The Stuff of Legends: Helm's Guard

Good morning gamers,

You've read our article on Theoden's Riders, you've read our article on Eomer's Riders, and you've read our post on Theodred's Guard (hopefully - if you haven't read any of these, you should). Today we hit the fourth Legion built around a mega hero for Rohan: Helm's Guard. Helm Hammerhand was the highest ranked Rohan hero for Jay Clare, Rythbyrt, and myself when we reviewed the top slayers for the Forces of Good - and specifically Helm in this Legion. So what makes him awesome? And how do you get the most out of this awesome hero with such a light bench of supporting characters? Rythbyrt has the answers to this - have at it buddy!

Legion Tax: 165-175pts

Rythbryt: It's no secret that Rohan's received a lot of love since the game relaunched, and not just in terms of its rule-set and profiles. I'm talking about new model sculpts that are beautiful (in addition to Pelennor box-set Theoden, we've also received Dernhelm, Deorwine, Elfhelm, Aldor and Haleth, and of course the new Eomer plastic kit). 

But my favorite, hands-down, is Helm Hammerhand.

As soon as last Fall's TMAT Tournament wrapped up, I started playing games with Helm's legion (though I won't be fielding it at this Spring's Grand Tournament, it was one of my early candidates). I don't know that this is the most competitive way to play Rohan, but boy will you have a good time while it lasts. 

Math: Should I Boost My Roll to Win This Duel?

Good morning gamers,

In our last post on dueling math, we talked about how to make a spreadsheet that computes your probabilities of winning a fight, given two sets of combatants. We talked about how to scale the number of dice being used - and even applying certain dueling penalties to your models. When we got to increasing your dueling rolls (usually with Might, could be with other rules), we decided to call it quits and start a new post. That's where we're picking up today.

Part 5: Handling Dueling Penalties and Boosts Better

It turns out that computing boosted dueling rolls requires re-thinking the way we've done the previous computations, since we can now have numbers going both up and down (and, of course, the reductions and boosts can be totally different). We also know that penalties are applied before Might is spent, so nothing can get below a 1 - and nothing can be higher than a 6. We know that reasonably we shouldn't see more than a -2 penalty applied to dueling rolls AND we shouldn't see more than a +5 applied to boosting rolls (to boost a 1 to a 6), so let's assume that (from a configuration perspective) this is what we need the tool to do. 

To begin with, let's take as our case study a duel between Angbor the Fearless (who gets a -1 penalty when he doesn't roll a 6) and a Morannon Orc Captain with shield. To compute Angbor's dueling probabilities, we will be setting up an extra set of numbers near the box that pre-computes the dueling penalties and boosts we're willing to make:

On the right side of the 6x6 grid, we have greyed-out numbers that apply the penalties and bonuses that we specify in our configuration section for the vertical character. You'll see something similar below the 6x6 grid for the horizontal character. These tell us what value we would ROLL in order to get the final result on the left-hand side (so Angbor's value for "1" on the left shows a "2" on the right side because the 2 will be degraded to a 1 with his broadsword). Similarly, he has no value for a 5 - any 5s will become 4s and any 6s will remain 6s.

The greyed out cells work as follows: =<original_value> - <dueling_penalty> - <boosting_bonus>. If you're thinking, "Wait, why am I subtracting a negative number and subtracting a positive number? I want my negative number to make my number go down and my positive number to make my number go up, right?" Well, yes . . . that's actually what we're doing, but it's not intuitive. Let's look at an example to make it a little clearer.

Suppose you suffer a -1 penalty from a two-handed weapon. Assuming you don't have Might to boost your dueling roll, you will end up with a 3 whenever you would have rolled a 4. In our system, to figure out how often you get a result of a 3 as your final value, you want the grey number to become a 4 in the line that the 3 is displayed in. Since the penalty is listed as a negative value, we need to subtract the negative from our original value in order for it to get increased properly.

Similarly, if you boost your dueling roll by +1 (usually with Might), all rolls of 2 will become a 3 after you boost it. So if we're trying to figure out how often we get an end result of 3, we would want the grey number to become 2 (which, again, involves subtraction).

