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.

Making Trees (a.k.a. don't throw anything away)

Good morning gamers,

As the TMAT GT 2019 approaches, I'm making terrain! I've always believed that the best way to get a terrain project done is to give yourself a deadline and I've been working on forests for quite a while (read, since I got started almost nine years ago). Today's post is informed by YouTube videos from The Terrain Tutor, though there are other channels on YouTube who will show you how to do this too (I'm subscribe to Lukes Aps as well).

Is Heroic Strike Good? (Part I: Fight Value and the Anatomy of a Duel)

Having finished a lengthy discussion of an oft-sneered-at heroic action that nobody uses (Heroic Strength), I figured it'd be fun to examine a heroic action at the other end of the spectrum that everyone values: Heroic Strike.

One of the first things new players learn in our game is the importance of fight value. If your fight value is higher than your opponent's, you can auto-win a duel if you roll a six (or can obtain a six through other shenanigans, usually involving banners and/or character-specific special rules and/or Might). You also win if you happen to roll higher on any die than your opponent, or if you roll the same as your opponent. If your fight value is tied with your opponent's, you only win outright if you roll higher than your opponent, and if you tie (or both roll a "6"), then you go to the dreaded roll-off where your fate is (literally) decided by (even more) random chance (than usual). And if your fight value is lower than your opponent's ... well, let's just say it can get very frustrating very quickly.

Most heroes boast a fight value of 5 or 6 (there are notable exceptions on both ends, of course). But as any seasoned player knows, there's a massive difference between FV5 and FV6. FV5 is usually good enough for dealing with regular troops, but not all elites, most heroes (even at low hero tiers), and almost all monsters. FV6 is good enough for dealing with most elite troops (but not all) and most low-end heroes, but not mid-to-high tier heroes, and again, most monsters will still pose a problem.

Enter Heroic Strike: the pinnacle of rule-breaking, at the cost of a Might point it allows our lowly hero to become as adept at fighting at the Balrog himself (although usually "as good as Gil-Galad" is good enough). Game-winning when it works, game-breaking when it doesn't, and usually game-slogging all the time, it is largely considered the most important heroic action to have in a hero's arsenal (now that not all heroes can call all heroic actions).

But are we really sure it's good?

(Controversial maths ahead...)

Heroic Srength: APPENDIX B: At Least and Expected Distributions for Heroic Strength (and Other Things)

This will be the last in our discussion of Heroic Strength. We left off last time in Appendix A looking at simulated dice rolls as a way of measuring the likelihood of "wasting" a point of Might on Heroic Strength. This time, we'll be tackling the same question using two more measuring tools: at least distributions and expected distributions.

An at least distribution chart attempts to convey the probability that we will score "at least" X results. For wounds (the primary thing we'll be mapping on these charts), this means our probability of scoring at least 0 wounds, 1 wound, 2 wounds, etc. out of however many to-wound dice our hero has. We made extensive use of these charts in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series, looking at the odds that characters like Aragorn and Boromir would have of scoring at least X wounds when they wound on 6s, 5s, and 4s, so they're not entirely new to us.

An expected distribution chart measures the same data, but instead of telling us how many 0+, 1+, 2+, etc. we scored, this chart tells us the probability that we will roll exactly zero 6s, one 6, two 6s, three 6s, and so on. And since the probability of rolling a particular result (like a 6) is important for lots of reasons in our game beyond wounding, these charts may be of interest to you even if you've long lost interest in Heroic Strength.

(Maths ahead...)

Magic In MESBG, Part IV: Lothlorien

Good morning gamers,

This post wraps up our discussion of magic for a while, as we look at the army I'm bringing to the TMAT GT 2019 - Lothlorien. If you haven't caught up yet, check out our discussions on Gandalf the Grey (in Thorin’s Company) and Gandalf the White (in Minas Tirith - though we did a second post on him going in-depth into some of the things you can do with him here), and Saruman (in Isengard) for some background -  we'll be referring back to these a bit. Lothlorien/Mirkwood was my first army that I "finished" in LOTR SBG, but I've added a few models to it over time and have managed to NEVER take it to a GT. So, here we are. While the list you're about to see is FAR from competitive, it should be fun and emphasizes the one thing Elves do better than anyone else: shoot at stuff.

Heroic Strength: APPENDIX A: Heroic Strength vs. Mighting your to-Wound Rolls

I'm back! It's been a crazy month involving moving trucks and all that entails, plus trying to finalize my list for TMAT's upcoming Grand Tournament (I think I'm almost there... but I've thought that at least a dozen times in the last twelve days, so...). 

We closed out Part 3 of our series on Heroic Strength (you can find Part 1 and Part 2 here) by asking the following question:

Question 2: Does the probability of wounding with Heroic Strength outweigh the certainty of wounding if I save that Might point to modify a wound roll?

The reason we saved that discussion for later is that it really launches us fully into a secondary discussion of opportunity costs in general, which needed some additional problem-solving. I’m not a math expert, and the probability calculators that I usually use offer the probability of rolling a number combination on 2 or more dice (sum of 7, sum of 11, etc.), which is great for calculating courage tests (more on them in the future, perhaps) but not for providing a breakdown on the probability of rolling each individual number on X number of dice or the expected odds of rolling each number on each die, both of which are what we’re really concerned about here (in a D6-based game). Which means I had to get more creative.

Because I couldn’t find a single metric that adequately addressed this problem in a way I could understand, I’ve decided to tackle it instead using several different methods. In this Appendix, we’ll start with a batch of simulated dice rolls to give us a sense of what various to-wound rolls look like before and after Heroic Strength modifications. In a future write-up, we’ll consider some other, broader, methods, like expected outcome distributions and custom dice simulations.

Finally, if you're still wondering why we're still going on and on about Heroic Strength, which is clearly a niche heroic action, the data we're looking at is useful for other things as well--we're going to look specifically at wounding and the frequency with which +1 modifiers improve our dice rolls (and at what point we start suffering diminishing returns, or their opposite), so you can substitute your favorite +1 modifier for Heroic Strength/Might-to-wound (like two-handed weapons, Backstabbers, Hatred (X), etc.) or even +1 modifiers unrelated to wounding (i.e., +1 on climb tests for Cave Dwellers, or +1 on reinforcement rolls). Spoiler alert: +1 modifiers, especially +1 modifiers that operate on multiple dice, are tremendous value.

More maths awaits…

(which isn’t grammatically correct, but it alliterates… sorta…)

Magic in MESBG, Part III: Isengard

Good morning gamers,

Today we continue our discussion on magic by examining Isengard and the addition of Saruman to Isengard armies. If you’re new to the discussion, check out our discussions on Gandalf the Grey (in Thorin’s Company) and Gandalf the White (in Minas Tirith - though we did a second post on him going in-depth into some of the things you can do with him here) for some background. While Isengard has many good heroes and lots of great warrior choices, deciding whether or not to spend 180 points on Saruman can be difficult. So, to help frame the discussion of today’s post, let’s look at some lists.

Magic in MESBG, Part II-B: Responding To The Critics

Good morning gamers,

My good mate MinutemanKirk made some very valid and interesting comments on my last post about how the case for Gandalf the White over Mega-Boromir was a difficult case to make (and he highlighted quite accurately that what my post ACTUALLY meant to say was that Gandalf was better than Boromir in some lists/cases – thanks for that, man). We’re going to look at a few of the thoughts brought up there, since our readers probably have those same thoughts too (as lengthy as my comment reply was, I barely scratched the surface...so I decided just to write another post).

Magic in MESBG, Part II: Minas Tirith

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we looked at how adding Gandalf the Grey to a Thorin’s Company list doesn’t provide too much of a setback to your army while providing some excellent mitigations to the team’s greatest weaknesses. In today’s post, we’ll be looking at the “new-and-improved version” of Gandalf (Gandalf the White) and how using this hero in a Minas Tirith army can greatly improve the resiliency of your team (and provide some powerful tools on offense as well). Brace yourselves - this post is kinda long...

Magic in MESBG, Part I: Thorin’s Company

Good morning gamers,

This post begins a four-part series on magic in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. It’s been said by several world-renowned SBG gamers that magic has suffered greatly with the newest release. In the same breath, many of the armies proposed by these renowed gamers still include some magic casters in competitive lists (Cirdan, Easterling War Priest, Saruman, Ringwraiths/Barrow-Wights, Gandalf the Grey in Shire, Ringwraiths/Mouth of Sauron/Orc Shaman). This got me thinking: as a long-time lover of magic as a tool in the MESBG, how can you employ magic in order to turn a good list into a better list (and what are the trades).