The Armies of the Hobbit, Part II: The Other Evil Armies

Good morning gamers,

This post will wrap up the evil armies from the Hobbit - and the lists we have today don't really synergize at all as far as theme goes. So, we'll be covering spiders and goblins today - things should be interesting

1) The New Lists: Dark Denizens of Mirkwood and Goblin-town (but what about the Trolls and the Dragon man?)

There are four evil lists we haven't covered yet: the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood (predominantly spiders) and Goblin-town (completely filled with goblins). Both of these lists have one thing in common: they're very traditionally hero-and-warrior teams (as opposed to the all-hero lists that are The Trolls and the Desolator of the North). I decided that we're not going to cover army lists for using The Trolls or the Desolator of the North for two reasons: first, because building lists at the 600pt (or higher) level are just not all that interesting, and second, because I've already covered lists that bring The Trolls already both in the last post and in a previous Armies of the Lord of the Rings post. For Smaug, I've chosen not to cover him because not only does he not fit in a 600 point game, but also because you have to be playing a really large game (1000+ points) in order for his exorbitant point cost to not eat all the points you have (very uninteresting).

Instead, we'll be leaving the discussions for the Trolls to the lists that bring them and we'll wrap up today's post by talking about ways to fight against Smaug (should you face him). We'll be assuming a 700-point game and provide two sample lists that showcase the ability to fight Smaug. By brainstorming ways to fight Smaug, we'll get an appreciation for what he can do (which is kind of like evaluating him). With that, let's take a closer look at the two lists we'll actually be reviewing today.

2) The Army Bonuses: Forth All Minions

Both of the lists we're covering today encourage you to bring lots of minions, albeit in very different ways. The Dark Denizens of Mirkwood only have one hero (the Spider Queen) and have special rules (like some of the lists from the Lord of the Rings that we've already seen) for mass-spamming warriors with no hero to lead their warband. This, of course, means that if you don't keep your army bonus, you're limited to a single warband (which, since your models are pretty expensive, might be okay). The Goblins of Goblin-town on the other hand work differently: each warband is able to hold MORE Goblins if you keep your army bonus. Suddenly, your generic captains are bringing 18 warriors along - that's crazy! All told, both lists find neat ways of bringing more models to the fight (which is good, because we didn't really get any spam lists in the last post). With that, let's look at some lists...

3) The Lists: Dark Denizens of Mirkwood

Creature lists suffer from two main weaknesses: a) your models have large bases allowing lots of people to gang-up on them, and b) you don't have spears to allow for models assisting one another. The advantage of running creature lists is that, in the main, our models are all multi-attack models, making the need for spears less of an issue. While being ganged up on is still a real concern, the Mirkwood Spiders in particular have clever ways of evening the odds a bit. Let's take a look.

List #1: Where The Wild Things Are
Spider Queen
7 Giant Spiders
8 Mirkwood Spiders
10 Fell Wargs
3 Bat Swarms

With almost 30 creatures in a 600-point list, I'm actually pretty proud of that. :) All four of the models serve different purposes - the Mirkwood Spiders don't have great Fight values, but if they hit their target when shooting (and it works like a throwing weapon, so you can do it on the charge), you can Paralyze targets (great for ensuring your Mirkwood Spider can't be killed AND making its poor Fight Value less of an issue). The Giant Spiders and the Fell Wargs have more traditional fighting profiles (the Giant Spiders are actually quite good) and so make up the majority of your killing power. The Spider Queen can spawn helper swarms - great for trapping models or holding objectives. Finally, the Bat Swarms (which have to be in the Spider Queen's warband) are there to assist with trapping thanks to Fly and to make your Fell Wargs a bit more viable by cutting enemy Fight values. Having played with a Bat Swarm in a Moria list for a while, I can tell you that Bat Swarms can be really tricky to use effectively, but they are KILLER when you get the hang of them. I've included three so that no matter where the battle rises, you have a Bat Swarm where you need it.

