Magic: Top Five Anti-Casters

Good morning gamers,

In our series on heroes, we’ve looked at Uruk-Hai heroes from Isengard, Dwarf (and wizard and Hobbit) heroes from Thorin’s Company, and the top five ways to waste Might points in the game. Today, we look at the top five heroes that you can employ to resist enemy magic casters (and in preparing for this post, I was rather proud to know that I own most of them - good thing, since almost all of my armies run magic, huh?). :)

How to stop magic?

As I discussed in a previous post on Magic in MESBG, there are four ways to block magic:

• Spend Will (one die for each point of Will you spend – any that get a “natural 6” are returned to your Will store);
• Resistant to Magic (free die anytime you’re targeted by a spell – available whether you spend Will or not);
• Heroic Resolve (free die anytime you’re targeted by a spell, but requires the hero who calls it to stay stationary); and
• Fortify Spirit/Protection of the Valar (two free dice anytime you’re targeted by a spell OR immunity from hostile spells, but requires the hero who casts the magical powers to retain Will OR cast the magical power that turn).

No model has access to all of these innately and most heroes only have access to one or two. Since magic is out of favor for many players these days, you might not get much practice fighting against magic (which can be a nasty surprise). As such, let’s look at some of the qualities that makes a hero a good anti-caster option (in the odd event you run into a double-Ringwraith army).

Top 5 Ways to Waste Might Points: One Gamer’s Opinion

Good morning gamers,

In this series on heroes, we’ve covered an exhaustive reviewof the Dwarves in Thorin’s Company (and which variant is better – the Thorin’s Company ones or the Erebor Reclaimed ones) and revisited a taxonomy on Isengard heroes that we did a while back. Today, we turn to the use of Might, one of the most important resources you’ll have to manage in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. Some of the thoughts I have in this article have already crept up in some of my other articles, but I think they all bear repeating in one central place. And if you’re going to talk about heroes for a month, talking about Might is probably a good thing to add to the conversation.

The guiding rule we’re going to following today is this:

Might is a scarce and important resource – don’t risk wasting it!

If you accept this rule, everything I’m about to write makes sense (even if it galls us to have to admit in a game). While the purely analytical side of me agrees wholeheartedly with this, I often find myself drawn to violate the following five rules (so naturally, I’m going to caveat exceptions to all of them). :-) Okay, enough blather - let’s get into it!

Tiberius Battle Company Log, Entry #1

Good morning reader,

Yep I know what you're thinking - Tiberius, what are you doing posting today? It's not Monday!?!?!?! I know, I know. That's because today's post begins an irregular series that I'm starting on Battle Companies.

This year's TMAT GT is going to be Battle Companies themed, where we all pick one (or more) Battle Companies, play against each other "regularly," and include one Battle Company that we developed this season to use in a larger army (points limit still TBD because people are lobbying for a higher points level, whether the alliance matrix is allowed is also being debated). All in all, it should be fun.

For my first battle company, I've decided to do the Last Alliance. Those of you who have followed the blog for a while know that I got started with Rivendell thanks to the White Council units (Elrond, Arwen, old Glorfindel model, Erestor proxy, thought about getting Cirdan for a while). I originally got a few High Elf Warriors just so I could run a handful of bodyguards around my Elf/wizard heroes because they were getting overwhelmed. That then led to a larger contingent that is now a full-fledged army.

Numenor took off at about the same time: I picked up a boatload of Numenor warriors from eBay (and traded/bought a bunch from some friends who were eager to get rid of the Numenoreans that came with their High Elves) and acquired Elendil and Isildur in a large hero lot on eBay. With a recently converted Captain of Numenor on horse and a lot of conversions to turn the all-sword-and-board army into a more diversified force, Numenor has been chomping at the bit to be used.I

Last Month on TMAT (November 2019)

November was full of other-life stuff (with personal travel for all of us), but we still got some content up! With our series on shooting continuing and a few workbench updates, there's a mixture of hobbying and tactics if you need to catch up!

Uruk Heroes: Taxonomy, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Back in January 2013, I did a post on Uruk-Hai heroes, addressing the various builds for Uruk-Hai heroes that you can do, what categories they fall in (we identified four general categories), and how you could create an Uruk-oriented Isengard army that had elements of all four of these categories. In today’s post, we’ll be revisiting this topic since Uruk-Hai hero profiles have changed a bit since the previous version (not much, but some). I will note that since most of Isengard didn’t change in the newest release, most of Centaur’s thoughts on both Isengard heroes and Isengard warriors also apply, so check those out when you have a chance.

Uruk-Hai Heroes: A Brief Taxonomy

I should note that not all Uruk-Hai are found in Isengard. While Shagrat, Mordor Uruk-Hai Captains, and Black Guard Captains/Drummers are great and all, we’ll just be focusing on Isengard today. I’ve also noted in a previous post that Thyrdan is an excellent choice of Isengard commander (as is Saruman) – but as great as these guys are, we won’t be looking at them (though you should consider bringing them – they’re definitely worth taking).

For Isengard Uruk-Hai captains, you have the following categories (largely unchanged from past releases):

• Rock:
• Uruk-Hai Captain/Scout Captain with shield
• Hatchet:
• Mauhur
• Uruk-Hai Captain/Scout Captain with two-handed weapon
• Main-Stay:
• Ugluk
• Uruk-Hai Shaman with armor
• Uruk-Hai Drummer
• Arrow:
• Vrasku
• Uruk-Hai Captain with crossbow
• Uruk-Hai Scout Captain with Uruk-Hai Bow
• Uruk-Hai Engineering Captain/Siege Veteran with Isengard Assault Ballista
• All-Around:
• Lurtz

We’ll take a look at each group in turn – they still make a nice pattern of increasing the number of models included in each, don’t they?

Sizing Up Dwarves: Thorin's Company vs. Erebor Reclaimed

Good morning gamers!

For those who have been following our blog for a while, my last post showed how I re-did some models I converted for Thorin’s Company. Recently, I acquired all of the new Thorin's Company models (the Dwarves at any rate) and began to re-convert my Thorin's Company rangers to match the color scheme of the army. It was a great project to make my Dwarves look like those in the movies, but I really like the new models (plus, my son was reading the Hobbit at the time, so maybe that kept them on my mind)!

I do like that thanks to the errata, their army bonus gives all of them Heroic March – something they REALLY NEEDED when the rules were originally released. While there are many great things that make this army fun to use, we’ll be using this post not only to showcase how they look now, but also contrasting the Thorin’s Company version of each hero with his counterpart version in the Erebor Reclaimed list (which Rythbryt did a write-up on earlier in 2019). For the purposes of this post, we will only be comparing the profiles of the heroes themselves. I say this because the heroes from the Erebor Reclaimed list can lead Iron Hills Warriors and Iron Hills Goat Riders - both of which are amazing warrior units, as Rythbryt writes about here and here - but the comparisons get really muddy if we include the ability to take warriors vs. having to run as part of a single warband. With that said, let the pictures begin!

Shooting: Skirmish models, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today’s post is something special – today I'm joined by Centaur in talking about different skirmish lists in MESBG. The intent of this post is to highlight some of the tactical thoughts that go into using different lists. For our purposes today, skirmish lists will be focusing on dealing damage outside of melee in order to whittle down an opponent's force to a more manageable size. This generally requires movement, as skirmish troops don't want to be engaged right away.

Without further ado, let’s take a look!