Jay Clare's Top 10 Slayer Heroes - Tiberius's Take, Part 2

Good morning gamers,

Hopefully by now, you've seen both of Jay Clare's articles on his top slaying heroes for both the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. You might have also read Rythbyrt's posts on the reranking of Jay's lists (Good, Evil Part 1, Evil Part 2). You might have even read Centaur's articles on the worst slayers for the Forces of Good and the Forces of Evil. I've already written my reranking of Jay's list for the Forces of Good - today we tackle the Forces of Evil. If you thought this would be an "I already laid out my methodology, so let's dig in" kind of post (like I did), think again . . .

Methodology: Categories and Weights

If you read my first article, the methodology used to rank each model was based on seven categories: hero slaying, troop slaying, survivability, mobility, empowerment, impact, and cost. While I could have limited myself to Jay's list, I wanted to take a more expansive approach, so I did what I did for the Forces of Good:

I evaluated 125 profiles for the Forces of Evil.

From Smaug to Sharkey, I walked through each hero, evaluated them, then questioned whether I gave them the best possible evaluation. There were roughly 50 fewer applicants this time around (far fewer named heroes in the Evil batch than the Good batch), but that didn't make the competition any less fierce. After many iterations and changes in the framework, I finally have a list I'm happy with. I will say that I didn't evaluate war beasts, siege engines, or warrior models, so if you're expecting Mumaks to dominate my scores in our podcast, you're in for some disappointment.

Jay Clare's Top 10 Slayer Heroes - Tiberius's Take

Good morning gamers,

A few weeks ago, Rythbyrt did a re-ranking of Jay Clare's Top 10 Slayers list for the Forces of Good. The MESBG community has had a lot to say about Jay's article (both here and on the rest of the interwebs), so I thought I'd provide a different way to evaluate the heroes on Jay's list. While Rythbyrt highlighted with pictures a lot of heroes who could have made the Top 10, I'm going to skip that and just focus on Jay's guys (most of them made my Top 15, so I think it's a pretty good list).

Methodology: Categories and Weights

Like Rythbyrt, we're looking at seven categories, but we're applying weights to them in order to make the two "Slayer" categories stand out more. I also decided that my ability to evaluate these heroes couldn't be done objectively if I took a subjective, feel-based approach (there are some heroes that I just want to see do well). Why didn't I feel like I could be objective?

Because I evaluated 178 profiles for the Forces of Good.

Yes, you heard me right - I evaluated heroes as powerful as Treebeard and as weak as Rosie Cotton. I did NOT evaluate Frodo of the Nine Fingers or Lobelia Sackville-Baggins because they couldn't wound anyone, and therefore are not slayers (somehow I doubt they would rank well even if they could). I could probably make a list of 50 models and say, "Yeah, I think I could rank these 50," but invariably, I'd miss someone, have to fit them in somewhere, and then look at the list at a later date and say, "Well, I know from experience that this hero is really good at killing things - I need to make room for him on the list." The iterations would never end and each time I'd probably feel like I got both closer to "what felt right" and farther from "what felt right". So to avoid all of that, I turned to math (and let whatever iterations fall where they would - for the record, I'm not happy with some of my rankings, but that is what it is).

Erratas Continue?

Good morning readers,

If you haven't seen it already, there are some new changes that have crept into the errata files - mostly related to Elven heroes (and some of the Designer commentaries are missing). Check them out here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/#middle-earth-strategy-battle-game. Some of the changes that you'll see:

• Armies of the Lord of the Rings
• Arwen is a Minor Hero (not a Hero of Fortitude)
• Cirdan is a Minor Hero (not a Hero of Fortitude)
• Arwen can be included in a Fellowship army if you also include Aragorn
• Haldir is a Hero of Valor
• If you want the Easterling bonus, you need at least 25% of your army to be Easterlings
• Armies of the Hobbit
• Alfrid requires you to take the Master or Bard in your army
• Arwen is a Minor Hero (not a Hero of Fortitude)
• Cirdan is a Minor Hero (not a Hero of Fortitude)
• Arwen can be included in a Fellowship army if you also include Aragorn

Additionally, the FAQs now clarify that if you have a historic alliance, each allied contingent only needs to have a Hero of Fortitude. Convenient and Impossible alliances still require a Hero of Valour, but given that all generic captains are Heroes of Fortitude, it should be possible to get back 90-95% of the thematic lists that were "lost" with the first round of FAQs as long as you bring along, say, a Rivendell Captain with Cirdan.

My initial take: the primary heroes that were targeted by the "must have a Hero of Valor" hero have been targeted here - maybe we'll see that disappear? Alternatively, making Haldir a Hero of Valor allows him to ally with the Fellowship for more thematic play (though Gildor received no such bonus). We'll see what comes of it...

Tiberius

Revisiting the Rangers of the North: Army Review

Hey Reader!

It's been a while since I've written an article for TMAT, though I'm sure you've enjoyed the content from Tiberius and Rythbryt as I have. In my defense, I've got a very good reason for being out for the past several months:

This Dunedain finally found his princess!
Huge thanks to Rythbryt for his sword.

Now that I've married my forest elf and settled us in our new house (with a mostly working microwave), I'm returning to some of our past army reviews to update them with the changes made with the new Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game release.

In today's post, in line with the ranger-themed wedding pic above, I'm pleased to begin my part of the revamp series with the Rangers of the North, as the changes are pretty substantial compared to what we had under the Warbands rules. You can find the old post on our blog here.

So with no further ado, let's look at one of my favorite armies to date.

Armies of Middle Earth SBG: Standard Infantry Formations

For those who couldn't tell, I find the probability side of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game fascinating. I also enjoy (probably to the point of obsession) list-building, and figuring out how changes and variations in lists impact how my army is likely to fare on the field of battle. Fight value, strength, defense, attack value, and wargear choices can make our troops more dangerous and resilient (or their opposites). 

In the run-up to TMAT's grand tournament, I ended up doing an inordinate amount of number crunching using Jeremy Hunthor's excellent duel and wound spreadsheets, which I've mentioned before. There's nothing special about what I've done (it just involves plugging lots and lots of numbers into the calculator, and then copying the results and recording them), but since I've already run a lot of calculations I thought I'd share some of the observations that I found particularly interesting, beginning with the strengths, weaknesses, and baseline probabilities behind five common infantry formations you'll see in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. 

Understanding how these formations work generally, and the probabilities behind them, can help us better understand why some formations work (or don't) against others, and help us to recognize strengths (and weaknesses) in our opponent's formations, so we can avoid (or exploit) them accordingly. They also give us a baseline for figuring out if a particular faction's take on one of these standard formations (say, a shield-spear shieldwall formation) is above average (Iron Hills dwarves) or below average (orc warriors backing up orc warriors) when it comes to their killing power and resilience.

(As always, maths ahead...)