The New Age Is Begun: The Army of Lake-town

Good morning gamers,

One of our readers asked when we'd do the Army of Lake-town - and I mentioned that I needed to do Thorin's Company first. This post closes out "Dwarf month" and it features . . . exactly four Dwarves. It also has one Elf and that makes it an interesting bridge into the month of May, which will be Elf month. Yes, we're reviewing the Army of Lake-town today - an army that used to be super powerful in the last edition and now really does need to lean into the non-Lake-town elements of the list (which, if we're honest, was always the strength of the Army of Lake-town last edition - see our Bare Necessities post for more on that, which did cover adding in Gwaihir, but not from the Misty Mountains list so he didn't have to be your army leader).

Army of Lake-town: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list has all of the old profiles that you'd expect - the Master of Lake-town, Alfrid, Braga, and Lake-town Guard Captains for your conventional heroes, Lake-town Guard as your only warrior option, and then Alfrid, Bard, and Bard's kids as "the rest of it." This edition, however, we have the guests of Bard's home as well - Tauriel, Kili, Fili, Oin, and Bofur (though notably . . . not Legolas . . . I guess he didn't stay long enough?). These additional heroes are the only way to "ally in" non-Lake-town bodies, which is good because Lake-town has always had fine-not-great profiles that you can buy on a budget to make space for something really strong (and something that's usually better than Bard).

Army List Bonuses

This list has some of the standard rules constraints for mixed-list armies - your Lake-town Guard can only be led by Lake-town Heroes and Bard's Family can be included either in Bard's warband or in Tauriel's warband. Tauriel's warband can also take the Dwarves, which could be useful if you know maelstrom might be a thing.

The Meta is Dead, Long Live the Meta

So next week, Tiberius will have a much more thorough, well-reasoned, dispassionate summary of the latest FAQs and Erratas that dropped on Thursday. 

But while you're waiting, allow me to be dis-dispassionate and express what we're all feeling:

Photo Credit: tenor.com (and The Wizard of Oz, of course)

So I have slightly mixed feelings about some of the changes that were made to a few popular lists (well, okay... one very popular ally choice). But overall, I'm like the rest of you: all my very thematic list ideas are overjoyed tonight that another round of power-creep fad lists have been restored to their proper place: history (or at least the niche pile).

In no-particular-order-of-overjoyness:

No more Lake-Town Spam (well, allied at least)

Like most of you, when I first read The Armies of the Hobbit, I took a look at the Army of Lake-Town, thought "man, that's boring," and kept right on reading. Then, like you, one day I was looking around for something cheap and decent to ally into something very large and cool and expensive (it's usually some sort of list with Gwaihir, isn't it?), and thought "hey, this is a VERY cheap way to get 50+ dudes who aren't complete duds in combat." And then I (like you, maybe) took them to a tournament, felt kind of guilty about it, and then forgot the guilt after kicking other people's butts with them.

Well, no more. At least mostly.

The Bare Necessities, Part XLII: The Survivors of Lake-town

Good morning gamers,

Today we're viewing the last of the Battle of Five Armies forces: we've already looked at the Halls of Thranduil, Erebor Reclaimed, and more recently the Iron Hills. Today we'll be looking at the "angry fishermen" in the alliance: the Survivors of Lake-town.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

The Survivors of Lake-town: Getting the Most out of Bard

A few weeks ago, we talked about the Army of Lake-town and in it we focused on how you could get a large body of troops for a relatively small number of points. In it, you could get two pretty mediocre heroes if you view their stat lines (the Master and Alfrid) and Braga (who is okay) and field a FLOOD of troops that, when augmented by these three heroes, are quite challenging to deal with (max of 39 warriors for 42 models total, coming in at ~350pts if you do 50% spears and 33% bows).

Well, as soon as Smaug burns their town, the refugees of Lake-town are . . . well, not the same kind of army. :-) Instead, your army bonus (and selection of units) makes Bard an auto-include if run pure/historically-allied (as he counts as a 12" banner and gives +1 Fight Value to most of the Lake-town models in this list WITHOUT having to spend Might like the Master of Lake-town does). For "only" 155 points when fully kitted out and a boost to a Hero of Legend, this seems like a cheaper and better version of Imrahil.

