The Board Is Set: How to Play Lords of Battle

Good morning gamers,

Today brings us to my favorite scenario from Pool 4: Lords of Battle. Last time, we saw how To the Death slants most of the scenario VPs into breaking and quartering the enemy - which means that if neither force can break each other, the game is going to end in a really low score (or if one side is quite likely to break the other in an open fight, the other side is disincentivised to actually come out and make a game of it). Lords is different as we'll see shortly - but before we do, let's go over the general principles of this pool of scenarios (which you can skip by clicking here if you've read it in one of the other posts in this series) . . .

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.

Let's see how all this applies to Lords of Battle (which is my favorite of these scenarios) . . .

Lords of Battle

The first thing we have to say about Lords of Battle is that this scenario, like Contest of Champions (which we'll look at next week), requires some record-keeping. The record-keeping for To the Death is pretty simple: are you broken or quartered? Is your army leader still kicking (and unwounded)? Do you have a banner? That's it - pretty simple stuff.

In Lords of Battle, both players need to keep track of the wounds they deal to the enemy - individual wounds and Fate for heroes, wounds and Fate for mounts, and the usual wounds for warrior models. In general, this can be really easy - but if you have mounted models in your force, you'll need a way of keeping track which mounts were actually targeted by an attack and killed vs. mounts that fled the field because their rider was killed (or because their rider failed a Courage test to stay in the fight). Any warrior or hero model who flees gives up their remaining wounds/Fate points.

Once you have the number of wounds/Fate that you have removed from your opponent's force, you compare your number to theirs and the person with more wounds/Fate removed gets 7VPs if they tripled the other player's number, 5VPs if they doubled the other player's number (but not tripled), or 3VPs if they removed more wounds/Fate (but not double or triple).

In addition to these VPs, you can get 1-3 VPs for breaking the enemy (this is pretty common) and 1-2 VPs for wounding/killing the enemy army leader (this is also common). There's also a special rule (A Time for Heroes) that allows a hero who is in a fight where an enemy hero was killed to regain a Might point they lost previously in the battle . . . which is nice when it happens (or if you have a hero with Blood and Glory who is already incentivised to kill off enemy heroes). The scoring rules for Lords of Battle makes it different from To the Death in several ways.

First and foremost, it's easier for one player to get 3-7VPs in Lords than in To the Death. Since 3-5 VPs in To the Death are tied up in breaking the enemy (and an additional 2 VPs are tied up in quartering them), you may need a very killy army - or just don't run into a high-Defense list - in order to score most of the VPs in To the Death. On the other hand, if you can kill 3 models with your bows and your opponent doesn't have archery, he HAS to come get you because you will win the scenario 7-0 if he doesn't come out. This means that there's more reason to play the game in Lords of Battle than there is in To the Death if you feel like the matchup is slanted against you.

Second, both players can deploy up to the center line in Lords of Battle, instead of deploying up to 12" of their board edge. This means that if you think your opponent can shoot you to death . . . you can start with a 12" head-start from where you'd have to be in To the Death. Saving yourself 2+ turns of enduring enemy archery is huge - and frankly makes the game a bit more fun (especially if you think you can catch up in the kill count once you get there).

Third, because most of the VPs aren't tied to whether you broke or not, the kills you get on the enemy army matter a lot more. Sure, there have been games for me (and probably for you) where you've seen the wounds stack up against you quickly, but it can make you work harder for whatever wound you can so that you can deny your opponent 2-4 VPs by just scoring a few more kills. Sure, you probably won't win if he's got more wounds than you (and the more wounds he gets, the more likely he is to get VPs for breaking you), but you can make it a closer game - and that gives you more agency.

Finally, because you can't get 0-2VPs for having a banner on the board (like you can in To the Death), no one can start with a 2-0 victory at the start of the game - you have to actually play the game. You also can't win by just running away from the enemy and keeping a banner alive (or hiding behind a wall/big building), which is good for actually playing the game. This is a bit of a double-edge sword because if you see an army on the other side of the board that scares you . . . you kind of have to fight it . . . and that might be rough. Still, playing keep-away can only get you a draw at best - and you'll usually lose if your opponent can outshoot you - but at least you can't get a cheeky win out of it.

Okay, let's start with some strategies - we'll lead off with the easiest strategy (and a common strategy for most infantry shieldwall lists) . . .

Strategy #1: Infantry Rush

Look, there's no real strategy with this one: deploy on the centerline, get locked in, kill lots of stuff. The deployment aspect of this can be really tricky, since your opponent could wait with their fast warbands for most of your shieldwall warbands to deploy, then deploy wide on the flanks in order to do a wrap-and-trap around you. As such, if you have warbands that like to form shieldwalls/phalanxes, make sure there are some units angled to the side to protect your flanks from a 10-12" wrap-around attack. Against flyers, there is no clear deployment strategy (besides having landing-blockers to keep people from engaging your spearmen?), but against cavalry, you can do a lot to limit their initial charging options.

If both armies choose this plan . . . well, the grind starts early. The player who deploys first will have some say in what the other player wants to do - if the second player thinks he can win a match-up against whoever was just deployed, he's free to deploy his first warband 1" away from the front lines of the enemy (if the enemy deployed right on the center line) so that the match-ups are pretty clear. For this reason, if you know your opponent has a shieldwall list and you're deploying first, you might want to deploy 2" back so you have some maneuvering options should you have to charge first.

If your opponent doesn't want to get in a shieldwall grind with you right away, you'll be forced to move towards them - so if you have a Heroic March hero (or a war drum), make sure they deploy close to the center of your army (and you'll want to deploy around them). It'll probably be clear what your opponent's deployment strategy is from the get-go, but if there are lots of one-model drops in the enemy list (e.g. a single Castellan of Dol Guldur or a single Dunedain), deploy so you can March/Drum with everyone, but do so while guarding your flanks in case your opponent deploys right on the center.

If you have a shooting-heavy list, this strategy won't work out well most of the time. A very common second strategy is . . .

Strategy #2: Sit Back and Shoot

If you're a shooting list, you're going to play this scenario EXACTLY like you'll play To the Death: determine if you can outshoot the enemy, stay back if you can, and move up to a defended position that's within shooting range if you can't. If your opponent has a shieldwall, the turn or two of shooting that you'll get is critical to get some early kills - but make sure you're focusing your damage in one section of the enemy army, not just plucking wounds here and there (which won't disrupt any of your opponent's formations). If you want more of a strategy drill-down for this, I'll direct you to the previous post on To the Death.

Lords does require rolling to see where a warband deploys (1-3 is the front half of your deployment zone, 4-6 is anywhere), but the first strategy isn't affected by the outcome because your deploying in the front half either way. For this strategy, anyone who gets a 1-3 will want to deploy as close to 12" from your board edge as possible . . . and everyone else will want to deploy further back - and in all cases, keep those firing lanes in mind!

But there's a third strategy that you can employ - usually when you have invested your points in multi-wound heroes instead of lots of warriors . . .

Strategy #3: Hero-Heavy Lists

Lords of Battle and To the Death are pretty good scenarios for low-model-count, hero-heavy lists. Armies that have invested a good bit of their points in heroes are probably going to be hard to break - and getting wounds off them with anything short of mass archery or siege engines is probably going to be hard (unless their enemy has beat-sticks of their own). Since each wound and Fate point count for VPs, an army that has invested in multi-wound models is unlikely to give up that many wound points early in the game - and if they can make up for the wounds they take with lots of warrior kills (usually through Heroic Combats), they can get a distinct advantage early on.

In the picture above, we have a 700pt list from War of the Ring Erebor Reclaimed - Dain, an Iron Hills Captain, Dori, and Bifur, supported by 30 Iron Hills Dwarves (10 vanilla, 12 with spears, 8 with shield-swapped crossbows). This is the kind of the list that isn't planning on coughing up that many wounds to enemy archery (thanks to having D8 melee units and D6 crossbows - and a LOT of guys). There are a total of 43 wounds/Fate points up for grabs in this list, about a third of which are wrapped up in the heroes (13).

But if we swap out 8 Iron Hills Dwarves (-6 shields, -1 spear/shield, -1 crossbow) for Gloin, we reduce our model count by 7 (which is not nothing) and reduce our total wounds/Fate available by 5, but the overall killing power of the army has changed a lot with the addition of a better killing hero (though admittedly, 8 Iron Hills Dwarves - most with shields - are pretty good at surviving and killing things). There's a trade to be made - and this scenario can reward good play with hard-hitting heroes by making it harder for your opponent to get points.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community 

There are also some heroes who can use Will points as Fate points . . . but because these are Will points, it's been clarified that they don't actually count towards your opponent's score. So . . . yeah, Castellans are ace in this scenario (especially if fielded with the Necromancer, who is also worth only 1 point in the wound/Fate department).

Now lest you think that ALL hero-heavy or all-hero lists work this way . . . they don't. In fact, there are some very iconic all-hero lists that stand to lose a LOT of Wounds/Fate points in this scenario simply because they have average-to-low Defense or they have poor combat stats (or both, in the case of most of the Hobbits in the Fellowship). This doesn't make Lords of Battle a no-win scenario for these kinds of armies - cascading Heroic Combats from these kinds of lists can be absolutely devastating - but it does mean that they probably want to play To the Death more if they can help it (and especially the Fellowship, where they can not count as being broken while Frodo is still alive). Just one more thing to think about . . .

Conclusion

Lords of Battle requires more record-keeping, but I feel like it's easier to bring back the scoring than To the Death. That said, I've had some absolutely blow-out games while playing this, usually with my army getting the blown-to-chunks end of the score. Still, knowing that a slew of wounds could bring the score to only double your score instead of having to actually break your opponent will leave you in a better psychological place, so I rate Lords of Battle higher than To the Death. But that's just my take . . .

Next time, we're going to look at what might appear to be the most skewed scenario from Pool 4: Contest of Champions. This is the scenario that everyone says Smaug will win by default - and Galadriel will lose by default. I've heard of both being untrue - but the sentiment is well-received. The scenario feels like Lords of Battle, but with a very important difference. Find out how to play that scenario well (even if your army leader isn't very good at fighting) next time - and until then, happy hobbying!