5 Reflections on Fantasy Fellowships (Centaur Edition)

Hey Reader!

So Tiberius and I just finished up Fantasy Fellowships, and I thought I'd take a few minutes to reflect on some of the mistakes I made with my fellowship, things that are useful (if not essential) to success in Fantasy Fellowships when building a fellowship, and a few final thoughts on scenario design that I'd adjust.

1.  Don't Skimp on Your Wizard

The nine companion slots are not created equal: skimping on, say, the Fated Companion, is not as big a deal because you don't actually use that slot very much in the campaign. And the wizard slot is one of those slots you shouldn't slouch on either, because there's a loooooot that rides on that character.

The fact that it's the primary defender on Atop the Walls and the linchpin in The Bridge of Khazad Dum (more on that scenario later) aside for a moment, the wizard slot is one of the few reliable positions for providing support for your Fellowship, and especially stat recovery (which is a huge issue in Fantasy Fellowships, as you don't always automatically reset your stats at the start of each scenario).

I used Gildor (proxied by my wood elf warrior, as I don't own Gildor but look forward to picking him up soon), and he's a decent fighter with 2 Attacks and F6 S4, and with 4 Will Points and a 3+ Immobilize, he's not a horrible caster. But he's not a great caster for this spot, as he has limited utility, limited survivability (D4 with 2 Wound 1 Fate is not good), and a limited number of Will Points.

While Gildor placed decently in Tiberius's ranking of eligible characters, I think you should aim for someone higher than him. He won't provide the critical punch you need in beat-down fights like Balin's Tomb and Warg Attack, he will struggle to complete mission objectives when he is the focal character, and he can be wiped out in a single round, and I'm not a fan of any of those things, :P So while I loved using him, and he's still a top five caster in my mind, if I was doing Fantasy Fellowships again, I'd probably opt to invest more in this slot - probably my boy Elrond if I'm honest.

2023 Hobby Bingo: Tiberius's Board

Good morning gamers,

Well, 2023 has been a year - and it's been full of hobby fun! With Fantasy Fellowships, the Minas Tirith board, several tournaments, and lots and lots and LOTS of Morannon Orcs, there's been a lot to keep me busy during my off nights. I haven't officially done the hobby bingo challenge before, though I've always looked at the boards and thought, "I should do that." Well, this year, I said, "Darn it, we're gonna do it this year" - and I am proud to say that it turned out pretty well. Let's have a look!

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Row #1: Lots of New Models (and some movies and a tournament)

Our first square in the first row requires us to start a new army, and for me this year, that was easy: Corsairs of Umbar! Throwing weapons are my thing and these guys have them everywhere. I also had these models sitting around for a while, so I don't have all the guys I painted shown here because . . . well, I need a guy for another bingo box:

Box two is easy - watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yes, I watch the extended cuts every year at least once, usually while I'm working on batch painting something or working on a terrain project. It took me longer than usual to watch them this year, since I had to catch up on a bunch of Star Wars shows, but I finished watching the extended editions of The Fellowship of the Ring on June 28th, The Two Towers on August 14th, and The Return of the King on September 9th.

Box three was checked off on June 24th when I attended our annual Grand Tournament - I got last place with a Quest of the Ringbearer Angmar army (you can read about my process of picking that list here and some thoughts on the scoring system - and a brief overview of my games - here).

Box 4 requires scenic bases for one of my armies and I decided to showcase my basing style for my Erebor Dwarves, as shown on Ori. The bases were done by painting white through a dryer sheet, then washing in black, then spot-highlighting in black, and then making piles of gold and emeralds from green glitter, PVA glue, and gold paint:

Finally, I needed to finish a Good army of at least 600 points. Because of the way Hobby Bingo works, I wanted to have a list that "just" reached 600pts (because I need elements of this project to cover multiple boxes, and you can't double-count a model) and since I spent quite a bit of time this year converting up Grim Hammers, Warriors of Erebor, and Thorin's Company heads into a War of the Ring era Erebor Reclaimed list, I figured I'd grab over 600 points from them. You can see here Thorin III Stonehelm, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Nori, Dori, Gloin, and 7 converted Iron Hills Dwarves with shields and spears:

Fantasy Fellowships: Campaign Recap

Good morning gamers,

Well, my Quest of the Ringbearer adventure is over - at least for this year (we're already in talks about when we'll do next season). The Fellowship I took was big on theme and performed pretty well, but I thought it might be nice to recap its greatest strengths and its worst struggles (and since we're doing Christmas lists right now, here's the list):

• Old Bilbo Baggins with Sting and the Mithril coat as Frodo
• Farmer Maggot as Sam (with Grip, Fang, and Wolf)
• Bofur the Dwarf as Merry
• Bifur the Dwarf as Pippin 
• Gandalf the Grey as himself
• Nori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor as Aragorn
• Dwalin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor as Legolas
• Gloin the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor as Gimli
• Dori the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor as Boromir

