The Board Is Set: How to Play Clash by Moonlight

Good morning gamers,

This is it, everyone - it's our last scenario for singles in the Matched Play guide (right before we get a new edition, I know)! The oddity of the scenario we have today, Clash by Moonlight, was integrated into every scenario that has the Assault on Lothlorien Legendary Legion as a participant. It's dark in this scenario - and that changes everything (and makes it a perfect time for killing heroes).

For the last time, let's look at what the main idea of Pool 6 is as a context for the Clash by Moonlight scenario (and if you've already read it, you can click here to skip ahead).

Pool 6: Killing Enemy Heroes

We've seen four scenario pools that ultimately come down to being able to get somewhere (whether that's with maelstrom deployments in Pool 1, holding multiple objective markers in Pool 2, getting to different objects in Pool 3, or starting from a corner/walking onto a board in Pool 5). We've also seen one pool that's all about killing more of the enemy than you lose in Pool 4 (which could be limited to kills by your army leader or just mass killing with your army).

Pool 6 is more like Pool 4 in that it's about killing things - but how many enemy models total you kill is usually not weighted as strongly as being able to kill enemy heroes (either one specific hero or all enemy heroes). Since heroes are generally speaking better than warriors, killing enemy heroes in Pool 6 requires some planning in the list building stage in order to avoid a "no win" scenario.

Two of the three scenarios in Pool 6 involve secretly picking an enemy hero that you want to kill - and unless your opponent has exactly one hero in their force, you'll need to pick a hero who isn't the army leader. In the third scenario, you get VPs for having at least one hero alive but additional VPs if you have at least one hero alive and you killed more enemy heroes than your opponent killed (or all enemy heroes). Lists that are good at killing enemy heroes have an advantage in these scenarios.

This leads to my first conclusion about these scenarios: as fun as they are, these scenarios are not good at low points levels. If you're playing below 700pts, chances are good you might very well have 1-2 heroes in your army - and if you only have 1-2 heroes, then the hero your opponent is trying to kill is not going to be a surprise. If you're playing at 500pts and below, you could have a really, REALLY expensive Hero of Legend who is your only hero . . . and if that's the case, your opponent has to try to wound/kill this hero in order to score VPs . . . and this too is not going to be a surprise. If your objective as a Tournament Organizer is to avoid unfun match-ups, I'd highly recommend that this pool be avoided at points levels below 700, where most factions can get 3+ heroes (but more on this later in the strategy section).

The other thing to know about these scenarios is that most of the other points available to both players are tied to breaking the enemy without being broken. In the scenarios in this pool, anywhere from 6-12 VPs (or half-to-all) are tied to wounding/killing a specific hero, wounding/killing the enemy army leader, or breaking the enemy without being broken - so in some respects, killing enemy models is even more important in this scenario than in the Pool 4 scenarios. While there can be other factors in play, you need to be able to kill both heroes and warriors in order to do well in these scenarios.

Finally, Pool 6 involves a lot of cunning - players have to secretly select heroes to kill (and in one of those, a hero to keep alive) and this is done after deployment but before the first turn. The secrecy of these objectives not only makes the game fun (since you don't know if a hero that you wounded was the hero your opponent was trying to keep safe - and your opponent doesn't know if the hero you just wounded was the hero you were trying to kill). The scenarios are great - and this pool is often one of the most loved scenario pools in the game. While there are certainly places for strategy once you're at the table, there are also a LOT of strategic choices that can be made in the list building stage of the game (which we'll talk about in the strategies section).

With all this in mind, let's look at the only Pool 6 scenario without any secrecy - and as a result, the easiest scenario in most cases to know how well you're doing . . .

Clash by Moonlight

Clash by Moonlight is the only scenario in the Matched Play Guide that awards up to 5 VPs for two different categories (though one contributes to the other). One category is easy to understand: you can get 3 VPs for breaking the enemy force or 5 VPs if you break the enemy force without being broken yourself. We've seen this before in To the Death (where an additional 2 VPs were up for grabs if you quartered the enemy - so if you both quartered each other on the same turn, both players could get 5 VPs). In this scenario, just getting the enemy to breaking is the end of VPs for "just killing things."

