Tournament Time: Rythbryt's Army Thoughts (Grand Tournament 2024)

Edited May 6, 2024, with tournament results

Bonus post this week. Must be something special going on... ;)

As faithful readers of the blog know, TMAT's annual GT is coming up this weekend. I generally don't post articles on the armies I'm running (I leave that to Tiberius, who's far more practiced--be sure to check out his article from yesterday, if you missed it). Nor do I generally recap how the tournament went (Centaur's your man... er... horse-man... for that). But I'm making an exception this time, for several reasons:

1. I've been light on generating content recently (and feel somewhat guilty about that);
2. I owe Tiberius at least two podcasts on tournaments that have long since wrapped (and, again, feel somewhat guilty about that);
3. I really liked a number of the lists that I batted around (and felt like sharing them); and
4. Perhaps because I really liked these lists, I actually locked into a list earlier than the final day they were due (actually, almost 2 full weeks before they were due), which meant there was actually time to write a prospective post on it. :-P

Along the way, there were twists and turns and trepidations (well, okay, actually less trepidation than usual). So yeah... if you want some musings about heavy/all-cavalry armies (or their equivalent), with a heavy dose of strategy (and maybe some obsession-bordering-on-neurosis), read on. :)

This may be a spoiler...

Photo Credit: cbr.com

Factual Background (because all of life is a story, right?)

First, a digression that's not really a digression.

About two months ago, TMAT hosted a winter "mixer" tournament designed to be a fun, pseudo-competitive way for the people in our gaming group to play some games (always fun), while also introducing new/newer players to MESBG. Because of that, we had a pretty small tournament by most standards: a 350 point cap (4-model minimum), with 5 games in one day (45 minutes per game). The five scenarios were pre-selected (though not their order), and all opponents were randomized. (For about a 72-hour period, we also thought this was going to morph into a funsies doubles-event, but we did end up having enough players for a full singles event--10 players altogether, which is also a weird number for doubles :-P).

For those of you who are familiar with the Matched Play guide, you know that 45 minutes is... kind of tight for a 350 point game (the guide recommends 1 hour 15 minutes for a game of that size, so this was definitely on the "fast" side). The pool of scenarios for the tournament (Hold Ground, Capture and Control, Destroy the Supplies, Lords of Battle, Divide and Conquer) also offered a mix of "capture objectives" and "kill models outright/around objectives," which posed some... interesting choices given the 45-minute time limit. For objective games, you wanted lots of models (and, in general, I think you want more models than less in MESBG). But more models equals longer phases, which means less rounds (which means less moving, less shooting, less fighting, less botching, etc.). And taking an army composed of slower models (goblins? hobbits?), shooting models (a 6-second shoot phase vs. a 10-minute shoot phase makes a huge difference), or models that last a long time but have trouble wounding standard (D6) shieldwalls (S3/D7 dwarves, for instance) could further complicate things.

So with those issues in mind, as I mulled my options for the tournament (and all told, I think I mulled some 200 different list ideas/variations), I kept finding myself drawn to lists that could move fast, kill very quickly, take a beating... and do all the above without relying on a lot of shooting/time-intensive roll-offs. And ultimately, it worked. I won all five of my games at the GT with a list that consisted of the Dark-Marshal on Fell Beast (F6 wraith who casts normally, on a flying monster, who can also be a 6" banner in a pinch), leading eight Morgul Knights (who I've always loved, and never brought to a tournament before), and four Black Numenoreans on foot (which I have brought to tournaments before, and never disappoint me) for a grand total of 13 models at 350. 

A portend of things to come?

If Tiberius Were King For A Day: Top 5 Profile Changes I'd Make

Good morning gamers,

Any person who reads Tolkien or watches the films is bound to love something about Middle-Earth (assuming they're the fall-in-love-with-Fantasy type). For some players, this often rears its head in MESBG with cool custom profiles being proposed for characters that show up Tolkien's works that aren't the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, custom Legendary Legions, or occasionally cool scenarios that try to recreate events from Middle-Earth's history.

But more often than not, I see this love for characters, profiles, and factions displayed in a request for updates to existing profiles. Questions like, "How do you get Osgiliath Veterans to work? I love the sculpts and I think they're so cool, but they just don't seem to be worth it - what do you do to make them work?" Have you seen these questions? And have you asked them?

Well, I've decided to compile my list of five profiles that I like (for various reasons) and what I would change about them to make them "better" if I were the King of SBG for a day. I will say that the profiles I've chosen are not only models that I like and think need a slight alteration, but they're also models I play with regularly (and would play with more if their rules were tweaked ever so slightly). With that, let's dive into . . .

Profile #1: Osgiliath Veterans 

Let's start with a profile that everyone struggles to see the point of or a use for (though I tried really hard last year): Osgiliath Veterans. "OsVets" cost +1pt more than Warriors of Minas Tirith and have an identical profile to them with two exceptions: first, they get +1 Courage (which makes them C5 with the Minas Tirith army bonus), and second, they trade the chance of having +1 Defense with the Shieldwall special rule for the chance of having +1 Fight Value if they're near Faramir or Boromir (which is actually easier to do than keeping Shieldwall up). 

The Scouring of the Shire Inspired Lists: The Shire Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today marks the beginning of a three-part series where we look at the models we have in the Scouring of the Shire scenarios and design a list for use in Matched Play. Unsurprisingly, our first stop will be . . . the Shire. The quintessential "good guys" of Tolkien's famous tale, the Shire is often viewed as a non-competitive choice in Matched Play because they have low Defense, they're slow, they have (basically) no spears, and their heroes are weak. And perhaps because they are so heavily critiqued, Centaur has made it his mission to champion them and trounce us here at TMAT again and again with his "waistcoat brigade." Those dashing chaps are more than they seem - let's look at the models we have to work with (I've done some groupings - the list is quite long):

• The Four Travelers (Frodo of the Nine Fingers, Samwise the Brave, Meriadoc & Peregrin, Captains of the Shire);
• Three combat Hobbit heroes (Holfoot Bracegirdle, Robin Smallburrow, and Farmer Maggot);
• Six support Hobbit heroes (Will Whitfoot, Farmer Tolman Cotton, Hamfast "the Gaffer" Gamgee, Baldo Tulpenny, Lotho Sackville-Baggins, and Folco Boffin);
• Four "damsel" Hobbit heroes (Rosie Cotton, Paladin Took, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Fredegar "Fatty" Bolger)
• 12 Hobbit Militia
• 8 Hobbit Archers (and 1 Hobbit Archer with war horn)
• 12 Hobbit Shirriffs
• Bullroarer Took (who seriously limits our options for heroes)
• Gandalf the Grey
• ALLY - The Rangers: Aragorn - Strider
  
• ALLY - The Rangers: 3 Rangers of the North
• Bilbo Baggins
  

While the warrior count is very low (33 Hobbits + 3 dogs) and a few less bows than we'd actually want (we probably want 4-5 more), you CAN run the Defenders of the Shire LL at 750 points if you run all the models you have and do 6 weapon swaps on Hobbit Militia or Hobbit Archers. This will "only" give you 52 models, 16 of which (roughly one-third of your army) are heroes. Tactical benefits aside of having all those heroes, you probably want more bodies than that.

Photo Credit: The Scouring of the Shire

The scale of the Scouring of the Shire book is much smaller than the other sourcebooks (Fall of the Necromancer varies in its scope, admittedly), so it would make more sense for us to lower the points level in this post to something smaller than our usual 700pt list. Like we did for the Men of the West last year, I landed on 600 points - and this list is an homage to my good mate Centaur who, I know for a fact, will critique only one thing about the list below: the lack of Anduril. Let's dig in!

A Season of Giving: Revamping the Rangers (Part II)

In case you missed it, Monday featured our measured update to the Rangers faction. But if that didn't scratch your itch, no worries! Our gift to you on the day of the Feast of St. Thomas Beckett (or "5 Golden Rings" day if you prefer... which is probably more appropriate for this game) is an unmeasured, full-blown revamp of the Rangers faction!

As some of you may recall, Centaur did a post last year suggesting various ways to revamp the Rangers. Some of his profiles (and a lot of his suggestions) have made their way into this in the form of new profiles or special rules. But there's also expanded wargear options, changes to the alliance matrix, updates to a couple Legendary Legions, and horses... tons and tons and tons of horses.

As a caveat, this version is primarily designed for TMAT's upcoming Arnor campaign, which we'll probably release some time this decade (deadlines aren't my forte). But of course we've done our best to try balancing these for competitive play (though I guess you can let us know how you think we succeeded).

As with Part I, I'll have screenshots as we go, but if you want to follow along you can download the whole thing HERE (and in Greyscale HERE). Spoiler alert: this is more than I've written in a long while. So if you find yourself only partly through and you're exhausted, I did try to warn you (instead of ambushing you like the poor orc shmucks in this awesome picture are about to be ambushed).

Photo Credit: Quora.com

Here we go!

A Season of Giving: Revamping the Rangers (Part I)

He sees you when you're sleeping... that's weird!

Photo Credit: reddit.com

Ho, ho, hooooooooold on... this is a day late...

(Oh well. Better late than never, right?)

Another Christmas may have come and gone, but the season of giving here at TMAT continues! (Mostly because I couldn't meet deadlines.) But my procrastination is your gain, because have we got some pre-Epiphany presents for you on this fine Boxing Day!

As many of you know, both Centaur and I are huge fans of the Rangers. So we were somewhat disappointed (or, in Centaur's case, close to affronted) as other factions got buffs, while our beloved Rangers looked on, quietly, from the shadows. 

Of course, the Rangers are a perfectly fine, pseudo-competitive faction as-is. But this is the holidays and we're wish-listing. So we've cooked up something extra special for those oft-underappreciated guardians of the North: an entire faction revamp.

Part I (which we're releasing today) is a modest update that takes a look at the existing profiles and gives them a little... something extra where needed. I'm also not a huge fan of legendary legions--I don't oppose them, I just think that when we have more legions than factions, that may suggest the factions themselves need more attention. But I acknowledge that these Legions exist, and there are two that impact the Rangers (or should), so we've offered some modest improvements for those, too.

I'll have screenshots as we go, but if you want to follow along, you can download the whole thing HERE (and in Greyscale HERE). And if you missed our other Season of Giving ideas, you can check them out using the links below (or at the bottom of the House Rules page):

• The Watchers of the Roads Legendary Legion (December 5, 2022)
• The Light of Caras Galadhon Legendary Legion (December 8, 2022)
• Defense of Mirkwood Legendary Legion (December 12, 2022)
• The Barrows of Cardolan Legendary Legion (December 15, 2022)
• The Last Alliance Legendary Legion (December 19, 2022)
• The Power of the Ring Legendary Legion (December 22, 2022)
• Revamping the Rangers, Part II (December 26, 2022)

Shall we?

2022 NOVA Open - Centaur's Recap

Hey Reader!

So Rythbryt, Red Jacket, Zorro, and I all went to the Nova Open this year, and it was fun to play against a wide range of people from across the country! While I didn't do well, I wanted to give a quick recap of how the matches went, army I took, and a few highlights.

But first, quick shout out to Telcontar101 and others that we met at the tournament! It was cool to actually put a name to the face of the people who read our blog, and for that we thank you, :)

I.  The Army List: Shire + Rangers Historical Alliance

I decided to go with an army that I enjoy: a Shire army that included Aragorn/Strider with all the cool toys, because I love that guy, and I teamed him up with a vast number of bodies to reduce the chance of getting broken in two hours. So here's the army I took:

Warband 1

Aragorn/Strider with Anduril, Horse, Bow, and Armor (Army Leader)

Warband 2

Gandalf the Grey

5 Hobbit Archers

9 Hobbit Militia

Warband 3

Farmer Maggot with Grip, Fang, and Wolf

5 Hobbit Archers

4 Hobbit Militia

Warband 4

Holfoot Bracegirdle

12 Hobbit Shirriffs

Warband 5

Mayor Will Whitfoot

2 Hobbit Shirriffs

5 Hobbit Archers

5 Hobbit Militia

Warband 6

Farmer Cotton

5 Hobbit Archers

7 Hobbit Militia

TOTAL: 800pts, 68 models, 35 casualties to break, 51 to quarter, 11 Might Points

So we've got decent magic and archery protection with Gandalf, a Big Beater with Aragorn, some 8" move infantry with the dogs for tagging objectives, and 20 archers (plus Aragorn's bow and a lot of rocks).

I didn't know how this was going to do, but having played all of the scenarios a few times against a wide range of armies in practice, I walked into the tournament with a rough idea of what I needed to do.

The Problem with Beornings

Pic courtesy of GamesWorkshop

Hey Reader!

So to start off, I should mention that I don't mind Beornings: I think they are a fantastic new addition to the game, and I'm so glad to see them in the miniatures line! A+ job by the team in model design, mechanics, points cost, and the legion associated with them.

But beornings bring out a potential issue in the game, which is the concept of "stat creep" from one release to the next, as the release of the beornings outdates, in my opinion, an entire faction in the game. Rythbryt covered this faction recently on the blog, so if you haven't played with them before, I recommend opening that article to give you a deeper dissection of the models in the force, as we won't be going that deep into it here.

Because from what I can see, The Beornings legendary legion is the new Rangers faction, except that they do almost everything better. Let's see why.

Armies of Middle-Earth SBG: The Rangers

Photo Credit: worldanvil.com

Summer is here again, and so it's time for my annual tradition of trying to finish this series on army lists.    :-P To get back in the swing of things, I figured I'd start with two lists I've spent a lot of time playing over the last year: the Rangers and the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur. The Rangers won the coin flip, so here we are.

While this list is not the most competitive list out there, my personal experience is that it is both (1) an absolute blast to play, and (2) way more competitive in way more scenarios than you might think at first glance. The secret sauce is the absurd number of heroes you can / must take, complimented as well by the assortment of heroes (and sometimes troops) you can ally with them). Having one of the best heroes in the game, with one of the best wargear items in the game, also doesn't hurt. (Can you guess which? spoiler: there are two great candidates.)

Once again, while there's a lengthy list of community resources at the end, I'll flag the Green Dragon Podcast's episode on the Rangers at the outset: definitely give that a listen if you have a lengthy painting project. Devin Moreno over at the DC Hobbit League did a great review of the Rangers after the new edition dropped, both on YouTube and with Mik at Veni Vidi Double. Finally, I have listened many times to the Green Dragon's post-tourney report from Ardacon 2018, when Kylie ran a now-outdated Ranger-heavy list that used the same run-and-hit tactics that continue to make the Rangers so dangerous. If this is a list that interests you, those battle reports give a lot of insights into how to run that list well.

Shall we?

The Bare Necessities, Part XXXIII: The Rangers

Good morning gamers,

We've already looked at two all-hero armies in this series (the Fellowship and Thorin's Company). Both factions behave similarly, so I reviewed them together. Both lists, no matter how you run them, are going to be constrained on model count - especially if you're going to include any kind of "good" heroes from the list. Today, we're going to look at the Rangers, who are capable (as I've recently come to find out) of having quite large numbers, despite everyone being "heroes". Let's look at what they do and what we need to think about when running them!

The Rangers: Allies, Pure, or Legendary Legion?

There are three ways you can run the Rangers right now: a) you can ally a few Rangers into an army (giving cavalry options and hitting power to a Shire force, for example), b) you can run the Grey Company Legendary Legion (which gives the list some extra army bonuses and trades Arathorn and Dunedain for Legolas, Gimli, and Elladan/Elrohir), or c) you can run "just the Rangers." As discussed in my review of the Grey Company, if you plan on running Aragorn, you should be running the Legendary Legion (just because you'd need to run 7+ Dunedain in order to make up for getting Anduril for free). Sure, you can't get horses in the Legendary Legion, but there are SO many points savings you get (not to mention a better array of power heroes to back Aragorn up). 

Allying with the Shire can give you numbers (we'll look at them at the end of this post), which is the one thing this army really struggles with - though the numbers they give you will be light troops and unless you splurge on Gandalf, you're not going to be protecting them from archery. Generally when you ally with the Shire, you feel like the allied contingent, not the main contingent. Similarly, you CAN ally with the Dead of Dunharrow, but this would require a) running Aragorn, and b) you're not getting troops that are THAT much cheaper (and you'll be investing 100 points on the King of the Dead). You can ally this way, but I'm not sure it's really worth it (unless you want D8 blockers for your archers).

Today, I wanted to look at a pure Rangers army (no allies), but we managed to get almost all of our criteria met at 700 points (despite not having allies):

Fleshing Out the Rangers

Hey Reader!

As we're talking about the Rangers this week, I thought I'd take a moment to do something a bit different: offer some ideas for new profiles for Ranger models to expand the range a bit more.

Not every faction needs to be as fleshed out as, say, Minas Tirith or Mordor, and the Rangers are one such faction: I don't think you need a lot of options to choose from to make this faction feel thematic and unique. The fact that it is an all-hero faction already makes it feel unique, and we don't want to detract from this.

But since this can also lead to a lack of options to deal with different threats and play styles, I present the following as homebrew profiles that might make your Ranger armies more flexible in dealing with threats.

I.  The Rangers of the North

In Tolkien's legendarium we have no indication that the rangers have vast numbers of troops - only a small platoon of men join Aragorn in his quest through the Paths of the Dead, and these are all that could be mustered by Halbarad. So while the obvious gap in the faction's options is troop options, I want you to know that 1) as a former Grey Company player from the old edition that had the option to take Rangers of Arnor, and 2) as someone who really misses having 30 shots in a round, I want to state upfront that we're not resurrecting that option in this update. You will still have an all-hero force, so your numbers will likely always be lower than your opponent.

And that's fine - that's the ranger way.

I will also say, thematically, all of the ranger profiles that currently exist should get hand-and-a-half swords instead of just swords, based off of Aragorn's ranger sword. I also don't think that requires a point increase, as they are not getting Burly or another rule that allows you to two-hand without a penalty, so personally I don't think there's a big deal with just making that change. But eh, we'll see what happens.

What we will provide below are a small number of new options to fill the other needs: slightly cheaper options so you can expand your numbers somewhat (at the expense of veterancy and survivability), as well as some support options to help you cover over some of the common issues the army faces. We will also provide some new named rangers, just to give the list more flavor, much like the new ranger heroes that were added with Quest of the Ringbearer.

The Stuff of Legends: The Grey Company

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we looked at the Men of the West Legendary Legion and how you can work with an all-infantry army that is an amalgamation of FIVE different army lists (Minas Tirith, Rohan, the Fiefdoms, the Fellowship, and Rivendell). While its buffs might make it worth trying out, I think most players feel it's not as good as a historical alliance between Minas Tirith, the Fiefdoms, and/or Rohan (though we probed ways the Legion could be tweaked to make its non-Gondor, non-Rohan heroes a bit more appealing). 

In today's post, we're covering the Grey Company (another Legendary Legion from Gondor at War), but unlike the Men of the West, this Legendary Legion provides some really nice benefits over the foundational Rangers army list (with only one or two down-sides). There are three factions that you'd need to Ally to build this Legion normally (and you'd be a convenient alliance). Let's see what you get with this Legion.

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Photo Credit: Games Workshop
Legion Tax: 160-175pts

The only model you NEED to take in this army is Aragorn - Strider. Besides his horse (more on that in a minute), Aragorn has all of his usual upgrades available to him, except that he starts with Anduril for free (which is great - and not an uncommon Legion rule in the Gondor at War book, since all three Legions with Aragorn in them let Aragorn start with Anduril for free). Aragorn's max cost is 175 in this Legion and he is a BARGAIN.

In the supporting cast of named heroes, you have Legolas (no horse, but otherwise all his options), Gimli (option for Elven Cloak), Halbarad (no horse, but option for his banner), and Elladan and Elrohir (no horses, but otherwise all their options). Four of these heroes (not Halbarad) appeared in the Men of the West Legion, but while the Men of the West Legion forbids them from leading warriors (making them difficult to include into the Legion), there are no warriors in this list - so you can take any mix of them without any real loss to your army.

Finally, your "warrior" options are Rangers of the North, which is to say you basically have some battle companies heroes in your list! A single Might/Will/Fate point won't make THAT much of a difference (you still die after taking one wound sometimes, you can only boost a roll that was just barely losing/tying to tying/winning), but it helps. And it helps a LOT.

Tiberius Battle Company Log, Entry #1

Good morning reader,

Yep I know what you're thinking - Tiberius, what are you doing posting today? It's not Monday!?!?!?! I know, I know. That's because today's post begins an irregular series that I'm starting on Battle Companies.

This year's TMAT GT is going to be Battle Companies themed, where we all pick one (or more) Battle Companies, play against each other "regularly," and include one Battle Company that we developed this season to use in a larger army (points limit still TBD because people are lobbying for a higher points level, whether the alliance matrix is allowed is also being debated). All in all, it should be fun.

For my first battle company, I've decided to do the Last Alliance. Those of you who have followed the blog for a while know that I got started with Rivendell thanks to the White Council units (Elrond, Arwen, old Glorfindel model, Erestor proxy, thought about getting Cirdan for a while). I originally got a few High Elf Warriors just so I could run a handful of bodyguards around my Elf/wizard heroes because they were getting overwhelmed. That then led to a larger contingent that is now a full-fledged army.

Numenor took off at about the same time: I picked up a boatload of Numenor warriors from eBay (and traded/bought a bunch from some friends who were eager to get rid of the Numenoreans that came with their High Elves) and acquired Elendil and Isildur in a large hero lot on eBay. With a recently converted Captain of Numenor on horse and a lot of conversions to turn the all-sword-and-board army into a more diversified force, Numenor has been chomping at the bit to be used.I

Shooting: Skirmish models, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today’s post is something special – today I'm joined by Centaur in talking about different skirmish lists in MESBG. The intent of this post is to highlight some of the tactical thoughts that go into using different lists. For our purposes today, skirmish lists will be focusing on dealing damage outside of melee in order to whittle down an opponent's force to a more manageable size. This generally requires movement, as skirmish troops don't want to be engaged right away.

Without further ado, let’s take a look!

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.