In Defense of: Gondor Battlecry Trebuchets

Hey Reader!

Photo courtesy of GamesWorkshop

Today we're continuing the In Defense Of series, and Tiberius asked me to jump in and chat about the Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet, as I thought it was the best Forces of Good siege weapon (or "Big Honkin' Things," as we also included things like chariots in our consideration) in the game, and that was controversial among our gaming group. And to be honest, this is likely controversial for your gaming group as well: most people tend to not like trebuchets. 

And I don't understand why, because I think they fix the "Minas Tirith Problem" quite nicely.

We will start by looking at why people tell you not to take this model, then we'll discuss why you should take it, and then close out by discussing how to make it work effectively in your army list.

Why NOT To Take a Trebuchet

A lot of people on the internet (both trolls and well-intentioned souls) will tell you that there's literally no reason to take a trebuchet.

Trebs are expensive for the number of crew you get, costing 80 points with no upgrades (which, complete aside, you don't need any of those) to get three dudes and a big siege engine (which is pretty standard for siege crews) that gets to fire once per turn, and can affect a maximum of 9 models (assuming you hit directly in the center of a block of infantry three ranks deep that are all shoulder-to-shoulder, striking the center target and all models within 2" of that target). And this is great, except that for the same cost Minas Tirith can take Anborn (35pts) and 5 Rangers of Gondor with spears (54pts) giving them 6 guaranteed shots with more Might Points for 1pt less. Oh, and twice as many bodies toward your break point, not to mention these dudes are all F4, whereas the trebuchet crew are F3, so if you get caught by enemy forces and have to resort to melee, the rangers are better off by far (and have spears, so they can help each other out far more easily).

And to be honest, most competitive Minas Tirith forces don't have siege weapons at all (in fact, most armies generally at the most competitive levels don't have siege weapons unless they take a legendary legion that boosts siege weapons) for precisely this reason: it's a lot of points to put into a small number of models that can't fire and move in the same turn, so you are integrating a static emplacement into your force, which is generally not ideal for a wargame centered around a variety of scenarios.

And of course, it actually gets worse than this: trebs have a 4+ to hit (so 50% of the time, on average, you miss with the treb entirely), and then they have to roll a Scatter roll (like every other siege weapon). On a 6, they hit the person you targeted, and on a 2-5 your opponent gets to choose the target (still has to be one of your opponent's models) within 6" to hit, so if you have a big block of Easterlings or Dol Amroth pikes (the ideal kinds of targets for a treb to fire at), if they have a single archer or "Red Nine" within 6" of everyone but away from the main battle line, he can be the target and you hit one person instead of a whole lot of people. At that rate (and we'll talk about wounding next), it will take a long time to make up 125pts worth of value.

And then, after determining who you hit, there's In the Ways. Now since this is a Volley Fire weapon you'd only get an In the Way against a trebuchet shot if there is something above you, or you are in base contact with a wall taller than you that is between you and the trebuchet, so it doesn't come up that often. But the fact that you might have a 50% chance of hitting terrain instead of hitting the target, after having a 50% chance to hit the target in the first place, makes trebs less attractive than, say, a 125pt slayer hero (for comparison, Legolas, Prince of Mirkwood with Armor, Horse, and Orcrist is in that category, as is Eomer with his best kit).

And once we have resolved the In the Ways and actually go to wounding people, on a 1-2 the shot fails to wound - so the model (and anyone nearby) is knocked prone, but they are 100% okay other than that. No damage done. By a massive rock. Falling on their head.

Talk about anti-climactic.

And this is to say nothing about how an enemy model can spend the entire Fight Phase dismantling the siege weapon if it is unengaged, and so in 1 turn a siege weapon could go from working to unusable for the rest of the game, which is a serious issue if you play against an army like, say, Goblin Town, Shire, Azog's Legion, Moria if it has the Watcher in the Water, or any other faction that has a special deploy option. And it doesn't address how obscuring terrain could keep you from hitting the targets you want because you can't get line of sight on them.

And with the trebuchet having a minimum range of 12", if enemies start to close on it, the trebuchet cannot fire at them like, say, a Bolt Thrower or standard archer can.

So there's a lot of reasons not to take a trebuchet - and all of them are bunk. Here's the reasons why.

Why TO Take a Trebuchet

First and foremost, the overwhelming number of concerns about the shooting potential of trebuchets is actually a critique of the myriad ways you can mitigate shooting in general in MESBG. It's a melee-heavy game: melee is highly encouraged, and any battlefield that doesn't look like the Pelennor Fields is going to dramatically mitigate shooting in general, whether you are running a trebuchet or a core of archers. The primary difference is that trebs have dramatically less In the Ways than "direct fire" shooting, which means your chances of hitting a hill, well, house, etc. are dramatically lower with a Volley Fire weapon.

In fact, shooting with a treb is dramatically more reliable than standard shooting, as people can't just place 1-2 bodies in front of a critical target to protect it from the attack by inflicting In the Ways: if you can see the target, you can shoot at them, and models between the treb and the target don't automatically create In the Ways.

Related to this, trebs are exceptional snipers for lone models moving toward objectives or running away with prizes, because if there are no other models within 6" (and this is a change from older editions of the game), on a Scatter roll of a 2-5 the opponent must still nominate the original model, as it is one of his models within the radius of the strike. So whereas in past editions trebs were horrible at shooting at lone models (like Goblin Scribes), now they are fantastic headhunters.

Oh, and furthermore, line of sight is dramatically easier to draw, as anyone in your army can give line of sight for a trebuchet. This means that, while a lot of people don't like playing maelstrom missions with siege weapons, on the first turn siege weapons on maelstrom are phenomenal because you are already setup at the start of the game (so you didn't move this turn, and thus can shoot), you can draw line of sight from any of your warbands on the table, and your opponent may not be able to target you in return depending on where they deployed (and we'll talk about keeping people from destroying your siege weapons more under "Making It Work" below, because it's easier than it seems in maelstrom missions).

And so even though yes, you only get one die roll v. many rolls for a comparable number of archers, trebs avoid a lot of winnowing down of shooting that other options suffer from (including the Avenger Bolt Thrower): it's range of 96" means that it can reach anyone on the table from anywhere (compared to the other Minas Tirith options which are all 24" range, and thus have to be pretty close to the fight or objective to assist with clearing out enemies), it avoids most In the Ways, and the S10 primary hit (plus the S5 ancillary hits against people within 2") means that your chance to wound is around 3-4+ compared to most archery which is wounding on 5-6+, so you are twice as likely to wound against all targets in the game than your comparable bowmen.

A bit of quick math to show you what this means practically: if Anborn and his 5 Rangers all fire at a D6 warrior (pretty standard in the tournament scene, but the math also works with D5 which is also very common), they have a 3+ to hit (assuming they don't move, but the math is cleaner and thus faster this way, so we'll use that), giving us 4 hits, needing a 6 to wound, so you'd assume that this an average of 0.66 wound per turn (0.5 wounds if they hit on a 4+). But that assumes no In the Ways, no moving and shooting, and no D7+ (which is also common in the tournament scene, even if only on high-priority heroes). Any of those factors drops your average wounds per turn to less than half, so less than 1 every other round.

Given a similar situation with a trebuchet, you have a 4+ to hit, giving you a 3+ to wound, plus the potential of more than one wound depending on how many models are nearby. So every turn you're doing about 0.5 wounds on average. Which keeps up with the math for bow shooting.

Sure, your ceiling is lower without luck - you probably won't hit and wound 6 people like you can with 6 bows - but let's be honest: bows don't come close to hitting their ceiling in any round either. When a Rangers of Ithilien list shows up with 30-40 bows, we don't assume there are going to be 30-40 wounds coming out. We assume there's going to be around 4 after factoring for targets within range, hits, In the Ways, and wounding rolls, and that lines up with average math. And if we're pleased with a 10% wound rate, trebs do great by comparison.

