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.

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."

Once I got everyone's scores, I made equal bands (decile, technical term) and wherever you fell, that's the score you got. Unlike the Forces of Good, I had a few outliers who REALLY outstripped everyone else, so I set the bands lower than the max score and gave those models priority over other models who barely got to 10. Interestingly enough, the bands I picked mirrored the Forces of Good bands almost exactly:

1. Score of 0.00-0.35 Wounds
2. Score of 0.35-0.70 Wounds
3. Score of 0.70-1.05 Wounds
4. Score of 1.05-1.40 Wounds
5. Score of 1.40-1.75 Wounds
6. Score of 1.75-2.10 Wounds
7. Score of 2.10-2.45 Wounds
8. Score of 2.45-2.80 Wounds
9. Score of 2.80-3.15 Wounds
10. 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):

1. Score of 0.00-0.34 Wounds
2. Score of 0.34-0.69 Wounds
3. Score of 0.69-1.03 Wounds
4. Score of 1.03-1.37 Wounds
5. Score of 1.37-1.72 Wounds
6. Score of 1.72-2.06 Wounds
7. Score of 2.06-2.40 Wounds
8. Score of 2.40-2.75 Wounds
9. Score of 2.75-3.09 Wounds
10. 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:

1. Score of 1.65-1.27
2. Score of 1.27-0.89
3. Score of 0.89-0.50
4. Score of 0.50-0.12
5. Score of 0.12-(-0.26)
6. Score of (-0.26)-(-0.64)
7. Score of (-0.64)-(-1.03)
8. Score of (-1.03)-(-1.41)
9. Score of (-1.41)-(-1.79)
10. 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:

1. 4" move
2. 5" move
3. 6" move
4. 7" move
5. 8" move
6. 9" move
7. 10" move
8. 11" move
9. 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)

The baseline of 6 was chosen after looking at the results - no one had more than 4, so getting +6 to this metric was fine. Averages of scores can be greatly affected by low scores, so making sure these numbers were high instead of low made a huge difference.

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.

The Mobility score could be +1 higher for his rule that allows him to move through his own models, but other than that, he's just a 6" model. Similarly, he has no area buffs, so he gets an Empowerment score of 5 for his 6" Stand Fast! Not much to say about either of those. Cost and Impact were both high scores for the Goblin King, as he's less than 150 points and has a couple of great keywords (Burly and his Father save). Again, not much to talk about here.

His Survivability score is the real point of interest, as the Goblin King is renowned for his ability to ignore Wounds with his free 3+ save from Blubbery Mass. The problem is that when you're wounded on 4s by a S5 model and you only save 2/3 hits, you're still taking damage - and with only 1F to blunt what makes it past the Fate, you're just breaking even. Getting a 5 isn't a bad score if you don't have a lot of Fate.

#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.

When computing his Warrior Slaying score, you don't get the Orc to give you +1 To Wound (because that would split the combat), but you still get the knock-down if you charge and since you wound on 4s, you're killing 2-3 of them. With a higher base Fight Value, you're winning fights and killing dudes (as well as Buhrdur).

His other scores are pretty boring - 6" move for Mobility, 6" Stand Fast for Empowerment, 8 for Cost because he's less than 150 points. He has an 8 for Impact because he has Blood and Glory and a Wild Card credit for his competition-with-Gorbag rule that gives him a reroll to win the fight if being out-killed by Gorbag. 

But Shagrat is our first model with a good Survivability score. Why? Because he's wounded on 5s (like Buhrdur) but has 3 Fate points to save whatever he's dealt. With an expectation of 1 Wound suffered and 1.5 wounds saved, Shagrat gets to the magic point where he's got a negative expected number of wounds to be suffered past Fate. This is pretty good.

#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:

As you can see, Bill is supposed to do 0-7 wounds to Shagrat. On average this is about 2.3 wounds per round, which is about 50% more damage than the Goblin King/Buhrdur will do and slightly less than Shagrat will do (~3 wounds/round). Bill's higher Fight Value does give him a greater advantage in winning the fight (Shagrat's got a straight 50% chance of winning because he's fighting himself), though admittedly Shagrat may have done better if we added an extra two dice (1 for the Orc in the fight and 1 for the reroll if Gorbag is out-killing him). With a 0.65 probability of winning the fight, he ends up with basically the same damage output as Shagrat (an expected 1.5 wounds given winning probabilities). Not bad, really.

