Overly Pedantic Stats: The Ten WORST Slayers (Evil)

 Hey Reader!

In our last post we looked at the top ten worst slaying heroes for the Forces of Good. Since Rythbryt has taken his look at Jay Clare's list of the top ten slayers for the Forces of Evil and then did his follow-up post on the top three in greater depth, in the same vein as our last post we will be looking at something completely different: the absolute WORST evil slayers in the game. 

In this post we continue by looking at the stats to find the "top ten" worst slayers for the Forces of Evil. These models fall under the same parameters as our last post: the models must be capable of dealing wounds (which actually doesn't prevent anyone from making this list - I guess that makes sense for evil models?), the model must be a hero, and all troop types (siege weapons, monsters, etc.) are on the table. As you can imagine, no monsters made this list.

We will be looking at five categories for this, as we always do: hero slaying capabilities (to show how well you kill heroes), troop slaying capabilities (for how well you chew through armies), defensive capabilities (for staying power to keep killing things), support capabilities (for making it easier for people to kill around you), and mobility (to get into range to kill stuff, be that at range or in melee).

So with no further ado, the literal WORST evil killers in the game!

The Stuff of Legends: The Riders of Eomer

Good morning gamers,

Last time we looked at the Riders of Theoden Legendary Legion - one of the most prolific and beloved Rohan Legendary Legions. Today we look at one of the LEAST loved Rohan Legendary Legions (and the most profile-restrictive Legendary Legion to date - narrowly edging out the Return of the King and Lurtz's Scouts Legendary Legions). Does limited choices mean a "worse" Legion? Today, Centaur takes us through this remarkable Legion and some of the neat tricks you can pull out of the hat with it - take it away, Centaur!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 110-120pts

Centaur: You have to take Eomer, Third Marshal of the Riddermark on horse (and a 110-120pt Eomer at that, so you do save some points), but in truth, if you're giving up the Arise, Riders of Theoden! bonus and the universal charge bonus, you should be taking Gandalf too. This means that the list is far more effective in higher points games, though even at 500pts (as you'll see in a moment), having Gandalf dramatically changes things as he's really hard to beat in lower points games. So the "requirements" for the list, to be fair, are steep, but probably worth it.

Overly Pedantic Stats: The Ten WORST Slaying Heroes (Good)

 Hey Reader!

We were blessed a few months ago with Jay Clare's thoughts about the best slayers in the game, and I've really enjoyed seeing everyone's take on it. Whether that's Rythbryt's analysis or Tiberius's analysis (both of which have good math and metrics behind them), or comments in Facebook groups and on YouTube, I've really enjoyed seeing the love shown to so many models in the game, and that just speaks to the quality of the models that have been made for our game. 

So a huge thank you to the team at GW for making all of this possible, :)

But some models suck at wounding, and since literally NO ONE asked for that, we're going to use some overly pedantic stats to bring to you the absolute WORST slayers in the game, starting with the Forces of Good.

We have two rules for this competition. First, you must be capable of wounding, so no, Frodo of the Nine Fingers, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Goldberry will not be doing a three-way tie for #1. You must be capable of wounding, but not be very good at it. 

Second, you must be a hero to be considered: we will not be looking at warrior models for this competition. This means we will be considering siege veterans, but the model must be a hero in order to count for the competition. No surprises to anyone, no monsters made this list, but we have left it open to hero monsters in case one of them was somehow atrocious at killing things.

We will be looking at five categories for this, as we always do, but a little different this time (as cost doesn't play as much into this equation): hero slaying capabilities (to show how well you kill heroes), troop slaying capabilities (for how well you chew through armies), defensive capabilities (for staying power to keep killing things), support capabilities (for making it easier for people to kill around you), and mobility (to get into range to kill stuff, be that at range or in melee).

So with no further ado, the literal WORST killers in the game!

The Stuff of Legends: The Riders of Theoden

Good morning gamers,

Today we continue our review of Legendary Legions from Gondor at War (we've already looked at the Men of the West, the Grey Company, and the Army of Gothmog) and we turn our attention to one of the most popular legions from that sourcebook: the Riders of Theoden. While many of the Legions from Gondor at War have remained popular years after its release (the Return of the King LL, the Black Gate Opens LL, and the newly-revamped Rangers of Ithilien LL among the front-runners), the Riders of Theoden is not only a good Legion for new players to try out (since you only need the starter box to get going), but remains one of the most competitive ways to play Rohan (even after Gamling's banner got nerfed). To be honest, this is a Legendary Legion that needs very little introduction - if you've played the game a few times, chances are you've played with or against this Legion.

Because everyone's probably run into this Legion before, I sent this article to one of the Legion's greatest advocates, Lachlan Linton-Keane from Zorpazorp (which, if you haven't run across his stuff on YouTube, you really need to give them a watch)! Lachie has great videos for MESBG (as well as other tabletop game systems) and great videos for terrain building, tournaments, and Battle Companies. Amidst all of these videos is the clear impression that if Lachie had another choice, he'd have been born on the plains of Rohan in the Third Age. He also sells terrain supplies (including free templates for the Minas Tirith project he's been working on with the community), so check out his store and support one of MESBG's flagship entrepreneurs! I'll be highlighting Lachie's thoughts where they differ from my own - and with that, let's dig into this Legendary Legion!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 100pts

The only model you NEED is Theoden, King of Rohan (who comes with the kitchen sink and weighs in at a very affordable 100 points). A mega combat hero Theoden is not, but his 12" Fight Value buff to Riders of Rohan, Rohan Royal Guards, and the seldom-seen-in-this-list-Captains-of-Rohan is quite useful (and is critical to how the list works). His ability to call "Death!" at the start of one Fight Phase makes him an essential piece to keep safe early in the game as well (I mean, it's one of the reasons to take this Legion over the vanilla Rohan build). With F5/S4/2 Attacks when charged and F5/S5/3 Attacks and the knock-down on the charge, Theoden has the potential to do some pretty nasty damage to enemy warriors.

But Theoden, like Gothmog (who we discussed last time), isn't an anti-hero power-piece. While he can Feint (reroll 1s at the cost of -D3 Fight Value) even when his starting Fight Value is lower (useful), he CAN fight enemy heroes, but with only 2 Wounds/1 Fate and "only" Defense 7, he's not THAT resilient (plus any wounds he suffers will give your opponent victory points in most scenarios AND he's important for your army buffs). This shouldn't be taken as a big critique - lots of Rohan heroes are D7 with 2 Wounds/1 Fate, so "it's to be expected."

Armies of Middle Earth SBG: Re-ranking Jay Clare's Top-10(ish) Evil Combat Heroes, Part II (the Big Three)

Photo Credit: alswns3421.deviantart.com

Last week, I took a stab at re-ranking Jay Clare's top-10 combat models for the forces of evil. We got as far as #4 before I had to call it quits, because blogger (quite literally) wouldn't post the rest of my thoughts on the top-3. So I'm back, as promised, to finish the set.

Before jumping into that, however, I have a little clean-up to do on the other rankings. After posting, Sharbie reminded me that Bolg also has access to Master of Battle if he's taken from Azog's legion and is your army leader (I'd plumb forgot, because our local scene always has Azog leading Azog's Legion--go figure). In Azog's case, having Master of Battle was good for another point in four categories (Troop Slayer, Hero Slayer, Mobility, and Impact). Bolg got max scores already in one of those categories (Troop Slayer), but since I'm trying to apply these already-subjective criteria as consistently as possible, I went ahead and gave Bolg a +1 point boost in the other three categories. 

On further reflection, I also thought that while I've never managed to get Bolg all ten of the kills he needs to unlock the Mighty Hero achievement, the possibility of Mighty Hero + Master of Battle on the same model was probably worth at least a +1 boost to his Empowerment score (I made it 1.5 to get to an even "6"), and also probably worth at least a slight bump to his cost score (given that he costs so much less than Azog does, and with Master of Battle + Mighty Hero, he may actually be be better than Azog). So here's Bolg's new platinum-level card, as well as his updated score breakdown:

Score Break-down:

• Hero kills (10): Base 8 (F7, 3 Attacks); +1 for Burly; +0.5 for The Bringer of Death (Mighty Hero if you get to 10+ kills); +1 for Master of Battle (potential free Strikes).
• Troop kills (10): Base 8 (F7, 3 Attacks); +1 for Burly; +1 for mount option; +0.5 for The Bringer of Death (Mighty Hero if you get to 10+ kills); +1 for Master of Battle (potential free Heroic Combats).
• Toughness (8.5): Base 6 (3.5 combined Wounds/Fate (3/1)); +1 for Defense 7; +0.5 for Master of Battle (potential free Heroic Defenses); +1 for Terror / Harbinger of Evil (1 and 5 kills with The Bringer of Death).
• Mobility (9): Base 6 (10" move); +1 for Fell Sight; +1 for 3 Will; +1 for Master of Battle (potential free Heroic Moves).
• Empowerment (6): Base 6 for The Bringer of Death (Mighty Hero if you get to 10+ kills).
• Impact (10): Fight 6 heroes don't like Bolg (he has a whole trick named after him that makes suckers of Fight 6 heroes). Striking monsters have to be careful around him, too--at Fight 7, he's got the base fight of most striking monsters (Dragons, Troll Chieftains, Bill/Bert) and at Strength 5 with Burly he wounds most of them (D7 or less) on 4s. He can't Rend them, so that works in their favor; but if they can't one-shot him, they're likely to lose some blood.
• Cost (6.5): Blog is very expensive, but he's way cheaper mounted than Azog is mounted, and if you do manage to tier The Bringer of Death all the way up (and pair that with Master of Battle from the Azog's legion army bonus), he's arguably as good or better than Azog, at a much lower points cost. You don't always have those two upgrades, but I did feel the potential of getting them was worth a slight cost boost.

Laid out like that, I think it's pretty clear I underrated Bolg last time around (but only if he's the leader of Azog's Legion--if you're running him just in Azog's Hunters--or if Azog is around and the Army Leader--I'm not sure I'm sold). What's less clear is where this version of Bolg slots in the final pecking order. On the one hand, I still have some reservations about putting a 3 Wound, 1 Fate orc on a 1 wound, Defense 4 Warg ahead of a big bruiser like Bill the Troll, although I fully admit that a full-power Bolg with Mighty Hero and Master of Battle is going to look pretty scary to Bill. On the other hand, his updated score (60) is substantially higher than Bill's (52), and is firmly in the same tier as Gulavhar (59) and Azog (59.5). 

Now, I know I said I'm not beholden to the scores (and that was my justification for putting Bill ahead of Bolg the first time), but at some point the score gap becomes so large that it's just not justifiable. I feel like I've reached that point with Bolg. So I'm going to bump him ahead of Bill (who falls to #7), and push Bolg into that next tier with Gulavhar and Azog. I suspect he may jump Gulavhar as well... but since we're going to rank all the evil slayers shortly on TMAT Talks, I'm going to mull it over for a couple weeks before committing to a final decision. Because there is a lot to mull over.

Anyways, with that cleaned up, it's time for the main event: my take on the last three models remaining: Sauron, the Balrog, and Smaug (to borrow Jay's order). 

There's a ton to talk about here, so strap in...