And this assumes a D5-6 target for bows: go any higher than this and your wound rate is being slashed to shreds because you're losing half or more of your 6s to actually score a wound. This means headhunting heroes, monsters, war beasts, etc., is highly unreliable with bows. But for trebs? 3s to wound unless you're Sauron or the Balrog, in which case it's 4s. I like those odds.

Furthermore, trebs have the benefit of auto-slaying: if you get wounded by that S10 initial hit and you don't 1) block it with Fate, 2) have 10+ wounds, 3) have D10, or 4) are a siege target (like a Mumak), you're removed as a casualty. Full stop. So those multi-wound heroes don't need to be hit with a treb very often to remove them: all they have to do is get an unlucky day once, and that could spell the end. It also makes this a great tool for removing slow monsters like trolls of various kinds, as even the hero trolls typically only have 1 Fate Point, so 50% chance they're gone outright.

And beyond the initial hit, the initial target and all targets within 2" are knocked prone, with the others also suffering a S5 on top of that. S5 is an important number: it means that most units in the game (D4-D7) are being wounded on 4-5s, and there's a non-zero chance (Goblin Town, Shire, Sharkey's Rogues, and Wood Elves) that you'll wound on a 3s. That's phenomenal chances to wound with ancillary hits, easily removing 2-3 models each time depending on where you can land the hit.

Oh, and for those pesky siege targets like mumaks, trebs have Wall Breaker, which means that they get to roll 2 dice to wound and select the highest. So you know what we said earlier about needing a 3+ to wound? Your chances of actually getting a wound each turn (and therefore requiring a Courage test to not stampede) is very high. This is very rare for siege weapons, and makes wounding mumaks far more reliable.

And this final points bleeds into the real reason to take these, and that is that it helps to fix the "Minas Tirith Problem": as tanky and armor-clad as Minas Tirith is, it has a serious problem with dealing wounds because all of their non-heroes - cavalry included - are only S3, which means against D6-7 armies (which are non-skirmisher armies that fight in ranks, which is the ideal opponent for a Minas Tirith force) Minas Tirith can't wound the enemy reliably in combat, either at range or up close.

Because they don't. Take. Trebs.

Trebs solve this issue: they break apart large blocks by encouraging your opponent to scatter, thereby opening themselves up to being enveloped by your infantry. For those that can't spread out (Host of the Dragon Emperor LL and Uruk pike formations, for example), they are forced to devote 1-3 dudes to sit out of combat on the off chance that the treb's shot can be diverted to them instead of landing directly onto the intended target (which, with 1 Might Point on your siege veteran, is surprisingly easier to pull off than most people think).

Trebs are also fantastic for punishing cavalry formations, as the Knock Prone for the target and anyone within 2" of it means they are dismounted, suffer the Knocked Flying result (so another S3 chance at damage on top of the S10 or S5 hit), and your opponent just lost things that cost points even if they don't lose the rider. And with most cavalry being D4-6, you're wounding on 4-5s basically all the time unless it's a really big hero like Dain on a boar.

Oh - and did we mention how many of the common mounted heroes only have 1 Fate Point? Every Rohan hero that is not Eomer, Dernhelm/Eowyn, and Eorl the Young only has 1 Fate Point. Hurin the Tall, Captains of various kinds, and Kings of Men for Minas Tirith only have 1 Fate Point. Almost every non-Ringwraith/non-Suladan mounted combat hero for Forces of Evil only has 1 Fate Point. So 3+ to wound, and then a 50/50 chance that they're gone entirely? Good odds. Better than the archers everyone talks about.

Trebs are also a great way to deal with palanquins: per the text of the palanquin, it is 1) a mount (ergo you need Horse Lord to spend Fate on its behalf), and 2) it specifies that all shooting has a 66% chance of hitting it instead of the rider...which is precisely what we want! We want that sweet, sweet wound on 3+, auto-kill, no Fate to save it goodness! And what's more, the base of the palanquin is huge, and since it's the initial target, all models within 2" of that massive base are knocked prone. And suffer that S5 hit. Oh - and the Dragon Emperor is still within range (as dismounted models are placed in base contact with the base), so he's knocked prone and suffers the S5 hit as well. Delicious.

