The Bare Necessities, Part V: Making Your Heroes Better (and Keeping Them Alive)

Good morning gamers,

Today is our last post in our series on list building – walking through the different things to consider for your army when thinking about victory points (VPs) that can be scored in a game. As a brief refresher, here’s the list:

• 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.

We’ve already covered fast troops, banners, “the numbers game,” and neutralizing enemy heroes. Today, we wrap up the discussion by talking about different ways you can make your heroes better (and keep them from dying). Most of our discussion today will focus around your Army Leader (and your opponent’s Army Leader), though most of it also applies to other heroes.

More Power: Augmenting A Hero’s Offensive Output

Wargear Options

Not quite done with the banner, but getting there...

Rythbryt has gone into great detail on the benefits of banners and mounts, but both of these bear repeating: charging into combat on a mount and being in range of a banner both provide you with more dice, and the more dice you roll in a fight, the more likely you are to get a winning roll. For heroes, this is particularly true since most heroes feature high Fight values and have Might points to boost their own rolls. While having a high Fight values is great when you tie high rolls with an opponent, having more dice often gives you a better chance of winning the fight than just having a higher Fight value. Having Might to boost your rolls is also nice to have, but the more dice you roll, the less likely you are to need to spend Might to boost.

Want to do more damage? There's a weapon for that!

Banners and mounts are great, but there are other things you can do to boost hero damage. Assuming you can get some help in a fight (either through charging another model into the hero’s fight OR through supporting attacks), getting a two-handed weapon on your heroes is great (which Rythbryt also covered previously), since each die benefits from a +1 bonus to its roll (which is kind of like boosting with a Might point). Ideally, your hero will have some way of avoiding the two-handed weapon penalty (the most common methods are having a master-forged weapon OR the Burly ability), allowing the hero to do lots of two-handed damage without any of the penalties normally associated with the weapon. A more common alternative is to rely on the non-two-handing-companion to get a great roll (maybe a 5 or a 6 – something higher than your opponent’s highest die), allowing the hero to be able to deal two-handed damage without having to compensate for any penalties. As a side note, if your hero is mounted, a lance will work like a two-handed weapon (except it doesn’t bring the penalty a two-hander does).

Heroic Actions?

Could have chosen lots of heroes, but went with an old favorite...

Some of the specialized Heroic Actions appear to provide a boost to your offensive firepower, though their actual benefit is often limited. Rythbryt did two detailed series on both Heroic Strength (+D3 Strength) and Heroic Strike (+D6 Fight Value). I won’t be going into any detail here – you should read Rythbryt’s series though (it’s good stuff). As I discussed in a post that pre-dates Rythbryt’s series, there’s an obvious benefit to having higher Strength - but from an offensive perspective, Heroic Strength will at-best allow you to wound your opponents on two difficulty levels easier than normal (e.g. when facing a D7 unit, going from S4 to S7 will change you from wounding on 6s to wounding on 4s). Most of the time it will give you +1 To Wound (which only helps you if you get 2+ To Wound rolls on this improved difficulty – otherwise, you might as well have saved the Might point to boost your roll OR not spent the Might point at all). Similarly, calling Heroic Strike is good in that it can get you a higher Fight Value, but this only helps if you tie high-dice values with your opponent (or if it allows you to Feint, but an argument could be made that using the Might to boost an almost-success is better than rerolling 1s).

Magical Powers

How likely am I to cast Enchanted Blades on myself? Depends on what I'm fighting...

Besides these kinds of wargear, there are other things you can do to increase your hero’s offensive output. The first and foremost is boosting their stats or capabilities with magical powers (specifically Bladewrath, Enchanted Blades, Enrage Beast, and channeled Shroud of Shadows), but other heroes can benefit from these kinds of abilities by allying in a hero who has them (all Forces of Good can ally with Cirdan/Celeborn/a Galadhrim Stormcaller for Enchanted Blades; Forces of Evil can ally with an Easterling War Priest for Bladewrath, Druzhag the Beastcaller for Enrage Beast if they bring Bats/Spiders/Wargs, or the Necromancer of Dol Guldur for channeled Shroud in Shadow – though technically Ashrak has this too, but it only applies to spiders). While this will help on a few turns each game, the boosts can make your heroes do more damage (which in scenarios that involve a kill-count can help tremendously).

Tactics

Traps win games... so set up traps...

If you want to run a pure army list and you’re not running any of these factions (Rivendell, Lothlorien, Easterlings, Moria, or the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur), you might want instead to rely on tactical maneuvering and set up traps. The Green Dragon Podcast is very famous for the quote, “Traps win games.” And it’s true: the more models you can trap, the more dice you’re going to roll in those fights. The more dice you roll in a fight, the more likely you are to get the roll that you need to kill something in that fight. Sure, traps aren’t a guarantee of a kill, but it does help. With a hero, traps are huge since hero’s generally have an easier time killing things than warriors do – so make them happen!

While we can say you should get traps, or mount your heroes, or put them in range of banners, you probably already knew all of this. So let’s look at one more thing you can do to maximize your hero’s offensive power: understand your match-ups.

If you know your match up, you probably wouldn't charge a Cave Troll at Balin...

As I mentioned in my last post, when I first got started playing LOTR SBG, I used to throw my biggest hero at the biggest thing my opponent brought (with the thought of, “I need to kill my points-worth, so let’s kill the most expensive thing my opponent’s side of the board”). Sound plan, right? What happened back then (before Heroic Strike was a thing) was that Balin (I ran Dwarves a lot then – I still do now) would run into a Cave Troll (Balin still does this – has a much better go of it now that Heroic Strike is a thing), begin hacking away at him, and about half the time, he’d die as a nasty smear on the Cave Troll’s hammer (and note: Cave Trolls weren’t Burly back then, their hammers were single-handed weapons, and they didn’t have Monstrous Brutal Power Attacks…so they had to kill Balin the old-fashioned way by winning the fight and wounding on 5s – quite an accomplishment back then).

So you like the head-on approach, huh?

This heads-on approach can work (and does work very well for certain heroes against certain other units), but you need to understand what your hero is good at and what the scenario rewards you for doing. If you’re facing an army led by Sauron or the Balrog, killing the enemy army leader will be next to impossible (for Sauron, this is particularly true if Sauron saves all of his Might to promote Ring saves). Most scenarios, however, give you a few Victory Points just for wounding the enemy army leader (and these two don’t have any Fate points), so getting a cheeky Wound against them can be quite easy. If you’re facing a more manageable enemy army leader (Theoden or Lurtz for example), getting a Wound in might be difficult, but it’s not inconceivable (especially if you use the Asymmetric approach we talked about in our last post). Some army leaders are incredibly fragile (with Denethor and Sharkey at the forefront of that list), so the question usually isn’t whether you can wound them – it’s about how quickly you can kill them (assuming you can find them).

But there’s another consideration too: while your army leader getting wounded is a “bad thing,” some scenarios give you minor bonuses for wounding/killing the enemy army leader relative to the total kills you do in the game (Contest of Champions and Lords of Battle being the quintessential examples of this). In these cases, your Army Leader taking wounds is a secondary consideration to him contributing kills in the first place – in these cases, you want to look at your opponent’s army, find something your army leader can kill easily, and focus all of your efforts on getting to those units (perhaps charging/killing some other models along the way). When your focus is strictly on killing things, whether your army leader lives or dies at the end of the mission is secondary to how many kills he puts up. While it’s useful to keep your army leader alive until the end of the game (especially in To The Death scenarios), by the end of the game, you want to be able to look at your hero and say, “You did enough.”

Galadriel: an unlikely Victor in Contest of Champions? Or a very tough competitor?