Perhaps the best thing about this list is the sheer number of warbands you can have - with a requirement of having 2+ Spiders in a warband, you can get 7 warbands JUST with the spiders. The Fell Wargs will give you another warband and then you have the Spider Queen's warband - that's NINE warbands that you could have, which would probably work just fine in a maelstrom fight and will give you tactical knowledge of where your opponent's whole army is before placing most of your models (assuming you start with some spider warbands first). Our next list keeps much of this list's killing potential and merges them with some more traditional models to provide much needed resiliency.

List #2: Assault On Mirkwood
Spider Queen
5 Giant Spiders
6 Mirkwood Spiders

CONVENIENT ALLY: Mordor

The Shadow Lord on horse
8 Black Numenoreans
7 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears

The Black Numenoreans and the Morannon Orcs cost the same, so you can flip the numbers around if you want. We've lost a few models compared to the last list, but we've added 15 Defense 6 figures and one Defense 8 figure who provides much-needed protection against archery. While the spiders are awesome and fun to use, their Defense is so very limited and can be a really damaging weakness. While not protected from melee damage by the Shadow Lord, you should be able to get most of your army charging into the target. Unlike our last list, we have two warbands here - no more tactical deployment advantage (sigh).

4) The Lists: Goblin-town

Goblin-town is unique among all of the civilizations you have access to because they are the only army that can run Heroes of Fortitude that operate (from a warband size perspective only) like Heroes of Legend - bringing 18 compadres to the fight! They're also unique because of their Chittering Hordes rule, which allows them to spear-support models with the Chittering Hordes rule without having spears. While supporting models can't wield two-handed picks, they can wield single-handed picks, getting all of the advantages of Piercing Strike without any risk of being attacked (so, no ill side-effects). You'd think that with only two warrior choices, you'd be hard-pressed to get some variety in your list, but the most basic warrior models in this list have access to four of the five basic weapon types (swords, picks, maces, and flails), so you can get quite the assortment of weapons in the fight (I recommend a 50/50 split between flails and picks, with the picks supporting the flails). But enough talk - let's look at the lists!

List #1: You Go My Lad - Ho Ho, My Lad!
Goblin King
Grinnah
Goblin Scribe
Goblin Captain
15 Goblin Warriors
57 Goblin Warriors with two-handed picks

With the Goblin King providing room for 24 warriors, Grinnah and the Captain each hosting 18 warriors, and the Goblin Scribe hosting 12 warriors (and allowing you to bring additional warriors on the board over time), you've got room for (wait for it) 72 warriors which is (magically) EXACTLY the number of warriors we've included here. Now, we could drop 55 two-handed picks to add another captain and 5 warriors, but I think having an insane number of 2h options is not a bad idea. The list relies on getting loads of attacks out of your grunts (two-handed Picks with Piercing Strike allows you to get lots of cheap S4 two-handers, to say nothing of the combo of Chittering Hordes and the growing of your army via the Scribe to help you with the dueling roll or mobbing tactical units that are hiding behind a shield wall), but the army is even more vulnerable to archery (and melee damage) than our last list. Of course, it has more than twice as many models (and easily more models than you'll ever see in a game).

Now if you really want to balloon the number of attacks you get, equip all of your guys with Flails (in this list, almost everyone has a two-handed pick that you can use for Piercing Strike if you want). While you can't use Whirl whilst supporting another model, you CAN use it on the guy engaged by your opponent, upping the number of dice he rolls on the To Wound roll. Winning with Fight 1 is pretty hard, but since you start at Fight 2 it's not a big deal. Also, when you do pull off a win, you have a non-zero chance of killing everyone who was engaged in the fight.

Our second list is for the people who wanted to see what happens when the forces of the Misty Mountains all band together...

