Unexpected Military Formations in MESBG

Good morning gamers,

We are always trying to find new and interesting formations here at TMAT - some of which have their basis in historical military formations. Today we'll look at a few formations that can be helpful in various contexts - fighting cavalry, breaking a shieldwall, and holding ground.

Formation #1: The "Long Fangs" Anti-Cavalry Formation

Have you ever found yourself staring across the field at an army of Rohan cavalry preparing to run into your front ranks and absolutely decimate your troops? Have you ever wondered how having a few cavalry models of your own can keep this doomsday scenario from working against you? Well, Rythbryt came up with the following formation to be used in a mixed arms force of infantry and cavalry. How do you prepare to meet the cavalry? By NOT having battle lines. Instead, we want a few very long teeth. 

The Stuff of Legends: The Return of the King

Good morning gamers,

Today we're back in Gondor at War to review one of the first Legendary Legions released (and still a popular Legion): the Return of the King. Any Legion that gives you Anduril on Aragorn for free is going to be popular, but pairing this with high Defense models (many of which you probably have in the Pelennor Fields starter kit) makes this army fun for new players and veterans alike.

While I'm not a big fan of this Legion, Rythbryt is - so he's bringing the list review for us today while I interject here and there from the sidelines. Have at it, man!

TMAT Talks, Episode 11: The Ultimate Uber-Slayer Podcast (Part 2)

Well, it's finally that time.

After going through the top-10 monsters, casters, supports, snipers, and big honkin' things, the TMAT team is going to attempt the impossible: rank the top slayer models in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game.

In Part 2, Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt work their way through Good's honorable mentions, getting all the way to number 21. There are plenty of surprises, a few head-scratchers, and more than a little hair-splitting. Who made the cut, and who was left on the outside looking in at the top 20?

For more on our methodologies, and for further discussion on just how hard it is to rank heroes like this, you can also check out both Rythbryt's and Tiberius's take on Jay Clare's top-10 slayers for the forces of good.


There are two options: the audio-only version is available on Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and most places you can hear podcasts. And if you like visual aids, you can watch the entire cast over on the TMAT SBG YouTube Channel!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny

____________________________________________

Show Notes:


Intro (0:00)

Honorable Mentions (64-51) (1:45)

Dwarves Galore: 50 through 41 (19:30)

So many riders: 40 through 31 (39:05)

Lots of hair-splitting: 30 through 21 (1:29:50)

Quest of the Ringbearer: What Terrain Do You Need?

Good morning gamers,

If you're like me, you were both a little surprised and kind of excited when Quest of the Ringbearer was announced. I bought the Fellowship of the Ring journeybook a few years back (Centaur and I played through it - it was great) and to see many of those scenarios get some new life breathed into them was exciting. It was also likely to field many Legendary Legions that I wanted (a Balrog-focused Moria one, a Cirith Ungol one, a Riders in Black one, a Lurtz-oriented Isengard one, and of course a scrappy Fellowship one). Yes, I'm grateful for the update to the Rangers of Ithilien too - and honestly this is the first supplement where I've looked at all of the Legendary Legions released and said, "Yep, I think I want to play ALL of these." So, needless to say, I love the book.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

When it arrived and I started pouring over it, I noticed that there were quite a few models that one would need to buy to play everything - I did a post on that and it came up $2000+ to buy everything (AFTER you buy the Battle for Pelennor Fields box set, the Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement, and the Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook). Yikes. 

But what also struck me is that unlike most of the other sourcebooks released so far, there are a LOT of different terrain boards you'd need to build in order to play the scenarios in the book. You have the rolling hills and open spaces of the Shire, the wooded terrain of the Old Forest and Lothlorien, the rocky terrain of Moria and Cirith Ungol, and the urban terrain of Bree and Osgiliath (two VERY different places). You also have some very iconic terrain pieces like Weathertop and the King's Seat which are important for the few scenarios they actually appear in . . . so . . . with all that terrain ahead of us, how does one get started (and try to get the most out of a collection of terrain)? Well, I'm glad you asked - because that's what we're going to look into today.

