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. 

First, while I felt the 600 and 750 versions were pretty good, I was never pleased with the 450 version. There are 9 Arbalesters in the list (to deal with Terror and high-defense models) plus six Reavers (ditto), but that really cut down on the number of spears and throwing daggers I could bring along (because Arbalesters and Reavers don't have either). I wasn't happy with just four spears, and while I probably could have swapped the three Corsairs who had shields for spears instead, I wasn't sure I wanted that much Defense 3 in a scenario (Hold Ground) where (a) everyone deploys using the Maelstrom of Battle rules, (b) everyone has to rush to the middle, and (c) the game can end as soon (or as late) as one side rolls a 1-2 after one force breaks. I also basically needed all three heroes to make the list work (I needed Dalamyr to "deal" with big-ish heroes, I needed Reavers (and there was no way I was going to run them in a Maelstrom list without a Bosun), and I needed Delgamar for his 3 Might, banner reroll, and to pick up some warband slots.

Second, while Dalamyr clearly fits the mold of a "fun" hero (3 Attacks, Bane of Kings, and smoke bombs ftw!), the list only really has 1.5 "combat" heroes (Delgamar is good at taking out troops who are F4 and below, but with just F5 himself, no Heroic Strike, and not much defense, he's not exactly scaring off a Boromir or Thorin, even with Backstabbers). As a result, the list is really dependent on the troops to do a lot of the killing, which they can totally do... most of the time, to most armies. But if there's a lot of Terror, or Blinding Light, or the enemy has heavy shooting and can knock out the Reavers before they hit combat (or even worse, a Bosun), I wasn't sure this army would remain competitive. In any event, I was looking for a less troop-dependent force after rocking an Angmar horde last time, and while Corsairs feel and play differently from Angmar, in the end it sort of felt too similar.

Third--and this was probably the most importantly for me--I looked very hard at allying the Corsairs with Suladan, which solves several problems: I pick up another 3 Might combat-y hero (always good), a 6" banner (always great, and very important for the 2VPs in the 600-point To the Death match), a 12" Stand Fast on a Hero of Legend (Corsair courage isn't great, after all), and access to cheap horses, which I felt would really help the Corsairs (Backstabbers gives them +1 to wound against trapped models, and prone models are trapped) and help improve my mobility in scenarios like Hold Ground (get to the middle fast) and Fog of War (capture that objective waaaaaay over there). 

But I made the mistake of looking at allying in the Serpent Horde after building this near-60 model Corsair army, and all the lists that included Suladan just seemed... smaller (40-48 models). And the lists without Suladan (I toyed with Raza, the Betrayer, and even a Haradrim Captain on horse) just seemed... meh. So I'd cycle back to pure Corsairs... and then miss Suladan... and then play with cheaper Serpent Horde heroes... and then get back to full-Corsairs... and so on.

In the end, I ran into a major case of analysis paralysis--so I set this force aside and started dabbling in other things, which was actually very liberating.

Some of my as-yet-unused Corsairs... but at least I can cross them off my to-do list

Option 2: An unruly horde

So I was perusing through the Armies of the Hobbit book one day, and there they were. Those ugly buggers from down, down, down you-know-where (EVERYBODY!). 

I've written pretty extensively about Goblin-Town and really love the way they're put together--so much so, that I've almost taken them to three tournaments now. Scaling them for an escalation event actually proved more challenging than I thought--not in terms of what you'll take (eventually, everything) but when exactly you bring everything.

My initial foray had the Goblin King, Grinnah, the Scribe, and Gollum in a 450 point list... and that worked okay. But having the Scribe in a Maelstrom scenario is always a bit stressful (even with the Army Bonus that allows him to bring up to 12 dudes), and in a mission (Hold Ground) that (a) relies on having the most models in the middle, and (b) can go on and on and on after you break (which is bad for Goblin-Town), I eventually decided that getting my model count as high as possible, as early as possible, was the way to go. So that's what I did:

Now I know what you're thinking: Where's the Goblin King at 450? I had the same thought quite a few times, but here's the thing: in a Hold Ground mission, the goal is to have more models than your opponent does within 6" of the center of the board. The Goblin-King, at 130 points, costs the same as 32.5 goblins. Which meant to squeeze the Goblin King into a 450 point list, I was going to have to choose between (a) having fewer than 30 models (which is just not a competitive option for Goblin-Town), or (b) dropping at least one (and probably two) of the following heroes: Grinnah, the Scribe, Gollum, the Goblin Captain, or the Goblin Mercenary Captain. None of those choices were particularly attractive:

• Gollum was the easiest include. He's pretty good value anyway (35 points for a 2 Attack, Fight 4 hero with March), and insanely good value if he has the One Ring (which he probably does). The Goblin-King is big at 450, but there can be other big things at 450 (and even some bigger things at 450). He needs Gollum to take out those really big things. So Gollum was staying.
• Grinnah was also an easy keep, because he has three Might and Strike. Now F3 isn't a great number to strike up from generally... unless you have the Ring, in which case it's quite good (you only need a 3+ on your Strike roll to get to F6... which will be higher than anything else you'll face in a combat if you have the Ring, except a Striking Witch-King or Dol Guldur nazgul). Swap with Me is also absurdly annoying...
• I did several playtests both with and without the Goblin Mercenary Captain... and ultimately, I decided the list played better in general with him. Goblins hate archers and horses and horse archers, and while the Scribe is great (more on him in a minute), he doesn't always give you the goblins you need in the numbers you need at the moment you need them (four goblins followed by six goblins followed by three goblins can wreak havoc on an enemy archer block... two goblins followed by no goblins followed by one goblin? Not so much). The Merc Captain's Warband meant that as long as I was willing to spend Might and Will, I could pretty much drop 9 goblins (one of whom is a two-attack hero) whenever I needed them (usually to back-up a large drop from the Scribe in the preceding move phase). The fact that TOs tend to like putting big, juicy centerpiece terrain features in the middle of their boards is a very nice bonus (in a mission where the goal is to get a whole bunch of models to the middle of the board).
• That left just the Captain and Scribe. And to be perfectly frank... I kinda needed the Captain, because Goblins only move 5", I have to get to the middle in Hold Ground, and Gollum only has one Might (while the Merc Captain may not be able to deploy anywhere near the rest of my troops). Which meant I'd have to leave the Scribe at home (plus twenty Goblins) to bring the King. 

So in the end, my calculus came down to this: did the Goblin King offer me more in Hold Ground than the Scribe and 20 goblins would have offered me? And the answer was "other than a more reliable way of dealing with a big hero--or a way to deal with more than one big hero--not really."

• Again, we have Gollum + Grinnah, which means we can deal with most big heroes anyway... eventually... if we have to. On the flip-side, having 20 more goblins (plus the bonus goblins we'll pick up from the Scribe) means I may not have to actually deal with a big hero for much longer. Unless you're hitting one of those rare heroes with free Heroic Combats (like Elendil or Aragorn or Helm or King Thorin or the Balrog), most heroes can't take out more than 2 Goblins a turn unless (a) you help them out by putting more goblins into them (in which case, put more than four), or (b) they burn might for Heroic Combats to kill generic troops (which isn't sustainable). Having 20 extra Goblins meant I could take up to 10 more hero combats. The Goblin King can tank a hero, too, of course... but only in one spot, and if he happens to botch the results are quite a bit more dire. If two goblins "botch" a combat with a hero, the results are... you lose two goblins. Now to be fair, there is the niche case of a big hero with Terror, who will be difficult to charge with Grinnah or Gollum (let alone both at once). But Grinnah's Swap with Me is a work-around at least (get any generic goblin into the fight in the Move Phase, then swap Grinnah into the fight in the Shoot Phase... because if you wait until the Fight Phase, you can't also call Heroic Strike... life lessons). But let's not pretend the Goblin King was going to have an easy time charging the Balrog, either. ;-)
• 20 more bodies is also 20 more bodies we can do things with--the most important of which is getting to the center, of course. Sending those 20 models straight to the center of the table frees up our other 40 models to do... whatever else needs done. Which usually includes stuffing up the enemy's models, so they can't reach the center of the board (much less clear our horde off of it).
• While the Goblin-King moves faster than generic Goblins (and Gollum), he's still not remarkably fast (just 6"), which means it takes him a while to leg it around the board. And since he's the only major combat piece in the army, if has to leg it far across the board (or if the enemy plays keep away), he may have trouble making back his points (and smart opponents will take advantage of that fact by keeping away from him, especially if they have shooting). Turning that one model into 20 models (wait, you guessed it) means it's actually quite hard for the enemy to play that avoidance game, specially when the Scribe and Merc Captain constrict the size of the board. 
• Lastly, while the Goblin King would help alleviate one very serious problem with this list (if it breaks, it's definitely running, whereas he'll auto-pass his first Break test because he's a Hero of Legend), we've gone to absurd lengths to prevent that from happening by cramming a whopping 60 models into a 450 list. Even against elf shooting (and I've tried this list against elf-shooting lists), it's incredibly tough to amass 31 kills in 75 minutes, in a scenario where there's maelstrom deployment and a Merc Captain and a Scribe (in which case, we won't break), especially once the elves have to start shooting into combat (because they can't). And if we manage to catch an enemy's warband out in the open with a couple of our own, we can decimate them surprisingly fast.

