Heroic Strength: The Fellowship of the Red-Headed Step Children (Or, Why Heroic Strength isn’t Always a Total Waste of your Might Point)

In Tiberius's write-up on the new heroic actions, he took a detailed look at what each of them do and when you might call them based on their utility. All but two were found at least some utility. The unfortunate misfits? Heroic Shoot and Heroic Strength.

Following Thumper's maxim, I shan't say anything about Heroic Shoot. But I read Tiberius's post shortly after a TMAT Tournament where I made frequent (albeit unexpected) use of Heroic Strength in all three of my matches. While it's not the sort of heroic action you would automatically call every turn, I believe there are situations--and several of them--where it adds clear value. 

Tiberius was kind enough to give me a chance to explain. So here's the first of three write-ups examining the case for Heroic Strength. 

(Also, there be some maths ahead...)

Anatomy of Heroic Strength: Persistent Effects 

Tiberius's main concern about Heroic Strength boils down to this: “This heroic action only works if you win the Fight, so if you get a poor Duel roll, you waste a Might point (which is bad).” 

This is hardly a unique sentiment, and there's a lot that's true about it. The last part of this statement is certainly true: wasting a Might Point is always bad (though not quite as bad, I would argue, as dying with Might points still unspent). It is also true that spending Might on Heroic Strength also comes with a clear opportunity cost: if you spend Might on Heroic Strength, you will not have that Might for other things, like winning a duel roll. It also excludes you from calling any other Heroic Action (like Strike, for higher fight value). And it is also true that most combat-oriented heroic actions confer a benefit on you only if you win the duel roll (Heroic Strike) or fight (Heroic Combat) or, more rarely, lose the fight (Heroic Defense). 

But not Heroic Strength. No, seriously. Check the text: 

Heroic Strength (Fight Phase) [Rules p. 73] 
Drawing on their reserves of Strength, a hero can smite their foes with greater ferocity and power than they ever realised they were capable of. 

A Hero model who declares they are using Heroic Strength adds D3 to their Strength characteristic for the duration of the Fight phase. This cannot increase a Hero model's Strength above 10. Note that this bonus is applied before other effects that affect a model's Strength, such as the Wither Magical Power.

This leads us to the first key in unlocking Heroic Strike’s potential: its primary utility lies in the fact that its effect persists through an entire phase. And not just any phase: arguably the most important phase (depending on how you feel about the Move Phase), and certainly the most deadly phase (depending on how you feel about the Shoot Phase). How rare is it for heroic actions to have persistent effects? There are some who have them, but overall they're pretty rare and even the ones that have it tend to be pretty one-dimensional: 

• Heroic Resolve grants a Resistant-to-Magic effect that lasts through the Move Phase, although your opponent has to casts a spell on one of the affected models, or the Might point is “wasted” (unless, of course, you consider “disincentivizing your opponent from casting magical powers for a turn” to be a valuable use of a Might point…).
• Heroic Accuracy grants a persistent re-roll to failed In the Way rolls throughout the Shoot Phase (although unless you have a multi-shot hero like Haldir, it’s practically a once-per-phase buff, and even Legolas will only benefit up to three times per Shoot Phase).
• Heroic Strike's D6 buff to Fight Value lasts through the Fight Phase, although it only comes into play during one duel roll (unless you successfully execute a heroic combat in which the striking model takes part). 
• Heroic Challenge can have persistent crippling effects on the model that declines it (and persistent effects on the heroes locked in combat), but they vary based on whether the challenge is accepted or not (and it doesn't have to be).

So what makes the persistent effect of Heroic Strength a game-changer? 

Having higher strength for the duration of the Fight Phase confers benefits on your hero, whether he/she wins or loses combat.

"Big deal," I can hear you saying (probably with a yawn). "So what if I get extra strength whether or not I win the duel? Everyone knows the purpose of Strength is to wound, and to wound you have to win the fight!" 

Allow me to address your skepticism with a story.

Let's suppose we have a fairly strong hero: make it Elendil on horse, with Narsil and shield for a nice, round 200 points. Now let’s suppose that Elendil’s Numenoreans are up against the forces of Mordor, led by the Witch-King with the Crown of Morgul on a Fell Beast (not an unlikely scenario). And let’s suppose further that Mordor has priority this round, and that the Witch-King has a clear path to charge Elendil (which he does), casting a spell on the way in (with a free re-roll from his crown for good measure). 

 

Mounted Elendil on Horse with Shield (not pictured)

[Also not mine, which makes me sad... that'd be pretty boss]

vs.

