Shooting: Skirmish models, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today’s post is something special – today I'm joined by Centaur in talking about different skirmish lists in MESBG. The intent of this post is to highlight some of the tactical thoughts that go into using different lists. For our purposes today, skirmish lists will be focusing on dealing damage outside of melee in order to whittle down an opponent's force to a more manageable size. This generally requires movement, as skirmish troops don't want to be engaged right away.

Without further ado, let’s take a look!

Workbench Update: Kingdom of Moria

Good morning gamers,

So, the Dwarves were one of my first armies to collect – and by far have been one of the most fun to use. I’ve played many games on this blog with my Dwarves against all kinds of foes and was the first of our players to bring Dwarves to the attention of the group (where they’ve received much criticism for being “overpowered” ever since). While Dwarves certainly have their weaknesses, conventional charge-the-battle-lines-and-hack-them-down strategies aren’t one of them – Dwarves excel at getting their units locked in combat (especially their heroes) and cleaving enemy units quickly. Banners are great for these guys (and King’s Champion banners are the best way to get them) and since any Dwarf Warrior can carry a banner, keeping banners alive is actually quite easy (be it equipped on a bowman or a warrior with a shield).

Today we’re looking at two critical changes that happened around the time of the new rules release: first, without the rules for volley fire, I don’t need 10 Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows anymore to hail down S3 arrows on people 18-36” away (so the two guys I converted are becoming melee guys again, but we’re giving them shields this time), and second, we’re repainting our converted Thorin’s Company rangers because … we bought Thorin’s Company (more on them next week).

Workbench Update: HORSES! (Minas Tirith & Numenor, Part II)

Good morning gamers,

So, let's begin by acknowledging that today in the US is Veterans Day - thanks vets!

Let's also acknowledge that despite a holiday weekend, my fellow admins are busy, so our collaboration post on skirmishers is slipping a week. Instead, we're doing next week's workbench update today (and, coincidentally, it's about Veterans of the Osgiliath variety).

In June/July of this year, we did two workbench updates on Minas Tirith and Numenor, showcasing some of the basing, painting, and converting we’ve been doing on the models I own. Today, we continue that work by looking at a few new acquisitions: painting up 8 more Warriors of Minas Tirith, further conversions on Osgiliath Veterans, adding spears and shields to some of my bowmen, purchasing six Knights of Minas Tirith, and painting up two Rangers of Gondor (and painting up two Aragorns and two spare Numenoreans - but we're getting ahead of ourselves).

Last Month on TMAT... (October 2019)

October's in the books, which is hard to believe. If you, like me, found yourself with a busier month than you planned and haven't had a chance to catch up on TMAT's content, we've got it all for you in one convenient location!

Case Study: Goblin Archery Tactica, Revisited

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we looked at how adding skirmish elements to a Kingdoms of Moria army can make it more flexible in dealing with enemy models than a pure line-em-up-and-hit-em list. Today, we’ll be doing the same thing, but looking at their primary antagonists: Moria. In a way, this will revisit a post we did back in June 2013 on Moria tactics. Things have really, REALLY changed for my Greenskins since then…

Moria: What Are Our Skirmishing Options?

Despite not having that many warrior profiles (and fewer hero profiles than many other factions), there are a surprising number of choices for skirmishing with Moria – let’s look at the Warrior choices first.