The Most Special Special Strike: Ranking the 5 Special Strikes of MESBG

Good morning gamers,

Special Strikes were first introduced to MESBG during the Hobbit era - and some got fixed in the newest edition. With the current edition entering its fifth year of life, we've had a lot of time to try out these Special Strikes in a bunch of armies and scenarios. But from both a qualitative and a mathematical perspective, which of these Special Strikes is the best? Well today we delve in and try to determine how useful each of these are!

Mathematical Approach: Measuring Change

One of the things that makes Special Strikes interesting in MESBG is the diversity of things they can do. Feint/Stab and Piercing Strike have very clear impacts on your wounding ability, but you can also make the number of Strikes you perform larger with Whirl, make someone else's wounding ability better with Bash, and neutralize an enemy combatant for a turn with Stun. Yes, these strikes do a variety of things - so how do we measure them? Well, we can simplify all of their differences by measuring the difference in expected wounds dealt with and without a special strike.

To measure expected wounds dealt, we're going to need to have a scenario - and the one I have chosen is intended to allow each special strike to shine. The scenario is as follows:

• Good:
• High Elf Warrior with a weapon-swapped hand-and-a-half <weapon type>;
• High Elf Warrior with Elven-made hand-and-a-half sword, spear, and shield (supporting)
• Evil: 
• Orc Warrior with pick/sword and shield
• Orc Warrior with pick/sword, spear, and shield (supporting)
• Morannon Orc with mace/pick/sword

We're going to use weapon swaps on the Elves to show how each special strike situation could go. I will note that half of the special strikes can be used by the Orcs as well - and for things like Stab, we'll need to have some kind of baseline for it.

If we have these five models fighting each other as shown above, the Elves are expected to win ~50% of their fights over 2000 trials if the front-line Elf fights normally instead of two-handing (which would drop to ~40% of their fights if the front-line Elf two-hands). Should the Elves win, they'll wound either Orc on a 5+ (because the Morannon has no shield), which gives them a 56% chance/0.5556 probability of wounding at least one of the Orcs and an 11% chance/0.1111 probability of wounding both Orcs. Should the Orcs win, all three will wound the front-line Elf on a 5+ if they wound normally (70% chance/0.704 probability of wounding him).

With this knowledge as our baseline, let's see where each special strike ranks based on how it changes the combat results . . .

Fifth Place: Stun

Stun was never going to rank very highly in the mathematical side of this evaluation because it is most helpful against heroes instead of warriors. Stun is one of two special strikes which is done instead of wounding - so the spear-supporting Elf would have a 33% chance/0.3333 probability of wounding an Orc (-22% from having two guys trying to wound) and the Orcs would have a 56% chance/0.5556 probability of wounding an Elf (-15% from having three guys trying to wound). In trade, you roll a die to see if you can make an enemy model F1 with 1A for the next round. Unlike Immobilize et al., the Stunned model can still make Strikes on the following round - and if the model already had a lower Fight Value (as the Orcs do here) and 1 Attack (as the Orcs do here), you really aren't getting anything from it.

Add to this that the supporting models will still provide the same Fight Value to the fight and you're getting nothing in return here. Stun has a place in the game though - particularly against mounted heroes (who can't be spear supported and so will experience the FV reduction more acutely). Most heroes are higher than F1 and most heroes have 2+ Attacks - if you don't think you can wound a hero (heroes who are D8+ for example), you may have a better chance of doing something by attempting a Stun instead of attempting to wound.

The multi-attack model you are trying to Stun plays a factor in how hard it is to stun them though - if it's a monster (Sauron, the Balrog, Smaug, Cave Trolls - you get the picture), you need to get a 6 on the Stun roll (and two-handing while stunning doesn't help you - WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!). If it's a non-monster model, then you succeed on a 5+. If a S3 Ruffian would have wounded a D9 Durin on a 6/5+ and can Stun him on a 5+, that seems valuable. If that same Ruffian would have wounded a D10 Sauron on a 6/6+ and can stun him on just a 6, that also seems valuable. But Stunning models in general is a ditch-effort move - and like Immobilize, while it does make the target less likely to win its next fight, it doesn't make wounding the target any easier (or in this case, keep it from wounding should he win).

This is one of the rarest special strikes in the game as most armies don't have clubs or staves as default options, so paying 1 point/warrior to get a club here or there (not a staff - you'll be vulnerable to Your Staff Is Broken! if you do) is a poor man's way to try to get Immobilize in your list. It's not exactly the same (the Fight reduction will usually be greater than Immobilize, but you lose the tactical benefits), but it's close. I like Stun, but almost never use it - and I think most players would agree it gets last place. My opinion of it would change, however, if you were allowed to get a +1 to your roll if you two-hand (Hobbit Shirriffs and wizards stunning most heroes on a 4+ seems valuable).

Fourth Place: Whirl

I really like Whirl on 1A models that have spear supports. Whirl gets critiqued by a lot of players because the Whirling model "reduces his Fight Value to 1, after all other modifiers, for the duration of the Fight." That sounds really bad - but of course, if you have a spearman behind you, being F1 really isn't a problem. In trade for the potentially reduced Fight Value, you roll 1 Strike against each enemy model that's engaged in the fight - which means a 1 Attack warrior can roll 2+ dice to Strike their foes (which is pretty cool).

This is a really good way to get multiple Strikes on the enemy - and in our example today, it means that the Elves get to roll 3 dice to wound the Orcs, giving them a 70% chance/0.704 probability of wounding at least one Orc (+14%) and a 26% chance/0.258 probability of wounding both of the front-line Orcs (+15%). This is a nice boost - and unlike Stun, you aren't losing anything to get a 15% increase in your likelihood of wounding. And while Rythbyrt has written up reasons why you shouldn't Whirl and two-hand at the same time, you can get away with it if you have a high-Fight spear-supporting buddy in the fight and your damage goes up EVEN MORE (banners help with this too, by the way).

But Whirl does have its limitations - first and foremost, to use it well, you need to spear-support your models. For elite/expensive armies, you may not have the model count to be able to spear-support everyone, so adding a few selective flails to your army could be a great idea (but spamming them, not so much). If you know you'll be hoarding out both models and spears, then go crazy with it (Goblin-town can do this pretty well, actually).

The second big limitation is that flails are rarely part of a model's initial gear (only Goblin Warriors from Goblin-town have them by default for warriors, some heroes have whips/flails by default that give them this), so you'll either need to pay to get a wargear option for your units (which I think is just whips for Ruffians and the Stone Flail on Azog - comment down below if you can think of anyone else) OR you'll need to pay 1pt to weapon-swap. It's important to note that if you weapon-swap an Elven-made keyword weapon (as the Elves would need to do here), the new weapon isn't Elven-made (which doesn't matter in our example because the Fight Values aren't tied, but could matter very much for other units). 

The third limitation is that Whirl isn't great on most multi-attack models. If a 3 Attack model like Dori the Dwarf from Thorin's Company chooses to Whirl, he'll forego his 3 Attacks when it comes to wounding and instead make 1 Strike/foe - which means he'd go from rolling 3 dice against 2 enemy models to rolling 2 dice . . . which you'd never want to do. It is technically possible for you to be charged by 4 enemy models while having a spear-supporting buddy in the fight, but this is a RARE situation that you can't count on occurring. As a general rule, if you have more than 1 Attack, Whirl is probably not in your best interest. The exception to this is Azog with the Stone Flail - because you only go down to F6 (instead of F1), a swarmed Azog might actually get better with his burly two-handed maul by Whirling (the larger base certainly helps with that as well).

Finally, Whirl is only a useful special strike when you're fighting multiple people - so embedding them inside your battle line isn't going to be useful. Sure, if you can charge the enemy battle line with a flail guy, you can get some pretty interesting results, but if you have your model packed tightly together, you probably won't have an opportunity to use it. Given this balance between advantages and disadvantages, I felt like Whirl was better than Stun, but not as good as the others.

I think most players would place these two special Strikes at the bottom of the list - now to rock the boat a bit . . .

Third Place: Piercing Strike

Okay, put your pitchforks and torches away - don't kill me! Piercing Strike is one of the most popular special strikes, mostly because S3 armies are pretty common and D6 armies are pretty common (and when you are S3 and you're up against D6, Piercing Strike may be your saving grace - turning a wound-on-6s proposition into wound-on-5s). Piercing Strike is awesome and very useful - but it also has draw-backs and limitations.

When a model chooses to Piercing Strike, if it wins the fight, it increases the Strength of its Strikes by 1 (which is different from getting +X Strength like you do with Heroic Strength). In trade, if the model loses the fight, its Defense goes down by D3. In short, you might get wounded more easily if you lose and you might wound more easily if you win.

The advantages are clear: if you're an odd-Strength model and your opponent is a higher even-Defense model, you can increase your likelihood of wounding them just by using Piercing Strike. If you're mounted and on the charge against an infantry model, this is even better, since you will double your dice AND reduce the wounding difficulty (many Riders of Rohan are equipped with axes instead of swords by default and some players choose to give Easterling Kataphrakts weapon-swapped axes for this very reason). Even on infantry, though, this can be a HUGE asset to your army (ask Helminga players as well as your disgusting local Dwarf player).

But Piercing Strike can also do nothing. If you're an odd-Strength model and your opponent is a higher odd-Defense model, then getting +1 Strength . . . doesn't increase your odds of wounding at all. This is because of the interplay between Strength and Defense in the wounding table - in general, it takes +2 Strength over your opponent's Defense to make a difference in your wounding difficulty. I've played a lot recently with the Riders of Eomer LL and I've been running a mix of Riders of Rohan with both axes and swords because . . . sometimes Piercing Strike doesn't work for you (and sometimes it's more valuable to Feint - more on that in a minute).

The second big limitation of Piercing Strike is that you need to commit to it (like all special strikes) before you know who wins the fight. If you knew that you had already won the fight, getting +1 Strength would be a no-brainer - and if you knew that you had already lost the fight, you'd never opt to reduce your own Defense by D3 pips. But because you have to commit BEFORE you know who wins the fight, you need to weigh the risk and reward of increasing your Strength AND reducing your Defense. It's not a one-way street - there's a trade to be had. Let's look at the following example to illustrate this trade:

In the two fights we see above, the Dwarves have reasons to use Piercing Strike - they're both S3 and they're against D4 opponents. By using Piercing Strike, they get to wound on 4s instead of 5s - which is really good (+17%)! The Ranger (D5) is against a Goblin (S3), so he's wounded normally on 5s by the Goblin - but should the Goblin win and the Ranger choose to Piercing Strike, he could still be wounded on 5s (if he gets -1 Defense) but is more likely to be wounded on 4s (if he gets -2 or -3 Defense). Is it better for the Ranger to keep his Defense where it's at and both sides wound on 5s? Or should he get greedy and risk both sides wounding on 4s? Hmmm . . .

In the fight next door, a Dwarf Warrior with shield (D7) is against a Moria Goblin Prowler (S3 with a two-handed weapon that can ALSO Piercing Strike) and a Moria Goblin with spear (S3). While the Dwarf could probably beat the Prowler by himself, the fight is going to be close (the Dwarf has an 49% chance of winning the duel if he strikes normally). The Dwarf is normally wounded on 5s by the Prowler and 6s by the spearman - and if he chooses to Piercing Strike, he might still be wounded on 5s/6s (if he gets -1 Defense), but once again is more likely to be wounded on 4s/5s (if he gets -2/-3 Defense). Yikes - what a choice.

But it actually gets more interesting - because the Prowler can Piercing Strike too! If he does, the Dwarf may get to wound the Prowler on 3s - but the Prowler will be able to wound on 4s if the Dwarf gets -1/-2 Defense and on 3s if the Dwarf gets -3 Defense - OI, you see the risk we're talking about? I will note that in our example, the Dwarf isn't trapped - but if he were to be trapped, the Prowler would become F4 (tying the FV of the Dwarf - gasp!) AND would get an additional +1 To Wound from Backstabbers - suddenly, the Dwarf has no interest at all in using Piercing Strike (who wants to be wounded on 3s or 2s just because you wanted to wound on 4s?).

