The Stuff of Legends: Helm's Guard

Good morning gamers,

You've read our article on Theoden's Riders, you've read our article on Eomer's Riders, and you've read our post on Theodred's Guard (hopefully - if you haven't read any of these, you should). Today we hit the fourth Legion built around a mega hero for Rohan: Helm's Guard. Helm Hammerhand was the highest ranked Rohan hero for Jay Clare, Rythbyrt, and myself when we reviewed the top slayers for the Forces of Good - and specifically Helm in this Legion. So what makes him awesome? And how do you get the most out of this awesome hero with such a light bench of supporting characters? Rythbyrt has the answers to this - have at it buddy!

Legion Tax: 165-175pts

Rythbryt: It's no secret that Rohan's received a lot of love since the game relaunched, and not just in terms of its rule-set and profiles. I'm talking about new model sculpts that are beautiful (in addition to Pelennor box-set Theoden, we've also received Dernhelm, Deorwine, Elfhelm, Aldor and Haleth, and of course the new Eomer plastic kit). 

But my favorite, hands-down, is Helm Hammerhand.

As soon as last Fall's TMAT Tournament wrapped up, I started playing games with Helm's legion (though I won't be fielding it at this Spring's Grand Tournament, it was one of my early candidates). I don't know that this is the most competitive way to play Rohan, but boy will you have a good time while it lasts. 

Math: Should I Boost My Roll to Win This Duel?

Good morning gamers,

In our last post on dueling math, we talked about how to make a spreadsheet that computes your probabilities of winning a fight, given two sets of combatants. We talked about how to scale the number of dice being used - and even applying certain dueling penalties to your models. When we got to increasing your dueling rolls (usually with Might, could be with other rules), we decided to call it quits and start a new post. That's where we're picking up today.

Part 5: Handling Dueling Penalties and Boosts Better

It turns out that computing boosted dueling rolls requires re-thinking the way we've done the previous computations, since we can now have numbers going both up and down (and, of course, the reductions and boosts can be totally different). We also know that penalties are applied before Might is spent, so nothing can get below a 1 - and nothing can be higher than a 6. We know that reasonably we shouldn't see more than a -2 penalty applied to dueling rolls AND we shouldn't see more than a +5 applied to boosting rolls (to boost a 1 to a 6), so let's assume that (from a configuration perspective) this is what we need the tool to do. 

To begin with, let's take as our case study a duel between Angbor the Fearless (who gets a -1 penalty when he doesn't roll a 6) and a Morannon Orc Captain with shield. To compute Angbor's dueling probabilities, we will be setting up an extra set of numbers near the box that pre-computes the dueling penalties and boosts we're willing to make:

On the right side of the 6x6 grid, we have greyed-out numbers that apply the penalties and bonuses that we specify in our configuration section for the vertical character. You'll see something similar below the 6x6 grid for the horizontal character. These tell us what value we would ROLL in order to get the final result on the left-hand side (so Angbor's value for "1" on the left shows a "2" on the right side because the 2 will be degraded to a 1 with his broadsword). Similarly, he has no value for a 5 - any 5s will become 4s and any 6s will remain 6s.

The greyed out cells work as follows: =<original_value> - <dueling_penalty> - <boosting_bonus>. If you're thinking, "Wait, why am I subtracting a negative number and subtracting a positive number? I want my negative number to make my number go down and my positive number to make my number go up, right?" Well, yes . . . that's actually what we're doing, but it's not intuitive. Let's look at an example to make it a little clearer.

Suppose you suffer a -1 penalty from a two-handed weapon. Assuming you don't have Might to boost your dueling roll, you will end up with a 3 whenever you would have rolled a 4. In our system, to figure out how often you get a result of a 3 as your final value, you want the grey number to become a 4 in the line that the 3 is displayed in. Since the penalty is listed as a negative value, we need to subtract the negative from our original value in order for it to get increased properly.

Similarly, if you boost your dueling roll by +1 (usually with Might), all rolls of 2 will become a 3 after you boost it. So if we're trying to figure out how often we get an end result of 3, we would want the grey number to become 2 (which, again, involves subtraction).

Two of the greyed-out cells do special things: the one in the "5" slot has to check to see if both the dueling penalty box is set to preserving 6s AND no Might is being used to boost - when this is the case, it returns 0 (since you will never have a situation where you end up with a 5 high). In all other cases, it works just like all the other cells. Similarly, the cell in the "6" slot has to check to see if the dueling penalty box is set to preserving 6s - if so, it's set to 6. Otherwise, we use the exact same formula that we used in the previous boxes (original score - penalties - boosts).

Okay, so let's assume that we now have the right values being calculated so we know what our expected values are supposed to be. How do we translate these new values into our 6x6 grid? Well, we update our cells on the left and top sides of the grid - here's how . . .

The Stuff of Legends: Ugluk's Scouts

Good morning gamers,

Today we'll be continuing our series on Legendary Legions with Centaur's take on Ugluk's Scouts. Now if you dig DEEP into our archives, you'll know that the first tournament we ever ran here at TMAT (Spring 2012) featured Centaur running Vrasku, an Uruk-Hai Captain (proxied by Ugluk - required by how the Legions of Middle-Earth rules worked back then), and a mixture of Uruk-Hai Scouts and Orc Warriors from the two Isengard lists from the Legions of Middle-Earth book. Centaur has been the longest promoter of Ugluk in our community (he was Centaur's first Isengard hero, if I'm not mistaken) (Centaur: he was!) and has been beloved by him ever since (though perhaps not as high on the totem pole now as the Isengard Siege Veteran with BALLIIISSSTTTAAAA!) (Centaur: he probably still wins by a hair, mostly because he doesn't MISS AS OFTEN, :P). Today, Centaur will be sharing his love for this iconic Uruk-Hai hero and his dysfunctional band of followers. 

Quick interjection before we get started: I intentionally placed this review AFTER the Lurtz's Scouts and Cirith Ungol Legendary Legion reviews, because they both stem from this army (one takes the free 8" movement upgrade for Uruk-Hai Scouts and the accompanying Uruk-Hai heroes, while the other takes the race-based warband restrictions and Animosity special rule). Both of these Legions were released AFTER Ugluk's Scouts, but I felt it would be better to cover Ugluk's Scouts third to show how these neat rules can be melded together. Okay, with the housekeeping notes out of the way, take it away, Centaur!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 65 points

Centaur: You must take Ugluk, but he's the only required hero for this list. That's a nice bonus, as he's only 65pts, and that means you have hundreds of points left to spend on your army. That being said, you are also effectively required to take Mauhur (to get the standard 8" move bonus to all Uruks), and it's wise to take both Grishnakh and Snaga as they are cheap Might Point caddies for you. I also recommend taking an Uruk Scout Captain with a two-handed weapon if you can, as they make for excellent killers (F5/S5 with a two-handed axe? OH YEAH BABY). But beyond that, you can take whatever you want, though I recommend taking a smattering of both Orcs and Uruks to fill out your ranks so that you can take advantage of your special rule.

Math: Am I Gonna Win This Duel?

Good morning gamers,

We've posted a few articles from a guest author named Sharbie who's taken up writing on his own blog - and his stuff is good (you should check it out). Sharbie had a set of two articles written earlier in the year that talked about the Cave Drake: the first covered how good he is in combat, while the other covered some additional maths based on comments that were made (including one of my comments, I'm proud to say). My question was based on a scenario he provided about how someone like Elrond would fare against the Cave Drake in a one-on-one contest. Ignoring how likely you are of getting a one-on-one duel against a Cave Drake with Elrond (he's going to have bodyguards - or he should), let's assume that Elrond does find himself alone in that kind of fight? How do we figure out how likely either side is to win?

The answer to that question (the math behind it) is the topic for today: if I know how many dice I'm rolling and the Fight Value of my models, how can I build my own spreadsheet to figure out the answers to the questions I want to ask? Assuming you want to use Microsoft Excel (or a Google Spreadsheet or some other similar spreadsheet tool) and you want to learn how to fish (so to speak), read on.

Before we dig in, I must add that Rythbryt did a post on some of this a while back in his series on Heroic Strike - if you want to check your math results in this post against something right, you can look there to compare. We'll give examples to illustrate,  but check against those if you don't believe me. Today we will be less concerned about explaining the numbers (though we will) as we are how to compute the numbers from a mathematically sound perspective.

The Stuff of Legends: Cirith Ungol

Good morning gamers,

Today we're back in the new Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook to look at another Legendary Legion: Cirith Ungol. We've already looked at Lurtz's Scouts, which is a fast army that has average Defense. In this list, we'll look at an army that is also average Defense, but not as fast (and you must work at making it fast, while Lurtz's Scouts come by it honestly).

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 155-175pts

You NEED to include both Shagrat and Gorbag in your army (Shagrat is always your Leader). With Shagrat's max cost being 115 points (with heavy armor and his special shield) and Gorbag's max cost being 60 points (with his not-so-special shield), your maximum Legion tax is only 175 points. That's higher than most Legions we've looked at, but not that high for most point levels.

Before we go into what you ACTUALLY need, let's go over something really quickly: you have two warrior profiles (Orc Warriors and Mordor Uruk-Hai) and they both have specialized jobs, as well as common jobs (where you can use either of them more-or-less equally well). Orc Warriors can take spears, while Mordor Uruk-Hai cannot - this means any second rank you have will be Orc Warriors. Mordor Uruk-Hai, by contrast, are more reliable archers than Orc Warriors (both come with Orc bows, but the Mordor Uruk-Hai have a 4+ shoot value). If you need front-line troops, BOTH Orc Warriors and Mordor Uruk-Hai make good choices, as both types of warriors can take shields (going from D4 to D5) and both types of warriors can take two-handed weapons. Both types of units can also take banners - you can give Orc Warriors spears as well (and shields if you like), while the Mordor Uruk-Hai can pair a banner with an Orc bow and be a shooting bannerman instead of a supporting bannerman.