The Stuff of Legends: The Black Gate Opens

Good morning gamers,

We're returning today to the Gondor at War supplement and covering (what I believe is) the most popular evil Legion from that book: the Black Gate Opens. Chances are that if you own the Battle for Pelennor Fields box set, you can all-but-run this Legion. All you need to get started is a Mordor Troll Chieftain, the Mouth of Sauron (highly recommend), and probably a Morannon Orc/Mordor Orc command blister - boom, you're done (roughly $250 for the core set and all this).

But how do you make this Legion work without the usual named heroes that a Mordor army has access to? And can you function without Fury? Taking us through this Legion is Rythbyrt - take it away man!

Legion Tax: 140pts

Rythbryt: As I may have told you elsewhere (and perhaps a few times already), my first tournament experience featured a Troll Chieftain, Kardush, Gorbag, and a bunch of Morannons and Mordor Orcs (roughly 25 models at 450, which isn't bad all things considered). If you're just starting out (like I was), the Troll Chieftain is a great hero to start with: he's tough as nails, quite scary, very forgiving, and a joy to play. Highly, highly recommended.

As it turns out, the bulk of my list was also (unwittingly) a fore-runner of The Black Gate Opens legendary legion, which consists (primarily) of a Troll Chieftain, supported by Mordor and Morannon Orcs. There are some important differences (no Kardush / Fury for one, and no 3 Might orc heroes for another), but if you love the Troll Chieftain as I do, he really comes into his own in this list. And while the unit choices look limited to start with, underestimate this list at your peril: it may not be broad enough to be "competitive," but properly built and run, it will hit almost everything like a truck.

TMAT Talks, Episode 13: The Grand Tournament 2021 (Part 2)

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 II, Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt recap their escalation rounds (which featured a lot of elves, Rohirrim, and monsters). If you need a refresher on the lists, you can find them here: 

https://tellmeatalegreatorsmall.blogspot.com/2021/04/tmat-talks-episode-10-grand-tournament.html

Now available on Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and most places you get your podcasts!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny

____________________________________________

Show Notes:

Intro (0:00)

Round 1: Uruks v. Monster Mash, Lothlorien v. Rohan, Mountain Rohan v. Gwaihir & Galad (2:20)

Round 2: Monster Mash v. Mounted Rohan, Uruks v. Rohan, Lothlorien v. Gwaihir & Galad (39:06)

Round 3: Rohan v. Mounted Rohan, Monster Mash v. Gwaihir & Galad, Lothlorien v. Uruks (1:36:07)

Final Placements and Parting Thoughts (2:51:44)

Why the Two-Hander Rules Should Change

Hey Reader!

So, to start off, I want to reaffirm that I love the ruleset for the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. I think on the whole this game is both easy to understand while also giving a lot of options and depth for list building (albeit to greater degrees with some factions over others) so that strategy/math-minded people have a lot to keep them engaged in the game. The hobby aspect of the game is also excellent, with a vibrant and positive community that supports the game and make works of art.

But every now and then you come across some rules and profiles where you think to yourself, "...are we sure that this is the best way to do this," and today's post is one of those questions. The aim here is to make the game better, and I hope that the love and passion for the game is what comes through in this post. I've been playing this game for over ten years, have loved this game even during the "dark times" when we were getting hardly anything new, and I've only grown in my love and appreciation for the game as the years pass.

But two-handed weapons get a bad rap in this game, and that shouldn't be the case. We will start off with a "high concept" look at two-handed weapons across history, and then look at a small change that could be made to the game to fix these issues without "breaking the game" in favor of two-handed weapons.

The Stuff of Legends: The Army of Dunland

Good morning gamers,

PSYCHE - I know last time I said we'd be covering the Black Gate Opens, but Rythbyrt needed some extra time to write his thoughts down, so today we are jumping ahead to the Army of Dunland.

We've covered a lot of ground in this series and today, we wrap up the last of the Legions from War in Rohan by examining the vicious and furious warriors of Dunland. Finally receiving love from the GW team is a subset of Isengard that has a cult following almost as large as the Easterlings of Rhun. Dunland has exactly one hero from the movies and three named heroes that were machinations of GW - and with a healthy list of warrior profiles and access to pretty much every piece of ordinary gear, Dunland is a powerful army that can be run as a horde or as an elite army. Let's delve in and see what we can build!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 85-95pts
Also, Dunland needs better GIFs...

In this list, you NEED to take Thrydan Wolfsbane - and because he's your only mounted hero (and his Mighty Blow rule gets better when he's mounted), you might as well give him the horse. With his horse, he's a pretty affordable 95 points, which makes him an easy inclusion in any army - be it this Legion or an Isengard army.

On his own, however, Thrydan doesn't help his team get better (and he's going to need help dealing with the biggest and baddest models your opponent has in his force). One way you can help him is by taking Gorulf Ironskin, who can either be a 3A model with F5-and-Strike OR a 3A model with a free Heroic Defense and 2 Wounds/1 Fate, so long as you're fighting against an enemy hero. He can also spend his 3 Might to call Heroic Defense against warriors, but usually you want this guy either chomping through grunts OR stalling enemy heroes. Gorulf is good, but honestly for me, he's the fourth hero choice, because there are two other heroes you want to buy first.

TMAT Talks: Episode 12 - List Reviews!

 

Centaur, Tiberius, and Rythbryt take a break from rankings to discuss some lists from TMAT follower Daniel! If you've been kicking around 700 point list ideas for Minas Tirith, Mordor, or the Grand Army of the South, perhaps this is the podcast for you?

If not, there's an extended discussion of which wraiths to mount on fell-beast, Citadel Guard vs. Rangers, and the best wing-men/trolls for your Mumak. Plus, Tiberius surprises with a bonus-list of his own!

Now available on Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and most devices near you!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny

____________________________________________

SHOW NOTES:

Minas Tirith - 700 (1:45)

Mordor - 700 (23:08)

The Grand Army of the South - 700 (1:01:12)

The Black Gate Opens - 550 (1:34:30)

Battle Report: TMAT GT 2021 Round 3

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! This is the last post in my TMAT Grand Tournament 2021 series, and I hope you've enjoyed following me on this journey.

As we came to Round 3, I was sitting in 5th, facing off against Tiberius who was...I believe #3 at this point behind Rythbryt and the Strider/Dronak team. Walking into this fight I knew this one was going to be tricky, as Fog of War requires you to get to an objective on the other side of the board, kill a pre-selected enemy hero, rewards you for breaking the enemy army, all while keeping one of your preselected heroes from being killed, and against Tiberius's Lorien force (which had over 30 ranged weapons), this was going to be an uphill battle.

I.  Overview: My Army

As a bit of background, I ran an Isengard army, centered around the theory I had for rethinking Isengard to optimize points for the value you receive. At 750pts, I had the following force:

Warband 1

Lurtz with Shield (Army Leader)

1 Uruk Scout with Banner and Shield

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

3 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 2

Ugluk

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

3 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 3

Mauhur

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

2 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

5 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 4

Uruk Shaman with Armor

1 Feral Uruk-Hai

1 Orc Warrior with Shield/Spear

3 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 5

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

Warband 6

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

TOTAL: 44 models, 449pts, 12 Might

Game 3: Fog of War (Opponent: Tiberius)

Tiberius has a great army list - lots of shooting, Blinding Light to protect from archery, cavalry (including a mounted F6 captain), and of course elven-made weapons for winning ties against all of my heroes. Add onto this the ability to immobilize heroes with magic and restore all expended Fate Points on a hero within 6" of the Mirror, and oof: killing heroes is going to be very hard, getting to objectives is going to be hard, and keeping them from getting to objectives is going to be hard. And that...is most of the Victory Points for this scenario.

His army list is below:

Lothlorien

Warband 1

Galadriel, Lady of Lothlorien with The Mirror of Galadriel (Army Leader)

3 Wood Elf Warriors with Throwing Daggers

1 Wood Elf Warrior with Elf Bow

7 Wood Elf Warriors with Throwing Daggers and Wood Elf Spears

Warband 2

Haldir with Heavy Armor and Elf Bow

7 Wood Elf Warriors with Elf Bows

1 Wood Elf Warrior with Elf Bow, Wood Elf Spear, and Banner

3 Wood Elf Warriors with Throwing Daggers and Wood Elf Spears

Warband 3

Galadhrim Captain with Horse, Elf Bow, and Shield

3 Wood Elf Warriors with Throwing Daggers

6 Wood Elf Warriors with Throwing Daggers and Wood Elf Spears

3 Galadhrim Knights with Shields and Elf Bows

Total: 750 pts, 3 Models, 8 Might

This is going to be tough. Really tough. Stopping the cavalry will require me to pluck a few off with ranged attacks before we close to melee, and then there's a good chance that, even if they don't charge, they will win in combat against us due to a high Fight Value. This means stopping him from reaching his objective, let alone outnumbering him at it, will be hard while still trying to outnumber him at my objective.

Strategy: My plan is kind of upside down, but absolutely necessary when fighting Lorien: we are going to intentionally suffer brutal losses to archery to break quickly. I will send a few guys to various places, force the archery to guess which objective is mine, and then land a few people at our objective just as we break. And then we hope that we roll a 1-2 to end the game quickly before we lose everyone at our objective, :P

For the scenario, I chose to kill the Galadrhim Captain, as he can hide Haldir and Galadriel in the Blinding Light, so the captain will be the easiest to kill. I chose to keep the metal ballista siege veteran alive, as I can put him near the edge of the map and screen him with Ugluk's troops to keep the elves off of him. And for the terrain piece, I went back and forth, but I opted to choose the wooded terrain piece here:

I suspect that he will want to kill either the shaman or one of the ballista siege veterans (depending on where he wants to send his cavalry), and then he will likely select a wooded terrain piece as he gets Woodland Creature. He will opt to keep Haldir alive, as he can hide him in the Blinding Light, and that's likely points in the bucket for him, as I don't think I can break the "gun line" with my army.

In the words of Caesar, "Alea iacta est" - the die is cast. We go to war!

The Stuff of Legends: The Wolves of Isengard

Good morning gamers,

Today we're continuing our review of evil armies from War in Rohan and covering the Wolves of Isengard. There are five Isengard/Dunland Legendary Legions - Ugluk's Scouts and Lurtz's Scouts have several named heroes who provide good synergies for their armies (though they're all mid-tier heroes at best), paired with 1-2 generic heroes to fill out your list (March is a bit unnecessary in both lists, as the named Uruk-Hai heroes have it if you need it). 

Last time, we covered the Assault Upon Helm's Deep LL, which has no named heroes at all, but its generic heroes provide some added punch to an already nasty list. We'll cover the Army of Dunland in a few weeks, but today we turn our attention to the Wolves of Isengard. In my mind, this is the hardest Isengard LL to use - and yet, there are aspects of it that make dealing with certain armies (terror armies and cavalry armies) easier than any Isengard Legendary Legion we've looked at so far! Centaur takes us through this Legion today (with my usual uninvited commentaries added) - take it away, buddy!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 60-65pts

The only required model is Sharku, and even with a shield, he's only 65pts. Effectively, though, you need to take every profile in this list: you need at least one Orc Captain to call March (because we need Sharku to save his Might for fighting), Orc Shamans to deal with Courage issues, Warg Riders for killing power/banner support/ranged options, and Wild Wargs for fleshing out numbers, holding objectives, disabling siege weapons, and digging up heirlooms as appropriate. So while yes, you technically only need Sharku, you effectively need some of everything.

Battle Report: TMAT GT 2021 Round 2

  Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! It's been a while since my last battle report, so as I prepared for the tournament I opted to bring some scratch paper and record what happened in each battle. As the tournament was three rounds, this will be the first in a three-post series showing how my army did in the tournament.

I.  Overview: My Army

As a quick reminder, this was an escalation tournament, so while Game 1 sported a 450 point list, this match had the following 600 point list:

Warband 1

Lurtz with Shield (Army Leader)

1 Uruk Scout with Banner and Shield

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

2 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

4 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 2

Ugluk

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

2 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

4 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 3

Mauhur

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

1 Orc Warrior with Shield/Spear

4 Uruk Scuots with Shields

Warband 4

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

Warband 5

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

TOTAL: 31 models, 600pts, 10 Might

List 2 was slotted to play a To the Death scenario, so wounding/killing the enemy army leader, having a banner, and breaking/not being broken was all that counted. For this match, I got to fight a conventional army of "combined arms" Rohan, with a mix of cavalry and infantry sporting some of the best of Rohan's heroes.

The Stuff of Legends: The Assault Upon Helm's Deep

Good morning gamers,

We've talked about a few Isengard Legions already - we've looked at both Lurtz's Scouts and Ugluk's Scouts, both of which have a smattering of mid-range heroes and a handful of warrior options. To continue the trend, we're looking today at the Assault Upon Helm's Deep Legendary Legion, which has even fewer heroes and roughly the same number of warrior choices. Unlike the other Legions, this Legion is commonly viewed to be one of the best Legendary Legions in the game for competitive play - and that might be due to the nasty siege engines and powerful warrior choices they have. It's certainly not because of their heroes . . . or is it?

Let's dive in and see what we have!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: probably 65pts, technically 60-75pts

This Legion requires you to take an Uruk-Hai Captain, who must be your army leader and gains +1 Attack and +1 Wound. This Captain (who we'll be calling the "Uber-Captain" from now on) isn't THAT much better than other Uruk-Hai heroes, but with 3A/3W, he's a pretty decent hero. No addition of Heroic Strike means that he's going to be good against warrior models (where being F5 is generally good enough).

You can equip this Captain with a crossbow (don't do it), a shield (pretty good option), or a two-handed weapon (I like the two-handed axe option the most). While you CAN give your hero all three of these things, you should probably just choose one (making your hero 65 points). The shield makes him a pretty good "Rock hero" (able to shield in order to get 6 Attacks), but the "Hatchet build" with the two-handed axe makes him more likely to get a high die roll before you suffer the -1 penalty from the two-handed weapon. If he wins the fight with the two-handed axe, he can do 3 Attacks at S5 (or S6 with Piercing Strike) and +1 To Wound - which will wound most warrior models on 3s. THREES! If you're unfamiliar with my taxonomy of Uruk-Hai heroes, check out my article on them here.

Thanks to the Legion bonuses, this hero can lead 18 models, which means you will probably need 1-2 other heroes to lead troops (depending on how big your points limit is). Personally, I would start off with either an Uruk-Hai Captain with crossbow (an "Arrow build") or an Uruk-Hai Shaman with armor.

Because of the bonuses that are provided to this Legion, you probably want to take an Uruk-Hai Demolition Team (with two extra flaming brands for 82 points) and an Uruk-Hai Assault Ballista led by a Siege Veteran (for 65 points). Unless you feel like these things are disgusting and have no place in matched play scenarios (which we'll discuss later), having your army leader and both of these siege weapons will cost you "only" 212 points and you still have 15 warrior slots in your leader's warband and you have 4 slots for extra siege crew. After picking up another hero for 55-65 points, you can include up to 27-33 models, which means that even at 500 points, you can field one of each of the siege weapons and a LOT of troops (you also need to bring at least one banner with this army - you have the points for it).

Battle Report: TMAT GT 2021 Round 1

 

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! It's been a while since my last battle report, so as I prepared for the tournament I opted to bring some scratch paper and record what happened in each battle. As the tournament was three rounds, this will be the first in a three-post series showing how my army did in the tournament.

I.  Overview: My Army

As a bit of background, I ran an Isengard army, centered around the theory I had for rethinking Isengard to optimize points for the value you receive. So for your knowledge, this is the army I was running for this match:

Warband 1

Lurtz with Shield (Army Leader)

1 Uruk Scout with Banner and Shield

2 Feral Uruk-Hai

2 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

3 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 2

Ugluk

1 Feral Uruk-Hai

2 Orc Warriors with Shield/Spear

4 Uruk Scouts with Shields

Warband 3

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

Warband 4

Isengard Assault Ballista with Siege Veteran

TOTAL: 23 models, 449pts, 8 Might

The Stuff of Legends: The Defenders of Helm's Deep

Good morning gamers,

Today we're covering one of my favorite Legendary Legions to date: the Defenders of Helm's Deep! Who doesn't love the last hour of the Two Towers, where we see Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli "doing their thing" helping the beleaguered soldiers of Rohan and the stalwart guardians of Lothlorien fighting against the unrelenting tide of Uruk-Hai (my, those were big words). This Legion was certainly the Legion I was most excited about when War in Rohan was announced and I can't wait to dig in and talk about bringing it to the tabletop! 

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 80-85pts

The only model you NEED to take is Theoden, King of Rohan with heavy armor. For 80 points, he's pretty inexpensive - but let's be honest, we're taking the shield to bump him up to 85 points. Theoden isn't a power-house hero, but with F5/S4 and 2A on offense, paired with D6-7 with 2H/1F on defense, he's "fine". 3 Might is nice, as is 3 Will when you need to resist magical attacks, but he's on the squishier side of army leaders (even when run in a normal Rohan list). Like you'll find in most Rohan armies, Theoden leads from a safe spot on the board, able to lend some combat power to a manageable part of the board without overly exposing his position. If you need someone to take on the bulk of your opponent's force, you'll want some other heroes.

You'll need some way of dealing with big enemy threats, which means either running Gamling with the Royal Standard of Rohan (to keep Theoden fighting longer) and LOTS of Rohan guys surrounding them (the more Rohan Royal Guards the better), or some combination of Aragorn - Strider, Legolas Greenleaf, and Gimli, son of Gloin. Haldir isn't a bad fighter either, but like Theoden or Legolas, he's only "fine" when fighting (F6/S4 with 2A, D6 with 2H/1F), so I wouldn't rely on him dealing with big threats (unless you intend to shoot them - which this Legion can certainly do).