725 points, 3 thrown stones hitting on a 3+, 4 D6+ models, no fast models, 19+ Might

Strength #1: Lots of F4+ 2A+ models with D5-8

Running Thorin's Company models in my Merry/Pippin slots made most of my army F4 or more with 2+ Attacks - and when you're facing Goblins, Wargs, and Uruk-Hai, that pays dividends. When we lost fights, we had D3 on a few models (Maggot and his dogs), D5 on a few models (Bilbo, Bifur, Bofur, and Gandalf), but D8 on the others (Dwalin, Gloin, Nori, and Dori). This usually meant that the damage suffered wasn't going to be much, but there were several missions (Balin's Tomb and Escape from Dwarrowdelf in particular) where we lost duels due to whiffing our rolls and good rolling on the other side that we could have lost the game if we'd suffered one more wound! Defense 8 pays dividends - and it's super hard to get unless you're spamming Dwarves. Still, in most of the scenarios, I wasn't that worried - D8 is very forgiving against a single foe.

Weakness #1: No March and mostly 5" Movement 

Our lack of speed was an issue throughout - especially in the Escape from Dwarrowdelf scenario, which went on far longer (and was much closer) than Centaur or Gorgoroth's attempts. Lack of speed meant we needed to rely more on our high Defense, which proved to be problematic in that scenario especially, where there are Goblins taking pot-shots at you and they only have to get lucky once to see your 2-Wound-1-Fate heroes teeter on the brink of death. It also provided problematic in the Amon Hen scenario, where Nori had to defend Bilbo for a while on his own while Dwalin and Gloin tromped towards them. 

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 7

Good morning gamers,

I know we're in the middle of a "Christmas List" series, but hey, I can turn a Fantasy Fellowship game into a Christmas List! For many players, these aren't the models you'd want if you ran a Minas Tirith/Rohan alliance, but my love for the Men of the West Legendary Legion has given me TONS of practice with these models! Here's the almost-legit, original participants list, clocking in at a very impressive 1352 points:

• Aragorn, King Elessar [ARMY LEADER]
• 8 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 8 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• Gandalf the White
• INDEPENDENT: Peregrin, Guard of the Citadel
• 8 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with banner
• CONVENIENT ALLY - The Fellowship: Legolas Greenleaf
• Gimli, Son of Gloin
• Frodo Baggins
• Samwise Gamgee with Sting (this would need to be on Frodo if you did this in Matched Play, of course)
• CONVENIENT ALLY - Rohan: Eomer, Marshal of the Riddermark
• INDEPENDENT: Meriadoc, Knight of the Mark with shield
• 8 Warriors of Rohan with shields
• 8 Warriors of Rohan with shields and throwing spears
• 8 Warriors of Rohan with bows
• 1 Warrior of Rohan with banner

Besides Eomer having 11 more guys than he should, this is actually a legal list for Matched Play - though where is Legolas's armor and Eomer's shield? I mean, Eomer almost NEVER has a shield in Fantasy Fellowships - what's up with that? Anyway, the participants from my Fantasy Fellowship are nearly the same, except that I paid 15 more points for Dwalin instead of Legolas, 10 fewer points for Gloin instead of Gimli, 20 more points for Bifur instead of Pippin, 15 more points for Bofur instead of Merry, and (wait for it) 135 fewer points for Nori instead of Aragorn . . . that's roughly a 100pt reduction on the original participants.

Of course, Nori now has Anduril (so it's really a 60pt reduction overall) - and thanks to having Weapon Master, he'll be wounding on 3s every turn with no penalty for fighting two-handed and D7 (no shield bonus because I'll be two-handing). With 3 Attacks and the equivalent of Lord of the West (reroll one dueling die and one wounding die), I feel that Nori will FINALLY be able to keep up with Dwalin and Gloin in the wounding department (especially after the last showing - he did NOT do well in the Docks of Harlond scenario). Okay, let's kick off the last scenario in this Fellowship's journey!

The End of All Things

This scenario takes place on two boards: a four-by-four board and a two-by-two board. The bigger board was provided by Rythbyrt and the smaller board has shown up in several battle reports in this series. The terrain is intentionally sparse on the bigger one.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep Dive, Part 7

Good morning gamers,

There's only one scenario left in Fantasy Fellowships: The End of All Things. This scenario is nuts: it's massive, it takes all day to play, and it has a lot of rules. It's also weird because . . . the part of the board that has virtually all the models on it doesn't matter that much - and both players have a lot to think about on one board and a lot less to think about on the other. So, let's unwrap this mega scenario and see what's important for our Fellowship members as they finish their journey together!

