The Bare Necessities, Part XXXVII: Goblin-town

Good morning gamers,

Well, this is an army I've fought quite a bit and I can't say I've enjoyed any of those games. At all. So when it came to doing this series last year, I passed on reviewing Goblin-town because, frankly, I didn't know how everything worked and what was a good way to tick all the boxes. To be even more frank, I'm not sure you NEED to check all the boxes. 30+ models will basically be a given, but do you need fast troops with this list? What about an actual banner? Ways to buff your models? We'll get into all of that today as we review an army that has its own special place in the hearts of MESBG players.

Two great and annoying models . . .

Goblin-town: The Art of Fast Play

Goblin-town plays a game that several armies do: spam out cheap, horrible models and rely on your outlandishly high numbers to take the day. Unlike armies like the Shire and Sharkey's Rogues, you can support other models - and while your Defense is low (like the Shire and Sharkey's Rogues), the fact that everyone has the equivalent of a spear for basically the same price means you can get LOTS of die into your fights. And I mean LOTS of dice. So why doesn't everyone play this list?

I think the biggest reason is that this army takes FOREVER to take a turn. Moving 30-40 models CAN take a while if you're being super careful, but moving 60+ models takes a long time even if you're trying to move quickly. Movement trays can help, but even with trays it takes a long time. So how can you fix this so you can play within a time constraint?

There are two ways, I think, that this can be done. The first is to embrace the Goblin-town mindset and don't care about where you place things. Veteran gamers may cringe when I say this - but I'm serious: place models so they're backed up by a friendly model, but just move them. No planning, no worries, no strategy - just take up space! If you're moving in the right direction, you might be a bit out of position for one turn, but there will be another turn and you'll be in a spot that's just fine.

The second way (and I think the more competitive way) is to ally with someone else - other armies will be more expensive and will give you other ways of dealing with problems (like big heroes and devastating spell-casters). By bringing in a big hero or two (backed by average-cost to expensive warriors), you drop your model count and can take your turns faster.

So what's the right balance between a high model count and allying in what we need to make a balanced list? Well, we're turning to the Armies of the Hobbit army book and allying with an army that, frankly, would want to keep their army bonus in most cases. But it turns out, you can supplement a lot of Goblin-town weaknesses by just bringing one warband of models from another list.

Army Concept: Girls Night Out

 

Hey Reader!

As I'm kicking around a few ideas for an army for our next tournament, an idea struck me that led me down a very deep rabbit hole (considering the army build restrictions) one night, and that meant I had to write a blog post for you all to talk about this very strange but very interesting concept. It's not a "meta" way to build an army, but golly is it a fun idea, so I thought I'd share it with you.

The army is a "Girls Night Out" army, and has a simple rule for army building: all of the models must be female. This means we have a very short list in our game, and it's probably only a Forces of Good army (but NOT ALWAYS - MORE ON THAT AT THE END!), but the models you get access to are actually really good, and you can build some pretty competitive lists with them.

So with no further ado, the rules and the profiles we can use.

I.  Defining a "Girls Night Out" Army

As mentioned earlier, our choices of models is very limited: even if you convert up unnamed captain models, you don't have a lot of choices. Assuming that you can turn any captain, King of Men (Queen of Men? Kind of a cool concept, and we know of at least three Numenorean queens who ruled), or warrior choice into a female character, here's the named profiles we can choose from:

Galadriel: Arguably the strongest of the characters we have to work with, we can either take her as a support caster who can regrow our Fate Points (assuming the Mirror is close) or as a decent close combat hero who can give us exceptional magic defense. The former is not as powerful in combat, but does have a stronger ally matrix, so keep that in mind.

Arwen: We get access to another F6 character with magic! This is very useful, as it also gives us a way to knock people down (through Wrath of Bruinen and charging people with Asfaloth) which should increase our killing power. We have the typical low Strength, low Defense issue that this army will generally struggle with, but whatcha gonna do.

Tauriel offers us a reliable infantry hero both at range and up close, which is really nice, and I think challenges Galadriel for the place of "Most Valuable Player" in our list. She still suffers from low Defense, but honestly that's just standard Mirkwood, so we're fine with that. Tack onto this that some of her fellow rangers already have female sculpts, and it's easier to add a Mirkwood contingent than it is for other armies in the line as we don't have to do as many conversions.

Eowyn: So to start off, we cannot take Dernhelm, as Merry is not "Mary," so that's a loss. But on her own Eowyn is a decent captain-level model, sporting F5 and 2 Fate instead of the traditional 1, all while still being around the same cost as a Rohan Captain thanks to that S3 reduction. And since she can take throwing spears and potentially benefit from the Rohan army bonus, she's a decent slayer. Not great, but decent, especially for her points cost. She can also get up to D5, which is more than Galadriel and Arwen can claim, but still not great.

Hilda-Bianca: We can get access to dirt cheap (and decent) spear support, so that's nice, and a useful special rule as well. She's nothing to write home about, but she gives you access to a small retinue of cheap spears. The other thing she does for you: she's a Fortitude hero for 30 points, so allying with historical allies is very, very easy.

You would have access to Sigrid and Tilda if you could take Bard, but alas, it's not possible. So we will not be looking at them today.

No comment on whether Alfrid in the dress should count in this list.

Rosie Cotton and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins offer us two Shire heroes, which means we could take a small contingent of two-handed weapons and/or bows to support the main lines, and for dirt cheap (easily under 50pts for almost 10 models). The trick is that these are Minor and Independent heroes, so getting them in an army is going to be hard. More on them in the next post in our series.

It's also worth noting that we have an option on the Forces of Evil side, as Dunland has one female hero: Frida Tallspear. She's not the most amazing hero ever, but hey - we have a hero! And that may be all we need. More on her later, though it's also worth noting that unnamed heroes for Forces of Evil also include (assuming there are female verions of these) dragons and cave drakes for Moria (and the presence of eggs makes me think the cave drake model is female), wild warg chieftains for Angmar (she-wolf matriarch that leads the pack), unnamed spirit models for Angmar, and (if there are female versions) trolls, though this is a hotly debated topic by the few who really care. 

So...yeah, there are some very interesting options, though not all of them may present many options for warrior choices, thanks to the fact that, as far as we know, all orcs, goblins, and uruk-hai are male.

With this in mind, the rules are simple: all models must 1) be female, and 2) still follow all the normal rules for list building. This means if we want a convenient alliance we need a Valour or Legend hero from all forces involved. If we want a historical alliance we need a Fortitude or higher hero from all forces. That makes things tricky (as we have Galadriel and a Queen of Men for Valour, and Tauriel, Arwen, and captains for Fortitude), but them's the rules.

So with these restrictions, let's look at five army lists: three historical alliances (I thought about doing a pure list, but I wanted to show off more of the models), and two "Kicks and Grins" pure armies for the Forces of Evil (because we don't have nearly enough green alliances/unnamed Valour heroes in Forces of Evil to make alliances work).

The Bare Necessities, Part XXXVI: The Iron Hills

Good morning gamers,

We've already looked at the Iron Hills a little when we reviewed the Army of Thror - they make great allies for basically anyone in the Armies of the Hobbit book (Historical allies with the Army of Thror, the Halls of Thranduil, and the Survivors of Lake-town; Convenient allies with everyone else). With D7 infantry that can be D8 in shieldwall, D6 infantry who can wield either crossbows or two-handed pick-hammers, D6 cavalry that can knock enemy models over BEFORE fighting, chariots that deal three S6 impact hits, and those nasty ballistas that can deny enemy archery. While the list doesn't have a lot of hero options, the heroes it DOES have are very good. So where do we begin when looking to build a balanced list with this army? Well, we should probably begin with this guy . . .

Photo Credit: Rebloggy.com

The Iron Hills: What Do You Leave At Home (And What Can You NOT Leave At Home)?

All pure Iron Hills lists begin with Dain Ironfoot - and in most cases, he will be mounted on his war boar (though an article from Dwarf aficionado Ali King indicates that may not be necessary). Regardless of whether you have a pure Iron Hills army or a Historical Alliance, the addition of Master of Battle (4+) is great for Dain - so unless you're bringing a bigger hero than Dain (not many are), you probably want Dain in your army. For 160 points when mounted, he's expensive for a Hero of Legend, but not as expensive as two Heroes of Fortitude, so you won't suffer too much from bringing him.

With the exception of the mattocks (unfortunate, since they look really cool), all of the gear options for Iron Hills Warriors are amazing - shields by default, the option to trade the shield for a crossbow, a banner on anyone (maybe two banners?), and spears for shield-carrying or crossbow-carrying Dwarves is good. These infantry models form a good core for any army - and make a great anvil for this force in particular. Adding a few Goat Riders to support this army gives you slightly more speed (especially if you March them) - not necessary en masse, but a very dangerous pocket of power.

I don't think you leave home without a good block of infantry and some Goat Riders. The question becomes whether the siege weapons are important to your strategy. On the one hand, bringing a ballista can force almost any shooting army to come to you and engage you in melee (exactly what you want with your block of Dwarf heavy infantry), but similarly, ballista require you to be in a particular place (giving you less deployment flexibility and very little maneuvering once you've deployed). Sure, some scenarios may not require you to move, but if you need to get somewhere, a ballista could be a liability.

The Iron Hills Chariots are very expensive - and while they can do lots of damage, I'm not sure how useful they are without someone like Gandalf the Grey to knock everyone who has engaged the chariot over with a Sorcerous Blast. Chariots are even more expensive when equipped on an Iron Hills Captain (or in an Erebor Reclaimed list with the Champions of Erebor on it). They're powerful, but oh so very expensive. I know people like these things, but I just don't see them fitting in our list today - they cost too much.

Without further ado, let's look and see what we're doing with the Iron Hills in a balanced list . . .

Announcing the Hunters Red October 2021!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time again - Fall is upon us, so it must be time for The Hunters Red October 2021! The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on October 2, 2021. This year, we're doing something special where all participants will be bringing two armies (one Good, one Evil) and play matches with them in a Good vs. Evil format. Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

The Bare Necessities, Part XXXV: Fangorn

Good morning gamers,

As we wrap up other factions in MESBG to review for balanced lists, we come to a faction that . . . honestly . . . you're probably NOT running with a balanced list in mind. Instead, this is a monster-mash army - and the first of three armies that we'll be covering that (when run pure) HAS to focus on low numbers, but strong models. Today we're going to be covering Fangorn - an army that is hard to ally with (even though they're Convenient Allies with all Forces of Good armies) since you have only one Hero of Valor/Legend profile. Once you add Treebeard to an army, each additional Ent makes the remaining points available to you much smaller - so how on Arda can you get a 700-point army with 4+ fast models, a banner, and 30 models when you're running at least one Ent!?!?!?!? The answer might surprise you - read on if you'd like to find out.

Fangorn: So You Like Treebeard, Huh?

There are many armies that have decent Heroes of Legend, but you don't REALLY want them being your army leader. Heroes like Theoden, Girion, Galadriel, or Gandalf the Grey can all be your army leader - and if the scenarios require just keeping someone safe, maybe it's fine to have them as your army leader. However, if you have the faintest chance of getting Contest of Champions and had the choice of a F5/6 1-2A hero or a F8 3A hero (who also is D8 with 3 Wounds and 3 Fate), which would you rather have? Well, you'd probably want the F8 guy - and for that reason, allying in Treebeard is a pretty good option for some armies.

Allying him in DOES come at a cost - not only does the non-Fangorn element lose a good 190-200 points of models, but you also lose the Fangorn army bonus (Fearless is good to have, but not necessary since your Ents have good Courage - it's the immunity to magical powers that would keep you from moving or knock you over that's the real appeal). The question is whether you NEED the model count at the points level you're playing at - if you don't need the model count (Contest of Champions, Lords of Battle, To The Death), maybe you can make due without all that other stuff and instead of rely on having a few models that are hard to kill (and good at killing things).

At the end of the day, I decided that this post was going to feature an army that had a Convenient Alliance between Fangorn and an army that could give it a real banner with pretty cheap troops and some mounted models. I also wanted the Fangorn contingent to be more than just Treebeard - two or more Ents would be good. So, that gave me only a few choices - and here's the list that we ended up with . . .

War in the North: Understanding the Erebor Reclaimed Revamp

Good morning gamers,

Photo Credit: Pinterest

We've received a lot of information about the upcoming sourcebook for the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game, both in the form of articles hinting at capabilities and new "working" profiles for Dain, Thorin III, Easterling Dragon Acolytes, and most recently the profiles for Bard II, King Brand of Dale, and Knights of Dale. In today's article, we're looking at what we think we know about the models that have been announced (they are subject to change - though historically very little if any changes have been made from the "working" rules and the final published rules), how you can use these models now, and what kinds of Legions we want to see in the new release.