List #2: Goblin Kingdoms United
Goblin King
Goblin Scribe
20 Goblin Warriors
4 Goblin Warriors with two-handed picks

CONVENIENT ALLY: Moria

Groblog, King of the Deep
Moria Goblin Shaman
4 Moria Goblin Warriors with shields
4 Moria Goblin Warriors with spears
5 Moria Goblin Warriors with Orc bows
2 Cave Trolls with hand-and-a-half hammers

With only 43 models (yeah, only), we've really dropped on the numbers game, but recall that Goblin Scribes can bring more models onto the board - so this model count is only going to grow. In place of the buckets of Goblin Warriors that we had, we have a handful of Moria Goblin Warriors (more resilient) and 2 Cave Trolls (the real reason we take this list). While the Goblin King is very powerful, having only one power piece is often hard to win with - having three that are all basically the same is a completely different ballgame. While normal Goblin Warriors aren't that impressive, Groblog can make them Fight 3 (note that we don't have our army bonus to make the Goblins Fight 4 if they're fighting trapped models). We could have run shields/spears instead of Orc bows, but I hate leaving all the archers behind (if we wanted to do that, we might as well just take Goblin Warriors from Goblin-town). Don't think this is a very competitive list, but it would be fun.

That's it for the traditional army lists for this post - now for something very different.

5) An Excursion: How to Fight Smaug

Our tournaments now are trending towards 700 points, which I have wanted to avoid primarily because you can't bring Smaug to a tournament if it's smaller than 700 points. With some of the expensive heroes getting great boosts to make them more competitive, the point limit has been raised and that leads to my greatest fear being realized: 

I need to be able to fight Smaug.

But how does one do it? To understand this, we need to look at Smaug himself and then get some general plans for how to stop him:

• Smaug is Fight 8, Strength 9, Attacks 4 on offense - that's really, REALLY good. Most Forces of Good mega-heroes will be Fight 6, so even if they Heroic Strike against him, there's a 50% chance that they won't get to Fight 10 (and Smaug is all-but-guaranteed to get to Fight 10 if he counter-calls with Heroic Strike). If he does win, Strength 9 wounds most models on 3s, some very tough models on 4s, and the Dark Lord Sauron on 5s. That's...pretty powerful.
• Smaug is Defense 9 with 20 Wounds, so he's very hard to wound (and even if you do wound him, a glancing hit now and again is not going to accidentally kill him). Unlike the Undying or Sauron the Necromancer, Smaug gets actual Wounds (not Fate points), though there are some glaring vulnerabilities in Smaug's profile as well (no Fate points and the Missing Scale ability that makes Smaug take more wounds from enemy archery that hit on a 6). In the main, Smaug can easily be considered the hardest model to kill in the game.
• Smaug gets a free Will point each turn, which can either be used to Breathe Fire or to cast magical powers. Besides the free Will point each turn, he has 6 Will, which can either be used to cast magical powers (assuming the free one is going to be used to breathe fire) OR can be used to resist magical powers cast on you (Smaug is Resistant to Magic, but a single die might not be enough if your opponent gets a 5 or a 6 on his casting roll).
• Smaug can do damage when he Barges, which makes tying him down with a single model incredibly difficult - though since he doesn't get free Heroic Combats like the Balrog, he's not AS hard to tie down as the Balrog.
• Smaug can fly, allowing him to move his incredibly large base a far distance. This mobility complements his 18" bow-like shot when breathing fire, making him very maneuverable and potent on different parts of the field with ease (which is good, since he might be the only model you have).

So what do you do? In my completely theoretical opinion (since no one in my gaming group has plunked down the money to buy him), there is no one-answer to fighting Smaug - it's a tiered approach (plans upon plans to beat him). This is what the Dwarves try to do in the movie (and Bard in Lake-town kind of does it too), so it appears only right that we try it as well:

• Lots of Might - Smaug may be Fight 8, but with only 3 Might points, he can't Heroic Strike forever. Like any team with one power character, if you run out of Might on that character, smaller power heroes can be a real problem. While Smaug might not be wounded easily by many of the Champions of Erebor or Thorin's Company, the extensive access to Heroic Strike on F5/6 characters, paired with an insanely high Might store can mean that late in the game Smaug isn't winning fights (and so isn't getting kills).
• High-Strength Archery - while siege engines are expensive, they're great at one thing: busting through tough targets. While there are few targets as tough as Smaug (the Balrog and either version of Sauron certainly come to mind), Smaug's glaring weakness against archery is huge. Only a handful of shots will hit on a natural 6 (Might can't be used to boost), but when they do they'll deal loads of wounds if the roll to Wound is successful. Siege engines aren't the only things that can cause problems - Thrown Stones from Trolls and even crossbow volleys can be lethal to Smaug (though crossbows will only wound on a 6/4+).
• Blinding Light (or a similar rule) - a surprisingly large number of armies have access to the Blinding Light magical power (Minas Tirith via Gandalf the White, Rivendell via Cirdan, Lothlorien via Galadriel, Fellowship/Shire/Survivors of Lake-town/Thorin's Company/White Council via Gandalf the Grey). Other teams have access to models who don't have the Cast Blinding Light skill, but have similar shooting penalties to nearby models (Mordor via the Shadow Lord, the White Council again via Galadriel). Still other teams have conditional limits on high-strength archery (Iron Hills via the "Twirlie Whirlies"). However you try to accomplish this, there are ways that you can prevent archery, and since Smaug's Breathe Fire ability functions like a bow, he'll be affected by these rules. If Smaug can't breathe fire against your best troops, he'll be forced to maneuver and charge you (which is still dangerous, but you might be able to deprive him of a kill during a few rounds).
• Immunity to Standard Brutal Power Attacks - Since Smaug gets special benefits from Barge, we'll focus on that one (though a very few models will have a Strength stat high enough that they can't be Hurled and that makes Rending harder than wounding normally. Barge normally doesn't do damage, but Smaug does damage whenever he throws his weight around. Models like Glorfindel with the Armor of Gondolin and Dwarf Vault Warden Iron Shields have special rules that specifically highlight immunity to such powers (in this case, all three BPAs).
• Immobilize/Transfix - While most models with the Fly special rule groan when they're Commanded/Compelled, Smaug has a nice rule that says he can't be moved by other things. Thankfully, it's easier for casters who have Command/Compel to cast the simpler versions of Immobilize/Transfix and despite the general nerfing of these abilities, they remain the most common spells for spell casters to have. While both of these powers have gotten weaker since the last few versions of the game, they provide a handful of key benefits (most notably the inability to move, the inability to call Heroic Actions, and the inability to kill things if you win the fight). Most of the guys in my gaming group seem to think magical powers are a cheesy way to take down heroes (and I've cited two of them here), but hey - Smaug has spells of his own, so using magic against him is perfectly understandable.

So what lists can do these things? Let's look at a few.

List #1: Send These Foul Creatures Into The Abyss
Gandalf the White on Shadowfax
Avenger Bolt Thrower with Swift Reload and an additional crewman
Avenger Bolt Throwers with Swift Reload and 2 additional crewmen
<320-points of whatever else from Minas Tirith you want, but I'm going to submit the following>
Denethor
16 Guards of the Fountain Court with shields
11 Rangers of Gondor

The key to this list is Gandalf protecting the two Avenger Bolt Throwers (and everyone else, if I'm honest). If you shoot and shoot and shoot and STILL can't kill the darn wyrm, you have plenty of Bodyguard warriors (16 with spears) to charge him if you need to. Two Avenger Bolt Throwers ought to be plenty (though with only 24" range, you're likely to only get off two volleys against the beast. Still, with 2*MAX(2D6) Strength 7 bolts (average of ~9 shots between the two each round), you're going to pack a punch with each quarrel that does hit (and do LOADS of wounds if you get any hits on a natural 6). That, supplemented by 11 bows (that wound on 6/6, granted), and you should get something in. Gandalf provides not only the archery-protection (aka Fire protection), but also allows you to Immobilize Smaug to keep him away from your men, giving you precious time to shoot some more. Sorcerous Blast could also be useful, though it would need to be to finish him off, since it won't do more than 1 Wound to him.

Let's make a note of one thing before we leave this list: it's not optimized to fight Smaug - it's kind of a normal list. GotFC, while incredibly powerful, don't actually see any benefits against Smaug by taking shields (his claws AND fire both treat D6 and D7 the same). Similarly, we would be better served (I think) by taking Citadel Guard with Longbows, but in most normal games, Rangers wound on nearly the same amount, hit more often, and are 2pts cheaper per model. While we might not see 2 Avenger Bolt Throwers in a normal game, they do provide excellent archery cover with non-archer models (making them one of the best ways to get massive archery AND force your opponent to come to you because that kind of archery can't just be weathered). Our next list takes a very different tact.

List #2: The Pall of Darkness
The Shadow Lord on Fell Beast
The Tainted on Fell Beast
The Knight of Umbar on Fell Beast
The Witch-King on Armored Horse with the Crown of Morgul, Morgul Blade, 3M/18W/3F

Ah, the Mordor Royal Air Force - gotta love it. While this army is terrifying (did you notice the pun there?) against conventional lists, it's also very good at hunting down and destroying a single model that's causing lots of problems. I thought about taking a Rivendell list with lots of Elven heroes, but since many tournaments in the UK have featured a list like this one, I figured it was more appropriate to showcase this list instead. I've always loved the Ringwraiths and here we see the four most potent against Smaug in a world all their own:

• The Shadow Lord's purpose in the list is simple: providing cover against the dreaded archery of the dragon (or any other team, to be completely honest). Mounting him on a Fell Beast not only gives him great maneuverability, but also allows him to do decent damage on the charge (thanks to 3 Attacks on the charge and S6). That said, I don't recommend that you attack with him - put up your archery cloud as you advance and once the fighting begins, switch to casting and force Smaug to burn up his Will preventing Transfix/Drain Courage from going off.
• Smaug, as we've seen, has incredibly powerful stats - but the Knight of Umbar can mimic those stats to make sure that you get to match the dreaded Dragon on an even playing-ground. Note that because Combat Mimicry is done BEFORE calling Heroic Actions, Smaug could still call a Heroic Strike (and the Knight of Umbar doesn't have Heroic Strike, so wouldn't go up in Fight value). Should the Knight of Umbar win, he doesn't lose any Will points for the Will of Evil special rule, which is good since he's losing Will for the Combat Mimicry.
• The Tainted is an annoying little jerk who can deal a one-off wound to Smaug before the battle begins while using the multi-attack of the Fell Beast instead of his sad 1 Attack. This won't kill Smaug outright, but it will work him down a bit during the course of the game.
• The Witch-King provides perhaps the best answer to Smaug, since he's the only character who can get up to 4 Attacks on his own and is the only one with access to Heroic Strike. Still, the Witch-King's real prowess comes from his 18 Will points and the Crown of Morgul, which will allow you to cast Sap Will to weaken Smaug's resistance to your magical powers. Without access to Heroic Strike, the Knight of Umbar is allowed to copy-cat Smaug's powers with impunity, which is HUGE. In your back-pocket, you've also got the Morgul Blade, which allows you to kill Smaug outright if you can get a single wound on the target (wounding at Strength 4 on 6/4+, you can throw all 3 Might points at the first attempt to guarantee the second one is a success). Like I said before, without Fate points, Smaug is vulnerable. It's important to note that the Balrog only takes half of his remaining wounds when hit by a Morgul Blade, but Smaug has no such rule...and the Balrog is half the cost AND immune to fire-based attacks...but let's not compare too much, shall we?

As great as Smaug is, I think this team is stronger (and might even be helped by dropping one of these guys and taking a Mordor Troll Chieftain and some Morgul Knights, hmmm...). Unlike the first list, this list is pretty tailored to fighting Smaug - not sure that I would run the Morgul Blade over +2 Will in most cases (as most heroes just save their Fate for when you say "I'm using the Morgul Blade"), but in this case it's totally worth it.

That's it for the evil forces from the Armies of the Hobbit - next we turn to the forces of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, covering some really unique mixes of hero-heavy and warrior-heavy armies (including some of the toughest armies to crack in the game to-date). It'll be great - until then, happy hobbying!