Thoughts on the War in Rohan Siege Scenarios

Good morning gamers,

The Matched Play scenarios give players a lot of different ways to play an MESBG game - with eighteen scenarios in the Matched Play Guide, you can have scenarios where you try to control parts of the board, kill off certain heroes, or "just kill things." No matter what your preferred style of play is, there's a scenario that's probably going to work out well for you.

But the one kind of scenario that isn't available in Matched Play is a siege scenario. There are rules for fighting sieges in the main rulebook and additional rules that were provided in the War in Rohan supplement, which included two scenarios - but the Matched Play experience is siege-free, and I think most players like it that way. I mean, the walls can make things really one-sided, right?

Well, I decided to test this theory by running a tournament using the siege rules/scenarios provided in the War in Rohan book (with a few modifications) and after MANY games of defending walls and villages (and attacking them), I have quite a few thoughts on how siege games work, what really doesn't work in a siege game, and ideas for how to take what GW has given us and turn it into a fun tournament-play experience. Let's dig in!

Siege Scenarios

There are two siege scenarios in the War in Rohan supplement - one for attacking a wall-less village (Defend the Village) and one for attacking a city with a wall (The Grand Siege). The fact that there are two scenarios you can play (one with a wall, one without one) is incredibly good, as it allows all-cavalry armies to participate in siege events without having to worry about dismounting to carry battering rams or climbing walls.

If you plan to run a siege event, I would highly recommend that you change the scoring requirements - the Grand Siege scenario is not optimized for event play and minor tweaks to the Defend the Village scenario would be recommended as well (though they are much less necessary).

Scenario Rules: Defend the Village

The setup for this scenario is simple - place five buildings on one half of the board to represent a village for the defending army to protect. The defender can start up to half way up the board (aka, in the village), while the attacker can start up to 12" from the opposite board edge. This gives some space for both armies to maneuver - and the board is incredibly easy to set up. The scenario awards 2 VPs to either side for each building that is either burning (VPs to the attacker) or not burning (VPs to the defender). This gives the players 10 VPs to fight over during the game, which is very similar to a game of Capture and Control.

The only change I'd make to the Defend the Village scenario is that you award 1 VP for breaking the enemy and 1 VP for dealing at least one wound to the enemy army leader. These additional scoring categories makes it so that one side can get a draw if they can't get to everywhere in the village (two buildings burning + wounding the army leader + breaking the enemy can get you 6 VPs, which would tie the 6 VPs the defender might have for having three standing buildings), but also encourages whatever side has more buildings working for them to go for the leader-wound or the army-break to ensure a win. In short, this encourages both sides to continue playing the game . . . which is the whole point of a good scenario.

Scenario Rules: The Grand Siege

The Grand Siege scenario is incredibly cool and just requires a wall on one side (roughly 12" away from one board edge) for the defender to deploy in, and a 12" deployment zone on the other side of the board for the attacker. If you have walls (or something you can roughly approximate as walls), this is also easy to construct (though constructing 48" of walls is tedious in my experience). If you're new to the game, I'd start with hedges or low walls with an open gap to serve as the "gate" (or make your own simple gate) and have models fight across it - it won't feel as grand as a proper castle siege, but the terrain is easy to use (and if made in 6" segments, it's easy to use as scatter terrain in Matched Play and can be useful in other siege games in the future - more on this in a bit).

The wall is comprised of a gate (which is said to be in the center of the wall - but if it's close to the center, it's fine) and wall pieces (towers are optional). The main rulebook has rules for siege ladders and battering rams which were unchanged in the War in Rohan discussion of sieges, so we'll get into how those work a little later, but know that the general way you were supposed to try to break into the fortress was "through the gate" or "over the walls." War in Rohan did provide additional siege options, but since the walls didn't get Defense values or wounds assigned, armies with siege engines should work out what Defense values (if any) are assigned to the walls in the scenario.

To make up for the presence of a wall on the defender's side of the board, the defender gets a lower points level than the attacker (20% less is the written amount, which means a 1000-point attacking army would be up against an 800-point defending army - playing at less than 1000-points is certainly possible, but there's a LOT of wall to cover, so I wouldn't choose a points level where the defender has less than 650 points). While the +20% is nice, depending on the means the attacker has of entering the city, it may not be enough. If all the attacker has are ladders and a battering ram (again, more on these later), 20% more points may not be enough to offset the benefits of a wall - just keep that in mind.