In fact, the reason I eventually walked away from this list wasn't the 450 variant--it was the 600 point variant, because I didn't think the 69 model limit was high enough to survive the heavy shooting armies I expected to face in To the Death (where everyone has 12" deployment zones). While it's hard for 450 point armies to amass 31 kills in 75 minutes, there are a fair number of 600 point armies that can amass 35 kills in an hour and forty-five minutes... with just 69 models, there's not quite enough to buy the Goblin King the time he needs to march across the board and start laying into things... and I also kept finding that it took me so long to march across the board, that I didn't have enough time at the end of games to bring my superior numbers to bear.

So in the end, I left Goblin-Town at home... again. Someday I will take them... but not this day.

Option 3: Camels! And a Beast! And a Castellan!

My need for speed brought me back to Suladan and cheap cav, which also got me thinking about one of my favorite units in the game (and one of the most feared): Mahud Raiders, aka, Middle-Earth's "Death Camels." I've written about Far Harad a couple of times, and played quite a few games with Mahud Raiders for Battle Companies (where they're absolutely brutal). The "problem" with them is that they're hyper-elite (we're talking almost 20 points a pop when you kit them out with War Spear and Blow Pipes, which I almost always do), but they don't have a ton of staying power (F3/D5 riders on D4 mounts) and have pretty low Might stores (their heroes top out at just 2 Might, unless you run the Mumak War Leader... who believe it or not, I did playtest at 600 points against Centaur's Uruk-Hai... let's just say the overall stress of that game, on both sides, didn't pass my "fun" criterion :-P).

How can we fix that issue? Why, with the Serpent Horde, of course! Both Suladan and Raza offer relatively cheap Might (plus a bargain-cost banner from Suladan, which is always great on Cavalry Models), plus a Taskmaster if you want to try your luck at calling a ton of Heroic Moves. Better yet, the Serpent Horde also has pretty good budget infantry (Haradrim Warriors with bows or spears are just 7 points, and just 8 if you give them both), and very good budget cavalry (I looked very hard at a mix of Serpent Riders and Haradrim Raiders with war spears and bows--both come in at 13 points a pop, which is an absolute steal). The result was that I could clear 30 cavalry models at 750 without really trying very hard (3+ heroes, 7-9 Might, with 10-14 camels), or close to 40 models if I saved a bit on the heroes and leaned heavier into the Haradrim cav. 

The "problem" I kept running into was that while all cav armies generate a lot of threat (and an all-cav army that numbers 40 models or more generates that much more threat), "budget" cav come with price--in this case, it was staying power. And since at least one of the missions required me to fight in a particular area with no definite "end" condition besides the expiration of the round timer (Hold Ground), I worried that even if I got the jump against my opponent early-on with shooting and some opportunistic Impaler strikes, I wouldn't be able to win the war of attrition if I lost priority rolls, or if the enemy had more shooting than mine (particularly S3 elf bows and S4 crossbows). So I started looking around to see if there was anything else that would fit my "trample" theme, and yet have more staying power so I could still make some hay if things stalled out on Hold Ground.

And then I saw it... my Great Beast of Gorgoroth.

Make that my partially-constructed-after-four-prior-attempts-to-build-the-stupid-thing-Great-Beast-of-Gorgoroth. (I mean, the thing is just. So. Fiddly.) But one evening, I girded up my loins (as the Scriptures say... at least I think that's what I did) and decided I was going to do it. And gosh darn it, I did it. It took me four hours, and I super-glued my hand together in several spots, but I built the blasted thing. And it actually stayed together this time (which, given my prior attempts, was far more impressive). And now I had a Great Beast of Gorgoroth. 

After all that agony, he needed blood. I needed blood. I needed to be satiated.

He's hungry... although come to think of it, I'm not sure he's carnivorous...

But I also had all these camels that I really loved. So I did what any sane person would do--I checked the Alliance Matrix, (re)discovered that Mordor and Far Harad aren't historic allies (which is stupid), and said, what the heck, I'm gonna do it anyway. Convenient Allies meant I couldn't go with my first plan (Shagrat!), so I opted for the Mouth of Sauron because he's a cheap Hero of Valor. I also opted for regular Orcs (also cheap), because Great Beast plus Mahud King plus Camels means you need any spare points you can get. Orcs plus Mordor meant Kardush (duh), and in the end, I took an Orc Drummer as well to get a little bit of "free" speed in my force (because Kardush plus Mahud King plus Great Beast plus Mouth of Sauron meant I didn't have much Might). 

I really liked this list... to the point that I play-tested it upwards of ten times combined, at all three points levels, making several tweaks along the way. (The two Half-Trolls at 750 were a late add, after deciding I needed some additional staying power in infantry brawls.) 27 models at 450, scaling to 50 models at 750, gave me a pretty good count considering the number of elite models I had in the army (at least 5 camels and a Great Beast, at all points levels). The list also topped out at a sneaky 5 heroes for Fog of War, which I managed to cram into both the 600 and 750 lists without sacrificing too many numbers (can you spot the fifth one?). 

On paper, the four major heroes look pretty meh, but each of them can be surprisingly effective in combat / at killing things: the Mahud King is probably a known commodity at this point, but a Great Beast looks scary, Kardush's Flameburst can be incredibly destructive, and the Mouth of Sauron's Fight 5 with two attacks can be a tough out, especially if he's got help in the fight from some orcs. I found the synergy between the four particularly good: if you space them out, it's really hard to tie down the Great Beast and the Mahud King and his supporting camels with a single Heroic Move, and since they all have either Trample or Impaler, as long as one group gets to move, you may be able to free up the other even if the enemy pins them with a Heroic Move (just impale any model(s) that charged the Great Beast, then leg it before the Beast activates and crushes you). Kardush and the Mouth also have some magics up their sleeves, which means you actually have an answer to enemy casters who might want to lock up your Great Beast or Mahud King--hitting enemy casters with offensive spells of your own (like a cheeky Transfix from the Mouth on the enemy caster if you win priority) is a great way to burn down their resources. Most importantly, having four heroes who could kill things meant that unless the enemy was going to run four casters (which Tiberius did consider for a few minutes), the odds were pretty good that even if I failed a couple of magic resist tests, I would still be able to use at least a couple of heroes to threaten the enemy.

In practice (because I play-tested this army a lot), that's what happened: the Great Beast ended up drawing the aggro most of the time (and not just from casters--he also attracts an absurd amount of bow fire, which thankfully he can tank pretty well), leaving my Mahud King and Camels free to approach relatively unmolested (it helps if there's an enormous Defense 7 model with a Defense 8 Howdah between them and the enemy archers) while my infantry blitzed down the middle (I used the Heroic March + Drum combo a couple of times, but mostly found I didn't need the March to get where I wanted to go... as long as I was okay with the Half-Trolls being a couple of turns behind). Orcs without Terror don't have the same staying power as Orcs with Terror, but I found I generally had enough of them at each points level where they could hold long enough for the rest of the army to do its job. Professional note: between the camels, Kardush, and the Half-Trolls (when you eventually unleash them), this army kills stuff fast, even if the Great Beast gets stuffed up for a few turns (if he's not, you'll kill stuff even faster).

