Stupidly Fun Lists, Part I

Good morning gamers,

Recently, we had a "longtime reader" send us the following comment:

I have 2 rather stupid but fun list ideas. This is already a suggestion for a category for you guys ;) "Just dumb fun lists" or so.

Anyway: List 1: All artillery gondor (3 Trebuchet,, 3 avenger bolt throwers, flesh out with whatever.

List 2: All fellbeast mounted nazgul, air superiority fighters. Welcome to the black dart missile age.

I always wanted to run this with allied dol guldur nazguls or castellans if somehow possible, but well.

Alternatively: Troll-only Barad dur squad. I still have to paint my trolls though

I began writing a reply when I decided that the "comments section" of an old post wasn't the right place to do it. This got me thinking as well about what lists would be "stupidly fun" to run - and maybe these thoughts will give you things to think about as well. With that, let's kick off a new series on "stupidly fun" lists to run - and how to make them viable (if not competitive). For the sake of starting somewhere, our lists today will all be 650pts - this should mean that you're probably 100-150pts off of whatever game you're playing, since many events are still run at the 500-800pt level.

List #1: Artillery-Heavy Gondor

In a podcast episode we did ages ago, Rythbyrt presented a 450pt list that had three heroes and three Bolt Throwers - this certainly would still be competitive this edition, though access to bolt throwers is much harder to get. The following lists are available to us:

• Atop the Wall (Gandalf the White required)
• Defenders of the Pelennor
• Minas Tirith (no trebuchet access)
• Realms of Men (King of Men required)

Now if you want to take three siege weapons (bolt throwers are 60pts each and trebuchets are 100pts each), you're looking at paying at least 355pts for Minas Tirith (Denethor, Irolas, Captain, 3 Bolt Throwers), 370pts for Defenders of the Pelennor (Beregond, Irolas, Captain, 3 Bolt Throwers), 385pts for the Realms of Men (King with heavy armor/shield, 2 Captains, 3 Bolt Throwers), and - wait for it - 505pts for Atop the Walls (Gandalf without Shadowfax or Pippin, Irolas, Captain, and 3 Bolt Throwers). While adding 145pts to those units could be fun . . . honestly, I don't think that list is going to be very good if you're spending 50pts on Shadowfax/Pippin (and I really don't think that list would be good without Shadowfax and Pippin).

I'm also going to skip over the Realms of Men list - in many ways, the Realms of Men list would function like a Minas Tirith list that jumps for Faramir instead of the Captain and generally speaking, Realms of Men benefits from having access to multiple Kings leading troops of different kinds (most notably Numenor for F5/S4 spearmen and Arnor for cheaper F4/D6 spearmen, possibly Rohan for Riders of Rohan or cheaper spearmen/skirmishers), so while we could have added 265pts of Minas Tirith troops to that list (and maybe a horse/lance for the King?), we'll be skipping that list as well.

This leaves us with the Defenders of the Pelennor and Minas Tirith - and the Pelennor list is going to look very similar to the Minas Tirith one (it can't get Guards of the Fountain Court and will be swapping Denethor for a more expensive hero - things probably come to a wash). As a result, we'll just be focusing on Minas Tirith today.

 While I certainly could have gotten more units into the army (and would have Heroic March to boot!) with a Captain of Minas Tirith, I've opted to take Faramir on horse with shield and heavy armor, leading 3 Knights of Minas Tirith (who get boosted stats in this list if they start near Faramir). The list features Denethor leading some Guards of the Fountain Court (still good units, even without the option for shields), and a mix of Citadel Guards with spears near Irolas. Oh, and it has three bolt throwers, for a total of 32 models at 650pts:

If you want March in the list, the easiest way to do that is by swapping Irolas for a Captain (and by extension, using the 5pts that are gained to upgrade the Citadel Guards to Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears). This won't hit as hard, but Shieldwall will be easier to keep around and on the whole, your Defense will just be higher (even if Shieldwall isn't active). I will note that because you don't NEED Shieldwall with Irolas, you could swap out the Warriors of Minas Tirith in the front rank for Citadel Guards with longbows - this would up your archery damage slightly and would increase your melee damage while they're near Irolas (but of course, you're losing your D6 front line guys).

Is this list stupidly fun? I think you'll have fun. Is it arguably competitive? I think it might be.

List #2: Flying Circus Mordor

In the last edition of the game, the "flying circus" of Mordor (which sometimes included the spider-web-tightrope-walker of Shelob in the list) in the hands of a capable opponent could be absolutely disasterous - monster BPAs, Fly with spellcasters, and the potential to keep those Ringwraiths cheap by limiting their Will/Fate levels. In the current edition of the game, we have the Wraiths on Wings list which is exclusively the flying circus (no Shelob), but the fact that Ringwraiths can't be customized anymore makes the points level of 650 incredibly awkward (upgrading all of the Fell Beasts to Armored Fell Beasts - terrible deal for 20pts each - and getting Morgul Blades on everyone and the Crown of Morgul on the Witch-King gets us to 625pts with three Fell Beasts). So . . . as much as this is PROBABLY the list we should be using (each Fell Beast can do S5 impact hits on its first charge and if you fly over someone and don't charge, you can do a S5 hit/knock Prone), this is just not a great list for this particular thing. Besides, we can't get a banner in the Wraiths on Wings list, so the actual list we want to use is the Army of the Great Eye.

In this list, we have to take a Ringwraith of some kind - but we have complete control over the gear options that they take (though they're all in their "mega forms", which means the Witch-King is super-pumped full of Will). That said, we can not only get the three wraiths on Fell Beasts, but we can also get Shelob (who yes, technically goes against the requirements of this challenge, but also doesn't cost 170pts):

I will note that you could also drop Shelob in order to get some infantry, but that really does go against the desire of this list - Warg Riders or Black Numenorean Knights would be fast enough to keep up, but we were asked to stick to Ringwraiths (and we already didn't do that). I think the big question that's prompted is whether or not Shelob adds enough to be justified in the list and for that, I will simply note that she has Dominant (4), which is higher than Fell Beasts, she has Venom to reroll all failed To Wound rolls with Monstrous Charge, and she can get +1 Attack against a lot of common race types (Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits). Caught in a Web and Hurl with a 5+ Intelligence make her a pretty tricky unit to deal with . . . though not being able to eat Orc models is a bit sad in this list. Also, depending on where you put the Eye of Sauron, you might get a banner bonus on your troops, which is pretty cool.

Now if you want to be STRICTLY accurate and only have flying Ringwraiths, the only list where you can get second-tier Ringwraiths and Fell Beasts is Minas Morgul - you will lose a lot of rules by doing this, but you'll get the Witch-King and three 1/10/1 Ringwraiths (instead of two 2/14/2 Ringwraiths) all working together:

Is it stupidly fun to throw three Ringwraiths on Fell Beasts and a big spider (with a cool new sculpt!) on the table? Absolutely! How competitive is this list? I don't know - I think with enough reps a player could certainly take advantage of an unsuspecting opponent who thinks the list is easy to crack through. I think there are plenty of lists that won't mind the Terror in the list and others that will just try to shoot them to death, but if you're lucky, you might be able to swing a win.

While we're on the subject of monsters in Mordor lists, how about we look at a different list . . .

List #3: Monster Mash Barad-Dur

So . . . I'm going to tackle the actual list that's been presented and then talk about my views on Barad-Dur as a faction - because I think this is one of the strongest skew lists in the game and a lot of people aren't running it. The exact words of the request were "Troll-only Barad-Dur squad" - and for 605pts, you can get the Dark Lord Sauron and two Trolls (one with a drum):

If you're playing at 700pts, you can give your opponent a 5-point handicap and have four models - and there's one big problem with this list: if there's any insta-kill siege weapons in your opponent's army, then he can target the Dark Lord, it will probably scatter onto a Troll, and that Troll is going down - HARD! As a result, I think the better way to do a list like this at 650pts (where we can't get the third Troll, even if we drop the drum) is to add 45pts of Orcs:

The Orcs and Black Numenoreans in this list are doing two things: sitting on objectives and taking siege weapon scatter hits. That's all - life as a grunt in the Second Age Mordor Legion wasn't great. You could turn the 4 Mordor Ocs into 2 more Black Numenoreans if you wanted to, but honestly, the list really wants to have a banner in it. To get that, I'm going to depart from the script I've been provided and present my general thoughts on Barad-Dur this edition - and why I think it's a really strong list.

Tiberius's Rant on Barad-Dur . . . and Skew Lists in General

MESBG has always been a game that encourages skew lists - it's the reason people have complained about high-volume shooting lists, lists with heroes who have knock-down magic (even when they've been charged), lists with too many flying monsters, lists with Generals that you have to bring down to half-wounds before you can break them normally, lists with chariots or throwing weapons or camels or war beasts, lists with LOADS of heroes that call lots of heroes to chop through your troops too quickly, lists with loads of F5+ warriors that can support each other 1-2 ranks deep, lists with Ringbearers that cheat and can auto-beat your Fight Value (which is less of an issue in the current game, but was certainly an issue in the last version of the game). All of these lists are skew lists - and some lists will do better than others into certain match-ups and at the end of the day, all MESBG list builders should keep in mind that the only skew list they have control over seeing at an event is the one they choose to bring (or not bring).

Since we can't control whether someone shows up with an all-Eagle list, a 100-model Hobbit list, or a Balrog/Goblin-spam list, the main question we need to ask when we're building a list is how my list plans to deal with these skews if I see them. Sometimes you'll have skews that are known or expected - maybe you have someone in your group who brings Rohan skirmish lists all the time (we have a guy who does that) or someone who tends to break big horde lists or monster-heavy lists (ala Centaur - and yes, there isn't a lot of middle-ground there). When it comes to Barad-Dur, you actually have a lot of ways to deal with various skew lists . . . if you play your cards carefully and build your list in a particular way. The skew centers around Sauron, who gives us a few things:

• Sauron is very hard to wound (D10 with 5 Wounds and a 2+ Ring save on his last wound) and has to be wounded 3+ times in order for your army to give up break VPs . . . and if he's your only hero, he has to be wounded/killed in order for your opponent to get wound-a-hero VPs;
• Sauron has Chill Soul with a 12" range and a 4+ casting difficulty (wounds, not Strength X hits, against a specific target) with a free Will point each turn and access to Heroic Channelling if it's really important;
• Access to Transfix/Compel on a 3+ with 18" range if you don't have to kill something;
• He's the top of the Ringbearer chart, so if your opponent brought any Ringbearer who isn't Sauron, he's wasting points/can't hide from you; and
• He's a Monster with Strength 8/Intelligence 3+ and Dominant (10).

Any one of these things usually means that you need to deal with him - and having ALL of these things means your opponent has to deal with him always. Even if the game can end by bringing your opponent to a quarter of their starting models, a list that features Sauron and a very cagey support force is going to be difficult to quarter before some kind of VPs are scored by Sauron and his buddies. If you play the normal game conditions pushing for a draw, getting a cheeky wound on the enemy General (or killing him), breaking the enemy (assuming you have time for that), or keeping a banner alive while killing an enemy banner can be enough to tip the scales to a victory. So how do we do that? We do that by having a single hero (Sauron - gives us an edge in a LOT of scenarios) and get extra "Might points" by taking a drummer troll . . . and a banner . . . and enough guys to keep the banner alive (and maybe screen for our leader):

I think this list is competitive and I don't care who says otherwise - if you play the Orcs right. Playing the Orcs wrong would be to assume that we have a shieldwall that wants to smash against whatever shieldwall our opponent has - that's the right way to get quartered. Sauron and the Mordor Troll are difficult to remove and if you have some Orcs around for scattering siege weapons/keeping the banner alive, you can advance towards your opponent and then pivot the Orcs into a retreat that draws enemy units to pursue them because "you can quarter me". If you're facing a fast list, you keep your Orcs together and hold them back while Sauron and the Troll try to force an engagement and some early losses (with Chill Soul sniping warriors that could get round our ranks, killing off banners, getting wounds on enemy Generals/critical heroes, or units with Bodyguard). If you're facing a slow list, you can keep your Orcs near-ish to Sauron and the Troll, but you should be ready to back them up if you need to. If your opponent brought along a lot of heroes, you'll want Sauron to work down at least one of them with Transfix/Compel (maybe Chill Soul) to stagger them out - Sauron doesn't usually take a lot of damage from a single foe and 4 Wound Mordor Trolls are a pain to deal with.

However you choose to do it, if you can rely on your Orcs defending by shielding near a banner (occasionally spear-supported) and staying away from the action and guarding a deep objective (or staying right on Sauron's tail), I think you have a chance at making things work. Is this list stupidly fun to play? Absolutely - it's got Sauron in it! Is it a stupid list? Maybe - but I don't think it necessarily is.

Conclusion: Stupid List? Or Skew List?

It turns out that a lot of skew lists can be classified as "stupid lists" - taking all-camels is an absolutely terrifying thing . . . unless you get shot up before you arrive or your impact hits blunt and you're facing a F4 shieldwall. I've been running double-Mumaks with guys in the howdah at 650pts - which is a very stupid thing to do, unless it isn't. Mass shooting lists, mass hero lists, mass model lists - they're all stupid in their own way. What's great about them is that they're also stupidly fun in their own way (at least for you) and sometimes they're exactly what you need to win a game against your opponent in a given scenario. This is the fun (and sometimes beauty) of MESBG: sometimes you can skew into a fun idea and win a game . . . and other times, you have a great laugh.

If you've enjoyed this post - and if you have stupid lists that you'd like us to review in a future post - let us know in the comments below! Hopefully this scratched the itch of our reader and hopefully we've given you something to look into trying on a game night with a friend! Until next time, may your pursuit of whacky and fun lists also be fruitful in helping you win games and happy hobbying!