Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Strike

Good morning gamers,

Well, we're closing out the year with the specialized heroic action you've been waiting for: Heroic Strike! Ah, Heroic Strike - the specialized heroic action that seemed so stupidly powerful when my mates and I looked at the Hobbit SBG rules that we said, "No thanks - we'll stick with the Legions rules and the big blue rulebook." In the new edition, Strike isn't available to all heroes and so becomes an interesting part of list building theory and meta-gaming. But how useful is it anyway? For more on this topic, you should check out Rythbryt's series on Heroic Strike, where he delved into how useful this heroic action really is (and covers a lot of other things too - things that can make your Heroic Strikes more powerful AND things that can make countering Heroic Strike easier without having to call a Strike in return).

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Strike, like Heroic Defense and Heroic Strength, is pretty straight-forward: the hero who calls Heroic Strike in the Fight phase increases his Fight Value by D6. Like all heroic actions, Heroic Strike is called at the start of the Fight phase, but your increase in Fight Value isn't determined until the fight involving that hero is selected to be resolved. This is important because if a F3 Meriadoc, Captain of the Shire calls a Heroic Strike against someone like the Witch-King of Angmar, the Witch-King will need to decide whether to counter-call a Heroic Strike BEFORE knowing if Merry got a 1-2 and retained a lower/tying Fight Value to the Witch-King's original Fight Value of 5. Counter-calling a Strike might be the "safe" way to go, but it would also mean foregoing a Heroic Combat (something the Witch-King is likely to succeed in pulling off if he's on the charge with the Crown of Morgul - and certainly possible if he's riding a Fell Beast).

This increase in Fight Value is also determined before the players choose whether or not they are using any special strikes - so a model armed with a sword or dagger (most models with Heroic Strike have these kinds of weapons) can Strike up to a high Fight Value and then choose to Feint to lower their Fight Value if they're fighting warriors (or low-Fight heroes) in order to not only get a higher Fight Value, but also reroll 1s on their To Wound rolls. Neat, huh?

Overly Pedantic Stats: Best Elven Faction?

 Hey Reader!

We're back with another episode of Overly Pedantic Stats, and this post was prompted by the fact that I'm revisiting Rohan, and as I started thinking through the Helm's Deep legendary legion, it got me to wondering whether it was worth it to purchase Lothlorien models, as I've never run Lorien before.

Now, in the last iteration of the game (and I've mentioned this in the past on this blog), I thought that the Galadhrim were a terrible model, failing to be as cheap as wood elves, as resilient as high elves, or as deadly as mirkwood elves. But with the newest iteration of the game where 1) the Galadhrim now have heavy armor instead of just armor, and 2) you can only get wood elves in a Lorien list or a Gildor Inglorien warband for Rivendell, I was curious to see how good Lorien is now.

And that meant it was time for overly pedantic stats analysis. We'll be looking at five elements of the army: killing power (both in melee and at range), duel winning ability, resilience to damage, mobility, and overall cost. Inasmuch as magic factors into these rankings (Blinding Light helping with resilience, Nature's Wrath helping with killing power as it deals wounds and traps targets that are on the ground, etc.) we have also considered magic, but do not have a dedicated "Magic" category, and that will highly favor the fleshed out army lists over the less fleshed out lists.

We will discuss each of them in order from weakest to strongest, looking at the following factions: Rivendell, Lothlorien, Halls of Thranduil, and the Helm's Deep Legendary Legion contingent of Galadhrim.

Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Strength

Good morning gamers,

Two more specialized heroic actions left in this series and today we're tackling the not-as-glamorous of the two: Heroic Strength. If you've been with us for a while, you know that Rythbryt came to the defense of Heroic Strength when the new rules dropped, doing a long series on Heroic Strength and how awesome it is (check out the list of posts here). Heroic Strength doesn't appear to be that useful, but it turns out some heroes can get REALLY good use out of it.

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Strength looks pretty simple: a hero can call Heroic Strength at the start of the Fight phase and increases his Strength by D3. In its most direct use, this can be used to increase your wounding potential by +1 (or sometimes +2), making it easier to wound a high Defense model you're fighting (or REALLY smash through a low Defense model you're fighting). However, the actual implications of increasing your Strength can have other uses too. Let's look at a few.

Shire Melee Tactica

Hey Reader!

In our last post we talked about how to use Shire archery effectively, and in this post we wanted to address arguably the most important thing you can do when playing Shire: building a cohesive, holistic approach to melee fighting. This will determine what you do in your Move Phases, how you position and array your troops, how you determine the composition of your warbands, which heroes you take, when and how to engage the enemy - basically everything except shot selection at range (hence the last post), as your plan for melee fighting will dictate a lot of how you play the game.

And in preparation for taking Shire to a tournament next year, I feel like now is as good a time as any to discuss it, as I'll likely be playing with them in some of our battle reports in the future, :) So with no further ado, let's look at how to beat your opponent in melee combat with a Waistcoat Brigade.

Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Defense

Good morning gamers,

Today we visit yet another clutch and beloved heroic action: Heroic Defense. For many people, this is a great heroic action - anytime you can keep a Troll from Rending you, Azog from smashing your face in, or ignore the benefits of that burly two-handed hammer, you're a happy man. But is Heroic Defense all that it's cracked up to be? And how do you know when to punt on offense and throw your heroic action into defending yourself? Well, that's what we're going to look at today!

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Defense is pretty straight-forward in its rules: the hero who calls Heroic Defense in the Fight phase is only wounded on a "natural 6" (that is, a die that "gets a 6" and isn't boosted to a 6 with Might, two-handed-weapon bonuses, special rules, etc.) during that Fight phase. Brutal Power attacks and modifiers don't come into play at all. If the hero would be wounded on a 6/4+ or worse, then you need to get a natural "6/6+" (which is, needless to say, quite difficult). Simple, right?