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.
Once again, we're going to weight each category, assigning 33% of the final score a model got to their Hero Slaying score, 33% of the final score to the Warrior Slaying score, and divide up the remaining 33% between the other five scores. The reduced scores for the five non-killing categories will be tie-breakers, but won't change the rankings too much if you aren't as good at killing things as other people.
In the previous post, we saw that models from the Forces of Good scored better if they were mounted. Doubling dice when wounding and getting bonus points for speed greatly increased the scores of those heroes.
However, the Forces of Evil have far fewer "good" mounted heroes and far more monsters (some of whom have Monstrous Charge). To allow monsters to score appropriately, I allowed them to either Rend (against heroes) or Hurl (against warriors), which allowed them to compete against mounted heroes (otherwise, they just struggled). I did not allow these to be used by models with Monstrous Charge (as they are encouraged to make strikes normally to take advantage of the bonus attack/knocking models over). As a result, being a monster was a huge asset for a good many models.
If you look at evil heroes who are not monsters, you'll also find that many Evil heroes are capped at F5 with 2-3 Attacks. While some (like Suladan and the Witch-King) can take mounts, others can't take mounts (like Lurtz and Shagrat). To make up for these weaker stat lines, evil heroes tend to cost 125 points or less when fully kitted-out. This lower price means that, while their ability to beat out other heroes (and even warriors) is less than the killing ability of many Forces of Good heroes, their cost scores will be much higher.
When it comes to monsters, many of them are in the 100-150 point range (also pretty low, compared to the best Good heroes), but others are very, VERY expensive. This not only influenced the decision of Jay Clare to ignore Smaug, but also seems to play into his rankings of other monsters (like the Balrog). While some evil monsters are very expensive, others are not - and if you compare their cost to their equivalent Good heroes, you'll find very impressive combat capabilities (which include ways of dealing with enemy mounts). Those that are very expensive are not only head-and-shoulders better in their stat lines than Forces of Good heroes, but often have special rules that require more than one model to take them down. You will find that Might tends to be more limited on Evil monster heroes, though.
Category #1: Hero Slaying (33% of final score)
Just as we did before, we're going to have each of the evil heroes evaluated against Shagrat, Warleader and determine how likely are you to beat him in a duel and how many wounds can you deal to him if you win the duel. The math worked out like this:
(Probability of Winning the Duel) x (Expected Number of Wounds)
Here are the common modifiers that I considered:
- We assumed that all Striking models got +4 to their FV (including Shagrat) - as discussed last time, this is simplistic (we could have weighted your ending Fight Value with Strike), but making the mathematical model more complicated would only see scores fall. At the end of the day, I used this simplistic approach because it was faster and didn't make a huge difference in how models behaved;
- Mounted models get +1 Attack and got double-dice for knocking things down (we assume they charged and Shagrat is an infantry model) - yes, we could have scored how well the hero did if he did or didn't charge, but again, it would only suppress scores;
- Models get any To Wound bonuses that apply;
- Monster models were allowed to take the best of their Rend score, their normal Strikes, or another Brutal Power Attack (monsters with Monstrous Charge had to use their normal Strikes);
- If you have rerolls, then you have rerolls; and
- When models have multiple weapon options, I scored each and found whichever one scored the highest and said, "You're using that one."
