I've got a 'serious' (well for toy soldiers anyway, lol) game on Saturday. The player definitely knows what he is doing and will play smart. I'm fairly comfortable playing the Gondor list, but am not used to so many points! Since we just couldn't coordinate all the young working dads before Christmas, we'll be going for 2500pts 1v1. I presume there will be no houserules, so everything that follows is based around the idea of coping with what someone who is really trying will throw at me from the Evil lists + battlehosts.

Elessar, King of the Reunited Kingdom
Eldarion, Son of the King (Boromir Statline)
Faramir, Prince of Ithilien
Eomir Eodig
Radagast the Brown
Morinethar the Blue (Saruman Statline) (return of the blue Wizards, but on the Good side - based on the suggestion in later Tolkien that they were a successful force for good in SA and TA)
Rohan Royal Knights x 5
Minas Tirith Knights w Shields x 6
Minas Tirith Knights w Shields x 6
Ithilien Warriors x 5 (MT Wars)
MT Archers x 5
Axemen of Lossarnach x 5
Warriors of Anfalas x 5 (MT Wars)
Warriors of Eriador x 5 (MT Wars)
Warriors of Rhohavian x 5 (MT Wars)
Avenger Bolt-thrower w crappy 2' range x 2
Avenger Bolt-thrower w crappy 2' range x 2
Fortune - probably 'Blessing of Galadriel' on Morinethar the Blue to allow some of those great abilities to work, since he lacks the beige wizard's 'touched by destiny'. 'Desperate Heroics' is another possibility.

The theory is that I will need multiple serious duelers (Elessar and Son) with ES, Epic Duel and extra might, to have a credible chance vs Khamul and the Betrayer - before they do too much damage. I need to be able to ensure I can at least overcome the Dwimmerlaik effect and ensure the kill. If Khamul lives too long, he could decide the matchup between battle-line on his own.

Also, I need to plan for monsters. I think the Balrog is not a worry, but Dragons and Mumaks concern me a lot more. I reckon (assuming I go first) Radagast's entanglement spell will help vs the Mumak (we are 100% sure that the interpretation that this causes dmage to the Mumak is correct?) and Morinethar the Blue's (Saruman) Ruin list can combine with Radagast's direct damage spells vs monsters as well. Of course, Boromir should be good vs a Dragon in a duel and Aragorn (plus Faramir for terror managment) is pretty efficient at boosting units in melee vs monsters. Related to that, I presume that you can Dark Fury a unit, then leave the unit with the spellcaster, so he is not there in the fight phase. The formation, not the caster is the recipient of the spell?

Generally I do not rate Avengers at all, but think they could be good given we have to fit 2x 2500 pt units on an 8'x4' and we both like our troops?

I am generally in a 1000pt headspace, so am I realistically planning for contingencies? He will be dissapointed if I am too much of a pushover!

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yes to all ur questions (ie entangle on the mumak)

the list is ok, but thats it. Where is the OH NO unit? you should have something big and scary
One of gondors big strengths is being able to field so many ES heros. Ive seen games where gondor overruns them with lots of might (this also proves to be an ok counter to lots of magic). get heros like: imrahil, isildur, eomer... galadrial, gandalf (blinding light is a great counter to dragons and the like)
ditch blessing of galadrial and put the points toward gandalf (any hero w/ epic renewal and counsular..). or get desperate heroics for boromir. get untainted palantir! counter spell is also a good option

what about the grey company? having aragon and the unlimited range inspiring leader would prove to be very useful in such large games.

this is what i can think of off the top of my head

and please break up your army into epics, commons, rare, legendary. its makes your list a lot easier to understand

Don't bother with Khamul until the latter stages. Try to 'soak him up' with WoMT. They don't inflict too many casualties so they won't have humungous amounts of hits reflected back (I once saw a brilliant charge by KoMT neutralised by Khamul reflecting back half of their 20 or so hits).

Swap Saruman for Gandalf and 'beef up' the Might of Elassar with a few turns of counselling. That way he can still 'beat up on' Khamul, even if the Dwimmerlaik is nearby. Also he can take a large cavalry unit on an Epic Journey and still be of use later on.

Best of luck.

Stephen

P.S. Watch out for Mumakil, the 'Fall Back' rule can be a swine if the Mumakil catches a unit on the flank, near a board edge - retreat to nearest edge ruling has seen a formation of 6 WoMT exit in turn one.

For Gondor!!!!
(I fight 4-5 Wraith armies every week, and I still reckon that I'm close to building the perfect counter-foil).

_________________
"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

WHAT?!?!?!
no, dont sit around, get him into a duel ASAP. He''ll have to use his precious might point, but afterwards he wont have any. then next turn you can kill him in another duel]

swapping saruman for gandalf is not necessary. Saruman is an amazing hero and should not me over looked, but the same goes for gandalf. If you dont have any counselor heroes at all then get Gandalf instead

Shadowswarm,

Trust me, that used to be my tactic. But once my opponent hit on the idea of having the Dwimmerlaik with Khamul alongside Gothmog (calling, for free, any Epic Strikes/Duels I called) I figured that blowing 3-4 Might just to get Khamul down to 0 (let alone the Might Boromir needed to fend off Gothmog, who would mimic his Epic Duel for free and seriously threaten an early departure from Middle-Earth for Gondor's finest) wasn't worth it.

Now, I'd rather 'cut down' the 'weaker' Wraiths with Boromir/Aragorn and reduce the wave of 'Pall of Night's' I have to face each turn. Let Khamul reflect back 2-3 hits on a 6 company formation of WoMT, it matters little in the long run.

I used to try having Pippin alongside Boromir, but too often Gothmog got the jump when it came to Heroic Actions and would slaughter the little fellow along with a half dozen or so other warriors. He'd then still, for free, copy Boromir's Epic Duel and have the best of two dice against Boromir's one.

Which leads me on, nicely, I think to a final question: Are Boromir and Araragorn's Epic Duel abilities a modification of Heroic Duel or a unique Epic Action? If the latter then it would appear to me that they only count when Boromir or Aragorn are the instigators; so when Gothmog copies it he gets the best roll from two dice and they revert back to one dice as the targets of a duel.

_________________
"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

Cheers for the feedback, Boromir of Ipswich. I think you are right about Khamul as a target vs the other Wraiths, and I am possibly getting ahead of myself. I'll weigh it up, and if Gothmog is there, I'll definitely leave him. This is assuming he even has Khamul at all! The player doesn't really 'need' him so it might be me that has gone a little OTT with the heroes. That's always a risk with this game, I find. One side or the other can go too OTT, if they misjudge their opponent's intentions.

I'm no sold on Gandalf over Saruman though, not least because I have a Saruman but not a Gandalf model! Also, Saruman adds a bit more to Gondor IMHO. He can weaken a target formation through 'shatter shields' then buf one of your formations with 'Dark Fury' (though probably cast in the other order). He also still has access to Dismay and Command so can throw all the interferance spells that Gandalf has - aspart from blinding light. His one downside is that he lacks 'touched by destiny'. I think that given get can still use 'Epic Renewal' to share out might, and has pretty good actions himself (including the option of Epic Ruination + Exxiscate on hordes), he is worth the points for him + a bonus might fortune. If he does not use the might, he can recharge Aragorn and Boromir.

Desperate Heroics is pretty outstanding used on Boromir, but less so on the other 3 might heroes (well, Faramir has 4) in my list. It also requires another hero to be expending their last might point... to me it seems a little inflexible unless you are angling primarily to pump Boromir. I'm not knocking that as a strategy, but I think I might want to preserve flexibility. Gondor just does not have heavy hitters/big nasties but it has flexibilty and durabilty in spades. So I like to use that and not over-emphasise any one of the threats I pose too much. You do give me a good reminder though to not get too focused on one part of the enemy army either!

AFAIK Aragorn and Boromir only get the bonus from their modified heroic duel if it is a duel that comes from them calling the action. So if both sides call a duel, then it may happen that Boromir or Aragorn have called the special action, but don't get the benifit, since they fight the duel their opponent called first.

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The more I study it, the more I am lead back to my first conclusion: when Gothmog copies, for free, an Epic Duel, he gets two dice and Boromir/Aragorn only one. At least they get to 'have a go' first.

Three cheers for Gondor!!

Got my first win in AGES!!!! against a four Ringwraith (plus Gothmog and Durburz) Mordor army. I was helped by my opponent miscalculating, in a 'Field of Swords' scenario which was poised at 8-10 to Gondor in the last round (all three criteria for points in use). He 'Heroic Duelled' and 'Epic Struck' Faramir in my last decent strength unit with Durburz, hoping I would reply with an 'Epic Strike' which the mightless Gothmog in a unit on F0 (thanks to Gandalf's 'Blinding Light') could copy. His plan was to prevent certain death at the hands of Might 5 Boromir. I almost fell for it, but given that Gothmog was the Mordor General and worth 4 VP, I reckoned that his death was worth more than saving Faramir.

Having given a 'Wraith-heavy' Mordor army a hiding (thanks to Aragorn and his 6 co. of KoMT who took out 9 coy. of Orcs, 5 of Morannon Orcs and 2 of Uruk-Hai Crossbowmen, along with 2 Wraiths in the bargain) I'm now off to devise a 'hero-lite' army to accomplish the same task.