The scoring rules, however, leave something to be desired - and it can actually be quite hard for the defender to win unless the attacking army is severely handicapped. The defender wins if they can quarter the attacker (which is actually quite hard to do if the points level is high), while the attacker wins if they can get 12 or more models inside the fortress (which is actually quite easy to do if you break the gate open and make some space). Additionally, there are niche factions that can field fliers en masse (e.g. Gundabad War Bats, Crebain) and if you're the attacker and can fly 12 of these over the walls . . . you've won. Similarly, without a restriction on models that arrive from a board edge of their choosing (or a terrain feature of their choosing) . . . an attacking force could win by Turn 2 or 3 without even advancing towards the walls . . . brilliant . . . Did you notice, also, that there aren't any VPs in this scenario? It's all-or-nothing . . . which is fine for a casual game, but not great in a tournament setting.

Modifications to this scenario are simple if you plan to use it for a tournament: add VPs for breaking the enemy (we've done 1-3 VPs for breaking/not being broken), VPs for wounding/killing the enemy army leader (we've done 1-3 VPs for wounding/killing the leader), and VPs for controlling the various parts of the fortress. Since the scenario specifies that the gate should be in the center of the wall, we've awarded 1-2 VPs for controlling the left wall (majority vs. sole control), 1-2 VPs for controlling the right wall (majority vs. sole control), and 1-2 VPs for controlling the area inside the wall (though you could do the area on the ground within a 12" radius of the gate if you wanted to). This keeps things in the "VPs scored" realm, instead of an all-or-nothing win. I could see awarding 1-2 VPs for breaking the enemy and 1-2 VPs for the army leader so there are more VPs tied to controlling the walls/gate - shifting those points to the gate might be a better option, but I don't know. If you're going to change these scoring conditions, you'll also need to change the ending conditions - we've opted for one side being quartered, since it's different from the random-end-after-one-side-breaks of the other scenario.

For the Grand Siege, a list of siege equipment is provided both in the main rulebook and with itemized points values in War in Rohan - let's look and see what both sides have to work with!

Siege Equipment

Both the attackers and defenders got gear in War in Rohan, but before we even delve into the gear, we need to address the elephant in the room: the gate.

The Gate

We need to start off with a discussion about the gate - storming the gate is the easiest way for an attacking force to actually get into the city (and if there are VPs for controlling the ground, assaulting the gate hard can be a valuable way to get defenders off the walls). In the War in Rohan supplement, there are various defense values for the gate, ranging from internal/external domestic doors (D5/1 wound or D6/2 wounds respectively) to heavy/armored doors (D7/2 wounds or D8/2 wounds respectively) to the really strong stuff (heavily armored doors are D9/2 wounds, Dwarven fortress doors are D9/3 wounds, and fortress gates are D10/3 wounds). The important thing to take away from this is that if you deal 2-3 wounds to the outer door, you're in.

You can't just shoot a door in with arrows, so there's a restriction that shooting attacks that are less than S5 can't damage the gate. This is an interesting cut-off point - it's clearly intended to stop crossbows, great bows, the various S3 bows, and standard bows/shortbows (to say nothing of thrown rocks by Hobbits or Bifur the Dwarf), but it doesn't preclude a Troll Chain (S5) from doing damage - nor does it preclude any use of magic against the door (Sorcerous Blast, Black Dart, Flameburst, or even Chill Soul). Were magical powers intended to be used against the gate? I don't know . . .

The main rulebook makes it clear that fortress gates/walls are all siege targets, so there's no insta-killing these things with siege weapons. However, the War in Rohan supplement specifies that models can attack the gate and count as automatically winning against it in combat and counting the door as Trapped. This . . . can be incredibly strong and make even the strongest Fortress gate fall quickly to an assault of grunts. Sometimes the door will hold - a D10 door against a S4 hero (wounds on a 6/5+) who has 3 Attack dice is expected to deal 1 wound every three turns without spending Might, but Aragorn with Anduril can crack through that gate in a single swing - and it's questionable whether the King of the Dead can even damage the door, since it doesn't have a Courage value . . . but if he can, he only needs to do it once. The Necromancer of Dol Guldur in his Legion can break open the door with a single 6 on 4 dice . . . eat that, you defending scum!

One final note on the gate: the defender could choose to "sally" from the castle and open the gate on his own - if he does, he can't close it behind him and "it's open" for the rest of the game. If you don't have a lot of shooting in your list, this is actually not a bad idea - just like in the village mission, you can meet the enemy far in front of the walls and if you can quarter him (or quarter yourself), you can force the game to end (assuming you're using the modified ending conditions I discussed above).

Personally, I think not counting the door as trapped is fine - there will still be models that can crack through the door in a hurry, but it won't be all-but-guaranteed on the first go. Other, more normal models (like S3 warriors), will have a hard time doing it on their own, which will lead them to try to use . . .