Profile Review - Dain

Courtesy: ForgeWorld Downloads

Dain has gotten a review already from a variety of people (I recommend you check out the Durin Show and Ali King's exhaustive review on the GBHL website), but I'm going to make a few observations about this guy that might shock the internet world: I actually think he's a pretty good hero. Not compared to other Dwarf heroes (half of which are underpriced at the least) - as Ali King covers in his article, most big Dwarf heroes outclass this version of Dain for equal/less cost. However, if you compare this particular hero (F6/3A with 3 Might/Strike and +1 To Wound without penalties; D8/3H with 1 Fate), most armies would LOVE to get a hero like that! Not only do some armies like Arnor, Dale (more on them in a bit), and the Survivors of Lake-town have no models anywhere near the caliber of this hero, but they have the points space to pay an extra 50 points to replace one of the heroes they have with a guy like this! Even Numenor wouldn't mind having Dain in place of Isildur if Elendil is also in the army - and that tells me that this guy has a good profile.

Unfortunately, he exists in one of the few army lists in the game that has SO many hitting pieces at/below 100points that he's unlikely to see daylight. As specified in their rules, you can run this version of Dain in an Erebor Reclaimed army, but don't have access to the six Dwarves that are dead already (Thorin, Kili, Fili, Balin, Oin, Ori) or Bombur (who is too fat to walk on his own at this point in the story). The remaining six members of Thorin's Company are some of the best heroes you have anyway:

• Dwalin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor is 115pts with no goat, but is S5 and either has the free +1 To Wound OR has 4 Attacks with no +1 To Wound. For 15pts less and +1 Fate (in exchange for -3 warrior slots, -1 Will, and -1 Wound), he seems like the most likely candidate for a "direct swap" but fitting both of them into an army is going to be hard unless you're going REALLY hero-heavy (almost 250pts in two heroes).
• Gloin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor was evaluated by Ali King to be one of the most points-effective Dwarf heroes in the game and for 90 points (40 points less than Dain), he gets the same combat profile in every respect (weapon master instead of Master Forged) and gets to reroll 1s To Wound at the cost of -2 Will, -1 Wound, -1 Courage, and Fearless (I'm treating the Stand Fast boost and the Venerable penalty as a wash). That wound (and the +6 warrior slots) needs to make up for 20pts of value - and maybe it does - but I think I'd jump for Gloin first.
• Dori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor doesn't have Strike and he's only F5, but other than that, his offensive stats are more or less the same. Coming in at only 75pts, though, he's nearly half the cost of Dain and against F4 troops (or below), he's going to be just as dominant. Dori's cheap and if paired with Gloin, the two of them cost only marginally more than Dain and will kill far more things.
• Nori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor wraps up the trifecta of cheap heroes. At only 80pts, he's got effectively 4 Attacks (7 dice if shielding) to win the fight and gets effectively 4 dice to wound (7 dice if he traps someone). He's also F5 but has Strike and can dual-role as a troop killer and a hero staller (potentially killer, though S4 will hold him back). Considering that you can get Nori, Dori, and Gloin for about the same cost as Dwalin and Dain, I'm not sure that you'd pick Dain and Dwalin over these three (maybe you would, maybe not).
• Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor gives you free Heroic Moves after he gets the axe head out of his skull and at 65 points is one of the cheapest Strike heroes in the game. If he's fueling your charges and clobbering warriors, I'd say he's worth it (though F4 isn't great).
• Bofur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor is another cheap Strike hero (again at F4) and provides some interesting head-hunting synergies for magic casters. He's powerful and dangerous and he and Bifur together cost the same as Dain.

As Ali noted in his write-up, Dain doesn't have March anymore - and none of these other Dwarf heroes have March either, so there's also the draw of an Iron Hills Captain for speed (and potentially free Heroic Moves/Combats/Strikes/Defenses with Master of Battle (5+)), so you gotta factor that into your calculations as well. I do think Dain is worth taking, though, but he's got to be part of this larger group of people - NOT the main point of the army (like Dain in his younger days tends to be). We'll talk about my army building ideas later, but for now, let's move onto Thorin III Stonehelm.

The Bare Necessities, Part XXXIV: The Serpent Horde

Good morning gamers,

We've looked recently at the Fiefdoms (renowned for their elite troops with average Defense and average Cost) and the Rangers (renowned for their ability to spam cheap mini-heroes to flood the board with Might). Today, we look at one of the most competitive armies in the game - and a long-time dominant army here at TMAT: the Serpent Horde. While I haven't played with this army, 50% bow limit (and lots of practice fighting it) makes it an army that I should begin playing soon. Thanks to the Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook requiring two Mumaks, I know I'll be diving into the Serpent Horde eventually, but travel with me through my ever-entangled thoughts about what to pursue with this army. Let's dig in!

The Serpent Horde: Spam Vs. Troop Carriers?

