The Bare Necessities, Part V: Making Your Heroes Better (and Keeping Them Alive)

Good morning gamers,

Today is our last post in our series on list building – walking through the different things to consider for your army when thinking about victory points (VPs) that can be scored in a game. As a brief refresher, here’s the list:

• Fast troops who can claim objectives or exit the opposing board edge;
• At least one banner;
• Ways of delaying/avoiding being broken (often in the form of large numbers);
• Means of killing/inhibiting enemy heroes; and
• Means of keeping your own heroes alive/augmenting their damage.

We’ve already covered fast troops, banners, “the numbers game,” and neutralizing enemy heroes. Today, we wrap up the discussion by talking about different ways you can make your heroes better (and keep them from dying). Most of our discussion today will focus around your Army Leader (and your opponent’s Army Leader), though most of it also applies to other heroes.

Heroes of Middle Earth SBG: Dain Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills (Profile and Basic Tactics)

No discussion of the Iron Hills and Erebor Reclaimed army lists would be complete without Dain Ironfoot, the Lord of the Iron Hills himself. He made a name for himself (in the books, anyway) by slaying Azog at the gates of Moria in the Drimrill Dale, and in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, he’s on any short-list of top-tier dwarf heroes. He is the undisputed commander of some of the slickest-looking dwarves in Middle Earth, and has some incredibly thematic rules to pair with an exceptional profile (plus an iconic mount). So if you want to indulge your reckless side, or just want an excuse to tell Sauron’s messenger to shove it or call an elven lord “princess,” Dain’s your man (er, dwarf).

(Oh. And his maths are pretty good, too…)

Armies of Middle Earth SBG: Iron Hills Dwarves (Profile, Wargear, and Basic Tactics)

Photo Credit: Wargameterrain

Iron Hills Dwarves are a personal favorite of mine. Beyond their aesthetics (which are stunning in Forge World resin), they boast very good statlines and a host of customization options and special rules for function and theme (or both). They can also be fielded in two separate army lists—The Iron Hills and Erebor Reclaimed—which offer loads more thematic material in addition to many capable heroes, including some of the fiercest and most resilient combat heroes in all of Middle Earth. Wherever they are found, Iron Hills dwarves are second to none when it comes to stubbornness and staying power.

We discussed the big-picture strengths and weaknesses of Iron Hills dwarves in our summary of the Armies of the Iron Hills and Erebor Reclaimed, but if you finished that unsatisfied and craving more, this is for you. In this detailed expose, we’ll spend far too much time breaking down the profile of Iron Hills Dwarves, running through their basic combat probabilities, and exploring how we can customize their wargear options to mitigate some of the weaknesses common to dwarves, or to further augment their prowess in combat.

(Combat Stats, Tactics, and Maths ahead...)