Revisiting Play Styles Part 3: The Linchpin Playstyle

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! Tiberius wrote a blog post recently about list building for beginners, based on a 2015 post I made talking about the seven list building play styles I noticed at the time. Last time we talked about the Theme Playstyle, and in today's post we are looking at the third playstyle: the linchpin list.

As before, we will look at what this playstyle looks like in concept, and then work to maximize its potential on the table to bring you victory, coupled with thoughts on which armies do this best.

I.  The Linchpin Playstyle: "Focus and Overwhelm"

Also referred to as the "Focus and Overwhelm" strategy, this playstyle looks at one aspect of the game - magic, monsters, mobility, melee prowess, mob tactics, might points, archery (sorry - I couldn't come up with an "M" word for the last one! I feel ashamed), etc. - and turns that up to 11 in the army. If that part of the game works for the controlling player, they are probably going to win because they dominate that aspect of the game.

Shire: an army that focuses on Shooting and Numbers to win

I will go on record (and Tiberius will probably write a reply post on this, which is fine) saying that I think there is a hierarchy in regards to which of these you should overpower to be most effective (more on that below), but before I do, I want to say that you can do any of these quite effectively, and by focusing on any given aspect you may find it easier to beat some of the more powerful armies in the current meta.

And that's one of the nice things about playing a Linchpin army: you can take one aspect of the game that you really like, that your army does really well, etc. and lean heavily into it to attain victory. You tend to see this a lot from Tiberius in our gaming group (most of the time it's magic or archery, as he really loves magic and throwing weapons), but I think we've all dabbled with it at some point.

You'll also find a lot of crossover between the theme playstyle and this one, which is why we're doing these two back-to-back, as some themes focus around a specific aspect of the game (monsters, poison arrows, etc.). But I think they are different because the focus on, "I want as many archers as possible" is very different from a thematic army, and that's why it gets it own list.

Put another way, Linchpin strategies are often incidental Thematic armies: the theme of, "as many ranger as we can fit in" or "as many artillery pieces as I can fit in" is incidental to the actual aim which is, "a butt-ton of dangerous stuff clouding out the sun will hit some people even on a bad day."

So toward that end, let's look at how we can make the most of the Linchpin style.

II.  Maximizing the Linchpin Playstyle's Potential

I'm going to present these in the order that I think are least impactful on the game going to most impactful. You're free to disagree, and I look forward to chatting about it in the comments! So let's get to it.

You can focus on mobility. I find this to be the least reliable because 1) there are some scenarios where you and your opponent are not required to get to a specific location on the battlefield or control an objective(s), and 2) if the opponent has good enough archery, magic, monsters chucking people down the line, etc., they can remove the benefits of mobility pretty quickly and easily. Is it helpful for scenarios like Reconnoiter and Heirlooms of Ages Past? Yes. What percentage of the scenarios is that? Not a high percentage, :P

You should have mobility in your army, don't get me wrong - I'm just saying that if you want to pick one aspect of the game to focus and overwhelm on, this one can be good (Riders of Theoden does it very well), but it's typically paired with something else (for them it's a mix of the ability to skirmish and melee prowess from good heroes and the Death! ability once per game), so if I was picking one thing to focus on (which is the criteria for my ranking) I wouldn't pick this one.

You can focus on causing Terror. Some armies do this better than others (Harbinger of Evil or a similar special rule coupled with Terror, for example), but a lot of armies have access to Terror in some form. The advantage of this is that it can stunt the charges your opponent can make, allowing you, when you go second to whittle down the enemy, or protect your guys from being ganged up on if you go first.

This is ranked higher than the others because in some cases it's very effective, especially where Nazgul are involved. It tends to work less effectively in Good v. Evil games, though, as Good armies generally have higher Courage on average, and Evil armies tend to have shamans, so if you're a rare Good army that runs terror (Fangorn, Misty Mountains, Radagast's Alliance, Dead of Dunharrow, etc.) it could do nothing for you if your opponent has a shaman and can keep them safe. So since it's less reliable, I don't rank it that high.

When you think of Shire linchpining on shooting you think of
Tookish Hunters, but also all hobbits have throwing stones!

You can focus on shooting attacks, both in the Shoot Phase and in the Move Phase when charging with throwing weapons. This one is about the middle for me because I tend to find that shooting in this game is very hit-and-miss (pun intended): sometimes you're doing good, and sometimes you're not. Very rarely do I see an "average game" when it comes to shooting: you're either hitting or you're not.

But if you choose to overpower the shooting game and your shots are hitting it's very effective. Since you have the ability to deal wounds without necessarily receiving wounds in return, it's a very good way to mitigate threats and give you the upper hand once they finally reach you. Sure, there's lots of ways to mitigate hits (In the Ways, generally weaker wounding than in melee, and Stalk Unseen), but on the whole it's decently reliable in high enough quantities if you are wise with choosing firing lanes.