   

Mounted Witchking on Fell Beast with Crown of Morgul (3/20/3)

[The "deadly version"]

For most heroes, this is an impending death blow: the Witch-King is a dangerous spell-caster and the Crown gives him 4 attacks on the charge with his Fell-Beast (which has Monstrous Charge, and is a monstrous mount that can Rend or Hurl at S6). Fortunately, Elendil is in a better position than most to weather this incoming storm. For one, he has two free resist dice courtesy of his Unbending Resolve Special Rule, which gives him fantastic magic resistance that is immune to Sap Will or any other resource-draining shenanigans. For another, Elendil has a wide cadre of heroic actions he can call upon to boost his chances of winning the fight or surviving: 

• If the Witch-King tries to improve his Fight 5 with Heroic Strike, Elendil can match him. 
• If Elendil is worried about dying, he can call Heroic Defense and force the Witch-King to wound him on natural 6s only. 
• Elendil could attempt to lock the Witch-King into one-on-one combat through Heroic Challenge. Usually this is death for most heroes, but Elendil has the magic resistance and beefy stats to come out on-top. In which case, we might as well consider…
• Through the power of Narsil, Elendil can also call a Heroic Combat for free each turn without expending Might. 

And yes... technically Elendil could also call Heroic Strength. But given the other options available to him, why would he? 

Answer: if he wants to maximize his tactical options on both offense and defense.

Heroic Strength as a Defensive Buff 

High Strength is usually associated with offensive gains: the harder you hit the easier it is to wound, and the easier you wound the faster you kill enemy units. But it turns out that having high Strength conveys benefits on defense, too. Here they are: 

1. Immunity to knock-downs. 

It’s happened to every hero: they’re in the midst of a key turn of the game and everything is going well. Suddenly, something hits the fan—an enemy mounted hero pulls off a heroic combat, and has found your army leader. There’s suddenly a very real chance that your precious hero is about to be knocked prone. This conveys a lot of disadvantages:

• Your opponent gets to roll double dice to wound. Any time your opponent gets to roll double dice for any reason, it’s already a bad thing (unless it’s one of those weird checks where they have to discard their highest result—those are okay). If those dice have the chance to remove your hero from the game, it’s even worse. 
• You’re knocked prone. This is bad for lots of reasons: yes, you get hit with double-dice if you lose. But you also suffer some persistent negative effects. If you survive those strikes, you have to remain prone until the start of your hero’s move in the next move phase. Which means that the best case scenario for you is that you (a) win priority the next round, and (b) stand your hero back up at the cost of half his movement. For most heroes this means 3” of movement or less for that round, which means you can be easily avoided or tagged, even by the slowest of opponents (hobbits?). And that’s assuming you aren’t forced to burn any Might in order to move before your opponent does. Because if you don’t... 
• Worst-case scenario next round: the enemy charges you while prone. At least three bad things happen here: (a) you have not moved at all, thus not fulfilling the primary function of a hero: altering the state of the battlefield in your favor; (b) you are at risk of taking double-strikes again if you lose the fight; and (c) even if you win the fight, you can only stand up; you can’t make strikes (essentially making you a “free,” low-risk target) and you can’t flee or move, further delaying any plans you had.

So what does Heroic Strength have to do with this? Well, because you generally suffer knock downs from cavalry during the Fight Phase, your hero’s Strength will be modified by Heroic Strength when the cavalry attempt to knock you over. And if your hero is S6 or above, they are immune to most cavalry knock-downs. 

Knock to the Ground [Rules p. 62] 

If a Cavalry model with this bonus wins a Fight, all of their opponents are Knocked to the Ground, except for Monster models or other models with a Strength of 6 or more. 

How hard is it for most heroes to get to Strength 6 if you pop Heroic Strength? Not very. Heroic Strength increases your Strength by D3. That means you have a 100% chance of increasing your hero’s Strength by 1 (1+, 6/6 rolls), a 66% chance of increasing it by 2 (3+, 4/6 rolls), and a 33% chance of increasing it by 3 (5+, 2/6 rolls). Since most heroes start at S4, they only need their Strength to go up by at least D2, or a roll of 3+, to gain immunity to knock-down. And S5 heroes (like Elendil, Isildur, Dain, Dwalin, Beorn in man-form, most mounted Rohan heroes on the charge, Uruk-Hai heroes, the King’s Champion, Azog and Bolg, etc.) will get that immunity automatically, regardless of what they roll for Heroic Strength.

How much of a benefit is this? Consider that a cavalry model is going to be rolling at least 2 dice on the charge—1 for their base attack and 1 for their charge bonus. Doubled, that makes 4 dice to wound if you are knocked down. Assuming a hero of reasonable defense (D7, we’ll say), most cavalry models (will wound a hero on a roll of either a 5 (S3 or S4 with a +1 to wound from a lance) or a 6 (S3 or S4 wounding D7).

Odds of rolling at least X 5s/6s or 6s on 4 dice

	5s or 6s	6s
0+	100.00 %	100.00 %
1+	80.25 %	51.77 %
2+	40.24 %	13.90 %
3+	11.10 %	1.62 %
4+	1.23 %	0.08 %

But if you can get to S6 (which most heroes should reach most of the time), you can deprive the enemy of at least 2 wounding dice, which drastically reduces their wounding potential:

Odds of rolling at least X 5s/6s or 6s on 2 dice

	5s or 6s	6s
0+	100.00 %	100.00 %
1+	55.56 %	30.56 %
2+	11.11 %	2.78 %
3+	0.00 %	0.00 %
4+	0.00 %	0.00 %

Not only do our odds of each wound go down by 20-30 percentage points, but our maximum number of potential wounds goes down as well: in absolute terms, from 4 wounds to 2 wounds, and in practical terms from 2 wounds (14-40% of the time) to one wound (30-56% of the time). Sure, there’s not a great chance you’d suffer 4 wounds from 4 dice, but no chance is better than a small chance, right?

And, of course, if your opponent has a base attack of 2 or 3, you could be removing as many as four wounding dice if you can deprive them of a knock-down (more on that later). Plus win, lose or draw, you know you’ll end the fight phase on your feet, either setting you up to spend your whole movement if you win priority, or make it far less risky if your opponent gets to move first. The point is this: there are worse ways to spend a single point of Might. 

Speaking of worse things that have more than a base attack of "1"...

2. Protection from Monsters (and Monstrous Mounts)
The defensive benefits of Heroic Strength are even more dramatic if your opponent has charged you with a monstrous mount, like our Witch-King on Fell Beast. Fell Beasts have Monstrous Charge, which means they can knock down even mounted heroes, as long as they have a lower strength value:

Monstrous Charge (Active) [Rules p. 106]

Slamming into the ranks of the enemy, these monsters charge with enough force to fling large numbers of warriors sprawling to the ground.

This model will Knock to the Ground any model that it Charges, including Cavalry or Monster models, with a lower Strength value than it, even if the charged model has a Strength of 6 or higher. The rider of a Cavalry model will automatically suffer the Knocked Flying result for its Thrown Rider test.

Monstrous Charge isn't a remarkably common ability, but it's not rare either. In addition to the aforementioned Fell Beasts (who can pop up in Barad-Dur, Angmar, Mordor, the Serpent Horde, and Corsairs lists), you have Shelob (Barad-Dur/Mordor), Dragons and Cave Drakes (Moria), the Spider Queen (Dark Denizens of Mirkwood), and Gwaihir and Great Eagles (Misty Mountains), plus I'm sure some others I haven't mentioned. Against all of these, you probably want to keep your mount under your hero, if for no other reason than to gain a bonus attack on the charge (since most of these aren't cavalry models, sans the Fell Beasts) and/or to keep the 10" movement option so you can either counter these models or stay clear of them.

The loss of a hero’s mount is usually a huge blow to the hero’s damage potential: not only is their threat range permanently reduced (usually from 10” to 6”), but they lose their own ability to roll double wounding dice against infantry they charge. In addition, the Knocked Flying result means that our hero suffers one S3 hit (which wounds D7 on 6s) in addition to the pool of to-wound dice that is coming: in Elendil’s case, that means eight nasty dice, wounding Elendil on 5s or 6s (S6 wounds D7 or D8 on a 5+). Since Elendil can only survive 3 wounds (assuming he passes his Fate roll), his odds of survival are pretty poor if he ends the duel Prone:

Odds of rolling at least X 5s/6s on 8 dice

	8 Dice (5s or 6s)
0+	100.00 %
1+	96.10 %
2+	80.49 %
3+	53.18 %
4+	25.86 %

Keep in mind as well, that in addition to these wounds, the Witch-King’s Fell Beast is also going to automatically dismount Elendil from his mount if he wins the fight (which is effectively another wound)—unless Elendil uses Heroic Strength. If he does, at worst Elendil and his steed will have the same strength as the Fell Beast (S6), depriving the beast of its strength advantage, and with it the knock-down. And there’s a pretty good chance (4/6 rolls, on a 3+) that Elendil will actually be stronger than the Fell Beast. Either way, the Witch-King is rolling 4 fewer dice to wound (4 rather than 8). Which means a dramatic reduction of killing power:

Odds of rolling at least X 5s/6s on Y dice

	8 Dice (5s or 6s)	4 Dice (5s or 6s)
0+	100.00 %	100.00 %
1+	96.10 %	80.25 %
2+	80.49 %	40.74 %
3+	53.18 %	11.11 %
4+	25.86 %	1.23 %

(Any interest in halved-odds on 2+ wounds, and fifth-odds on 3+ wounds? Anyone?)

