Fall breezes be breezin', which can only mean one thing: it's time for another Hunter's Red October!
Join Tiberius, Centaur, Rythbryt, and a whole lot of guests (yes--GUESTS!!!) as we discuss the scenarios and (20!) lists in this 550 point Good vs. Evil tournament.
(Spoiler alert: the evil armies are loaded).
Now streaming on Spotify, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and (probably) wherever you get your audio content! Plus, you can head on over to the TMAT blog for more details about the tournament (and eventually full published lists), or to read Tiberius's thoughts on his Moria armies (and the armies he left behind).
Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny
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Show Notes:
41:00 - Azog, Treebeard, Gil-Galad, and a(nother!) Balrog (with Dronak, Ikaika, and Gorgoroth)
1:01:00 - Avengers, Saruman, Theoden, and a (third!?!?) Balrog
1:46:00 - Centaur's vaunted predictions (and some parting thoughts)
A great episode! I love your pre-tournament episodes, they're always a great time. Would it be possible for you to post the lists, I'd love to peruse them more (and maybe right up an some analysis if I get time/you're amenable to that).
ReplyDeleteI'm really surprised by a lot of the lists. Specifically, I'm surprised that so many people have gone for hero-heavy lists in what seems to me a format that actively discourages that. You've got two scenarios that relate to board control, which obviously favour large armies, and then two more which favour armies that can keep their heroes safe. To my mind, hero-heavy lists are likely to struggle in all of those, because they're almost always going to lose more heroes than their opponent for Clash by Moonlight or their their target for Assassinate simply because their heroes are going to be on the frontlines every turn.
To my mind, the obvious answer to this is an army with heroes who are either super resilient, or that is happy to keep its heroes out of the fight where needed. A classic Angmar horde would have a field day, for example, as it doesn't need to expose its Barrow Wights for them to be useful but its also well equipped to take down enemy heroes. Either way, a substantial warrior core seems like a must to ensure you don't need to rely on heroes to do the killing.
The Legendary Legion bonus points do make this trickier, as there are a lot of Legendary Legions with a pretty heavy emphasis on heroes. The Good side in particular has a quite limited number of LLs that don't rely on heroes to do damage. Rangers of Ithilien might be the only one, really, and even they are shackled to fielding quite a lot of heroes these days. Maybe something like:
Faramir on horse with bow 95
Madril 55
Angborn 35
Frodo with everything 85
Sam with cloak 45
28 Rangers with 11 spears 215 points
31 bows will massacre most things in Clash by Moonlight, it's a lot of models for Domination and Command the Battlefield and it's perfectly happy to spread out, and it can probably gun down its target easily enough in Assassinate. Frodo and Sam are absolutely just tax in Assassinate and Clash though, which sucks a lot.
That means that you're either stuck with an Evil Legendary Legion (a really beefy Besiegers of Helm's Deep seeming the obvious one) or running a Good LL that can bunker up its heroes easily enough. Return of the King with the King and Aragorn standing in a big mass of Army of the Dead probably isn't likely to lose either of them really. Nor are your Dwarves (Tiberius) really likely to lose too many heroes, although the Shieldbearer will probably need to play a bit more defensively than normal. That's probably fine there, because most of your points are in good warriors who can win you the day without your heroes doing much.
I'm therefore going to predict that one of the high model-count armies wins the day overall. That really shooting focused Isengard/Gondor combo sounds like it could do it, or maybe the Riders of Theoden/Ugluk's Scouts pairing. Both of those two have the ability to kite well enough to not need to commit heroes in Clash by Moonlight, and should do well in all of the others. I would tap your Dwarves, Tiberius, but I've played with (and lost with) the Balrog too much recently to be confident in him. Maybe your Balrog is better at actually winning fights than mine though!
Good luck to everyone involved!
Your Ranger list is missing Smeagol, who is now required for the Legion to work, so you'd be down 3 Rangers and some spears. Still quite dangerous and it probably would have done well. I shall reserve my comments on the Balrog's performance until the after-action report, but suffice it to say that unlikely events occurred in each game. :-)
DeleteAh, bugger, I thought it was just the Hobbits. Well, that probably reduces the viability of Rangers of Ithilien, so my best option is probably a Pelennor Fields pairing. I'll definitely be excited to hear about how the Balrog went!
DeleteI'm always surprised when people say Smeagol makes the list not viable - something to test I guess. At 550, you now need to spend 245pts on Faramir and the traveling band (plus optional horse), and getting Madril and Anborn is a given for me. That leaves you with 215 points left, which I'd use to get 19 Rangers and 7 more Rangers with spears (without the horse - would be 20 Rangers and 5 Rangers with spears if you want it). You get up to 28-29 bow shots a turn, one of which gets a free Might to boost a roll . . . Still sounds dangerous to me.
DeleteI don't think I'd quite say that it's not viable, for exactly the reasons you mention. ~30 bows is ~ 30 bows, no matter what. I think the problem is more that it's no longer 43 bows, which was about what you previously got to at 550 points. Something as simple as Faramir on horse, Madril, Angborn and Mablung lets you fit in 39 Rangers with 18 spears, which is a ridiculous weight of firepower and numbers. That's admittedly without a banner, so probably it should go down a couple models to fit one it, but even then you're still firing basically 50% more shots per turn and have 50% more models to throw at the enemy when they get close.
DeleteIn contrast, the version with the Hobbits has an extra 4 Might points, the Ring, one mediocre combat character and the occasional free Heroic Combat. None of that is at all bad, but does any of it compare to 14 more Rangers and Mablung?
None of that is to say that the new version of Rangers isn't competitively viable. In fact, a scenario setup like this one would be pretty great for them, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they did well here. But they're clearly a lot weaker than they used to be, which is probably healthy for the game
I had a pretty good laugh at how cute the kiddos were! Wish I coulda been there. I'll be talking to the Mrs. about making a trip out that way this time next year...
ReplyDeleteSend us the dates when you make them and we'll be sure to make sure you have a great time!
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