Another 5 VPs is tied to the heroes alive for both sides at the end of the game. If both players have at least one hero alive, you're guaranteed at least 1 VP. If a player has at least one hero alive and has killed more heroes than the other player, then the player with the greater number of hero kills gets 3 VPs instead of 1 VP (this, like the kill counts in Lords of Battle or Contest of Champions from Pool 4, will only be awarded to one player). If one player has at least one hero alive and has killed all of the enemy heroes, that player is awarded 5 VPs (and consequently, the other player will receive 0 VPs because they won't have at least one hero alive).

This is actually a big swing - you can go from down 2 VPs (3-to-1) if both players have at least one hero left but one has killed more than the other to being 5 VPs down (5-to-0). The weight of that 5-0 swing, however, is made even worse by the fact that killing all of the enemy heroes also means you've killed their army leader (which is worth an additional 2 VPs - and 1 VP if you get a wound on the leader). It's certainly possible for one side to get a landslide win if they can just kill all the heroes - 7 VPs are awarded to one player and only up to 2 VPs can be awarded to the other if this happens (if both army leaders are slain).

Coincidentally, if you've killed off all of the enemy heroes, it's quite likely that you can break the enemy list - and that means you can get a solid 10 VPs for breaking the enemy and killing all their heroes . . . or 12 VPs if you haven't been broken yourself. It's a nasty business that could leave an unrecoverable gap . . .

. . . but most games of Clash by Moonlight don't have to be this way. If a single hero (ideally the army leader) is alive on each team, then one player might have a 3-1 advantage over the other, which might turn into a 6-4 advantage if both forces can break each other. What can make all the difference is whether or not your army leader is alive on the board - because if he isn't, that score jumps up to an 8-4 win for one side (or a 6-6 draw if the army that's killing more heroes loses its army leader). The game can be quite interesting - there are 180 distinct combinations of the scoring criteria (eight variations of scores for the army leader wounds/kills, four variations for breaking the enemy, and five variations for scoring points for heroes - all of which are independent of each other) and most of the scoring combos are close.

Click to view all the details on this chart!

As you can see here (if you click on it), the most common scores that the players can receive (five distinct combinations) are 5-6, 6-5, and 6-6 (together these make up 15/180 possible scoring solutions), or basically a draw/narrow win. When we extend this to the next most common scores (four distinct combinations), we get other scores that are also close - 5-7 and 7-5 - as well as two scores that are not that close but the game probably was close at one point - 3-8 and 8-3. These seven scoring outcomes account for roughly one-sixth of the possible combinations you can get.

Naturally, not all of the possible combinations will be equally weighted in every game, but the really one-sided victories of 12-0 or 12-1 are unlikely to happen in Clash by Moonlight - though they can happen, especially if one side has a few heroes and the other side has a lot. The game is going to come down, in most cases, to who can kill more heroes from the other side - and that's a fun game to play most of the time. 

But to add some chaos to the existing mayhem, there's a scenario-specific rule that can change everything: models can only see other models that are 12" or less away from themselves and if they're making shooting attacks, they get +1 To Wound on their shooting rolls. Apparently, models that live in caves (which are ONLY models with the Cave Dweller rule and not things like Cave Trolls, Bat Swarms, and Dwarves) are used to being in the dark, so they don't suffer the limited range of vision or award their opponents the +1 To Wound boost. Honestly, if their eyes are adjusted to seeing in the dark, they should have a penalty for fighting in the day, but that might be too much of a penalty, no? Shooting attacks that get +1 To Wound are basically ranged weapons with +2 Strength - a S2 bow suddenly hits as hard as a crossbow and those siege weapons kill far more reliably than they did before.

What's more, anti-archery rules like Blinding Light will automatically illuminate nearby models (within 12" - something that usually doesn't mean anything), which means these models can be targeted from beyond the usual 12" limitation, though they'll still be hit only on a 6. Models within this light still can't see the arrows coming, apparently, so the +1 To Wound buff applies . . . if this infuriates you, you're not alone - please don't get me started on this . . .

Okay, let's take a look at some strategies you can use in this scenario (though they are by no means unique to this scenario) . . .

Strategy #1: In-Set Heroes

Killing heroes is the aim of this game - and this can be done from a distance with archery or up close in melee (or up close or far away with magic, depending on your flavor). Like we talked about a while ago in combatting the Black Riders Legendary Legion, setting your heroes back a ways in your formation is a great way to make sure that your heroes are protected and lines of sight to them are obscured from most foes. Your heroes need to stay alive - and while they might be more survivable than your average grunt, they're incredibly tempting targets for models with shooting weapons, as well as Compel casters, Sorcerous Blast casters, and (of course) every siege engine in the game.

Putting your heroes back is only the start of the plan, however - you need to have an avenue for the hero to move forward, especially if you plan to call a Heroic Move/March or if you want to do any fighting. Eventually you'll need these heroes to do the actual killing work that nearly half of the scenario VPs require - but leaving a channel for them to walk through could also mean leaving a channel for arrows to pour through (not as many as if you were standing in the front rank, but still some). Be careful and mindful of the approach, and don't shy away from making the channel go at a diagonal instead of a line straight ahead. You can even make it wobble a bit - whatever you need to screen your heroes in.

In the "inset heroes" article linked above, I also talked about how you can use shooting models in your ranks in order to threaten enemy models that might want to yank your heroes out into the open - and that strategy certainly serves here. Having archers embedded in your battle line (and more particularly, near your heroes) can provide return fire that will keep your lines strong and your heroes safe and is particularly useful in this scenario where archery is a bit stronger than normal.

As a general approach, I think this is a great strategy - both for Clash by Moonlight and lots of other scenarios. When it comes to army building, you might want to consider this strategy (well, two diametrically opposed strategies) as well . . .

Strategy #2: Hero Spam (or Hero Starve)

Easily the nastiest army I've ever had to fight in Clash by Moonlight was Rythbyrt's Grey Company Legendary Legion in Game 4 of THRO 2021. Rythbyrt's army was small, but it had Aragorn, Halbarad, Elladan, Elrohir, and three Rangers of the North - seven heroes altogether. I had . . . the Balrog and a Moria Goblin Captain. My plan to win the game was simple: kill two heroes, only lose one, and keep the Balrog alive. Simple, right? Should be doable, right? Well, I did manage to kill two heroes . . . but I also lost my Balrog, which caused me to break, and I lost the game with 3 VPs for killing more heroes than Rythbyrt did (and I may have gotten a wound on Aragorn?), but he got 5 VPs for breaking me without being broken, 1 VP for having at least one hero around, and 2 VPs for killing my army leader. An 8-3 (or 8-4 - can't remember) loss is still a major loss - and the largest reason for the loss was, ironically, that Rythbyrt had more heroes (and way more Might) than I did.

I'm not ashamed of how I played that game - I've lost my Balrog in practice games to Rythbyrt and Centaur plenty of times, and I played pretty smart in that game (and if poor rolling hadn't been in play, there were opportunities to kill Aragorn and the Twins - which would have led to a break and ultimately my win). However, having lots of heroes in this scenario gives you incredible flexibility in defeating the enemy because you can break them quickly if your heroes can get kills in fast (especially with Heroic Combats) and they can challenge big heroes to keep them from racking up kills. Since 3-5 VPs are tied to killing over half the enemy models, it's well worth considering how you plan to get there . . . and good combat heroes are probably the most reliable way to do that.

But it's also an opportunity for your opponent - especially if they take the opposite approach (as I did at that tournament) where they do a "hero starve" list. If you're facing just the Balrog and a Captain (or just Sauron and a Nazgul), you may not have the opportunity to kill a hero, no matter how many heroes you bring. Additionally, if that big, nasty enemy hero manages to kill a single hero from your force, suddenly you might be losing 1-3. If you can't kill that army leader and can't break the enemy (which might be one in the same if we're talking about the Balrog or Sauron), you basically have no ways to get VPs in the scenario (1 VP for wounding the enemy army leader and 1 VP if you can keep one of your heroes alive) . . . that could be a loss right there, sweet and simple.

This "hero starve" approach is more complicated than the hero spam approach - fewer heroes often means less Might, more weight in a single place instead of spread out across the battlefield (which can be good or bad, depending on the scenario), and it generally means you don't have as much redundancy in your list (unless that big hero just won't die). Still, it's a skew list that can really win this scenario if your opponent brought a bunch of little heroes and a horde of guys to help them out.

Okay, this final note isn't really a "strategy" per se, but it addresses a very common strategy in this scenario - relying on shooting . . .

Strategy #3: The Truth About Shooting

I may not be the largest fan of shooting in MESBG, but I'm certainly one of the largest fans in MESBG of throwing weapons (and I'm fairly certain I hold the title of "Person who has written the most about throwing weapons on a blog that starts with the letter T"). Whether your shooting comes from bows, crossbows, slingshots, or rocks/Goblins that get thrown at the enemy, shooting seems to be the name of the game in this scenario. In some respects, this is true - but for the vast majority of lists . . . it isn't. In fact, the dark secret about this scenario is that shooting can actually be far less effective here than in other scenarios.

The reason for this is simple: there's only one normal army list in the game and one Legendary Legion that has access to bows of any kind on models with the Cave Dweller special rule - Moria and the Assault on Lothlorien Legendary Legion. For reasons that are probably chalked up to game balance design, Goblin Warriors from Goblin-town can't take bows (even though they use them in the extended cut of the first Hobbit film), so Moria Goblin Warriors are the only archers who can shoot from more than 12" away (besides siege weapons, who hit on a 6) - and they will only hit on a 5+ if they stand still or a 6+ if they move and shoot. 18" range was already only getting you 2-3 shots on your opponents before they arrive, and if you get 20 or fewer bows in your list, a shot that hits on 5s (optimistic best-case for their shoot value) and wound on 4s (optimistic best case for a S2 bow that's wounding on 5s), you're still only getting 3 kills per round. That's not bad if you've got a horde of guys and ultimately a models advantage on your opponent, but it's also not that good if he's speeding towards you.

If your opponent has D5-6 models (which most armies do), you're looking at 1-2 kills each round - and that's if you don't move and shoot with about TWENTY S2 bows! Goblin archery isn't that great, even if the environment is trying to help them out. The sad thing, of course, is that other bows don't do much better - the stats we see above for Goblins can only be slightly improved by armies with a 3+ or 4+ To Hit value - you're supposed to get one-in-nine shots to wound with a 4+ shoot and a S2 bow against a D5-6 target, which isn't bad at all, but since you're only likely to get 1-2 shots off before the enemy engages you (12" max range being a thing), a squad of 9 archers is only likely to kill 1-2 models before the enemy engages . . . that's not great.

If you were playing a different scenario (say, Lords of Battle or To the Death), you'd have some no-man's-land space between you and your opponent (automatically or by deployment choice) - and that space is likely to be more than the 12" range limit that you have in this scenario (possibly not for Lords of Battle). There are fast armies that can run up to you quickly in Lords of Battle, but in the main, if all of your models are within the back 3" of your board edge in Lords, you've got more than 12" to work with - and that'll give you an extra turn of shooting that you probably won't have in Clash by Moonlight.

So is shooting worth taking in this scenario? Yes, actually - it is, but you shouldn't rely on it to be the game-changer. An army that goes hard into shooting will probably find an opponent rushing them (or hiding all game behind terrain). Either situation is going to result in their archery not doing anything - and ultimately, an opponent who hides well is going to be impossible to break - and if you want 6+ VPs in this game, you probably need to break your opponent (that or kill all of his heroes).

Conclusion

Well . . . it's been a long year - but it's also been fun finally writing up all this stuff after years and years and years of thinking about scenarios. If you've played a game of Clash by Moonlight and had a different perspective in mind, we'd love to hear about it in the comments below (we're all students of war here - at least as far as it involves toy soldiers). Over the next two weeks, we'll be tackling some more wishlisting for the new edition - and I'm really excited about them both! Until then, happy hobbying!