Defence of the North: What Models Do You Need?

Good morning gamers,

We're reviewing the most recent MESBG supplement to be released and boy was Centaur (and I more belatedly) excited to get it: Defence of the North. By now, you probably know the drill for these posts: I walk though the models you need for the scenarios, provide a cost at the end of each section to make you cry, and give advice on how to save money where you can along the way. Since this sourcebook has lots of models from the Armies of the Hobbit (and lots of ForgeWorld purchases from both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings range), I thought it might be good to review the costs of the preceding sourcebooks:

• Gondor At War: $3500
• The Scouring of the Shire: $1100
• War in Rohan: $3700
• Quest of the Ringbearer: $2100-$3200 (depending on whether you want to play just the scenarios from the book, Fantasy Fellowships, or both)
• Fall of the Necromancer: $1100

NOTE: we should expect the prices in this post to be a bit higher than the other books because since writing those what-do-you-need posts, there's been a price hike on some of the models in the range. Still, since many of the models we need are from the Armies of the Hobbit (some of which didn't see a lot of movement), I don't think it'll have moved the needle too far to make the comparison ridiculous.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

As you can see, there's quite a bit of variation, with the Gondor and Rohan supplements being very pricey, the Shire and Mirkwood supplements being "fairly inexpensive", and Quest of the Ringbearer falling in the middle (or near the top if you invest in everything you need for Fantasy Fellowships . . . which is a good chunk of what you'd need for the Gondor at War/War in Rohan supplements too). Will Defence of the North be the nastiest surprise yet? Let's dig in and find out!

Fall of the Necromancer Inspired Lists: The Rise of the Necromancer Revisited

Good morning gamers,

We've come to the last post in this series (mostly because I didn't want to tackle the Vanquishers of the Necromancer) and we're ending with one of my favorite Legions ever: the Rise of the Necromancer LL. Often hailed as a horrible all-hero army because it's slow and has far too few numbers, this Legion his a PAIN for many armies to deal with because everything in it can just refuse to die. Yes, you might be able to outmaneuver them, but don't underestimate them. Thanks to getting several missions in the Fall of the Necromancer sourcebook with Castellans in them, we actually have a very healthy list of models to use:

• The Necromancer of Dol Guldur
• The Keeper of the Dungeons
  
• 9 Nazgul of Dol Guldur
• 6 Castellans of Dol Guldur with Morgul Blades
  

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Today's discussion will not only be on the list itself, but also a short treatise on the points levels that it plays well at - let's dig in!

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 3a

Good morning gamers,

Today we're kicking off Part 3 of our Fantasy Fellowship campaign where my "Erebor Reunion" Fellowship is playing its last game with (almost) all of its members - Dori will have his last mission (as the Boromir character doesn't get to go on) and such an array of heroes will not be seen again in this campaign until we get to the Black Gate (and even then, Bilbo/Maggot will be apart from the rest). If you've been following my conversion series for the Champions of Erebor, this is the first post where you'll get to see those models in action!

Mission #1: Ambush at Amon Hen

Okay, so my thought going into this was simple: Gloin and Dwalin are two of our best fighters and they start WAY out of position. So, what we want to do is move towards them with Bilbo/Nori as much as we can and THEN advance towards the boats. If we can use Heroic Combats between these guys to get some extra movement for them (and Bilbo), we can do this. 

I'm also going to lean heavily into a few pieces of war gear that we picked up in Lothlorien: Nori will be using his new dagger (which gives him the Elven-made keyword, allows him to Feint if he Strikes well above his opponent's Fight Value, and deals D3 wounds for every unsaved wound - perfect for clearing out Uruk-Hai Captains). Bifur will be using his "nice shiny dagger" whenever he's not spear-supporting someone with his boar spear (since the rerolling all failed To Wounds is often better than two-handing) and Bofur FINALLY has a one-handed weapon that he can use (which is also often better than two-handing - though I'll probably two-hand if I'm only fighting one shield-armed guy so I have the option to Piercing Strike up to S5). Finally, if Gloin gets in a tight spot, I've got three full rerolls for him thanks to the three locks of hair he got from Galadriel. The other items are unlikely to see much use (I like the Light of Earendil, but I plan to have the Ring on the whole mission, so I can't use it).

Okay, let's get stuck in!

Grim Champs: Converting the Champions of Erebor, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

I mentioned at the start of the year that I was going to take a bunch of Champions of Erebor in my Fantasy Fellowship this year. The champs are kinda expensive (like everything in the Erebor Reclaimed list), so I wanted to look for conversion options. While I was puzzling through this, I got the Dain and Thorin set from Rythbyrt and I noticed how similar the shield design on Thorin was to the cheaper Warriors of Erebor. Picking up a box of Warriors, Grim Hammers, and Thorin's Company costs the same as the champs, but also nets me a bunch more models - so I began a neat endeavor to convert up our Heroes from these models. Let's start with the six Dwarves in our Fellowship.

The War of the Ring Era Champs

These are the bits we're going to need for our War of the Ring champions (I didn't end up needing Dwalin's hammer). We mostly need their heads, but we're going to also borrow some other bits too. Let's start with the Champ that's being used by both me and my son for Fantasy Fellowships this season, Dori!

Fall of the Necromancer Inspired Lists: The Dark Denizens of Mirkwood Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Warning: There will be references to Spiders in this post (and a picture below). Mythopoeia, stop reading now - you've been warned!

In our third article in this series on the Fall of the Necromancer, we turn to an army that . . . doesn't have a Legendary Legion: the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood! Yes, we're looking today at an army of beasts - bats, Wargs, and SO many Spiders.

Photo Credit: Fall of the Necromancer 

The Fall of the Necromancer includes several missions that focus on the spiders (and other creatures) that flooded into Mirkwood and were fought off by the Elves who lived there. This means we have a fairly large collection of models to use in Matched Play:

• The Spider Queen (with her Broodlings)
• 2 Bat Swarms
• 6 Giant Spiders
• 6 Mirkwood Spiders
• 6 Fell Wargs
  

Since the Spiders are 240pts cumulatively, the Bat Swarms are 70pts together, the Spider Queen is 115pts, and the Fell Wargs are 48pts, you can get all of these models for 473pts - but I don't think this list wants to go in 27pts down into a 500-point game. So instead, we're going to ally in another army today and up the points level to 700 points - let's look at the list!

Announcing the TMAT Grand Tournament 2023!

Good morning gamers,

It's that time again - Spring is hastening here, holidays have come and gone, and we're gearing up for another GT! The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on June 24, 2023. This year, we're going European and trying out two things: the German points system and a wacky (but logical) points level. Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

The ruleset from the updated Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual will be our baseline. The Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Lord of the Rings, while the Armies of the Hobbit supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Hobbit. Legendary Legions and profiles from any of the GW supplements may be used, provided that the army building requirements for the Legendary Legion are followed. Any GW errata for these books will take precedent over the printed text of these documents.

2) Thou Shalt Honor Thy Alliance

This tournament follows the alliance "restrictions" provided in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings and Armies of the Hobbit supplements - players are allowed to have "pure" armies or Historical/Convenient/Impossible alliances. Legendary Legions from any of the Games Workshop supplements can be taken as well, but obviously cannot take allies nor be taken as allies.

Five Easy Math Stats For MESBG

Good morning gamers,

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you probably know that Rythbyrt and I really like math facts. Whether it's computing your likelihood of winning/killing in the context of heroic actions, special strikes, or making full-blown spreadsheets that iterate through two sets of combatants beating on each other, we love figuring out new, unexpected ways to maximize your army's effectiveness by delving into mathematical probabilities.

Photo Credit: Stock photo?

But what about players who don't want to be math junkies? Are there some simple and valuable things you can store in your brain to give you a ballpark estimate of what to expect in the outcome of your games? Well, today we put the complicated math on the side (sort of) and focus on five very simple things you can remember that will help you gauge your expectations (and maybe learn a little math along the way). Let's dig in!

Math Fact #1: Rolling 3 dueling dice = 70% chance of getting a 5+

In MESBG, the most exciting part of any game hands-down is the Fight phase. Unlike magic (which might be able to be resisted, but might not) and shooting (which you get absolutely no say over - though you can make your opponent work harder), fighting involves you rolling dice and your opponent rolling dice - and just because you have the better units doesn't mean you'll roll better than him. This makes the opposed rolls when dueling really important.

So this leads to our first math-based principle to remember: try to roll at least three dice in a duel. Why? Because rolling three dice gives you a 70% chance (0.7037 probability) of rolling a 5 as your highest number. Unlike in the board game Risk, you only care about your highest die result - if you can get 6s in all your duels, you have the opportunity to kill lots of guys and also have a great chance of not taking a lot of damage. The more dice we throw, the more likely we are to get a natural 6 (which is awesome).

Fall of the Necromancer Inspired Lists: The Pits of Dol Guldur Revisited

Good morning gamers,

This is our second post in our mini-series that brings those Fall of the Necromancer models you need for scenario play into Matched Play. Evil has a real problem building lists for Matched Play, since you get a mix of Orcs that are used in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings with the Necromancer in the scenario book - and without a Hero of Valour/Legend to bring along (and almost always as Impossible Allies), you're really limited in how you can build lists for Matched Play games.

As such, the one faction that's pretty well fleshed out in this book is Azog's Hunters - though our access to heroes and bows in the scenarios is quite limited. As such, we can grow our available model count a bit and trade our archery-heavy rules for other rules by not running Azog's Hunters and instead running the Pits of Dol Guldur Legendary Legion. Here is the list of models we have to play with from the scenarios:

• Azog (we probably have the model that's mounted on the White Warg, but not in the scenarios)
• The Keeper of the Dungeons
• Thrain the Broken
  
• 12 Hunter Orcs with no additional gear (we probably have 12 other Hunter Orcs)
• 6 Hunter Orcs on Fell Wargs
• 6 Fell Wargs
  

While the Pits of Dol Guldur Legion loses a lot compared to a historical alliance between Azog's Hunters, Azog's Legion, and the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur, the scenarios pare down the selection of models even MORE than normal. We don't have Gundabad Orcs to give us spears, C3, or D6 for starters - and that's a HUGE loss. Thematic, yes, but still a huge loss. We also don't have any generic Captains, so we'll need to take Azog (duh) and the Keeper of the Dungeons to lead our troops (and he's not bad in this Legion - especially if your opponent is worried about Azog). Still, no Captains means a max cap of 33 models in our force and no Heroic March unless Azog is willing to burn Might to move the army (which, admittedly, he can get away with in this Legion since he has the option for free Heroic Combats).

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

The units we have access to are incredibly limited in number - as you can see above, we have 12 Hunter Orcs, 6 mounted Hunter Orcs (so we have 18 Hunter Orcs if we don't take mounted guys), and 6 Fell Wargs (who might be needed as loose mounts for the mounted Hunter Orcs). As I mentioned in the what-models-do-you-need post, we'll ACTUALLY have 24 Hunter Orcs (up to 6 of which can have extra gear), as well as the White Warg, but this really constrains what kind of list we can build. As such, we're going to be looking at two lists today - one that is pretty true to what we've been given, and one that departs a bit from the script (but still doesn't require us to buy any more models). Let's check it out!

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive, Part 3

Good morning gamers,

As we begin "Path #3" in Fantasy Fellowships (Amon Hen and the journeys through Rohan before Helm's Deep), we're getting our last hoorah with (virtually) our whole Fellowship and are going to begin splintering our group into smaller pockets. We have the epic Amon Hen mission as well as one mission with the Three Hunters and one mission with Merry and Pippin. We also get our last mission with our Boromir character and introduce a new foe that changes our force dynamics quite a bit: Uruk-Hai. Let's get stuck in!

Part 3: Amon Hen to Helm's Deep 

 

Photo Credit: Quest of the Ringbearer
Uruks . . . I hate fighting Uruks with heroes . . .

We're not going to use our Gandalf model in any of these missions, but we get to use everyone else at least once against a game-changing foe: Uruk-Hai. Yep, get used to them, they're not going anywhere! While Uruks dominate two of the three scenarios we need to play (Ambush at Amon Hen and Ambush at Night), we also need to be ready to face Orcs and Warg Riders, so our list of potential foes is surprisingly diverse: 

• Lurtz (1 mission) 
• Ugluk (1 mission) 
• Mauhur (1 mission) 
• Uruk-Hai Scout Captain (no extra gear, 1 mission) 
• 12-24 Uruk-Hai Scouts (usual gear, 2 missions) 
• Grishnakh (1 mission) 
• Snaga (1 mission) 
• Sharku (1 mission) 
• 12 Orc Warriors (usual gear, 1 mission) 
• 18 Warg Riders (usual gear, 1 mission) 

As was already said, we don't get Gandalf, but we have everyone else at least once - and a wide cast of friendly models: 

• Frodo (1 mission) 
• Sam (1 mission); 
• Merry (2 missions); 
• Pippin (2 missions); 
• Aragorn (2 missions); 
• Legolas (2 missions);  
• Gimli (2 missions);  
• Boromir (1 mission); and 
• ALLIES: 
• Eomer on horse (1 mission) 
• Theoden on horse (1 mission) 
• Gamling on horse (no banner, 1 mission) 
• Hama (no additional gear and he only has 1 Might point, 1 mission)
• Captain of Rohan on horse with shield (1 mission) 
• 6-12 Riders of Rohan (2 missions) 
• 3 Rohan Outriders on horses (1 mission) 

This is the first part of Fantasy Fellowships where we have our Fellowship divided up into different groups - our first mission has everyone except Gandalf, but after that, we say good-bye to Boromir, Frodo, and Sam and focus on what we can do with Merry/Pippin and Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli.  