The Stuff of Legends: The Paths of the Druadan

Good morning gamers,

We're a little more than half way done with the Legendary Legions released so far and we're back in the War in Rohan book, covering my second favorite Rohan Legendary Legion: the Paths of the Druadan. This army has an interesting mix of light infantry (all of whom can skirmish with blowpipes AND have spears) and cavalry (who can also skirmish). With the highest Legion tax for the Forces of Good, Centaur takes us through building lists with this Legion - take it away, Centaur!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 290-300pts!

Centaur: You are required to take Theoden, King of Rohan on armored horse, though if you were running Rohan without Helm Hammerhand or Eorl the Young, you were probably taking Theoden already. Theoden can take a shield and heavy armor - and you're probably taking both of them. You are also required to take Ghan-Buri-Ghan, but if you were planning on running Woses, you were going to take him anyway. Personally, I don't think he's worth the 65pts you have to spend from a profile perspective (he's only a 2.6/5 from my Overly Pedantic Stats perspective, and that's with his low cost inflating his score), and the fact that you have to take a full warband of Wose Warriors means that your "tax" is 300 points - which is a LOT (especially since you're probably going to need to also take Eomer for dealing with big bad evil guys, Dernhelm for rolling over the masses as a second attacker, and Gamling for banner support and keeping those Heroic Moves coming). So I'm not a huge fan of the tax, but it does mean that you start with a lot of models in your army as woses are cheap.

TMAT Talks, Episode 10: The Grand Tournament 2021 (Part I)

A global pandemic may have claimed TMAT's 2020 Grand Tournament, but those dark days are finally past, and a red sun is rising once more. The 2021 Grand Tournament is upon us--so of course, TMAT's resident armchair quarterbacks had to break it down!

In Part I, Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt give an overview of the tournament's escalation rules, muse on the three scenarios, and discuss the six armies that will take the field before making some (very reluctant) predictions about the impending weekend.

Now available most places you listen to podcasts (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts)!

You can find the show notes and army lists after the jump!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny

Tournament Time: Rythbryt's Army Thoughts

Photo Credit: Hall of Beorn

As some of you faithful readers may know, TMAT's spring tournament is upon us this weekend. (In case you missed it, you can find Tiberius's thoughts on his entry here.) It's shaping up to be pretty small (most likely five players overall), but everyone has a pretty good grasp of the rules, and we always have a good time of it. Plus it's a chance to try out some of my new terrain boards!

As with every tournament we've ever done, I had a characteristically difficult time settling on a list for this event. In fairness, given that this particular tournament is an escalation event, I actually had to settle on three lists... so I was kinda screwed from the beginning. 

I had several criteria going into this tournament:

• Run something new. Playing games is the most fun, but I enjoy the hobbying side of MESBG quite a bit, and had a lot of plastic kits sitting in my storage closet when the tourney was soft-announced by Tiberius around Christmas time. So I figured, why not take the opportunity to try something new? I've run orcs twice (Mordor once, and Angmar once), and Iron Hills the other two times (a hero-heavy Erebor Reclaimed for 2019's Grand Tournament, and an Iron Hills / Survivors of Lake-Town alliance at a follow-up Fall event), and while I dabbled in a few lists that featured more orcs or more dwarves, I ultimately decided on something different.
• Competitive at all three points levels... but not oppressive. Part of this is probably residual guilt from taking Angmar to TMAT's Spring festivities... that army is definitely competitive, but it's not exactly fun to play against (go figure, for a list with triple barrow-wights plus the Witch-King on Fell-Beast). This time, I wanted something that'd be at least somewhat fun to play against for most armies--yet another reason I shied away from my beloved Iron Hills dwarves (and a reason why I looked more seriously at regular Mordor orcs for a while)--while also giving me some fun pieces to play with. The escalation aspect had more of an impact on competitiveness than I thought it would: the Rangers of Ithilien Legendary Legion is really, really strong at 450 and 600, but I think it starts to suffer diminishing returns (or runs into harder counters) at the 750 level... not that I was considering taking the Rangers, of course (because I'm trying not to be oppressive, remember? :-P ).
• Combat heroes... preferably in multiples. Again, I'm not knocking Angmar, but it's an army (as I built it, at least) that didn't have much in the way of combat heroes (the Witch-King and a Wild Warg Chieftain), and almost no Might to speak of (5 total). I quite enjoy playing armies with lots of heroes, because it can create some interesting challenges for both sides: heavy-hero armies tend to be outnumbered a lot, so there's a lot riding on your heroes to even the odds before you succumb to attrition. It's also one of the best counters I've found in practice to enemy magic, because most armies don't run more than one top-tier wizard and/or two beefy heroes, so if you have 3+ combat heroes, there are very few armies that can lock all of them down. And let's face it... the game is far more interesting when there are heroes involved (especially if they're iconic heroes). The fact that the 750 match would be Fog of War (which can reward you for having multiple heroes) was a nice bonus, and I also suspected that there'd be a fair bit of Bodyguard cav at this tournament (in which case, I would prefer a solid Might store to stay in the game): far better to have the Might and choose not to use it, than to need the Might and not have it.
• Average to above-average model count. I've run super-elite hero-heavy armies before (my Erebor Reclaimed force a couple years back featured only 24 models at 700 points, with five of them being heroes--but that doesn't really count, because Iron Hills Warriors aren't your typical warriors). My experience with Angmar in the Spring really sold me on having a solid number of models. I also think the choice of scenarios, on balance, favors having more models than less: Hold Ground (450 points) is a more-models-than-you-in-the-center mission, To the Death (600) awards a ton of points if you can break the enemy without breaking yourself, and Fog of War (750) may require me to be in several spots at once on the opponent's side of the board at the end of the game (which may be a problem if I have low-courage troops and am broken). My goal was to shoot for 20+ models at 450, and 35+ models at 750. Anything at or above that level--coupled with a few combat heroes to do the work--should be at least competitive in all three scenarios.
• Have at least one incredibly fun model. I checked with Tiberius (who's TO'ing this event) about the power-curve of this particular tournament, and he assured me that I could get as competitive as I wanted with these lists (in his words, "this is the GRAND TOURNAMENT, after all"). Having said that, I did want to include at least one "fun" model who's a joy to play with on the table--something along the lines of Aragorn, or Bolg, or Glorfindel (all of whom I play-tested at various points over the past few months). At 750, I figured I could probably afford whoever I wanted (even Sauron)... but scaling an army built around a big hero, and accomplishing everything else I wanted the list to do, proved to be a bit more challenging.

With these general goals in place, I set about the task of list-building in earnest. And boy, did I build lists... most of them got recorded in the "Notes" app on my iPhone, and I literally have forty-five notes dating back to December 2020 filled with different lists ideas. Most notes contain 6-9 different lists (because again, it's an escalation event), so that's easily 200+ lists that I wrote down at various points over the past four months (God only knows how many more I thought about, and didn't commit to digital paper).

To be fair, some of the lists I jotted down were never really in the running (my "Wee Three Kings?" list, for example, featuring the Goblin King, the Witch-King of Dol Guldur, and the Spider Queen... though it did come in at 52 models, which isn't bad for a convenient alliance that featured a banner, four cav, a decent number of hunter orcs, three Mirkwood Spiders, and a Bat Swarm). But eventually these six lists rose to the top... and then fell by the wayside for one reason or another.

Option 1: Men of the South (Waaaaay South)

The first army I really wanted to run involved Corsairs, because I played an evil horde at TMAT's last tournament and really enjoyed it. The problem with the force was three-fold. First, I initially built the list assuming we were playing at 500, 650, and 800, and I really liked how the Corsairs scaled at that points level (basically, I could get to 50 models at 800 points and have the Knight of Umbar on Fell Beast as my third-banana multi-use combat/magic hero, along with Dalamyr and Delgamar plus a Bosun). 

Scaling the lists down to 450, 600, and 750 proved more challenging than I thought, and I could never settle on something else that I really liked. This list is the closest I got to locking things in... 

While in retrospect this looks pretty intimidating, there were three things I couldn't "fix" in these lists. 

TMAT GT: Tiberius's Army Thoughts

Good morning gamers,

This coming weekend is TMAT's Grand Tournament and we're doing an escalation tournament with the following point levels and scenarios:

• 450 - Hold Ground
• 600 - To The Death
• 750 - Fog of War

I've been wanting to throw an escalation tournament for ages - I developed armies in an escalation tournament style to teach people the game since I got started playing (100 points of warriors only, 250 points by adding a hero or two and some additional warriors, and slowly adding more points with additional warriors and heroes until you get to 500-700 points). This approach allows people who are new to the game (or haven't played in ages) to understand the core mechanics slowly and ease them into a game that has (if we're honest) a LOT more rules than the game requires.

Developing armies that can do well at three different point levels and are good at missions that do different things is hard to do - and so I had many armies swirling through my brain before I finally quieted the petitions from the boxes and picked one. Extra bonus points are awarded at this tournament if you have a "nesting dolls" style build, where the 450 is a subset of the 600, which is a subset (naturally) of the 750 - as opposed to having the 450 army be a subset of the 750 army and the 600 be a subset of the 750 army (but not having all of the models in the 450pt list in the 600pt list). Here are the armies I considered taking - and why I didn't chose the ones I did.

The Stuff of Legends: The Black Riders

Good morning gamers,

We've covered a lot of Legendary Legions already in this series - and today, we turn to one of the Legendary Legions I was most excited about in the Quest of the Ringbearer book (and one I ran at a tournament LONG before the Legion was available): the Black Riders. While the "actual" models (sans the Witch-King) have only recently become available (I provided four different ways to get them if you want to play through the Quest of the Ringbearer scenarios), these models represent one of the most iconic forces of Evil in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. While their Fell-Beast-mounted cousins are more powerful on offense, these guys are set to dominate the magical game in ways that other Ringwraiths will envy forever. Let's dive in!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 80-165pts

The only model you NEED to take is the Witch-King of Angmar on horse, who comes in at a very affordable 80 points. Functionally, he's going to come in at 100 points, because you want to give him 3 Might points and at least 1 Fate point.

Since most games are played above 200 points, you'll be running at least one Ringwraith on horse, but you really want to include at least 3 Ringwraiths on horses. Like the Witch-King, I think you want to run these guys with 2 Might each and at least 1 Fate point. This means they're at least 80 points each - and each stat improvement will cost you 5 points/model (if you're going to have these guys have different Will/Fate allocations, make sure you mark your Ringwraiths well!).

We'll be talking in the Strategy section about when to get more Will/Fate on each Ringwraith, but for now let it suffice to say that the customizability of this force is largely found in the allocation of Will/Fate to each model (I think you run full Might on all of them - even over Fate). An interesting OTHER way to customize your army is to do weapon swaps on your Ringwraiths: as generic heroes, you can swap their swords for other weapons (axes perhaps?) if you want some variety in your ranks (or just do more damage). In February 2019, I recommended giving these guys clubs so they can get the OLD version of Transfix via the Stun special strike - not sure it's worth it in this Legion because you need to be killing things, but it could be very useful (stunned models are easy to kill).

Fixing the Orc Fight Value Problem

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the TMAT blog! In today's post I'm going to address my overall annoyance at how good some of the Hobbit era orcs are at fighting, because it seems like in their haste to make the microcosm of the Hobbit line work thematically they inadvertently snubbed a lot of the best heroes across the three ages of Tolkien's primary history of Middle Earth. And today I'm going to recommend a simple fix that would solve this issue.

First we're going to build the case for a change, because I hate recommending changes to stats in profiles if I don't have to. Once we establish that, thematically within the world, the Fight Value of specific models is too high (and it won't just be orcs - we'll address some Forces of Good models as well), we will present a simple, semi-elegant way to fix this problem that is consistent with current rules in the game that will allow for those thematic battles between orcs and dwarves without encroaching on the territory of the likes of Elessar, Glorfindel, and some of the greatest elf lords in all of Tolkien's legendarium.