Good luck in your fight against the forces of evil.

Stephen

'For Gondor'

_________________
"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

I didn't get my game, and suffered the dreaded army crash in the process (I think it's repairable, though a lot of my Knights might be wielding swords from now on!) but one thing the list-building experience for 2500pts did suggest to me was that once you've already had your cheap boost from Gothmog, and the three 'Training Wheels' Wraiths, you've had it. So the same goes for 1000pts and 2500pts. That's a real benefit for Gondor, since the relative importance of that cheap boost shrinks as the points total increases and you have plenty of simple counters in your own list, along with plenty of cheap troops. It is just a shame that big games take so long (I play almost exclusively in evenings after kids are asleep) and take so much space (I can't really fit and 8'x4' or bigger in my living room). Because I am coming around to the point of view that the cheap tricks matter a lot less at those bigger game sizes. I think you also see a lot more big monster action at that size, and it was whether I'd planned sufficiently for that which really puzzled me.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Stephen. My own personal friendly rivalry has been 1000pts of Gondor vs Isengard. Over and over. I've always found the combination of ruin magic and massed crossbows tough to cope with. Aragorn can do great things though, keeping those heroic actions going every turn and boosting melee results vs 'tough nut' units. If the experience has taught me anything, it is that there are a lot of different and effective ways to structure the Gondor and Isengard lists!

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@BoromirofIpswich, late reply but anyway, didnt take gothmog into account. if he does have khamul, gothmog and the dwimmerlaik together then you should totally leave them be. in fact, if you can have a 120ish pt unit stall them then your doing really well, he'll have about 460pts worth sitting there not really doing much (except casting magic, but still not as good as it could be)

Thanks, Shadowswarm,

That is what I do - most of the time.

I've tinkered a bit in putting 'speed-bumps' in this unit's way - 2 co. of Rangers with a Captain. Sure, they get destroyed, but I try to 'Heroic Duel' Khamul and get him to use up his 1 Might (If he tries to save the Might and loses Khamul then my opponent tends to get annoyed - with himself).

Thereafter, Khamul is very wary of getting involved in any fight, especially if the target unit contains an Epic Hero. Which has, on occasion, lead my opponent to 'hanging back' with his 'Uber' unit.

I will have to perfect the tactics, but, optimist that I am, I'm fairly sure that a 'rank-and-file' counter exists for the 4-5 Wraith Mordor horde. Or am I kidding myself????

Stephen

_________________
"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

What if Gothmog is in the same formation? Then he could easily call an epic strike for Khamul as he would adopt his FV as long as he was in the same formation unless I am mistaken.

_________________
"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russel

Spuds,

I think you are mistaken. Gothmog could call a Heroic Duel and hope he goes first, thereby cutting down the upstart Captain who dared challenge Khamul, but, as far as I know Gothmog cannot pass on his FV.

You may have confused Gothmog with the 'Knight of Umbar' or the 'Dark Marshall'; but as far as I am aware they only pass on the improved FV to the formation, not to any Epic Heroes in that formation.

Which opens up a 'can of worms' as to when modifiers to the formation affect Heroes. I know that Terror does reduce EVERYONE to 0. But does Aura of Blinding Light affect Heroes, or Epic Charge??? For simplicity, apart from Terror, which has been mentioned in WD Battle Reports, and Gandalf's 'Blinding Light' we, in our group anyway, do not allow formation affecting spells/actions to alter the Heroes FV.

Stephen

_________________
"We may have cared about many things in life, but what will we have in our last moments.”
St. Teresa of Avila

Ok, I thought, as it affected all his company, it would include any heroes in that formation too. But I suppose I was wrong then.

_________________
"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russel

IANA(R)L but I think you are right there. As far as I can see, the bits granting heroes the same effects as are on formations are specific (spells, special rules) rather than general. So if is a spell and/or a special rule - then yes, otherwise no?

Which is a shame, since I tend to give players using Epic Charge the boost to their duel. Otherwise, what is it? A +2 boost to coy dice in the fight phase and useable only on the charge? Hmmm.

However, isn't 'Combat Mimicry' etc a special rule? It does not explicitly say so, as far as I can see, but it sure looks like it is.

The big bash did not occur last week. It is back bigger and better (I hope, touch wood) this week. Two players per side, 2000pts per player I have gone over to the Dark Side, along with my mate Andy. Our opponents will have stacks of Gondor, and perhaps Rohan. Andy will have Mordor and I will have my WIP Isengard, complete with 19 coys of the Dunlending Battlehost.

_________________
http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com