You can focus on numbers to overwhelm your opponent. This is of course most effective in scenarios where you have to count models at an objective, but it can also be a great way to "speedbump" a major hero that your faction has issues fighting. Need to handle Legolas sniping your guys? Put fourteen people in front of your hero and there's almost no way he can get a shot on the target by the time you reach him. Need to keep a ringwraith from tearing up your army leader with their fell beast? Don't give them room to land. Afraid a ringbearer is going to ruin your day? Just plough your hero into combat and surround yourself with guys (ideally spear guys) so that there's no way to get in base contact with you.

This strategy tends to work better in shorter games, as longer games could have you bleeding guys fast enough that you break and cough up points, and/or flee entirely, so keep that in mind. But unlike a lot of other armies, horde armies have the advantage that since breaking can end the game it could actually be bad for the enemy to break you as you might still have more objectives than they do. The game doesn't always end immediately, but if it does, you're still doing great despite being broken.

You can focus on melee prowess through high Fight Value and a good number of attacks. Assuming that you get a straight-up fight this is a very reliable thing to aim for. If you have a good mix of F5+ (or even F4+ depending on your local meta) with good Strength with enough attacks, you can crack pretty much anything. This probably means running the biggest hero in your list (though there are exceptions; Lorien gets really good value out of their mid-range heroes when it comes to killing power) and a few additional threats, and some armies will do this better than others. The big thing to remember here is that if your focus is on melee prowess, you need ways to catch enemy archers. So don't forget that Heroic March on one of your heroes, and/or that drum if you're playing a Forces of Evil army.

You can focus on magic. I have found that against some armies magic is very good: armies like Rohan and Isengard struggle with resisting magic, and neutralizing heroes, knocking people down, and dealing wounds to them is pretty crippling if not catastrophic to their armies. But there are other armies where having a lot of magic doesn't actually hurt them all that much (Fangorn being a great example). So it's kind of here and there for me; it ranks high because the number of armies who are confident in taking on lots of spellcasters is pretty small, so I've ranked it higher here.

It is worth noting, though, that cheap, good spellcasters are very rare: Rivendell has Gildor, Mordor has Kardush, Moria has Druzhag, and Muzgur from Dol Goldur potentially looks pretty good. But on the whole you're looking at a pretty big investment.

You can focus on monsters. Now some will disagree with me on why this is so high, and fair enough: I'm probably biased. But when you think about it, focusing on monsters gives you a lot of the lower things. You generally get good melee prowess from monsters, even without the brutal power attacks that monsters get. In some cases you get high damage shooting (even if the Shoot Value is only 4+ or 5+), and in the other cases you tend to get good mobility (and is one of the few ways to get fliers in this game, short of crebain and bats of various kinds). You get Terror, and in some cases you get a good Courage value to go with it to mitigate the issue of Terror on your opponent. So you're actually focusing on various aspects of the game by focusing on monsters.

Sure, you lose numbers, but you know what, numbers are overrated. There, I said it (as the resident Shire player and a person building a Sharkey's Rogues army right now). Monsters have a reliable way of reducing the footprint of the enemy army very quickly, so if you're clever and dedicated you can reduce the numerical advantage with relative ease. And even big heroes with Heroic Strike may not be able to keep up with you if you have enough of them. Which, on that topic...

Finally, you can focus on Might Points. Having lots of Might gives you a lot of advantages during the game. You can get the charges you want. You can get the wounds you want. You can get a boost to Fight Value or other stats (though Fight Value is the most common) that you want. You can mitigate damage from enemies by making a Fate Point successful. While I don't think you necessarily need Might in an army (I did run an Angmar army with no Might once and enjoyed it), boy does it help. And if you overpower this in your army you will be able to reshape and reframe the game as needed at critical times. Just don't waste your Might - for more on that, see the posts from Tiberius here and here.

III.  Factions to Consider 

Some factions play better with specific playstyles, and this is very true for the Linchpin. Some lists don't have a lot of options for focusing on (or even participate in) specific aspects of the game (Army of Thror has no shooting, a lot of factions have no magic, Arnor has no mobility to speak of, etc.), so when choosing a faction you will want to first consider what tools it has, and then from there decide on how to focus and overwhelm your opponent in that aspect of the game.

Unlike our other posts in this series we won't highlight a handful of factions, but instead will highlight different aspects of the game that you can focus on, and which factions overwhelm the enemy best in those particular aspects of the game.