A quick note here: sometimes killing just one model with your army leader is fine. I’ve been a long-time Lothlorien player and I’ve heard time and time again about how bad Galadriel-led Lothlorien teams are at Contest of Champions (where the lion-share of the VPs are tied to whether you out-killed your opponent). Yes, Lothlorien is a rough faction for that scenario for beginners, but if you don’t give up on using them, you learn very quickly that there are two easy ways to win Contest of Champions with Lothlorien: shoot the enemy army leader before he can kill something (take Haldir for this) OR immobilize him every turn with Galadriel so he can’t kill anything. You can also charge a hero like Rumil into him to make it less likely that he wins the fight to begin with, but the overall strategy is simple: if you cause 1 Wound with Galadriel and you keep your opponent from getting any kills, you will win.

Now, this is very hard to do against certain army leaders (Sauron or the Balrog for example), though Lothlorien is pretty well suited to fighting both of these guys (Resistant to Magic on everyone is a passable deterrent against Chill Soul, while Blinding Light will make the Fiery Lash very ineffective – and BOTH of these guys have 6” movement only). Still, with a single kill (or a few kills if you can manage it), you could win a Contest of Champions match while killing relatively few models. Food for thought . . .

While killing things with our heroes is always fun, there’s a second aspect we’ve already hinted at: your opponent is probably going to try to neutralize or kill your army leader (and as many of your other heroes as he can). So, what can you do to protect your army leader and make him a less juicy target?

Shields Up: Augmenting A Hero’s Defense

Most heroes have the ability to get to Defense 6-7 and sport at least 2 Wounds and 1 Fate point. While there are a good number of heroes (though far from the majority) who have 3+ Wounds and 2+ Fate points, the general rule of thumb when you’re trying to kill a hero is that you probably need to wound them on 5s or 6s and you’ll need to wound them 3 or more times. Some heroes have an easier time of this than others, but generally speaking, if you can just beat them in combat two or three times, you should be able to bring down most heroes with a strong hero of your own or the press of numbers.

Wargear

Some heroes can survive without buffing their armor or taking shields - Theoden isn't one of those heroes...

So let’s assume that you’re facing a large force that wants to kill your army leader: what can you do to make him more defensible? I recommend you begin by looking at your hero’s profile and see what kind of wargear he can get. Obviously a shield or taking stronger armor is a great way to start, as they usually boost your Defense value. Most heroes don’t have the option for taking heavier army (most start with whatever armor they can wear in their base profile), but most don’t begin with a shield if they have it as an option. For +5 points, shields not only give you the ability to have higher Defense, but they also allow you to defend yourself by shielding (unless you’re mounted, by the way). Shields are a good value.

Need some extra resilience? Why not take a horse?

Speaking of being mounted, a mount not only gives you an extra in-the-way roll (and potentially an extra Wound or three), but it also increases your movement so long as you stay out of difficult terrain. Infantry hordes can spell certain doom for heroes who stray too far from their honor guard, but mounts can ensure that the hero can charge the edge of a battle line and be able to dance out of range on the following turn. While I’ve already referenced this, you can find out more about what shields and mounts provide in Rythbryt’s previous corpus here.

Survivability: they can't kill you if you're not actually in the fight...

But there’s another piece of gear that is seldom available to heroes that can provide much-needed protection as well: a spear. Sure, supporting attacks only allow you to bring a single attack to a fight (when you were probably getting 2-3 Attacks in there), but if your opponent wins the fight, your hero can back away and let someone else take the beating in his place (though beware certain Brutal Power Attacks that can target supporting models as well as engaged models). Very few heroes have the option to take spears (Wood Elf Captains, Mirkwood Captains, Iron Hills Captains, Dunedain/Rangers of the North, Duinhir, Corsair Bosuns, and Haradhrim Captains suffer the least from this), but if you do have the ability, it can buy you much-needed resilience.

Heroic Actions

When it comes to keeping you alive, Heroic Defense sure looks tempting...

In the Heroic Actions department, there are four specialized heroic actions you can use to protect your heroes. The first and most straight-forward is Heroic Defense. While not many models have this heroic action, many vulnerable heroes (such as Galadriel, Arwen, and Frodo) have the ability to call it 1-3 times. For most heroes, calling Heroic Defense will mean your opponents will wound you on a natural 6 only (which negates the bonuses an opponent would get from using BPAs like Rend, special abilities like those on Anduril or Azog, and boosts to wounding rolls that would come from lances/war spears, two-handed weapons, or the Enchanted Blades magical power). Some heroes have the ability to pair this magical power with very high Defense (Elendil can get to D8 with a shield), which can push the To Wound roll for some models (S3 models vs. D8) to wound on 6/4+. Heroic Defense changes this to a 6/6, which is really hard to pull off. At the loss of a single Might point, you have a decent shot with a hero like this of buying yourself one turn of not being killed when, by all rights, you should be killed. It’s also a great way to tick off Aragorn and Azog – just saying. :-) Rythbryt discussed Heroic Defense in conjunction with Heroic Strength in his series on Heroic Strength last year – check that out for more information.

Heroic Strength isn't just about wounding more easily - it can also keep you from being bowled over by cavalry...

Speaking of Heroic Strength, this heroic action (though often underrated) can be very useful when you’re charged by a cavalry model or a monster model (especially those with Monstrous Charge). While I wasn’t a big fan of Heroic Strength in my original estimation (and still call it seldomly), there are uses for it – uses I won’t go into because Rythbryt covered them in his first two posts on Heroic Strength. You should read what he had to say – it’s good stuff that!

Heroic Resolve is tricky to call, since you can't move - but the increased resilience to magical powers is great!

If you don’t mind one of your heroes standing still, you can use Heroic Resolve to get some extra resilience against magical powers (free die, stacks with special rules and magical powers that also confer free dice). Many heroes with Heroic Resolve only have a single Might point OR have access to other heroic actions that are great to use. Still, this is a useful capability to keep another hero (who isn’t going to be going anywhere) from getting nerfed by enemy casters.

Feeling the pressure from an opponent? Single out their hero and appeal to his sense of epic combat, perhaps...

Finally, there’s the newly revamped Heroic Challenge. A new heroic action to the MESBG game, Heroic Challenge is often available to heroes who have high Heroic Tiers (Valor/Legend for the most part) and allows a hero to challenge another to single combat (no one else gets to be engaged in their fight). The challenge can be accepted (in which case the challenger and the challenged duke it out without other models jumping into the combat) OR it can be rejected (in which case, the fight continues with whatever combatants were originally involved, but the challenged suffers some long-term penalties). If the challenge is accepted, the surviving hero gets some Might restored (which is awesome) after he kills the other – and yes, this means you could spend Might calling a Heroic Challenge and provide your opponent with additional Might.

While originally seen as a desperate ploy for a hero who was outnumbered to minimize the number of people he was fighting, this heroic action has become much better under the new errata. While the original penalty for declining a heroic action was that friendly models couldn’t benefit from your heroic actions until the challenger was killed, the updated errata has added that the challenged hero is unable to call a Stand Fast for the rest of the game. While this is good, beware calling a Heroic Challenge against a model that can wound you too easily (especially if he has access to Strike and can gain the upper hand in Fight Value).

Want to be tricky with Heroic Challenges? Use Shagrat...

Heroic Challenge can be used as a ditch effort to keep a hero in an army that is near breaking from getting help from his friends, but it can also be used in crafty ways on offense. Some heroes (originally just Shagrat and the Keeper of the Dungeons, but it now includes a few Hobbit heroes, Golfimbul, and Snaga) are Heroes of Fortitude and have access to Challenge. This means that a combat beast like Shagrat (or the Keeper of the Dungeons) could challenge a generic captain (who doesn’t have access to Heroic Strike) and slay him outright. These generic heroes are often brought along because of their access to Heroic March (or to call late-game Heroic Moves to get the charge in an important round) OR because you need a reliable Stand Fast somewhere on the field. A Heroic Challenge, if accepted, will likely lead to the hero’s death, but a rejected challenge will nullify much of what makes a generic captain good.

Magical Powers

Gandalf has two profiles - and both are great at protecting your heroes... and warriors...

The magical powers that can augment the defense of your heroes are numerous. One of the most difficult challenges for most heroes to overcome is enemy magic casters: while Immobilize et al aren’t as powerful in this edition as in previous editions, they can still keep a hero from killing things (or calling heroic actions – or using active abilities). Resisting magical assaults can come in the form of Fortify Spirit (two free dice to resist each turn – available to basically any Forces of Good team through the White Council as a Historical/Convenient alliance). This spell, if cast on a hero who already has Resistant to Magic, is really powerful and can make your hero a less-likely target for the casters employed by your opponent. Another option is Protection of the Valar (cannot be targeted by magical powers this turn), available through Gandalf the Grey (also available through the White Council, but can be included in more armies as a historical alliance thanks to his listing in the Fellowship, Thorin’s Company, the Shire, and the Survivors of Lake-town as well). Forces of Evil get a similar immunity from Shroud of Shadows (immunity to magical powers, shooting attacks, and special rules). This spell is really only available by taking the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, though Ashrak from Moria can cast it on spider models.

If you need protection against archery (a useful tactic for dealing with some heroes and monsters), you could use Shroud of Shadows again, but most Forces of Good will need to look to Blinding Light instead (hit on a 6 if you’re within 6” of the caster of this spell, needs to be channeled in order to remain in play). While the Forces of Evil don’t have access to this spell, you can include the Shadow Lord from the Mordor army list to provide it to you each turn at the cost of 1 Will per round.

You can also make it harder to charge your units. While the wizards have access to Terrifying Aura (makes the wizard cause Terror, can be channeled to roll 3D6 and take the lower two), other heroes can be granted Terror through Aura of Dismay. The easiest way to get this is by taking Thranduil with the Circlet of Kings, but other armies can get it through Radagast the Brown (the White Council) or Cirdan (harder to get off, available through Rivendell).

If you're going to regrow stats, Wounds and Fate are pretty good ones to focus on...

Alternatively, there are spells you can use to regain resources after you’ve been attacked (or in one case, before your hero is targeted). Thanks to the White Council, most Forces of Good armies can get access to Renew (regain 1 lost Wound) through either Radagast or Elrond (though Radagast can cast it more often). The Forces of Good can also get access to Blessing of the Valar (regain 1 lost Fate point) through Galadriel from the Lothlorien list. Both of these magical powers are great when you’re taking damage, but can’t pre-empt enemy action. Strengthen Will (+1 Will point) on the other hand can be cast on a friendly figure that has a full Will store and grow it beyond its starting size (or even give Will to someone who didn’t begin the game with any Will). This spell is available to virtually all Forces of Good if they take Gandalf (in either form) and is really good when used on heroes who start with very little and you anticipate having to fight spell-casters (like Boromir of Gondor) OR heroes who use Will points every turn (like Gandalf himself or auxiliary casters).

Why stop at healing people (or preventing Wounds)? Why not grant other things as well?

If you choose to forego your army bonus, any Forces of Good army can take Tom Bombadil (with an option for taking Goldberry as well) and you’ll have access to Refreshing Song (regain 1M/1W/1F/1 Wound that have been previously spent), which has a very short range but a REALLY powerful benefit. In case you haven’t noticed, Forces of Evil are out of luck in this department, though they do get access to Fury (which, when channeled, provides a 6+ save against wounds caused against them). Fury isn’t as good as a normal Fate point, but it’s something.

Tactics

Just like traps help you do more damage, having a retinue of elite troops to cover your flanks can help keep your heroes alive. Sure, you can use chaff troops as well, but elite troops have a better chance of surviving (in general) and dealing some supplementary damage. While spear-supporters are always welcome, don’t underestimate the value of using models intended to support your heroes as tagging-pieces to keep enemy models out of combat with your heroes.

Yet another way to keep your heroes alive is to understand your matchups – like on offense, you need to understand what heroes, monsters, or groups of warriors your heroes can’t fight. Those heroes (or monsters or blocks of troops) you want to stay away from as much as you can and instead, you want to make your way towards heroes/monsters/warriors you can beat. I re-learned this recently while playing a game with my son: I was using Gandalf the White in a Minas Tirith list and was fighting an Azog’s Hunters/Goblin-town alliance. I knew I didn’t want Gandalf to go toe-to-toe with Azog (mounted on the White Warg, naturally) and my son knew he wanted that fight very, VERY badly. Not only did Gandalf eventually get caught by Azog (because Wargs are fast), but even when he disengaged, I foolishly charged Gandalf into two Hunter Orc archers (forgetting that together they have 4 Attacks). The result was a very dead Gandalf – so lesson learned: know what your heroes can’t fight!

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

We’ve already talked about this in passing both when considering your offensive firepower and defensive resilience: you need to remember what you’re trying to do. A player who doesn’t keep the end-game victory requirements in mind is bound to lose, as he’ll get caught up in what he thinks he needs to do to win and forget what he actually needs to do to win. If your opponent is trying to head-hunt your army leader with Sauron, is that a bad thing? Can you delay Sauron from killing anything else with Chill Soul for half the game while he tries to pluck wounds off your Army Leader (perhaps by using an avoidance strategy with the rest of your army)? How important to the overall victory points scale is keeping your army leader alive?

On offense, how much does your army leader need to kill? Is there a Contest of Champions where your army leader needs to be in harm’s way so he can get maximum points? Is your hero any good at killing models (so do you need to focus on keeping your opponent’s army leader from killing any)? Is the scenario more about speed than damage? All of these things are worthwhile considerations for any army looking to maximize its victory point score.

Special Note: Protecting Heroes in Fog of War

The Fog of War scenario is an oddity in that you don’t get points for wounding/killing the enemy army leader: you have to kill someone else (unless your opponent only has one hero). If you run a powerful hero (as your army leader), a not-as-powerful-but-decent supporting hero, and a weak hero, your opponent might just pick the weak one as his target. How do you keep these guys alive (especially if they’re generic heroes and don’t have very many options?

First off, if you can, take spears on these guys. Normally, this is a 1-point upgrade (unless it’s a war spear – which has other advantages) and it will allow you to keep your support hero in the second rank where he’s mildly more protected. If you don’t have access to spears, look for heroes who have access to Heroic Defense (Duinhir in a Fiefdoms army, Gamling/Hama in a Rohan army, Groblog in a Balrog/Dragon-included Moria army) – if you want to keep from dying, requiring the roll of a natural 6 is one of the best ways to avoid taking damage. Third, if you can’t get either of these, look for heroes who can be mounted – outrunning your foes (and having the chance at an additional wound) is great. Finally, if you don’t have access to any of these things (generic Dwarf heroes, for example), keep these heroes near a very powerful army leader (like Durin) so that your opponent needs to risk taking on a good hero to get to a lesser one. Unlike every other scenario in the game, killing the enemy army leader doesn’t get you any points in Fog of War – it only takes out an important piece (for most armies). So, keeping your army leader nearby might cause your opponent to waste resources on your army leader instead of the model that’s actually going to score him points.

Well, we’ve gone through five different posts on ways you can build your army list to maximize on victory points. In our next few posts, we’ll be going over some of the armies I’ve been working on and how they utilize these strategies to maximize on possible victory points. Our next journey takes us to the white city of Minas Tirith – see you there, and until then, happy hobbying!