Isengard Strategies: Ballista Crews

Hey Reader!

As we prepare for October's THRO tournament (woot!), I'll be releasing a number of tactical posts alongside the battle reports I usually produce, talking about different elements of the Isengard lists that I'm tinkering with for my force for THRO.  In today's post, we'll be touching on ballista crews, and some of the thought into why you'd take them, what they are designed to do (as well as what they are not designed to do), and how to get the most out of them in your games.

Over the past few months I've heard a number of players complain (and rightly so) that ballistas don't really work because gamers in our gaming group put down a boat-load of terrain, making the range, line of sight, etc. substantially worse than the stats in the book.  I'll note upfront that I disagree with a reduction of their effectiveness (though I grant the point on how this limits line of sight), and in my next few battle reports I'll be playing urban games just to prove this point, :)  It definitely limits range, but as you'll notice in Section II below, limitations from terrain can be used to our advantage, and we actually embrace this.  But we are getting ahead of ourselves, :)  To begin, let's start at the beginning: why would you ever take a ballista crew.

Summer Workbench: Mordor

Good afternoon gamers,

As I mentioned in a previous post, I did a lot of hobbying this summer, but due to purchasing a condo and moving, I didn't get a lot of time to post on the blog. This summer, I focused on two projects for the most part (besides purging my terrain collection before the move): Mordor Orcs (and their Ringwraith handlers) and Rivendell Elves (and some of their High Elf lords). Both of these lists will be getting a post on some of the strategies I've developed while learning how they play, and today's post will be focusing on Mordor.



The army is mostly composed of Mordor Orcs (not Morannons, more on that in a bit), but there are some Trackers and Spectres too to bring out the model count. I also own some Wild Wargs, which thanks to the new sourcebooks can be brought with a Mordor list (or Angmar under the old LOME rules). A few thoughts on why this collection of models...

Sneak Peak: THRO 2015

Good morning gamers,

So I've been thinking about our Fall "The Hunter's Red October" tournament (THRO, pronounced like "throw") a lot in the last few months, and so we'll begin this post with a short overview of the purpose of the THRO tournament and then give a sneak peak to the scenarios that are going to be played and the army list-related rules we're going to have. This is not only to field comments before the official tournament post goes up (read: this is not binding yet, so comment if you have better ideas...or if you think one of these ideas stinks), but also to allow players to practice before the tournament is posted to get a better idea of how they want to structure their armies.

Throwing Weapon Theory: How to Make Them Work

EDIT: If you found this page, you should know we've posted an update for the new MESBG rules (2018)! You can find the updated page here.

Good morning readers,

So my wife and I just bought a condo, moved, and have been doing home-improvement jobs for the last few weeks. It's been really busy. But now that most of that stuff is put to bed, I can get back to writing on the blog. Rest assured, my hobbying-hands haven't been idle in the past few months, so I'm hoping to get up a lot of content over the next few weeks (give Glenstorm a break - thanks buddy).

Today, we're talking about throwing weapons, and this post constitutes the climax of a four-year journey in learning how and why to use throwing weapons. Since starting to collect in this hobby, I've really liked throwing weapons. First with Gimli, then with my Wood Elves, I learned that there is not only a reason, but also a tact to using these things. As a preliminary note, all references will be in inches - assume 2 cm for each 1 inch we talk about here if you use the metric scale.

Battle Report: Domination: Isengard v. Rivendell

Hey Reader!

This is Centaur here with another battle report!  This battle involves me testing out one of my crazy ideas for an army for THRO 2015 (which is coming up in October) against a very odd Rivendell army concept that Tiberius is dabbling with right now.  I'd mention what makes it odd but...you'll see when he lays out his army list, :)  Since this was a "Eh, let's just test some crazy ideas and see what works" game, we decided to play a Domination game (as it has very easy rules) to help get some of the dust off of my Isengard game (as it's been years since I've used Isengard in a tournament).  The lists are below: