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).

Let me begin by acknowledging (as I did in my comment) that his critique is not only well-received but also expected (not from him in particular, but from somebody with some good experience under their belt). As I highlighted in the list provided by David Clubley (and you’ll see Boromir leading a strong contingent of men alongside Fiefdoms/Rohan if you continue reading in that post), I expect most people’s response to looking at the Minas Tirith list will be something like this:

I want Boromir (or maybe Aragorn) as my key piece.

And I think, on the whole, they would be right.

But the point of these posts isn’t to say that taking a magic caster is the obvious choice for a player – in fact, I’ve generally found in my nearly nine years of playing the game (a kid compared to the greats, I know), that including a magic wielder can often complicate strategies – especially when you have so many choices in spells (like you get for Gandalf, Radagast, and Ringwraiths). Still, these characters exist for a reason and that reason, on the whole, is something like this:

I want unconventional ways of dealing with common problems.

And that’s what we’re going to look at today (with the help of comments to guide our discussion). While I did highlight a LOT in my own comment, this will serve to flesh the thoughts out a bit. Recall again, that I think the comments are all correct and showcase how most players will view the hobby. Read what I write as simply the minority counterpoint.

Gandalf the White vs. Boromir: On-Paper Comparison

On paper, Gandalf and Boromir are clearly different:

	FV	S	D	A	H	C	M	W	F
Boromir, Captain of the White Tower (shield, banner)	7/4+	4	7	31	3	7	6	3	3
Gandalf the White (Shadowfax wielding Glamdring)	5/4+	5	6	22	3	7	3	63	34

¹Banner reroll         ²Cavalry bonuses not applied           ³Free Will each turn             ⁴Reroll failures

Boromir has +2FV, +1A, and +3M (all good on offense) as well as grants himself a banner reroll (with no penalty for holding the banner, which is sweet), while Gandalf has +1S and +3W (which is good for casting and for killing whoever you beat, but not as good in general as bonus FV/A/M). This tells us clearly that Boromir is the better fighter…or does it? Let’s look at each part of the profile and understand what it does for us (and what it doesn’t do for us).

Fight Value & Attacks: How Much Do You Need?

Having a higher Fight Value than your opponent’s models is a good thing – if you play a few games with Elves, you’ll very quickly grow to love high Fight Values. I myself got started with the Mines of Moria starter set, so I played with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli fighting alongside (GASP) Gandalf and Boromir (in their minor versions) and can tell you that having high Fight Value is great. As such, my first armies (besides my beloved Gobbos) were composed of Wood Elf Warriors (FV 5/3+), Dwarf Warriors (FV 4/4+), and Uruk-Hai Warriors (FV 4/4+). High Fight Value is good.

But having a high Fight Value isn’t enough – you need a large number of attacks to back it up. As a commander of Wood Elf Warriors (and I’m bringing a TON of them to our GT next month), I can tell you that just because you have Fight 5 doesn’t mean you’ll win all the time – you need a large number of attacks too. Since Boromir essentially gets 4 Attack dice to win the fight with Fight 7, he does well on this count as well (and certainly much better than Gandalf).

But how important is a high Fight Value anyway? And when does a high Fight Value have diminishing returns? Boromir may be great, but if he’s fighting someone who’s Fight 5, being Fight 7 does mean that he’s winning ties, but he has to tie high dice for that high Fight to actually do anything. Most of the time when a hero is fighting, he’s trying desperately to get a 6 on one die so that he can say, “I have a 6 and the higher Fight Value, so while all my other dice were terrible, I win the fight!” And he wouldn’t be wrong. Against F5 foes, someone like Boromir could choose to Feint, but 33% of the time, he’ll actually go to a Fight Value BELOW his opponent, so against Fight 5 foes (who featured prominently in the comments on my last post) Boromir is likely to keep his Fight 7 and just fight “normally.” In our most recent THRO tournament, I actually fought Mega-Boromir with banner with Fight 5 High Elves (and later Elendil) and lo and behold, he never Feinted once. Not once.

If your opponents are F2-4, you can Feint with impunity (something Gandalf can’t do), so Boromir can certainly get some good utility out of this neat little trick – especially if he’s allowed to blow the Horn of Gondor and win the fight before any dueling dice are even rolled. Boromir is, without a doubt, very, VERY good in combat.

But so is Gandalf. While Gandalf isn’t Fight 7, he is Fight 5 and since our meta at least is F4/D6 (with more and more people trying out Elves it seems), Fight 5 is “fine.” Consider:

• Most Warriors in most armies are F2-4 – Fight 5 beats these as well as Fight 7 (except that you’re less likely to risk Feinting against F3-4);
• Some armies have F5 warriors, but Gandalf wields an Elven-made-hand-and-a-half-sword, so he’ll either have a 50/50 chance of winning against Elven-made weapons OR he’ll have a 67/33 chance of winning against mundane weapons;
• Some armies have a handful of warrior choices that are Fight 6 (mostly monsters, but Lothlorien have some that are “normal people”) – you tend to know where these models are, though, and with added mobility (like from a 12” move mount), you can avoid them if you want to;
• Many heroes are F4-5, so even against heroes you’re likely to have a roll-off (and before you say “But Heroic Strike!?!?!?!” recall that characters who are Immobilized can’t call Heroic actions, so we’re just looking at base capabilities);
• Against heroes/monsters who are F6+, Immobilize/Command work pretty well too, in that you can root them in place and avoid them OR charge them knowing that even if you lose, you don’t take any wounds (so it’s kind of a pot-shot).

These last two points highlight the next thing we’re going to look at with Gandalf: while Boromir is great in combat on paper, functionally he’s limited by what he’s fighting – he’s a great piece and in a vacuum he should do lots of damage, but in practice, he’s far more limited.

The Toolkit Approach: How Do I HAVE To Tackle Hard Problems?

Most heroes have one way of dealing with enemy models: attack them, beat them, kill them. Some heroes have an alternate path to fighting in melee thanks to a ranged weapon: shoot them, kill them. Both of these approaches rely on the innate stats of the hero (Fight Value, Strength of weapon, Attacks/number of shots) to overwhelm the defensive bonuses of the target (most notably Defense and Wounds, but also Fight Value and Attacks if you’re duking it out in melee).

Magic is different: while it does rely on the stats of your hero, it relies on a different stat: Will points. Whether you’re casting or resisting, your Will points (and any applicable special rules) are the only thing between either the board remaining unchanged or some game-changing event occurring. Below are the most common scenarios I find myself using Gandalf the White in (and most of them involve Gandalf as a melee hero because you NEED to do damage with him):

Situation #1: The Troll Charge

If you’ve never faced more than one Cave Troll in a game, you’ve really missed out. The principal we’re going to address here, however, involves more than one multi-Attack, high Fight Value model that lacks Will points. The most blatant example of this is when you have 2+ Cave Trolls romping towards you. If they get to any hero (especially now that they’re Burly with hand-and-a-half hammers), that hero is in serious trouble. Since we’re looking at a F7 Boromir, we’re going to up these to Mordor Trolls instead (just to make things interesting). While Boromir knows that the only way he can deal with this threat is to fight it and win the duel/roll-off (besides blowing the Horn of Gondor), units like Gandalf don’t have as much to worry about – when the Trolls are still far away from him (12” away, let’s say), you can cast Command on them (success on a 3+) and move one of the Trolls 3” back the way it came. The first half of its next turn’s movement will be recouping how far he got last time, at which point you turn to his friend and move him backwards as well.

The impact of this strategy depends greatly on who gets priority (since if Gandalf’s team gets Priority, the Troll that’s targeted won’t be able to advance at all and loses a turn of action). In just two rounds, there are four possibilities for how far the Trolls will have advanced:

Two Rounds Casting Command	Turn 2: Minas Tirith Priority	Turn 2: Mordor Priority
Turn 1: Minas Tirith Priority	TrollA gets moved 3” back; then moves 6” forward (+3”) Troll B moves 6” forward; then gets moved 3” back (+3”)	TrollA gets moved 3” back; then moves 6” forward (+3”) Troll B moves 6” forward; then moves 6” forward and gets moved 3” back (+9”)
Turn 1: Mordor Priority	TrollA moves 6” forward and gets moved 3” back; then moves 6” forward (+9”) Troll B moves 6” forward; then gets moved 3” back (+3”)	TrollA moves 6” forward and gets moved 3” back; then moves 6” forward (+9”) Troll B moves 6” forward; then moves 6” forward and gets moved 3” back (+9”)

In the worst possible case, the Trolls have gained 9” of ground when they could have gained 12” of ground. The question then becomes for their supporting models (a line of Morannon Orcs perhaps): do we advance 3” ahead of the Trolls? Do we let them enter the fight a turn later? At the same time, the Minas Tirith team has options to make as well: do we continue to retreat to make the distance between the Trolls and the Orc battle line even greater (and buy ourselves more time to shoot)? Do we move our line away from where the stuck trolls are to add more distance they need to travel?

Situation #2: The Hulking-Hero Challenge

Many armies field one (sometimes two to six) major heroes that you don’t want to have to fight. This situation is characterized by one or more hero models that you are afraid might kill your best hero. While Boromir is a gifted warrior, there are some heroes (Glorfindel, Gil-Galad, Azog, William/Tom the Troll) who are going to give him a rough go of it if they fight. While Boromir is awesome, the lack of an Elven-made weapon (which King Aragorn and Gandalf have…) means that on a roll-off against these kinds of guys, tying Fight values isn’t good enough – you have to beat them. While Azog and Tom/William don’t have Elven-made weapons either, Azog’s “I-wound-enemy-heroes-on-3s” rule is will negate all that armor Boromir is wearing (with a free counter-call of heroic actions if taken in the Azog’s Legion army list), Tom can sneeze on Boromir to make him Fight 4 (Fight 5 if he calls Heroic Strike), and William can Mince ‘Em Fine if he wins (estimating 3-5 Wounds against Boromir if he wins).

With Immobilize, the job is much easier: glare at the hero you don’t want to have to deal with and before he can do anything to you, hit him with Immobilize (you only need your free Will point, but you can use more than one just to make him work harder). Once immobilized, your target will be running the risk of not being able to fight with the rest of the group and falling behind. As the battle lines engage, your job doesn’t have to be to fight the guy – you just have to keep him from doing anything. As my good friend commented, every piece needs to deal its weight in damage OR force your opponent to play differently. An immobilized hero isn’t doing either of those things and Gandalf is doing at least the latter.

Situation #3: The Support Piece

There are many nasty heroes who play a support role (and often are skulking around in the back of an army). Our situation here involves a hero who isn’t intended to fight but instead provides some kind of global buff to its allies or debuff to its foes. Heroes like Groblog, shamans, Malbeth the Seer, Cirdan, Shades, Barrow-Wights, The Dark Marshal/Shadow Lord/Dwimmerlaik – they all benefit from staying out of the initial fight and lending auric benefits to their teammates. For someone like Boromir, your only respite is to cut your way through the ranks to get to them (and for Shades/Barrow-Wights/Dark Marshal, that can be really hard). Even with shooting heroes, you’ll probably have to pass multiple in-the-way rolls to hit these guys (if they present themselves as targets at all).

Magic wielders have other options: while you could always cast Command on these guys, you can often get more movement out of Sorcerous Blast. Cast on a slightly higher difficulty (4+ vs. 3+), you can spend your free Will point + 1 Will to send your target flying backwards (and deal some damage to them and anyone they run into). For auric heroes, it’s often helpful to avoid hitting other models just so the target goes flying even farther backwards. Since half their movement will be getting back on their feet, the army they’re meant to support will be LONG gone by the time they remember where they are. Against spirit-based auric heroes, you also have the option of Banishment – and for the ones listed above, 2-3 successes will kill them all.

Situation #4: The Mass Horde

The last situation we’re going to look at is what happens when there isn’t a big target to hit – what happens when there are buckets and buckets and buckets of warriors are charging your way? In this situation, Boromir might seem like a much better candidate, except for one thing: he still needs to wound them. While wounding D3-4 warriors isn’t that hard (Goblin-Town, Moria, Lake-town, Shire, some Uruk-Hai Scouts), most armies field D5-6 warriors, who are wounded on 5s. Statistically, you should get 1 Wound/turn this way (which isn’t a great return for Boromir). Yes, you’ll probably not die (you may not ever take a Wound), but you won’t be killing much either (and if the goal is killing your points, you’ll be hard pressed to do that during the course of the game).

Switch to Gandalf: while Sorcerous Blast isn’t as great as it used to be, it can still reliably put two models on the ground, making them much easier to kill (either by you or by friendly warriors). I used Sorcerous Blast a lot since starting out in the hobby and I can tell you this about the magical power:

The purpose of Sorcerous Blast isn’t dealing damage – it’s about putting models on the ground.

Whether you’re Saruman working alongside Uruk-Hai or Gandalf working alongside the sons of Gondor, the point is the same: anyone you don’t kill with the G-Force of your staff will be killed by the angular momentum of someone else’s sword. Wounding models is key – and while heroes do that better than warriors, you still need your warriors to contribute if you’re going to kill enough models to break someone by the end of the game. While Boromir’s banner does a good job of that (both in the FV department and with the number of dice they roll to win the fight), putting a few people on the ground is also very helpful.

But there is another way that you can augment your abilities against a mass horde with Gandalf: protection. Fighting armies with high model counts tends to mean that there’s one of two things going on: first, the army could just be running TONS of melee guys. If this is the case, they’re probably all infantry and you can run Gandalf wherever you want, staying outside of charge range, until you’ve picked off a few that you can slam into on a charge. Anyone he distracts from the main charge will be a welcome relief to your troops. While you can mount Boromir and try to do this as well, the lack of ranged capabilities on him means committing him (instead of skirmishing first to soften your opponent up). Plus, if any of his models wish to charge Gandalf, they’ll need to pass a Courage Test to do so, assuming you’ve cast Terrifying Aura. While courage tests are a common thing when fighting Boromir as well, Gandalf can channel Terrifying Aura to make courage tests be taken at a disadvantage (lower two of three dice) – which has no small impact on the results for models that are C5 and below:

C	P(SUCCESS_NORMAL)	P(SUCCESS_CHANNEL)	DIFF	Key
7	97.2%	92.6%	-4.6%	90-100%
6	91.7%	80.1%	-11.6%	80-90%
5	83.3%	64.4%	-19.0%	70-80%
4	72.2%	47.7%	-24.5%	60-70%
3	58.3%	31.9%	-26.4%	50-60%
2	41.7%	19.4%	-22.2%	40-50%
1	27.8%	10.6%	-17.1%	0-40%

So if you look at the chart, you’ll notice a few things: first, the channeled version of Terrifying Aura skips more bands than the normal version – you have C6-7 models doing really well (80% or better), you have C4-5 models (who are normally reliable at passing Courage tests) doing poorly (45-65%), and C2-3 models quite unlikely to pass (roughly 20-30%). If you’re Gandalf and someone wants to charge you, chances are they live in one of the lower two groups, which means to get more than one model to charge you, they’re going to need to throw 4-5 models at you in the hopes that two stick. While these can then be supported, that’s a sizeable horde sent your way (and you can stay out of reach and Sorcerous Blast a few to thin the herd a bit).

The second approach by large horde armies is that because the army is so large, they can pack a lot of archery (making even bad archers a reliable source of damage). While I’m one of a handful of people in our group who still does this, it’s still a problem that you need to be prepared for – and as addressed in my previous post, Boromir isn’t well suited to keeping this from being a problem. If you surround him with a Shieldwall formation, it becomes even worse, because Boromir is likely to be on-par for Defense with your other models, making him a more valuable target for waves of archery. Gandalf, as we’ve said countless times over, provides a great counter-point to archery (and if you follow Mik’s lead and focus on archery as well, you can force your opponent to forego all that archery in favor of becoming a melee horde).

Closing It Out: Why Take Gandalf the White?

Everything we’ve talked about in this post (and most of what we talked about in our last post) highlight how good Gandalf is and how he has more options for dealing with problems than Boromir does. Let’s not forget that I think Boromir is good – he is. Let’s also not forget that Gandalf clearly has benefits in certain situations – he does. But I think it’s important to note that Gandalf has some benefits that are just straight-up-better than Boromir: defense.

The Defense Game: Four Ways To Kill A Hero

There are four ways you can kill a hero: a) be better than him in melee, b) deal damage to him via shooting, c) deal damage to him via magic, and d) neutralize the hero’s killing potential in melee and overwhelm him with inferior units. The first is the most common method of dealing with someone (and why most people take Boromir – he’s really good at this). The second is a cheesy way of dealing with people (how the Uruk-Hai in the Fellowship of the Ring choose to deal with Boromir), but incredibly effective all the same. The third is a risky way of dealing with people and tends to work best with spells that do actual Wounds instead of Hits (Banishment/Chill Soul). The fourth way is the more traditional magic approach – Immobilize/Command/Knock Prone to keep someone from striking wounds if they win and club them while they’re weakened. Gandalf responds well to all of these.

Against stronger melee models, Gandalf has Immobilize and Shadowfax that allows him to swoop in when someone is vulnerable. With 3 Attacks on the charge, Fight 5 (with option for Heroic Strike), Strength 5 with Knock Down, and an Elven-made weapon, he’s no slouch in combat (and will wound most heroes on 4s or 5s). Plus, you can cast Immobilize BEFORE committing to fight, so if it gets blocked, you can just re-route to some weaker grunt and bide your time (and with a 12” move on your mount, staying out of reach isn’t hard).

Against shooting attacks/magic attacks, you have Blinding Light and Fortify Spirit – some of the best anti-archery/magic rules in the game. We’ve already talked these to death, but it bears repeating that even the best archers in the game are unlikely to wound Gandalf with archery (and if you’re facing siege engines, that’s huge).

Finally, Gandalf has three rerollable Fate points at the same Wound value and nearly the same Defense value as Boromir – which is perhaps the most understated advantage of running Gandalf so far. In the MESBG, chomping through rerollable Fate points is one of the most annoying things you can do – it’s hard because those Fate points are all-but-guaranteed to work, making Gandalf close to a 6 Wound hero! Shooting him will be ineffective (even if our archers are bad enough that shooting into Blinding Light isn’t a big deal), casting one-off magical damage will be ineffective (even if it gets past Fortify Spirit), and if someone can beat him in melee, he STILL might have issues finishing the wizard.

In this overly-detailed and somewhat-complex discussion of Gandalf the White, I do hope I’ve shown you at least a few ways you can deal with enemy models. For those who are still not convinced, I’m not surprised: the use of magic as a whole (especially under the new rules) almost requires a different way of thinking about the game in order to want to use it. While magic on the whole has lost a lot of its edge, it’s still quite useful and effective, as we’ll see in our next post on Saruman! Until then, happy hobbying!