Nemesis: How To Fight The Balrog

Good morning gamers,

We're kicking off a new series here at TMAT today: Nemesis! I've been planning this series for a while now and it was born, actually, out of the In Defense Of series (where we take models that lots of players think are worthless or "bad" and explore how valuable they can be/how to make them work).

Nemesis tries to do something similar: we're going to be looking at models that lots of players say are "too good" or "unfun" or "unfair" or "overpowered" or "pick-your-favorite-phrase-that-means-there's-something-insanely-too-good-about-it" and explore how to beat those models. Sometimes these models will have a Legendary Legion, an army bonus, or an alliance that causes them to go from "fine/fair" to "too good/overpowered" and when that's the case, we'll flag it in the article.

Our first stop happens to be one of my favorite models and one that, when run well, can REALLY ruin your day. Yes, it's Devin Moreno's least favorite model in the game: the Balrog. This guy is not only one of the most expensive models in the game (and tied for most expensive model available to the Moria faction), but he's also the figurehead of one of the most feared Evil Legendary Legions in the game. Let's see what's up with this big guy that makes playing against him so unfun.

What Makes The Balrog So Hated?

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community 

The Balrog begins with unparalleled stats: he's F10 (innately higher than any other model in the game), he's S9/D9 (so Rending doesn't help enemy monsters wound him more easily and he's wounded on 6s or worse by basically everything in the game), he's got 4 Attacks (on-par with most big heroes when they're mounted and on the charge, better than most other heroes), 10 Wounds (less than Smaug, sure, but on-par with Mumaks and better than anyone else), 10 Will and Resistant to Magic (because locking down monsters with magic is a good idea), and C7 with Fearless (because, you know, why not have both).  His only real "down-side" in his core stats is his 6" movement, which is "fine" on a 60mm base, but can mean that getting his positioning requires some thinking. Not having any Might points or Fate points is also a knock to the profile, but as we'll see in a moment, there are mitigations for this.

His special rules help him out quite a bit not only in the movement/positioning department, but also in keeping him from getting some unfavorable match-ups. He's got the ability to use his fiery lash as an 8" S7 throwing weapon (with a 3+ shoot value base, he'll hit on either a 3+ or a 4+ depending on whether he's charging into someone while shooting with it or moving and shooting with it) that can bring enemy models that are hit but not killed into base contact with him (so he fights even if he can't charge something). He's also got a flaming sword, which means he can use the Feint special strike if he knows his opponent won't be above F6 (really making that F10 work for him - and it's something that no one else that's F8+ innately can do).

His other special rules give him a 12" auto-pass-Courage-tests rule for friendly Moria Goblin models (great for making that C2 across your grunts not a problem - as well as auto-passing Stand Fasts with your Goblin heroes), the awful pairing of Terror with Ancient Evil (you need to test for Courage to charge him and he applies a -1 Courage penalty to enemy models within 18" of him), the other awful pairing of Resistant to Magic and 10 Will points for shutting down enemy spells, and immunity to being disarmed and fire-based attacks/special rules (which includes the fiery lashes and flaming swords of other Balrogs, interestingly enough - though I don't think it makes him immune to Rending by an enemy Balrog . . .).

He can't be insta-killed by insta-kill rules, but only takes half of his wounds (so it takes two insta-kill wounds to kill him - unless it's a Dragon's Breathe Fire attack, in which case he takes nothing per the note above) and he gets to call a free Heroic Combat each turn. This, paired with the F10, is often the reason people complain about the Balrog - not only is he insanely hard to beat in combat if he gets a 6-high on his dueling roll, but you can't just throw one guy into him to keep him from smashing everything.

Finally, an underappreciate rule he has is that any model that suffers a wound from the Balrog but isn't killed rolls a D6: on a 6, the model is Set Ablaze (instant S9 hit and a S5 hit at the end of every turn until they put the fire out, which requires going prone and crawling or walking through water). Yes, this doesn't come up very often - very few things can stand against the Balrog's fury, but if you take only a scratch, the chance of take collateral damage from him repeatedly is enough to scare anyone.