When it comes to Warrior Slaying, however, Bill is much better than those that we've seen to date. Why? Because his S7 gives him +1" of Hurling distance and potentially kills two additional models. As such, he's got a 7 on the warrior killing and squeaked out ahead of Shagrat. His other stats are, well, not that surprising. At 165 points, he scores a 7 for Cost (not as good as everyone else we've covered, but not "bad" for a hero by any means), while he gets a 3 for Mobility because of his 6" move. He gets an 8 for Empowerment because of the Campfire, which gives him (and Tom and Bert if they're in the same force) +1 Courage and Resistant to Magic if they're within 6" of it - pretty great bonus really. He scored the Wild Card bonus point for Impact, since he's got Keep 'Em For Later (which we haven't accounted for yet). Bill's Survivability score is . . . well, the same as Buhrdur's and the Goblin King's scores. With D7 (wounded on 5s, like Buhrdur) with a single Fate point, he's going to be okay at resisting damage, but not great. 

While I think I would have ranked Bill higher if I was going with my gut, Mince 'Em Fine is a lot more devastating against S4 models. Against someone like Shagrat (whose S5 not only makes it harder to get a one-turn-kill with Mince 'Em Fine, but also negates the advantage of Bill being D7), Bill doesn't perform as well as you'd expect - so, I feel like placing him #7 in this list (much lower than #7 on my master list) is fine.

#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.

Killing troops is pretty straight-forward - you have the higher Fight, you have more dice, and you get four sets of two dice to wound the three warriors (wounding on 5s if you fight normally) - that's quite a bit of damage (but not as much as you would if you Hurled with a high Strength). As such, his Warrior Slaying score is about the same as Buhrdur and Shagrat, but not as high as Bill.

His other categories are simple: Mobility score of 7 for being mounted (realistically this could be higher because he probably has a War Drum in his army), his Survivability is about the same as most of the previous contestants (wounded on 5s with 1 Fate point - but with a slightly higher probability of winning, which pushed him over the boundary to a 6), Empowerment is a 6 for his 3" banner (I didn't count the if-you-can-kill-the-army-leader-you-get-more-range), and his Cost is an 8 because he's less than 150 points (barely).

Amdur gains some ground over the other two in the tie-breaking department thanks to his great Impact score. Like most of the contestants so far, he has two abilities that give him bonus points (Blood and Glory and the Wild Card bonus for having the free-Heroic-Strike-if-the-other-guy-Strikes-first). In a close contest between the other two, he'll rank better than either of the other guys one way or another. 

Both Amdur and Bill scored 12 points across their Hero/Warrior slaying categories, and their Empowerment/Impact/Cost scores came out as a wash as well (Amdur got a 6/8/8 while Bill got an 8/7/7). Amdur's slightly higher probability of winning the fight led to a better Survivability score, which was icing on the cake thanks to his much better Mobility score. 

Let the record reflect that this analysis has improved my opinion of Amdur without improving my opinion of Easterlings in general . . . moving on . . .

As we wrap up Amdur, we close out the discussion of the models that made Jay's Top 10 list, but didn't make my Top 10. The following models are all Top 10 models in my opinion and are all really great. Ready for something controversial? Well, here it is . . .

#5: The Dark Lord Sauron - "Slow And Steady" (Jay's #1)

Okay, so I mentioned that Sauron was #5 to Centaur and he was like, "Um . . . why?" And I was like, "Well, he's only got 4 Attacks, he can't knock models prone, his Brutal Power Attacks don't help him much in these scenarios, and he's slow and expensive." Centaur was then like, ". . . and your point is?"

So if Jay thought this guy was #1 and Rythbryt thought he was better than the other models that Jay ranked, what gives? Don't get me wrong - Sauron is great. I recently helped my son through a tournament where we used Sauron, and he was amazing (most of the time). Chill Soul is a great spell for plucking warriors off of objectives or getting VPs for wounding that army leader that's beating a hasty retreat from you. Not being broken is pretty great too. So is being D10 with the Ring. 

However, in THIS evaluation, not all of that is well reflected. Sauron is guaranteed to hit F10 when he Strikes (which gives him the Fight advantage against Shagrat), and with +1 dice over Shagrat, he's got a good chance of winning the fight. I probably should have assumed there was a banner near him (since there's always a banner near Sauron), but I didn't want to have to do that with every single hero in this list. Once he beats Shagrat, he's wounding him on 4s if he strikes normally OR 3s if he Rends (which he would choose to do in this instance). Wounding on 3s gives him almost 3 Wounds/round expected (which is on-par with Amdur). So why doesn't he have the same score as Amdur?

The answer lies in something that no other model on this list is going to have: he has magical powers to augment his damage. Chill Soul deals 1 Wound to a target model if it's not resisted. Chill Soul is cast on a 4+ and the first 5-6 times you cast it, you're going to use two dice. Two dice have a 0.75 probability of passing the cast without using Might, so I gave Sauron an extra 0.75 wounds to his final total to reflect this. A few things about this:

• 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).

When you take all of these things into account, he's going to come out ahead - and it turns out this is good enough to get him an 8 in Hero Slaying, which I feel is pretty good. When it comes to Warrior Slaying, he gets a perfect 10. I ranked his S8 Hurl, which knocks down a lot of models and results in a lot of kills. He also gets an 8 for Empowerment thanks to Ancient Evil and an 8 for Impact, thanks to having his free Will point each turn and a Wild Card point for the Ring. I don't think there would be too much to critique about any of these.

There are two categories that, try as I might, I couldn't increase and still retain his ranking. The first is Cost - 400 points has to be factored in somewhere. As one of the most expensive models in the game, Sauron's going to have a low score in this category. The other category that's going to be low is Mobility - like many of the models we've viewed so far, he's only got a 6" move. In reality, Sauron is often accompanied by a generic Ringwraith or an Orc Captain to give him March (you usually don't have the money for a Mordor Troll with a War Drum, so March it is), so you can see him be faster than he is. Like a banner would have made heroes score better in their Hero/Warrior Slaying categories, expect Sauron to be more mobile than his score indicates (at least for a few turns). You could also increase his mobility by factoring in Compel, which can move an opponent's model 3-11" closer to you (depending on their normal speed and the impact of War Drums/Heroic Marches), which gives you an effective "charge range" of 9-17". Any of these would rank much higher than his current score, but would come at the expensive of casting Chill Soul (since you can't cast two spells in the same round). Once again, factoring in a Ringwraith near Sauron would be really helpful here. 

One final category we need to address is Survivability. Our metric for Survivability in this framework (the likelihood that Shagrat wins the duel, multiplied by the expected Wounds that Shagrat would deal to Sauron, reduced by the number of Fate saves that are expected) works for most models - if you have 2 Wounds and 1 Fate point, you are less likely to survive than a model with 3 Wounds and 3 Fate points (especially if those Fate saves are rerollable).

But Sauron is different: he doesn't have Fate, but he gets a 2+ save when he's about to lose his last wound. In our metric, whatever wounds he's going to be dealt are going to be unsaved (he never gets credit for the 2+ save). As such, his end score is going to be positive, which means he's going to NOT score high in a category you'd expect him to be really good at. So let's explore a few things:

• 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.

Sauron's Survivability score SHOULD be higher than it is, but consider that Sauron rarely has to be killed in the scenarios that he plays - he just has to be wounded three times (in order to break Sauron's army normally and get points for wounding the enemy army leader). While Sauron is a beast in combat and very hard to wound, he doesn't need to be killed to have his greatest assets removed from the board. As such, I'm going to stand by my Survivability score of 5 with the full knowledge that a single Fate point would have seen the score jump up dramatically.

For kicks and grins, I did manually change his Survivability score to a 10 and that saw him jump . . . one place in line. He came in just above . . .

#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.

In my opinion, Bolg is much better suited for chaff slaying - not only does his profile get better when he racks up kills (Terror, Harbinger, and Mighty Hero are your after you get 10+ kills), but his S5 with +1 To Wound and the knock-down is devastating against warriors, giving him a perfect 10 WITHOUT Hurl. Need to do some Warrior Slaying? This guy's a pretty good option (if you're not Immobilized).

What can I say about his other stats? His Survivability score is on-par with Amdur (D7 with 1 Fate and winning a lot of the time anyway), his Cost is under 200 points, he can get Harbinger of Evil if he kills 5 models to help his Empowerment score, and he's got a 7 for Mobility thanks to his "stretch Fell Warg".

But why we REALLY want Bolg is his Impact score - a perfect 10! If he's your army leader in Azog's Legion, he gets Master of Battle, but he can also have Mighty Hero if you kill 10 models with him. This gives him the ability to copy 1-2 heroic actions each round AND have a free Might point to call a Heroic Action (or boost a roll) if you need it. Joining these two abilities is Burly and Ancient Enemies (Elf, Dwarf) - both of which are great for dealing extra damage (sometimes situationally). He's pretty great - lots of great rules - but he's not the tip-top of hero-killing prowess. If you like that, you need to look at . . .

#2: Azog - "I Whip My Flail Back And Forth - I Whip My Flail Back And Forth" (Jay's #2)

Jay, I've agreed with you five times now - that's unheard of. :) I've fought Azog a few times and most of the time, I have magic to shut him down. If you left home without magic support, you're in for it if you draw Azog. Azog is our first hero to get a 10 in Hero Slaying - 4A at F10 with a free Strike from Master of Battle, knock-down from the White Warg, and wounding all heroes on 3s means Azog is expected to do more than 5 wounds to Shagrat and he's projected to win a lot of the time. Azog tied for second with the highest expected wounds to Shagrat given how often Azog would win - and he did so without the Stone Flail (don't need it).

When it comes to Warrior Slaying, Azog is not as lethal as some monsters but is still very dangerous - and becomes even more so when you have the Stone Flail. With a great Fight value (F7 normally, the Stone Flail would reduce it to F6), 4A that turn into 8 dice that wound D5 warriors on 3s does a lot of damage (~5 wounds each time he wins). Azog gets a perfect score here - but ONLY because he has the Flail. I will note that warriors can be Azog's bane (he wounds D6-7 warriors on 5s - and D8-9 warriors on 6s - unless he takes the Stone Flail) - knocking these guys down on the charge will help, but it's still going to be hard. As such, we took the Stone Flail today - since Azog is Burly, you can get the free +1 To Wound for the low-low price of being F6. Against most warriors, this won't hurt you, so take the slight Fight reduction and crack through them!

His other stats are pretty straight-forward: his Survivability is better than others we've seen today because he wins a lot and has D7 with 2 Fate points (thanks to the White Warg) to thwart damage dealt. He's also got a Mobility score of 7 thanks to being mounted and an Empowerment score of 7 thanks to a 12" Stand Fast. He's just shy of 250 points, so he scores a 6 for Cost and gets a whopping 9 for Impact, thanks to having Burly, Master of Battle, and a Wild Card point for I Am The Master (the thing that lets him wound heroes on 3s - though honestly, you could give it to the Stone Flail or his synergies with the White Warg if you wanted to). My only regret is that I couldn't justify including the Signal Tower . . .

In truth, the final score for Azog tied with our #1 entry for today, but we all knew how that tie was going to break, right? 

#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)! 

In our Hero Slaying scenario, the Balrog doesn't want to charge into Shagrat - he wants to lash him over the front lines and trap him! Normally, you'd want to do this with two Moria Goblin Prowlers, supported by two Moria Goblin Warriors with spears in base contact with a spare 25mm base (bring one - always) that backs up to your battle line so that Shagrat will be Trapped. Like Shagrat with the friendly Orc in his fight, we didn't add the Goblins into the calculations for winning the fight (though you would win more of the time) or into the wounds dealt (though you would definitely do more Wounds - the Prowlers would wound on 4s and the Goblin spearmen would wound on 6s). Instead, we did it this way because we want Shagrat to be trapped - and he will be very, VERY dead after this encounter (suffering as much damage as you would expect from Azog - without factoring in the potential for a Feint from the Balrog, since we assumed Shagrat would make it to F9).

To compute our Warrior Slaying score, we're Hurling - which you should always do with the Balrog. S9 is really good - and even when Hurling S4 models, you're throwing them 6-8" away from you (which is bonkers). Your free Heroic Combat (in which you killed Shagrat, perhaps) will allow you to charge around the flanks into a warrior and toss that poor bloke down two lines of guys, which is really great for tearing through your opponent's ranks (possibly some of your own guys as well) and will rapidly get that model count deficit favoring you (if you didn't already start with the numbers advantage). This all assumes that you run the Balrog near the flanks of your army - as I've said before, if you charge him towards the center, he's going to get bogged down and you won't get good usage out of him.

Speaking of Cost, the Balrog did alright in the Cost department (all things considered - like Sauron, you have to pay for this eventually) and got top marks for Empowerment thanks to his 12" Fearless buff to friendly Moria Goblins. His Survivability is the same as Sauron's (no Fate, so we're capped at 5) and his Impact score is great thanks to free Heroic Combats, Fearless, and a Wild Card point for this "Shadow . . . and Flame" rules from the Legion (though we could have awarded it for any number of things, like not being insta-killed, having the chance to set models he wounds but doesn't kill on fire, or never being unarmed). 

The one category that might cause an eye-raise is his Mobility stat. How does the Balrog get a 9 here? The answer is tied to his Lash and free Heroic Combats: the Balrog is allowed to move 6" each turn and has an 8" range on his Lash. While moving and shooting, he hits on a 4+ with his Lash, but so long as he doesn't kill the target, the target is brought into base contact with him (which is death in the ball that we've set up). I've played a bunch of games with the Balrog and getting those Heroic Combats off for more movement isn't that hard - especially if you're careful with positioning your Balrog. As such, I gave him credit for having a 12" move. Realistically, you're going to have 2-6 Might for March near the Balrog at all times, so he's going at least 9" each turn in the early game (and 6-12" each turn once combat starts), so I didn't feel like this is an unfair movement score.

Now lest you think I've awarded top prize to the Balrog because I like him a lot, consider the following: almost all of the heroes that showed up in today's list (Sauron and the Balrog excluded) have a very real weakness - none of them are good at resisting sustained magical barrages. Whether it's Ringwraiths or Wizards, models like Bill and Buhrdur (1 Will each) are going to absolutely melt - though the Campfire will help Bill in this respect. Other models like the Goblin King and Gulavhar have Resistant to Magic and might get lucky (but otherwise have 2-3 Will to stop the magic that's coming). None of these models have great Courage and can't auto-pass Courage tests, so spending Will to resist magical powers may cause them to fail charges on critical rounds. Still other models (like Shagrat, Amdur, and Bolg) have 3 Will each and NO Resistant to Magic - which means you can stop 2-3 spells (depending on their casting difficulty and how many natural 6s you get - and how much Might you're willing to spend) and then you're done. Azog does the best of the non-Sauron, non-Balrog variety with 4 Will, but as I said when discussing him, magic is his biggest weakness. If you can't resist enemy magical powers, your ability to kill things is . . .  well, potentially non-existent.

The Balrog (and Sauron) fear magic a lot less: if your opponent doesn't get a 6, you're pretty confident that between the Resistant to Magic and 10 Will points, you can stop whatever comes your way. The Balrog is also not afraid of a channelled Flameburst (which can be the doomsday scenario for any of these other heroes - except maybe Sauron) - a magical power that does a S9 hit, a S6 hit, AND a recurring S5 hit until the hero steps away from the action or finds a convenient puddle of water to walk into. Thanks to the Flame of Udun, this magical power does . . . nothing to the Balrog. Oh yeah, that's right - he doesn't care. Pro-tip though: don't underestimate the power of 7 Barrow-Wights . . . you probably won't face that in a points match game, but if you ever see that on the other side, be afraid.

Final Thoughts

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!