The Bare Necessities, Part III: Numbers (or not-being-Broken)

In our previous two posts in this series, we’ve discussed the benefits of including fast models (cavalry in particular) and banners (not just units that count as banners) in your army because of the points they can score you in certain games. The five points that make up the series are reprinted here as a roadmap for today’s discussion:

• Fast troops who can claim objectives or exit the opposing board edge;
• At least one banner;
• Ways of delaying/avoiding being broken (often in the form of large numbers);
• Means of killing/inhibiting enemy heroes; and
• Means of keeping your own heroes alive/augmenting their damage.

Today’s post covers what most new players tend to value in an army: raw numbers. While having raw numbers doesn’t score you points in and of itself, it does make your army (in general) harder to break, which in most scenarios will give your opponent some points. Having greater numbers also makes it easier for you (in general) to trap your opponents – and traps win games.

So, today we’re going to discuss some of the subtleties of numbers in a points match game and different ways you can avoid being broken in a game (and other ways you can take advantage of numbers).

The Oddities: Pure Fellowship and Barad-Dur Lists

There are two lists that have unique ways of dealing with “being broken”: The Fellowship and Barad-Dur. If you run a pure Fellowship list (max of 10 models) and Frodo is alive, you can’t count as broken (though you can go down to 25%, which might give up victory points in certain scenarios and will end the game in many scenarios). Similarly, if you run a pure Barad-Dur list (due to not having any historical allies vs. an explicit requirement to be a pure list), while Sauron has suffered 0-2 Wounds, you can’t count as broken (though again, you can go down to 25%).

Both of these lists are powerful for this reason: some scenarios give you a high number of victory points for breaking the enemy and not being broken (often 3 VPs, sometimes more), which means if your army gets reduced to 25% and the game ends, but by the time you were cut down to size you had plowed through half of your opponents models AND kept your broken immunity condition up, you could score lots of VPs and deprive your opponent of any. While this won’t often win you a game outright, it can mean the difference in a close game between victory and defeat.

Most armies can’t count on this though – so you need to take a different approach: playing the “numbers game.”

The Numbers Game: How Many Units Do You “Need”?

When the first of us at TMAT started playing LOTR SBG back in 2011, you only needed one hero from each army contingent you brought and you could bring along as many warriors as you wanted. It wasn’t uncommon when we first got going to see a 500-pt list that featured Eomer and almost 50 Warriors of Rohan (mostly with either shield or bow), since the power-heavy version of Eomer came in at 130 points (not too different from where he does now) and you could get Warriors of Rohan with bows/shields for 7 points each. With a 50 model limit, a few of your guys would need to take throwing spears, but you could get to 50 models easily and outnumber all your foes (even Moria had to be under that model limit).

With the introduction of the Warband rules about a year later, we saw many changes to the lists: heroes were a must, as each hero could only lead 12 warriors, and cheap heroes were of particular interest (since they allowed your armies to grow). Banners (and cavalry) were almost never taken due to the increased number of heroes (except by Centaur, of course), and we upped the point limit to 600 points to accommodate it. By and large, armies still favored numbers over anything else, because being broken in the new scenarios made up a large number of points.

Then the MESBG rules came out and variety became more common: Rythbryt started using banners and cavalry more, army bonuses were introduced that incentivized many armies to bring more cavalry, and the addition of heroes who could bring 15-18 models made bringing different heroes (and even more expensive ones) more common. With this change, we increased our normal points limit again (to 700), but we normally see armies that live in the 30-45 model range (lower than we used to have, but not by much).

So, with all that history, how many models do you need? Naturally, bringing enough models to “not be broken” is a good idea, but here are the factors to consider:

• Losing a few models to get auric benefits is a good thing (a banner can easily add the equivalent of an extra die to 5 fights and often comes at the cost of 3-4 models);
• Losing a few models to get tactical benefits on a few models can be a good thing in small amounts (like dropping a few infantry models to get half as many mounted models);
• Losing a few models to upgrade a bad hero to a decent hero (or a decent hero to a good hero) is a good thing (Khazad-Dum Dwarf Captains are fine, Khazad-Dum Dwarf Kings for +10 points are better); and
• Losing a few models to get more elite warriors is often a good thing (24 Orc Warriors will be fine, but losing 4 Orc Warriors to upgrade 12 Orc Warriors to Morannon Orcs is a good trade).

While these principles are all fine and good, I’m going to provide a rule that’s a bit more concrete for games played at 700+ points: I call it . . .

The Rule of 30

Having thirty models is, I admit, a bit arbitrary, but hear me out: we’ve already discussed in our post on cavalry (which you should read it you haven’t already) that you only need 20-27 models (depending on their base size) to make an impenetrable wall across the battlefield (assuming there’s no terrain to reduce that number). If Reconnoitre is a possible mission, having at least 30 models will mean that you can stall your opponent AND run 3+ models towards his edge of the board. Ideally, you’ll have more than 30 models, but 30 will be able to get the job done.

Taking at least 30 models also requires your opponent to kill 16+ models to break you and 23+ models to quarter you. If you’re running 30+ models that need to be wounded on 6s, this will be pretty hard to do, especially if you can neutralize his heroes (which we’ll look at next week). While it’s possible against some armies to be outnumbered 2:1 by only bringing 30 models, you’re likely to have some very elite heroes/monsters in your list, so make sure you use them to the full in order to get their points worth (more on that in two weeks).

Perhaps the greatest benefit to being broken after losing 16 models is that even when you take a lot of casualties in a single round, it rarely amounts to more than 6-8 models lost, so having 16+ models required to break your force allows you to have one bad round. If you have more than that, I’m sorry – but boosting your models to a decently high count is a good way to account for that happening and giving you the models you need to keep one round from deciding the game for you.

In general, it’s good to have more than 30 models, but 30 models is a good “bare minimum” bar to aim for – especially for elite factions like Rivendell and the Dead of Dunharrow. Like all rules, however, there are exceptions to be made (though I think it should come attached to a very good reason).

Why Break the Rule of 30?

Obviously, if you’re playing below 700 points, it might seem impossible to get above 30 models. Even at 500 points, however, 30 models isn’t ridiculous – most factions get decent heroes in the 60-100pt realm and you can get pretty close to 30 models by bringing two of them and filling out their warbands (you should have a few points to spare). For some armies (like Moria, Shire, or Goblin-town), you can get 13+ models for every 100 points you spend, so getting above 30 is easy – so if you’re bringing any other army and expect to see one of these on the board, you probably want to get as close to 30 as possible to avoid being overwhelmed.

All that said, there are some armies that will never get to 30 models (hero-only factions like the Fellowship, the Rangers, and Thorin’s Company), but if you look at more conventional forces, there are some cases where not getting to 30 models is fine. The most common of which comes from the points we’ve outlined above:

• Sometimes you want more elite troops than the ones you have (upgrading Orc Warriors to Morannon Orcs or Black Guard of Barad-Dur or upgrading Dwarf Warriors to Iron Guard, for example). If this takes you from having a low 30s army to a high 20s army, that might be alright if the boost to the profile of the warriors changes things. If you’re going to play below 30 models, however, you may need to play differently than you otherwise would, since enemy forces will find it easier to wrap around your battle lines and trap your models (and sometimes, paying to be elite doesn’t make enough of a difference).
• Sometimes you want to drop models in order to get something that provides tactical benefits (like mounts or throwing weapons), but these benefits aren’t guaranteed to make a difference (mounted models can be charged before they can charge and throwing weapon units can be engaged before they can shoot), so mass spamming them might not be justified if your numbers are too low (remember one of the primary benefits to keeping your model count high is to give yourself some cushion for a bad round).
• Sometimes you want to drop models in order to get auric boosts to your troops (like banners), but a banner without a backup carrier to hold it is a vulnerable piece: don’t sacrifice your model count unnecessarily just so you can have more reroll bubbles.
• Some armies might sacrifice model count to get more powerful units (like allying in the Trolls with Goblin-town or Azog’s Hunters), intentionally sacrificing numbers in order to multiply the pieces that will be a threat to the opponent.

Some armies have insanely good selections of heroes (like Rivendell, Rohan in the Theoden's Riders Legendary Legion, and Erebor Reclaimed), so it wouldn’t be uncommon to see these kinds of armies run many heroes (often named) and a smattering of warriors to keep them from getting overwhelmed and coming in well below 30 models. While both Rivendell and Erebor Reclaimed have good warrior profiles (a good infantry choice with lots of gear options alongside a good cavalry choice with next to no gear options), you want to run these lists more for the hero selection you have available – this differs greatly from the lack of selection present in armies like Lothlorien (who have very similar warrior types and far fewer hero options) and Iron Hills (which has far greater selection of warriors and basically no hero options).

Consider this: is it better to have 7 Iron Hills Warriors or Gloin with his no-penalty-two-handed-axe? Sure, you get more Wounds AND more models out of the Iron Hills Warriors, but lots of models can win fights (and might even Wound) the Iron Hills Warriors, while Gloin will have a handier time winning fights and dealing Wounds. I don’t want to knock the Iron Hills Warriors in the slightest – I’ve faced them before and they’re not fun to fight, but Gloin is MANY TIMES WORSE to face than them. 

Rohan is a bit of a special case, as their army bonus encourages them to bring as many mounted models as possible (my Rohan list that I’m building doesn’t have 30 models). The Riders of Theoden Legenadary Legion often goes even lower due to the encouragement to have more heroes in your list to get free Heroic Strikes/Combats. In fact, most of the Legendary Legions from Gondor at War (Riders of Theoden, The Army of the Dead, The Grey Company, and “the Mumak herd one”) benefit the most from their rules if they are well below 30 models.