- Score of 0.00-0.35 Wounds
- Score of 0.35-0.70 Wounds
- Score of 0.70-1.05 Wounds
- Score of 1.05-1.40 Wounds
- Score of 1.40-1.75 Wounds
- Score of 1.75-2.10 Wounds
- Score of 2.10-2.45 Wounds
- Score of 2.45-2.80 Wounds
- Score of 2.80-3.15 Wounds
- Score of 3.15+ Wounds
Category #2: Warrior Slaying (33% of final score)
Our troop slaying is once again how well your hero fights 3 Uruk-Hai Scouts with shields. For those of you who prefer Good vs. Evil, you can change this to 3 Warriors of Numenor with shields (exact same profile - though you'd be more likely to find spears supporting at least one of these guys, so the math would change considerably if fighting Numenor). The scoring worked out like this:
(Probability of Winning the Duel) x (Expected Number of Wounds)
This rating is, once again, the expected number of wounds that you'll deal to three Uruk-Hai Scouts, factoring in whether you win the duel. Monsters were allowed to Hurl a model - which was assumed to cut down a 9" battle line at an angle (hitting two ranks of models - the most optimistic approach for Hurl, but something we all strive for if we can). Once again, we had a few outliers that really threw off the scores, so those guys got placed higher at the end of our rankings when tied with others. The corpus of scores gave us our bands and you fell where you fell (the bands that we made were a little below the Forces of Good ones, but pretty close to the same):
- Score of 0.00-0.34 Wounds
- Score of 0.34-0.69 Wounds
- Score of 0.69-1.03 Wounds
- Score of 1.03-1.37 Wounds
- Score of 1.37-1.72 Wounds
- Score of 1.72-2.06 Wounds
- Score of 2.06-2.40 Wounds
- Score of 2.40-2.75 Wounds
- Score of 2.75-3.09 Wounds
- Score of 3.09+ Wounds
Category #3: Survivability (<7% of final score)
Survivability is the opposite end of the coin for hero-slaying - your likelihood of taking damage from Shagrat if you lost the duel (and how likely you were to save wounds with Fate). The math worked like this:
(Probability of SHAGRAT Winning the Duel) x (Expected Number of Wounds) - (Expected Passed Fate Saves)
As discussed last time, a "good" score here will be negative, but it's important to note that to get a negative score, you need to have Fate points (and lots of them). Most Evil heroes (monsters or not) have 0-1 Fate point, so even the highest scoring models don't have great scores here. If you want resilient heroes on paper, look to the Forces of Good (though there are some heroes who I evaluated who scored as well as the Forces of Good heroes, so the bands were about the same).
I did run into a problem with this metric on two kinds of models: those that can spend Will points as Fate points and Sauron. To keep the Will-as-Fate models from becoming outliers and tanking everyone else's scores, I determined how much Will they needed to spend to get a 10 (relative to the rest of the group). Sauron proved to be far more difficult to assess, as we'll see below, since he doesn't have Fate in the traditional sense, but gets a 2+ save when he's about to take his last Wound. Here's the scoring ranges:
- Score of 1.65-1.27
- Score of 1.27-0.89
- Score of 0.89-0.50
- Score of 0.50-0.12
- Score of 0.12-(-0.26)
- Score of (-0.26)-(-0.64)
- Score of (-0.64)-(-1.03)
- Score of (-1.03)-(-1.41)
- Score of (-1.41)-(-1.79)
- Score of (-1.79) and lower
Category #4: Mobility (<7% of final score)
This was the easiest category to compute:
(Model's Max Movement - 3) + (Bonus points for movement-related special rules)
This would give 1-9 points for a model (4" move models get 1 point, 12" move models get 9 points). We then awarded additional points for movement-related keywords (such as Woodland Creature and Mountain Dwellers), allowing the max score of the model to be up to 10 (Glorfindel has Fleetfoot and Woodland Creature, which would give him a score of 11 while riding Asfaloth, but we capped him at 10).
There were a few models who had special rules for getting extra movement - where that applied, I gave the model more points. Here's the scoring schema for reference:
- 4" move
- 5" move
- 6" move
- 7" move
- 8" move
- 9" move
- 10" move
- 11" move
- 12" move
Category #5: Empowerment (<7% of final score)
Empowerment has always been arbitrary for both me and Rythbryt. My metric is simple: you need to have an auric buff - and your score is based on the size and permanence of that buff. The scoring worked like this:
2-6 points for buff radius + 1-4 points for buff permanence
Very few evil heroes have auric buffs (some do) - and most of them are not 12" radius buffs, so this is not going to be a big differentiation in scores for most heroes we view today. Here's the scoring metric:
- 2 points for a buff with a 0-3" radius
- 4 points for a buff with a 3-6" radius
- 6 points for a buff with a 6-12" radius
- +1 point if the buff is a Stand Fast! or Harbinger of Evil
- +2 points if the buff is a one-turn ability (e.g. Dark Marshal spending a Will point to count as a 6" warrior-only banner for a turn) or Ancient Evil
- +3 points if the buff lasts as long as a heroic resource lasts (e.g. Fury)
- +4 points if the buff lasts as long as the character is alive (e.g. Suladan's 6" banner).