But lest you think that this Defense reduction is a huge set-back, it doesn't have to be. For Dwarves, lowering your Defense (one of your great assets) can be a huge risk. But for other factions (like Goblin-town, the Serpent Horde, Moria, or Azog's Hunters - most of whom need to weapon-swap/buy two-handed weapons to get axes), your Defense is already in the can. Yes, your opponent might go from wounding you on 5s to wounding you on 4s or even 3s - but you knew you were dying already. So what's the big deal? Piercing Strike for some armies has absolutely no penalty because . . . well, Defense isn't a big deal (and Goblin-town is probably the pinnacle of this, since they're D3 and can start with Piercing Strike on all of their Goblin Warriors if they want to).

For higher-Defense armies, Piercing Strike can still have an appeal though. If you're playing against an army with Blades of the Dead (where your opponent wounds against your Courage stat instead of your Defense stat), Piercing Strike has absolutely no downside - you aren't using your Defense stat for anything. You may not get any benefit from increasing your Strength by 1 depending on the Defense of the thing you're fighting, but might as well do it anyway because it doesn't cost you anything.

Finally, high Defense armies can benefit from Piercing Strike if they think they have the tools they need to win fights. Banners, spear-supports, high-Fight values, and wrapping enemy battle lines can all go a long ways to reducing the number of dice your opponent is rolling and increasing the number of dice you are rolling. When that happens, you're more likely to win the fight - and if you're more likely to win the fight, you can afford a little risk. Even if they lose, if your opponent has 2 dice looking for 5s, nearly half the time (44%) he'll fail to wound you - and if you're only losing a fight here or there, you won't lose a cascade of guys.

In our Elves vs. Orcs scenario, the only model with an incentive to use Piercing Strike is the Morannon Orc - who will go from being wounded on 5s to being wounded on 5s (-1 Defense) or 4s (-2/-3 Defense). In trade, he becomes S5 (at only 7pts/model, I think that's the cheapest S5 model in the game) and wounds the Elf on 4s. This does a minor boost to the wounding potential of the Orcs (78% chance/0.7778 probability of wounding for a cumulative +8% chance) and a pretty startling boost for the Elves (who might get a 75% chance/0.75 probability of wounding the Morannon for a cumulative +20% chance of wounding someone and a 17% chance/0.167 probability of wounding both Orcs for a cumulative +5% chance). These aren't great odds of boosting rolls, if we're honest - and they're lower than a fairly optimal case for Whirl - but since this isn't an optimal case for using Piercing Strike (and to avoid being crucified), I feel like I need to put Piercing Strike ahead of Whirl (and clearly above Stun). I do not feel bad, however, about putting it below . . .

Second Place: Bash

I'm not sure that most players would place Bash over Piercing Strike - like Stun, Bash turns a potential damage-dealer into a non-damage-dealer (which has a risk of not helping), but Bash does something the other special strikes don't do: you can make an enemy model prone, which doubles your remaining dice in the fight. Unlike Stun, you make an "opposed roll" - both you and your opponent roll a die: each of you then adds your Strength value and the "basher" adds +1 if he's bashing with a two-handed weapon. If the "basher" ties or beats the final score of the "bashee" (if that's not a word, I made it a word), then the "bashee" is knocked Prone. 

Functionally, this isn't how Bash actually works - usually the players will identify the difference in Strengths between the models and the higher-Strength side will get a modifier based on the Strength differential for its die (to keep the math to a minimum). Depending on the model Bashing (a Hobbit Militia from S2 or a Mordor Troll from S7 - potentially with a two-handed weapon?), you can get VERY one-sided rolls - but remember that you do this instead of making Strikes.

Bashing has three key purposes: first, you can knock a model Prone so that other models contributing to the fight (like supporting spearmen) can double their dice to wound the Prone model. Naturally, if this is your goal, you want to Bash before you resolve other Strikes (no point in wounding the enemy while he's standing, right? Play dirty and hit him while he's down!). In some cases, this can also make them easier to wound (models with Shieldwall won't benefit from it if they're Prone, for example).

Second, Bash can be used to dismount cavalry models. Since knocking a model Prone forces a dismount (and most mounts have 0 Attacks and so will flee the battlefield), Bash is an excellent way to effectively wound the mount while guaranteeing that the enemy rider will be Prone vs. standing in place. Depriving a hero of a mount is particularly useful, since you will limit their long-term maneuverability by denying them their mount AND deny them a lot of short-term mobility by making them Prone (and potentially killing them - that REALLY cuts down on their mobility). Even against warriors, though, you're denying a warrior a reliable way of killing your infantry models - and for some warrior models, you'll also take away the benefit of their lances as well!

Third, Bash can be used to perform "non-lethal strikes" so that you DON'T kill an enemy model. We've all played those games where we're dicing up the enemy army, we've lost next to nobody in return, and the game ends because we broke or quartered the enemy and our army, while mostly intact and "clearly winning" wasn't within scoring range of any of the objectives. And so we get a rousing loss when we feel like we should have won. Bash (as well as shielding) is a great way to be able to say, "I'm not going to break you yet" and avoid losing a game because our opponent just wants to throw guys at us. If it gets you a tactical advantage, use it.

In our scenario, the Elves already wound the Orcs pretty well, but you could forego 1 Attack to Bash the Mordor Orc (S3 vs. S3 - Bashing the Morannon would be S3 vs. S4, giving the Morannon an edge). With no modifiers being applied to the fight, the Elf has a 58% chance/0.5833 probability of successfully bashing the Orc to the ground. At which point . . . the probability of wounding is actually the same as wounding the Orc with both models. If the Bash fails (~42% of the time), then the remaining Elf still has a 33% chance/0.3333 probability of wounding either Orc (I'd go for the Morannon).

If the Elf chooses to two-handed Bash, the likelihood that they win is closer to 40%, but the likelihood of Bashing (with the +1 modifier applied) becomes a 72% chance/0.7222 probability (-10% chance of winning, +14% chance of Bashing). I'm not sure it's a good idea to do this, but hey, you could try. Where things get really interesting, though, is if the Morannon Orc has a Mace (which is one of their default starting gear options). With a base Strength of 4, he can Bash and get +1 to his roll thanks to having +1 Strength over the Elf. This changes their probabilities of wounding the Elf marginally with no penalty to winning the fight (4 dice looking for 5s vs. 3 dice looking for 5s).

So why rank Bash above Piercing Strike? We know that Piercing Strike only helps us against certain Defense levels - and even then, it usually helps us by +1 pip of difficulty. Since most mega heroes are named and DON'T have axes (unless they're Dwarves), Bash is a neat way to get more damage out of your heroes too - and often will make them more effective than if they had to Piercing Strike. Math doesn't lie - as the number of dice increases, your wounding probability goes up by a LOT. Consider the following comparisons - which would you rather have?

• Durin with a Hearthguard with a two-handed axe vs. a weapon-swapped two-handed mace: 4 dice at S4-5 with +1 To Wound vs. 6 dice at S4-5 with +1 To Wound
• Thrain with a Guardian of the King: 3 dice at S4 with +1 To Wound + 1 die at S4-5 with potentially +1 To Wound vs. 6 dice at S4 with +1 To Wound
• Dalamyr historically allied with an Abrakhan Guard with a two-handed sword vs. a weapon-swapped two-handed hammer: 3 dice at S4 and rerolling all failed To Wounds + 1 die at S4 with +1 To Wound vs. 6 dice at S4 with +1 To Wound and rerolling all failed To Wounds (from Backstabbers)

I could go on, but I think you get the idea: if you want more damage to come from your infantry heroes, you should Bash. Some heroes like Boromir of Gondor and Tauriel can win fights easily, but when it comes to wounding, they can glance off enemy models. It's a lot easier to kill things if they've been knocked over - so Bash with them!

Well, there are only five special strikes, which means the overall winner (and surprising upstart, I'm sure) is . . .

First Place: Feint/Stab

Okay, let's admit it - for most players, this is like the least useful special strike in the game. Why? Because basically everyone can have it by default! Most named heroes have swords and many warriors do to - so why is Feint the best special strike in the game? Well, let's look at the rules and see what it does:

• You look at the start of the Fight phase at which model has the highest Fight Value in a fight.
• If a model who wishes to Feint has a higher Fight Value than his opponent, he can "feint," reducing his Fight Value by D3.
• If a model who wishes to Feint has a lower Fight Value than his opponent, he will "stab" instead.
• If a model who "feints" or "stabs" wins the fight, he gets to reroll 1s To Wound.
• If a model who "stabs" loses the fight, he suffers a S2 hit after the Fight has been resolved.

Okay, you probably knew most of this, but let's break it down a little further: Feint gives you a reroll on 1s at the cost of Fight Value, while Stab gives you the reroll on 1s at the cost of potentially a S2 hit. Rerolling 1s doesn't look great, but here's the sneaky thing about Feint (we'll deal with Stab in a minute):

You rarely suffer the penalty for Feint.

First off, if you have a supporting model with the same/higher Fight Value as the model who's Feinting, you can Feint without any downside. Like Whirl, Feint doesn't modifying the supporting model's Fight Value, so a F5 Elf (like we have in our scenario) can reduce his Fight Value by D3 without any worries if he has another F5 Elf backing him up. Free reroll of 1s To Wound anyone? Yeah, I'll take that anytime.

From a math point of view, if our front line Elf were to Feint against the Orcs (wounding on 5s and rerolling 1s), he'd go from a 33% chance of wounding to a roughly 39% chance of wounding (+6% increase). If he were to two-hand, their odds of winning would fall, but he'd have a 58% chance of wounding (+8% increase over two-handing normally). This isn't as spectacular as getting +17% from Piercing Strike, but the Elves will always get this kind of boost (instead of getting it only when they are fighting an even-Defense model).

Second, some models (like Elves and some heroes) can lose D3 Fight Value and STILL have a higher/tied Fight Value as their opponents. If a High Elf Warrior with shield is in a fight against 2 Goblin-town Warriors, the F2 Goblins would at best tie the Fight Value of a F5 Elf who loses D3 Fight Value - and with an Elven-made weapon in the fight, a single Elf will still have a 37% chance of winning the fight at F2 and has a 42% chance of winning the fight at F3-4. If he has a banner near him, this goes up to a 53% chance of winning the fight at F2 and a 61% chance of winning the fight at F3-4. Note that this is a SINGLE Elf - he has no help at all and yet can have a 61% chance of winning the fight against two Goblins . . . not bad, I think.

Third, if one of your heroes calls a Heroic Strike and your opponent calls a Heroic Defense, Piercing Strike won't help you, Whirl is unlikely to help you, Stun could help you (if you get a 5+ or 6+ to work), and Bash might be useful - but none of the other special strikes are going to help you wound the guy on "natural 6s." As it turns out, rerolling 1s gives you a non-zero chance of getting a natural 6 - and even if your opponent doesn't have Heroic Defense up, a wounding roll of 1 is most likely going to fail (most heroes don't have the special rules/Might/don't want to spend the Might to boost it). So . . . get a different result by rerolling the 1!

Fourth, rerolling 1s may not seem that good when you're a S3 warrior trying to wound a D6 opponent on 6s (you're only adding a 3% success rate), but as your wounding difficulty gets better (usually because your Strength increases and sometimes because the Defense of your target decreases), rerolling 1s becomes far more valuable. One of the best models in the game to Feint with is the Balrog - he starts at F10 and while Feinting, will be F7-9 - which is still high enough to best pretty much every warrior in the game and most of the heroes who can't Strike. Most models in the game (some Dwarves, Elves, ancient Men, and monster excluded) are D7 or less, so a S9 Balrog will wound pretty much everything on 3s (unless it calls Heroic Defense, of course). You could Rend on 3s against one model OR you can Feint and wound on 3s rerolling any 1s you roll (so . . . just don't get any 2s). This simple trick (which again has no negative impact on you) makes it far more reliable that the Balrog will wound with all four dice (or 8 dice if you've gotten a trap off). I really like the Balrog - can you tell? If you haven't gleaned that yet, read my published works. :)

Okay, so maybe I've convinced you that Feint is pretty good - but surely Stab is not good, right? I mean, you get the reroll 1s like we've talked about, but if you lose the fight, you take a S2 hit - and that can kill a man! True, the S2 hit isn't great, but there are a few ways to work with Stab. First and foremost, there are a lot of models who can Stab from F3 - and with most models Feinting from F4-5, keeping your Fight Value the same makes it unlikely that they Feint in response to your Stab (unless they've got a spear-support/someone else in the fight to keep their Fight Value higher). This may not seem like much, but if you're worried about being wounded by a S2 collateral hit, chances are good that you should be equally worried about your opponent rerolling 1s to wound (since you're probably wounded on 5s or 4s).