BUT when you factor in the ACTUAL cost of Bard, he's closer to 200 points, because he's probably joined by three Independent heroes: his daughters, Sigrid and Tilda, allow him to be F6 instead of F5 if one of them is within 6" of him and call free Heroic Combats so long as both of them are near him. Free Heroic Combats on a horse with F6? Sign me up! Alfrid the Councilor, demoted to an Independent Hero in this list, can still give Bard extra Might points (or give Might to Sigrid and Tilda if you don't want to risk losing Might by rolling the 1 for Dubious Counsel), which can turn him into a pseudo-Boromir hero (except with a larger radius for his banner/FV boost, free Heroic Combats, and lower Defense).

But once you've sunk nearly 200 points into Bard and his three attachés, the question is what ELSE do you put in a list to augment him? Naturally Bard is going to draw a LOT of attention and with only D5 and 3 Wounds/3 Fate (which is admittedly as good as a man-sized model can expect to be sans the Defense rating), so what else would keep him alive? Here are some ideas:

• Gandalf the Grey is a Hero of Valor in this list - one of only two lists where Gandalf can lead troops. While his casting array is meh, he provides resilience to archery with Blinding Light, which is not only good for Bard himself, but is also good for Bard's horse, his daughters, Alfrid, Gandalf's horse (if he has one), and your Lake-town Militia (particularly those without shields).
• Lake-town Militia Captains don't look like much, but within 12" of Bard, they're very cheap F4/S4 models with spears (which means they can support through a cheap grunt if they want to) and Heroic March (good for getting your infantry horde where it needs to be). They're not very expensive, so you might be able to get two or three of these guys into your army if you want to get somewhere fast for an extended period of time.
  
• Bilbo Baggins, Master Burglar is kind of expensive, but as a Hero of Fortitude he can also lead troops and can make Bard not need to call Heroic Strikes if they're in the same fight and Bilbo has the Ring on (and Bard is near the girls). This could make calling Heroic Combats easier, since you'll have the FV advantage, knock-down who you're fighting, and then get extra movement out of your horse.
• Historical Alliances with Erebor Reclaimed, The Iron Hills, and the Halls of Thranduil  provide some nice boosts for your Lake-town troops. Lake-town can get you a high body count for these elite forces, but the allies grant you stronger stat lines (that your Orc-like Lake-town guys can support). Excellent augments include Legolas (for his archery damage more than anything else), Mirkwood Cavalry or Iron Hills Goat Riders (for actual fast troops), Dain Ironfoot (and many of the things he can bring from the Iron Hills), Thorin (a second hero with free Heroic Combats) and any number of the Champions of Erebor (most notably Dwalin, Gloin, Dori, Nori, Kili, Fili, or Bifur).
  

It's important to note that one of the biggest advantages that comes from a historical alliance is that you get a second killing hero. The biggest challenge with Lake-town is that they have exactly one beater hero - Bard. Sure, you can make Captains do damage (and Percy can do some damage with archery), but for the most part, you've got Bard. And that's it. Allying with any one of Lake-town's Historical Allies gives you additional threats without weakening Bard's auric benefits to his team. And if you want, Bard doesn't have to be your leader, depending on who you choose. 

All that said, one of the Top 5 Ardacon lists relied on only Bard as its killer her and another used Lake-town Captains to support Legolas, so whether you need Bard in the list is also up to debate. Regardless of how you roll, you can't get everything we described above (not at any serious points level, that is), so here's a list that shows off some of the synergies you can get (we'll delve into others at the end of the post).

The Bare Necessities, Part XL: The Army of Lake-town

Good morning gamers,

Today we cover one of the most competitive armies for the Forces of Good in MESBG right now: the Army of Lake-town. If you're looking at running a list pure, this army . . . well, doesn't look very good. In fact, compared to their cousins (the Survivors of Lake-town, which we'll cover in a few weeks), it looks downright awful. But this army is one of the cheapest hordes that have access to spears you can find and this means you can get a healthy amount of numbers and have plenty of points to ally in big heroes. Lake-town doesn't have the suite of allies that you'll find from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, but the options they have are solid. So how do we begin to piece together a good army from Lake-town? Let's dig in and see what we have to work with and you'll soon see.

The Army of Lake-town: Who Needs A Horde?

So when you think of horde armies, you generally think of evil factions - Goblin-town, Moria, and Sharkey's Rogues, for example. Some good factions qualify - like the Shire - but most good factions run average-cost models (or very elite/expensive models), which can keep them from "hording out" (though there are builds for Minas Tirith that can horde out by taking cheap heroes). Lake-town has only one expensive hero (Bard) and everyone else costs no more than 50 points - and with most of them (not Bard's children) able to lead 12-15 models and your warrior models costing 5-7 points each, you can get a full warband of guys for under 120 points. If you're getting that many guys for that kind of cost, you can easily get 65+ models in a 600pt game (and at 700, you're looking at over 70 models easily).

