The Board Is Set: How to Play Reconnoitre

Good morning gamers,

We're wrapping up the discussion of Pool 5 today - and it involves more walking than any other scenario in the game: Reconnoitre. The idea of this scenario is simple - but there are a LOT of complications from how you "deploy" to the incentive to actually score the main point of the scenario that make a lot of players shy away from it. So, as we've been doing, we're going to unpack what Pool 5 is all about (which you can skip by clicking here if you've already read this part) and then we'll dive into Reconnoitre and how to actually have a good time playing it (and possibly even win it).

Pool 5: Going Places (And Usually Far-Off Places)

Pool 1 scenarios have odd deployment rules which can make your army show up all over the board (sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad). Pool 2 requires you to control (or at least contest the control of) 4-5 different objectives. Pool 3 involves reaching one or more objects somewhere on the board (and in two of those scenarios, there's some element of offense and defense that needs to be played). Pool 4 scenarios are about how much killing your army (or your army leader) can do.

Pool 5 is about getting places, which means that it's very similar to Pools 1, 2, and 3. In Pool 1, most models will be walking onto the board from the board edges and will need to make their way to some part of the board (the center of the board in Hold Ground or to various quadrants/objective markers in the other two scenarios). Pool 2 doesn't need to require traveling far if you start on the center, but depending on your army's play style, you might be walking a lot (usually to play keep-away from an enemy shieldwall or spam horde). Pool 3 has all kinds of things that require you to travel a quarter of the board length or half of the length of the board.

The Scouring of the Shire, Part 11: The Bounders Strike Back

Good morning gamers,

This scenario is OLD - back when Centaur and I got into the game in the Fall of 2010, this scenario was available for download from the GW website, with directions on how to adjust the game for alternative participants. With very few models in our collections - and none of them from the Scouring of the Shire - we had a lot of fun seeing if Merry and Pippin from the Fellowship (20pts) could beat up 10 Orcs (60pts) . . . the game was a lark, but we also learned how limited Merry and Pippin are as characters.

Today's scenario features 5 Tookish Hunters and 12 Ruffians (standard load-out of 6 vanilla, 2 whips, and 4 bows) and we're basically doing a deja vu scenario to the Maggot's Farm scenario where about half the Ruffians we have here try to get across a similiarly-sized board with only Maggot and his dogs to stop them (mostly his dogs, though). Oh, and Centaur gets 20 traps in this scenario . . . lovely.

The Bounders Strike Back

The Ruffians start 12" up the board and as such, they started as far up as they can. To win, I need to get 5+ Ruffians off the far board edge. Centaur wins if he can kill 8 of them - he started with his Hunters as far forward as they could go and scattered the traps as a way to hem me in. The raised portions with the trees are all woodland terrain and we have some trees for cover . . . but not much. Critique us if you want to, but I'll tell you now that adding slower terrain cover would have both advantages and disadvantages for the Ruffians - more on that later, though.

With Centaur automatically claiming priority on the first turn, we began the grind fest!

The Board Is Set: How to Play Storm the Camp

Good morning gamers,

Today we're viewing the second scenario in Pool 5 - and it's an old one: Storm the Camp. So far in this series, we've seen scenarios that are pretty fun (like Hold Ground, Domination, or Destroy the Supplies) and scenarios that can be very one-sided (like Seize the Prize, Contest of Champions, and Heirlooms of Ages Past). Today's scenario is commonly seen as the hardest scenario to not get a draw in . . . and it also involves a lot of walking (Pool 5 scenarios generally do). As a result, it's not hard to chalk this scenario up as an "unfun" scenario for many lists . . .

. . . but the scenario is actually quite interesting and while draws can easily be a thing, it's a good "gatekeeper" scenario for helping novice players become expert players - and to keep us long-time players constantly thinking and re-thinking about our army strategies. We're going to review first what Pool 5 is all about (if you've already read this, you can skip it by clicking here) and then we'll get into the specifics of Storm the Camp (and the strategies you can employ to win the scenario).

Pool 5: Going Places (And Usually Far-Off Places)

Pool 1 scenarios have odd deployment rules which can make your army show up all over the board (sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad). Pool 2 requires you to control (or at least contest the control of) 4-5 different objectives. Pool 3 involves reaching one or more objects somewhere on the board (and in two of those scenarios, there's some element of offense and defense that needs to be played). Pool 4 scenarios are about how much killing your army (or your army leader) can do.

Pool 5 is about getting places, which means that it's very similar to Pools 1, 2, and 3. In Pool 1, most models will be walking onto the board from the board edges and will need to make their way to some part of the board (the center of the board in Hold Ground or to various quadrants/objective markers in the other two scenarios). Pool 2 doesn't need to require traveling far if you start on the center, but depending on your army's play style, you might be walking a lot (usually to play keep-away from an enemy shieldwall or spam horde). Pool 3 has all kinds of things that require you to travel a quarter of the board length or half of the length of the board.

Top 10 Series: Top 10 Shock Cavalry

Hey Reader!

We're back! Who doesn't love another Centaur rankings post (except Sharbie, ;P ) - and with the release of the Rise of Angmar supplement coming soon, now is as great a time as ever to do our review of the best shock cavalry in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. As I always do with this series, I need to make some caveats first.

So first, we're combining evil and good in this list, which means that, in general, you're likely to see a greater weight toward Evil because 1) they are far more likely to get S4 on mounted models, and 2) they get easier access to war spears and lances in general, and +1 to wound is really, really good for shock cavalry.

Second caveat: we're looking at shock cavalry, not cavalry generally. So while skirmish capabilities are really good, and can make the difference between cavalry making it to the enemy mounted or not, we're not ranking skirmish and harassing cavalry here: we're purely ranking cavalry on their aptitude on the charge. This also means we will be assuming that the model is charging when assessed, though we will weigh their effectiveness against both infantry and cavalry models.

Third caveat: I'm only looking at warrior models for this comparison, mostly because we already reviewed the heroes in a previous podcast (and if you're wondering, I think the best shock cavalryman in the game is Radagast on a Great Eagle for oh so many reasons, most notably his ability to charge into enemy cavalry, cast Panic Steed on a 2+ on models all around him, turn those cavalry into infantry, and then finish the charge, which feels really strong for me even if he doesn't get the benefits of his Staff of Power), but also because some of the special rules/Might point discrepancies make them hard to compare to each other, so I figured warrior profiles were closer in value and form to each other (and a LOT closer in points cost).

Fourth caveat: while we will be considering the ability to charge in difficult terrain, we are assuming open ground for these assessments because, well, that's kinda necessary to get the benefits of the cavalry charging rules. So I know this puts Lorien Cavalry at a disadvantage, and I'm sorry, but it would skew the results pretty heavily if we did, so there.

The Board Is Set: How to Play Divide and Conquer

Good morning gamers,

We're kicking off our fifth part in this series on how to play the various scenarios in MESBG and Pool 5 brings us some of the LEAST loved scenarios in the game (even more unloved than Heirlooms of Ages Past, Seize the Prize, and Contest of Champions). We'll be tackling the newest (and most beloved) of these scenarios today, Divide and Conquer. This scenario, introduced with the Matched Play guide, has one of the oddest deployment configurations you'll find - but I at least think the scenario itself is not only the best scenario in the pool for a fair game, but it's also an interesting improvement over other scenarios we've already viewed in this series.

As we've done previously, let's begin with an overview of what the scenarios in Pool 5 are all about (and per the usual, if you'd like to skip this and go straight to the scenario specifics, you can click here).

Pool 5: Going Places (And Usually Far-Off Places)

Pool 1 scenarios have odd deployment rules which can make your army show up all over the board (sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad). Pool 2 requires you to control (or at least contest the control of) 4-5 different objectives. Pool 3 involves reaching one or more objects somewhere on the board (and in two of those scenarios, there's some element of offense and defense that needs to be played). Pool 4 scenarios are about how much killing your army (or your army leader) can do.

Pool 5 is about getting places, which means that it's very similar to Pools 1, 2, and 3. In Pool 1, most models will be walking onto the board from the board edges and will need to make their way to some part of the board (the center of the board in Hold Ground or to various quadrants/objective markers in the other two scenarios). Pool 2 doesn't need to require traveling far if you start on the center, but depending on your army's play style, you might be walking a lot (usually to play keep-away from an enemy shieldwall or spam horde). Pool 3 has all kinds of things that require you to travel a quarter of the board length or half of the length of the board.