriel), you know I like magic - while Immobilize et al did get a nerf under the new rules, the Trolls in this list aren't Resistant to Magic so a good Immobilize/Transfix can root them in place and allow your power heroes to either attack them without the fear of being munched up themselves (and no sneezing Tom!) or allow you to bypass them entirely and fight weaker things;
• Ignore them - throwing a courageous spam model doesn't work so well with Barge being a thing, but using enough warriors can screen for your good heroes, allowing them to carve up other models (like the Goblin King or doubling-up Heroic Strikes against Tom, since he can only sneeze on one person).

All of this is, of course, theoretical - I've done the tying up thing and it's worked, I've done the casting magic thing (against William) and it's worked, and I've done the shooting thing, and that kind of worked. In none of these cases did I kill more than one - they're going to make it. This brings in the biggest rule of playing MESBG: play to the scenario. No scenario requires you to kill your opponent's army to a man - there are other ways you can win (unless your fighting Smaug on To The Death - good luck with that). While the list above is scary, I've only lost a game once because while my son enjoys crushing things with his Trolls, the Goblins aren't very resilient. He's getting better though, so I expect that beating him in games will only get harder.

Well, I gotta run - Gorgoroth wants to play again...until next time, happy hobbying!