Army Concept: Girls Night Out

 

Hey Reader!

As I'm kicking around a few ideas for an army for our next tournament, an idea struck me that led me down a very deep rabbit hole (considering the army build restrictions) one night, and that meant I had to write a blog post for you all to talk about this very strange but very interesting concept. It's not a "meta" way to build an army, but golly is it a fun idea, so I thought I'd share it with you.

The army is a "Girls Night Out" army, and has a simple rule for army building: all of the models must be female. This means we have a very short list in our game, and it's probably only a Forces of Good army (but NOT ALWAYS - MORE ON THAT AT THE END!), but the models you get access to are actually really good, and you can build some pretty competitive lists with them.

So with no further ado, the rules and the profiles we can use.

I.  Defining a "Girls Night Out" Army

As mentioned earlier, our choices of models is very limited: even if you convert up unnamed captain models, you don't have a lot of choices. Assuming that you can turn any captain, King of Men (Queen of Men? Kind of a cool concept, and we know of at least three Numenorean queens who ruled), or warrior choice into a female character, here's the named profiles we can choose from:

Galadriel: Arguably the strongest of the characters we have to work with, we can either take her as a support caster who can regrow our Fate Points (assuming the Mirror is close) or as a decent close combat hero who can give us exceptional magic defense. The former is not as powerful in combat, but does have a stronger ally matrix, so keep that in mind.

Arwen: We get access to another F6 character with magic! This is very useful, as it also gives us a way to knock people down (through Wrath of Bruinen and charging people with Asfaloth) which should increase our killing power. We have the typical low Strength, low Defense issue that this army will generally struggle with, but whatcha gonna do.

Tauriel offers us a reliable infantry hero both at range and up close, which is really nice, and I think challenges Galadriel for the place of "Most Valuable Player" in our list. She still suffers from low Defense, but honestly that's just standard Mirkwood, so we're fine with that. Tack onto this that some of her fellow rangers already have female sculpts, and it's easier to add a Mirkwood contingent than it is for other armies in the line as we don't have to do as many conversions.

Eowyn: So to start off, we cannot take Dernhelm, as Merry is not "Mary," so that's a loss. But on her own Eowyn is a decent captain-level model, sporting F5 and 2 Fate instead of the traditional 1, all while still being around the same cost as a Rohan Captain thanks to that S3 reduction. And since she can take throwing spears and potentially benefit from the Rohan army bonus, she's a decent slayer. Not great, but decent, especially for her points cost. She can also get up to D5, which is more than Galadriel and Arwen can claim, but still not great.

Hilda-Bianca: We can get access to dirt cheap (and decent) spear support, so that's nice, and a useful special rule as well. She's nothing to write home about, but she gives you access to a small retinue of cheap spears. The other thing she does for you: she's a Fortitude hero for 30 points, so allying with historical allies is very, very easy.

You would have access to Sigrid and Tilda if you could take Bard, but alas, it's not possible. So we will not be looking at them today.

No comment on whether Alfrid in the dress should count in this list.

Rosie Cotton and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins offer us two Shire heroes, which means we could take a small contingent of two-handed weapons and/or bows to support the main lines, and for dirt cheap (easily under 50pts for almost 10 models). The trick is that these are Minor and Independent heroes, so getting them in an army is going to be hard. More on them in the next post in our series.

It's also worth noting that we have an option on the Forces of Evil side, as Dunland has one female hero: Frida Tallspear. She's not the most amazing hero ever, but hey - we have a hero! And that may be all we need. More on her later, though it's also worth noting that unnamed heroes for Forces of Evil also include (assuming there are female verions of these) dragons and cave drakes for Moria (and the presence of eggs makes me think the cave drake model is female), wild warg chieftains for Angmar (she-wolf matriarch that leads the pack), unnamed spirit models for Angmar, and (if there are female versions) trolls, though this is a hotly debated topic by the few who really care. 

So...yeah, there are some very interesting options, though not all of them may present many options for warrior choices, thanks to the fact that, as far as we know, all orcs, goblins, and uruk-hai are male.

With this in mind, the rules are simple: all models must 1) be female, and 2) still follow all the normal rules for list building. This means if we want a convenient alliance we need a Valour or Legend hero from all forces involved. If we want a historical alliance we need a Fortitude or higher hero from all forces. That makes things tricky (as we have Galadriel and a Queen of Men for Valour, and Tauriel, Arwen, and captains for Fortitude), but them's the rules.

So with these restrictions, let's look at five army lists: three historical alliances (I thought about doing a pure list, but I wanted to show off more of the models), and two "Kicks and Grins" pure armies for the Forces of Evil (because we don't have nearly enough green alliances/unnamed Valour heroes in Forces of Evil to make alliances work).

TMAT Talks, Episode 10: The Grand Tournament 2021 (Part I)

A global pandemic may have claimed TMAT's 2020 Grand Tournament, but those dark days are finally past, and a red sun is rising once more. The 2021 Grand Tournament is upon us--so of course, TMAT's resident armchair quarterbacks had to break it down!

In Part I, Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt give an overview of the tournament's escalation rules, muse on the three scenarios, and discuss the six armies that will take the field before making some (very reluctant) predictions about the impending weekend.

Now available most places you listen to podcasts (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts)!

You can find the show notes and army lists after the jump!

Music: Happy Haunts by Aaron Kenny

Tournament Time: Rythbryt's Army Thoughts

Photo Credit: Hall of Beorn

As some of you faithful readers may know, TMAT's spring tournament is upon us this weekend. (In case you missed it, you can find Tiberius's thoughts on his entry here.) It's shaping up to be pretty small (most likely five players overall), but everyone has a pretty good grasp of the rules, and we always have a good time of it. Plus it's a chance to try out some of my new terrain boards!

As with every tournament we've ever done, I had a characteristically difficult time settling on a list for this event. In fairness, given that this particular tournament is an escalation event, I actually had to settle on three lists... so I was kinda screwed from the beginning. 

I had several criteria going into this tournament:

• Run something new. Playing games is the most fun, but I enjoy the hobbying side of MESBG quite a bit, and had a lot of plastic kits sitting in my storage closet when the tourney was soft-announced by Tiberius around Christmas time. So I figured, why not take the opportunity to try something new? I've run orcs twice (Mordor once, and Angmar once), and Iron Hills the other two times (a hero-heavy Erebor Reclaimed for 2019's Grand Tournament, and an Iron Hills / Survivors of Lake-Town alliance at a follow-up Fall event), and while I dabbled in a few lists that featured more orcs or more dwarves, I ultimately decided on something different.
• Competitive at all three points levels... but not oppressive. Part of this is probably residual guilt from taking Angmar to TMAT's Spring festivities... that army is definitely competitive, but it's not exactly fun to play against (go figure, for a list with triple barrow-wights plus the Witch-King on Fell-Beast). This time, I wanted something that'd be at least somewhat fun to play against for most armies--yet another reason I shied away from my beloved Iron Hills dwarves (and a reason why I looked more seriously at regular Mordor orcs for a while)--while also giving me some fun pieces to play with. The escalation aspect had more of an impact on competitiveness than I thought it would: the Rangers of Ithilien Legendary Legion is really, really strong at 450 and 600, but I think it starts to suffer diminishing returns (or runs into harder counters) at the 750 level... not that I was considering taking the Rangers, of course (because I'm trying not to be oppressive, remember? :-P ).
• Combat heroes... preferably in multiples. Again, I'm not knocking Angmar, but it's an army (as I built it, at least) that didn't have much in the way of combat heroes (the Witch-King and a Wild Warg Chieftain), and almost no Might to speak of (5 total). I quite enjoy playing armies with lots of heroes, because it can create some interesting challenges for both sides: heavy-hero armies tend to be outnumbered a lot, so there's a lot riding on your heroes to even the odds before you succumb to attrition. It's also one of the best counters I've found in practice to enemy magic, because most armies don't run more than one top-tier wizard and/or two beefy heroes, so if you have 3+ combat heroes, there are very few armies that can lock all of them down. And let's face it... the game is far more interesting when there are heroes involved (especially if they're iconic heroes). The fact that the 750 match would be Fog of War (which can reward you for having multiple heroes) was a nice bonus, and I also suspected that there'd be a fair bit of Bodyguard cav at this tournament (in which case, I would prefer a solid Might store to stay in the game): far better to have the Might and choose not to use it, than to need the Might and not have it.
• Average to above-average model count. I've run super-elite hero-heavy armies before (my Erebor Reclaimed force a couple years back featured only 24 models at 700 points, with five of them being heroes--but that doesn't really count, because Iron Hills Warriors aren't your typical warriors). My experience with Angmar in the Spring really sold me on having a solid number of models. I also think the choice of scenarios, on balance, favors having more models than less: Hold Ground (450 points) is a more-models-than-you-in-the-center mission, To the Death (600) awards a ton of points if you can break the enemy without breaking yourself, and Fog of War (750) may require me to be in several spots at once on the opponent's side of the board at the end of the game (which may be a problem if I have low-courage troops and am broken). My goal was to shoot for 20+ models at 450, and 35+ models at 750. Anything at or above that level--coupled with a few combat heroes to do the work--should be at least competitive in all three scenarios.
• Have at least one incredibly fun model. I checked with Tiberius (who's TO'ing this event) about the power-curve of this particular tournament, and he assured me that I could get as competitive as I wanted with these lists (in his words, "this is the GRAND TOURNAMENT, after all"). Having said that, I did want to include at least one "fun" model who's a joy to play with on the table--something along the lines of Aragorn, or Bolg, or Glorfindel (all of whom I play-tested at various points over the past few months). At 750, I figured I could probably afford whoever I wanted (even Sauron)... but scaling an army built around a big hero, and accomplishing everything else I wanted the list to do, proved to be a bit more challenging.

With these general goals in place, I set about the task of list-building in earnest. And boy, did I build lists... most of them got recorded in the "Notes" app on my iPhone, and I literally have forty-five notes dating back to December 2020 filled with different lists ideas. Most notes contain 6-9 different lists (because again, it's an escalation event), so that's easily 200+ lists that I wrote down at various points over the past four months (God only knows how many more I thought about, and didn't commit to digital paper).

To be fair, some of the lists I jotted down were never really in the running (my "Wee Three Kings?" list, for example, featuring the Goblin King, the Witch-King of Dol Guldur, and the Spider Queen... though it did come in at 52 models, which isn't bad for a convenient alliance that featured a banner, four cav, a decent number of hunter orcs, three Mirkwood Spiders, and a Bat Swarm). But eventually these six lists rose to the top... and then fell by the wayside for one reason or another.

Option 1: Men of the South (Waaaaay South)

The first army I really wanted to run involved Corsairs, because I played an evil horde at TMAT's last tournament and really enjoyed it. The problem with the force was three-fold. First, I initially built the list assuming we were playing at 500, 650, and 800, and I really liked how the Corsairs scaled at that points level (basically, I could get to 50 models at 800 points and have the Knight of Umbar on Fell Beast as my third-banana multi-use combat/magic hero, along with Dalamyr and Delgamar plus a Bosun). 

Scaling the lists down to 450, 600, and 750 proved more challenging than I thought, and I could never settle on something else that I really liked. This list is the closest I got to locking things in... 

While in retrospect this looks pretty intimidating, there were three things I couldn't "fix" in these lists. 

Mastering Magic: Sorcerous Blast

Good morning gamers,

So we find ourselves today beginning a new twelve-part series on magic. I know what you're thinking: 

"Tiberius, you just DID a series on magic. What's there left to talk about?!?!?!"

Lots. :-)

To be honest, I've covered magic quite a bit on this blog. My last series on magic was back in July-August 2019, where I looked at the four different kinds of magical models in the game (Combat mages, Auxiliary mages, Multi-Purpose Will mages, and Unlimited mages).

Prior to that (in April-May 2019), I covered four of my favorite magic heroes in five posts and why I liked what they brought to the army over more traditional, combat-oriented heroes (Gandalf the Grey, Gandalf the White, Gandalf the White again, Saruman, and Galadriel).

More recently, I and my fellow admins Centaur and Rythbryt did a review of our "Top 10" Good spell casters and "Top 10" Evil spell casters in our TMAT Talks podcasts (available on YouTube, going up on other places too). Our post on "Top 10" Support heroes (both Good and Evil) also featured spell-casters - though I did restrain myself from ranking Gandalf the White in that post.

Centaur, Rythbryt, and I teamed up with two of our mates (MinutemanKirk and RedJacket) for two TMAT Drafts with support-oriented heroes as well (Forces of Good and Forces of Evil). While spell-casters were only a part of the total set of models in the pool, they played no small part in my calculations for either side of the coin (no surprise there).

I've written a smattering of other articles in the last year (or so), including the best anti-mages, when channelling wastes Might points (and other things that weren't related to magic), and a review of the best Ringwraiths to take in an army. All of this is under the new MESBG rules - I also talked about magic under the previous rules sets (but I won't drudge all those up here).

After compiling this list, it occurs to me we have written about magic a lot (and me in particular). :)

So what have we not talked about with magic? Why, how to best use each spell, of course! In writing most of these posts (and some other posts on list building), we received comments from some of our readers about how to get better value/from certain casters (Gandalf especially) because they just never seemed to do enough killing to justify their existence in a list over a more combat-oriented hero. This got me thinking about different spells and how to "best use them" (or whether they're even worth using at all). 

So, this series was born, where we'll understand at the beginning of each post what a spell (or set of spells) does, who can use it, how you use the spell effectively, when you use it, and wrap up with a few case studies of people who should (and shouldn't) use it and how. As the series continues, when we've finally covered all of the spells available to a hero model, we'll do a recap of that hero and talk about how to balance what you've read about in the previous posts on the blog so you can integrate the various thoughts into a solid game plan. The end-goal is not only to make spell-casters more accessible to new players, but give experienced players an idea of how they could integrate some of the most powerful spell-casters in the game into existing armies they like to run.

Our first spell that we'll be covering is a spell that got a lot of critique under the new rules: Sorcerous Blast. While only available to a handful of models, Sorcerous Blast has the potential to really change your opponent's combat plans - and let's face it, it's a damage spell (so by definition, it's a cool spell - you think we would start with Enchanted Blades?!?!?!?!). Let's see what it does.

Armies of Middle-Earth SBG: The Survivors of Lake-Town in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

In stark contrast to the last army list we covered, this one is far more humble in its outlook and bearer. And a humble force deserves a humble intro:

In the lands of Lake-Town, the people of Esgaroth are led by two separate yet equally important groups of heroes: the family of Bard who stick together through thick and thin, and the militia captains of Lake-Town who buff their numbers.

 

These are their stories.

*dun-dun*

I think they're onto us, son...
Photo Credit: denofgeek.com

Magic: Top Five Anti-Casters

Good morning gamers,

In our series on heroes, we’ve looked at Uruk-Hai heroes from Isengard, Dwarf (and wizard and Hobbit) heroes from Thorin’s Company, and the top five ways to waste Might points in the game. Today, we look at the top five heroes that you can employ to resist enemy magic casters (and in preparing for this post, I was rather proud to know that I own most of them - good thing, since almost all of my armies run magic, huh?). :)

How to stop magic?

As I discussed in a previous post on Magic in MESBG, there are four ways to block magic:

• Spend Will (one die for each point of Will you spend – any that get a “natural 6” are returned to your Will store);
• Resistant to Magic (free die anytime you’re targeted by a spell – available whether you spend Will or not);
• Heroic Resolve (free die anytime you’re targeted by a spell, but requires the hero who calls it to stay stationary); and
• Fortify Spirit/Protection of the Valar (two free dice anytime you’re targeted by a spell OR immunity from hostile spells, but requires the hero who casts the magical powers to retain Will OR cast the magical power that turn).

No model has access to all of these innately and most heroes only have access to one or two. Since magic is out of favor for many players these days, you might not get much practice fighting against magic (which can be a nasty surprise). As such, let’s look at some of the qualities that makes a hero a good anti-caster option (in the odd event you run into a double-Ringwraith army).

"Fly you Fools!": Rethinking Shield-Spear Combat

It's been a couple months since our last dedicated post on maneuvering, but after doing so many theory-crafting posts on army lists recently, and with Tiberius about to launch a new series on Shooting, I thought it was high time to dust off some models, move them around the table-top in a photogenic-esque fashion, and see if we could get them to do interesting or unexpected things.

We're kicking off the first post of our new series on tactical maneuvering with what tends to be (for most armies, at least) the default battle-line in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game: a front rank of warriors with shields (and sometimes the occasional front-rank hero) backed up by a rank of warriors with spears. This Shield-Spear formation (not to be confused with a Viking Shield Wall formation, which lacks spears, or a Shieldwall formation, which also gets a +1 defense bonus based on its position when strikes are made) generally tends to be pretty static. But that needn't be the case. As with Shieldwall, your Shield-Spear formation can be a dynamic and flexible formation, setting you up for the next turn, frustrating your opponent's plans, and even transforming "unwinnable" combats into salvageable ones.

If that sounds intriguing to you, read on for five simple tactics you can employ to accomplish just that! (No, that doesn't sound click-baity at all...)

Warning: lots of text, photos, and maths ahead. But it's the weekend, so it's not like you have anything better to do, right? ;-)

Photo Credit: VaderFan2187