Back To Basics: The Shoot Phase

Good morning gamers,

We're in our third post on how to play the game and we're tackling one of my favorite aspects of the game: the Shoot phase. This phase of the game is the only phase where your opponent doesn't really get a say in what happens - sure, he can maneuver his troops during the Move phase to make his units harder to hit (or impossible to see) OR even use special rules that make shooting at his troops harder, but once he's done moving, it's all in your hands. For a game that is heavily dependent on "rolling better than your opponent," it's nice that at least one aspect of the game doesn't involve that kind of competition. This also makes armies that focus too heavily on shooting hated by some members of the community, so just be aware of that before delving headlong into it. Let's understand what you can do in the Shoot phase!

How Does Shooting Work?

Like we talked about in our last post, the player with Priority for the round shoots with his models first (generally speaking). After he's done shooting, the opposing player gets to shoot with any of his models that are able to shoot. The steps for shooting are as follows:

1. Pick the model you wish to shoot at;
2. Determine your "shoot value" to hit that target;
3. If you hit the target, determine what is "in the way" and roll to see what you hit;
4. Once you know what you hit, roll to wound (if applicable); and
5. If you wound the model, identify if the model has lost all of its wounds (remove it if it has).

Who can you see?

Picking the model you wish to shoot at it is pretty straight-forward: find a model that you can "see" (e.g. you can't see just a sword or tail sticking out) and say, "I'm going to shoot at that." Simple, right?

The target model also needs to be "within range" of the shooting model, which is determined by their ranged weapon type. Generally speaking, you have the following ranged weapon categories (see the main rulebook for a more complete list of ranged weapons in the game):

• Bows/longbows: 24" range with the shooting model able to move up to half of its Movement distance and still shoot (the Rangers of Gondor in our example have standard bows, which are S2 bows with 24" range);
• Crossbows: 24" range with the shooting model unable to move and shoot on the same turn;
• Shortbows: 18" range with the shooting model able to move up to half of its Movement distance and still shoot (the Mordor Uruk-Hai in our example have Orc bows, which are S2 bows with 18" range); and
• Throwing weapons: 6" range with the shooting model able to move up to its full Movement distance.

Assuming we have picked a target that we can see and is within range of our shooting weapon, we need to identify the shooting model's "Shoot Value," which we talked about briefly in our post on unit profiles. Your Shoot Value determines what you need to roll in order to "hit" your target (e.g. a Shoot Value of 4+ means when you roll the die to shoot, you need to see a 4 or higher in order to "hit" your target instead of your arrow flying wide of the mark). A model's Shoot value will be one of the following:

• 2+ (very rare, limited to a handful of heroes);
• 3+ (generally considered to be a "good" shoot value, generally found on Elves and elite archers - like the Rangers of Gondor in our example);
• 4+ (generally considered to be an "average" shoot value, found on the vast majority of archers - like the Mordor Uruk-Hai in our example);
• 5+ (generally considered to be a "bad" shoot value, found on a lot of Orcs and Goblins); or
• 6+ (very rare, limited to animals and Trolls that can't shoot).

Your Shoot Value can be modified in a few ways. First and foremost, most models that both move and shoot in the same turn apply a -1 penalty to their shoot value (so a model with a 3+ shoot value that moves and shoots will have a 4+ shoot value). Some models have special rules or magical powers that can apply shooting modifiers, the most common of which is the "Blinding Light" magical power that requires enemy archers to get a 6 to hit models within 6" of the caster (some models have similar rules that aren't tied to this specific magical power). This penalty doesn't stack with the moving-and-shooting penalty, so if you're up against a model with a rule like this, you might as well move and shoot, right? Okay, so let's assume that the six Rangers of Gondor on the hill shoot at two of the Mordor Uruk-Hai (being the better troops) - four shooting at one of them (only an Orc in the way) and two shooting at another (since they'd have the tree and an Orc in the way):

Six archers needing a 3+ to hit score three hits (the two 1s and one 2 are misses) . . .

If we hit the target (roll at/above our Shoot Value difficulty), we determine what is "in the way" of our shot. Terrain and other models that block the physical view of our shooter would count, but there are other things that might be "in the way" (or not in the way). For example, you might have a building or a friendly model that obscures the visibility of your target, but if the shooting model is in base contact with that object or model, they can "shoot past" it and not count it. When you shoot at a mounted model, you need to see if your arrow hits the rider or the mount (and with some mounts being much bigger than their riders, the likelihood that you hit the mount might be greater than your likelihood of hitting the rider). Finally, evil models may shoot at an enemy model that is engaged in combat with one or more friendly models and so need to see if they hit one of their friends or their target. Because Forces of Good models presumably care about their comrades in arms, they are not allowed to shoot at enemy models engaged in combat (unless they have a rule that says otherwise). Here are the in-the-way rolls for the Orcs in our example:

Three arrows hit, two get a 1-3 and so land on targets that are in the way, while one hits the intended target . . .

If you pass your hit roll and have determined through any in the way rolls that you hit a model that you are able to wound (trees and rocks and such wouldn't count), you roll to wound the model you hit, comparing the Strength of your ranged weapon (which will often be different from the Strength stat of the model firing the ranged weapon) to the Defense of the target model on the chart below (the grey rows are the most common Strengths for ranged weapons):

If you see a value of "5", you need to get a 5 or higher on this roll in order to wound the target. Generally speaking, needing a "4" to wound is good, needing a "5" to wound is average, and needing a "6" to wound is hard. If you see a "6/4+" or similar value, you need to get the roll of a 6 followed by the roll of a 4+ (or whatever is after the slash). Models that can get to that difficulty level of wounding are considered very hard to wound. Some things to consider: 

• If your Defense value is 1-2 pips higher than your opponent's Strength value, you will be wounded on a 5+, while you will be wounded on a 6 if your Defense value is 3-4 pips higher than your opponent's Strength - this means that increasing your Strength or your Defense may not actually result in making it easier to wound things or be harder to be wounded.
• Since most ranged weapons in the game are Strength 2 (S2) or Strength 3 (S3), getting to Defense 6 (D6) is the lowest possible Defense value you can get to that requires your opponent to wound you on a 6 with most ranged weapons (so most players try to get D6 models when they can). 

So let's seen how our example round went - the Mordor Uruk-Hai will be wounded on a 5+ while the Orcs will be wounded on a 6 (and this is the no-kidding roll I got - nothing doctored for the sake of example):

Two sixes = two wounds = two dead models . . .

Because the Orc Warrior and Mordor Uruk-Hai have one Wound each, they are removed as casualties. Well, the Minas Tirith army got lucky huh? Okay, so we've talked about how shooting works - let's now look at reasons to either take or not take shooting weapons in your list.

Why Not To Invest In Shooting

Perhaps after talking about all this and seeing the wounding chart you're wondering, "Wait, I'm only going to hit with less than half of my shooting models and only wound with about a third of the models that hit? What kind of shooting is that!?!?!?" Well, you wouldn't be alone in that assessment - so let's look into the decisions that might inform a commander to not take shooting in his list.

First and foremost, most bow-armed models are not going to take a shield. Models with Expert Rider can benefit from the +1 Defense bonus that comes from a shield while mounted, but once dismounted, all models that carry a bow/crossbow and carry a shield don't get the extra Defense boost. This means that they are generally easy to kill (often D4-5, wounded on 5s by most models), while losing the bow would make them harder to kill (especially from archery). 

Second, I learned pretty quickly in MESBG that shooting is unreliable - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This uncertainty has led some players in our circle to avoid shooting entirely (or take a very small contingent for "honesty archery" so your opponent can't dictate everything). When you add in the negative archery modifiers that some models have (e.g. the Blinding Light magical power that makes shooting attacks hit on a 6 instead of what they would normally hit on), a large contingent of bowmen might seem like a wasted investment.

Third, running lists that focus heavily on shooting can distract you from the actual victory conditions of the game. When playing games like Hold Ground (where you're trying to get models into the center of the board and the game can end once one side is broken), it might seem like a good idea to appear at a safe distance from the enemy warbands and shoot them to pieces as they race to the center. One problem though: if your opponent gets 3+ models into the center before you have anyone within range of the center objective and the game randomly ends, you lose. Period. Why? Because you got carried away with the shooting and didn't focus on actually winning the game.

Fourth, because most models will find it hard to hit and hard to wound the enemy (optimistic rolls are a 4+ to Hit and a 5+ to Wound), shooting will often feel like a let-down unless you bring LOTS of bows (which some factions can bring 50% or more of their list with bows, but most factions won't see more than 10 in their army). If you get lucky and hit on a 4+ (either because you are standing and shooting with a 4+ Shoot Value or you move-and-shoot with a 3+ Shoot Value) and you wound on a 5+ (S2 bows attempting to wound a D4 target or S3 bows attempting to wound a D5 target), only one-in-six shots are likely to be converted into a wound - which means 10 bows will probably kill 1-2 models a turn . . . not very impressive, am I right? If you invest in fewer bows (say, six total), you might see 1 kill each round . . . and THAT doesn't seem worth it.

Why Would You Invest In Shooting?

Despite all this, I've always found myself taking close to 33% archery for the armies I field. Why? Well, for several reasons.

First and foremost, shooting is the one thing in this game that your opponent has no say about once he's done moving. Sure, you can move models behind cover or provide abilities that reduce enemy archery accuracy (like Blinding Light), but once the pieces are done moving and the Shoot Phase begins, your opponent rolls no dice, contests no shots, and "just takes it." If you find yourself fighting an army with a higher Fight Value than you, you may lose duels because your opponent got a 6 (we'll cover that more next week) - and if you bring a wizard to cast magical powers, you may find an opponent that rolls inordinately well on their Resist tests (which we talked about last time). But in the Shoot phase, you deal with none of that - it's just you and the dice you roll doing your thing.

Second, shooting is an asymmetric way to deal with enemy models - and their mounts. Charging models that provide area-wide buffs to their team is usually difficult (or requires constant pressure) - models like Cirdan, banner-bearers, or Shades are usually tucked away from the fighting so they can provide their buffs for as long as possible. If you shoot at these models, you may have to pass in-the-way rolls to hit them instead of someone else, but if you can hit them (and manage to wound them), you can make the hero play differently (more conservatively) OR deny your opponent a powerful piece without having to chop your way through his army to get to it. Similarly, most heroes are much better when mounted - and many heroes lack the Horselord special rule that allows them to spend their Fate points (which, you may recall from our post two weeks ago, are used to prevent wounds) on behalf of their mounts. Shooting a horse out from under a big hero can mean the difference between fighting a fast-moving, hard-hitting mega-hero and fighting a slower-moving, not-as-hard-hitting mega-hero. Which would you prefer?

Third, there are many missions where you get bonus points for being in specific parts of the board. Stationing a model with a shield at an objective might make him hard to kill because of his increased Defense, but if you want to have your models actually DO something, it would be far better if they had some kind of shooting weapon so they can park behind cover, give you points for sitting on the objective, AND kill someone every now and again.

Fourth, if you bring enough archery (and if your opponent doesn't find archery reliable enough), you can force your opponent in some scenarios to play the game on your terms. Scenarios like Lords of Battle, To The Death, and Clash by Moonlight don't require you to get anywhere, so if you have shooting superiority and you move into shooting range, you can signal to your opponent, "You will lose this game if you don't come towards me." And do you know what people don't like to do? Charge across a field at a high-volume archery force (even if they have Blinding Light up to protect them). 

Fifth, when determining if bringing bows was worth it, compare the points value of the models killed to points spent on the ranged weapons alone - not the models carrying them. You were buying the warrior/hero model anyway, but what was the points value invested in doing damage from a distance? In our example army from Mordor, we spent 1 point on each Mordor Uruk-Hai to give them Orc bows (+6 points) that could have been spent on shields - but if those bows kill a single enemy model (the Minas Tirith models cost 8+ points each), then the bows paid for themselves. Now wounding those models is quite difficult, but we only need to get lucky once - and that seems worth it to me!

Sixth and finally, there's a whole phase of the game that you can't get any kills in without shooting weapons. By passing up on archery, you basically say, "Yeah, I'll only do damage in the Fight phase - and maybe the Move phase (if I can do impact hits or have damage-oriented magical powers)." I get that shooting is fickle, but at some point giving up an entire phase each round of removing enemy models just doesn't seem like a worthwhile choice for most armies.

Heroic Actions

There are only two heroic actions (one general action, one specialized action) that apply in the Shoot Phase and in general, they're both rubbish. :) I talked about calling a Heroic Accuracy in my post on Top 5 Ways to Waste Might Points and covered Heroic Shoot in my post on Five More Ways to Waste Might Points. In each I gave examples of when you might want to call them and so that's what we'll focus on here (in order to be positive):

• A Heroic Shoot (as we said two weeks ago) allows the hero who calls it (and nearby warriors with shooting weapons) to perform their shooting attacks before the player with Priority resolves his shooting. This might seem like a good idea because you can kill enemy archers before they get to shoot, but because translating shots into kills is quite difficult with archery, you'll see a minimal impact on average on your opponent's responsive shooting. As a result, you want to call this Heroic Action only when you have a hero who has a shooting attack (like Legolas or Haldir) and you're pretty sure that hero is going to die from an incoming volley of arrows before they get to go.
• A Heroic Accuracy allows the hero who calls it (and nearby warriors with shooting weapons) to reroll failed in-the-way rolls - which only matters when you're shooting at something that's behind cover/other models/mounted, which means you actually need to pass your To Hit roll before the heroic action gives any benefit. When there is a +3 difference in Defense between the target model and the model/barrier that's in-the-way, it's probably worth it to do (as it could greatly increase the difficulty of wounding the model that you end up hitting).

The Other Side Of The Fence: Lists Without Shooting Options

Okay, so we're almost done - but there's one final thing we need to cover: what happens if you don't have shooting options in your list and your opponent has lots of shooting? What are your options and how can you play the game to mitigate his advantages?

First and foremost, you want to move quickly - including things like Heroic Marches or War Drums in your list are essential. Most lists have access to Heroic March and a few Evil factions have access to War Drums. If you can get both, you can move VERY quickly, denying your opponent several turns of shooting.

Second, take advantage of cover as much as possible - remember that games in Middle-Earth take place somewhere, and most of the time, that means there will be rocks, trees, buildings, or hills that can provide in-the-way rolls for your models or even deny line of sight to them (making them ineligible targets). Some factions even have special rules (like Stalk Unseen) that make them ineligible targets if a part of their model's body is obscured by terrain, while other factions (like Hobbits and Goblins) have models that are really short and could be out of line of sight simply by being shorter than normal models.

Third, look into anti-archery models (like Galadriel or Gandalf) who can reduce whatever archery is fired at you by making it harder to hit you. Models like these often encourage shooting models to move and shoot since they're hitting on a 6 anyway, so there can be repercussions to this (like shooting armies being harder to catch because they retreat more). Still, allying in Galadriel, Lady of Light from the White Council is a Historical/Convenient alliance for all Good factions except Arnor and Numenor (both of whom can ally with Rivendell or Lothlorien if they wish to get anti-archery benefits from Cirdan or Galadriel).

Fourth, if possible, get to Defense 6. Some armies, like the Easterlings, can move incredibly fast (March + War Drum = 12" movement on your infantry and 20" movement on your cavalry) with high Defense models, which makes shooting them to death a chore (look guys, Tiberius had something nice to say about Easterlings). While you may not be that fast, getting to/above Defense 6 is a great way to make it harder for your opponent to wound you. Factions like the Dead of Dunharrow/Return of the King Legendary Legion or any Dwarf faction usually don't care about enemy shooting because they can get D7/8 models that are seldom wounded by enemy bows.

Finally, run the horde. Factions like Goblin-town have access to Heroic March on some of their heroes, but will tap out at 8" movement (not great for catching bows), are short and so can benefit from cover, have no access to anti-archery models without becoming Impossible Allies, and their warriors are D3/4. Not great. BUT there's a lot of them - and even if you manage to kill 2-3 in a single round of shooting, the remaining 70+ Goblins (and maybe some fresh new Goblins arriving behind the archers?) are still coming your way . . . whatcha gonna do now?

Conclusion

So that's it on the Shoot Phase - there's not a lot going on (and in some rounds there may be nothing at all), but I really like shooting in MESBG and think it's worth taking. In our next post, we delve into the Fight Phase, where "all the fun happens." Most of your models are likely to not be carrying shooting weapons and for them, the Fight Phase is where it's at - because it's here that they get to meet sword with sword against the enemy and see who has what it takes to come out alive. See you next time and happy hobbying!