TMAT GT: Tiberius's Army Thoughts

Good morning gamers,

This coming weekend is TMAT's Grand Tournament and we're doing an escalation tournament with the following point levels and scenarios:

• 450 - Hold Ground
• 600 - To The Death
• 750 - Fog of War

I've been wanting to throw an escalation tournament for ages - I developed armies in an escalation tournament style to teach people the game since I got started playing (100 points of warriors only, 250 points by adding a hero or two and some additional warriors, and slowly adding more points with additional warriors and heroes until you get to 500-700 points). This approach allows people who are new to the game (or haven't played in ages) to understand the core mechanics slowly and ease them into a game that has (if we're honest) a LOT more rules than the game requires.

Developing armies that can do well at three different point levels and are good at missions that do different things is hard to do - and so I had many armies swirling through my brain before I finally quieted the petitions from the boxes and picked one. Extra bonus points are awarded at this tournament if you have a "nesting dolls" style build, where the 450 is a subset of the 600, which is a subset (naturally) of the 750 - as opposed to having the 450 army be a subset of the 750 army and the 600 be a subset of the 750 army (but not having all of the models in the 450pt list in the 600pt list). Here are the armies I considered taking - and why I didn't chose the ones I did.

The Stuff of Legends: The Black Riders

Good morning gamers,

We've covered a lot of Legendary Legions already in this series - and today, we turn to one of the Legendary Legions I was most excited about in the Quest of the Ringbearer book (and one I ran at a tournament LONG before the Legion was available): the Black Riders. While the "actual" models (sans the Witch-King) have only recently become available (I provided four different ways to get them if you want to play through the Quest of the Ringbearer scenarios), these models represent one of the most iconic forces of Evil in the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. While their Fell-Beast-mounted cousins are more powerful on offense, these guys are set to dominate the magical game in ways that other Ringwraiths will envy forever. Let's dive in!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 80-165pts

The only model you NEED to take is the Witch-King of Angmar on horse, who comes in at a very affordable 80 points. Functionally, he's going to come in at 100 points, because you want to give him 3 Might points and at least 1 Fate point.

Since most games are played above 200 points, you'll be running at least one Ringwraith on horse, but you really want to include at least 3 Ringwraiths on horses. Like the Witch-King, I think you want to run these guys with 2 Might each and at least 1 Fate point. This means they're at least 80 points each - and each stat improvement will cost you 5 points/model (if you're going to have these guys have different Will/Fate allocations, make sure you mark your Ringwraiths well!).

We'll be talking in the Strategy section about when to get more Will/Fate on each Ringwraith, but for now let it suffice to say that the customizability of this force is largely found in the allocation of Will/Fate to each model (I think you run full Might on all of them - even over Fate). An interesting OTHER way to customize your army is to do weapon swaps on your Ringwraiths: as generic heroes, you can swap their swords for other weapons (axes perhaps?) if you want some variety in your ranks (or just do more damage). In February 2019, I recommended giving these guys clubs so they can get the OLD version of Transfix via the Stun special strike - not sure it's worth it in this Legion because you need to be killing things, but it could be very useful (stunned models are easy to kill).

Fixing the Orc Fight Value Problem

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the TMAT blog! In today's post I'm going to address my overall annoyance at how good some of the Hobbit era orcs are at fighting, because it seems like in their haste to make the microcosm of the Hobbit line work thematically they inadvertently snubbed a lot of the best heroes across the three ages of Tolkien's primary history of Middle Earth. And today I'm going to recommend a simple fix that would solve this issue.

First we're going to build the case for a change, because I hate recommending changes to stats in profiles if I don't have to. Once we establish that, thematically within the world, the Fight Value of specific models is too high (and it won't just be orcs - we'll address some Forces of Good models as well), we will present a simple, semi-elegant way to fix this problem that is consistent with current rules in the game that will allow for those thematic battles between orcs and dwarves without encroaching on the territory of the likes of Elessar, Glorfindel, and some of the greatest elf lords in all of Tolkien's legendarium.