Trebs also do setup work for you as well as board control by changing how your opponent deploys and moves, but also by allowing you to knock targets prone in advance of a cavalry charge or the clash of your infantry blocks, thereby further reducing your chances of taking damage while also increasing your odds of dealing damage to the enemy. Again, it sets you up to fix the #1 issue that Minas Tirith faces: slaying power.

But perhaps the greatest benefit from trebs (other than that they just look awesome) is that trebuchets setup your heroes for victory. Spread out enemies are not going to fare well against Boromir (or heck, even mounted Faramir or Hurin, if you need a budget slayer). Protecting trebuchets from being tagged by enemies is easy with Ingold (who comes in the set with Hurin, by the way). Deploying people in maelstrom near your trebs gets easier if you have Madril. The hero choices for Minas Tirith synergize very well with trebs, making for an effective combination that covers their weaknesses while pairing up their strengths.

Making It Work

So, to sum it up, how do we make trebs pull their weight? Five things.

• First, get two. This is more commonly done in Europe, but double trebs means on average you're getting to roll for Scatter and damage every turn. It also means that you have more threats for the enemy to deal with, and you can either keep them together (I would) or spread them out to make it harder to tag both of them.
• Second, think through cheap Fortitude or higher heroes to pair with them. My current plan for 800+ pt tournaments (heads up, TMAT gang!) is two trebs, Ingold, Madril, and a heavy hitter like Hurin, as that will give me slaying power, staying power, deployment control, and plenty of Might to solve problems, plus we meet the requirement of at least 2 Fortitude or higher heroes to field our 2 siege weapons.
• Get lots of bodies. In this case, I'm looking at Warriors of Minas Tirith/Osgiliath Veterans (depending on whether I use Hurin or the Sons of Denethor) plus some Rangers of Gondor, but there are other ways you can get bodies to pump up your numbers to protect your trebs and keep you from being broken. Historical alliances give you access to Rohan, and Rohan Outriders on foot supported by some charge cavalry and a steady mid-range hero makes for a great asset alongside trebuchets. If you're willing to give up your +1 Courage army bonus, 200pts of hobbits can get you about 30 bodies under Merry and Pippin (a thematic team-up for helping Minas Tirith out), which is a fantastic screen standing 12" out from your trebs (thus allowing your trebs to fire without enemies entering their minimum range). Woses are also an option for relatively cheap infantry that can hold the enemy at bay. But you'll need bodies - make sure you have enough numbers to keep you safe.
• Protect them. You need to make sure enemies can't end their Move Phase in base contact with the treb to dismantle it. Depending on the army you're fighting (and whether the enemy can come in on your back board edge), you need to keep a solid defensive line 12" away from your trebs (so that people can't sneak into your minimum range), and control zones/bases to keep people coming in from the back board edge and tagging the siege weapon. I recommend putting your treb crew around the back of the treb to protect it from immediate danger, and since you can draw line of sight from anyone in your army, you don't need them to be up front to see the enemy. So just put them in the back: it's harder to remove the crew, and it protects the weapon. Win-win all around.
• And finally, don't forget you need exploiting units: people that can rush in and take advantage of the opportunities your trebs create. This means Knights of Minas Tirith, mounted heroes, and/or Heroic March to get your infantry blocks into position to deal with enemy forces once they've been knocked prone. Trebs will provide great supporting fire for you; just make sure that their work is being maximized for value.

Conclusion

Do I think the treb is the best model in the Minas Tirith range? No - not by a long shot. Do I think a lot of people go "meh" to it without really thinking about what it offers? Yes - and it's a loss for them. And in the coming months when we have our next 800+ pt tournament, I plan to prove exactly that. Watch me fail, :P

Until next time, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"(Your teacher) is a human...and is therefore blinkered and fettered by the limitations of your kind." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix