Nemesis: How to Fight Against Elendil

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we looked at Gil-Galad and ways (with specific units/army building emphases) you can counter him with. Today, we're tackling the biggest hitter from Numenor: Elendil. While some of what we're going to talk about is copy-paste from Gil-Galad, there are a few rules that Elendil picks up (and a few that he drops) that makes his use (and his countering) different from Gil-Galad. Let's see what's so great about the greatest hero of men . . .

What Makes Elendil So Hated?

Elendil has a beastly combat profile - with F7, S5, and 3A with the option for a mount (if you're willing to do some conversion work, since Games Workshop never made a model for this guy), Elendil is about as punch as man-sized heroes come. While F7 isn't the F9 that we see on Gil-Galad, it's higher than any man-sized warrior is going to get and it's also higher than most heroes. Additionally, he carries Narsil, which is a Master-forged hand-and-a-half sword (so he can two-hand without suffering the To Wound penalty) that allows him to declare a free Heroic Combat each turn - if F7 wasn't enough to make you want to hit warriors with this guy, Narsil certainly incentivises it!

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

On Defense, Elendil is no slouch, with D8 if you give him a shield (and aren't two-handing - otherwise he's D7) and has 3 Wounds/1 Fate, which is "fine" and expected for someone who died in the story. Elendil is the quintessential "a good offense is a good defense" character (well, him and Gulavhar, I guess), which means that once he gets into combat, it's very hard to pluck a wound off of him - especially if he's backed by a banner (for a reroll on one of those 4 dice he gets on the charge).

If this wasn't enough, he has the Unbending Resolve special rule, which grants him two free dice when resisting magical powers - even if he runs out of Will. This makes targeting him with magic (especially spells that just barely go off on a low difficulty) very difficult to cast on him. With 3 Will in his store (that he can regain on a natural 6) and 3 Might that don't have to be used if he's just declaring Heroic Combats, it's not hard for him to shrug off the worst magic in the game (well, almost - more on this later).

Nemesis: How to Fight Against Gil-Galad

Good morning gamers,

We're back in our Nemesis series for the next few months and we're going to be focusing on the heroes who fought for or against the Last Alliance for most of the next few posts. Our journey begins with one of the nastiest Elven heroes in the game: Gil-Galad. Back when Heroic Strike wasn't a thing, having a F9 hero was pretty sweet, but even in an age where Strike exists, having a F9 hero is guaranteed to make your opponent cough up some Might (and being guaranteed to get to the all-desired F10 is a nice option). So what makes this guy so hard to deal with? And what tools can you use to fight against him? Let's dig in and find out!

What Makes Gil-Galad So Hated?

Like most combat heroes, we need to start by looking at Gil-Galad's offensive profile. He's one of four heroes who is innately F9-10 (and by far the cheapest - his rivals are the Balrog and the Dark Lord Sauron) and with 3 Attacks, a reroll to his dueling and wounding rolls with the Lord of the West special rule, Aiglos (a spear that confers +1 To Wound without any penalties), and a mount (your stock-standard horse for 10pts), it's not hard to get a lot of damage out of this guy.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

The pairing of Fight 9 and the Blood and Glory special rule make him particularly dangerous against heroes, most of whom will have to declare a Heroic Strike (if they even have that option) to tie or beat his Fight Value and if he manages to kill the hero (not hard if he can knock the model prone while on the charge or if he's got some help in trapping the target), he gets a Might point back. Striking from F9 can be unnecessary, but if you're going to get the Might point back, it's probably worth doing anyway.

If Gil-Galad was all that was potent or dangerous in his list, he'd probably be okay - but the Rivendell list is loaded with options to make Gil-Galad work at basically any points level. There are some Rivendell heroes that confer no penalties at all to your army building - Elrond and Glorfindel are pricey heroes, but they make excellent wing-men for Gil-Galad (especially Elrond, since he might be able to help you win you priority on a close roll with his Foresight points or knock foes near Gil-Galad prone with Wrath of Bruinen). If you're looking for more budget-restricted killing power, a mounted High Elf Captain or Erestor are excellent choices for 85-100pts. Most players who face Rivendell fear Cirdan with Gil-Galad, since shooting Gil-Galad and charging all those Elves they brought gets harder. Oh, and any Terror you invested in is a lot harder to preserve unless you have Sap Will in your army.

Literary Corner: Why The Hobbit Is Better than the Films

Hey Reader!

So, as you might recall from our discussion about The Lord of the Rings movies and books, this year we're doing some literary study and comparing the books and movies tied to Tolkien's legendarium, and this week I'm kicking us off with a look at The Hobbit. In our last discussion on the Lord of the Rings trilogy I largely agreed with Tiberius's thoughts: the movies are pretty good adaptations and do a lot of things really well.

Today's post is not going to be as understanding to the Hobbit movies, though admittedly I have toned back a lot of my rhetoric because 1) people do like the movies, and I don't want to rain too hard on their parade, and 2) because I really am trying to cut back on being salty about most things in life, so I have to practice somewhere, :P

Like last time, this is not intended to be exhaustive: I've kept myself to five overarching reasons, but you can definitely add more in the comments if you wish. But as someone who had the equivalent of a Literature minor in college, has spent a lot of time specifically studying faerie literature and Tolkien's works, and even wrote a high school course on The Hobbit and its themes, it will surprise no one when I tell you that I have thoughts on this.

I think the Lord of the Rings movies are decent adaptations of the books: it's not a 1:1 recreation, but it does try to remain faithful to the themes and (generally) character arcs in the original text. I do not think the Hobbit movies are faithful adaptations of the source material, as a lot of what they do in them takes away from the central themes of the story, and overly complicate what should be a deeply resonant story for all of us who have ever felt like we weren't quite "home" yet, and are still searching for that place in our hearts (if not our physical bodies). And as a literary person, I really don't like it when themes aren't properly adapted from the source material.

So let's get started.

Back to Basics: Heroic Actions in MESBG

Good morning gamers,

Today, we're talking about what heroic actions are available to heroes in MESBG. When I first got started playing SBG back in 2010, there were only three heroics: Heroic Move, Heroic Shoot, and Heroic Combat. These heroics are the only ones available to all heroes, but other heroics have crept up through the intervening years (and when the MESBG rules revamp happened in 2018, the other heroics became specialized and were listed under each profile . . . which was good, because Captains of Rohan being able to out-fight Cave Trolls for two rounds was just silly).

But what heroic actions are out there? And are there traps to any of them that should be avoided? We're going to deep-dive into all of this today as we explore one of the best aspects of the MESBG system. I'll be dropping links throughout the discussion to our previous Heroic Heroes series where I talked about how these heroic actions work and some of the best heroes that could use them back in 2020 - the articles are old, but the lists have held up pretty well over time - and other articles that we've done on heroic actions so you can learn more if you want to. Let's take a look!

Common Heroic Actions: Move, Shoot, and Combat

As has just been stated, every hero in MESBG has access to Heroic Move, Heroic Shoot, and Heroic Combat. At least two of these are incredibly useful heroic actions (whether there's value to calling Heroic Shoot is very much a debatable question) but all three share one thing in common: they all change the cadence of the phase that they're called in. Let's see how they work.

Heroic Move

I mentioned very briefly in the Move Phase post of our how-to-play section of this series that a hero who declares a Heroic Move can either move before the normal priority-player's movement or can call "With Me!" to allow the declaring hero and all friendly models within 6" of the hero to move before the normal priority movement, though the declaring hero has to move first, the friendly models within range have to end their movement within 6" of the declaring hero's final movement, and anyone who can't end within 6" of the declaring hero's final position OR that doesn't want to move within 6" of the declaring hero can't move at all. Heroic Moves are incredibly useful because they can allow you to move first.

Because Heroic Moves alter the cadence of the Move Phase, if both players have heroes who declare Heroic Moves, a roll is made to see which player gets to move first - one player is assigned the values 1-3, while the other is assigned the values 4-6 and a single die is rolled (the Evil player is 1-3 and the Good player is 4-6, but in Matched Play, you'll need to decide which player is which if it's a Good-vs.-Good or Evil-vs.-Evil match). Each player then takes a turn resolving one of their Heroic Moves. You can cancel a Heroic Move declared by an enemy hero by charging them.

For most factions in the game, moving first is really good - cavalry models can get their charge bonuses by moving first, heroes get to pick their matchups instead of having their opponents decided for them, and models that are trying to escape from enemy models with an object that's worth victory points have the opportunity to get in a better position (and even out of reach of an enemy model). Yes, Heroic Moves are awesome.

They're also costly - you'll hear veteran players talk about "Heroic Move-Offs," which is the colloquial term for when both players declare Heroic Moves to see who goes first. In most cases, the side that loses the 50/50 roll is going to have their Heroic Move cancelled, which results in a wasted Might point (hence my caution about counter-calling Heroic Moves with actual Might points back in 2019). For most players, this is just seen as part of doing business, but as the game drags on, wasted Might is felt acutely and this can have a psychological impact on your game play. Blaming dice is all fine and good - and losing priority a ton of turns in a row and NOT winning any of the Heroic Move-Offs can be a real pain - but the choice to counter-call a Heroic Move is a choice that we make, and so before you counter-call a Heroic Move (or even declare the first one), one should always examine the board and see what the ACTUAL risk is of moving second. Sometimes it's fine to move second.

FAQ Time: Reviewing the February 2024 FAQs

Good morning gamers,

I know I said we would do Thursday posts every other week this year, but golly I couldn't wait two weeks to cover the FAQ drop, now could I? I'll admit it - I was a little afraid we weren't going to get a February FAQ, but surprise, surprise, the GW MESBG team does in fact love us and dropped us an FAQ . . . albeit the shortest FAQ we've gotten to date. Perhaps this means the game is in a good place - and it probably means they didn't read my mail again (or just wrote it off as the antics of a crazy man). Still, it's good to get some updated content for MESBG, so without further ado, let's get into the changes!

Photo Credit: Reddit 
Where is it? Did they fix all those things I asked about for Fantasy Fellowships and the Men of the West? No? Oh well . . .

What Didn't Have Changes

This time around, there were only changes to four of the GW supplements - the main rulebook, the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, Defence of the North, and the Matched Play Guide. If you're interested in any of the other sourcebooks, you can look at our article for the August 2023 FAQ (or in the case of Quest of the Ringbearer and Fall of the Necromancer, before then).

While I don't have any insider knowledge, it would appear that the older supplements are being left alone unless there are game-altering changes that need to be made. In my humble opinion, this is a real shame - mostly since the errata requests I submitted were tied to clarifying things about certain scenarios from the older books (all tied to Fantasy Fellowships - which I think is a great way to keep the game entertaining and interesting for players who have been in the game for a long time . . . and it can make you buy hero models that you'd otherwise avoid picking up) and to Legendary Legions that have been chucked to the wayside by competitive players (though my hat off to the guy who won a GBHL90 event with the Men of the West - you are truly a legend).

Right or wrong, the only non-rules-heavy supplement that got any changes was Defence of the North - which, honestly, was totally expected (or for you double-negative lovers out there, wasn't unexpected). Before we dig into the meat that we got in this release, let's take a quick look at rules that got clarified and worked as we expected (and by "we," I mean us here at TMAT - I know these have come up before and we ruled on them the way the FAQs said).