Two of the greyed-out cells do special things: the one in the "5" slot has to check to see if both the dueling penalty box is set to preserving 6s AND no Might is being used to boost - when this is the case, it returns 0 (since you will never have a situation where you end up with a 5 high). In all other cases, it works just like all the other cells. Similarly, the cell in the "6" slot has to check to see if the dueling penalty box is set to preserving 6s - if so, it's set to 6. Otherwise, we use the exact same formula that we used in the previous boxes (original score - penalties - boosts).

Okay, so let's assume that we now have the right values being calculated so we know what our expected values are supposed to be. How do we translate these new values into our 6x6 grid? Well, we update our cells on the left and top sides of the grid - here's how . . .

The Stuff of Legends: Ugluk's Scouts

Good morning gamers,

Today we'll be continuing our series on Legendary Legions with Centaur's take on Ugluk's Scouts. Now if you dig DEEP into our archives, you'll know that the first tournament we ever ran here at TMAT (Spring 2012) featured Centaur running Vrasku, an Uruk-Hai Captain (proxied by Ugluk - required by how the Legions of Middle-Earth rules worked back then), and a mixture of Uruk-Hai Scouts and Orc Warriors from the two Isengard lists from the Legions of Middle-Earth book. Centaur has been the longest promoter of Ugluk in our community (he was Centaur's first Isengard hero, if I'm not mistaken) (Centaur: he was!) and has been beloved by him ever since (though perhaps not as high on the totem pole now as the Isengard Siege Veteran with BALLIIISSSTTTAAAA!) (Centaur: he probably still wins by a hair, mostly because he doesn't MISS AS OFTEN, :P). Today, Centaur will be sharing his love for this iconic Uruk-Hai hero and his dysfunctional band of followers. 

Quick interjection before we get started: I intentionally placed this review AFTER the Lurtz's Scouts and Cirith Ungol Legendary Legion reviews, because they both stem from this army (one takes the free 8" movement upgrade for Uruk-Hai Scouts and the accompanying Uruk-Hai heroes, while the other takes the race-based warband restrictions and Animosity special rule). Both of these Legions were released AFTER Ugluk's Scouts, but I felt it would be better to cover Ugluk's Scouts third to show how these neat rules can be melded together. Okay, with the housekeeping notes out of the way, take it away, Centaur!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 65 points

Centaur: You must take Ugluk, but he's the only required hero for this list. That's a nice bonus, as he's only 65pts, and that means you have hundreds of points left to spend on your army. That being said, you are also effectively required to take Mauhur (to get the standard 8" move bonus to all Uruks), and it's wise to take both Grishnakh and Snaga as they are cheap Might Point caddies for you. I also recommend taking an Uruk Scout Captain with a two-handed weapon if you can, as they make for excellent killers (F5/S5 with a two-handed axe? OH YEAH BABY). But beyond that, you can take whatever you want, though I recommend taking a smattering of both Orcs and Uruks to fill out your ranks so that you can take advantage of your special rule.

Math: Am I Gonna Win This Duel?

Good morning gamers,

We've posted a few articles from a guest author named Sharbie who's taken up writing on his own blog - and his stuff is good (you should check it out). Sharbie had a set of two articles written earlier in the year that talked about the Cave Drake: the first covered how good he is in combat, while the other covered some additional maths based on comments that were made (including one of my comments, I'm proud to say). My question was based on a scenario he provided about how someone like Elrond would fare against the Cave Drake in a one-on-one contest. Ignoring how likely you are of getting a one-on-one duel against a Cave Drake with Elrond (he's going to have bodyguards - or he should), let's assume that Elrond does find himself alone in that kind of fight? How do we figure out how likely either side is to win?

The answer to that question (the math behind it) is the topic for today: if I know how many dice I'm rolling and the Fight Value of my models, how can I build my own spreadsheet to figure out the answers to the questions I want to ask? Assuming you want to use Microsoft Excel (or a Google Spreadsheet or some other similar spreadsheet tool) and you want to learn how to fish (so to speak), read on.

Before we dig in, I must add that Rythbryt did a post on some of this a while back in his series on Heroic Strike - if you want to check your math results in this post against something right, you can look there to compare. We'll give examples to illustrate,  but check against those if you don't believe me. Today we will be less concerned about explaining the numbers (though we will) as we are how to compute the numbers from a mathematically sound perspective.

