The Road to THRO 2021: Tiberius's Army Pairings

Good morning gamers,

As we get ready for THRO 2021 this weekend, I wanted to take a moment (as I've been doing before the last few tournaments) to talk about the armies that I considered taking to THRO and the armies I finally settled on bringing. In case you missed the announcement, THRO this year has all players bringing two 550-point armies (one good, one evil) and we're playing Good vs. Evil with the first two rounds randomly assigned and the latter two rounds being power-matched (#1 faces #2, #3 faces #4, etc.). 

Players will be awarded +1 Tournament Point if the Good and Evil armies that they bring fought each other (or could have reasonably fought each other if they include GW-invented characters) and +2 Tournament Points if the Good and Evil armies fought each other and at least one was a Legendary Legion. This led me to only consider pairings with at least one Legendary Legion (many involved two though). As a player who loves thematic lists, I'm really happy that I got to run this particular tournament. :)

What we'll be doing today is talking through the scenarios and what they reward players for and then walk through each pair of lists I considered and why I decided not to take the ones that I did. Without further ado, let's dig in!

Scenario Walk-Through

The four scenarios that we'll be playing are as follows (in this order):

• Domination
• Assassination
• Command the Battlefield
• Clash by Moonlight

As tournament organizer, I thought these scenarios were good on a number of levels. First and foremost, because the points limit is low, having a mix of control-based scenarios (Domination and Command the Battlefield) and slaying scenarios (Assassination and Clash by Moonlight) was good as it wouldn't drive players to go horde-heavy or hero-heavy by default. Players can, of course, choose to go heavy into one side or the other, but it wasn't "a given" based on the scenarios being played. 

Second, because the first two matches are randomly assigned, I wanted the first two games to feature a control-based scenario and a slaying scenario (so that your placement going into the latter half of the games wasn't based on one kind of scenario). 

Finally, I wanted the most suspenseful scenarios from a scoring perspective to come up later in the tournament - Domination can be pretty clear-cut on the scoring if one side is being rolled and driven off of objectives, while Assassination can see one force killing their target with their assassin on the first or second turns (and neither would be good if you were playing for top seed). Command the Battlefield can change quickly after one side breaks (with lightly guarded quadrants being completely abandoned) and Clash by Moonlight focuses a lot of points on killing enemy heroes and keeping your own heroes alive - both of which can change in an eye-blink. All told, I'm pretty happy with this scenario pairing. :)

The scenarios give you the following rewards:

• Domination (play to quarter)
• Up to 10 points are awarded for having majority control or complete control of five objectives (1-2 points each);
• Up to 1 point for dealing 1+ wounds to the enemy army leader (you don't have to kill them to get more points); and
• Up to 1 point for breaking the enemy army (you don't have to break them without being broken to get more points).
• Assassination (random end after one side is broken)
• Up to 7 points for wounding or killing a target hero in the enemy army (not their army leader if they have more than one hero) with or without your assigned assassin (1 point for wounding the target without your assassin, 3 points for wounding the target with your assassin, 5 points for killing the target without your assassin, and 7 points for killing the target with your assassin);
• Up to 2 points for wounding or killing the enemy army leader; and
• Up to 3 points for breaking the enemy army and not being broken.
• Command the Battlefield (play to quarter)
• Up to 8 points for control of the four quadrants of the board (excluding the center of the board, measured as a 12" radius from the center point);
• Up to 2 points for wounding or killing the enemy army leader; and
• Up to 2 points for breaking the enemy army and not being broken.
• Clash by Moonlight (play to quarter)
• Up to 5 points for killing enemy heroes and keeping your own alive (1 point if you have 1+ heroes alive at the end of the game, 3 points if you have a hero alive and have killed more heroes than you lost, and 5 points if you have a hero alive and have killed all the enemy heroes);
• Up to 2 points for wounding or killing the enemy army leader; and
• Up to 5 points for breaking the enemy army and not being broken.

So what does this tell us? First and foremost, if you have an army leader who is hard to kill, you're probably only coughing up 1 point each game. Second, while breaking the enemy army is important in all scenarios, it's okay to be broken in Domination (which means that if you can stall your opponent's forces in a prolonged grind away from several objectives, you can win by quartering yourself). Third, killing enemy heroes is kind of a big deal - but if possible, you want your best killing machine to NOT be your army leader. It's okay to have a big killing hero if you're okay getting 5 points instead of 7 points in Assassination, but if possible, you want your slaying guy to be your leader's right hand man.

Okay, enough about scenarios - let's dig into the lists. In order to give all of these guys a fair shake, I took a month for each and played with them in order to test out various scenarios against various opponents. So let's start out with the guys I ruled out and we begin with . . .

Pairing #1: The Men of the West and Black Gate Opens Legendary Legions

Two trolls borrowed from my son . . . both in various states of repair . . .

Tell you honestly, I love the Men of the West - and the 550-point list that I built was crazy good and lots of fun to play. While I've talked about spamming Warriors of Minas Tirith and Warriors of Rohan with throwing spears by running just Eomer and Aragorn (I did try a variant of that and it did okay), I actually found at low points levels (and particularly for these scenarios) that running Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli backed by Minas Tirith troops worked a lot better. You don't have a lot of guys, but you have enough warriors to leave behind on objectives and lots of killing power from the Three Hunters. Here's the list I tested the most:

• Aragorn, King Elessar [ARMY LEADER]
• 7 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields, spears, and bows
• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• Legolas Greenleaf with armor
• Gimli, Son of Gloin

I don't have anything bad to say about this list - I really enjoyed using Elessar and didn't find his infantry status to hold him back that much (Anduril makes the pain of not having a mount a lot less noticeable). Legolas is a great assassin (capable of shooting into friendly combats to make sure your target stays harried the entire game) and both he and Gimli can clear objectives pretty easily. With Aragorn granting a banner bonus to all those Warriors of Minas Tirith (and the heroes, of course) and giving everyone effectively Bodyguard and one round of being +1 Fight Value (F7 heroes and F4 warriors), you can do a lot of work with this army if you stay together and play your cards right.

Where I struggled was the evil faction pairing - I just never could find something that I liked. I considered (at Rythbyrt's recommendation) running a "vanilla Mordor" list to expand my options, but even then I couldn't find something I liked. So here's what my front-runner list from the Black Gate Opens looked like (the Mouth of Sauron is missing because in the films he's dead already):

• Uber-Mordor Troll Chieftain [ARMY LEADER]
• 1 Mordor Troll with War Drum
• 5 Mordor Orcs with shields
• 4 Mordor Orcs with shields and spears
• 1 Mordor Orc with shield, spear, and banner
• 2 Mordor Orcs with Orc bows
• Mordor Troll Chieftain
• 2 Mordor Orcs with shields
• 2 Mordor Orcs with Orc bows
• 2 Mordor Orcs with Orc bows and spears

I was pleasantly surprised that I could get 21 models at 550 points with three Trolls in the list. :) My son ran a variant of this list at 400 points (with less Orcs - A LOT less Orcs) and I was impressed with how well it performed there too. Troll Chieftains have big bases and they're slow, but the Drum gives them extra speed and their big bases can make Hurling easier if you keep them on the flanks. You have enough Orcs to sit around if you want (6 Orc bows won't be dangerous, but they can at least do something) and have enough front-line Orcs to keep your Trolls from being trapped. While killing that generic Troll Chieftain would be hard in Assassination, I just never got the fighting power out of it that I wanted. So . . . these guys go back on the shelf for a bit.

Qualitative Scores: Good 3.0, Evil 2.5

Pairing #2: The Defenders of Helm's Deep and Assault Upon Helm's Deep Legendary Legions

The Ballista and Bomb are missing - thankfully, I know a guy who has both. :-)

There were two variants of the Defenders of Helm's Deep list that I looked at - a shooting-heavy list (you know how much I love shooting) that sported Legolas and Haldir to support Theoden (required in the Legion, but he brings March to your all-infantry army, so that ticked that box) and a list that featured Aragorn and Legolas (which is more balanced between shooting and melee). I loved both, but your options really open up when you have Aragorn, so that's probably the list I'd go with (it still reached 22 models, despite having ~350 points invested in heroes). I chose not to include Haleth at this point level - I had plenty of Elves that the Fight Value bonus was really only going to help Aragorn:

• Theoden, King of Rohan with heavy armor and shield [ARMY LEADER]
• 3 Galadhrim Warriors with Elf bows and spears
• 2 Warriors of Rohan with shields
• Aragorn - Strider with armor
• 1 Galadhrim Warrior with Elf bow
• 4 Warriors of Rohan with shields
• 3 Warriors of Rohan with shields and throwing spears
• 1 Warrior of Rohan with shield, throwing spears, and banner
• Legolas Greenleaf with armor
• 2 Galadhrim Warriors with Elf bows and spears
• 3 Warriors of Rohan with shields

The Assault Upon Helm's Deep list was virtually unchanged as I tested it (with a whopping 31 models) - the only thing I played around with was the piece of gear that I gave to the Uruk-Hai Captain. I knew I wanted a bomb team, a Shaman to help the bomb team, and a ballista, so that meant I only had one Captain (who becomes my Uber-Captain). While I generally think that a two-handed axe is the best piece of gear for the Uber-Captain in this list (shield could be good if you want to be able to shield with six dice), because we only have one Captain, I experimented with giving him a crossbow (which I recommended you not do when I reviewed Uruk-Hai captains). Here's the list:

• Uruk-Hai Uber-Captain with <choice of gear> [ARMY LEADER]
• 4 Uruk-Hai Berserkers
• 4 Uruk-Hai Warriors with pikes
• 1 Uruk-Hai Warrior with pike and banner
• 4 Uruk-Hai Warriors with crossbows
• Uruk-Hai Shaman with armor
• 1 Isengard Demolition Team
• 5 Uruk-Hai Warriors with crossbows
• 4 Uruk-Hai Warriors with pikes
• Uruk-Hai Siege Veteran with Isengard Assault Ballista
• 2 Siege Engine Crewmen
• 1 Siege Engine Crewman with ballista bolt (pike)

These lists were a lot of fun to use and I don't have a lot to critique them for. Honestly, they're good lists but they both had a lot of average Defense units (especially on their warriors, but also on their heroes) and the good list felt fragile in Clash by Moonlight (though it shoots well, so you could deal more pain than you receive) and could struggle in Domination (where the game won't end early). The Isengard Legion is pretty good at those scenarios, but would struggle in Assassination for sure. I decided to leave them both at home in favor of trying out a different pairing . . .

Qualitative Scores: Good 3.0, Evil 3.5

Pairing #3: The Breaking of the Fellowship and Lurtz's Scouts Legendary Legions

Outnumbered much?

The Breaking of the Fellowship was in the running for being in the tournament for a LONG time. Despite having small numbers for the Forces of Good (maxes out at 8, but at 550 you're running 6), this army does pretty well at control-based scenarios because you have three big heroes who can each clear an objective if they need to. Ideally, you get all three working together and travel from objective to objective (placing the objectives as close to each other as you are able) and leaving either Frodo or Merry/Pippin and Legolas behind as you advance. I've been playing this Legion a lot and have had some great success with it. The list writes itself (as usual for this Legion):

• Aragorn - Strider with Elven Cloak [ARMY LEADER]
• Legolas Greenleaf with armor and Elven Cloak
• Gimli, Son of Gloin with Elven Cloak
• Boromir of Gondor with shield and Elven Cloak
• Frodo Baggins with Sting, Mithril Coat, and Elven Cloak
• Peregrin Took with Elven Cloak

What was most surprising to me was how good the Lurtz's Scouts Legion performed. At first glance, not having any kind of spear support and not having any D6 heroes (besides Lurtz and Scout Captains with shields) is pretty rough, but with S3 bows in the army and 8" speed on everyone (and an Uruk-Hai Drummer AND Heroic March on all your heroes except the Uruk-Hai Drummer), you get places FAST. This has obvious benefits in Domination and Command the Battlefield (as you don't have to stay near objectives in order to threaten them), but it also helps in Clash by Moonlight, where you can have fast-moving archers who can shoot and run and won't be caught (with S3 bows) OR bull-rush an opponent, bearing a single turn of archery before engaging. While I've gone on record for having 1 banner for each big hero, I opted for only two banners in this list (to push the model count to 32):

