Guest Post: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Tentacle (A Tactica on the Watcher in the Water with Sharpie)

Good morning gamers,

So today we have a guest post that was sent to us on Facebook by one of our readers. Today's tactics discussion centers around using a model I find intriguing (but haven't scrounged up the money to purchase yet): the Watcher in the Water. As an avid Moria player who loves throwing weapons, this model has long been on my list of models to try out (though with me always running the Balrog, I'm not sure I can squeeze this guy into enough games, if I'm honest).

Our guest author, Sharbie, has some interesting thoughts on using one of the most underused monsters in the game - take it away Sharbie!

Hello folks! I’m Sharbie, and today I’m writing in to discuss one of my favourite models, the Watcher in the Water. I think the star of the Fellowship’s flight into Moria is a bit of a hidden gem, so let’s dive in and take a look at the scariest squid in Middle Earth.

Almost every monster, from Gwahir to the Balrog, functions in a broadly similar way: you plod forward, get into close combat, and beat up some stuff. There’s some variation in the speed of that plodding and in what they can comfortably beat up when they get there, but that’s basically it. Some monsters are best against heroes, others against warriors, but with large base sizes and generally low movement values, you don’t normally get much choice in the matter.

The Watcher is the big exception to these trends. It doesn’t plod across the field at all if it can help it, and —as we will soon discuss— it doesn’t really aim to beat stuff up in close combat, at least not directly. Instead, it is a teleporting assassination threat, that does its best work at range and wants to hide behind a friendly battleline as much as possible. It’s for this reason that I think a lot of players have dismissed it out of hand; it’s not very good at doing standard monster things. Instead, it’s amazing at doing things that no other model in the game can do, in ways that require a bit more thought than your average Cave Troll.

The Rules

The key to understanding how the Watcher functions lies in three of its unique special rules: From the Deep; Many Tentacles; and Tentacles (there’s a strong theme with this model). It also has some cute rules around water features, but most MESBG maps don’t contain swimming pools, so we’ll ignore these. From the Deep is how it rocks up to the battle, and it’s an amazing rule— getting to turn up wherever you like and even displace enemy models is excellent. However, it also contains a trap, and that’s only accentuated by the second special rule.

A lot of players will see the six attacks on its profile, notice the ability to pop up in the middle of the enemy on turn one, and do exactly that. I did it on my first game with the Watcher. I popped up in the middle of a Minas Tirith battle line, ate Denethor and an Avenger Bolt Thrower, and felt pretty chuffed with myself. Then a bunch of heroes and warriors charged and trapped me, called a heroic strike, and I lost four wounds straight up. Not only did this leave me on death’s door with no goblins to hide behind, but it also reduced my attacks to three, due to the ironically-named Many Tentacles rule. I lost that game pretty decisively and was convinced that the Watcher was a trap piece.

That was when I started to look a bit more deeply at the third rule, Tentacles. This rule allows the Watcher to throw out a few Elven bow shots every turn, but much more importantly, it allows you to get enemy models into contact with you from up to 6” away, even over the heads of other models. What this lets you do is hide behind a wall of 5 point goblins and choose exactly who you do and don’t want to fight. Banner bearers, wizards, and heroes without any way to match your F6 all make perfect targets, but so do basic warriors in inconvenient positions. You can, over the course of a few turns of shooting and combat, strip out the entire supporting rank of your opponent’s shieldwall, giving your goblins a much-needed advantage in dice rolled. If you want to get a bit sneaky, however, you can even use this ability to take on enemy power heroes.

Photo Credit: FellowshipOfTheMiniatures

The Tactics

Now, I know what you’re thinking (or at least, I’m going to pretend I do to give myself a good segue): “Sure, you can grab Aragorn/Bolg/Glorfindel and pull them in to fight you, but they’ll just call a Heroic Strike and start making sushi with your 200 point monster.” The solution is to apply true goblin cunning to the problem. Bat Swarms, for a mere 35 points, can halve any model’s fight value in close combat, rounding down. This means that your six-attack kraken will have the higher fight value against even Gil-Galad and can set about squishing the annoying enemy hero into paste. The difficulty here is that the enemy gets pulled to you in the shoot phase, so your bats can’t charge in until the next turn, by which point the sushi-making process could already be well on its way.

This is where the cunning comes in. The Tentacles rule states that the targeted model is “dragged into base contact with the Watcher by the shortest route possible…” What this means is that if you set up the Bat Swarm in base contact with the Watcher and between it and the enemy hero, “the shortest route possible” will see them placed in contact with not just the Watcher but the bats as well. At this point, nothing short of a Balrog is likely to survive the ensuing combat, especially if you have a goblin or two standing round to ensure the unfortunate target is trapped. Best of all, it’s a trick that requires no expenditure of resources. You can do it again on the next turn, and the turn after that, until either you’ve killed all the big enemy pieces or they’ve hacked their way through your goblin hordes.

This all sounds very finicky and technical, but it’s surprisingly simple to pull off in a real game; I did it to Gwahir in the last battle I fought, and there’s not that much your opponent can do about it. They can hide outside 6” easily enough, but at that point their expensive hero isn’t killing your stuff, and you can continue grabbing banners, spearmen and lesser heroes. It doesn’t work on things as big as Smaug (but really, what does?), and Blinding Light is a decent defence, though you still have a ~ 50% chance of getting a hit and yoinking them over to be eaten. Terror is no help; you’re never actually charging an enemy model, so you never need to test (which is great, because Bat Swarms really don’t like Terror tests). Enemies charging you can be inconvenient, but you can still use your tentacles in combat, so all you have to do is set up the requisite hero-sized hole and you can still grab them just fine. Nor can heroes even hide in close combat, because you can fire into close combat as an Evil model (and you don’t even have to roll In The Way tests!). All they can do is skirmish around the edges of the fray and hide outside your 6” range while you pick up their banners and spearmen as snacks. And if you’re really worried about the enemy escaping your reach, just hold off on arriving until the battlelines are already clashing and you can plonk your Watcher down within range of the enemy general. As long as you keep your precious Bat Swarm safe and your goblins take awhile to die, there’s not much they can do to stop your evil plan (though I’m sure Sauron thought the same thing).

Sample List

For full context, here’s what I like to bring to a 500 point game:

• Three "vanilla" Goblin Captains
• 20 Goblins with Shields or Spears
• 2 Warg Marauders
• The Watcher
• 1 Bat Swarm.

It’s 500 on the dot, and it’s got mobility, hero-killing tricks, lots of Might and a huge kraken. Give it a try if you can proxy the models, you might start to realise why almost 800 points of Good Heroes fled screaming into Moria instead of fighting it.

Tiberius: Thanks Sharbie for submitting this - I think Sauron might join the Balrog in the list of models that would be okay under the barrage of attacks from the Watcher, but at twice his points, you'd expect he would. :) If you've also been thinking through tactics for different models, send them our way by messaging us on Facebook (TmatSBG). As always, we welcome your thoughts in the comments below! Until next time, happy hobbying!