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.

Pool 5 is a very different story - if you're playing any of these scenarios, moving over half the board length is going to be common and required for maximum scoring. In two of these scenarios (Divide and Conquer and Storm the Camp), you'll have one or two table corners that your force will deploy in and you'll be trying to get to the middle of the board (Divide and Conquer) or to the other player's table corner (opposite yours in Storm the Camp). In Reconnoitre, your models don't even start on the board - they walk on from your board edge and you're trying to get at least a few of them off your opponent's board edge . . . yeah, legging it is hard in these scenarios.

The scoring for these scenarios is, however, pretty standard - the scenarios will give you 1-2 (or in one of them, 1-3) VPs for wounding/killing the enemy army leader and will give you at least 1 VP for breaking the enemy (two of them will give you 3 VPs for breaking the enemy without being broken). This means that even slow armies stand a chance of getting a few VPs if they can just do the killing thing. This is good for us Dwarf players - though even Dwarf players should try to bake in ways to get the movement they need to score more than 3-5 VPs in a game.

The majority of the VPs up for grabs are based on getting more models off the enemy's board edge (up to 7 VPs in Reconnoitre), having more models in both player's deployment corners (up to 6 VPs in Storm the Camp), and having more models than your opponent around three objectives (cumulatively worth 9 VPs, but split up into 2/2/5 VPs for the side/side/center objectives in Divide and Conquer). The player who actually plays to the scenario and doesn't settle for just making things a killing fest will win - usually (there is one scenario that serves as an exception to this).

But this underscores something big about these scenarios: if no one has a fast enough army (or enough time) to actually DO the scenario requirements, the VP scores will often be low and draws are very common. If you're trying to get to the enemy camp or if you're trying to get models off the enemy board edge, you may just run out of time to reach your destination and you'll be left with minimal if any points to show for it. This is the primary driver for why two of these scenarios are not well loved amongst most players.

Today, we're going to focus on Divide and Conquer, which I think is not only the most liked of these scenarios because most armies can score it, but it might be the most balanced control-based mission in the game (even over those found in Pool 1 and Pool 2). Let's look at how it works . . .

Divide and Conquer

Let's start off by saying that this is one of a handful of scenarios where the deployment of your forces is going to be messy - armies that want all of their warbands showing up together in a "death ball" will hate this scenario. Both players receive two opposite table corners and alternate placing warbands in each of the corners (so if I deploy my first warband in the top-right table corner, my second warband will need to be placed in the bottom-left table corner, my third warband will be with my first warband in the top-right, etc.). Once one warband is down, it's often predictable what warband will go next depending on how synergistic the player's warbands are.

As an example of this, consider the following 700-point Ugluk's Scouts army:

• Ugluk
• 3 Uruk-Hai Marauders with shields
• 2 Uruk-Hai Marauders with Uruk-Hai bows
• Mauhur
• 3 Uruk-Hai Marauders with shields
• 7 Uruk-Hai Marauders with Uruk-Hai bows
• Uruk-Hai Scout Captain with two-handed weapon
• 2 Uruk-Hai Marauders with shields
• 8 Uruk-Hai Marauders with Uruk-Hai bows
• Grishnakh with shield
• 11 Orc Warriors with shields and spears
• 1 Orc Warrior with shield, spear, and banner
• Orc Captain with shield
• 9 Orc Warriors with shields and spears
• 3 Orc Warriors with spears

This army has a very impressive 54 models at 700 points and has two warbands of Orcs that are intended to support the three warbands of Uruk-Hai (so we can have a F4 frontline with spear-supports). There are enough spearmen (24 in total) to support the 5 heroes, the 8 Uruks with shields, and 11 of the bowmen - or put differently, we could support everyone in Mauhur's and the Scout Captain's warbands.

If this army were playing Divide and Conquer, they'd want to make sure that the two generic captain warbands show up in the same corner (both heroes have Heroic March to get their warbands across the board quickly, but you don't want to use the two-handing Uruk-Hai Captain's Might for that) and Grishnakh and Mauhur's warbands show up in the same corner (so the two named heroes can benefit from the banner). Ugluk will then deploy in whatever deployment zone you started with (both will have spears that can be spared for him and his shield-carrying buddies).

While there appears to be some choice involved - and sometimes there is choice involved - most armies are going to telegraph to their opponent exactly what they'll be doing after they deploy their first warband. This is fine - while there might appear to be a disadvantage to you if your list has a predictable warband pairing (like the one we saw above), your opponent's list will probably be predictable as well.

As was mentioned in the overview section above, the scoring for this scenario is simple: 1-2 VPs for wounding/killing the enemy army leader, 1 VP for breaking the enemy (nothing extra for breaking the enemy without being broken yourself), 1-2 VPs for having more models/double the enemy models within 3" of either of the two side objectives (deployed 12" away from the center of the board on the "center line" - though because both armies deploy from opposite corners, the direction of north/south doesn't actually make a difference in this setup unless there's a bunch of impassable terrain), and 3-5 VPs for having more models/double the enemy models within 3" of the center objective. The game can end suddenly after one army breaks, which adds an element of surprise to how long the game will go. If you've played scenarios from some of the other pools, these might all sound very familiar . . .

I alluded to how I think this scenario is an improvement over other scenarios - and that's simply because it's a hybrid scenario of two other scenarios we've seen so far - Hold Ground and Breakthrough. Like Hold Ground, we have an objective in the center of the board that holds most of the VPs (but with a 6" radius), which means screening off acces to the objective is hard and lots of models can contest it. Unlike Hold Ground, our deployment zones are known, so while our opponent could try to intercept our warbands on their approach to the center, they can't deploy right next to us from the get-go. Similarly, everyone can start on the board when the first turn begins - there's no risk that a critical warband waits three or even four turns before it can even show up! 

Finally, in Hold Ground, getting to the center of the board with 3 models and then breaking your army against your opponent's army (while stalling him from getting to the center) is a bizarre but absolutely viable tactic - in this one, getting 3 models to the center might get you 5 VPs, but if you sacrifice the other two objectives and are broken, then the game ends in a draw - not a loss. You have to do more in this scenario than you have to do in the other one (even though breaking the enemy without being broken isn't worth as much in this one).

This scenario is also like Breakthrough in that we have two side objectives (as we just mentioned) that have enough VP value to make them interesting, but not enough VP value to make them more important than another place that we want to be (in this case, the center objective). Unlike Breakthrough, however, we can't start near these objectives - we have to walk to them. In all three scenarios in Pool 2, we can start with 3-4 objectives either directly in our control or at least contested by our forces - in this scenario, we start with none and whichever player can push their models faster to these points of interest will be the one to set up in the best terrain. This makes it really fun to play, I think . . .

Perhaps the best thing about this scenario is that it always feels like you can win - I remember playing with an 800-point Men of the West list at a previous TMAT GT against Centaur's mostly-book-accurate Helm's Deep defenders list (Aragorn, Eomer, and Theoden riding around on horses while Legolas and Eowyn - she was ruling in Edoras in the book, but whatever - and a bunch of infantry Rohan guys held the ground) and even though my army was getting pasted (Elessar never rolled higher than a 3 for either of his duels!), I was actually winning the game because of the way the control of the objectives was going! An all-infantry army like mine would have had a rough time with Reconnoitre or Storm the Camp against the army I was up against, but Divide and Conquer was an even fight (even though the game refused to end on me and I ended up losing 12-0).

Okay, let's talk about strategies for playing this scenario . . .

Strategy #1: Center Rush

When I run a list with ways to get speed and lots of models (like a Heroic March-shieldwall list), this is my default strategy: get to the center quickly, then assess where our enemy is approaching from and deal with him in pieces. If you're the first player to reach the three objectives, you've got 9 VPs in the bucket - and you'll still have 7 VPs if you can retain control of at least one side objective and the center objective.

If you've got shieldwall blocks, you're going to want to advance around terrain, but be mindful of where your opponent is approach from - if there are fast models in the enemy force, they might try to sweep behind your ranks as you advance for the center to either distract your forces from reaching the scoring zones OR to get a good rear-charge in and kill a bunch of spearmen to weaken your front line. While keeping guards on your flanks is a good idea, it's usually a better idea to be able to flip your front line and your back line so that you "back into" the scoring zones if your opponent attempts a flanking maneuver.

Whatever you do with this strategy, don't get distracted with fighting away from the center - armies like this usually tend to be slow, so committing to a fight away from the action is ONLY going to make the end-game harder for you. Keeping your army together - and where all the VPs are - ensures that you can support your forces wherever the enemy chooses to fight and that as many models as possible are scoring you points.

Cavalry archery lists (like my beloved-but-unloved Riders of Eomer LL lists) don't have much difficulty getting to the middle, but staying in the middle is quite hard because their units want to be skirmishing. When this kind of list archetype happens to be what you're running, a better strategy is probably to . . .

Strategy #2: Gang Up

You don't have to be a skirmish-heavy army to make this work, but skirmisher armies like this strategy a lot: send your forces towards one of the enemy corners, cut off the approach of that part of the enemy army, and destroy it before it can regroup with the rest of the army. This strategy works on several levels, not least of which is that you can limit your opponent's access to the three objective markers by slowing down/destroying their approach to one of the side objectives, but it also brings your opponent very close to breaking if the two corners have roughly equal numbers of models in them (which is not always the case - my previously-mentioned Men of the West list deployed Aragorn and Eomer in one corner while a lone Gandalf the White model was in the other corner - mostly because I wanted to rush to the center with all but one model instead of roughly half my army).

As with any scenario that can randomly end when one side breaks, you have to be careful with skirmishing lists if you take this approach - if you just keep shooting at the enemy, you might accidentally break the opposing force before you have any models near any of the objectives. If this happens, a roll of a 1-2 at the end of any round will see your opponent rolling in the VPs and you stranded with a single VP for breaking the enemy (maybe 3 VPs if you also killed the enemy army leader). That . . . won't feel great.

If you don't have a skirmish list, but you do have a fast list that can call a lot of Heroic Combats (like the Riders of Theoden or even an Pits of Dol Guldur LL/Helm's Guard LL/Elendil/King Thorin/Aragorn list where you can have free Heroic Combats on at least one hero), doing a smash-and-dash strategy can be a great way to quickly clear out enemy models and you can use the extra movement from a Heroic Combat to go rampaging towards the center of the board (or a side objective). Whatever your plan, bringing down the enemy model count quickly can make sure that you can minimize or completely remove the threat of enemy forces harassing you from one side of the board - and that has value.

There's one additional strategy that I've found to be quite useful - and it was used against me to deadly effect at our 2023 Grand Tournament. It is . . .

Strategy #3: The Side Rush

Both of the previous strategies have had getting to the center as the primary objective - and why not, most of the VPs are there, right? Well, yes . . . you can get 5 VPs for having control of the center. However, if you get control of both side objectives (which are easier for your forces to get to from their starting corners), you'll have 4 VPs compared to your opponent's 5 VPs - and if you have a strong base of fire from those two points, you might be able to reduce your opponent's control of the center to only a majority (not double), which will land him on 3 VPs - and that's a win!

In 2023, I had the pleasure of playing a guy who normally plays in southern Virginia by the name of Sam (he won the Richmond Open with a list similar to the 623pt list he brought to our GT - it was a Last Alliance list with Gil-Galad, a Captain of Numenor, and Cirdan). My army had 4 Barrow-Wights, a Wild Warg Chieftain, and a ton of Orcs/Wargs - you can read about it here and about how well it did here. Suffice it to say that Gil-Galad isn't the kind of hero who can ram into a swarm of Barrow-Wights and come out of it conscious, so Sam decided to deploy his Numenoreans in one corner, his Elves in the other, and slowly make his way to the side objectives in order to keep me from being able to turtle up effectively. It also didn't help that my Wild Warg Chieftain refused to kill a Paralyzed Captain of Numenor for several turns . . . oh my gosh, divas #amiright . . .

With no big target for my Barrow-Wights to harass, they burned their Will attempting to Paralyze (sometimes successfully - and far less than you'd expect) random Elves who had engaged my Orcs. This let me kill some guys, which was good, but it eventually meant that Gil-Galad was free to pounce on the center. By the time the game ended, I had wrestled majority control of one of the side objectives away from the Numenoreans (1 VP for me), I had made no breach in the line of Elves defending the other side objective (2 VPs for Sam), I was broken (1 more VP for Sam), both army leaders were alive and well, and Gil-Galad had nearly killed off enough Orcs to take control of the center, but I had held on by like one model to majority control (3 VPs for me). Unfortunately for Sam, we had a rule at that tournament that if there was fewer than 5 minutes left on the clock, we couldn't start a new round . . . so I barely won 4-3.

Had that rule not been in place, however, it was evident to both of us that Gil-Galad would have swept the center on the final turn and the game would have flipped to a 6-1 major victory for Sam - so the strategy does work: force your opponent to at least fight you on the sides and then once the center is weak and you've won on at least one flank, press hard for it. Just watch the timer . . .

Conclusion

I don't think I've ever played a game of Divide and Conquer that I didn't like - admittedly, watching my poor Men of the West die to Centaur's heroes wasn't very fun, but lots of laughs were had. The game is pretty balanced and if you ever feel like Hold Ground or any of the scenarios from Pool 2 could be just a bit better, you should try this one - it's great.

Next time, we're turning to a scenario that is incredibly polarizing for most players: Storm the Camp. Our deployment structure is pretty similar to Divide and Conquer and the scoring on this scenario is not complicated to compute, but it is hard to score well in it. Find out how to play it (and how to actually score points in it) next time - and until then, happy hobbying!