Heroic Heroes: Top 10 Heroes for Heroic Accuracy

Good morning gamers,

Today begins a new series that will take us through the end of the year and we'll be looking at each of the specialized Heroic Actions available to heroes in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game. For each heroic action, we're going to review a) what the heroic action does, b) when you would actually use it, c) how you can waste the heroic action, and then d) the Top 5 heroes for Good and Top 5 heroes for Evil who can get the most out of the heroic action being viewed.

Our first heroic action is the heroic action I like the least - Heroic Accuracy. I've discussed Heroic Accuracy in the not-so-distant past when discussing my Top 5 ways to waste a Might point and before that I was pretty harsh on it in my review of the specialized heroic actions back in February 2019. Lest you think I will be coming to this discussion from a jaded perspective, know that I do think Heroic Accuracy has its uses (which we'll cover a bit later). I do think this is the most niche specialized heroic action (and the most likely to waste Might, which we'll cover later), but figured we just get it out of the way from the get-go.

What Does the Heroic Action Do?

Heroic Accuracy is a niche heroic action that allows the hero who calls it (or all friendly models within 6" of him if he shouts "Take Aim!") to reroll all failed In The Way rolls. As I mentioned in my post on wasting Might points, this helps you with a very small (albeit sometimes important) part of shooting in MESBG:

• You roll to hit the target;
• You roll to see if you hit anything that's in-the-way;
• You roll to wound.

It's that second bullet that you can reroll - you need to hit before hand AND you still need to wound afterwards. To understand the usefulness of this heroic action, let's looking at what situations would drive you to use it.

Guest Post: (In)convenient Allies in MESBG: Preconditions for a Competitive Alliance with Sharbie

Good morning gamers,

This weekend we host yet another article from Sharbie - if you haven't read his previous article on the Watcher in the Water, you should. Today, Sharbie explores the idea of including allies in your lists - what do you look for in an allied contingent? What can they provide that merits losing your army bonus (unless you're Historical allies, which most factions aren't)? Can you go too far with an allied contingent and lose the core of your original force? All of these questions will be covered below - take it away, Sharbie!

Overly Pedantic Stats: Are Hobbit Armies better than LotR Armies?

 Hey Reader!

I'm beginning a new series on this blog centered around "overly pedantic stats," wherein we assign statistical values to different characteristics of a model to determine how strong the innate stat block is compared to other factions. We do not factor in skill level of the player, army composition, formations, or scenario, but instead just look at the raw stats of the warriors and heroes to see how good they are vis-à-vis each other. 

We looked at five different characteristics for every hero and warrior: offensive capabilities, defensive capabilities, utility abilities, movement values, and cost. Each model was ranked on a scale of 1-5 in each category, and then was assigned a final overall value for the model. This overall value will not be used in today's post, as we are instead looking at the overall score by category for each civ, to see how they line up. We can then use these stats to determine the relative strength of the models in each faction in the game.

One use case for using these stats is answering the question of "power creep": are factions that were released later in the game (found in the Armies of The Hobbit book) stronger or better than the earlier factions that were released (found in the Armies of The Lord of the Rings book)? Let's find out.

TMAT Challenge - Episode 4: Balrog v. Barrow-Wights

It's man versus monster in the ultimate test of survival! 

Tiberius, Centaur, and Rythbryt take a break from matching up iconic heroes against monsters to answer the ultimate question you never thought to ask: can 350 points of Barrow-Wights beat 350 points of Balrog?

 

Mastering Magic: Fury

Good morning gamers,

We come to it at last - the final spell in all of MESBG. We've talked about damage spells (Sorcerous Blast, Area-of-Effect damage spells, and precision spells). We've talked about augments (auric bonuses, stat/resource restoration, magical protection, and damage enhancers). We've talked about debuffs (stat/resource reduction, neutralizing with Immobilize et al, and breaking gear). We've talked about spells that scatter enemy models.

Today, we wrap it all up with one of the first spells I ever used and the spell that (in my opinion) has changed the most from the Legions era to the current MESBG gaming system: Fury.

Ah, Fury. As I've stated in many posts, I got started playing the game with the Mines of Moria starter set and one of the first things I learned was that I needed a Moria Goblin Shaman - Goblins just can't charge Gandalf or gang-up on Boromir reliably without one (that, and they seem to run away a lot)!

Back then, Fury didn't require you to have a Will point to keep it alive - you just had to not lose a fight (which, if you were spear-supporting from the second rank OR standing in the third/fourth rank, was pretty easy to pull off). Even if your opponent had a Ringwraith who could cast Sap Will on you and you lost all your Will, the Fury train kept on chugging. While it was active, all models of the same race as the caster passed all Courage tests and got a 6+ save against all wounds.

When the Hobbit SBG system redid the way magic worked, Fury became dependent on having a Will point in your store. Like the previous version of the rules, friendly models of the same race passed all Courage tests and got a 6+ save against all wounds, but you could channel the spell to improve that spell to a 5+ save. Moria didn't have to do this, as they could take Groblog (whose crown made Fury give a 5+ save so long as he was on the board).

In the newest edition, things have changed yet again - let's look at what Fury does, and to help me with this discussion, I've asked the other members of the TMAT team to help me out a few things based on their experiences (and if you haven't heard our podcast on Evil Spellcasters, I highly recommend you check that out for our extended discussion on Fury).

What Does Fury Do?

Fury is an exhaustion spell that is cast on the caster himself and affects all friendly models within 6" of the caster that have certain keywords (specified by the spell). For the most part, these keywords match the race and affiliation of the caster (Mordor Orc Shamans have "Fury (Mordor Orc)" and so won't help your Black Numenoreans - who aren't Orcs - or your Cave Trolls - who are not Mordor models). Affected models automatically pass any Courage tests they need to take. If channelled, affected models may roll a die for each wound they are dealt and ignore a wound they would have suffered for each roll of a 6 they get.