• Lurtz [ARMY LEADER]
• INDEPENDENT: Uruk-Hai Drummer
• 6 Uruk-Hai Scouts with shields
• 3 Uruk-Hai Scouts with Uruk-Hai bows
• 1 Uruk-Hai Scout with Uruk-Hai bow and banner
• Ugluk
• 5 Uruk-Hai Scouts with shields
• 1 Uruk-Hai Scout
• 3 Uruk-Hai Scouts with Uruk-Hai bows
• Mauhur
• 5 Uruk-Hai Scouts with shields
• 1 Uruk-Hai Scout
• 2 Uruk-Hai Scouts with Uruk-Hai bows
• 1 Uruk-Hai Scout with Uruk-Hai bow and banner

Where this Legion struggles is Assassination: Lurtz is a decent hero for his cost (especially in this Legion), but he can't be your Assassin and he can't be your opponent's target. Your other heroes (Mauhur, Ugluk, and the Uruk-Hai Drummer) are incredibly vulnerable to being killed and you can't rely on "hiding" them from your opponent (well, the Drummer maybe). If your opponent picks the Drummer as his target, you might be okay - but if he knows that you need Mauhur as a killing piece, he'll be able to kill Mauhur. The same goes for Ugluk - and since one of these two is probably your assassin, he may try to kill both quickly just to keep you from getting maximum points. The Fellowship can probably hide Pippin, but everyone else needs to do work, and that's a risk.

Still, if the only thing this Legion struggles with is Assassination, that's not a bad thing. These lists were great fun to play with and really enjoyable to strategize for - and they were the only REAL army pairing that contended with my final choice for the tournament . . .

Qualitative Scores: Good 3.0, Evil 3.5

Final choice: The Kingdom of Moria and The Depths of Moria Legendary Legion

BALROG BALROG BALROG BALROG BALROG!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been itching to run the Balrog in one of our tournaments for a while - and I mentioned before our last two events that I was sad to leave him at home. No more - I'm taking him. When you compare how well I think his army does against the previous list, you'll probably be wondering why I chose this pairing over Lurtz's Scouts and the answer is simple: this is the only pairing where I feel good about any game with either army (in case my opponent chooses late in the tournament what I'm running).

We're going to start with evil this time and as I've already said, I'm running the Balrog. With 350/550 points spoken for, there was quite a bit of iterating over the remaining 200 points. I knew I wanted a Drum (because global drum range, man!), but I did think hard and long about whether to bring a Cave Troll and max out at 19 models or run a Captain and spam out as many models as I could. The advantage to taking the Cave Troll is that the Balrog would be my only hero - this does a few things for me:

• In Domination, we're going to deploy in the center of the board as one warband, which means that two monsters will be staring at the center objective (and most armies won't want to fight that). Our Drum can start closer to a rear objective and retreat on the first turn with most of the Goblins assisting them (or threatening other nearby objectives - but never that far from the Balrog and Cave Troll).
• In Assassination, we have exactly one hero - so your opponent might get 1-3 points for wounding the Balrog (forced to be his target) and 1 point for wounding my army leader, but getting 5-7 points for killing the target (and 3 points for killing the army leader) will be very, VERY hard. Killing my target with the Balrog shouldn't be that hard UNLESS the hero is able to stay well away from the action (which is possible).
• In Command the Battlefield, I'd be arriving in one location with everyone and would need to walk across the board to hunt people, but anyone caught by the Balrog (going one way) or the Cave Troll (going the other way) is toast (the Troll may struggle). Hardest scenario to win to be honest . . .
• In Clash by Moonlight, the Balrog's Fiery Lash wounds many warrior models on a 2+ and even when he gets within range, he'll be hit on a 5+ (until he sets someone on fire). In addition, so long as you kill a single hero, your opponent is forced to kill the Balrog in order to keep you from getting 3 points for killing more heroes than you kill (which is pretty hard for most armies to do - though in practice, I've lost the Balrog twice to hero-heavy lists).

The problem with running the Cave Troll is that you don't have any actual Might - so no Heroic Moves and you have less control over where your monsters can go and fewer choices over who you fight. From experience (very recent experience), that bites. So instead, Chuckles the Cave Troll is staying at home and I'm taking the following list:

• The Balrog [ARMY LEADER]
• 4 Moria Goblin Warriors with shields
• 4 Moria Goblin Warriors with spears
• Moria Goblin Captain
• Moria Goblin Drum
• 3 Moria Goblin Warriors with shields
• 3 Moria Goblin Warriors with spears
• 4 Moria Goblin Warriors with Orc bows

I will need to protect the Captain to avoid coughing up points in Assassination and Clash by Moonlight, but other than that, we're following the same game plan as outlined above.

But the sneaky, sneaky thing about running this list is that I think most players will opt NOT to fight the Balrog because very few heroes at this points level can last more than two rounds against the Balrog (of the nine other players attending, I'm only worried about 2-3 of them being able to take on the Balrog). As a result, they'll take a chance on their evil armies facing off against my Kingdom of Moria Dwarves, who I happen to think are great at all four scenarios. Let's look at the list:

• Balin the Dwarf, King of Moria
• 2 Dwarf Warriors with shields
• 1 Khazad Guard
• 1 Khazad Guard with weapon-swapped two-handed mace
• 4 Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows
• 1 Dwarf Ranger with throwing axes
• King's Champion
• 2 Heralds
• 4 Iron Guard with weapon-swapped axes
• 4 Dwarf Rangers with bows
• Shieldbearer
• 4 Dwarf Warriors with shields
• 2 Dwarf Rangers with throwing axes

With 28 total models, what does this army do that makes them good at every scenario? Let's take a look . . .

• In Domination, I begin with a TON of models and two big killing machines (each can have a banner and Balin will have the Shieldbearer floating around nearby with free Heroic Combats). With 3-4 dice for Balin to win the fight and 4 dice for the King's Champion, both have good chances of winning fights and can deal devastating damage to their opponents (Piercing Strike on both, Balin gets +1 To wound at S4 vs. the King's Champion's innate S5). With 8 bowmen to leave near objectives and a fighting team of Iron Guard to protect the King's Champion's flanks (and eight D7 troops near Balin/the Shieldbearer), I'm not too worried about being broken and think three objectives can be controlled pretty easily.
• In Assassination, my opponent has FOUR heroes to choose from - two Heralds, the Shieldbearer, or the King's Champion. I think the Shieldbearer is the most likely candidate (no Fate), but one of the Heralds might be chosen as well. With the King's Champion as my default assassin, I think I can kill whoever my opponent chooses (so long as I can catch him). 3 Might and March on Balin helps a lot when you need to catch someone.
• In Command the Battlefield, we can arrive in three places with roughly equal numbers - and while it's best if we arrive together, each warband CAN function on its own. Ideally, Balin and the Shieldbearer will arrive together and the King's Champion can do whatever he wants - but we can use two placements (if we get to choose where on the board edge we go) to contest all four quadrants from the start . . . that will force people to come to us (though our forces will be split).
• Finally, in Clash by Moonlight, we have plenty of archers and our high Defense helps us more than most of the armies we're likely to face. We also kill things quickly, which should mean we can get ahead in the hero killing count early. Keeping our Heralds out of trouble (and the Shieldbearer as well) is probably our only weak-point - from experience, though, anything short of a Balrog will struggle to kill these guys unless they're caught in the open and abandoned.

This army does it all - and besides, they're my bearded fellows (who I haven't taken to a tournament since the new rules dropped). I can't wait to field them (though their playing time will be lessened if I get to play with the Balrog - which I think I'm fine with). :)

Qualitative Scores: Good 4.0, Evil 3.0

Conclusion

This weekend is THRO 2021 and I'm excited to play! We'll probably have a podcast episode talking about our games (that may take a while), but until then, be safe out there and happy hobbying!