The Board Is Set: How to Play Contest of Champions

Good morning gamers,

Author's Note: with a new edition looming ahead of us, it's unclear how the scenarios are going to change . . . so since we're nearly done with the series, we're going to press on and hope that the changes that we see don't invalidate all of our work. Even if the scenarios get reworked, hopefully the principles found in these articles will give you a starting point for how to play the scenarios. If they all change . . . we'll write more articles next year. :)

This is our third and final scenario in Pool 4 - and alongside Heirlooms of Ages Past, this scenario is a polarizing one for many players: Contest of Champions. This scenario is, on its face, about how many models your army leader can kill in melee. For some armies, this is fine - if I'm running Aragorn, Azog, or Boromir, I'm probably able to kill enemy models pretty well (and for a long time). If your army leader is Treebeard or the Balrog, you can probably kill models AFTER you catch them. However, if your army leader is someone like Galadriel or Saruman . . . well, that's likely going to be harder.

Well, today, we're looking to see what kinds of strategies we can use to play this scenario - and we'll approach the topic first by recapping what Pool 4 is all about and then identify the options that are available to you depending on the kind of army you're running. Let's take a look (though you can skip the recap, once again, by clicking here).

Pool 4: Killing Lots of Models

The previous three pools have mostly involved controlling certain points on the map (Pools 1-2) and having enough speed to get to an object or set of objects (Pool 3). While your killing power has value in these scenarios (either for holding or securing objectives - or for punching a hole through the enemy to get to their objectives), there is no pool where your killing power is more important than in Pool 4.

In two of the scenarios (Lords of Battle and Contest of Champions), players have to do a bit more recordkeeping than normal and have to keep track of the wounds they deal to their opponent and the Fate points that are spent by their opponent's heroes (Lords of Battle) or the number of kills their army leader gets in melee (Contest of Champions). Both of these scenarios also allow the armies to start up close to each other if they want to, so things can very quickly become a blood bath . . . which some armies welcome gladly.

Both of these scenarios also give 1-3 VPs for breaking the enemy army, but To the Death gives a whopping 3-5 VPs for breaking the enemy - and an extra 2 VPs if you quarter the enemy! If your army isn't able to break the enemy in any of these scenarios, you're going to be hurting . . . and particularly so in To the Death.

Whether you break the enemy matters very little in Pool 2 and only has moderate value (1-3 VPs) in the other two pools we've viewed so far, but in Pool 4, breaking the enemy is a must. Not only is it worth a lot of VPs in To the Death, but an army that doesn't break the enemy probably hasn't killed a lot of models, which means your opponent is probably beating you in the kill count categories . . . the VPs can stack up pretty quickly.

As a result, some of the themes that make armies good at this particular scenario pool include the ability to do mass damage to the enemy (usually with shooting, but don't sleep on things like impact hits, cavalry charges, and mass Heroic Combats), really high defense (mostly to mitigate these mass damage attempts), army-wide speed boosts to enable you to get into battle quickly (Heroic March and War Drums for infantry-heavy lists), and elite profiles (so you can win close match-ups). You don't have to follow these archetypes, but they happen to be pretty effective.

The greatest advantage of this pool is you can explain it easily to new players: kill things. Kill all the things. Don't stop killing the things until the things have all been killed. Actually DOING this, however, can be quite difficult and can make skew lists (armies that lean hard into shooting, impact hits, D7+, and all-cavalry armies) more appealing than balanced lists.

While the previous two scenarios we've reviewed have focused on killing the enemy army with whatever means you have available, this scenario requires a bit more specificity. Let's see how Contest of Champions differs from the other two.

Contest of Champions

One of the key distinctives of Contest of Champions has to do with its deployment rules. First off, the deployment areas go up to the centerline, but the first warband to be deployed MUST be the army leader's warband. Furthermore, the army leader has to deploy at least partially within 3" of the center point of the board . . . so put simply, the army leaders are going to be close together.

The lack of agency in placing the army leader (and their warband) as well as the lack of knowledge of your opponent's force deployment before having to commit your army leader can be a real struggle for players who have weaker army leaders (ranging from Galadriel or the Master of Lake-town to Denethor or Ugluk). If you're used to fielding the Balrog, Boromir, or Dain (any version), you're probably okay with deploying close to the enemy - and if you have a horde of Uruk-Hai, Dwarves (and stripe), or Hunter Orcs, you'll probably welcome starting up in the enemy's grill instead of having to leg it across a battlefield (like you would in To the Death).

Your other warbands then deploy in an alternating fashion per normal - but this means that you'll know before you have to place any of your supporting warbands where the enemy army leader is (regardless of whether you deploy first or scond) and this can have implications for how you deploy your army leader's warband (more on that in one of the strategies below).

The scoring for this scenario is pretty simple: 7VPs if your army leader kills three times as many models as the enemy army leader, 5VPs if your army leader kills twice as many models as the enemy army leader (but not three times), or 3VPs if your army leader kills more models than the enemy army leader (but not two or three times as many). Like many of the scenarios we've seen so far, 3-7VPs for the scenario will be awarded to one player and not the other (or neither player if you tie on kills). Wounds dealt by shooting weapons, impact hits, and most Brutal Power Attacks don't count towards the army leader's kill count - you have to be fighting in melee to get credit. Also, if your army leader is on a war beast, trample damage or melee kills from the war beast won't count as kills for the army leader . . . so beware.

This competition can have some very interesting interplay between the armies - do you try to road-block the enemy army leader with a hero who's hard to kill to keep them from racking up kills on your army? How quickly will your army leader have to kill enemy models if all of his supporting warriors/heroes are also killing machines? What do you do if the enemy leader is better at killing models than your leader? Yes, there's a lot to think about . . .

The other VPs are similar to other scenarios but with a slight twist: wounding/killing the enemy army leader WITH YOUR army leader is worth 1-3VPs (usually it's 1-2, with the higher VPs awarded if you kill the leader instead of just wounding the leader) and breaking the enemy is worth 1-2VPs (usually it's 1-3, with the higher VPs awarded if you break the enemy without being broken yourself).

Unlike Lords of Battle which can randomly end when one army breaks, this scenario ends when time runs out or one side is quartered. While you're not encouraged to quarter someone as much in this scenario as you are in To the Death (especially if you're behind on the leader kill tally), sometimes you need to end the game quickly - and to do that, you'll have to no-kidding quarter the enemy army.

The deployment requirements and the VP scoring together can make this scenario very, VERY one-sided in a number of ways. Here are a few of them:

• If one force has lots of models and the other force has very few models (e.g. hero-heavy/all hero lists), because it's model count and not wounds-dealt like Lords of Battle, low model count lists can do quite well in Contest of Champions (especially if their army leader is good at killing things);
• Armies that can kill off enemy army leaders quickly have a distinct advantage, since a dead army leader is going to have a known kill-count - and more VPs to you if you happen to do this with your own leader;
• Armies with fast army leaders (especially flying army leaders) can rack up kills very quickly while staying away from less-mobile threat models;
• Army leaders that rely on shooting to kill their foes are going to struggle more than army leaders that want to kill enemy models in melee - and unarmed army leaders will struggle a lot; and
• Armies that have non-lethal strikes (Bash, Stun, and Shielding) can have a tactical advantage over those without those rules in order to time the ending of the game in their favor.
  

So all that to say, it's quite likely that you will "like" this scenario (see what I did there?) or "not like" this scenario based on your army composition alone - and possibly based on your matchup. Regardless of the army leader you have, every army can (and should) have a plan for this scenario. Let's take a look at what you can do . . .

Strategy #1: Full Court Press

I mean, this strategy should speak for itself: start on the center, press ahead, keep going until the enemy is dead. If you have two armies that do this, your game can be over in less than an hour, regardless of the points level - we've seen this happen in Lords of Battle more than Contest of Champions here at TMAT, but it's true for both. If you have a hard-hitting melee army and your opponent has the same strategy, whoever punches up the other person first is going to win . . . usually . . .

This is where Contest of Champions differs from Lords of Battle a bit: if your army is quartered by the enemy, but you were able to get your army leader into LOTS of enemy warriors and your opponent's army leader whiffed a roll during one round or got charged and had to fight only one model that turn (maybe Combatting into another model), the army that is broken and quartered but killed more models is likely to pull a draw if not a win. Sure, they were "losing," but they can still win by making sure their army leader was bashing up the enemy faster than the other guy.

Killing enemy units faster than the other guy is all well and good for some match-ups, but what happens if your opponent brings a better beatstick than you? Or what happens if you have a perfectly competent fighter as your army leader, but you're outshone by the enemy leader? Well, you might want to try . . .

Strategy #2: Stall Out

This tactic is simple: keep the enemy army leader from getting kills. Your army can crumble like a biscuit (well, an American-style biscuit), but so long as the enemy army leader isn't getting kills, you're fine. Stalling out the leader can be as simple as throwing one of your heroes into their fight and declaring a Heroic Combat, having a hard-to-kill hero (like a Castellan of Dol Guldur) block the direct charge of the enemy army leader (which might require your army leader's warband to deploy slightly back so that your second warband can deploy in front of it), or using magical powers like Immobilize/Transfix (or keep knocking the army leader prone with spells like Sorcerous Blast, Nature's Wrath, or Tremor) to prevent the enemy leader from making Strikes.

If you have the tools for it, you can also try to kill the enemy army leader quickly as a means of stalling out the enemy army leader's kill count. While beating the enemy leader up in combat is a great strategy, so is trampling them with a Mumak, burning them to a crisp with dragon fire, a torrent of archery, or dealing large numbers of wounds to them with a demolition charge (best to keep your army leader away from the enemy army leader in this case). There are lots of tools for the job - and most armies can employ them quite easily.

Both of the previous strategies rely heavily on having a hero who can actually kill models in melee to be effective - doing a full-press works best with really powerful heroes, while a stall-out tactic works well when you've got medium to high killing potential on your end. If you have a depowered leader when it comes to melee combat, doing a stall-out tactic is a good start, but it won't win you the game. Instead, you should try . . .

Strategy #3: Three-and-Done (but Ideally Four-and-Done)

So here's the thing: to get max VPs in this scenario, you need to triple the enemy army leader's kill count. That means that if the enemy army leader can be kept to 0-1 kill, you just need your army leader to get 3 kills. For some army leaders, this may seem daunting - Galadriel from Lothlorien only has 1 Attack and is unarmed, so she'll wound a D5 model on 6s . . . which is not great. However, there are ways you can work around this by just focusing on getting 3 kills . . . and keeping your opponent locked down to 1 kill max.

First, you need an abundance of stall-out tactics - taking supporting heroes like Rumil and Celeborn in Lothlorien lists can give you solid combatants (both can roll 4 dueling dice before banner support - Celeborn with 3 Attacks and Lord of the West, while Rumil can defend by shielding with 2 base Attacks) and they can reduce the chance that they die in one turn with Heroic Defense (and 3 Might each). Celeborn and Galadriel both have Immobilize, so if the enemy leader has a low Will store, you can avoid having to spend Might in a fight against the army leader just by casting a spell. The longer you can delay your opponent's hero from getting kills in, the better.

But there are other things you can do too - Galadriel can ally historically with some killy heroes who can chop through the enemy quickly (like Theoden, Boromir of Gondor, or Elrond - two of which could be your army leader) and can even pick up some great hero support from convenient allies, which would just cost Galadriel the Resistant to Magic rule (like Gil-Galad, Isildur, Elendil, Elessar, or King Thorin - most of whom could be your army leader). To win with a low-Attack army leader, you need to not only stall the enemy army leader, but you need to CRUNCH their army quickly while getting in a few kills with your own army leader. Getting a solid accompanying hero is a key part to the strategy here.

The third element to winning is to have warriors or a cheap hero who can help the army leader get kills - and in particular, a mounted friend. Galadriel's ability to kill a D4-5 model is pretty low with 1 Attack die - but if her target has been Knocked Prone by a charging cavalry model, she can double her chances. If all of her Might points are spent boosting wounding rolls (do you really need Blinding Light in this scenario? I mean, maybe in some matchups . . .), she can probably kill 3 models if they're trapped/Prone. Whether it's a mounted warrior or a mounted hero (like a Captain of Numenor, a Galadhrim Captain, or any number of Rohan heroes), someone who can help get the trap will be welcome. I'd also recommend having a spearman in tow and a banner nearby (but not in the same fight if you can help it) because you want every chance possible to win the duel with a die that isn't going to be penalized for being unarmed.

If you find yourself employing this strategy, the entire battle matters - you need to be removing enemy models while locking down the enemy army leader and killing a few models quickly with your army leader. Like I've recommended for escaping models in Reconnoitre, you really want your army leader to get four kills - not three - because then if your opponent manages to get 2 kills, you'll still have double his kills and get 5VPs instead of 3VPs for having more kills but not double. When these games are not blowouts for one side, they're close and very exciting - and emotionally draining. So . . . do your best, enjoy the game, and may the blessing of the Valar be with you and your army leader . . . because you'll need it.

Conclusion

Contest of Champions is one of those mostly all-or-nothing scenarios that can leave a bad taste in a player's mouth. I'd encourage you to prepare for it so as not to feel like you can't win. If you expect to use the same strategy with Lothlorien that you'd use for the Pits of Dol Guldur, I think you'll be very disappointed. However, if you're careful and focus on how your list wins the scenario, I think victory could easily be in your reach. While I feel like player agency is a bit lower in this scenario than in Lords of Battle, it's still a great scenario.

When we come back to this series, we'll dive into Pool 5 - which includes some of the least loved scenarios in the book (if you thought Contest of Champions makes people mad, just wait for what's in store for us in Pool 5!), we'll start off easy with one of the oddest deployment configurations available and one of the most interesting objective-based scenarios. In the meantime, I'll be kicking off a new series next week Monday to run in between the scenario discussions - all with the intention of getting ahead of the new edition (and some of the profile revamps he hopes to see). We hope to see you next time - and until then, happy hobbying!