• Mobility: Rohan, Far Harad, and Serpent Horde are great at this, as you get good charging and skirmishing capabilities for whittling down the enemy. If warg riders were better skirmishers they'd make this list, but I don't trust a 6+ Shoot for skirmishing once movement penalties have been applied. And definitely not at 18" range. You can get good mobility from other factions (Minas Tirith Knight Swarm is pretty sweet, especially if you have Boromir/Elessar and Hurin running people down with a host of knights at their backs, or something similar with a Dol Amroth Knight Swarm plus Forlong from the Fiefdoms), but the mix of movement + skirmish capability is limited to nothing in these lists.
• Terror: There really aren't that many armies that can really focus on Terror (I'd define this as 75%+ models causing Terror, so that opponents have to test for Courage basically all the time), but among the Forces of Good the best options are Fangorn and Dead of Dunharrow, and for the Forces of Evil the Riders in Black Legendary Legion is by far the best, followed by Mordor, Far Harad (thanks to those big beasties who both cause Terror and rarely fail when run correctly), and Smaug. I would include Angmar in that list, and it's a good choice, but since Terror in that list is situational as a lot of your army is relying on being near a spirit model to cause Terror. But if you are interested in a more tactical use of Terror, definitely consider Angmar.
• Shooting: In general I require a 3+ Shoot or 4+ with rerolls to count as being "good" at shooting, and that actually leaves a decent number of factions available. So if you look at sheer volume of shots that can be done in this way, I think the list builds itself: Rangers of Ithilien, Lothlorien, Shire, and Halls of Thranduil for Forces of Good (Rangers are also good, you just don't get a lot of volume for them, so I really like them but I won't include them here), and Assault on Helm's Deep, Serpent Horde, Corsairs of Umbar, and Smaug for the Forces of Evil.
• Numbers: Naturally armies that can field cheaper models do this best, but honestly there's more to it than that. Take Goblin Town for example: they have one expensive hero, but everyone else is cheap and they can take a ton of guys under each hero, so they definitely make the list. On the other side you have cheap Dunlendings in the Wild Men of Dunland, but a lot of their heroes are around 60-100 points, so you don't actually get the numbers you'd expect, and your troops are only marginally better Fight than, say, Moria, while having vastly weaker resilience, so you lose your horde quickly if you horde up. So for cheap models that you can actually get good numbers from (70+ at 700pts), Shire and Woses do this best for Forces of Good, and Goblin Town, Moria, Mordor, and Sharkey's Rogues do it well for Forces of Evil. 
• Fight Value: In my opinion this is more than just, "who has the best killing heroes," as I think some of those models - Azog, Sauron, etc. - are in armies where your army won't focus on this. Just the one hero (though Gorgoroth in our gaming group is renowned for only running trolls with Azog and then supplementing with about 1-2 orcs to meet the point max, so I suppose you can do it with Azog? That's a fair criticism - lemme know if you agree in the comments). So if you really want to focus this you play elves, dwarves, Fangorn, Misty Mountains, and Riders of Theoden with a lot of Rohan Royal Guards for Forces of Good, and Monster Moria, Black Numenorean Mordor and/or Barad Dur, Black Guard Mordor (though OOF these guys are expensive for what you get), The Trolls, and of course, Smaug, for the Forces of Evil.
• Monsters: This is already a short list, as not every faction gets monsters. All of the Forces of Good monsters are good, though, and since they come from basically 100% monster armies, they are good choices for this playstyle. For the Forces of Evil all of the monsters are good, though I think Moria, Mordor, Smaug, and Azog's Legion do monsters the best (nothing personal against Angmar, the Isengard Troll, and the Trolls, but Angmar has issues with keeping up against big heroes and elven heroes, the Isengard Troll is not a good baseline for a monster army, and the Trolls cap out at 400 points, so not the best way to do a monster focus).
• Magic: Quite a few armies have magic, but a lot of them have 1-2 options. What we want here is a magic focus, so the list does go down quite a bit at that point. For Forces of Good you want any variation of The White Council and Rivendell (with maybe an add-on of Tom Bombadil from the Wanderers in the Wild if your tournament allows him), and for the Forces of Evil you want Mordor, Barad-Dur, Angmar, Moria, or Smaug. 
• Might Points: Having lots of Might either involves having very cheap captains (40pt orc captains or 35pt goblin captains can get you 2 Might for very cheap) or lots of 3 Might heroes and/or people who can regain Might. I tend to prefer the latter, as those cheap captains can be removed before they spend their Might if you're not careful. For the Forces of Good you're looking at Thorin's Company, The Fellowship, The White Council, Rohan, and Minas Tirith as the frontrunners (both because they have lots of 3 Might heroes for relatively cheap, plus you get Helm or Eorl or Gamling for Rohan with the ability to team in Aragorn, or you get Boromir or Elessar with the ability to team in Aragorn if you don't run Elessar supported by a lot of 3 Might heroes), and for the Forces of Evil you have Azog's Hunters (as you get waaaaay more Might than you do in the legion), Moria (lots of Might plus free Heroic Combats off the balrog) Mordor (between cheap captains for moving people up and troll chieftains for killing things, The Witch-King and the rest of the Nazgul plus the solid fighting orcs and uruk-hai are just gravy), and Isengard (a metric ton of 3 Might heroes, some of which start at F5 S5).

So play what you want! If you're looking to focus and overwhelm I think Rohan and Smaug are technically the best two for this job, but almost every army appears on this list. So find what you'd like to focus on, and go all-in on it.

Conclusion

Focus and Overwhelm armies are, in my experience, a yo-yo for my emotions: I'm either really enjoying the game or I'm frustrated because the thing I built the army to do it isn't doing. But these types of armies also tend to break the meta and reshape the landscape of the game, as they take something and make it super powerful through intentionally investing in it. So who knows: maybe you'll find a new list that will shake up the meta in your region, country - possibly even the world? Who knows.

Next time we'll be talking about reactionary armies, aka "Armies that pop up in response to other common armies in your region." Until next time, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane - yes, with humans alongside me if I must." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone