The Road to THRO 2021: Tiberius's Army Pairings

Good morning gamers,

As we get ready for THRO 2021 this weekend, I wanted to take a moment (as I've been doing before the last few tournaments) to talk about the armies that I considered taking to THRO and the armies I finally settled on bringing. In case you missed the announcement, THRO this year has all players bringing two 550-point armies (one good, one evil) and we're playing Good vs. Evil with the first two rounds randomly assigned and the latter two rounds being power-matched (#1 faces #2, #3 faces #4, etc.). 

Players will be awarded +1 Tournament Point if the Good and Evil armies that they bring fought each other (or could have reasonably fought each other if they include GW-invented characters) and +2 Tournament Points if the Good and Evil armies fought each other and at least one was a Legendary Legion. This led me to only consider pairings with at least one Legendary Legion (many involved two though). As a player who loves thematic lists, I'm really happy that I got to run this particular tournament. :)

What we'll be doing today is talking through the scenarios and what they reward players for and then walk through each pair of lists I considered and why I decided not to take the ones that I did. Without further ado, let's dig in!

The Bare Necessities, Part XLI: The Dark Denizens of Mirkwood

Good morning gamers,

We've talked about a lot of armies in this series that have a variety of models available to them - fast units, banner-carrying units, etc. However, in today's post, we're looking at an army that has no problem being fast, but struggles with having low defense, no spears, large bases, and average Fight Value (for the most part). We're talking about the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood - an iconic monster-mash army (that has only one monster - but lots of scary things) that features creatures of all shapes and sizes. Can you make a balanced list with this army? Well, let's see what we can whip up, shall we?

Photo credit: Tumblr

The Dark Denizens of Mirkwood: What Creatures Do You Need (And How Do You Keep Them From Dying)?

The models available to the Dark Denizens of Mirkwood list has access to several different creatures and each has a different role to play in the army. The Spider Queen is your only hero option and she's a very offensive-heavy hero. Paired with a Bat Swarm, she's capable of toppling anyone's Fight Value if you can get the Spider Queen and a Bat Swarm in the same fight, so her Heroic Defense can be used as insurance against a bad match-up.

You have two other Spider options in your army: Mirkwood Spiders have a terrible Fight Value, but can use their Spider Webs to Paralyze warrior models (and hero models who have run out of Fate or fail a Fate save) and so skip straight to the wounding roll. Giant Spiders, by contrast, are F4 with a good Strength value - miniature versions of the Spider Queen and designed for getting locked in and smashing through things.

Bat Swarms and Fell Wargs have more tactical uses - Bat Swarms aren't great in fights on their own, but since they half Fight Values, they can be deadly when paired in a fight with a Giant Spider (since Bat Swarms half your Fight Value rounding down, your opponents will need to be F10 if they want to have a higher Fight Value) or the Spider Queen (who will always have the higher Fight Value). Even if paired with Fell Wargs (who are F3), enemy models will need to be F8+ in order to have the higher Fight Value - AGAINST WARGS!!!!

Speaking of Wargs, Fell Wargs are great for grabbing objectives, charging models that are hiding behind terrain, and theoretically are good for boosting your numbers. However, since they are your only 1 Wound model and only about half the cost of Spiders (and one-fourth the cost of Bats), your total wound count isn't much different by spamming Fell Wargs than it is spamming Spiders or Bat Swarms - and I think the tactical utility of these units is much better. Having a few of these guys to dig up Prizes/Heirlooms or sitting on objectives isn't a bad thing though, so use them appropriately.

This is a light bench and you're locked in at D4 or less (even on the Spider Queen), so your number one objective is to figure out how to keep your units from dying. You don't have any Historical allies and your Convenient allies list is short but has a surprising amount of options. While allying with Smaug is probably a pipe-dream, allying with Azog's Hunters, Azog's Legion, Goblin-town, Mordor, and Moria give you options for spamming numbers and adding in heroes who can distract from the Spider Queen's danger.

It Has Come To Me (Again): Thoughts On The One Ring, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

When the new rules dropped back in late 2018, I did a post on the One Ring and how it had changed since the LOTR SBG days (when I first got started playing). Since then, we've had a few FAQ clarifications (a few very needed clarifications) and I've played a LOT with the Breaking of the Fellowship Legendary Legion and those experiences have given me some new perspectives on things you can do to both use the Ring well and fight against Ringbearers. So today, we're going to take a look at what the rules are for the Ring, how these rules have been altered by FAQs and Designer Commentaries, and ways you can use these rules to both use Ringbearers better AND fight against them.

Rules Review (With Errata and Designer Commentaries Notes Added)

There is a whole page of rules dedicated to the One Ring - thankfully it's broken up into sections for us. Let's dig in and see what's interesting in each part of the rules (I've color-coded the relevant Designer Commentary questions to the references from the rules (to include the errata that have been made on it).

Wearing the Ring

[Wearing The Ring] The model with the Ring can put it on at any time during their Move phase. As soon as they do so, they become Invisible. [ERRATA: Whilst invisible, the Ringbearer may move through friendly and enemy models, provided they do not end their move overlapping any part of another model’s base.] If a model who put on the Ring is mounted, their steed will bolt and they must immediately take a Thrown Rider test.

Q: Can a model with the One Ring put it on if they have already been charged that turn? (p.90) A: No.

Q: Do Invisible models ignore enemy Control Zones when they move? (p.90) A: Yes.  

Two things jump out at us from this section: first and foremost, as the Designer Commentary on the main rulebook has clarified, a Ringbearer cannot put on the One Ring if he has been charged already. This will require planning a turn or two ahead, but otherwise isn't a big deal. It can bite new players, though, so if you're just learning how Ringbearers work, you may want to just accept that there's an error or two that might be made when learning the game. This will probably be one of them.

Second, if your Ringbearer can take a mount (Isildur on horse or Bilbo Baggins on a pony), then you'll want to dismount BEFORE you put the Ring on. Because you can put the Ring on at any point in your movement, you can dismount, put the Ring on, and then move without penalty - but the timing does matter.

The Bare Necessities, Part XL: The Army of Lake-town

Good morning gamers,

Today we cover one of the most competitive armies for the Forces of Good in MESBG right now: the Army of Lake-town. If you're looking at running a list pure, this army . . . well, doesn't look very good. In fact, compared to their cousins (the Survivors of Lake-town, which we'll cover in a few weeks), it looks downright awful. But this army is one of the cheapest hordes that have access to spears you can find and this means you can get a healthy amount of numbers and have plenty of points to ally in big heroes. Lake-town doesn't have the suite of allies that you'll find from the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, but the options they have are solid. So how do we begin to piece together a good army from Lake-town? Let's dig in and see what we have to work with and you'll soon see.

The Army of Lake-town: Who Needs A Horde?

So when you think of horde armies, you generally think of evil factions - Goblin-town, Moria, and Sharkey's Rogues, for example. Some good factions qualify - like the Shire - but most good factions run average-cost models (or very elite/expensive models), which can keep them from "hording out" (though there are builds for Minas Tirith that can horde out by taking cheap heroes). Lake-town has only one expensive hero (Bard) and everyone else costs no more than 50 points - and with most of them (not Bard's children) able to lead 12-15 models and your warrior models costing 5-7 points each, you can get a full warband of guys for under 120 points. If you're getting that many guys for that kind of cost, you can easily get 65+ models in a 600pt game (and at 700, you're looking at over 70 models easily).

Quest of the Ringbearer: Terrain Update, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

Today we're back in Quest of the Ringbearer land and we'll be covering how the terrain is coming for the missions that are in Quest of the Ringbearer. If you haven't read the post on what terrain we need, you can check that out here. Today we're focusing on terrain that will apply to many, MANY missions and a few specialty pieces that we'll need. Here we go!

Trees

I got a bunch of trees from Centaur for my birthday last year and I have only recently started putting them to good use. I have twenty scatter terrain trees now (some tall, some short), which have been placed in 40mm circular cardboard bases, stacked with 25mm circular cardboard bases to give them some interesting rise. The flocking was a mixture of Green Scenics Burned Earth (I think) and some green flocking that I got from Amazon:

With the flocking, the trees look a little different from the normal board, making the difficult terrain visible but not too clashing. I have a bunch of other trees, but don't plan to have them as scatter-terrain (instead, they'll be added to other terrain features for variety). Speaking of which, we've also been working on . . .

Hills

I've made hills out of XPS before (I have a two-section hill that I love), but am not happy with the work required to make mounds of earth (glue causes warping if you don't press down on it hard enough). Thanks to a tutorial from the Terrain Tutor, I looked into expanding foam instead. After a few failed attempts, we have this:

Added some spackle/filler to smooth out the surface and added more flocking and a few big trees to finish the effect. Job's a good one! As playable terrain, their slopes are steep, but they all have pathways to the top and the rest will just require climb tests.