But the Depths of Moria Legendary Legion takes all of this a few steps further: in addition to granting the 12" auto-pass-Courage-tests, the Depths of Moria Legion makes Goblins within 6" of the Balrog get +1 Fight Value (instead of when they're fighting a trapped opponent like Moria gets normally with its army bonus). Whether it's F3 Goblin Warriors/Blackshields or F4 Goblin Prowlers/Captains, a Moria horde is suddenly a lot scarier wherever the Balrog is fighting. Furthermore, their Drums become battlefield wide instead of within 12-18" of the drum AND count as banners for the purposes of victory points, which makes their Goblins far more dangerous (and the drums can be hidden safely out of sight).

From a Victory Points perspective, the Legion not only makes those out-of-reach Drums count as banners for the purposes of VPs in three of the scenarios, but in order to get VPs for breaking the army, you'll need to deal at least 5 Wounds to the Balrog. Did I mention he's F10/4A and D9/10 Wounds? Kill as many Goblins as you like - until you deal with the big guy, that army isn't breaking (and in those scenarios where the game can randomly end when one army breaks, you could have just the Balrog left on one side and the game . . . won't . . . end . . . yeah, I've come back to win those games a time or two).

Finally, you know how the Balrog might randomly set you Ablaze if he wounds you but doesn't kill you? Well, in the Legion, you're able to start off with the "Shadow" rule in play, which makes the Balrog get hit on a 5+ from shooting attacks instead of whatever the normal difficulty would be (more applicable for siege engines than anything else, but still useful if enemy siege engines are nowhere to be seen) - and when you're tired of having that rule up, you can swap it for the ". . . and Flame" rule, which allows you to select an enemy model within 3" at the start of any Shoot Phase to be Set Ablaze on a 2+. Yes, that's right - you can deal a S9 hit BEFORE you get to attempt a 4+ Fiery Lash attack . . . yep, grown heroes cry when this happens.

So, the Balrog is a nasty bit of kit, eh? He is - but like all things in MESBG, there are several strategies you can use to deal with him (especially and specifically in the context of his Legion). Let's talk about a few of those now.

How Do You Fight Back Against The Balrog?

Let's start by clearing up a misconception: just because you have no big heroes in your army doesn't mean you're safe from the Balrog. If you're fighting against most multiple-caster lists (say 2+ Ringwraiths - or heck, 5+ Ringwraiths), having a bunch of budget heroes and a bucket of grunts can really reduce the caster's utility. Not so with the Balrog: because he can call a free Heroic Combat and use that movement to reposition and get a Hurl in (you can only use one Brutal Power Attack each turn - but a Combat isn't a BPA, so you can do both), even a sea of grunts could end up being torn apart by the Balrog - and he doesn't even need to KILL models with the Hurl. Nope, he just needs to get them on the ground so they a) can't kill anything this round, b) won't be standing up/moving very far next round, and c) will double the wounding dice of any Goblin spearmen who were supporting a Goblin that's now on the ground because of the Hurl. Yep, don't trust to "just having lots of guys" - the Balrog loves those fights more than most monsters.

But having lots of models does lead to our first strategy: trap the Balrog. The Balrog is incredibly hard to beat in combat and wound - but doubling your wounding dice (and making sure you have more dueling dice than him) is a great way to dealing damage to him. In some scenarios, breaking the enemy force is worth a lot of VPs (3-5 VPs in two scenarios, 1-3 VPs in most of the other sixteen), so you can't just avoid him. When taking him head-on, you don't want a single, brave hero (most of the time) to do it: you want a strike team of heroes (and usually warriors) to gang up on the guy, trap him, and then deal at least 5 wounds to him.

Another common misconception: you can't just tag the Balrog with 5 models. The idea behind this is solid: you can prevent his free Heroic Combat from going off by making it so he can't actually kill everything he's in combat with. This makes some sense - but if the Balrog gets to choose his own fights, he's probably not killing more than four models anyway (unless there's a Hurl involved - and the number of wounds dealt by the Hurl itself is highly dependent on the Defense rating of the enemy). Plus, most of the time, the Balrog is perfectly happy to be killing 4 models/turn, even if they're grunts. Why? Because with his massive horde around him, he's slowly marching you closer and closer to breaking - and if he hasn't taken 5 Wounds, he can break you without being broken himself. And if you don't have any Wounds on him at all, then you're also not scoring any Leader VPs. Most Depths of Moria LL players will welcome this strategy.