In this scenario, it’s possible that the Witch-King might even forego standard strikes entirely, given how drastically the reduction from eight dice to four dice affects the odds of killing Elendil (dropping them from 26-53% to 1-11%, depending on Elendil’s Fate roll). The Fell Beast’s Rend attack suddenly looks far more attractive: instead of wounding Elendil on 5s or 6s, a S6 Fell Beast will Rend a S5 Elendil on 4s, with an improved chance of killing him (between 6-31%, depending on Fate):

Odds of dealing at least X wounds on Y dice

Wounds Dealt	8 Dice (2x Strikes: 5s/6s)	4 Dice (Strikes: 5s/6s)	4 Dice (Rend S5: 4s/5s/6s)
0+	100.00 %	100.00 %	100.00 %
1+	96.10 %	80.25 %	93.75 %
2+	80.49 %	40.74 %	68.75 %
3+	53.18 %	11.11 %	31.25 %
4+	25.86 %	1.23 %	6.25 %

The problem for the Fell Beast is that Rend is only better than striking if Elendil is at S6 or below. If he can get to S7, however, the Fell Beast is back to wounding on 5s, on just 4 dice. And if Elendil calls Heroic Strength, his odds of going to at least S7 are 67% (on a 3+, or 4/6 rolls).

Odds of dealing at least X wounds on Y dice (Strikes vs. Rend)

Wounds Dealt	8 Dice (2x Strikes: 5s/6s)	4 Dice (Strikes: 5s/6s)	4 Dice (Rend S5: 4s/5s/6s)	4 Dice (Rend S7: 5s/6s)
0+	100.00 %	100.00 %	100.00 %	100.00 %
1+	96.10 %	80.25 %	93.75 %	80.25 %
2+	80.49 %	40.74 %	68.75 %	40.74 %
3+	53.18 %	11.11 %	31.25 %	11.11 %
4+	25.86 %	1.23 %	6.25 %	1.23 %

Faced with an inability to dismount Elendil (because his matching or greater Strength makes him immune to knock-down), a less than 50% chance of doing more than a single wound to him, and just a one-in-ten (11%) chance of killing Elendil (if he fluffs his Fate roll), the Witch-King may be tempted just to Hurl Elendil and be done with him. Hurling not only knocks Elendil prone (dismounting him, forcing him to move first or risk being trapped, halving his movement on a future turn, etc.) but is also the Fell Beast’s only chance of rolling more than four to-wound dice against Elendil (if the Fell Beast can knock Elendil directly away into four or more models).

But once again, there’s a catch. And (as you probably guessed) it hinges on the models’ respective Strengths:

Hurl [Rules p. 78]

The monster picks up its foe and flings it backwards with incredible force, sending all in its path sprawling to the ground. 

Before models Back Away, nominate a single enemy model involved in the Fight, and in base contact, with a Strength characteristic lower than that of the Monster and follow these steps . . . .

Crap.

Because Hurl requires the model to have a lower Strength characteristic than the monster, tied Strength characteristics (in this case, S6 vs. S6) lock a monster out of hurling. Since Elendil gets to S6 on a roll of 1+ (cheeky S5), that means he has a 100% chance of not losing his mount, not bowling over his own troops, not suffering cheeky hurl damage hits, and not starting the next round off on the back foot if he calls Heroic Strength.

To be fair, Elendil is a bit of a special case (he starts at S5), and the Fell Beast is on the weaker end of the Monster scale (S6 vs. S7 for most trolls and eagles, and S8 for Ents, Beorn, and Sauron). For most heroes (S4), it’s not a guarantee that calling Heroic Strength grants immunity to knock-down, Hurl, pushes Rend to 5+, etc. But the knock-down is probably attainable (on a 3+), as is Rend on a 4+ instead of the normal 3+ most monsters would need (for a S7 monster, a bump to S6 (or a 3+ on the Heroic Strength die) is sufficient to push Rend wounds from a 3+ to a 4+, which is a big jump). And if you do manage the +3 strength, most monsters will find their usually-overflowing bag of tricks a quite dry.

Surely, that level of added survivability counts as at least situationally-useful, right? ;-)

Of course, all this begs the question: are these defensive benefits as good as what you’d get if Elendil spent that same Might point on Heroic Defense? The answer is…

(What? You weren’t expecting a cliff-hanger? Did you not read Fellowship of the Ring?)