While we’ve talked about model count as an important factor, there’s another reason to sacrifice model count: to focus on Wound count.

Model Count vs. Wound Count

While we all know you’re broken based on how many models you lose (not the amount of wounds you’ve lost), if you’ve played against an army like the Fellowship or Thorin’s Company, you know that it can be hard to get any kills because a) it’s hard to beat the profile of those heroes, and b) even when you do beat them, they have multiple Wounds and Fate points. While Wound (and Fate) count aren’t directly correlated to breaking an opponent, they are a contributing factor. Let’s look at a quick example to see what I mean.

Is it better to have a Mirkwood Spider or 2 Gundabad Orcs with shields and spears in a Dark Powers of Dol Guldor army?

For the same number of points, both of these choices provide you with the same number of Attacks (2) and Wounds (2). The Gundabad Orcs boast higher Defense (6) and marginally higher Fight Value and Courage, while the Spider boasts increased Movement, marginally higher Strength, and better abilities with regard to wounding opponents (Poison and the chance to Paralyze vs. Ancient Enemies against Elf/Dwarf models).

So is there a difference? Yes! Besides the tactical advantages that a fast, Paralyze-inducing Spider can bring, spiders get 2 Attacks without having to maintain spear-supports. While Gundabad Orcs are harder to Wound, they’re not as lethal on offense (which can make all the difference if you need to whittle down the enemy). By taking a few spiders in your army, your break point drops negligibly but your Wound count hasn’t dropped (and if you can use your spiders to guarantee that other models aren’t wounded (fighting a Paralyzed model), you’re in pretty good shape.

Consider another example: Bat Swarms are expensive models and in Moria or Dark Denizens of Mirkwood lists, they have what appears to be an underwhelming (if not horrible) profile. While the 2 Attacks and 4 Wounds isn’t bad, Fight 1 paired with Strength 3 isn’t going to kill much and Defense 3/Courage 2 leaves you very vulnerable to taking damage or fleeing the table. Is it worth including one of these models when you could include a cheap Moria Hero, 7 Moria Goblins, or 4 Fell Wargs/2 Spiders? I think having one or two isn’t a bad idea. Why?

While the profile of a Bat Swarm is not good, the special ability a bat provides is incredible: cutting an Engaged enemy model’s Fight Value in half (and rounding down!) is really good. Since you’re unlikely to get more than one model in base contact with whoever is fighting the Bat, you can hopefully bring in a model that is Fight 3 (Fell Wargs for Dark Denizens of Mirkwood, Moria Goblin Prowlers or Moria Goblin Warriors/Blackshields if you can trap the foe for Moria). With a Fight 3 model in the fight, you’ll have the higher Fight Value against anyone that is below Fight 6 (which most people are) – and if you can get a Fight 4 model into the fight (Giant Spiders for Dark Denizens of Mirkwood and Moria Goblin Prowlers if you can trap the foe for Moria), you’ll beat anyone that is below Fight 8. In this second example, even models with Fight 8-9 will only win if the roll-off for tied Fight Value goes their way – that’s a pretty good chance at winning! Would 4-7 more models get you that? Maybe, but probably not…

Is There Such A Thing As Too Many Models?

We’ve talked a lot in this post about the different considerations for numbers: I don’t think hoarding models is as necessary as it used to be in the Legions of Middle-Earth days that preceded the warbands books and we’ve seen relatively low model count lists do very well in our recent tournaments. The Rule of 30 seems to be a pretty good target for an army, but as with anything, there are cases where running below that number might be worth trying. For my armies, only Rohan dips below 30 (and any armies that flirt around 30 get rethinks). Most run in the 35-45 range, but I’ve got an army or two in the works that can bust 50.

In general though, I don’t recommend taking more than 50-60 models. I’ve postulated lists on this blog that run really high model counts, but in practice, it’s both physically and mentally taxing to keep track of lots of models – and the more models you have, the longer each round takes. The longer each round takes, the fewer rounds you have to meet the scenario objectives. The fewer rounds you have, the more likely you are to lose. It’s as simple as that (so, there is such a thing as too many models).

But one final note bears mentioning: having lots of units is great most of the time. Every now and again, however, you’ll draw Lords of Battle or Contest of Champions and if you do, spamming lots of warriors to avoid being broken MIGHT keep you from getting broken, but might also feed lots of points to your opponent. Fighting King Aragorn with a Dunharrow ally? You might outnumber them 2:1, but they’ll probably win simply because of how many guys they’re going to kill. Once again, there is such a thing as too many models…

In our next post, we’ll be exploring the realms of heroes (specifically army leaders) and things to think about in order to keep enemy heroes from doing maximum damage against your force. While there isn’t a sure-fire strategy for locking down an enemy hero, there are certain things you can do to slow someone down (and if you can slow them down enough, the game can end before they can catch up). Should be interesting – until then, happy hobbying!