Battering Rams

The rules for battering rams are found on page 123 of the old "Gandalf" rulebook and on page 127 of the new "Sauron's Eye" rulebook - for 15pts/ram, you get a heavy object that can make 1 attack against the door at the highest strength of the guys carrying it. For every model after the first, you increase the Strength of the ram by 1, so if 7 Uruk-Hai Warriors are carrying a battering ram, they'll resolve the strike at Strength 4+6 or Strength 10 - neat, huh? If you happen to go over Strength 10, you instead reroll failed To Wounds (so you'd actually want 8 Uruk-Hai carrying it, because why not?).

If the gate has 2 wounds, this gives the defenders very limited time to try to take down the ram - a successful wound from the ram isn't that hard to get (you're looking at 5s, 4s, or 3s in most cases, depending on how many people are manning the ram and how high the Defense of the door is). Woe be to the defending general who thinks he has time to get models to the courtyard if the ram is near the gate.

If you want to keep people from clogging up the space inside the gateway, you probably want to have some angle of attack on the walls - and for that, we could use . . .

Siege Ladders

On paper, ladders look like an interesting purchase - for only 5pts/ladder, we can have TONS of attack points on the walls. The truth of the matter is that attacking up a ladder is really hard for most models. The rules for siege ladders can be found on page 122 of the old rulebook/page 126 of the new rulebook and like battering rams, ladders are treated as heavy objects. Each ladder has a Defense of 8 and 2 wounds if they're not carried (I don't think they can be targeted while they're being carried?). When the bearers come into contact with the wall, the ladder is immediately raised and your infantry models (including Monsters, actually - my, those are strong ladders) can climb up and try to fight off the defenders that are waiting for them.

Fighting up a ladder, though, is hard work: the defender counts as defending a barrier (so there's a 50% chance that a duel won by the attacker will actually hit the wall instead of the guy defending it). Second, if the model on the ladder loses, he keeps his footing on a 4+ but falls down the ladder on a 1-3 (taking falling damage, of course). If there's no one at the top of the ladder, the defenders can try to push the ladder down on a 4+, getting a +1 to their roll for every additional helper model they have trying to push it and a -1 penalty for every model on the ladder. Monsters that help push or that are on the ladder apply a +/-3 modifier to the roll instead of the +/-1.

The ladder strategy works much, MUCH better if you're running Isengard Assault Ballistas, as you can actually raise them WITH a guy on them in the Shoot Phase and the defender won't get the defense bonuses from the Wall - perfect! You will never use the Raise the Ladders! special rule with ballistas in Matched Play, but boy is that special rule helpful here. Those who aren't running Isengard will probably want to lean harder into . . .

Siege Towers

Siege towers have to be tall enough to reach the top of the battlements (my Minas Tirith walls are 8.5" tall, while my Kingdom of Durak Deep walls are more like 3" tall - so this is very much a variable) and can be up to 4" wide (so 3-4 models can stand at the top). According to War in Rohan, a siege tower is Defense 10 with 3 wounds and counts as a battlefield target (so you can scatter off of it . . . but can also insta-kill it if the defender has a siege engine). Our event has only one siege tower per table and since it's easier for most factions to use a siege tower to contest a wall segment than ladders, we've opted to make it a siege target for our games . . . that's purely to make the playing ground a bit more even . . .

Only infantry can be in the siege tower (no monsters) and an empty siege tower can be pushed 6" each turn by at least 6 infantry (with Monster models counting as 6). You can start with models in the siege tower, but for every 1 model you have in it, you need +1 model pushing it. Models that are pushing the tower can either be in base contact with the siege tower OR in base contact with another pushing model (so you can have a long line of pushing models if you want). It's probably intended that you can't make the siege tower move faster with a Heroic March or a war drum, but we've allowed it for our event - this is something that should be discussed before the event, though.

Once you get to the walls, the ramp automatically lowers and the guys inside it can start pouring out . . . or more appropriately, they can charge the guys who are waiting for them. We'll talk about this a bit more in the strategy section below, but these things can't really change direction very well, so your opponent knows exactly where this thing is going and can prepare for the defense straight away.

The defenders don't just have a wall, though - they have gear that they can use to defend against the rams and various wall-assailing gear of the enemy. Let's begin with their most valuable piece of gear . . .

Rallying Point

For 25pts, the defenders can buy banners - and not just any banners, but banners that give you +1 Courage if you're within 6" of them! Enemy models that don't do anything and are in base contact with a rally point can dismantle them, but otherwise they can't be destroyed - and having one or two on the walls or one by the gate can make all the difference between a fragile defense and a solid one. There's not much to say about this, but it remains my favorite of the defensive upgrades - place the banner where you know the fighting is going to be critical and then distribute any other banners you bought elsewhere. And if you're playing in an event where you may need to downgrade your list to defend a castle, at least consider dropping one of your banners if you know you're getting another one . . .

Barricades and Spiked Barricades

For 5-10 points, the defenders can erect a barricade or a spiked barricade, which are obstacles that are up to 6" long and 1" wide/high with a Defense of 7 and 3 wounds. For 5 extra points, the spiked barricade also has a chance of dealing a S3 hit to anyone who doesn't get a 6 on their Jump test to cross the barricade OR who strikes the barricade in combat. Placing these near the gate can not only stall the enemy in their tracks, but can also deal some cheeky damage against the enemy in a fight that you LOST. Other than that, it's just stuff to slow them down and help you buy time to get reinforcements where you need them. Also, if you built low walls to experiment with the siege rules quickly, you can use them as additional siege gear once you have a proper wall built! These upgrades, though, are really only going to help you near the gate - for wall defense, you should consider getting . . .

Rocks and Boiling Oil

The attackers can get ladders for 5pts and the defenders can get rocks for 5pts. The rocks are very similar to the Rocks upgrade you can get for Mumakil - except that they're represented by a 25mm base that counts as a light object (so you can move them around easily) and allows anyone to make a shooting attack on a 4+ with an 8" range and a S6 hit. If you hit someone who's standing on a ladder, that guy has to take a footing test and falls if he gets a 4+ (for consistency with other footing checks, you might want to make this a 1-3). The target has to be within 1" of the walls, so your shots are likely to be quite limited - but you can hit people on/near the siege ladders. It probably won't help much against siege towers.

Boiling Oil is more expensive at 30 points - this is represented by a 40mm base heavy object that allows you to make a similar shooting attack (To Hit roll of a 4+ with 8" range against models within 1" of the walls and deals a S8 hit), except that it ALSO deals a S4 collateral hit to anyone within 2" of the target model. After each use of Boiling Oil, you have to see if the Boiling Oil has run out: on a 1, the pot's dry and the oil's gone (akin to the rolls Dalamyr has to make for his smoke bombs).

Okay, that's the siege gear - let's talk strategies now!

Strategies for Grand Siege Games

I'm going to preface this by saying that I've played a TON of Grand Siege games with our rules. The advice you're about to receive only matters if a) you're not playing with the stated scoring rules, b) you're playing until one side or the other is quartered (instead of just the attacker OR when 12 attacking models get into the fortress), and c) you're treating siege towers as siege targets (because EVERYTHING changes if they're battlefield targets). Most of the advice will be tailored to the attacker, but there will be some nuggets of advice for the defender (because frankly, their learning curve is much less steep).

Siege Towers and Siege Ladders: A Combined Arms Approach

Most people will tell you that siege towers are good and siege ladders are bad. And on many levels, they're right. But here's the thing (and we've hinted at it already): siege towers are predictable and siege ladders are flexible, so having both in your army is actually quite good. My siege tower, from the moment it deploys, is going to be a known entity - my opponent will have several turns to get guys where it's going to show up and be ready to receive it. And unless I have fire support to rain down on that section of the wall (like from a siege weapon, magical barrages, or lots and lots and LOTS of archery), there's no way I can do anything to make to make approaching the wall easier.

For every siege tower you take, you could take 8 ladders, which gives you not one but EIGHT possible attack points - and if any of those ladders get to the wall where it isn't being defended, they can get models on the defender's side of the barrier and deny them the usual protections they'd get from the wall . . . which is really bad for them. If you have ladders on your side of the field, drag them all to the walls - all the time - because any time you can open up a new potential front for the defender to protect, the more you'll stretch his resources thin and the easier it'll be to punch through his ranks. Speaking of which . . .

Heavy Hitting Heroes for Ladders and Siege Towers (and Walls)

Yeah, you need big hitters (heroes and/or monsters) to make ladders and siege towers work - it's a thing. If you don't have power at the top of the ladder or siege tower, the enemy's going to hold you back. Unless you're playing with the original rules, you probably need to control the walls - and without a large number of bodies cleared out, that's not going to happen. So you want cheap, efficient killing heroes in your lineup to scale the walls (be it on a ladder or on a siege tower).