I.  The Problem: Why High Fight Values?

Let's start with the biggest perpetrators of "Fight Value Bloat," which is Azog and Bolg. First off, in Tolkien's world, Bolg is a scary dude (as is Azog in his day, to be fair): these guys are good fighters. But we have no indication that it would have taken a heroic feat involving one of the best elven lords of all time tying either of these guys in their fighting prowess, which is the current state of the models in our game.

Both Azog and Bolg are Fight 7, which makes them better than Imrahil (a half-elven descendant of both the Quendi and the Numenoreans, and among the strongest three warriors of his time), Elrond (herald of the Faithful and among their best warriors in the Second Age), Celeborn (another of the strongest elf lords that ever lived), and Aragorn (the best warrior of his time) to name a few. That...doesn't seem right to me, any which way you look at it.

The Stuff of Legends: The Breaking of the Fellowship

Good morning gamers,

Today we'll be looking at a Legion that has surprised me more than any other Legendary Legion to date (with the possible exception of the Men of the West LL): the Breaking of the Fellowship. With heroes that we know and love from the Amon Hen sequence of the Fellowship of the Ring, we've got all the power heroes that you follow throughout the Lord of the Rings and none of the nameless grunts that you are usually forced to bring in an army. But can this Legion fight down-handed in both models and points at high points levels? Is it even worth taking at low points levels? All of these questions will be answered today as we delve into this unique and beloved Legion. Also, I've been using this Legion for our upcoming Grand Tournament (and even painted up new copies of all eight heroes), so I'll be including images of my Breaking of the Fellowship LL models in this report - the Legion is a LOT of fun to use!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 160pts

You NEED to include Aragorn - Strider in your army and he costs a very manageable 160 points. You ACTUALLY need other stuff too, beginning with Frodo Baggins: Frodo not only gives everyone Fearless and can keep you from giving up victory points for being broken, but also gives you Blinding Light access AND a Ringbearer (in most games). All of this is really good - and that speaks for 240 points already.

Once you have Frodo and Aragorn, your next choices are determined by your points level: if the points level is in increments of 100 points, you need to take Samwise Gamgee, Meriadoc Brandybuck, and Peregrin Took if you don't want to waste points. If the points level is in increments of 50 points, you're picking just Merry or Pippin. This will take you to either 250 or 300 points.

Your next points (up to 300) will be spent on your other killer heroes: Legolas Greenleaf (100 points), Gimli, Son of Gloin (100 points), or Boromir of Gondor with shield (100 points). Of the three, I'm inclined to think that you need Legolas the most (as he'll be necessary for clearing sparsely guarded objectives or models that are racing to capture objectives). The big discussion is going to be whether your next inclusion is Gimli or Boromir . . . a discussion we had when we covered the Fellowship in the List Building series, actually.

An Apologetic for the Flameburst Spell

 Hey Reader!

So I was talking with the rest of the TMAT team about evil spellcasters and the damage potential of Saruman, and one of the things that I brought up was how Saruman had two spells that did good damage: Sorcerous Blast and Flameburst. And the comment was made: "well, except the fire, because no one casts that, like, ever," so effectively he has one damage spell.

And that made me sad, because I've always loved the Flameburst spell.

And since only two people in the game have it (Kardush and Saruman), and one of them apparently never casts it, it means the spell gets virtually no use.

And that made me sad, so I decided I'd craft an apologetic for why you should cast this spell at least once every game. I'll start off with a quick look (because I don't think people will disagree with this) at why it isn't cast as much as, say, Sorcerous Blast, and then walk through the situations that would make it wise to cast this spell over and against the other spells on Saruman's list, and how these come up an amazingly high amount of the time regardless of the army you are facing.

We will not be looking as much at Kardush, not because he isn't great, but because the only spells he has are Fury and Flameburst so he tends to use it a lot. But everything we mention below for tactical uses of the spell apply to both Kardush and Saruman equally (albeit with the caveat that Saruman can be mounted for 10" of movement and Kardush cannot).

Also, if you want a nice comparison of Flameburst to other similar spells in the game to give you greater context for the spell, my buddy Tiberius did a great write-up on it in his Mastering Magic series a few months ago. You should check that out - won't take more than a few minutes.