Furthermore, the more models you swarm into the Balrog, the more options he has from the get-go to have a good Hurl line - he may not need to succeed with the Combat at all (he just needs to go before an unsuspecting hero who happens to be in a good Hurl arc). Swarming to trap has its merits, but it also has innate risks. Instead of just feeding models to the Balrog, a legitimate way of dealing with him is actually to do the opposite: charge the Balrog with one model who has Heroic Defense. Heroic Defense makes the Balrog wound on natural 6s - which doesn't do as much as it would against other heroes because the Balrog has no Might and no bonuses To Wound. However, when you're S9 with Rend, you don't really NEED bonuses to Wound - you can wound anything that isn't a S8+ monster on 3s! Well, turn that into natural 6s and suddenly the Balrog has a roughly 50% chance of getting one wound each turn when he manages to win. If you're stalling him out for a bunch of turns, then the rest of his army should be driven back, giving your power heroes the space they need to knock some wounds off him.

Keep in mind, however, that using Heroic Defense heroes to stall the Balrog is a temporary solution - it's not going to work for the whole game. You want VPs for breaking the enemy and wounding the army leader - and you can get both by actually tackling the Balrog with good units. You do need to focus on that - but you might not need to do it right away (or stay at it for very long). Carve up some of the grunts around him, make a space for one good fight against him, get some wounds in, then continue to stall for as long as you can. And always, always, ALWAYS be aware of what a Barge can do (as it's a sure-fire way of dealing with Heroic Defense heroes who don't beat the Balrog's roll).

Our third strategy is, admittedly, a niche way of dealing with the Balrog: get a Ringbearer into him. It turns out that if you have a Ringbearer in your army, dealing with models that are higher than F5 is quite easy assuming you have a F6+ hero in your army: since a Ringbearer wearing the Ring (excluding Sauron, of course) halves the Fight Value of the enemy model (making the Balrog F5), having a Ringbearer and any F6 hero in the fight can give you the Fight Value advantage - and if you have Might on one or both of those heroes to boost their rolls, getting a 6 with the higher Fight Value is pretty easy. For a case-in-point, check out my Fantasy Fellowship journey from this year.

Now some Ringbearers are better than others - Isildur, for example, pairs F6 innately with the One Ring, so he can solo the Balrog if he can just get a 6 on his dueling roll (or a higher roll if the Balrog doesn't get a 6 himself). While he COULD solo the Balrog, he's probably rewarded for having some friends in the fight as well in order to increase his chances of getting a 6-high.

The Young Bilbo Baggins profiles have F3 and Heroic Strike, but are often fielded alongside a F6 hero, so their need to Strike is limited. They also have Heroic Defense if you'd like to go that route instead (making the Ringbearer who's neutering the Balrog's Fight Value harder to kill in one gulp). Frodo Baggins also has Heroic Defense and is often fielded with a F6 hero (or a F3-5 + Strike hero in the Rangers of Ithilien LL). Gollum is only F4, but he's often fielded with the Goblin King and they would have a good chance of whacking off some wounds for sure.

The most vulnerable of the Ringbearers is Old Bilbo Baggins (if fielded in the Shire or the Rivendell army lists). This version of Bilbo has no Heroic Strike or Heroic Defense and only has 1 Might point. If he's fielded in Rivendell, he's likely got a F6+ hero larking about (they're basically all F6+). If he's in the Fellowship, he's probably got a F5 Gandalf or an allied Aragorn (or both) who can support him. While the Ringbearers may differ in effectiveness, they are one of the things I fear the most when I'm fielding the Balrog - especially if I can't pull that F6 hero out of the fight with my warriors (and Isildur is by far and away the worst of the lot in this respect).

Tiberius's Top 5 Models To Counter The Balrog

So what kinds of units (and in some cases groups of models) can we use to employ these principles? Let's look at a few of them here - and yes, we're actually going to look at seven profiles because I can't help myself.

Honorable Mention: Tom Bombadil

You know, there are very few big models who want to see Tom Bombadil on the other side of the board - his 15 Will Points are incredibly valuable, as they can replenish lost wounds/Might/Will/Fate on friendly heroes, pluck wounds off Spirit heroes, and are used when Tom Bombadil fights (where he always wins but no one strikes any wounds). Against the Balrog, these three things are particularly nasty because a) Tom Bombadil can keep the heroes near him from running out of Might with Refreshing Song, can remove negative effects with the same spell (I think that cancels Set Ablaze?), has Banishment to pluck a wound off the Balrog to score some leader VPs if a lucky cast gets through on a 3+ difficulty, and can keep the Balrog from winning fights if he charges him.

But even if Tom Bombadil just stands near the Balrog, he has some value: friendly models within 3" of him automatically pass any Courage tests they have to make, so the Terror/Ancient Evil thing is not a factor - and any model that would be Hurled or Barged towards him has to stop 1" away with no effect on Tom himself. With a 1" control zone that the Balrog cannot enter unless Tom allows, he becomes effectively a 3" piece of impassible terrain - something that a 6" move 60mm base model REALLY doesn't want to have anywhere near him. Yep, Tom Bombadil is great in this role . . .

. . . but there are also very few models as hated as Tom Bombadil (more on him in a later post). Tom and his beautiful wife Goldberry are the ultimate cheat codes and saying, "You can beat the Balrog by just taking Tom" didn't seem like a fitting way to begin this series. So, I've listed him here because he is, in fact, a good counter to the Balrog - but some tournaments don't allow him to be used and some armies won't be able to fit a 160pt hero in with everything else they want to run.

Dishonorable Mention: Barrow-Wights

So, I have to mention these guys because . . . my Balrog lost to seven of them in a TMAT Challenge we did back in 2020. No one in their right minds would run seven Barrow-Wights in Matched Play (except maybe me, Centaur, and Sharbie - but that'd just be mean, right?), but I ran four of them earlier in the year and I feel like the Balrog still doesn't feel good when facing that many of them if they have two full rounds of throwing spells at him. He might outlast them, but if he spends any time on the ground and a big nasty Angmar model charges into him (like a Wild Warg Chieftain or Gulavhar or the Witch-King with the Crown of Morgul and a Morgul Blade on a Fell Beast) . . . yeah I don't feel good about that. These guys won't be very effective Terror-providing caddies since the Balrog will provide auto-passing of Courage tests, but they're definitely a threat since they will employ their nasty Paralyze spell to deplete the Balrog's Will store quickly (or just get lucky with a low roll from him to resist).

Frankly, however, you have to run a very niche kind of Angmar list to have this kind of effect - most Angmar players would love to run the Gulavhar/Witch-King combo, which usually means there's 0-2 Barrow-Wights in the list (dependent on points level and the desire for an Angmar Orc Captain). If you like spamming Barrow-Wights as I/Sharbie do, however, this is a perfectly legitimate counter to the Balrog. Now on to more reasonable counters . . .

Pick #5: Gorulf Ironskin

One of the recommendations I made for dealing with the Balrog is to have someone with Heroic Defense stall for a while - and there are very few models in the game who can call free Heroic Defenses every turn. Gorulf Ironskin from the Isengard list (or the Army of Dunland Legendary Legion) gets to call a free Heroic Defense whenever he's engaged with an enemy hero - and the Balrog certainly qualifies. With 3 Attacks and 3 Might points base, if the Balrog doesn't get a 6-high, he can probably boost his roll to beat the Balrog once or twice. When he beats the Balrog, his innate S5 means he's wounding on 6s (not 6/4+ like most Heroic Defense heroes will), so he's got a decent chance to sneak in a wound on the Balrog too! This is going to be a stalling tactic (and is unlikely to end up with a dead Balrog at the feet of Gorulf), but sacrificing a 70pt hero to slow down a model that costs five times that much seems like a pretty good option to me.

Pick #4: Thrydan Wolfsbane on the charge while mounted WITH Saruman

Thrydan doesn't have Heroic Defense, but he has two things going for him. First and foremost, he's got 3 Might points to boost his rolls and he's got Mighty Blow so every wound he deals to the Balrog becomes 2 Wounds! While you can run Thrydan with Gorulf in the Army of Dunland Legendary Legion, I think you're better off having Gorulf call Heroic Defenses while supported by a Wild Man of Dunland (who auto-passes Courage Tests while near the Wild Man Oathmaker). In an Isengard list, if run with Saruman, you can start hammering the Balrog with Immobilize spells from 18" away with Saruman and then sail in with Thrydan on a turn when the Balrog is Immobilized to get in some quick damage.

You don't want to Strike with Thrydan if you're fighting an Immobilized Balrog - the Balrog can't do any damage on a turn when he's Immobilized and you don't want to risk calling a Strike and then getting below F10 (more likely than not when you start from F5). Furthermore, if the Balrog whiffs and gets a 4-high or a 5-high, you wouldn't need to call a Strike to beat him that turn anyway - you'd want that Might to boost your roll instead (something you might not be able to do with a trigger-happy Strike habit). Nope, two-hand with Thrydan, get a trap in if you can, and then when you get to the wounding roll, watch as the wounds roll in.

Unlike Gorulf, Thrydan can wound the Balrog really well - with innate S5 (wound on 6s), a two-handed axe (wound on 5s), and hopefully some Might points, your hope is to have three successful wounding rolls in a single round (possible if you're mounted and on the charge, more likely to occur if you've got six dice from a trap). Those three wounds will turn into six wounds, which means you can ignore the Balrog from then on (you've got the leader wounding VPs and you can break the enemy force normally). Of course, if you HAPPEN to Immobilize him again, you could charge in to try to finish him off . . . I mean, why not, right?

For anyone who thinks this is unrealistic, I've done it several times - when it works, it works. Gorulf might be a cut above Thrydan+Saruman, but he's never going to kill the Balrog. You can certainly have a decent swing at it with this combo. Combos are tricky since you may not be able to guarantee that they're working together - for a more complete package, I give you . . .

Pick #3: Isildur with the One Ring

Isildur is ridiculously cheap - 120pts base with the option for a shield (5pts) and a horse (10pts) is bananas when you're getting a F6/S5/3A/3 Might hero on offense and a D7 (before the shield bonus is added)/3 Wound/2 Fate hero - I mean, he's roughly equivalent to Eomer for roughly the same cost. Not bad at all. Pair this with the Ring, however, and you get a monstrocity like little else in Middle-Earth: a F6 hero who halves your Fight Value.

For me, however, it's the S5 and the option to go two-handed that makes Isildur awesome. If he were S4 (like most heroes of men), he'd be wounding the Balrog on a 6/4+ (5/3+ if he were two-handing - which most people don't do). That wouldn't be great. But he's S5 - that means 6s if he wounds normally and 5s if he two-hands! If you thought Thrydan was a good pick (and he is), Isildur has a similar wounding difficult without Mighty Blow - but also without the need to call a Strike or fight against an Immobilized foe in order to have a good chance of coming out alive. With C6 (and the optional ability to ally with Cirdan + any Fortitude+ Rivendell hero to auto-pass Courage tests), Isildur is pretty much the perfect model for countering the Balrog . . .

. . . unless he rolls a 1-2 during the Priority Phase for whether his player has control of him during the round. If you have control of Isildur, he's amazing - and if you lose control of him (especially over multiple turns), you're more likely to have him wandering off somewhere behind your lines and away from the action instead of into the big nasties you want him to deal with. More concerning would be the situation where you've burned through all your Might and the Evil player makes you take the Ring OFF right next to the Balrog . . . yeah, then he's not so great. Isildur's good, but he's not winning today. For a more controlled method of dealing with the Balrog, I recommend to you . . .

Pick #2: Castellans of Dol Guldur with Morgul Blades (or any model with an insta-kill rule and S5+)

I've left this one open-ended a bit, but we're going to focus on Castellans. Yes, there are other models who can insta-kill (the King of the Dead, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, the Witch-King of Angmar with a Morgul Blade, most siege weapons), but Castellans are the only ones that can be run en masse - and they can even be run WITH the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (though you're only likely to see them both if you're running the Rise of the Necromancer Legendary Legion).

If you want the full break-down of why Castellans are so great, you should read Rythbyrt's article on Castellans in our In Defense Of series - it's really good. Here's the skinny with the Balrog specifically in mind: first and foremost, Morgul Blades on a S5 model require only two 6s to be rolled for a 45pt Castellan to kill a full-stat Balrog. Your likelihood of getting two 6s on two dice is quite low - but if you have a trap (or have two Castellans with Morgul Blades and no trap), you have a 50% chance of getting at least one six - which is enough to break the enemy normally (something Castellans are perfectly happy to do). Once you get one 6, the Balrog needs to be careful because any other lucky 6 from another Morgul Blade will kill him - YIKES!

If the Balrog beats these guys . . . well, they have 12 Will Points that they can use as Fate points (though functionally they probably have 8-10 to use, since they need to spend 1 Will each turn they fight him and they need 1 Will to stay alive). With the Balrog wounding on 3s (rerolling 1s if he Feints - which he should if it's "just Castellans" in his fight), he will probably deal 3-4 wounds to ONE Castellan each time he wins - but this could clear out 3-8 Will on the Castellan. In short, he'll probably only kill 2-3 Castellans over 3 turns - and BOY is that not a good return on his investment. Yes, he might Barge these guys out of his way, but keep enough of them near him and where else is he going to go?