Part 7: The End of All Things 

With the exception of Boromir (which I feel was a missed opportunity), we've got everyone - Frodo and Sam haven't had a rest point since Ithilien and everyone else is coming off the bench fully rested - but boy do we have our work cut out for us! Here's who we have to work with: 

• All eight remaining Fellowship members 
• Eomer (no extra gear) 
• 25 Warriors of Minas Tirith (standard war gear and a banner guy) 
• 25 Warriors of Rohan (standard war gear and a banner guy) 

Opposing us are the following models - many of them we've fought in the previous part: 

• Mordor Troll Chieftain (new kid on the block) 
• The Mouth of Sauron on armored horse (another new kid) 
• Gollum (NOT Smeagol, but basically the same profile) 
• 3 Morannon Orc Captains with shields 
• 50 Morannon Orcs (48 with standard gear and two banner guys) 

Oddly enough, there are actually MORE Good models at the start of the game than evil models - but as is usually the case, Evil gets to bring back its Mordor Orc models that are killed (Morannons and Morannon Orc Captains), so you'll be outnumbered eventually.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Ranking Sample Fellowships

Good morning gamers,

We've spent the previous four posts in this deep-dive analyzing which models have been ranked the "best" for each of the different roles of the Fellowship in Fantasy Fellowships. One of the things I liked the most about the Quest of the Ringbearer supplement was seeing the example Fantasy Fellowships at the back of the book from the design team. Naturally, I figured it would be good to wrap up this discussion of Fantasy Fellowships by viewing those sample lists (which were released before everyone started playing Fantasy Fellowships - and before the release of the models that were introduced in Defence of the North) and "ranking" them based on how their selected models did in my analytic model.

A quick note: some of these Fellowships were formed with specific themes in mind - they were not made to be optimized. Fantasy Fellowships don't need to be optimized at all (my Fellowship worked pretty well, but I didn't optimize it very much - heck, I could have fit 25 more points in it without dropping Sting/the Mithril Coat from my initial Fellowship!), but this ranking is intended to view how well these Fellowships are optimized (even if optimization wasn't in the creator's mind) according to the analytic model I built as a means of comparing what the creator wanted to use and what is actually required of the unit. With fun and much charity in mind, let's dig into it!

Contestant #1: Rob Alderman

• Ringbearer: Young Bilbo (#2, 2.433)
• Companion: Balin the Dwarf (#14, 1.933)
• Friends: The Master of Lake-town and Alfrid (#16/27, 2.517/1.917)
• Wizard: Radagast the Brown [with Sebastian?] (#1, 3.5)
• King: Beorn (#7, 4.25)
• Shooter: Tauriel (#28, 3.7915)
• Fighter: Gloin the Dwarf (#44, 3.4165)
• Doomed: Kili the Dwarf (#51, 3.322)

We're not told which character plays Merry or Pippin, so I'm going to assume that Alfrid will be taking the Merry slot (since the Master will be slightly better in the Minas Tirith scenarios, seeing as how Alfrid can't give anyone Might and only has 1 Attack). Radagast and Bilbo are excellent choices and Kili (like many characters) scored pretty well as a Boromir character (though his numerical ranking doesn't reflect this). Balin is useful, though I do question how two 1A characters will fare late in the campaign.

The choice of Beorn (who is great in the Aragorn slot - whether he can change forms or not), Tauriel (who isn't a better archer than many of her competitors but is excellent in scenarios where you'll be outnumbered), and Gloin (both versions of him are good) are excellent, netting Rob a good final utility score of 27.08. When I dropped these guys into my spreadsheet builder, I noticed that Rob has only spent 745 of his total 750pts, so I assumed that he started Radagast with Sebastian instead of starting Bilbo with Sting. This is a great Fellowship to start with and, assuming Bilbo and Balin don't get eaten by Shelob, I think this Fellowship has a good shot at making it to the end.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Optimizing Your Characters, Part 4

Good morning gamers,

In our fourth and almost-final post in this mini-series, we're covering who are the "best" characters to fill your Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimil slots in Fantasy Fellowships. Obviously, you should run the models you like - and there's nothing wrong with picking whoever you want - but we're going to look today at the models I think are the most optimized to perform well against the opponents we're actually going to face in Fantasy Fellowships. These three characters have to do a lot of the killing work - and they're almost always going to be together. As a result, there are going to be options for who takes what slot, but only minor situations where the hero you choose for one slot will be better than an option in another slot. Let's start off with Legolas and Gimli.

The Helpers - Scoring Criteria

As we discussed last time when we looked at the Boromir character, the Legolas and Gimli characters need to be pretty competent fighters - they're going to have to fight Wargs, Goblins, and Uruk-Hai Scouts, of course, but they also need to be able to fight Warg Riders, Uruk-Hai Warriors/Berserkers, and Morannon Orcs. While you can rely on your Boromir character to "just handle the grunts," your Legolas and Gimli characters probably need to be capable of handling the bigger foes on the board as well (a Wild Warg Chieftain, a Cave Troll, the Balrog, and a Mordor Troll Chieftain - all of whom cause Terror and are properly big). As such, there's going to be some overlap with our requirements for the Boromir character, but our bar is going to be higher because we're not mostly fighting F2-3 foes.

Dueling Profile

The dueling requirements are going to be stricter this time, since we know that the Legolas and Gimli characters will need to face a lot more Uruk-Hai than the Boromir character does - and boy is the Deeping Wall scenario harrowing! As such, we're going to require that models reach a minimum of F5 and 3 Attacks if they want full marks, have F5 with 2 Attacks OR F4 with 3+ Attacks in order to get half marks, and give limited value to models who are F1-4 with 1-2 Attacks. We want beaters in these spots, so we need to be able to beat things - no F4/2A heroes for us in these slots please!

• Utility score of 1: F5+/3+ Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.5: F5+/2 Attacks OR F4/3+ Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.1: F1-4/1-2 Attacks
  

Wounding Profile

This is very similar to the wounding rule we covered last time for our Doomed Companion - we want to be at least S4 (whether that's "actually S4" or S2-3 with +1 To Wound) so that we can wound most of the Goblins we'll face and all of the Wargs we'll face on a 4+. It's also valuable to be S5, but not that much more than it is to be S4 (since only a handful of models will be D5 - admittedly, this includes a good chunk of the Uruk-Hai and Morannon Orcs we'll be facing). If possible, we want to be S6 or above (or effectively so once you factor in bonuses To Wound), but we'll take being S4-5 (acceptable) and give minimal points to those who are S1-3.

• Utility score of 1: Effective S6+
  
• Utility score of 0.5: Effective S4-5
  
• Utility score of 0.1: Effective S1-3

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 6c

Good morning gamers,

There are some scenarios that feel like they're horribly weighted towards one side (Good or Evil). There are some scenarios that look downright impossible to win for one side. There are some scenarios where you look at the scenario rules and just say, "Yeah, I just gotta kill everything and I'll finish the scenario objectives later." We've seen a bunch of these scenarios in Fantasy Fellowships . . . and this is going to be another one. :) The technical win conditions for the Docks of Harlond scenario is to get your Aragorn character and either your Legolas or Gimli character off the Evil player's board edge . . . but we can do this really easily by just killing everyone. And so, this scenario is yet another example of the best scenarios in Fantasy Fellowships: line up the enemy and smash them! Let's get into our last Pelennor scenario - and get back to the beater heroes in my Fellowship!

The Docks of Harlond

The plan here is simple: because we don't have Heroic March in our Fellowship, we're just here to kill lots of guys. The Orcs don't respawn in this scenario, so it's 40 of them against 30 of us - and we have FAR better heroes (and way more points) than they do! So yeah, we're just gonna kill things - and if they're running away from the back board edge and don't want to engage, we'll have Nori and Dwalin (because he's a diva and I can't trust him) run for the gate . . . because why not . . .

I don't have 20 Warriors of the Dead (with no extra gear!) or 6 Riders of the Dead, so I used my 10 Warriors of the Dead, 10 Nazgul of Dol Guldur/Castellan proxies, and my 6 Ponies of Equestria. To make this post a bit more interesting, I'll make some random comments about how well the ponies do.

Turn 1-3: Priority Good, Good, Good 

Good automatically starts with priority in most scenario missions and I won the priority roll on rounds two and three, so I advanced with my guys while Centaur held on the center for a turn and then retreated towards the more restricted deployment of the Rammos Echor gate . . . here are some pics:

The army of the Dunharrow advances towards the enemy, with the ponies driving up the right flank

We continue to press forward as the Orcs begin to fall back - the ponies stayed outside of 12" (so they couldn't be charged) . . .

The infantry continue to advance as the Morannons back up towards the gate - the ponies once again stay outside of 12" to avoid being charged on Turn 4 . . .

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Optimizing Your Characters, Part 3

Good morning gamers,

This is our third part in this mini-series on which characters are the "best" choices for Fantasy Fellowships - at least with the analytic model I've made. We've already looked at the Ringbearer and Companion slots, as well as the Rohan/Gondor "friend" slots, and today we turn to the Wizard and "Doomed hero" slots (or "who's going to replace Gandalf and Boromir"). Let's take a look!

The Wizard - Scoring Criteria

As we covered in a previous post, this character has fewer missions than almost any other member of the Fellowship (only Boromir has less screen time - and we're getting to his slot later in this post). Besides the Ringbearer slot, this is also the most constrained slot in your Fantasy Fellowships, since you have to pick a hero from one of the following ten characters:

• Gandalf the Grey (not Gandalf the White)
  
• Saruman the White
• Radagast the Brown
• Galadriel (not Lady of Light)
• Elrond, Master of Rivendell
• Celeborn
• Cirdan
• Arwen Undomiel
• Gildor Inglorion
• Thranduil, King of the Woodland Realm (presumably with the Circlet of Kings so he actually has some magical powers, but this isn't ACTUALLY required)
  

The list is basically the three wizards, two Elves who act like wizards (possibly three, depending on who else is in your Fellowship) and five (or four) other Elves who happen to have magical powers (or can get magical powers with a piece of war gear, in Thranduil's case). Given that they will only be participating in the four scenarios of the Moria Sequence (with a very critical role in the Bridge of Khazad-Dum scenario), one scenario in Rohan (Eomer's Return), two scenarios in Minas Tirith, and the End of All Things scenario to close out Fantasy Fellowships, here are the five categories that are important to them.

Dueling Profile

It's no secret - most magic casters in MESBG aren't great in combat. Usually, you want a few ranks of warriors standing in front of these guys to make sure they don't get torn apart by something big and nasty or a horde of really puny grunts - but that isn't an option in Fantasy Fellowships. Your wizard character might have 20+ guys to keep him safe as you ride to save Helm's Deep or defend the walls of Minas Tirith, but during the early missions, you're going to have a few brave souls to keep the pain off this guy - and with at least a few of those characters being Hobbits, even some of THOSE guys can't be relied upon to keep your wizard alive. As such, I've made this metric simple (perhaps overly simple - see the discussion below on this) and given a utility score to each character based on the number of attacks the hero has (in a few cases, this can be modified by their war gear):

• Utility score of 1: 3+ Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.5: 2 Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.1: 1 Attack
• Utility score of 0: Unarmed
  

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 6b

Good morning gamers,

We're closing in on the end of our Fantasy Fellowship campaign and today we have Bofur's second-to-last mission (the Charge of the Rohirrim). Fell deeds awake - let's get going!

Charge of the Rohirrim

So I'll be honest, this mission felt a lot like deja vu for me after the Eomer's Return scenario - I have a bunch of skirmish cavalry, there's no shooting on the other side, job's done. However, there IS a way that Evil can force a draw if we break them before killing Gothmog (Gothmog can walk off the back edge of the map), so we're going to do some whittling down, but then we're going to charge in and "do what the Riders of Theoden Legion does." Let's see how this all worked out . . .

Centaur deployed just shy of 12" forward and I deployed as far up as I could:

Turn 1: Priority Good

I moved my guys up 5" and prepared to shoot, while Centaur prepared to receive my shooting. In a stunning turn of events, I aimed, I shot, I killed nothing. Turn two . . .

Turn 2: Priority Good

In case you're wondering, the "priority" thing is a bit moot, since there's a scenario rule that Good always counts as winning priority . . . so I stood where I was and fired again, with Centaur standing to receive the shots.

In the Shoot Phase, we actually got some hits this time and killed two Orcs!

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Optimizing Your Characters, Part 2

Good morning gamers,

We're back for another review of which characters are statistically optimized (according to my own analytic model) for certain positions in Fantasy Fellowships. Last time, we looked at the Ringbearer and Companion slots, and this time we're looking at the Friends of the Ringbearer who will be traveling to Rohan and Minas Tirith (aka, the Merry and Pippin slots). The only requirements in Fantasy Fellowships is that the characters cost no more than 50pts, which as of the writing of this article, gives us fifty models to evaluate (most of whom we covered last time in the Companion slot . . . because, you know, Hobbit heroes are generally less than 50pts). We do have some new arrivals, however - and while the two positions we're going to look at today are often in the same scenarios together, there are a few scenarios near the end where they differ (the Ride of the Rohirrim scenario and the Atop the Walls/Denethor's Madness scenarios). Let's dig in and see who's the best!

Scoring Criteria

As I mentioned in a previous article, your Merry and Pippin characters participate in 11-12 of the 23 scenarios in Fantasy Fellowships - or put simply, in half of them. In the early scenarios, they'll be fighting Ringwraiths and Barrow-Wights (Terror-causing units), then they'll be braving the road to and through Moria (with F3 Wild Wargs and F2 Goblins), then pop out the other side to fight F4 Uruk-Hai near and in Rohan (Amon Hen and Ambush at Night) and F3 Mordor and Morannon Orcs (Atop the Walls or Ride of the Rohirrim and the End of All Things). Because most of these are the same scenarios the Ringbearer and Companion are in, a lot of our metrics are going to be the same - but the biggest change from a combat perspective is that you can get away with these guys being F4 instead of pushing them to be F5 (more on this throughout this article).

But there are some key differences for these characters that makes picking the "best" character different from your Companion. First and foremost, the hero you select for your Rohan friend doesn't need to be a particularly good fighter, since he'll be riding safely behind Eowyn (buffing the Dernhelm profile) during the only scenario where Pippin and possibly other Fellowship members are absent. Besides the Boromir character, this is probably your best choice for a "dump" character.

Second, the hero you select for your Gondor friend would benefit greatly from being able to help your wizard character be better. Since the two scenarios where your Gondor Friend will be separated from everyone else involve your wizard character (in one you lose if he dies; in the other the wizard only begins with 1M/1W/1F and no staff of power), it wouldn't hurt to be able to make your wizard character better (or be able to pull models out of his fights). There will even be F4 Citadel Guard who can't be wounded in one of his fights - so a little extra oomph wouldn't hurt.

Third, these guys are often add-ons to your Fellowship (either your Ringbearer and Companion or the full/wizardless Fellowship). As a result, we wanted to reward certain characters for "doing helpful things" with these slots - things like providing shooting, stat regeneration, and banner rerolls. While you CAN get these sorts of things on bigger heroes, getting contributions from smaller heroes is a nice bonus in Fantasy Fellowships. Not all boosts are created equal (some require you to have other Fellowship members with certain keywords or could change the way you/your opponent plays the game), so we're going to have a qualitative measure for how "good" these things are. This is the first time that we'll have a layer of subjectivity in our model, but I thought it was important to let some of the more nuanced benefits of these characters shine.

With this in mind, we have four categories to evaluate again - three will look familiar, but one is unique. Let's take a look . . .

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Optimizing Your Characters, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

If you've been following the blog for the past year, you know we've been walking through Fantasy Fellowships (and we're almost done!). Playing through scenarios has been fun - sub-optimal equipment choices, sub-optimal unit choices, and very different victory conditions have led to some very interesting games (you can read about mine on the Quest of the Ringbearer page).

But one of the things that I've been struck with as we've been playing is how much value the stats and rules of your units actually contribute to how well your games go. I mean, do you NEED good units in your Merry/Pippin slots? How good does your wizard need to be? Well, today begins a new five-part series where I take the principles of the Fantasy Fellowship deep-dive posts I've been doing and applying a statistical score to different categories for each unit that can be taken in a particular Fantasy Fellowship slot, and finding out who are "the best" units for each position. 

If the Google Analytics are to be believed, our least popular posts on the blog are generally related to a) Fantasy Fellowships/Quest of the Ringbearer, b) math posts, and c) Shire or Sharkey's Rogues reviews. Naturally, then, we will kick off this new series by doing a post that covers all three topics. :-) We begin our journey with what might be the two most important characters in your Fellowship: your Ringbearer and your Companion. Let's dig in!

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 6a

Good morning gamers,

This is a huge milestone for me - I have labored long and hard this year to make some Minas Tirith walls for THIS scenario (and so I can say I have them) and now I finally get to use them! We'll be looking at the two wizard-and-friend scenarios today - let's get into it!

Atop the Walls 

This is a small board and a TON of models - there are actually five siege towers (I have two that Centaur printed for me and templates for where the other three are) and there are a ton of Orcs! The objective for me is simple: kill 30 guys before Gandalf goes down. Let's see how Gandalf and Bifur fair!

Because of how I built the board, there's a 1" gap between our models and then there's a ton of stairs. There are five siege towers (two from Conquest Creations, three from Costco cereal boxes) and the Orcs have 7-9 guys on each one. Let's see if we can keep the Orcs from overwhelming Gandalf!

Fantasy Fellowship Deep Dive, Part 6

Good morning gamers,

We come to it at last, the big battle of our time! Indeed, in Fantasy Fellowships, the saga of the siege of Gondor is actually split into four missions (all of which are found in Gondor at War and NOT in Quest of the Ringbearer). While our last segment focused on the journey of Frodo and Sam through the Dead Marshes, Ithilien, the pass of Cirith Ungol, and the plains of Gorgoroth, our journey today returns to the six other living Fellowship members and their part in the struggle at Minas Tirith. Let's dig into it!

Part 6: The Pelennor Sequence 

Photo Credit: Gondor at War

We're almost done with Fantasy Fellowships and this part, like Part 3 (the Amon Hen to Helm's Deep missions) basically has 1-2 missions for different groups of your Fellowships. As such, this is one of the few parts where your scenarios can be played out of order and everything is fine (just remember to play Atop the Walls before Denethor's Madness). Certain scenarios in Part 3 can be played out of order (whether you do Warg Attack before Ambush at Night doesn't actually matter) and you can play Eomer's Return from Part 4 before the other two scenarios if you want to (The Deeping Wall is Breached and Ride Out), but Part 6 is by far and away the most flexible - which is good if you need to juggle tables among several players. Our four scenarios are (mostly) filled with allies and we get to use the following models: 

• Merry (1 scenario) 
• Pippin (2 scenarios) 
• Aragorn (1 scenario) 
• Legolas (1 scenario) 
• Gimli (1 scenario) 
• Gandalf (2 scenarios) 
• ALLIES: 
• Irolas (1 scenario) 
• Beregond (2 scenarios) 
• Theoden with everything (1 scenario) 
• Eomer with everything (1 scenario) 
• Dernhelm (1 scenario) 
• Gamling with everything (1 scenario) 
• Deorwine (1 scenario, probably supposed to have a horse) 
• Elfhelm with everything (1 scenario) 
• Captain of Rohan on horse (1 scenario) 
• The King of the Dead (1 scenario) 
• 24 Warriors of Minas Tirith (standard gear) 
• 24 Riders of Rohan (1 scenario, standard gear) 
• 20 Warriors of the Dead (1 scenario, no war gear) 
• 6 Riders of the Dead (1 scenario) 

That's a lot of guys - most of the scenarios have 24+ warriors and all have 1+ allied heroes. The foes we'll be facing are (mostly) F3 warriors and F4 heroes (mostly without Heroic Strike): 

• Zagdush (1 scenario, F4 with Strike) 
• Gothmog (1 scenario, F5 with Strike) 
• Gothmog's Enforcer (1 scenario) 
• 2 Orc Captains with shields (1 scenario) 
• 3 Morannon Orc Captains with shields (1-2 scenarios) 
• Denethor (1 scenario, F5 without Strike) 
• Guritz (1 scenario) 
• 36 Orc Warriors (1 scenario, standard gear) 
• 36 Morannon Orcs (2 scenarios, standard gear) 
• 4 Citadel Guard (1 scenario, F4) 

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 5c

Good morning gamers,

This post was supposed to go up last weekend, but the impending arrival of Centaur's newest "colt" required a delay. We're wrapping up Part 5 of Fantasy Fellowships right now and we're tackling both the Cirith Ungol mission and the Plateau of Gorgoroth. After two big defeats in the last few missions, I get to use . . . potentially none of my Fellowship members in this first mission! The second mission will probably prove to be quite difficult to win (though a draw is quite easy to get), but we'll see how it goes. Let's get into a scenario where I get to use some of my favorite Mordor units - Mordor Uruk-Hai!

Cirith Ungol

We deployed our models one at a time, keeping our new models at least 2" away from a deployed enemy model (more on this later). The castle proper was pretty packed, as you can see:

Let's get into Turn 1!

Turn 1: Priority Good

I charged into as many guys as I could, focusing on securing the top level. My goal was to stall out his guys on both of the second tier flanks and then bunker up on the top tier. A lowly grunt picked up the coat and the dogs entered Cirith Ungol.

In the Shoot Phase, an Orc archer on the outer wall didn't hit anyone. In the Fight Phase, I declared a Heroic Combat with Shagrat (1/3M), who diced up the guys he was fighting and moved towards the ramp where Gorbag is:

I probably could have gotten Shagrat into combat again . . . but I forgot . . .

The fighting went pretty well for me - I lost a few fights, but only lost 3 models! In trade, I killed 5 Orcs (7 if you count Shagrat's Combat). 

With an initial model count disparity of 9 models, we're closing the gap nicely!

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 5b

Good morning gamers,

Last time, I skated around the Ringwraith in the Dead Marshes, but this time, the same Ringwraith decided to take 2 Might/2 Fate in addition to his 10 Will and Fell Beast and join a band of Orcs to sack Osgiliath! Yep, I've been looking forward to this scenario for a long time and we're finally here! Let's get into it!

Osgiliath

The board is a 24"x48" setup, with 40 Orc models and a Fell Beast on one side, and my Fellowship of six models and 36 Gondorian models on the other. There are three buildings that will be used as objectives that the Orcs are going to try to wrestle away from the Gondorians:

With the units deployed, we started Turn 1!

Turn 1: Priority Good

Centaur called a Heroic March with the Western Orc Captain (1/2M) and I responded by calling a Heroic March with Madril (1/3M) - I brought most of my troops towards the eastern board edge, while the Orcs rushed to hedge out the western objective.

In the Shoot Phase, Faramir killed an Orc with his bow (1/3M) - otherwise, two Orc bowmen, two Orc two-handers, one Orc shield, and a Ranger were killed:

In the Fight Phase, I lost an OsVet in combat in the northern objective, as was one Orc:

Fantasy Fellowships: The Erebor Reunion, Part 5a

Good morning gamers,

Today kicks off the scenarios for Part 5 of Fantasy Fellowships and it's all about Frodo/Old Bilbo Baggins and Sam/Farmer Maggot and his dogs. Oh, and Smeagol. :) The first scenario we have on the docket is the Dead Marshes - a scenario I played before and knew could take a long time or a short time depending on the participants involved. While Frodo and Sam don't really want to tangle with a Nazgul on Fell Beast, Smeagol can wound the Nazgul on a 6 (5 if he uses his Might point) and Maggot can use Piercing Strike with his two-handed scythe to wound him on 5s (4s if he has his Might point). Old Bilbo wants nothing to do with this guy. So . . . while I intend to not fight a Nazgul if I can help it, I'm feeling better about it than with the normal participants (where you have to hope that Sam can Strike up high enough to beat the wraith's Fight Value and someone can get a wound in). Let's get into the scenario!

The Dead Marshes 

The board is a 48" x 48" setup, with six spectres in six marshes, the Fell Beast on one side, and my Fellowship of six models on the other:

My plan was to go towards the northern board edge to make two of the spectres non-players in the game - here's how we got on!

Turn 1-3: Priority Good, then Evil, then Good

The first three turns of the game were all about maneuvering - in Turn 1, three of the spectres were under my control (top-left, bottom-right, right-most), two spectres were under Centaur's control (bottom-left moved 3" through the swamp, top-right moved full and got out of his swamp), one spectre didn't move at all (center), and the Nazgul flitted 3" forward:

On Turn 2, I continued to advance northwards, while two spectres didn't move (bottom-left and right-most), three spectres moved under my control (top-left, center, top-right), and one moved under Centaur's control (bottom-right - he got out of the marsh and moved to intercept). The Nazgul moved 6" under my control and decided that there was something very interesting in the southeast corner of the board:

On Turn 3, I started to near some of the spectres, but things looked pretty good for me again - I got to move two of the spectres (top-left - he's looking for mushrooms around that hill - and bottom-right), two spectres didn't move (top-right and bottom-left), and two moved under Centaur's control (center moved full, rightmost moved through the marsh a bit). The big swing here was that the Fell Beast got to move fully under Centaur's control - and boy can that guy close a gap fast:

Fantasy Fellowship Deep Dive, Part 5

Good morning gamers,

In the previous posts, we've looked at how best to optimize your Fellowship to fight the enemy models that will be showing up in the Fantasy Fellowship missions. Today, we're looking at the two most important models in your Fellowship: your Ringbearer and your Companion. Their journey to Mordor is a hard one, but they are not without help (at least at the beginning). So let's dive in and view not just what makes a hero a good fit for these slots, but also some strategies for tackling the missions you're presented with!

Part 5: The Journey to Mordor 

 

Photo Credit: Quest of the Ringbearer

In this section, our only Fellowship heroes are our Ringbearer and Companion - and boy do we need to get some work out of them! We have the following five missions to complete with them, though you should note that the first two scenarios give us allies while the latter two scenarios require our Ringbearer and Companion to work alone (and this changes the requirements for these characters dramatically): 

• The Dead Marshes (ally: Smeagol) 
• REST POINT! 
• Osgiliath (allies: Smeagol, lots of Minas Tirith guys) 
• Shelob's Lair (no allies) 
• Cirith Ungol (you're basically not playing with your Fellowship on this one!) 
• Plateau of Gorgoroth (no allies) 

For these missions, we have the following models to help us: 

• The Ringbearer (effectively 4 scenarios) 
• The Companion (4-5 scenarios, depending on how often you win priority) 
• ALLIES: 
• Smeagol (2 scenarios) 
• Faramir, Captain of Gondor with bow (1 scenario) 
• Madril, Captain of Ithilien (1 scenario) 
• Damrod, Ranger of Ithilien (1 scenario) 
• Anborn, Ranger of Ithilien (1 scenario) 
• Mablung, Ranger of Ithilien (1 scenario) 
• 13 Warriors of Minas Tirith (standard gear and 1 with banner, 1 scenario) 
• 12 Rangers of Gondor (standard gear, 1 scenario) 
• 6 Osgiliath Veterans (standard gear, 1 scenario) 
• PSEUDO-ALLIES: 
• Shagrat, Captain of Cirith Ungol 
• 15 Mordor Uruk-Hai with no additional gear 

We’ll be facing the following models – basically a bunch of Orcs with some scattered other bad guys to fight: 

• Ringwraith on Fell Beast with 0-2 Might, 10 Will, and 0-2 Fate (2 scenarios) 
• 6 Dead Marsh Spectres (1 scenario) 
• 3 Orc Captains with shields (1-2 scenarios) 
• 12-37 Orc Warriors (4-12 shields, 4-12 spears, 2-6 two-handed weapons, 2-6 Orc bows, 1 with banner, 1-3 scenarios) 
• Smeagol (NOT Gollum, 1 scenario) 
• Shelob (1 scenario) 
• Gorbag, Orc Captain (1 scenario) 
• Orc Taskmaster (1 scenario)