 

This brings us to something to keep in mind: our Boromir position is the least valuable slot in our Fantasy Fellowships. I talked about this when we got started: Boromir only appears in missions with 7-8 other members of your Fellowship - and in this last mission, all but the wizard will be there to help you win the mission (and he'll start with Merry/Pippin, about 24" away from Aragorn/Frodo, and potentially 12" away from Sam). So, if you like Boromir (like I do), run him in a different position so you can use him in more than just a few missions. 

 

Cavalry Charge: Heroic Combats and the Battle of Lewes

Good morning gamers,

Last month, we looked at a useful tactic for using Heroic Combats with cavalry models (the wag) - today, we're digging deeper into some principles for using Heroic Combats with cavalry models. Cavalry models gain a lot from the increased movement they get from their mount (and the greater damage output they get when fighting infantry), but to capitalize on this movement, there are a few principles we should keep in mind. We'll be deriving these based on a battle fought in 1264 in England: the Battle of Lewes.

The Battle of Lewes: When Hot-Heads Run Off

The Battle of Lewes was part of a larger war between several prominent English barons who sought a greater role in running the English government and King Henry III. You can read about it here or can watch one of the excellent battle reports on YouTube from BazBattles. Henry III and his son Edward Plantagenet (later known as Edward "Longshanks") led the royalist forces, while Simon de Montfort (a hero of the crusades and dubbed "the wisest and stoutest warrior in England") was the most prominent of the barons opposing him.

As both armies chased each other, laying siege to various towns, the barons finally caught up to Henry's force at the town of Lewes. The baronial army had a numerical disadvantage against the royalists (estimates put them outnumbered 2:1) and one of the baronial flanks was composed of militia - poorly-trained men from London led by Simon de Montfort's son, Sir Henry de Montfort. When the Royalist forces finally arrayed and engaged, Prince Edward led his cavalry into the undisciplined right flank of the baronial army and broke them quickly. As the Londoners fled, the fury of Prince Edward burned hot and he led his horsemen to pursue and kill as many of the scattering soldiers as he could. They eventually found the baronial baggage train and began looting, assuming the battle was well in hand.

Meanwhile, the rest of the lines clashed with the baronial forces pressing the attack hard to gain an advantage. The barons' army fought well and put the royalists to route, capturing King Henry's brother and later capturing Prince Edward when he returned to find the battlefield held by the enemy. A foolhardy pursuit and looting certainly played an important factor in the success of the royalist forces on that day.

Now all of this is a nice story and all, but what can we learn about this incident and apply it to how we use mounted heroes in MESBG (including those famous monster heroes, as we were asked recently in a comment)? I think there are four things we can learn - and some of them are quite positive.

Fall of the Necromancer Inspired Lists: The Rangers of Mirkwood Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today we're beginning the first in a series of posts on taking your Fall of the Necromancer models into Matched Play. If you didn't catch the drift from our review of the models we need to play all of the scenarios from Fall of the Necromancer, we don't have a lot to work with. All of the Halls of Thranduil models available to us are available in the Rangers of Mirkwood LL, so we'll be looking at that today. These models include:

• Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Mirkwood
• Tauriel with Elf bow
• 2 Mirkwood Ranger Captains
• 20 Mirkwood Rangers
  

Did you notice anything that was missing (besides all the armored stuff)? A lot of players like to add in a few Wood Elf Sentinels into their Lothlorien or Halls of Thranduil lists to provide some shenanigan options to their forces - and these are really good inclusions. Did we get any in the scenarios? No.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Sentinels also give an underrated bonus to the army: variability in points usage. At almost any points level, you're likely to have both Legolas and Tauriel in your list - Tauriel is one of the cheapest F6/3A heroes in the game and can reliably have at least 4 Attacks on a turn when she's able to charge two enemy models. With 3-Might-and-Strike on both her and Legolas (who picks up the Knife Fighter rule in the Legion - which I would totally pay extra for to get on every version of him), you can at least challenge most big things in the game AND fight against spam lists.

But once you get these two heroes . . . what do you do next? With only 14-point Mirkwood Rangers and 75-point Captains available to you, not coughing up points that "you just can't use" is quite hard without using weapon swaps. Having something that is 25pts doesn't SEEM like that much of a help, but spending 25pts when you would have spent 28pts can save you a little more, which allows you to turn those odd extra points into an Elven Cloak for Legolas or another guy.

With a max points value of 620pts (650 with 22 weapon swaps), I've decided on showcasing a 500-point list (in line with what we did for the Scouring of the Shire series - small books get small points levels) - here it is!