If you're facing the Rise of the Necromancer Legendary Legion, you do run the risk of having the Necromancer in your fight as well - and if he channels Shroud of Shadows on himself, he's a F7 hero who halves the Fight Values of those he's facing. If his two attacks (wounding on 6s - unless he calls Heroic Strength, which would wound on 5s or 4s) can score two wounds - and if any Castellans are in the same fight, you may not need two wounds from him - that's a dead Balrog. 1 Might to channel a spell on yourself (and also being able to spend a pile of Will as Fate points to keep you from taking any damage)? Yeah, this seems really one-sided.

Siege Weapons could be limited in their effectiveness with the "Shadow" rule in play - and there's probably a mess of Goblins that can be scattered onto - but they're definitely effective if they can hit him. Similarly, the King of the Dead pairs Drain Soul (insta-killing) with Blades of the Dead (wounding against the Courage stat) - and if he's got his Harbinger of Evil rule (army bonus or the Return of the King Legendary Legion), he'll wound the Balrog on 5s. Getting two 5s on two dice isn't that likely, but it's a far cry easier if he's got Aragorn near him. Speaking of which . . .

Pick #1: Any version of Aragorn with Anduril (but most especially Elessar)

Yep, Aragorn's at the top - free Heroic Strikes/Defenses each turn gives you two options of dealing with the Balrog (and my Balrog has been chopped up no less than six times by some variant of Aragorn belonging to Centaur, Rythbyrt, or my son Gorgoroth). Even when he loses, with 3 Wounds/3 Fate, he can usually take one in the teeth and still be ready for another go on the following round.

But it's Anduril that makes the difference here: Aragorn CAN call a Heroic Strike, but he can also call a Heroic Defense, counting on his Might points to be used to boost his rolls since he can wound on 4s with Anduril (3s if he two-hands - which you can do if you want). While a good day for Thrydan can lead to the Balrog taking a lot of wounds in one round, there are NO models in the game without an insta-kill rule that can crank out the wounds that Aragorn does without the fear of tacking a bunch of damage in return.

My Balrog has fought a lot of stuff - in one tournament I got to face Elrond + the Twins in one round, Treebeard with Legolas/Gimli in another round, and Aragorn + the Twins in the third round - and I tell you what, fighting three Elves (one of whom gets +1 To Wound me because I'm a spirit model) is scary, but I almost killed two of them. Fighting Treebeard was really scary . . . until Legolas and Treebeard got killed because both of them can be wounded on 3s or 4s once their Might is gone. Fighting Aragorn and the Twins was really scary - and my Balrog actually died in that round BECAUSE of Anduril. The rest of the time, my Balrog lived - beat up in both cases, but still alive. If Anduril's coming for this dark demon, he's going down (unless that particular Aragorn chooses to be a diva, like mine always does).

Final Thought: The Knight of Umbar

I made a comment a while ago about the Knight of Umbar and his effectiveness against the Balrog: usually the Knight of Umbar's Combat Mimicry isn't very good, since you copy someone's stats at the start of the Fight Phase (and a Heroic Strike or Heroic Strength isn't resolved until the fight begins . . . so you might copy someone's F6 stat and then they surge above that). The Balrog is the one model who . . . well, isn't going to change his stats. A F5/S4/1 Attack model doesn't have much chance of beating the Balrog normally, but if that same model can suddenly become a F10/S9/4 Attack model for the low-low price of 1 Will point, that seems worth it.

I didn't put him on the list today because while his offensive stats gives him no worse than a 50/50 chance of winning the fight, his defensive stats remain unchanged - so if the Balrog wins, he can Rend this guy on 3s and probably slap him to death in a single blow (three 3s on four dice seems pretty likely). If he has help, maybe he'll be fine . . . if he doesn't have help, though, he's hoping to get a better roll or he's gone.

