Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Strike

Good morning gamers,

Well, we're closing out the year with the specialized heroic action you've been waiting for: Heroic Strike! Ah, Heroic Strike - the specialized heroic action that seemed so stupidly powerful when my mates and I looked at the Hobbit SBG rules that we said, "No thanks - we'll stick with the Legions rules and the big blue rulebook." In the new edition, Strike isn't available to all heroes and so becomes an interesting part of list building theory and meta-gaming. But how useful is it anyway? For more on this topic, you should check out Rythbryt's series on Heroic Strike, where he delved into how useful this heroic action really is (and covers a lot of other things too - things that can make your Heroic Strikes more powerful AND things that can make countering Heroic Strike easier without having to call a Strike in return).

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Strike, like Heroic Defense and Heroic Strength, is pretty straight-forward: the hero who calls Heroic Strike in the Fight phase increases his Fight Value by D6. Like all heroic actions, Heroic Strike is called at the start of the Fight phase, but your increase in Fight Value isn't determined until the fight involving that hero is selected to be resolved. This is important because if a F3 Meriadoc, Captain of the Shire calls a Heroic Strike against someone like the Witch-King of Angmar, the Witch-King will need to decide whether to counter-call a Heroic Strike BEFORE knowing if Merry got a 1-2 and retained a lower/tying Fight Value to the Witch-King's original Fight Value of 5. Counter-calling a Strike might be the "safe" way to go, but it would also mean foregoing a Heroic Combat (something the Witch-King is likely to succeed in pulling off if he's on the charge with the Crown of Morgul - and certainly possible if he's riding a Fell Beast).

This increase in Fight Value is also determined before the players choose whether or not they are using any special strikes - so a model armed with a sword or dagger (most models with Heroic Strike have these kinds of weapons) can Strike up to a high Fight Value and then choose to Feint to lower their Fight Value if they're fighting warriors (or low-Fight heroes) in order to not only get a higher Fight Value, but also reroll 1s on their To Wound rolls. Neat, huh?

Overly Pedantic Stats: Best Elven Faction?

 Hey Reader!

We're back with another episode of Overly Pedantic Stats, and this post was prompted by the fact that I'm revisiting Rohan, and as I started thinking through the Helm's Deep legendary legion, it got me to wondering whether it was worth it to purchase Lothlorien models, as I've never run Lorien before.

Now, in the last iteration of the game (and I've mentioned this in the past on this blog), I thought that the Galadhrim were a terrible model, failing to be as cheap as wood elves, as resilient as high elves, or as deadly as mirkwood elves. But with the newest iteration of the game where 1) the Galadhrim now have heavy armor instead of just armor, and 2) you can only get wood elves in a Lorien list or a Gildor Inglorien warband for Rivendell, I was curious to see how good Lorien is now.

And that meant it was time for overly pedantic stats analysis. We'll be looking at five elements of the army: killing power (both in melee and at range), duel winning ability, resilience to damage, mobility, and overall cost. Inasmuch as magic factors into these rankings (Blinding Light helping with resilience, Nature's Wrath helping with killing power as it deals wounds and traps targets that are on the ground, etc.) we have also considered magic, but do not have a dedicated "Magic" category, and that will highly favor the fleshed out army lists over the less fleshed out lists.

We will discuss each of them in order from weakest to strongest, looking at the following factions: Rivendell, Lothlorien, Halls of Thranduil, and the Helm's Deep Legendary Legion contingent of Galadhrim.

Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Strength

Good morning gamers,

Two more specialized heroic actions left in this series and today we're tackling the not-as-glamorous of the two: Heroic Strength. If you've been with us for a while, you know that Rythbryt came to the defense of Heroic Strength when the new rules dropped, doing a long series on Heroic Strength and how awesome it is (check out the list of posts here). Heroic Strength doesn't appear to be that useful, but it turns out some heroes can get REALLY good use out of it.

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Strength looks pretty simple: a hero can call Heroic Strength at the start of the Fight phase and increases his Strength by D3. In its most direct use, this can be used to increase your wounding potential by +1 (or sometimes +2), making it easier to wound a high Defense model you're fighting (or REALLY smash through a low Defense model you're fighting). However, the actual implications of increasing your Strength can have other uses too. Let's look at a few.

Shire Melee Tactica

Hey Reader!

In our last post we talked about how to use Shire archery effectively, and in this post we wanted to address arguably the most important thing you can do when playing Shire: building a cohesive, holistic approach to melee fighting. This will determine what you do in your Move Phases, how you position and array your troops, how you determine the composition of your warbands, which heroes you take, when and how to engage the enemy - basically everything except shot selection at range (hence the last post), as your plan for melee fighting will dictate a lot of how you play the game.

And in preparation for taking Shire to a tournament next year, I feel like now is as good a time as any to discuss it, as I'll likely be playing with them in some of our battle reports in the future, :) So with no further ado, let's look at how to beat your opponent in melee combat with a Waistcoat Brigade.

Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Defense

Good morning gamers,

Today we visit yet another clutch and beloved heroic action: Heroic Defense. For many people, this is a great heroic action - anytime you can keep a Troll from Rending you, Azog from smashing your face in, or ignore the benefits of that burly two-handed hammer, you're a happy man. But is Heroic Defense all that it's cracked up to be? And how do you know when to punt on offense and throw your heroic action into defending yourself? Well, that's what we're going to look at today!

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Defense is pretty straight-forward in its rules: the hero who calls Heroic Defense in the Fight phase is only wounded on a "natural 6" (that is, a die that "gets a 6" and isn't boosted to a 6 with Might, two-handed-weapon bonuses, special rules, etc.) during that Fight phase. Brutal Power attacks and modifiers don't come into play at all. If the hero would be wounded on a 6/4+ or worse, then you need to get a natural "6/6+" (which is, needless to say, quite difficult). Simple, right?

Quest of the Ringbearer: What Do You Need To Buy?

Good morning gamers,

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

I recently acquired the Quest of the Ringbearer supplement - and boy am I excited! As great as sourcebooks that showcase Minas Tirith, Rohan, and the Shire are, following the storyline that we all love is incredible. What I was overwhelmed by when I was thumbing through the book was the sheer amount of money that would be required to buy all of the models required for the book. But when I thumbed through it a second time, it occurred to me that there were quite a few repeat models. As I passed through it a third time, I thought, "Someone should put together a post that explains everything you need for the scenarios in this book." And that someone is me . . . and here's where we're doing it. :)

With Christmas around the bend, maybe this will be useful in helping you shape what's on your wishlist this year. I'm going to assume from the start that you already own the Pelennor Fields Box Set, the Armies of the Lord of the Rings sourcebook, and the Quest of the Ringbearer supplement. This means you'll have the following models which will be important for this campaign:

• Actual models:
• Ringwraith on Fell Beast
• 36 Morannon Orcs
• Proxy-able models:
• Mordor Troll
• 19 Warriors of the Dead
• 9 Riders of Rohan

While this might not seem like much, since the cost of buying the Ringwraith, the Morannon Orcs, and the Rulebook on their own is the same as the cost of the entire box set, might as well buy it (and get rulers, dice, cool scenarios to play besides what we're doing, and start Rohan/Dunharrow/Mordor armies). Okay, so with all this in play, let's start by going through the book and see what you'll need!

DISCLAIMER: I get no kick-backs from Games Workshop for this post - but I'm going to do a lot of advertising anyway (because I, like Games Workshop and Forge World, have your finances in mind). :-)

Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Challenge

 Good morning gamers,

We're half way through our series on specialized heroic actions and we've only got a few specialized heroic actions left. Today, we address what is probably the least loved heroic action in the game (behind Heroic Shoot and maybe Heroic Accuracy): Heroic Challenge. What is, I think, the coolest idea for a heroic action, is also the largest gamble - and because models are limited to one heroic action each phase, calling a Heroic Challenge comes at a high opportunity cost. The trick, though, is to find a hero that is dangerous enough not to be left running around on his own, but not THAT dangerous that you're worried about him killing whoever he challenges. To understand more about this, let's look at what this heroic action does and how to use it.

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Challenge is a mouthful of text, which is probably enough to scare most people away from using it. Let's break down what happens:

• At the start of the Fight phase, a hero who has Heroic Challenge must be in base contact with a hero of the same or higher tier (one exception, which we'll address later);
• The challenge can be accepted or declined:
• If accepted, the challenger and the challengee fight in single-combat against each other, forced to charge each other if they can, until one of them dies;
• If accepted, other models may not support the challenger/challengee, may not charge the challenger/challengee, provide their Fight Value/roll dice/make Strikes in any way;
• If declined, the challengee will not be able to affect other models with their Heroic Actions (such as Heroic Moves or Heroic Marches) and cannot declare a Stand Fast!
• Whichever hero slays the other gains D3 Might points - which can put them above their starting Might level.

Pretty simple, right? Declare a challenge and either get Might back OR deny your opponent the ability to call Stand Fasts or effective Heroic Moves. What's not to like? Well, for most people, there's a lot to not like. Let's get into why . . .

Overly Pedantic Stats: Improving Minas Tirith

 Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! I spent some time tracking the performance of Minas Tirith armies at our tournaments over the years, and it didn't surprise me to find that pure Minas Tirith armies (and even allied Minas Tirith + Fiefdoms armies) didn't perform well in our meta. So I got to thinking, "Why is that? Gondor is such a strong faction with so many options and lots of heroes to round them out, so why don't they win more often?" I can't chalk it up to lack of skill because the players who have used them performed well in other tournaments, so I my puzzlement grew.

And that's when I cracked out the overly pedantic stats spreadsheet, because that's what nerds do.

And would you believe it - I found some answers that might help. The purpose of this post is to help you think through how you can improve your Minas Tirith game purely based off of stats: strategy will matter as will objectives, but since those are intangible variables we won't be factoring those into the stats. Instead we will be looking at small changes you can make to increase the overall effectiveness of the profiles in your army to set you up for success.

And with that, join me in my descent into overly analyzed math.