Category #6: Impact (<7% of final score)
Here we're rewarding heroes for having special rules that really, REALLY hurt when you face them. The ten categories of special rules are listed below - but the basic idea is to credit models for having really good rules. Here's the metric:
6 + (bonus points for each special rule that falls within certain categories)
I gave everyone a base score of 5 in the Forces of Good evaluation, but for the Forces of Evil, I chose to give everyone a base score of 6 and then used the ten categories of special rules that we used last time. For each rule they had (even if there were more than one in each category), 1 point was awarded, to a maximum of 10 points. Here are the categories:
- Rerolling To Wound (e.g. Bane of Kings, Venom, Ancient Enemies)
- Blades of the Dead
- Regaining Might points (e.g. Blood and Glory)
- Not getting a penalty To Wound (e.g. Burly, Weapon Master, Master Forged)
- Auto-passing Courage Tests (e.g. Fearless, Bodyguard, Sworn Protector)
- Bonuses To Wound (e.g. Hatred, Backstabbers)
- Multiple Wounds (e.g. Mighty Blow, "bane" weapons, Drain Soul)
- Free Heroic Resources (e.g. Mighty Hero, Master of Battle, free Heroic actions)
- Monstrous Charge
- Wild Card (a "great special rule" that wasn't well reflected in the previous categories, max of 1 from this category)
Category #7: Cost (<7% of final score)
This category was scored similarly to the Forces of Good metric, but uses a different base number:
ROUNDDOWN{(Total cost of the model) / 50}
This metric causes more expensive models to get a lower score than cheaper models. Models like Lurtz are 90 points, so he would score a 9 (90 / 50 = 1.8, rounds down to 1, and 10 - 1 = 9). Models that cost more than 500 points get a 1 (only one model crossed the threshold). It's important to note that since most Evil heroes are cheap, this really only caused distinguishing differences between really expensive monsters and "everyone else." Using a 25-pt measurement (like we did for the Forces of Good) caused almost all big monsters to clump together with low scores, so I increased it. The end result seemed to be much more accurate and representative.
Changes That Would Make A Difference
As was mentioned last time, we could have chosen to not allow mounts to be taken as additional wargear. While this was certainly an issue in the Forces of Good evaluation, it made less of a difference here - Evil has far more models with Monstrous Charge than Good does, and these models would rank well whether we allowed heroes to take mounts or not. Heroes who happen to be monsters fared really well, and I couldn't avoid that.
Another change that could be made would be to swap Shagrat out for Amdur (with Bladewrath cast on him). Shagrat starts at F5 and has no Elven-made weapon, which means that if you change him for Amdur (marginal cost increase), you can a) remove the benefits of mounts because Amdur is likely mounted, b) make Elven-made weapons more valuable since those who get to F10 (like Amdur will) need to have the Elven-made weapon in order to do well, c) Amdur still boasts a high number of attacks with Strike, which means he'll be hard to tackle for models that don't have Strike or find it hard to get to F10, and d) if Amdur were to not have Kataphrakts nearby, he'd be D6, which would make the value of S5 less valuable. There are pros and cons to either hero - the true answer would be to compute scores for both and average them (but we're already doing tons of that, so . . .).
One final change that could be made: there wasn't a good way to measure Might in this metric - there's really only one hero who suffers from this, since many of the really good Evil models only have 1-2 Might anyway. While 3 Might comes standard on most Good heroes, Evil heroes really struggle to get to 3 Might (and the few that do pretty much use it to Strike).
With all that prologue, let's look at Jay's rankings!
#10: The Goblin King - "Not Fat Free" (Jay's #9)
Recall that the Hero Slaying and Warrior Slaying scores are based on the relative killing power of the model to all of the other models in the pool. The killing power of the Goblin King is good (F6/S5 with 3A and a Burly 2H pick). While good for killing heroes, it's not great - only 3 dice, no knock down, and no rerolls. Gollum would have helped him, but by himself, the Goblin King is just fine. Against S4 warriors, throwing a model D3+1" isn't a far distance (expected to clip 6 warriors with the model that's thrown) but isn't horrible.
#9: Buhrdur - "Oldie But A Goodie" (Jay's #10)
Buhrdur has been a staple in our group for a long time - Zorro has him, Centaur has him, Rythbyrt has him. I don't. I have a healthy respect for the famed Hill Troll Chieftain, but he's limited in his damage output because of no +1 To Wound. As a result, he can Rend Shagrat on 3s (which is the same as the Goblin King wounding normally), paired with F6/3A (like the Goblin King). This will give you a decent chance of beating Shagrat in a duel and will deal the same kind of damage to Shagrat as you would with the Goblin King. As we said above, his Hero Slaying is "good," but not particularly good.
Where he really shines over the Goblin King is his Warrior Slaying ability - being S6 means you'll Hurl a warrior a little farther than the Goblin King would (at S5), which means you'll deal a little more damage than the Goblin King does (+2 models affected). The band between 4 and 6 was pretty tight, so when you go up by nearly a whole wound, you'll score better.
Many of the other scores are not surprising: Mobility is 3 because he has a 6" move, Impact is a 6 because he has no cool keywords, and Cost is an 8 because he's under 150 points. His Survivability score is a 5 because his ability to resist damage is . . . well, pretty much the same as the Goblin King (slightly harder to wound, no fat save). His Empowerment score accounts for his ability to be a 6" banner for one turn when he kills a hero or monster - which scored slightly better than his Stand Fast! All told, he came in a bit higher than the Goblin King because of his Hurl - when you look at the other categories, Buhrdur and the Goblin King are basically the same.
#8: Shagrat, Warleader - "All The Threes, Almost Like Cavalry" (Jay's #8)
Funny thing - when Shagrat fights himself (from his Legendary Legion), he does alright. :) Jay and I agreed on Shagrat's position in this list, so that's agreement #1. Now this version of Shagrat (in the Legendary Legion) assumes that he's in the same fight against the enemy Shagrat with a friendly Orc Warrior in the fight (engaged, not supporting). The extra die for dueling/wounding from the Orc were not computed (technically, this would be +1 Attack dice for the duel, possibly two extra dice on the wounding roll if the addition of the Orc traps the enemy Shagrat), but today we're just focusing on Shagrat. The main reason we want that extra Orc in the fight is because Shagrat gets the one thing that Buhrdur doesn't get: +1 To Wound. Paired with his Shield of Cirith Ungol to provide the knock-down bonus that cavalry get means you can get 6 dice wounding on 4s (expecting 3 wounds) instead of Buhrdur's 3 dice Rending on 3s (expecting 2 wounds). Sure, you're going in with an even Fight Value, but you're not THAT much more likely to win with Buhrdur and you're doing 1 fewer expected wounds when you win. Not a bad Hero Slaying score, to be honest.
#7: Bill the Troll - "I Like Minced ('Em Fine) Meat" (Jay's #5)
I've written about Bill before - and I hold him to be the second best Evil monster model in the game (behind the Balrog) and while my opinion of Smaug has improved some over the past few weeks, Bill does two things well that makes him really good against most models: he can Paralyze man-sized models by using Keep 'Em For Later, and he can Mince 'Em Fine. In the Hero Slaying evaluation, I allowed Bill (who used Strike to get to F10) to Mince 'Em Fine against Shagrat. This gave him a +2 advantage when they rolled their D6s - here's the discrete probabilities (technical term) for how many wounds he'll deal to Shagrat, based on what each rolls:
#6: Amdur, Lord of Blades - "Elven-Made Weapon + Mount" (Jay's #6)
Agreement #2 with Jay on this with regard to models on his list - we're at 40% so far (not bad, in my opinion). If you compare Amdur to Bill, his ability to kill heroes is . . . well, not that great at first glance. However, Amdur scored really well in this metric and made up for being worse against warriors by being better against heroes. Here's how his Hero Slaying computation worked out:
- Amdur will have 4 Attack dice on the charge against Shagrat - this is the first hero to have more dice than Shagrat (unless we gave Shagrat from the LL +2 dice for the extra Orc and being out killed by Gorbag);
- Amdur will Strike from F6, which means in this framework, he'll be F10 over Shagrat's F9 (same as the other heroes EXCEPT Shagrat himself);
- If Amdur wins, he'll knock Shagrat over and roll 8 dice to wound (+2 dice over Shagrat, +5 dice over the Goblin King/Buhrdur, irrelevant for Bill);
- Amdur, if he fights normally, will wound on 6s, which would NOT be good, so we've chosen to go two-handed and just be willing to Might-up the dueling roll (since the Strike will be free - Shagrat has the lower starting Fight Value, so we'll either beat his FV without Striking OR Strike for free);
- Going two-handed, Amdur gets 8 dice wounding on 5s, which gives him just under 3 wounds to Shagrat - for comparison, the Goblin King/Buhrdur are expected to get 1.5 wounds.
#5: The Dark Lord Sauron - "Slow And Steady" (Jay's #1)
- I assumed that Shagrat's Will was depleted by Compel/Sap Will before the two closed in combat. Sauron has an 18" range on both of these spells and Compel is cast a 3+ while Sap Will is cast on a 4+ (pretty reliably cast on just his free die if you're okay with Sap Will not going off when you cast it).
- I also assumed that Sauron would want to cast Chill Soul instead of Transfix (which would save him the Might point for Strike, but wouldn't "do a wound" to clear out Fate points).
- I also assumed that Sauron would choose to Rend (wounding on 3s) instead of wounding normally (which means trapping Shagrat is unnecessary - something you generally want to do with Sauron).
- If he Strikes, Sauron has a 0.73 probability of winning the fight (so Shagrat has a 0.27 probability of winning the fight);
- When he wins, Shagrat wounds Sauron on 6/4+, which means you are expected to deal (0.08 x 3) an expected average of 0.24 wounds during each round that he wins;
- Multiplying these two chances together (0.27 x 0.24), he's supposed to deal ~0.08 wounds each round - which is not a lot at all. But it's also not negative, so his score is going to be middle-of-the-road.
#4: Gulavhar, The Terror of Arnor - "The Melee Glass Cannon" (Jay's #4)
Agreement with Jay #3 is awarded to Gulavhar. While not as good at killing heroes as Sauron, a completely healthy Gulavhar slams into Shagrat with 5 Attacks, which gives him a 0.44 probability of winning the fight DESPITE not having Strike. In reality, you've probably paired Gulavhar with a spell-caster or three (the Witch-King and Barrow-Wights are particularly nasty), so not having Strike might be a moot point. When he beats Shagrat (4-out-of-9 times), he's rolling 10 dice and looking for 4s, which will see an amazing FIVE Wounds expected to be dealt each time he wins. When factored into his nearly even probability of winning the fight, he falls behind Sauron in Hero Slaying, but comes out a little ahead of heroes like Bill and Amdur. His Warrior Slaying ability is, as expected, very good - ten dice looking for 3s will deal a good number of wounds.
When you look at his Mobility stat, Gulavhar gets the full 10 for having Fly (which is good for him). Empowerment gets a 7 for Harbinger of Evil (which is better than his Stand Fast). He gets 8 points for Impact thanks to having Monstrous Charge and his ability that allows him to regain Wounds when he kills models. For Cost, he's a good 200 points, which puts him just barely at a 6.
His only "bad" stat is Survivability - D5 isn't great and no Fate isn't great either. Sure, he's not the WORST hero out there, but compared to the rest of these guys (especially Shagrat), you really aren't as good as you could be. I mentioned at the beginning that I didn't account for Might very well - and it shows here. Gulavhar could call Heroic Defense in order to be wounded on 6s, which would improve his score a bit. Still, Gulavhar is vulnerable to shooting damage as well as melee damage (if he doesn't auto-win the fight), so I feel like this Survivability score is fine.
#3: Bolg - "Cheaper Than Dad, Probably Better If You Kill Chaff" (Jay's #3)
Agreement #4 - we're on a roll! Bolg is one of those heroes that everyone worries about facing (unless they have a magic-heavy crew - especially someone with Sorcerous Blast). Bolg is pretty good at Hero Slaying (he Strikes from F7 and is S5 with a two-handed Burly pick to augment 3 Attacks and a Fell Warg mount) - let's just say that dealing with Shagrat wasn't that difficult. Getting an estimated 4 Wounds when he beats Shagrat is pretty good, but not as good as some other heroes in the game.#2: Azog - "I Whip My Flail Back And Forth - I Whip My Flail Back And Forth" (Jay's #2)
#1: The Balrog - "#Underrated #JusticeForMoria" (Jay's #7)
Okay, my love for the Balrog is well-known here at TMAT. He's great - and he's amazing - and he's a little expensive. But let's break down what he does: first and foremost, he starts at F10 instead of having to Strike up to F10 - and against someone like Shagrat, that's really good! If your opponent can't Strike (or Strikes but fizzles out at F6-7), you can Feint with the Balrog (because he has a sword) and reroll 1s if you win - which is awesome (wound on 3s and reroll 1s, why don't we)!
Rythbryt went through a very detailed review of Smaug, who was Jay Clare's honorable mention (fearing he couldn't actually kill his points worth in a game). While I think Rythbryt did a more than adequate job (understatement) of addressing how great Smaug is as a slayer, I'd like to just raise the curtain a little to show how he did in my ranking system:
You'll notice a lot of 10s on this stat line (Hero Slaying, Warrior Slaying, and Mobility) - and besides Cost (which is in the tank - whatcha gonna do), his other stats aren't bad (many Evil heroes got a 5 in Survivability - and that's as good as you can do if you don't have any Fate). With Ancient Evil, he gets as good of a score as he can get without a 12" while-I'm-alive buff for Empowerment, but otherwise, he's pretty beastly. His Impact score is padded by his free Will point, his almost-Monstrous-Charge rule, and a Wild Card point for having fire (something we DIDN'T evaluate in this framework, but wouldn't have done as much damage as attacking normally unless your opponent was being STUPID and clumping everyone together).
Smaug is devastating in combat, but deals about the same number of wounds as you expect to see from the Balrog and Azog when you actually get down to it. With 4 Attacks at S9 and knock down (thanks to NOT having Monstrous Charge, but instead having Unstoppable Momentum - has the knock-down but no extra attack), he's devastating in combat. As such, he's well-deserving of being on this list - but not at the very top for me. Like we discussed in our podcast on Snipers, Smaug has to be one of the best Combat Heroes in the game for the same reason that he has to be one of the best Snipers in the game - because if you take him, he's all you have (for the most part)! If he's not one of the best, there's little to no reason to run "just Smaug."
So, that's it. Hopefully this has prompted some thinking gears of your own - I know there are flaws in my methodology, but I don't think the results are far from where they should be (and as I've said before, all models are wrong - but some are useful). Leave your comments below - I'd love to hear what you have to say! Until next time, happy hobbying!
So as you seemed to recognize going through it... I'm not sure your survivability metric is capturing all the facets of survivability. ;-) I get that it's consistent (in that all three of the big "no Fate" monsters got the same score (5), and I can even sort of get why Azog tops this list with a "7"... but I don't think saying Bolg and Amdur are more "survivable" than Sauron (or even the Goblin King) passes the eye test. ;-)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think the rankings as you've laid them out are defensible (apart from Sauron's, of course ;-)). All of these are terrific models, and more than a match for most foes.
Personally, I'm less afraid of models like Bolg and Azog than I am models like the Goblin King or Sauron because I tend to bring casters (especially Unlimited Casters and Ringwraiths). The vulnerability to magic is real and certainly could have been accounted for. If I made Survivability the probability of being killed in one round (vs. expected wounds suffered), that would have helped models like Sauron and the Balrog to get a better score, but a bunch of models would have scored very well, so I'm not sure the model would have been working properly.
DeleteSo, naturally we've already had this argument, and as you know I disagree with some of the metrics in the review. But just a very quick apologetic for my boy Sauron, vis-a-vis Gulhavar and Bolg.
ReplyDelete1) Gulhavar cannot strike, has no way of reducing opponent's Fight Value, and if he loses a fight he's going to be wounded. A lot. And every wound he suffers will result in less attacks in subsequent rounds. Does the math consider what happens if Shagrat strikes up, wins a fight, and deals (probably) 1-2 wound each turn to Gulhavar? I feel like his ability to hero slay goes down quite a bit if he ever loses a fight, not to mention if Gulhavar gets hit by archery before closing to melee. Neither of these issues affect Sauron's ability to slay.
2) Bolg is great. I love Bolg. I think his Fight Value is a bit too high compared to other people in the line, but even as-is I don't think he's better at slaying warriors, better at survivability, or better at impact than Sauron. If you fail to wound Bolg you can still break the enemy force to get Victory Points, but not so with Sauron (which is something I feel like should affect his Impact score, as 3 wound against D10 is not an easy thing for anyone). The S8 hurl, the ability to wound spear support, the fact that if you tag him with a single person you can barge and then charge into more people...none of this is stuff that Bolg can do. Add onto this the fact that Sauron can snipe banners, and I'm very curious how he gets a lower Warrior slaying score than Bolg, even Uber Bolg (who, admittedly, doesn't always get to that level, let alone start at that level at the start of the match).
But yes - in all other points I really like this list!
I agree that Gulavhar could be in trouble if Shagrat Strikes, though not having Strike means he can call Heroic Defense every time Shagrat Strikes, so he won't take too much damage unless Shagrat is rolling a lot of 6s. Fly is his best asset, since he can probably choose when to commit against Shagrat (and if he's working with the Witch-King and/or a Barrow-Wight . . .
DeleteBolg got a 10 for Warrior slaying, but know that his 10 was a lower expected kills than Sauron's final score - I completely agree that Sauron is better at slaying warriors, but I also think both are well kitted out to crack through D5 troops. The Impact score doesn't adequately reward Sauron for all of his rules, but Bolg will only score a 10 if he gets 10 kills (that's when he gets Mighty Hero) and he has to be your army leader (no Azog or Necromancer) from Azog's Legion - which means you'll be pretty vulnerable to magic.