Sample Lists

There were lots of lists you could build with countering the Balrog in mind - and I've chosen to pick a few that I think are pretty competitive against threats other than the Balrog (but can still deal with the Balrog effectively). I've written a post recently on Castellan spams - and have a list from our GT that had Barrow-Wight spams - so I'm going to steer clear of those today. Our first look will be at a 700-point list with two models in our primary categories from today - Aragorn, King Elessar and the King of the Dead:

• Aragorn, King Elessar on armored horse [ARMY LEADER]
• 12 Guards of the Fountain Court with shields
• 6 Rangers of Gondor
  
• HISTORICAL ALLY - The Dead of Dunharrow: The King of the Dead
• 12 Warriors of the Dead with shields
  

700 points, 32 models, 6 bows hitting on a 3+, 26 D6+ models, 1 cavalry + Mighty Hero and Heroic March, 4+ Might

This is one of those lists you don't see a lot competitively - but it's actually an interesting alternative to the Return of the King Legendary Legion: Aragorn has a 6" banner that affects himself and his Minas Tirith blokes, you get roughly the same numbers because the cheaper Minas Tirith models offset Elessar's increased cost, and you've got a F3/D8 front line with F4/D7 spearmen to back them up. Oh, and we have 6 bows just because - you could turn these into cavalry if you wanted to, but I like having models that can sit back on objectives.

You could make the army cheaper/slightly-bigger if you opted for Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears as your second line - those that are in shieldwall will be D7, but you'd lose the F4 that the Guards of the Fountain Court are bringing to bear. Still, with 24pts to work with, you could add another Warrior of the Dead with shield, drop a spear, and upgrade two of your spearmen into Knights of Minas Tirith. Is 33 models/slightly more mobility better than F4? I don't think so. If you don't HAVE 12 Guards of the Fountain Court, though, I think it's worth at least trying once.

Our second list goes a more traditional "Last Alliance" route at 700 points, getting to 35 models and including the awesome pairing of Isildur with Cirdan for dealing with the Balrog (and a High Elf Captain in two for March/running over Goblins):

• Isildur on horse with shield [ARMY LEADER]
• 6 Warriors of Numenor with shields
• 4 Warriors of Numenor with shields and spears
  
• 5 Warriors of Numenor with bows and spears
  
• HISTORICAL ALLY - Rivendell: High Elf Captain on horse with shield, Elf bow, and lance
• 3 High Elf Warriors with shields
• 2 High Elf Warriors with shields and spears
• 1 High Elf Warrior with shield, spear, and banner
• 2 High Elf Warriors with Elf bow
• 2 High Elf Warriors with Elf bow and spear
• 2 Rivendell Knights with shields
  
• HISTORICAL ALLY - Rivendell: Cirdan
• 3 High Elf Warriors with shields
• 3 High Elf Warriors with shields and spears
  

700 points, 36 models, 6 Elf bows hitting on a 3+ AND 5 bows hitting on a 4+, 16 D6+ models, 4 cavalry + 2 Might and Heroic March, 6 Might

I opted here to mount Isildur - I usually don't because I try to get him locked in with the Ring on early, but the movement he gets (and the positioning power that comes with that movement) is really nice. If you don't want to give him a horse, you can upgrade 1 High Elf Warrior with Elf bow and spear into a Rivendell Knight with shield for the exact same cost. We've maxed out our model count at 36, have a good auric hero to support our infantry block in Cirdan, we have some cavalry to rack up kills quickly (including two heroes), and a hero who can solo the Balrog (once dismounted and once he has the Ring on) if we run into him.

If you read our article on Last Alliance list building last year, you'll see in the comments section a lot of people recommending Isildur with Erestor and Cirdan at 600 points - and this combo ranked really high at Ardacon this year. While I'm not going to say that's a bad list, I opted for the ability to call Heroic March in my list - yes, I could have saved 20pts (and probably gotten a second banner) by running Erestor, but frankly I want the option to move my predominantly D5 infantry up the field a little faster. It was a choice - critique me if you must.

Conclusion

Well, that was long - but hopefully you enjoyed it! If you have other tricks that you've tried out against the Balrog, let us know in the comments below! Also, if you don't think I gave the Balrog a good shake, let me know that too (there are counters he can do to many of these shenanigans, but they've all worked against MY Balrog, so they're at least semi-legitimate strategies). In our next post, we're sticking with the theme of big, nasty monsters and tackling Gulavhar. This is one of the nastiest flying monsters in the game - and he's a staple at higher points levels for Angmar players everywhere (well, those that can get their hands on the model). What do you do if you see him on the other side of the table? Find out next time - until then, happy hobbying!