Beware of Dragon, Part 4: The Defensive Versatile Dragon Types

Good evening gamers,

We've talked about Vanilla dragons, Utility dragons, and Offensive Versatile dragons. In this post, we're wrapping up the tactical overview of dragon builds and focusing on the "defensive versatile" dragon options. As mentioned in our last post, these dragons don't use the Breathe Fire upgrade, which brings a few concerns. The chief benefit to this dragon type is that your Will store can be saved for one of two things: casting magic (if you have the Wyrmtongue upgrade) or passing Courage tests (available to all three builds below). This allows you to protect your dragon either by weakening your foes or ensuring you are resolute enough to stay and fight. The concerns for this build are as follows:

Operation Tuckborough Update: Trees!

Hey Reader!

First of all, I hope that your Thanksgiving was amazing!  Over the course of the extended weekend I was hard at work with a bread knife, but not because I was baking (we'll, I was baking for the holiday, but the bread knife had nothing to do with it - I'll explain in a bit), and after a few grueling weeks at work and finally having time to upload this, I wanted to give you all an update from the weekend on Operation Tuckborough, which is my Shire board for the TMAT GT IV this March.

Per interesting circumstances surrounding the tournament last year my army, the Waistcoat Brigade (Shire LOME List, which you can find here), dropped from the tournament, and for the GT this year I am bringing more or less the same army (more on that in a future post), and will also be bringing my Shire board to the tournament to accompany them.  To add a bit more flair to the board though I decided to include my first foray into the realm of trees and woodland terrain, and today's post covers the creation of two new pieces of woodland terrain for the board.

Before launching into the step-by-step process, it is worth noting that I followed the ideas laid out by Dan at Mini War Gaming, and I highly recommend their video series on terrain building.  Really good ideas on what tools to use, techniques to provide added stability and longevity to your terrain, and just all-around good ideas, :)  So, with no further ado, let's make some terrain!

Beware of Dragon, Part 3: The "Offensive Versatile" Dragon Types

Good morning gamers,

In our previous two posts, we talked about the Vanilla dragon type (no upgrades) an the Utility dragon types (one upgrade). These five builds are more affordable options that what we're going to be talking about today, but they only do one thing for your army. In today's post, we're going to be looking at the three possible Versatile dragon builds that include the "Breathe Fire" upgrade, because let's face it, we think breathing fire is pretty cool. Because you pay Will points to use Breathe Fire, we're going to be referring to these dragon builds as "offensive versatile" types, while the non-Breathe-Fire builds save their Will stores for resisting magic or passing Courage tests ("defensive versatile" types). It's important to note that the fact that "offensive" or "defensive" has been tacked onto the Versatile description doesn't mean that taking an "offensive" dragon build lacks defensive options (or that "defensive" dragon builds lack offensive capabilities). Rather, the focus is only on how it enables the use of its Will store. Before we begin, let's get some of the elephants out of the room.

Beware of Dragon, Part 2: The "Utility" Dragon Types

Good morning gamers,

In today's post, we're going to look at the four types of "utility" dragons that you can buy in the LOTR Strategy Battle Game. The following terms will be used throughout the post, so here are their "formal" definitions up front:

• Utility Dragon - a dragon with a single upgrade is termed a "utility" dragon, since the upgrade provides a niche capability for the dragon to perform a primary function (and very few other functions besides that). This is used to differentiate a dragon with a single upgrade from those with no upgrades (termed a "vanilla" dragon) and those with two upgrades (termed a "versatile" dragon).
• Lightning Build - a dragon who relies on its fiery breath to devastate enemy ranks and the heroes who lead them. This allows a dragon, for a limited time, to have an archery attack option.
• Thunder Build - a dragon who relies on the thunderous pounding of its wings to choose its battles, avoid several turns of archery, and often ensures that it will receive its charge bonus.
• Rain Build - a dragon who relies on magical spells to enfeeble enemy heroes (or warriors, I guess) in order to defeat them asymmetrically. Like fighting in rain, heroes who face a dragon of this kind will not be entering the combat at full strength (if anywhere near the same playing field).
• Hail Build - a dragon who relies on its tough hide to ignore wounds dealt by the most powerful of blows. This has its advantages against enemy archery, damage-oriented magical spells, and melee attacks.

For the sake of theme, these all have storm elements in their titles - the "hail" build is probably better termed a "rock" build, but since hail is rock-like...you get the picture.