Photo Credit: Tumblr

The Serpent Horde has the ability to spam pretty good troops - their Haradrim Warriors with bows, spears, or weapon-swapped axes are 7 points each, which means you can throw out a lot of these guys if you want to. The down-side to them is that they can't get shields, so your army is going to be vulnerable to archery of any kind (D4). To compensate for this, the army is flush with models who have poison (rerolling 1s to Wound) and you can take 50% of your models with bows (so you can outshoot most armies before they shoot you to death). With pretty cheap light cavalry that hit hard and a few non-poison models who can chop through enemy models with burly two-handed swords or multiple attacks, the army has no limit to good models you can spam out.

And it has Mumaks. Mumaks are some of the most iconic and coolest models in the game - complete with four pages of rules (two for the Mumak itself and two for war beasts), lots of impact hits, and good resilience against siege weapons (since it is explicitly called out as a siege target instead of a battlefield target - no auto-kills here, baby!).

Mumaks are incredibly expensive and often get in the way of spamming out warriors (though it will provide high Defense in-the-ways for those low-Defense troops standing in the howdah). So is it worth it to add a Mumak to your list or just buy a hero and a whole warband of troops? Most competitive players say leave the Mumak at home, but we'll delve into some Mumak lists later in the post. For now, let's look at a spammable Serpent Horde army that emphasizes one thing above all others: poisoned weapons.

Unexpected Military Formations: Epic Movie Moments, Part II

 Good morning gamers,

We're back with another epic movie moment - one of those scenes that you see and you're like, "Yeah, that's awesome - but there's no way I'd do that in MESBG." Today we're looking at one of my favorite five-seconds-of-film of all time (and one of those moments that really sold me on Lord of the Rings): the Last Alliance Elves using their two-handed weapons in a windmill sweep against a charging horde of Orcs. Let's get stuck in right away and figure out how to use this MESBG!

Movie Moment #2: "The Last Alliance Elves"

Okay, you're less than 10 minutes into the Fellowship of the Ring, and you see the Elves do two amazing things: first and foremost, Elrond is shouting in Elvish for his archers to slay all the Orcs in front of him (which they proceed to do) and then you see this . . .

You're going, "Aw YEAH!" - Am I right?

I know I was feeling great when I first saw that moment - and I still pause in my painting to watch those few seconds of film every time I watch the movies. I love it so much - I mean, like, SO MUCH. Who doesn't like that windmill attack? NOBODY! But you don't want to do this in MESBG, do you? Why not? Because using a two-handed weapon applies a -1 penalty to your dueling roll (and THAT is a recipe for disaster). Or is it?

The Bare Necessities, Part XXXIII: The Rangers

Good morning gamers,

We've already looked at two all-hero armies in this series (the Fellowship and Thorin's Company). Both factions behave similarly, so I reviewed them together. Both lists, no matter how you run them, are going to be constrained on model count - especially if you're going to include any kind of "good" heroes from the list. Today, we're going to look at the Rangers, who are capable (as I've recently come to find out) of having quite large numbers, despite everyone being "heroes". Let's look at what they do and what we need to think about when running them!

The Rangers: Allies, Pure, or Legendary Legion?

There are three ways you can run the Rangers right now: a) you can ally a few Rangers into an army (giving cavalry options and hitting power to a Shire force, for example), b) you can run the Grey Company Legendary Legion (which gives the list some extra army bonuses and trades Arathorn and Dunedain for Legolas, Gimli, and Elladan/Elrohir), or c) you can run "just the Rangers." As discussed in my review of the Grey Company, if you plan on running Aragorn, you should be running the Legendary Legion (just because you'd need to run 7+ Dunedain in order to make up for getting Anduril for free). Sure, you can't get horses in the Legendary Legion, but there are SO many points savings you get (not to mention a better array of power heroes to back Aragorn up). 

Allying with the Shire can give you numbers (we'll look at them at the end of this post), which is the one thing this army really struggles with - though the numbers they give you will be light troops and unless you splurge on Gandalf, you're not going to be protecting them from archery. Generally when you ally with the Shire, you feel like the allied contingent, not the main contingent. Similarly, you CAN ally with the Dead of Dunharrow, but this would require a) running Aragorn, and b) you're not getting troops that are THAT much cheaper (and you'll be investing 100 points on the King of the Dead). You can ally this way, but I'm not sure it's really worth it (unless you want D8 blockers for your archers).

Today, I wanted to look at a pure Rangers army (no allies), but we managed to get almost all of our criteria met at 700 points (despite not having allies):