Good morning gamers!
So before last Christmas, I bought Faramir and Damrod from my good mate Glenstorm along with 6 Rangers of Gondor (with the intention of double-using all eight of them as Dunedain when playing my Fellowship of the Ring campaign). Over Christmas and a wedding in January, I acquired 48 Warriors of Minas Tirith. About three weeks later, Gandalf the White (foot and mounted from the Two Towers edition) arrived from Australia. With buckets of Warriors of Minas Tirith to paint, we had a proper project on our hands (and LOTS of decisions to make). So, here's what we did:
The Army - High Level Decisions
The first high-level decision that we made was this: do we try to do one of the new Legendary Legions (I've always wanted an army like the Rangers of Ithilien one that they made in Gondor at War) or do we go for a more traditional one taken from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book. My ending decision was as follows:
Gandalf the White is amazing - for reasons we'll delve into in another post. The short reason is that a) assuming you don't run Denethor or King Aragorn, he can be your army leader if you want, b) he has great auric powers that lend greater protection to friendly models, and c) his offensive spells can be utterly deadly to most foes that you face. All in all, while costing about the same as mega-Boromir and King Aragorn, I think he's actually better than the two (hold off on the comments until you read my post on Gandalf the White coming soon).
The next decision that I made was that I wanted this army (however I built it) to rely on shooting as its primary means of doing damage. While a Rangers of Ithilien list would be far better suited for it, we came to the following decision:
Avenger Bolt Throwers are a neat way to equip melee models (you start with one Warrior and one Minor Hero) with range weapons. While not as powerful (or long-range) as Trebuchets, you don't scatter the same way as you would with normal siege weapons. In trade for passing up an insta-kill against non-D10/10H models, you get D6 S7 shots per turn (and with Swift Reload, you get the better of 2D6), which is more dangerous in most cases against grunt troops. With a plentitude of Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows, I anticipate great conversions to turn these archers into siege engineers.
The final decision that we made was about our melee grunts: do we go for Shieldwall (new rule for the Warrior of Minas Tirith profile) or do we pay +1 point per model to get Osgiliath Veterans. After playing several games with Shieldwall, I agreed with Rythbryt's assessment that keeping Shieldwall is hard. So, we came to the final decision:
"Wait!" I hear you say, "I thought Decision #2 said no Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows - just Rangers and Avenger Bolt Throwers?" Yes, you read that correctly. I did want some flexibility to have higher defense archers, so I'm keeping some of my Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows as bowmen, but also equipping them with shields. "Wait!" I hear you also say, "Warriors equipped with bows don't get a defensive bonus when also equipped with shields!" You'd be correct in that they don't get a defense bonus from the shield - but the Shieldwall rule says that you need to be a) standing b) in base contact with two other standing models c) who also have shields d) and the Shieldwall rule in order to get +1 Defense. It doesn't say that you need to have the defense bonus from the shield to get the Shieldwall bonus - you just need to have a shield. Thanks to this rule, these guys are D6 (albeit for +1 point/model than Rangers and having a worse FV/SV). This requires them to be standing next to each other, but if backed up by spearmen, you should be able to trigger the defense bonus against most archers.
That's it for the discussion of decisions - picture time!
The Army - Osgiliath Veteran Conversions
When I first looked into Minas Tirith (back in the Fall of 2010), I was like "If I ever get these guys, I'm getting Faramir." Anyone who says "I'm getting Faramir" probably sees the benefits of running "OsVets" - they're slightly more expensive than Warriors of Minas Tirith (WoMT) and they can be +1FV and +1 Courage (which makes them C5 with the new army bonus). While this comes now at the trade of Shieldwall (which can allow WoMT to be D7), after playing a few games, I decided that being D7 a) didn't have any difference in whether S3 models wounded you or not, and b) is a hard rule to keep active (unless you trap yourself or have the new Ingold model...where you're still trapping yourself). As such, I'm opting for the higher FV/C and going with OsVets on my swordsmen:
OsVets with spears and shields cost the same as Guards of the Fountain Court, so I don't think they're worth it. Hence, I'm keeping my spear models as normal WoMT for 9 points each (same cost as my OsVets, still cheaper than Uruks):
If you're going to keep the Shieldwall rule, you want to move in a hexagonal pattern, which requires 7 models. We'll discuss why this is in a later post - stay tuned!
The Army - What To Do About Archer Models?
If you're going to run a Minas Tirith army, the cost of running a Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow and a Ranger of Gondor is the same (and both can take spears for +1pt/model). Most of our users on the blog opt for the Rangers over the Warriors of Minas Tirith because of the improved Fight/Shoot values (as opposed to the slightly higher Defense). Not to break wholly from tradition, I'll be running some rangers.
But Rangers are squishy - with only D4, they are very vulnerable to S2 archery and S4 melee/shooting damage. While Gandalf the White (more on him in a moment) can mitigate most of the archery, high-volume archery armies will still take their toll on your Rangers. So, it occurred to me that for +1 point, I could get much more resilient archers by taking shields and bows on some of my Warriors of Minas Tirith (see picture above). As mentioned above, so long as these guys are touching each other (or other infantry models with Shieldwall - like those spearmen), they're D6!
So what am I doing with all the other "boring" Warriors of Minas Tirith? Why, turning them into crewmen for Avenger Bolt Throwers of course! One of them will be converted into Beregond, but I like that Avenger Bolt Throwers allow melee models to participate in the Shoot phase (and to do so with high-Strength archery - perfect for cleaving through D6/D7 models and not shabby against D8/D9 models). I've over-spent my hobby budget getting some really great deals on used miniatures, so I won't be getting the Balsa Wood I need to make my Avenger Bolt Throwers for a while, but when I get them, you'll see some posts on the blog.
The Army - The Heroes
I've always liked Gandalf the White, but the new revamps to his profile (at no additional cost to him!) have made him FANTASTIC and for me, he's an auto-include:
Gandalf is a flexible hero, but we'll cover everything he does in a later post. For now, let it suffice to say that unlike King Aragorn or Mega-Boromir, Gandalf provides lots of auric benefits that can make your team (and your heroes especially) much more resilient to taking damage or suffering negative status effects. I'll note that both King Aragorn and Mega-Boromir have great auric benefits that assist in the offensive attributes of your team (namely banner bonuses), but I've foregone these in favor of the defensive ones.
Supporting Gandalf (and actually leading our team) is Faramir, assisted by Damrod:
And The Most Important Thing For Last...
One final note - you may have noticed, but I've caved and began monetizing the blog. The blog gets lots of views (we've been around for nine years this past month and have over 210,000 page views). With over 4,000 page views in the last 30 days, this provides us with a reasonable claim to readership. If you don't like it, let me know - I'm going to take the next month to refine what kinds of ads we allow (I have standards), but I'll take what you all say into consideration. Lest my fellow admins think I'm using this to line my pockets, the idea is that we can use the funds that we generate from this blog to sponsor LOTR-related things (e.g. prizes/trophies for GTs we run, pay fees at a local gaming store, sponsor people going to the NOVA GT). And yes, we could also sponsor the few of us that run this blog to get more miniatures. ;)
Hope you enjoyed this update - I'm going to be busily working on my Wood Elves and Uruks before our GT in May (still haven't decided which one to run). It'll all fall into place soon, I'm sure. I'm planning on doing a four-part Magic series in April to help get people acquainted with the magic I might be running (or thought about running) in the GT so as to give early warning about what to expect from my lists (since most of our guys don't use magic very often and so haven't dedicated as much thought to dealing with it as they might to smashy/shooty heroes). Until next time, happy hobbying!
So before last Christmas, I bought Faramir and Damrod from my good mate Glenstorm along with 6 Rangers of Gondor (with the intention of double-using all eight of them as Dunedain when playing my Fellowship of the Ring campaign). Over Christmas and a wedding in January, I acquired 48 Warriors of Minas Tirith. About three weeks later, Gandalf the White (foot and mounted from the Two Towers edition) arrived from Australia. With buckets of Warriors of Minas Tirith to paint, we had a proper project on our hands (and LOTS of decisions to make). So, here's what we did:
The Army - High Level Decisions
The first high-level decision that we made was this: do we try to do one of the new Legendary Legions (I've always wanted an army like the Rangers of Ithilien one that they made in Gondor at War) or do we go for a more traditional one taken from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book. My ending decision was as follows:
Decision #1: I want Gandalf the White.
Gandalf the White is amazing - for reasons we'll delve into in another post. The short reason is that a) assuming you don't run Denethor or King Aragorn, he can be your army leader if you want, b) he has great auric powers that lend greater protection to friendly models, and c) his offensive spells can be utterly deadly to most foes that you face. All in all, while costing about the same as mega-Boromir and King Aragorn, I think he's actually better than the two (hold off on the comments until you read my post on Gandalf the White coming soon).
The next decision that I made was that I wanted this army (however I built it) to rely on shooting as its primary means of doing damage. While a Rangers of Ithilien list would be far better suited for it, we came to the following decision:
Decision #2: We want Rangers and Avenger Bolt Throwers.
Avenger Bolt Throwers are a neat way to equip melee models (you start with one Warrior and one Minor Hero) with range weapons. While not as powerful (or long-range) as Trebuchets, you don't scatter the same way as you would with normal siege weapons. In trade for passing up an insta-kill against non-D10/10H models, you get D6 S7 shots per turn (and with Swift Reload, you get the better of 2D6), which is more dangerous in most cases against grunt troops. With a plentitude of Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows, I anticipate great conversions to turn these archers into siege engineers.
The final decision that we made was about our melee grunts: do we go for Shieldwall (new rule for the Warrior of Minas Tirith profile) or do we pay +1 point per model to get Osgiliath Veterans. After playing several games with Shieldwall, I agreed with Rythbryt's assessment that keeping Shieldwall is hard. So, we came to the final decision:
Decision #3: Shieldwall will be kept for Warriors of Minas Tirith with spears or bows.
