Nemesis: How to Fight Against the Goblin King

Good morning gamers,

Today is our last post (for now) in this series on how-to-fight-against-those-models-that-are-not-fun-to-fight-against. Our contestant today is a model that I have never used, but have had to face many, many1 times: the Goblin King. Yes, it's the dreaded monster from Goblin-town and all his lovely entourage! While this post will be focusing primarily on the Goblin King himself, there will also be thoughts on the other models that are in his list, since their presence make him MUCH more difficult to deal with. Let's get into the discussion of one of the nastiest profiles around!

What Makes the Goblin King So Hated?

There's a lot to unpack with this guy, but it's probably best to start off with his combat profile. The Goblin King has a pretty mediocre stat line compared to most monsters, but it's a lot of the numbers you want - Fight 6 with Strength 5/3 Attacks is incredibly good for most heroes in the game, and with 3-Might-and-Strike, you're at least on-par with other heroes. This is made even better by his two-handed pick and the Burly special rule, which allows him to be S5-6 with +1 To Wound - at effectively S7-8, he's doing as well or better than most monsters in the game!

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Many of the monsters who rival him (The Balrog, Smaug, Dragons, the Watcher in the Water, Cave Drakes) have really big bases, but the Goblin King has a 40mm base (on par with Buhrdur, Sauron, and Cave Trolls - the Troll guys are envious of this guy's profile and Sauron is . . . really expensive in comparison). This gives him incredible mobility, especially since he's got the Relentless Advance rule, that allows him to move through his own models and squish/potentially squish them to get where he wants.

The greatest critique of the Goblin King can be based on his defensive stats, but even here, he cheats: he's "only D5" with 3 Wounds/1 Fate, but thanks to his Blubbery Mass rule, any wound he takes that isn't caused by a magical power or an Elven-made weapon can be saved on a 3+ BEFORE he has to spend his Fate point. While there are models out there with 6+ saves (the Bears in their Legion, Durin, Fury/Oblivious to Pain) and even one model who can give out a 5+ save (Malbeth the Seer), getting a 3+ save is not only BETTER than having infinite Fate points, but is only comparable to Thror with the Arkenstone (which will save once on a 3+ and can save multiple times on a 4+) and Goroth's "Look Out, Sir!" rule that allows him to bounce a wound onto a friendly model nearby . . . which is good for Goroth, but not great from his friends. Yep, when it comes to shrugging off punishment, there's no one who does it better than the Goblin King.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep Dive, Part 7

Good morning gamers,

There's only one scenario left in Fantasy Fellowships: The End of All Things. This scenario is nuts: it's massive, it takes all day to play, and it has a lot of rules. It's also weird because . . . the part of the board that has virtually all the models on it doesn't matter that much - and both players have a lot to think about on one board and a lot less to think about on the other. So, let's unwrap this mega scenario and see what's important for our Fellowship members as they finish their journey together!

Part 7: The End of All Things 

With the exception of Boromir (which I feel was a missed opportunity), we've got everyone - Frodo and Sam haven't had a rest point since Ithilien and everyone else is coming off the bench fully rested - but boy do we have our work cut out for us! Here's who we have to work with: 

• All eight remaining Fellowship members 
• Eomer (no extra gear) 
• 25 Warriors of Minas Tirith (standard war gear and a banner guy) 
• 25 Warriors of Rohan (standard war gear and a banner guy) 

Opposing us are the following models - many of them we've fought in the previous part: 

• Mordor Troll Chieftain (new kid on the block) 
• The Mouth of Sauron on armored horse (another new kid) 
• Gollum (NOT Smeagol, but basically the same profile) 
• 3 Morannon Orc Captains with shields 
• 50 Morannon Orcs (48 with standard gear and two banner guys) 

Oddly enough, there are actually MORE Good models at the start of the game than evil models - but as is usually the case, Evil gets to bring back its Mordor Orc models that are killed (Morannons and Morannon Orc Captains), so you'll be outnumbered eventually.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Ranking Sample Fellowships

Good morning gamers,

We've spent the previous four posts in this deep-dive analyzing which models have been ranked the "best" for each of the different roles of the Fellowship in Fantasy Fellowships. One of the things I liked the most about the Quest of the Ringbearer supplement was seeing the example Fantasy Fellowships at the back of the book from the design team. Naturally, I figured it would be good to wrap up this discussion of Fantasy Fellowships by viewing those sample lists (which were released before everyone started playing Fantasy Fellowships - and before the release of the models that were introduced in Defence of the North) and "ranking" them based on how their selected models did in my analytic model.

A quick note: some of these Fellowships were formed with specific themes in mind - they were not made to be optimized. Fantasy Fellowships don't need to be optimized at all (my Fellowship worked pretty well, but I didn't optimize it very much - heck, I could have fit 25 more points in it without dropping Sting/the Mithril Coat from my initial Fellowship!), but this ranking is intended to view how well these Fellowships are optimized (even if optimization wasn't in the creator's mind) according to the analytic model I built as a means of comparing what the creator wanted to use and what is actually required of the unit. With fun and much charity in mind, let's dig into it!

Contestant #1: Rob Alderman

• Ringbearer: Young Bilbo (#2, 2.433)
• Companion: Balin the Dwarf (#14, 1.933)
• Friends: The Master of Lake-town and Alfrid (#16/27, 2.517/1.917)
• Wizard: Radagast the Brown [with Sebastian?] (#1, 3.5)
• King: Beorn (#7, 4.25)
• Shooter: Tauriel (#28, 3.7915)
• Fighter: Gloin the Dwarf (#44, 3.4165)
• Doomed: Kili the Dwarf (#51, 3.322)

We're not told which character plays Merry or Pippin, so I'm going to assume that Alfrid will be taking the Merry slot (since the Master will be slightly better in the Minas Tirith scenarios, seeing as how Alfrid can't give anyone Might and only has 1 Attack). Radagast and Bilbo are excellent choices and Kili (like many characters) scored pretty well as a Boromir character (though his numerical ranking doesn't reflect this). Balin is useful, though I do question how two 1A characters will fare late in the campaign.

The choice of Beorn (who is great in the Aragorn slot - whether he can change forms or not), Tauriel (who isn't a better archer than many of her competitors but is excellent in scenarios where you'll be outnumbered), and Gloin (both versions of him are good) are excellent, netting Rob a good final utility score of 27.08. When I dropped these guys into my spreadsheet builder, I noticed that Rob has only spent 745 of his total 750pts, so I assumed that he started Radagast with Sebastian instead of starting Bilbo with Sting. This is a great Fellowship to start with and, assuming Bilbo and Balin don't get eaten by Shelob, I think this Fellowship has a good shot at making it to the end.

Nemesis: How to Fight Against Mumakil

Good morning gamers,

One of the great things about collecting the models I need for the Quest of the Ringbearer sourcebook is that I "need" to buy not one but TWO Mumaks. After having gotten a second-hand Mumak from Centaur (a kingly gift, indeed), I decided to play around with them this year. Our gaming group has actually had a Mumak or two in the mix for a while, but they rarely show up on the table - and the fear of them showing up is often enough to get into the heads of even the most veteran players. So what can you do against such beasts if you see them (especially if there's more than one of them on the table)? Well, these things might not be viewed as competitive options, but they certainly do pose problems to unprepared players - so join us today as we walk through why these things can be deadly (and how to beat them). Let's dig in!

What Makes Mumaks So Hated?

For a refresher on what Mumaks do, you should check out our article from earlier this year on how War Beasts work - it was informative for me to write and hopefully will be informative for you to read. It's no secret - the most dangerous thing about a Mumak is that it Tramples. The Trample rule for Mumaks in particular is nasty - at least three Strength 9 hits to everyone it comes into contact with! If you pay 20pts for the Tusk Weapon upgrade (or have the Mumak War Leader, who begins with the Tusk Weapons upgrade), you increase this to four Strength 9 hits - which may seem like overkill, but it's surprising just how many times not getting that elusive 3+ crops up. 

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Since both the rider and the mount take these hits if it's a cavalry model, it's not hard for most heroes in the game to be killed or very much crippled after a Mumak runs into them. There are some monsters who are less worried about being outright killed (like Sauron, the Balrog, or Smaug), but even THESE guys don't want to be battered by a Mumak over multiple turns - and if it's the Mumak War Leader doing the trampling in the Grand Army of the South Legion, he's quite likely against these specific monsters to be able to call a free Heroic Strike . . . that may not be a guarantee of tying/beating their Fight Values, but it's certainly possible for that Mumak to be higher than F5.

The second complicating factor of Mumaks is that the Mumak itself and its howdah are listed as Siege Targets. Great Beasts of Gorgoroth have been clarified to be battlefield targets, so any siege weapon that can get a direct hit on them and scores a single wound will kill it in one go - OUCH! Mumaks . . . not so much. A 10-wound Mumak will require 10 wounds in order for it to die (for most siege engines this is an expected 22.5-60 turns, depending on the siege weapon being used - the Minas Tirith Bolt Thrower is the only one that can do it in less than 10 turns, but it also has the shortest possible range) - most siege engines aren't going to have that kind of time on their hands. While siege targets aren't harder for normal bows to wound, any D7-8 target (depending on whether the Mumak has the Tough Hide upgrade or not) is going to be hard to bring down with shooting - and if it's good shooting, you can't target the darn thing once it's Engaged with a friendly unit.

Fantasy Fellowship Deep-Dive: Optimizing Your Characters, Part 4

Good morning gamers,

In our fourth and almost-final post in this mini-series, we're covering who are the "best" characters to fill your Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimil slots in Fantasy Fellowships. Obviously, you should run the models you like - and there's nothing wrong with picking whoever you want - but we're going to look today at the models I think are the most optimized to perform well against the opponents we're actually going to face in Fantasy Fellowships. These three characters have to do a lot of the killing work - and they're almost always going to be together. As a result, there are going to be options for who takes what slot, but only minor situations where the hero you choose for one slot will be better than an option in another slot. Let's start off with Legolas and Gimli.

The Helpers - Scoring Criteria

As we discussed last time when we looked at the Boromir character, the Legolas and Gimli characters need to be pretty competent fighters - they're going to have to fight Wargs, Goblins, and Uruk-Hai Scouts, of course, but they also need to be able to fight Warg Riders, Uruk-Hai Warriors/Berserkers, and Morannon Orcs. While you can rely on your Boromir character to "just handle the grunts," your Legolas and Gimli characters probably need to be capable of handling the bigger foes on the board as well (a Wild Warg Chieftain, a Cave Troll, the Balrog, and a Mordor Troll Chieftain - all of whom cause Terror and are properly big). As such, there's going to be some overlap with our requirements for the Boromir character, but our bar is going to be higher because we're not mostly fighting F2-3 foes.

Dueling Profile

The dueling requirements are going to be stricter this time, since we know that the Legolas and Gimli characters will need to face a lot more Uruk-Hai than the Boromir character does - and boy is the Deeping Wall scenario harrowing! As such, we're going to require that models reach a minimum of F5 and 3 Attacks if they want full marks, have F5 with 2 Attacks OR F4 with 3+ Attacks in order to get half marks, and give limited value to models who are F1-4 with 1-2 Attacks. We want beaters in these spots, so we need to be able to beat things - no F4/2A heroes for us in these slots please!

• Utility score of 1: F5+/3+ Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.5: F5+/2 Attacks OR F4/3+ Attacks
  
• Utility score of 0.1: F1-4/1-2 Attacks
  

Wounding Profile

This is very similar to the wounding rule we covered last time for our Doomed Companion - we want to be at least S4 (whether that's "actually S4" or S2-3 with +1 To Wound) so that we can wound most of the Goblins we'll face and all of the Wargs we'll face on a 4+. It's also valuable to be S5, but not that much more than it is to be S4 (since only a handful of models will be D5 - admittedly, this includes a good chunk of the Uruk-Hai and Morannon Orcs we'll be facing). If possible, we want to be S6 or above (or effectively so once you factor in bonuses To Wound), but we'll take being S4-5 (acceptable) and give minimal points to those who are S1-3.

• Utility score of 1: Effective S6+
  
• Utility score of 0.5: Effective S4-5
  
• Utility score of 0.1: Effective S1-3