Second, it's fine to take a S2 hit if you're D5 or above - you'll only be wounded on a 6 (or worse). D5 Orcs are some of the best models in the game to Stab with - most armies can get F4 elite troops if they want them, so Orcs often find themselves outmatched if the end result of the dueling roll is a tie. Orc Warriors/Angmar Orc Warriors/Morannon Orcs can all be at least D5 (Morannons can get to D6) and this makes them excellent Stab candidates because . . . well, it's fine if they die (but you won't lose too many casualties to it . . . usually). 

If you can reach D7 (which you can do easily with Iron Hills Dwarves and most heroes sporting heavy armor and shield), Stabbing will only wound you on a 6/4+ - which is to say almost never. If you get to the upper echelons of Defense (D8+ - which you can do with Captains of Minas Tirith/Iron Hills Dwarves in shieldwall against models that are higher than F4), this difficulty level gets even higher - so don't worry about it, just Stab. Unlike Feint, this isn't negating the penalty, but the likelihood that the penalty impacts you is very slim.

Third, Stabbing may have a S2 hit drawback, but that's only a drawback if you lose the fight. In our example fight today, we have 3 Orcs (2 of which could Stab - though it's probably better if the Orc Warrior Stabs and the Morannon Orc Bashes) against 2 Elves - and thanks to outnumbering our opponent, the Orcs have a near-50/50 chance of winning the fight if the front-rank Elf doesn't two-hand (and have a near-60/40 chance of winning the fight if the Elf does two-hand). Any duel that you Stabbed in and win is a free reroll of 1s without penalty - kind of like Feinting with a spearmen behind you.

Fourth, Stabbing can be used tactically to break or quarter yourself in a game while giving you the opportunity to break/quarter the enemy. Consider the following situation: you've got a horde of Orcs and you're playing Domination and have 3-4 objectives on your half of the board or on the center line. You're up against an elite army that can probably roast your troops over time - but you know that if you have double your opponent's models on 4 objectives at the end of the game, you can't lose - so what do you do? Well, you start with as many bodies on the center line as possible, then surge forward, Stabbing the entire time. Why? Because while your models might die (many to the enemy, some to themselves), you can probably win enough fights to push the enemy away from where he actually needs to be - and if you happen to have the only models on the objectives by the time the game ends, you win. Simple and easy.

This is a particularly useful technique when the game can randomly end, as you can just barely break yourself by losing casualties with having to win the game with "just a few guys left on the board." Some armies can get to obnoxious model counts at 700-800pts, so being quartered may not mean that you have fewer models than your opponent started with, but for most armies, at 700pts you can easily get to 30-40 models which means you have somewhere between 7-10 models on the board when the game ends. If the scenario is right, you could do really well. If the game ends once you've been quartered, then Barad-Dur armies who do this with their Orcs are feeling pretty good, since they can quarter themselves without giving up VPs for breaking themselves (if Sauron is healthy).

Finally, a quick note on stabbing with low Fight Value, low Defense models (like Hobbit Militia, Haradrim Warriors, and Lake-town Guard): if you're D3-4 and Stabbing will wound you on 5s (pretty much the lowest it goes - Old Bilbo Baggins without the Mithril Coat can be wounded on 4s by a Stab), you could see a lot of guys losing fights and dying. As we have previously mentioned, this is only a problem if you lose fights and if you get the 5 or 6 that you need to wound you (which is still less likely to happen than to actually happen - even though being wounded on 5s seems to be easy in this game). 

While there are definite downsides to Stabbing and losing the fight, I would encourage you to think ahead about how risky it is, steel yourself, and "just Stab." This is particularly true if you have a +1 To Wound modifier (whether that's from a two-handed sword on a Moria Blackshield Captain, a Legion bonus like the Black Gate Opens/Ugluk's Scouts LL, or a special rule like Backstabbers or Hatred) - that bonus To Wound modifier could see the enemy dead, so why not reroll any 1s that won't let that bonus work?

Conclusion

Well, you probably disagree with something you read - and if you did, drop us a line in the comments. :) If you like these kinds of rankings posts, we can do more of them (I know Centaur has a few that he's working on) - so let us know that too! Until next time, happy hobbying!