I.  The Problem: Why High Fight Values?

Let's start with the biggest perpetrators of "Fight Value Bloat," which is Azog and Bolg. First off, in Tolkien's world, Bolg is a scary dude (as is Azog in his day, to be fair): these guys are good fighters. But we have no indication that it would have taken a heroic feat involving one of the best elven lords of all time tying either of these guys in their fighting prowess, which is the current state of the models in our game.

Both Azog and Bolg are Fight 7, which makes them better than Imrahil (a half-elven descendant of both the Quendi and the Numenoreans, and among the strongest three warriors of his time), Elrond (herald of the Faithful and among their best warriors in the Second Age), Celeborn (another of the strongest elf lords that ever lived), and Aragorn (the best warrior of his time) to name a few. That...doesn't seem right to me, any which way you look at it.

The Stuff of Legends: The Breaking of the Fellowship

Good morning gamers,

Today we'll be looking at a Legion that has surprised me more than any other Legendary Legion to date (with the possible exception of the Men of the West LL): the Breaking of the Fellowship. With heroes that we know and love from the Amon Hen sequence of the Fellowship of the Ring, we've got all the power heroes that you follow throughout the Lord of the Rings and none of the nameless grunts that you are usually forced to bring in an army. But can this Legion fight down-handed in both models and points at high points levels? Is it even worth taking at low points levels? All of these questions will be answered today as we delve into this unique and beloved Legion. Also, I've been using this Legion for our upcoming Grand Tournament (and even painted up new copies of all eight heroes), so I'll be including images of my Breaking of the Fellowship LL models in this report - the Legion is a LOT of fun to use!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 160pts

You NEED to include Aragorn - Strider in your army and he costs a very manageable 160 points. You ACTUALLY need other stuff too, beginning with Frodo Baggins: Frodo not only gives everyone Fearless and can keep you from giving up victory points for being broken, but also gives you Blinding Light access AND a Ringbearer (in most games). All of this is really good - and that speaks for 240 points already.

Once you have Frodo and Aragorn, your next choices are determined by your points level: if the points level is in increments of 100 points, you need to take Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took if you don't want to waste points. If the points level is in increments of 50 points, you're picking just Merry or Pippin. This will take you to either 250 or 300 points.

Your next points (up to 300) will be spent on your other killer heroes: Legolas Greenleaf (100 points), Gimli, Son of Gloin (100 points), or Boromir of Gondor with shield (100 points). Of the three, I'm inclined to think that you need Legolas the most (as he'll be necessary for clearing sparsely guarded objectives or models that are racing to capture objectives). The big discussion is going to be whether your next inclusion is Gimli or Boromir . . . a discussion we had when we covered the Fellowship in the List Building series, actually.

An Apologetic for the Flameburst Spell

 Hey Reader!

So I was talking with the rest of the TMAT team about evil spellcasters and the damage potential of Saruman, and one of the things that I brought up was how Saruman had two spells that did good damage: Sorcerous Blast and Flameburst. And the comment was made: "well, except the fire, because no one casts that, like, ever," so effectively he has one damage spell.

And that made me sad, because I've always loved the Flameburst spell.

And since only two people in the game have it (Kardush and Saruman), and one of them apparently never casts it, it means the spell gets virtually no use.

And that made me sad, so I decided I'd craft an apologetic for why you should cast this spell at least once every game. I'll start off with a quick look (because I don't think people will disagree with this) at why it isn't cast as much as, say, Sorcerous Blast, and then walk through the situations that would make it wise to cast this spell over and against the other spells on Saruman's list, and how these come up an amazingly high amount of the time regardless of the army you are facing.

We will not be looking as much at Kardush, not because he isn't great, but because the only spells he has are Fury and Flameburst so he tends to use it a lot. But everything we mention below for tactical uses of the spell apply to both Kardush and Saruman equally (albeit with the caveat that Saruman can be mounted for 10" of movement and Kardush cannot).

Also, if you want a nice comparison of Flameburst to other similar spells in the game to give you greater context for the spell, my buddy Tiberius did a great write-up on it in his Mastering Magic series a few months ago. You should check that out - won't take more than a few minutes.