"Wait!" I hear you say, "I thought Decision #2 said no Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows - just Rangers and Avenger Bolt Throwers?" Yes, you read that correctly. I did want some flexibility to have higher defense archers, so I'm keeping some of my Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows as bowmen, but also equipping them with shields. "Wait!" I hear you also say, "Warriors equipped with bows don't get a defensive bonus when also equipped with shields!" You'd be correct in that they don't get a defense bonus from the shield - but the Shieldwall rule says that you need to be a) standing b) in base contact with two other standing models c) who also have shields d) and the Shieldwall rule in order to get +1 Defense. It doesn't say that you need to have the defense bonus from the shield to get the Shieldwall bonus - you just need to have a shield. Thanks to this rule, these guys are D6 (albeit for +1 point/model than Rangers and having a worse FV/SV). This requires them to be standing next to each other, but if backed up by spearmen, you should be able to trigger the defense bonus against most archers.
That's it for the discussion of decisions - picture time!
The Army - Osgiliath Veteran Conversions
When I first looked into Minas Tirith (back in the Fall of 2010), I was like "If I ever get these guys, I'm getting Faramir." Anyone who says "I'm getting Faramir" probably sees the benefits of running "OsVets" - they're slightly more expensive than Warriors of Minas Tirith (WoMT) and they can be +1FV and +1 Courage (which makes them C5 with the new army bonus). While this comes now at the trade of Shieldwall (which can allow WoMT to be D7), after playing a few games, I decided that being D7 a) didn't have any difference in whether S3 models wounded you or not, and b) is a hard rule to keep active (unless you trap yourself or have the new Ingold model...where you're still trapping yourself). As such, I'm opting for the higher FV/C and going with OsVets on my swordsmen:
 |
| Haven't done anything to make them look weathered/veteran yet, will do something... |
 |
| I do like that you can pose their arms however you want - and oh look, archers with shields! |
The Army - What To Do About Archer Models?
If you're going to run a Minas Tirith army, the cost of running a Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow and a Ranger of Gondor is the same (and both can take spears for +1pt/model). Most of our users on the blog opt for the Rangers over the Warriors of Minas Tirith because of the improved Fight/Shoot values (as opposed to the slightly higher Defense). Not to break wholly from tradition, I'll be running some rangers.
 |
| Got these guys from Centaur as he was down-sizing his Ranger horde - I've always loved the poses, but never collected any until now. I'm looking at collecting more, simply because of their better offensive profile. |
So what am I doing with all the other "boring" Warriors of Minas Tirith? Why, turning them into crewmen for Avenger Bolt Throwers of course! One of them will be converted into Beregond, but I like that Avenger Bolt Throwers allow melee models to participate in the Shoot phase (and to do so with high-Strength archery - perfect for cleaving through D6/D7 models and not shabby against D8/D9 models). I've over-spent my hobby budget getting some really great deals on used miniatures, so I won't be getting the Balsa Wood I need to make my Avenger Bolt Throwers for a while, but when I get them, you'll see some posts on the blog.
The Army - The Heroes
I've always liked Gandalf the White, but the new revamps to his profile (at no additional cost to him!) have made him FANTASTIC and for me, he's an auto-include:
 |
| Probably one of the oldest and most common poses for Gandalf the White, but he's mine, so I don't care... |
Supporting Gandalf (and actually leading our team) is Faramir, assisted by Damrod:
 |
| More acquisitions from Centaur - have always wanted these models! |
I've always like the Osgiliath scenes in the Two Towers and the Return of the King - they're so exciting and the danger is real! Faramir and Damrod are fairly inexpensive heroes and are both archer heroes, allowing them to lead your archery-oriented armies to victory. While the new Gondor at War supplement provides a new Legendary Legion with these guys, it can't take Gandalf the White, so I'm not investing in it (though I'm sorely tempted).
And The Most Important Thing For Last...
One final note - you may have noticed, but I've caved and began monetizing the blog. The blog gets lots of views (we've been around for nine years this past month and have over 210,000 page views). With over 4,000 page views in the last 30 days, this provides us with a reasonable claim to readership. If you don't like it, let me know - I'm going to take the next month to refine what kinds of ads we allow (I have standards), but I'll take what you all say into consideration. Lest my fellow admins think I'm using this to line my pockets, the idea is that we can use the funds that we generate from this blog to sponsor LOTR-related things (e.g. prizes/trophies for GTs we run, pay fees at a local gaming store, sponsor people going to the NOVA GT). And yes, we could also sponsor the few of us that run this blog to get more miniatures. ;)
Hope you enjoyed this update - I'm going to be busily working on my Wood Elves and Uruks before our GT in May (still haven't decided which one to run). It'll all fall into place soon, I'm sure. I'm planning on doing a four-part Magic series in April to help get people acquainted with the magic I might be running (or thought about running) in the GT so as to give early warning about what to expect from my lists (since most of our guys don't use magic very often and so haven't dedicated as much thought to dealing with it as they might to smashy/shooty heroes). Until next time, happy hobbying!
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