The Stuff of Legends: Cirith Ungol

Good morning gamers,

Today we're back in the new Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook to look at another Legendary Legion: Cirith Ungol. We've already looked at Lurtz's Scouts, which is a fast army that has average Defense. In this list, we'll look at an army that is also average Defense, but not as fast (and you must work at making it fast, while Lurtz's Scouts come by it honestly).

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 155-175pts

You NEED to include both Shagrat and Gorbag in your army (Shagrat is always your Leader). With Shagrat's max cost being 115 points (with heavy armor and his special shield) and Gorbag's max cost being 60 points (with his not-so-special shield), your maximum Legion tax is only 175 points. That's higher than most Legions we've looked at, but not that high for most point levels.

Before we go into what you ACTUALLY need, let's go over something really quickly: you have two warrior profiles (Orc Warriors and Mordor Uruk-Hai) and they both have specialized jobs, as well as common jobs (where you can use either of them more-or-less equally well). Orc Warriors can take spears, while Mordor Uruk-Hai cannot - this means any second rank you have will be Orc Warriors. Mordor Uruk-Hai, by contrast, are more reliable archers than Orc Warriors (both come with Orc bows, but the Mordor Uruk-Hai have a 4+ shoot value). If you need front-line troops, BOTH Orc Warriors and Mordor Uruk-Hai make good choices, as both types of warriors can take shields (going from D4 to D5) and both types of warriors can take two-handed weapons. Both types of units can also take banners - you can give Orc Warriors spears as well (and shields if you like), while the Mordor Uruk-Hai can pair a banner with an Orc bow and be a shooting bannerman instead of a supporting bannerman.

New Faction: The Ettenmoors

 Hey Reader!

So this is something new on this channel, and we'd love your feedback on it to see what you think. As I reread the works of Tolkien, I'm reminded about how many cool Germanic mythological stuff is found in The Lord of the Rings (not surprising, considering that Tolkien was writing a mythos for Britain), and unfortunately not all of these things appear in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in prominent ways, so we are limited in what we have in our miniatures line.

So I took a moment to think about some of these creatures and where they lived, and I realized that they all lived in the Misty Mountains. And that got me thinking about a very loose alliance that would make for a very interesting fighting force on the table, which is where the Ettenmoors faction was born.

We will start by introducing this homebrew faction - what it contains, where they appear in Tolkien's mythology, and what we know about them - and then we will go into presenting the profiles for the various creatures.

The faction is a neutral faction, with some models being taken as part of a Forces of Good army, some models being taken as part of a Forces of Evil army, and some models that can be taken as part of a neutral army. Some are copied from other armies, others are similar to models in existing armies, but most of them are new, giving a unique primarily monster army that we hope you will enjoy.

I.  The Ettenmoors: The Might of the Mountains

The Ettenmoors is a section of the Misty Mountains north of Rivendell. In this region (and across the Misty Mountains) you will find a mixture of stone giants, werewolves, trolls of various kinds, and wild animals, which is the basis for this faction.

Some of these creatures are well documented: stone trolls (like we see in The Hobbit), cave trolls (like we encounter in Moria), and various bears and deer in the Carrock region of the mountain range are pretty well understood from a lore perspective. But there are others that raise questions.

The first is one that we know decently well from The Silmarillion and The Lost Tales, and that is the werewolf. A staple of Germanic/Saxon mythology (and appearing in some Scottish and Irish myths as well), werewolves are most well known for their part in the story of Beren and Luthien, and the saga of the Silmarils. They are fast, ravenous, and ferocious in battle, with greater strength than your average person.

The second is the giant, which is referenced by Gandalf in The Hobbit, and the party gets to see them later as they ascend the mountain, throwing stones to each other in a crude and dangerous game. These guys are big - at least as tall as ents, if not taller - and some can be evil, but some are a good sort, including the one that Gandalf says he will talk to about closing up the entrance to the goblin tunnel.

The third is the two-headed troll, which is a creature hotly debated by the few who really care. Mentioned in a throwaway line in The Hobbit, Gandalf insinuates that there are trolls with two heads, but whether this means they literally have two heads or whether it means that they have a mind of their own plus the will of Sauron ruling over them is a mystery. The critical thing we know about them is that they are evil and they are not the same as the stone trolls that Thorin's Company encounters (as Gandalf speaks of them as if they are different), so for the purposes of more interesting army lists we are treating them as an actual two-headed troll, different from the stone trolls of the Trollshaws.

Fourth we have the snow troll, another creature only referenced in an obscure part of Tolkien's lore, in this case in the tale of Helm Hammerhand, who went about the Dunlending camps with a white pelt on his back killing his enemies with his bare hands. The Dunlendings say that he stalked them "like a snow troll," which presumes the existence of a snow troll.

Of course, it could also just be a Dunlending "bogeyman" sort of thing designed to scare children, so we don't really know that they exist. But it seems far more interesting if they do, so we decided to build a profile for them, because Stalk Unseen on a troll is such a novel concept.

And that gave us a lot of fodder for a monster-heavy army that is admittedly short on numbers, but could be very fun to play.

II.  The Ettenmoors: Units and Stats

The stats of the Ettenmoors units can be found (and easily printed to show your gaming group) here. You'll find a version in full color with a nice background that is cool to look at but more harsh on your printer, so we've also included a black and white version for ease of printing. We will start by looking at the army bonus and army composition, and then move through a quick discussion of the heroes and warriors you can take.

The army is composed of Stone Giant Kings, Stone Giant Craftsmen, Snow Troll Chieftains, Werewolf Chieftains, Two-Headed Troll Brutes, Stone Troll Brutes, Stone Giants, Two-Headed Trolls, Cave Trolls, Snow Trolls, Stone Trolls, Werewolves, Carrock Bears, and Carrock Deer.

The army bonus for the faction is Games with Rocks, giving you the Mountain Dweller special rule, and you add +1 to your Shoot Value when you are throwing stones. This doesn't make your throwing particularly good, but hey, you get to have games with rocks like they do in the books!

Of the heroes, Stone Giant Kings and Stone Giant Craftsmen may be taken in Forces of Good, Forces of Evil, or Neutral armies. All of the other heroes can only be taken in Forces of Evil or Neutral armies. Similarly Stone Giants, Carrock Bears, and Carrock Deer can be taken in any army, while the rest may only be taken in Forces of Evil or Neutral armies. This means that you will likely be playing a Forces of Evil or a Neutral force when using this army, unless you really love giants teamed with, say, Beorn or Radagast.

For the Forces of Evil, you get access to a wide range of monstrous and deadly creatures: tough trolls, sneaky trolls, and unyielding werewolves. They are expensive, to be sure, but if you like the idea of fighting with a relentless army that is mostly monsters, you can do it with this army. And for armies like Angmar, you get access to a wider range of frontline bruisers to accompany your orcs.

It's not an amazing army, but I think it's 1) thematically cool, 2) fun to play, and 3) gives a lot of room for customization depending on what you want to do with it. As someone who enjoys the monster rules, throwing stones, and berserker-style special rules, you have a great option with The Ettenmoors.

Conclusion

We love talking about the game, best tactics, and how to build armies with unique playstyles. The idea of creating our own homebrew content is a new venture for us (and probably won't do this often), so let us know what you think! We have high hopes that as the Amazon Prime series starts we will get new models and units for some factions (and who knows, maybe even a werewolf if we're going to the Second Age!), so who knows: maybe someday this faction will be outdated/antiquated by official lines of miniatures and stat profiles. But in the meantime, if you like giants, trolls, and werewolves, may I recommend The Ettenmoors.

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane - yes, with humans alongside me if I must." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

The Stuff of Legends: Lurtz's Scouts

Good morning gamers,

Today we will be looking at our first Legion from the new Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook! Of all the Legions that were released in that sourcebook, I was really excited to see what they did with this one. While I can't say I'm very impressed with it (it's kinda meh relative to the other Isengard Legions or the normal Isengard faction itself), the Legion emphasizes one of the things that many players will enjoy: running up the field very quickly with F4/S4 Uruks and hacking stuff up-close-and-personal. Recipe for success? Possibly not. Really fun to play? Absolutely. Great models to use on the tabletop? Undoubtedly. Curious about how we're going to make this Legion work? Read on . . .

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 90pts

The only model you NEED is Lurtz with the shield, which - let's face it - we were taking the shield anyway whenever we run Lurtz (because it's free and you get a special rule for it in this Legion). Lurtz is a cheap hero, providing "good" combat stats for an Evil hero (F5/S5/3 Attacks on offense, D6/1F/3 Wounds on defense). Lurtz has 3 Might points and a good selection of heroic actions (most notably Challenge in this Legion, but also Strike/Strength/March). Being "only" D6 with "only" 1 Fate/3 Wounds isn't great for your army leader, but any Isengard player who doesn't bring Saruman is probably bringing Lurtz, so maybe you're used to it.

Lurtz also needs supporting heroes - specifically in the form of Mauhur (one of the cheapest 3 Attack heroes in the game, 2 Might for Heroic March, and you get a free upgrade for all of your Uruk-Hai Scouts to Uruk-Hai Marauders by including him) and an Uruk-Hai Drummer (+3" of movement for friendly Uruk-Hai models within 12" of him, but those same models can't charge). These two heroes cost less than 100 points, so for under 200 points, you've got 26 warriors slots (assuming the Uruk-Hai Drummer is in one of those warbands instead of by himself) and LOADS of points to work with (no matter what your point limit is).

Lurtz's Scouts Bonuses

Jay Clare's Top 10 Slayer Heroes - Tiberius's Take, Part 2

Good morning gamers,

Hopefully by now, you've seen both of Jay Clare's articles on his top slaying heroes for both the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. You might have also read Rythbyrt's posts on the reranking of Jay's lists (Good, Evil Part 1, Evil Part 2). You might have even read Centaur's articles on the worst slayers for the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. I've already written my reranking of Jay's list for the Forces of Good - today we tackle the Forces of Evil. If you thought this would be an "I already laid out my methodology, so let's dig in" kind of post (like I did), think again . . .

Methodology: Categories and Weights

If you read my first article, the methodology used to rank each model was based on seven categories: hero slaying, troop slaying, survivability, mobility, empowerment, impact, and cost. While I could have limited myself to Jay's list, I wanted to take a more expansive approach, so I did what I did for the Forces of Good:

I evaluated 125 profiles for the Forces of Evil.

From Smaug to Sharkey, I walked through each hero, evaluated them, then questioned whether I gave them the best possible evaluation. There were roughly 50 fewer applicants this time around (far fewer named heroes in the Evil batch than the Good batch), but that didn't make the competition any less fierce. After many iterations and changes in the framework, I finally have a list I'm happy with. I will say that I didn't evaluate war beasts, siege engines, or warrior models, so if you're expecting Mumaks to dominate my scores in our podcast, you're in for some disappointment.

The Stuff of Legends: Theodred's Guard

Good morning gamers,

We've already looked at a Rohan Legendary Legion centered around Theoden, a Rohan Legendary Legion centered around Eomer, and today we will be viewing a Rohan Legendary Legion centered around Theodred. I love using Theodred - he's a crazy good hero when he's charging, but I prefer him in the vanilla Rohan list where he'll be a supporting hero instead of the main hero (he also gets a better supporting cast of heroes than in this Legion). Thankfully, Rythbyrt really likes this Legion, so I passed the review on to him - have at it mate!

Rythbyrt: I have a soft spot for the tragedy of Theodred (which became even softer after re-living that battle in The Lord of the Rings Online a few years back). Last summer, I built a terrain board themed around the Fords of Isen (complete with a Ford, of course, which makes it interesting), and a couple tournaments ago I toyed with the idea of taking a Theodred-led Rohan force to a tournament, and even tried it once against Tiberius's prized wood elves. 

That match... went about how you'd expect it to go. In addition to the trouble that Blinding Light + S3 elf bows pose to D5 Warriors of Rohan armed with Throwing Spears, it didn't help that the Rohan force led by Theodred didn't benefit much from the rules of Vanilla Rohan. My cavalry models (of which I had a fair bit) didn't get any Fight bonuses (because no Theoden), and I hadn't experimented with Rohan enough to discover the pure joy that is Royal Guards on foot (much, much more on them shortly).

Since then, the Theodred's Guard legendary legion came out, which fixed some of those issues, plus I've matured in my understanding of how to play avoidance armies (which Rohan in general, and this legion in particular, absolutely is). So when Tiberius offered me a chance to summarize this legion, I got very excited. I don't think this legion is the most competitive out there, but if you love Rohan--and have a soft spot for Theoden's lost son--there's a ton of enjoyment to be had from this legion.