There were, however, some downsides--especially when I started play-testing against armies that cause Terror. Thanks to Kardush's Fury, I could get my orcs into combat without any problem (and the Great Beast doesn't worry about Terror either, because Trample allows him to move into base contact with enemy models without having to charge them), but my poor Mahud had serious trouble. Not the King, mind you--he was always game (sometimes to his own detriment--See that giant fire drake over there? The one with 20 wounds? He's MINE!!!) But the generic Raiders had serious trouble completing charges, and given that Impaler only kicks in when you charge, that was a problem. Of course, if Mordor and Far Harad counted as Historic Allies (which--not to beat a dead Mumak too much, but--they clearly were both at the Battle of Pelennor Fields), this wouldn't be a problem. But giving up Far Harad's Army Bonus meant I couldn't bypass the Courage problem on my Raiders, and that's what eventually soured me on the list.

Well, that and playing with...

Option 4: Castellans!!!

I experimented with the Army of the Dead for a hot minute (paired with Minas Tirith... more on that shortly), and one of the test-games paired the King of the Dead and some of his boyos against my Camels and Great Beast. It went... about as well as you'd expect (which is to say: very, very badly). The Beast got surrounded and ganked in one turn (it turns out F5 from the King, plus seven Blades of the Dead dice, plus Drain Soul as a finisher, is enough to kill a War Beast with no Fate points... who knew?). 

But I wasn't entirely satisfied with the Dead, either. While their stat line is pretty good, Fight 3 combined with low numbers means they have a hard time winning fights and killing things. They do fine while shielding with a banner, but then you're not killing stuff--and especially at lower points levels, it's pretty rare that you get to do your preferred shield-spear rank-up if the enemy has any sort of Terror bypass (because the number of models you can field is so low). 

Hero scaling for this army was also a nightmare. While it did give me a chance to paint up the beautiful King and two Heralds kit from GW (gosh, I love those models), I was pretty sure that wasn't going to cut it at 750 (those three heralds, plus just three Riders, nets you only 32-34 models total... and if the King of the Dead was going to be my only proper hero, I wanted way more heralds and riders than that to help him out). Plus, my King of the Dead never--and I mean NEVER--wins fights... it's almost like he's cursed (which I suppose is thematic?).

My Army of the Dead, with their updated paint scheme.

Another hobby achievement unlocked.

Then one day, I was playing around with my Corsairs again, and fumbled on my proxy Knight of Umbar that I'd made up from a Castellan of Dol Guldur... and had an inspiration. I reckon a ton of these would be fun! So I started play-testing armies with a couple of castellans. And then I started adding another couple. And then a couple more. Until I got to something absurd, like 12 Castellans at 600 points. 

If you're running an evil Hobbit-era army, and you're looking for some added punch, these guys are 'da bomb. I know they don't have Might, and Defense 6 looks fragile-ish, but I'm telling you: two Attacks at Fight 5, Strength 5, and Terror makes these guys an absolute nightmare to deal with in multiples. They absolutely crush orcs and goblins, of all varieties. Uruks tremble in fear before them. Even elves will struggle to kill them off. In other words, get 2-3 of them in a concentrated area, and they clear things off in droves.

And then there's their 12 Will points, which they can use as Fate Points. Yes, they also have Will of Evil (so they're hard-capped at fighting in no more than 12 Fight Phases per game... that's usually plenty), but that ability to spend Will as Fate, on top of Terror, on top of their bruising combat stats, and on top of Defense 6 means they're incredibly tanky against most warriors and heroes. Think of a cluster of half-trolls, only the half-trolls each have the equivalent of seven wounds instead of two. 

There are very few warrior models who are equipped to deal with that kind of front-line fighter, and there's not many troops that Castellans will struggle against. Between Defense 6 and their 12 Will points, they're almost completely immune to archery and siege weapons. Terror makes life really rough for hordes (especially if you have a Nazgul of Dol Guldur with them, which you probably will both for a Hero of Valor with Might, and for Harbinger of Evil), while their Courage 6 means they can reliably charge enemies that cause Terror themselves (and if they "fail"... they have 12 Will points). If you beat a Castellan in a duel, he's probably still there next round. If you lose a fight against a Castellan... you're probably dead. Dwarves have an awesome reputation for out-attrition-ing enemies, and rightly so. I'm telling you, as someone who's played a lot with the most out-attrition-y of all dwarves (Erebor Reclaimed): they have nothing on a wall of Castellans, because they don't have the same margin for error.

Even enemy heroes aren't exactly itching to fight Castellans. Really big mounted heroes can one-shot them if (a) they succeed in charging past Terror, (b) they roll lots of wounds after winning the fight (usually 5+ out of 8, which can be hard to do if you need a 5+ to wound (which most S4 heroes generally need)), and (c) the Castellan whiffs on fate saves. It has happened to me a few times... but it generally only happens once per game (unless you're fighting Aragorn with Anduril--then it happens a lot), and if you're fighting 8+ Castellans, that's just not often enough. 

More likely, most heroes need 3-4 wins in combat to finish off a Castellan (which is 3-4 wins in combat where that hero isn't actually killing anything), and if a hero loses in combat to a castellan (or two), which does happen (especially for smaller heroes, who may only have F5 and 2 Attacks themselves... or worse), their horse is going down, or they're taking wounds, or may even be one-shotted by a Morgul Blade, which you can give to all your Castellans if you really want to terrify your opponent... for just 5 points each. Suddenly, 1 Fate heroes want no part of your Castellans. Basically, they're the combat-equivalent of Angmar's Barrow-Wights: heroes who can realistically take much larger heroes out of the fight for large chunks of time (if not permanently), at a fraction of the cost you're paying for those much larger heroes. They're not as oppressive on paper (mostly because heroes still have the option to beat Castellans in combat, whereas it's very hard to counter Paralyze once you run out of Will), but I've found mass Castellans to be almost as oppressive in practice.

Now imagine twice this many...

(For the record, these aren't mine)

Photo Credit: Scott's Wargaming

Once I'd settled on a core of Castellans in principle, I then had to figure out how to configure a list around them that would make the most sense. I knew I wanted one of the Dol Guldur nazgul with them (primarily for the Might, but also for Harbinger and to get at least the threat of Heroic Strike for dealing with F6+ heroes), and eventually settled on the Witch-King (because again, Might). The Lingering Shadow was also an option for a double-wraith list, which would have featured a whopping 7 Castellans at 450 (four with Morgul blades, plus the two wraiths), and 14 Castellans at 750 (only 16 models at 750, but all of them would be nigh-unkillable). But I moved away from that idea mostly because of concerns about speed (again). Fortunately, Dol Guldur has access to all sorts of fast models (Fell Wargs, Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs, and Mirkwood Spiders if I wanted to keep army bonuses, and Bat Swarms and Giant Spiders if I wanted to ally with the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood). I also tried really hard to fit the Necromancer in (who I completed and painted just in case), but alas--it took out too many Castellans. In the end, I opted to swap out two basic Castellans (80 points) for 80 points of Fell Wargs and Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs, eventually settling on two Hunter Orcs on Warg, and six Fell Wargs, giving me 8 models that could move 10" (plus two models to counter-charge enemy cavalry, if needed--something that can completely flip a fight against a big hero in a Castellan's favor).

While I now had the speed problem addressed, there were three final issues I wanted fixed. First, even with the Witch-King and Lingering Shadow, my Might pool was still stuck at 5, and I thought I would want more than that. Second, while Castellans can withstand enemy charges better than many models can (thanks to Terror, and now Harbinger from the Witch-King), it is nice occasionally to be able to move first--and it's very nice to have some answer to armies that can spam Heroic Moves (like the Fellowship, or Rohan with Gamling), because even if it's not actually hurting you much... it just makes you feel powerless if the enemy gets to have his way all the time, and that's insulting. Third, while I had plenty of models that could take out troops of all stripes, and who could take out mid-tier heroes, and who could survive big heroes, I didn't really have a strategy for taking out big heroes besides "strike with a Nazgul and hope."

Now if only there was a model that could fix all three issues... 

Oh wait. There totally is:

Full disclosure: I was heavily experimenting with this army right when I released my re-ranking of Jay Clare's top-10 combat models for the forces of evil, and friend of the blog Sharbie correctly took me to task for under-ranking Bolg, because I didn't account for the fact that Bolg has Master of Battle if you take him from Azog's Legion, he's your army leader, and you have your army bonus. I corrected that mistake in my subsequent write-up, but that got me thinking about whether Bolg might be the fix that this army needed: he's got more Might than the Lingering Shadow, can definitely deal with big heroes (because he's F7 with Strike), and that Master of Battle (with no roll attached to it, either) meant I could not only contest enemy Heroic Moves, but also Combats, Strikes, and whatever else was going on. Last but not least, it'd be another 10" move model to buff the speed of my army. Plus, Bringer of Death meant I could get Terror and Harbinger on Bolg in most games, with the potential for Mighty Hero if I could accumulate those magical ten kills.

I play-tested this army a ton, and it did really well in the 600 and 750 match-ups. To score the maximum points against me in To the Death at 600, the enemy would need to break my force without breaking itself--and to break a force that contains only contains four "soft" models (three fell wargs and a Hunter Orc on Fell Warg), you'd need to kill at least three of Bolg (plus his warg, because cavalry models are weird for breaking), a Witch-King with Unholy Resurrection, and seven Castellans (four of whom also have Morgul Blades). For most conventional armies, that's an impossible task to complete before that army breaks you (and for some conventional armies, it's an impossible task, period). As for Fog of War at 750, there are nine fast models to capture back objectives (one of whom is Bolg), ten possible heroes for me to choose from to keep alive (all of whom are really tough to kill), and four Morgul Blades for assassination runs (plus Bolg).

The problem was the 450 match. Don't get me wrong--this list is still really resilient at 450, but because Hold Ground (a) uses Maelstrom deployment (and all my castellans, as Minor Heroes, deploy separately... would it break the game if they were Independent Heroes?), and (b) can suddenly end on a 1-2 after one side breaks, I found I would either (a) have a couple models get deployed in bad spots, and they couldn't fight their way to the middle in 75 minutes, or (b) the game would end on an early 1 or 2, after I'd broken the enemy but before I could kill enough of the enemy to have more models within 6" of the central objective. I must have played this scenario ten times in practices: all ten were in doubt when the enemy broke; I always won if the game went to time; and I always lost if the game ended on the first or second test after break. In other words, this mission is the definition of a crapshoot. And in a tournament that features just three rounds, I wasn't sure I wanted a third of my score to hinge on a crapshoot. This shouldn't have been a surprise, of course: with 10 models, I was now well-below my target model count for this mission (20+ at 450), so of course I was going to be outnumbered in the middle most games (sometimes severely). 

Then there was the "fun" factor--this list is a blast to play for me, but again... it felt just a little too oppressive for opponents (when they lose 25-30 models over the course of the game, and you only lose two... it's rough).

The last thing that got me down was those elusive 10 kills for Mighty Hero... After tons of games play-testing Bolg in this force... I still haven't gotten it. I've topped out at 8 kills, but I agree with Jeremy from the Green Dragon--by the time you get to that many kills, the game is pretty much over. And while Master of Battle is good, it only helps you if the enemy is calling Heroic Actions within 6" of Bolg... which they learn to stop doing pretty quickly. Plus, it doesn't help at all if you can't win priority, and you want to move first.

At which point it occurred to me: if I wanted free Might, why not just run with...

Option 5: Aragorn!!!

I dabbled with the thought of Helm Hammerhand for a bit (who I love), but in the end, it was always going to be Aragorn, for two reasons. First, he's just better at being Helm than Helm: yes, a free Might and Heroic Combat while being S5 and Burly are great... but a free Might, plus 3 Fate, plus a 3+ to wound anything (if you're willing to two-hand with Anduril), plus a 6" banner effect is just better. Second, there are more options for heroes in a Minas Tirith list than there are in Helm's Legion, and I wanted to run multiple heroes (I did try multiple King's Huntsmen once... it just didn't work for me).

I initially thought I'd build a force around King Aragorn, Madril (because he's a cheap 3 Might, plus helps with Maelstrom), and the King of the Dead with some dead (because that's fun and, as it turns out, Historical, which means the dead pick up Harbinger from the King while my Gondor models pick up +1 Courage--win-win). But as with many of these lists, I ran into two problems: the first was model-count (because it turns out, the dead are really expensive... even if you're trying to bulk out their numbers with cheaper Minas Tirith dudes). And the second was scaling in general. I stumbled very early on a sub-450 maelstrom warband I absolutely loved:

Aragorn, King Elessar on Armored Horse

• x8 Fountain Court Guard with Shields
• x6 Rangers of Gondor with Spears
• x4 Knights of Minas Tirith with Shields

That's nineteen models for 438 points. At higher points levels, this is a pretty solid base to work from: five heavy cavalry mean you can get places fast, counter enemy horsemen, or barrel through opposing lines of infantry; fourteen Fight 4 warriors (all of whom have spears) really helps the Knights out with their one eyesore stat (Fight 3); six bows keep enemies honest; and eight D7 warriors with shields and Bodyguard are surprisingly resilient. But the engine that makes it all go is Aragorn, who's backed by enough dependable troops that he can actually do Aragorn things (in particular, that 6" banner bonus is incredibly good in this force). 

I played multiple test games with just this warband at 450 (it comes in at 438), and absolutely wrecked forces that had multiple heroes, because Aragorn is in fact that good, and the troops are resilient enough to hold up while he's doing his thing. In Hold Ground, that single warband drop is pretty sweet in a Maelstrom scenario (very few opponents at 450 feel good about ganking a full warband led by Aragorn). Heck, I play-tested this warband against my Great Beast and Camels force at 450... and it absolutely obliterated them (despite spotting them 12 points and 8 models).

So how 'bout it? You wanna win this thing?

Photo Credit: The Tolkien Forum

The problem was that I could get the King and Madril into my 600 list... but only them (plus maybe one more Ranger, if I dropped a spear or two). 21-22 models at 600 isn't awful, but not being able to get the dead into the list until 750 (at which point I could only take 8-10 of them) sort of made me feel like they were dead weight. (Editor's Note: Sorry, that was unintentional... we didn't catch it until later.) Alternatively, I could try to bring Madril into the list earlier (after all, it seemed kind of stupid to include him for his Maelstrom special rule... and then not slot him into the Maelstrom list), but that meant dropping a couple of knights and some troops (which depleted the numbers), and also meant I'd have two warbands to drop instead of one. Granted, between Madril's special rule/3 Might, and Aragorn's free Might/3 Might, I could probably get where I wanted to most of the time. But a warband of 6 models and a warband of 8 models just wasn't the same as a warband of 19 models.

So I started to look around for other allies, and kept coming back to Loth-Lorien. I acquired a bunch of these models a while back for Battle Companies, but they had never entered my painting queue. So I dusted them off and, after playing around with Haldir (since I needed a Hero of Valor for our convenient alliance), I started importing a few Guard of the Galadhrim Court (because F6)... and then a few more... and then some Galadhrim warriors (for F5 and elven-made weapons)... and one thing led to another, and I ended up with this list:

First things first: there is absolutely nothing thematic about this list. Yes, Aragorn fought with both Haldir and Boromir, but not at the same time and definitely not in his "hey, let's storm the dark castle" form. I also don't have any thematic reason to have Galadhrim fighting with Gondor. Or for Haldir to be traipsing around Middle-Earth with Celeborn and Galadriel's elite guards.

But dagnabit, this list may be the most fun I've had at 750 with any list, ever. On top of freakin' Aragorn (what can I say--I'm a fan) and that killer 19-model warband (which I did manage to work into the list in its final form), Haldir and the elves allow our already pretty good Fight 4 warriors (Rangers and Fountain Court) to get the advantage on other Fight 4 warriors (with Galadhrim) and even Fight 5 elves (because F6 Galadhrim Court Guard, for 12 points a pop, are insanely good value). Boromir in his Fellowship form (who doesn't make an appearance at 450, because Maelstrom) is a bit fragile, but he's way overqualified to be our "second beater" (which he totally is, in a list that features King Aragorn), just like Haldir is seriously overqualified to be our third banana. In addition to a metric ton of Might (12 at 600 points), there's Fight 6+ everywhere, which is a real problem for a lot of enemy heroes. Add the Defense 6 from the Galadhrim (who also bring elven-made weapons) and Defense 7 from the Fountain-Court Guard (who still have Bodyguard for dealing with Terror), plus the shock-value of the Knights on the charge (especially if you can get a F6 pike in their fight when they charge), and you can deal with a lot of threats before you have to commit your heroes (all of whom have tools to neutralize even more threats, if needed). Before trying this list out, nothing I tried could consistently best the Castellans and Bolg in higher points games. This list dismantled them three times in a row.

And yet... there was just something about it that I couldn't work out. For all these three heroes could do (and don't get me wrong--they can do a lot), there were some things they couldn't do. One is shrug off magic--Aragorn can do it for a little while, but eventually he runs out of Will (unless he rolls 6s all the time to resist), at which point he's still useful (he still calls Heroic Moves every turn to put pressure on the enemy caster, and still contributes a 6" banner even if he's Transfixed or Compelled), but he's not acting like Aragorn. Haldir and Boromir are more susceptible (because they only have 1 Will each), and unlike Aragorn, with just 2 Wounds/1 Fate or 3 Wounds/0 Fate, they can't actually survive multiple rounds of combat if they're Transfixed or Compelled. And while I'd like my #1 hero in a fight with any other army's #1 hero, and my #2 in a scrap against most other #2s, and my #3 to out-kill a fair bit of enemy #3s... I did only have three heroes at the end of the day, so if the enemy had more than three heroes I'd be in trouble (although six Galadhrim Guard backing up eight Fountain Court Guards meant I could weather that storm better than most armies). I also didn't have a real solution for enemy heroes on horse, besides trying to shoot out their horses (I looked long and hard at swapping Boromir for Legolas, for precisely that reason), or beating them in Combat with Aragorn (which he can do... but it's not a guarantee, especially if he's not picking up that fourth dice to win fights from charging, and doesn't get a knock-down bonus).

But once again, in the end I was thwarted by the scaling. I really liked the 450 list with Aragorn's full warband drop. But I couldn't take both Boromir and Haldir at 600 if I ran that warband, and if I took Boromir first I was out of warband slots (plus I kinda wanted the Galadrim Guard more at 600 anyway). That meant no Boromir until 750, which meant I was dealing with just 6* Might until 750 (and only two heroes, who could be transfixed in the meantime). While 32 models isn't bad at 750, it was definitely on the small side. Plus Boromir's slightly fragile (and if he dies early, that's a big problem), plus I wasn't 100% sure Boromir was a better play than Legolas... 

This... is not our "Plan A" scenario...

Photo Credit: Galadriel on Reddit

In the end, there were just too many questions, so I tabled it for later. At a set points level, I think a list like this would be really brutal, and I will return to it eventually. But I just couldn't configure it in the way I wanted for an escalation event.

So I went back to the drawing board (for what would turn out to be the last time).

Option 6: Budget-Aragorns

Before that, a slight digression.

Here's the thing about Aragorn: everyone reads Aragorn's profile (any Aragorn profile), and everyone thinks, Wow... this guy's awesome. And then you read all the entries for his special rules, and think, Holy cow! This guy's [insert word of your choice here] awesome! But then you read other profiles, and you find other guys who do sort of the same things as he does for fewer points, and who are in armies you like better (or who are in actual armies, in the case of Fellowship Aragorn), and he sort of gets forgotten.

Then one day you decide (like I did), You know what? Aragorn. I know he's awesome, but I never play him. Let me give him a go. So you do. And it's not only awesome (or "[insert word of your choice here] awesome")--it's like way more of whatever-word-you-inserted than you ever thought it could be. 

And once you have that experience, it's really hard to go back to life before Aragorn.

That was me. Having tasted the absolute bliss that is Aragorn (mostly Mighty Hero, but also a 4+ to wound or better all the time, and a 6" banner, and knocking dudes over on horse, and being a F6 Striking machine), every list that couldn't do those things just seemed lack-luster. So I did the logical thing: I started looking for different allies for Aragorn (because clearly, Haldir and Boromir were the problem).

Around this time, I was listening to the Green Dragon Podcast's episode on Lothlorien, and they were talking about powering up throwing weapons on wood elves by being able to call free Heroic Moves (probably with Fellowship Aragorn). Now I have some Wood Elves (not painted), but I wasn't going to take them for two reasons: (1) Tiberius was already running wood elves, and I'd never be derivative like that (besides, he's much better at running wood elves than I am), and (2) there's a much better throwing weapon troop than wood elves anyway: Guardians of the King, from the Army of Thror (S4, D7 Grim Hammers, which I happen to own quite a few of and have played with a lot in casual games). 

You can't handle our metal...

(Again... these aren't mine)

Photo Credit: Adam Troke on Warhammer Community

Having already thrown theme to the wind with my "Aragorn's Dead Mates" list, I decided to chuck Aragorn into an impossible alliance with the Army of Thror, because who cares about impossible alliances when you have Aragorn, right?

As it turns out, the Army of Thror cares. 

It didn't used to be this way, but it turns out that if you build an impossible alliance now, both forces break separately (which I cared a little about, but not enough to abort) and neither force can benefit from the other's banners (which I cared about more, given that Thror was going to lose the army bonus that gave him a 6" banner effect) and neither force can benefit from the other's heroic actions (which... defeated the whole point of the army). So yeah, I could run Aragorn, and I could run S4 D7 dwarves with Throwing Weapons, but they'd fight as basically two separate entities (and if either force lost just 10 models at 750, the entire force would count as broken). 

So that was dead on arrival (which made me sad, because I rather liked that list). But I was hooked on this idea, so I started thumbing through the Armies of the Hobbit to see if I could find someone who could bring what Aragorn could. And of course there isn't. But then I got to the Army of Lake-Town (not the Survivors of Lake-Town with Gandalf and Bilbo, and not Girion's Dale... this is the Master's Lake-Town, which I always thought was bad)... and they didn't have Aragorn, but they had bits and pieces of what Aragorn could do. They had a 6" banner effect (the Master's Moneybags). And a 3-Might hero who could get free Heroic Actions on a 4+ (Braga's The Master's Puppet). And a way to get that 3 Might hero even more might (Alfrid's Dubious Counsel). And a cheap Hero of Valor for alliances (the Master). And yeah... none of them were Fight 6, and there was no Anduril, and they have no cavalry to speak of, but what they did have was reeeeeeeeally cheap spearmen to back up my S4, D7 dwarves with throwing weapons (who are actually dangerous for cavalry armies). They were so cheap, in fact, that I could get well over sixty models at 750 if I wanted to (yes, you read that right... sixty). It was literally perfect!

And also impossible. 

It's an impossible alliance.

(Darn it.)

Furious now (and probably suffering from some after-effects of obsessively list-building for almost four months solid), I decided to stick it to the rules writers (because of course they care about my tribulations) and abuse the alliance matrix by pairing my new-found "budget Aragorns" (the Master plus Braga plus Alfrid is a surprisingly cheap 120 points, which is pretty good for all those bonuses plus 39 warband slots) with armies that were convenient allies with basically everyone... which eventually crystalized into some sort of elves, some sort of wizard, and something really punchy.

And with that, I present to you:

Lock it In: Fearsome Lake-Town*

* Subsequently rechristened "The Unholy Northern Alliance" by Centaur

Now I know it's not a defense... but in my defense: when I put this list together I thought I'd stumbled on something new and exciting. It was only afterwards, as I started doing my usual YouTube deep-dive into armies I'm planning to run that I discovered that the Army of Lake-Town isn't exactly an unknown commodity when it comes to competitive list-building (nor is Gwaihir for that matter--I did know about Galadriel, though). So here's what led me to these particular choices (before I knew they were cool).

Let's start with the basic army choice: Lake-Town Guard. Their stat line is pretty average (like, the textbook definition of average): F3/4+, S3, D4, C2, with 1 Attack and 1 Wound. If that stat-line looks familiar to you, it should: it's the same profile as a basic Orc Warrior. What's also average (if you consider orcs as the average) is the cost: 5 points for a basic troop, which is... well, actually amazing for good troops. For some reason, F3/4+, S3, D4 troops on the good side tend to cost 6 points each (think Warriors of Rohan), probably because of their courage boost (C3 instead of C2). The exception are the Lake-Town warriors from the Hobbit: either the Lake-Town Guard (who get Courage 2 instead of 3) and the Lake-Town Militia from the Survivors List (who get F2 instead of F3). Now don't get me wrong, Courage is important and all... but if you ask me to trade 1 Fight or 1 Courage for 1 point, I'm gonna trade the 1 Courage every time.

There are some issues with Lake-Town Guard, of course. Fight 3 on its own (while better than Fight 2) is sorta meh, and of course while they can take spears and bows (great options), they can't take a banner (and the 600 To the Death scenario gives VPs for having a banner). Thankfully, the Master's Moneybags rule fixes 2/3 of that problem, by trading one of the Master's Might points (which he's unlikely to use on much else) to give all Lake-Town Guard within 6" of him both a +1 Fight boost (they become Fight 4) and a banner reroll (which is pretty sweet) for a single Fight Phase. Repeat each round, bolstered by Alfrid's Dubious Counsel, and you can get up to five 6" Fight 4/Banner bubbles in a game (assuming Alfrid's counsel isn't particularly dubious, of course). I've generally found that 4-5 rounds of combat is enough to decide the game: at lower points levels, things go downhill for one side pretty fast (because everyone's got smaller numbers), and at higher points levels, the additional models means Fight Phases take longer, so there are fewer of them (and even at high points levels, against most armies 4-5 rounds of combat decides the contest for all intents and purposes).

This is the actual Braga... or so he tells me

Photo Credit: Courtesy of @actual_braga on Twitter

The other eyesore stat is that since Lake-Town Guard can't take shields, they're locked out of Defense 5, and they can't double their attacks on their own by shielding. I've found that the sheer numbers you can bring (coupled with spears, plus the Fight buff and banner reroll from Moneybags) means you can survive the lack of Shielding for a turn or two, but the Defense 4 means you're much easier to gun down with archery (S2 bows need only 5s to wound, and there's a lot of S2 shooting out there), and S4 troops and heroes can butcher them in combat (although, again--getting to that above-average F4, plus a big 6" banner effect and more dudes who can take cheap spears, helps even the odds against most S4 troops). Padding the numbers always helps, but given that I had already locked-in a pretty good amount of starting Might (5-8 from Braga and the Master, depending on what Alfrid did) plus 30 warriors for around 300 points total, I figured it was worth exploring options to toughen the Guard up with my remaining 150-450 points.

My first thought was Terror, because that works absolute wonders for Angmar's cheap orcs (plus a lot of S4 warriors--Morannons, Scout/Siege uruks, Mahud--can struggle with Courage, especially at low points levels where it can be tempting to pass on a Shaman over, say, a comparably-priced 3 Might hero). I also figured that if a F3 Terror line with 3" banners (or no banners) was hard to overwhelm, surely a F4 Terror line with a 6" banner would be harder to overwhelm? Good actually has ways to give Terror to non-Terror troops through Aura of Dismay, so that meant looking at Cirdan in Rivendell, Thranduil in Thranduil's Halls, or Radagast in either the White Council or Radagast's Alliance. 

I moved on from Cirdan pretty fast, mostly because the tax to bring him (aka, a Hero of Valor) was going to be at least 170 points (Glorfindel with all his marvelous toys), and scaling a list with both Glorfindel and Cirdan (plus the three Lake-Town heroes, plus the accompanying Rivendell and Lake-Town warriors) proved surprisingly challenging. Cirdan is also pretty one-dimensional (he casts awesome spells, and takes care of your Stand Fast... and that's about it), whereas both Thranduil and Radagast can fill a few roles because they're not Unarmed (plus there's no tax to bring them, since both are heroes of Valor/Legend).

I eventually moved on from Thranduil as well, again because I couldn't find a configuration of him that I really liked. He had to have the magic hat (because that's how you get the Terror), and I felt the heavy armor was a must (given that, as a Hero of Legend, he'd probably have to be my leader). And once you have the armor, it's hard not to take the blades... and then it's hard not to mount him... and of course there's the bow, because he's got a 2+ shoot... and then he's 200 points. :-P At which point you might as well bring Palace Guard (to get some F6/D6) and some Mirkwood Cavalry (for some speed), and some Rangers, and probably a Wood Elf Sentinel or two, and... that's 450 points for a full warband. You could do much worse than that for 450, of course, but given that I wouldn't have the Mirkwood Army Bonus (+1 to-wound for most elves within 6" of Thranduil), I wasn't sure that warband would be punchy enough (particularly against hero-heavy warbands). Additionally, while Thranduil doesn't need to spend Will to cast Aura of Dismay (which he always successfully casts), he can only cast it once, and to keep the spell up he has to have at least 1 Will in reserve (because Aura of Dismay is an Exhaustion spell). 

That left Radagast, who can also fill a couple of roles depending on what you take him on (and I do feel that Radagast probably wants to be on something most of the time--at least to start the game, until you get him where you need him). He's quite cheap on horse, but suffers all the normal issues that most wizards face on horse: namely, he's not much use to you in combat if he doesn't charge, and even if he does charge, he's only so-so because he's Fight 5 and can't Strike. Mounting him on sleight is probably the optimal choice because you pick up quite a few more attacks, plus he gets to keep his staff of power, plus you can give him Sebastian for a nice, round 200 points (instead of the 205 you need to take Sebastian and the Eagle). But I didn't have the sleigh, and wasn't particularly interested in buying one. I did, however, have an eagle (and figured I could kit-bash together a Radagast to sit on him, which I did). And while I'm sure I was down on the eagle when we talked about Radagast in our TMAT Talks episode on good spell-casters (mostly because losing that free Will per turn sounds bad, and probably is bad), a flying monster does offer some combat advantages over a giant-base sleigh that can't go over models (or terrain), especially if you basically have Good's equivalent of Fell Sight. More on that later, though...  

Is it possible a model this well-known can still be "underrated"?

Photo Credit: mistersteel on Imgur

At the same time, I also started looking hard at Galadriel, Lady of Light, from the White Council list. I initially looked at her purely because she had Blinding Light for free (no need to cast it) and Fortify Spirit, which would give my other heroes some protection from magic (the Lake-Town Guard really need the Master to be in the correct position, and he needs to have Will left in his store to trigger Braga's free heroic actions, so the thought of having some protection against Compels from enemy casters was appealing). If I had to venture a guess, I'd say most players start looking at Galadriel for those two reasons. But there were a few more I discovered, as I started digging into her profile:

• First off, she may be the most multi-use magic caster good has. She's not just "fine" in a scrap--she's very good in a scrap. Defense 3 is low, but it only matters if you lose fight. And with three attacks, base Fight 6, and access to Heroic Strike, she doesn't lose a lot of fights (plus you have three rerollable Fate to weather a botch). That already makes her better than 80% of evil's man-sized heroes when it comes to fighting, and a fair number of Good's. She's also S4 and never counts as unarmed, which means she can still deal with D5-6 opponents pretty reliably (especially if they're trapped), and even D7-8 opponents can be wounded on just straight 6s (instead of 6s plus something else).
• Second, while there's no denying the raw killing power of mounted heroes, one of their disadvantages is that they tend to wander off from your main battle line (I ran into this with King Aragorn a lot whilst play-testing my Minas Tirith list). That's not necessarily bad (as long as they're off doing heroic things), but it's much less risky if you have above-average troops. Since my core troops are only average (the definition of average), I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a very good combat model nestled in the line, too. Braga sort of fits that bill (he's F5 if Moneybags is active), but without the option to Strike, he's best deployed as a Heroic Defense speed-bump to opposing heroes (especially since the Defense may be free)--he's not likely to actually beat a hero like Aragorn or Boromir in a brawl. Galadriel is different, because she's base F6 with Heroic Strike; put a single spearman behind her, and suddenly there's four dice to win a fight (plus potentially a fifth from a banner reroll). At a minimum, she's consistently beating (and then carving up) enemy troops in your opponent's battle-line, and supported by friends (or a monster) she can also beat and kill pretty big enemy heroes (she spearheaded a successful assassination run on Treebeard this past weekend). 
• Third, she's a much, much more resilient army leader than any of the Lake-Town heroes. 3 Wounds and 3 rerollable fate are always great, and while she's still Defense 3, the fact that Blinding LIght is up all the time, combined with Fight 6, Strike, and no longer being Unarmed means she's surprisingly difficult to wound enough times that she'll die, especially if a second combat-y hero is nearby to serve as her bodyguard. I've had a lot of success with Braga and a spearman in that role (F5 with 3 Attacks, plus a banner reroll), because he's got potentially-free Heroic Combats. She also synergizes well with Braga: with Galadriel nearby, Braga isn't the clear-cut choice for "public enemy number one" anymore, and if the two of them are in reasonably close proximity, enemy heroes can get nervous about charging into both of them and a mess of Lake-Town warriors. 
• Fourth, because she has a 6" Harbinger of Evil bubble, I thought she'd be a cool companion for Radagast's Aura of Dismay. I ended up playing against Tiberius's wood elves a couple of times with Harbinger armies (with both Angmar and my Castellans), and even Courage 5 gets a little shaky once you start applying -1 Courage debuffs. Again: Lake-Town Guard are pretty squishy if they lose fights, so anything that made them harder to charge disadvantageously seemed like a boon.
• Fifth, because of that Courage debuff, she's also sneaky-good at clearing objectives because she has a 4+ Instill Fear. If you're not familiar with that spell, it's pretty nasty. And while most models who have Instill Fear (namely, Sauron and Ringwraiths) don't bother casting it because they have other fantastic spells at much longer ranges, once Galadriel is done giving Fortify Spirit to whoever needs it, and if you're not facing Spirit models who need to be Banished, what else is Galadriel going to do with her free Will per turn? So why not spam Instill Fear?
• Finally, there was the cost difference. I looked at other wizards, too (I did my due-diligence on Saruman the White and Gandalf the Grey from the White Council, as other companions to Radagast), but in the end, Galadriel was better in combat for significantly fewer points. 40-50 points may not sound like a lot, but that's an extra 6-10 Lake-Town Guard. It adds up.

Which brought me back to Radagast. While the Terror from Aura of Dismay would have improved the survivability of my warriors even more, I confess that after I'd marked Galadriel (and her Blinding Light) in pen, I was significantly less worried about that. Since Aura of Dismay is an exhaustion spell, getting it up (which probably requires 2-3 dice for a 5+ cast) and then keeping it up meant I was only going to have 2-3 Will to cast other spells anyway for the remainder of the game (plus I'd need to keep Radagast within 6" of my army, unless I channeled the spell, which is a whole 'nother conversation...). I did like the option to Renew (what's more annoying than a Braga who can Heroic Defense for free every turn? Restoring wounds on that Braga), and since we have a lot of mounted Rohan in our gaming group (whose doesn't?), Panic Steed or Nature's Wrath, plus a giant F7 bird with Monstrous Charge, is abjectly terrifying. Until the Will runs out... then it's only "pretty scary."

Prior to experimenting with Radagast on eagle, I'd looked at all three of the other good monsters (first Beorn, because he's awesome! then Treebeard, because he's more awesome!), before settling on Gwaihir in this spot (and, in one test army, a second eagle with him). I've been "down" on him in previous episodes of TMAT Talks, too, and just like my mea culpa on Fell Beasts, now's the time to apologize: Gwaihir is awesome. Even with the two attacks base (which I think is low), he's tremendously difficult to deal with, because Flying monsters are incredibly difficult to deal with in general, and Striking flying monsters dial the difficulty up to eleven. And while I still think Treebeard is a better model overall (the 6 Will in particular, but also the S10 Throw Stones and Bludgen, plus getting 3 models for the price of one is handy), a test game with Treebeard led me to conclude pretty quickly that having a ground-bound centerpiece hero on a  60mm base... is probably not the best strategy if you're planning to run a 50+ model horde, because those other models tend to get in the way of Treebeard (and for some reason, you can't step over them). Having Fly makes that centerpiece hero much more versatile (and threatening). Plus, Gwaihir was 50 points cheap (and, again, that's 6-10 more Lake-Town Guard).

So I was leaning Gwaihir... but then I saw that I could get an Eagle and a 3/3/3 Wizard for just 50 points more (plus, for 5 more points on top of that, I could give the Wizard an extra hedgehog attack, so he'd be 3 attacks base and 4 on the charge, with 8 dice to wound against prone models). So I went away from Gwaihir, and started play-testing Radagast on eagle with Sebastian. If you're looking for my "verdict" on the two, here's what I would say: I'm still not entirely convinced that Radagast on eagle is worse than Gwaihir, but Radagast on Eagle is definitely different from Gwaihir. And after testing Radagast on eagle a couple of times, and comparing those tests to my tests with Gwaihir, I decided that Gwaihir (plus those 55 points I was saving) was a better fit for this particular army.

Be honest... the thought of fighting this would scare you, too

Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

At this point, I felt like I was really close: I was very happy with Gwaihir as my uncontested #1 (as anyone would be), which bumped Galadriel to #2... a role for which (I think) she's actually overqualified. I made up for that by making her my army leader (by taking Gwaihir from Radagast's alliance, he's only a Hero of Valour), mostly because I expect Gwaihir to take the enemy's best shots all the time (fyi: that happens every time), which means he probably takes wounds eventually (fyi: that hasn't happened nearly as often as I thought it would). Braga then shifts to my #3 threat (about right), with the Master and then Alfrid rounding out the list. At the time, the rest of the army consisted of two additional Lake-Town Captains (who, at F5 with Moneybags active, would slot in above Alfrid in the pecking order) and a ton of Lake-Town Guard. The full army hit 54 models at 750, which is a lot of models given the number and quality of heroes in it: seven heroes (one of whom is a glowing, terrifying elf-witch, and the other is a demon bird) with 15 Might... plus potentially 3 more from Alfrid... plus potential free Heroics from Braga. It might actually have the Might and heroes to go toe-to-toe with all-hero armies like the Fellowship.

Speaking of the Fellowship...

Now I probably could have called it there (and maybe I should have). But call me crazy: I was still a little worried about my ability to deal with multiple enemy heroes. No doubt, this was shaded by my fear that at some point, I'd have to play Tiberius's stupid Broken Fellowship legion, which for reasons unknown he'd decided to make the "automated player" for this tournament in case there were ties. But that list features four F6 heroes, all of whom can Strike, and who are really tough to beat in combat (Legolas, Boromir), or kill (Gimli), or both (Aragorn). And while I felt pretty good about Gwaihir taking on heroes of that caliber (and to a lesser extent, Galadriel, if I had the numbers advantage), the rest of my list would have to hope to overwhelm them (or, in Braga's case, out-last them). Getting the advantage on them would take time, as Gwaihir made his way across the board. And if something freaky happened, and Gwaihir went down early (which, by the way, is always on the table as long as Legolas is around), I didn't have many good plan Bs (and maybe one plan C... that was it).

I may show up in THREE lists this tournament!

Photo Credit: Marcia Hicks on Pinterest

To find that final piece of the puzzle, I went back to the metaphorical well / Mirror of Galadriel: I dusted off Haldir and his platoon of Guards of the Galadrim Court, who were the unheralded secret sauce that made the Aragorn/Minas Tirith list so formidable (and now actually have a thematic reason to be there, given that (a) Haldir isn't dead yet, and (b) Galadriel is there, so of course she brought some of her personal guards along). Haldir plus five Galadhrim Guard (at 750) gave me six additional F6 models, which meant that with Gwaihir and Galadriel, I had one for each member of the broken Fellowship (and almost one for each Ringwraith in a full-strength Black Riders legion... hopefully no one's bringing that to the tournament). It also gives me some additional models who can successfully charge enemies with Terror, which doesn't matter until it does (Courage 6 will flub Courage tests, but thankfully it's pretty rare). 

Haldir also gave me a third model who could call Heroic Strike if we needed it, plus an elven-made weapon to help Gwaihir in Fight-capped combats (or at least keep the roll-offs even). That instantly vaulted him up to my #3 threat (for which I feel he's probably slightly overqualified). That shifted Braga down to my #4 threat (which is kind of crazy--he's definitely over-qualified for that role). The Master probably still fits into the #5 spot (depending on how you feel about F6 warriors with pikes), but Alfrid is basically an afterthought. Finally, reinserting a warband from Lothlorien allowed me to bring an actual banner in the list for the 600 point match (To the Death), when there could be actual VPs at stake.

All painted up and ready for war!

This was the last decision I made on the list, and it took me a while to pull the trigger. While you generally want banners in high Fight Value armies, this army is kind of a special case because the Master's Moneybags rule means you can get a banner effect (and a big one, at that) without having to take an actual banner. That doesn't help with scenarios like To the Death that award VPs for banners, but as long as you can kill the enemy's banner-bearer before the enemy is quartered (and Gwaihir's pretty good at doing just that), you can play around that. A banner-bearing Galadhrim Warrior (with spear and shield) also cost 36 points, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's an extra 3 Galadhrim Guard (or six Lake-Town Guard with spear or bow, or seven without wargear), so that's a -2 to -6 penalty on model count, just for bringing a banner. Taking Haldir and five Galadhrim Guard had already reduced my model count from 54 to 46, which was still a good count... but adding the banner would drop me down to 42. And going from 54 to 42 is a significant drop.

In the end, however, I did end up pulling the trigger, for two reasons. 

The most important reason was to help out Gwaihir. While Galadriel (and, to a lesser extent, Haldir) can generally get the reroll from Moneybags (you just glue a Lake-Town Guard with spear to their backs), I found it surprisingly hard to get Lake-Town Guard into Gwaihir's fights consistently (since models with a 25mm base can't support him with spears). This was especially true when trying to take down models with Terror (where you generally want that Duel reroll), but it also became a problem if Gwaihir had to go to an extreme flank (or behind the enemy's lines) where infantry models just couldn't reach. Gwaihir can take most botches on the chin, but he's far more lethal when he's winning fights. And that banner reroll really helps him win fights.

The other reason--and this came into play in several of my test games--was (for lack of a better word) "Alfrid insurance." Alfrid is pretty dependable: 83% of the time, he'll roll a 2+ on his Dubious Counsel die (5/6 chance), at which point nothing bad happens. But if he rolls that "1," he steals a Might point from the intended target. Which isn't the worst thing in the world... if he's counseling Braga, who starts with 3 Might (and may get Heroic Actions for free). But if he's counseling the Master (who only starts with 2 Might, and which you'll want to do if he's your only source of a Banner reroll), losing 1 Might to Alfrid means you've lost a turn of banner rerolls (and a Fight buff, too boot). And in an army that has a pretty elite component (again--eight F6+ models kicking around), a turn without those banner rerolls can hurt.

Here's the other thing about rolling dice: the more dice you roll, the more likely you are to get a particular result. If Alfrid rolls his Dubious Counsel dice one at a time, he has an ~17% chance of rolling a 1, and an ~83% chance of rolling a 2+; but if he rolls two Dubious Counsel dice at once, his odds of rolling at least one "1" go up from ~17% to ~31% (that's almost one-in-three, which of course means it happens almost every game :-P). And if you roll all three Dubious Counsel dice at once, that's a 42% chance to roll at least one "1" (and an almost 7% chance of rolling at least two "1s"... which, I get it, is low... but it's not an impossible chance).

The problem is that even a single "1" hurts the Master's Moneybags production quite a bit. If you roll no 1s, Alfrid gives the Master 3 Might, and steals 0 Might; the Master ends with 5 Might (2 + 3), which means he can call Moneybags up to five times--that's usually enough to resolve battles, especially if you have a monster and the fight-advantage on opposing armies. Now, suppose Alfrid rolls two 2+ dice and one "1". Alfrid gives the Master 2 Might, and steals 1 back; the Master ends with 3 Might (2 + 2 - 1), which means he's lost two turns of Moneybags. That's a huge loss. And again... that's just with Alfrid rolling a single 1 (which, again, happens 42% of the time if you roll the three dice at once). If the doomsday scenario happens, and Alfrid rolls two 1s, that's just one turn of Moneybags with the Master (2 + 1 - 2). 

At the risk of understating the obvious, that's bad.

Trust me man... the fishes are talking now...

Photo Credit: Bustle, somewhat ironically in an article titled, 

"Why does anyone in The Hobbit trust Alfrid?" 

(Methinks the author hasn't played SBG)

The Banner is there primarily for that 42% of scenarios (which, again, happens to me almost every time) where Alfrid decides to be devious. If my force is clustered together, and if we have enough F4+ models in combats (between the elves and Gwaihir, plus Braga), we may not need Moneybags--that 3" banner may be enough. And if something goes wrong, we at least have something we can use once the Master's Might is spent. (Plus one more elf with F5 on a stick is never a bad thing.)

Overall, I'm pleased with that addition at 600, in every respect but one: unfortunately, it meant axing Braga. This is the one thing I would rework in this list, if I could. I made the decision early that I wanted both Galadriel and Gwaihir in my 450 list, because you need the shooting protection and the threat for enemy heroes. That left 170 points for the rest of the force, and while Lake-Town and their heroes are cheap, taking all three Lake-Town heroes (120 points combined) would have left only 50 points for troops, which is only 10 Lake-Town Guard with no gear (15 models total). Given that Hold Ground is both a Maelstrom mission and a model count mission, I wasn't too excited about dropping Alfrid or the Master with just a handful of D4 troops between them and whatever the enemy had. So I opted for bigger numbers, which meant leaving someone at home. And in the end, the model I left was Braga, for several reasons. 

First, you can bring way more troops if you leave him at home: that 30 point difference between he and Alfrid meant an extra 5-6 troops, so instead of bringing four more guys by dropping Alfrid, you can bring 9-10 more guys by dropping Braga. Second, I felt the army needed a few extra turns of Moneybags more than it needed free Heroic Actions (free moves are great and all, but F4 with a banner reroll is probably better--and given the other armies who are playing, most of whom are F3 or F4, I think that was the correct call in retrospect). Finally, the Maelstrom rules meant there was a chance that Braga and the Master could be forced apart, in which case I may not get to use The Master's Puppet much (if at all).

Before I added Haldir and the banner, getting Braga into the 600 list was pretty easy. But Haldir (85) plus Braga (50) plus the Banner (36) is way more than 150 points (21 points more, to be precise), which meant I'd have to go into the 450 match down 21 points (-4 models) and wouldn't be able to bring any Galadhrim Guard until 750... which seemed like a mistake. I could, of course, have dropped the Banner for some Galadhrim Guard... but not taking the Banner in the scenario that gave VPs for having a Banner also seemed like a mistake.

In the end, I felt like I could get more utility out of Haldir, some Galadhrim Guard, and a banner than I would out of Braga at 600 points. The addition of Haldir gave me a healthy Might pool (11 Might before Alfrid--up to 14 Might if he behaves), which should be a competitive amount at 600. So Braga makes his triumphant arrival at 750, when my Frankenstein-Aragorn list is finally complete.

We just murdered most of the Fellowship... Commemorative Group Shot!

So much for the list-building. Now to see if we win any games. :-P

What do you think about Rythbryt's lists? Did he make the right choice, or would you have gone in a different direction?