Assigning big heroes to the walls is also a bit of a requirement - yes, you can pile in warriors where a ladder is, but if something big comes up the ladder, you're in trouble. These heroes don't necessarily have to be Gil-Galad or Aragorn-level heroes - mid-tier heroes with a healthy amount of attacks/Might (2-3 of each) and decently high Fight Values (FV 5-6) can do a fine job of slowing down the advance or punching through an assault. If you have a lumbering monster in your mix, having him go up a ladder is an interesting option to clear a hole for you - especially since there's no restriction that I could find on using a Brutal Power Attack like Barge to force the enemy away from the wall and getting a foothold.

Battering Rams vs. Just-Hitting-The-Gate

If you have a monster in your army (and he's not going up a ladder), taking out the gate is a good idea - wounding D7-10 isn't that hard for most monsters (a few of the S5-6 monsters might struggle a bit) and if the gates count as being trapped, they can usually deal 2-3 wounds in a single swing. If you don't have access to monsters, battering rams are often the best way to go - you can have, like, 10 guys running the thing and end up with a S10 hit with rerolling all failed To Wounds. This will take a lot longer, though - and if you don't have a constant influx of guys, you're liable to have at least a few guys shot down while trying to knock the gate in. Once you have it down, you'll have an obstacle that your army will need to work around, which isn't as good as "just having your monster advance." But still, it's nice to have the option for a ram.

Some heroes will work like monsters - Dwalin and Dain are likely to wound the door on 5s (if not 4s), while Aragorn with Anduril will wound the doors on a 4+ (though he should two-hand to wound it on a 3+ since he wins automatically). With a free Might point that could be at his disposal, a trapped door is all but guaranteed to come crashing down before him (and even an untrapped door is quite likely to fall after a single blow)!

But don't underestimate the power of just shooting the gate with siege weapons too - most siege engines are S8-10, so wounding the gate on 4s is a definite possibility (if not 3s) - and since some siege weapons have the Wall Breaker rule or the Flaming Ammunition upgrade, they may be getting rerolls or rolling two dice and picking the highest as well! Siege engines are scary in siege scenarios on a number of levels, even if you don't have assigned Defense/Wound values for the walls themselves.

The Role of Cavalry Models on Defense

Whether you're attacking or defending the walls, the question of "what are my cavalry doing for me" is a real one - since cavalry can't climb siege ladders or siege towers, an army that invests heavily in cavalry is hoping for one thing: to batter down the gate and punch a hole through the defenders if they're attacking, or sallying/counter-charging through the gate if they're defending.

While our event allows the team captain to assign his cavalry-heavy allies to village scenarios instead of grand siege scenarios, your event may not have that option, in which case, there are a few things to consider. If you're attacking with a sizeable cavalry contingent (either all-cav or mostly-cav), consider having a few models dismount to man a battering ram. The fewer infantry models you have, the more difficult battering the gate down will be - but if a few are heroes (who will suffer for not having mounts but are also likely to bring higher base Strength and Defense stats), you're likely to get the gate down in a few turns. Once broken, that gate's wide open for the rest of the fight - so you can hold back your cavalry until you have 1 wound left on the door and then prepare for a grand charge once it collapses.

While you could dismount more models to man a siege tower, I wouldn't risk attacking the walls at all - ladders are too finnicky for a few infantry to use effectively and siege towers require a LOT of guys to push/man, so if you don't have a lot of infantry, you don't want to be anywhere near these things. Yes, this limits your options for attacking the city, but hey, you're a cavalry faction - hopefully you can harass with archery and then get a big charge to help you take the gateway quickly and then can force the enemy to the walls (where he'll hopefully not have much cover).

On defense, you should at least consider sallying out - taking the fight to the enemy makes it harder for him to launch the attack on your fortress. On some levels, it may be more valuable to have a wide-open gate than to have a closed gate that restricts your ability to launch an attack. This is particularly true since he may not GO for the gate, knowing there's a host of cavalry behind it. A smart attacker would try to force you to dismount as many of your cavalry as possible to defend the walls (and maybe get archers on top to snipe some of your horses before eventually attacking the gate). By sallying out, you can make sure that the walls don't get attacked (at least not right away) and if you can meet the enemy far from your walls, you may even be able to pull back on a turn in order to regroup and make it harder to advance against you. It may be valuable to have a few guys on the walls, but I wouldn't dismount too many guys.

Conclusion

These are my many thoughts and musings about siege games - if you've played any siege games with these rules (or any you've made up at home), let us know in the comments! I'm particularly curious about any tournament scoring rules that have been used in your part of the world (as this is the second event we've had at least one siege game in it and always think they're good fun). 

Next week is a formations post, but after that, we're going to start a new Thursday series that involves math, top-5 rankings, and Fantasy Fellowships - hope you enjoy it! Until next time, happy hobbying!