Last night I spent almost three hours trying to devise a Good army to put up a fight against my regular opponent's Mordor army with 4-5 Ringwraiths. I tried Elves, Dwarves, Gondor and alliances of all of these. Each time I devised an army I could see a weakness, which my opponent was bound to exploit. Finally, I gave up. WoTR is 'broken' I said as I retired to my prayers and sleep.

In the bath this morning, whilst pondering whether to replace 'WoTR' in my wargaming life with 'Flames of War' or Mantic's 'Kings of War' I had that Archimedes moment. The obvious had been staring me in the face from the beginning.

With a few other exceptions the chief villain in play-balance terms is the Ringwraith. It is so underpriced that it makes the choice of any other spell-caster for an evil army a ‘no-brainer’. The proliferation of Ringwraiths also makes some Good armies almost unplayable, e.g. the Elves – they can’t field enough formations to negate the ‘Pall of Night’. The abilities of the Ringwraiths alone are worth up to 100 points when they are placed in the right units, let alone the fact that each can unleash up to three deadly spells.

Secondly, the films and the battles in the book, as far as I can recall, do not show the Nine going into battle other than on a Fellbeast. Lots of Ringwraiths clustered together on foot in a large unit of Orcs just seems plain wrong!

So, to address both of these issues my simple ‘House Rule’ is that, with the exception of Battle Hosts Ringwraiths cannot be fielded.

Suddenly, the game changes:
-Winged Nazgul are vulnerable and are best 'harrassing' the enemy rather than leading the hordes of Orcs into battle.
-The Orc Courage, previously 6 (accompanying Ringwraith's 5 + Taskmaster) becomes an issue.
-The spells to be cast change; no longer is it simply 'Pall of Night'/'Wings of Terror'/'Strength through Corruption'. 'Black Dart' becomes the chief weapon as the Winged Nazgul try to sap the Might of the Epic Heroes they face. This is because the onus now becomes how does Evil counter the large number of Good Epic Heroes; not, as it was in the past, how to counter the tidal wave of Evil spells.
- Mordor becomes a challenge to play
- It looks better and more like the 'Return of the King'.

I'll let you know how this pans out with a few battle reports over the next few weeks.

Stephen

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

Or you could just do what most people do - set a magic level limit. For 1500 points limit it to level 7 and the wraiths become no problem at all. Basically limit magic to 1 level per 200 points you're playing, so in 1000 pts you can only field 1 Wraith. It's the best fix that I've seen used by far and it doesn't affect players as much because it's a simple rule.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

We did play this for a while, but all it seemed to do was make the armies of the forces of Evil even larger - what they couldn't spend on Ringwraiths they spent on anything and everything else. The choice of the 2 Ringwraiths became the choice of one (who accompanies Khamul, in our group it was normally the Dwimmerlaik - makes duelling even harder) and with the savings it was possible to field, even in a 1500 pt battle alongside these: Gothmog, 3 x 9 companies of Orcs with Taskmaster, 1 x 9 co. of Goblins with Drums and Durburz, and 1 x 6 co. of Morannons.

Sure, the magic is less, but the Mordor army is no less unbeatable, which, of course, lessens the fun for the opponents, but also, ultimately, for the Mordor player.

Orcs still appear with a Courage of 6 and Shaman are still largely absent. And, of course, you still have Ringwraiths 'hidden' in units of Orcs. Not only does this 'jar' with what we saw in the movies, but it creates the quite ridiculous game situation were by spending 125 pts LESS you get a character that is a lot HARDER to kill.

As I said, the play-balance regarding a whole host of other issues (Will of Iron - 4+ is not a good return for 1 Might, the focus and other effects of many of the Darkness/Dismay spells, costs of other spell casters compared to Ringwraiths etc.) seems to fade away to a great extent when Ringwraiths are removed.

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

I think your thinking is a bit flawed here. You're arguing that by putting level limit you still get 2 Wraiths, but in addition the army becomes bigger... well if you ban Wraiths completely then the army becomes even bigger, I don't get how is that a counter argument? If you remove Wraiths completely then you're still gonna get Gothmog, Durburz, whatever else and 250 points of Orcs instead of 2 Wraiths or just get Mouth of Sauron with Druzhag for not much worse effects . Plus the army which you named:
Gothmog
Durburz
2 Wraiths
9x Orcs with Taskmaster
9x Orcs with Taskmaster
9x Orcs with Taskmaster
9x Goblins with Drum
6x Morannons

Is honestly pretty weak. If you had any decent amount of terrain I would argue that such army is not even playable competitively because it can barely manouver.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

Gonna have to disagree

Mordor faces a choice, large army without magic or smaller army with magic.

If it goes without magic the army size is the same whichever system you use.

If it goes for magic, let's say six levels of magic:

No Ringwraith system
- without Ringwraiths this costs 500 pts with MoS, Druzhag and 3 Shaman (who are vulnerable to Duels from almost everyone), or
- with two Winged Nazgul this costs 500 pts who are vulnerable to missile fire in a way that the other choice isn't (but they do have some abilities).
Limit on spell casters
- without Ringwraiths as above
- with two Ringwraiths this costs a mere 250 pts and, as I said, they are far harder to remove than either Winged Nazgul or MoS/Druzhag etc. and their abilities are far deadlier when in another formation.

With the spell caster limit there isn't really much of a choice is there?

Plus, as I said it looks and feels more 'historical'.

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

Problem is that Shamans are completely worthless so it is a better idea to go completely without magic if you ban the wraiths. Mordor then becomes a weaker version of a Moria (in your example based on just Goblins and Blackshields... which is not the best Moria list either). In a Moria list nobody plays Shamans because they're useless, same in Mordor army you don't see Shamans. Just because there are no wraiths doesn't mean that a good player will want all the levels filled with magic, essentially with wraiths and limit it's not about having the total level but about having certain rule and 2x Strength from Corruption for combat purposes (honestly 2x Pall of Nights don't make much difference, it's another story with 5 of them. And Wings aren't that essential either) without wraiths it would be advisable to take MoS and *maybe* a Shaman for the same effect, but since Shaman is too vulnerable to duels I doubt I would be even taking 1.

Shamans suck no matter what limit or ban you put on Wraiths and I don't think you're gonna force a good player to take them regardless of the limits you put. Come on, who would ever want MoS, Druzhag and 3 Shamans?? It's a suicide, the 3 Shamans are 300 points thrown away. Unless you drop their price to about 60-70 points and even then they're just a problem for their own formation because their low fight value means that other than losing them you also lose a company's worth of troops if you're fighting against an ES hero.

Meh, whatever, it's your house rule, but I just don't think it's gonna fix anything. My point was that it is better to go without magic if you can't have wraiths so you're kind of cutting on the main reason for taking Mordor... you might aswell play Moria because all Epics you have in Mordor without Wraiths are Gothmog, MoS and Gollum, so you might aswell have Durburz and Druzhag.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

Hi BoromirofIpswich, yes a couple of the Wraiths are annoying. So I would like to take you up on your ideas and play you using a nice balanced force, with no Wraiths allowed, and only a couple Ruin casters, Morranans, and Corasir Arbalesters.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

Hey Xelee, I love the idea of the challenge and 'gauntlet thrown down' as it were... Shame you guys are ~12,000miles apart...

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www.scottswargaming.blogspot.com

Lol, my posing a thought experiment isn't exactly 'gauntlet thrown down'! And there are plenty of likely ones behind that.

Not that I think a cap on spell levels is the way to make the game better either. At least before there was a chance we would not be seeing only the one named Wraith in every 1000pt army.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

I disagree with your premise, and obviously your conclusion. Shaman are relatively worthless (if they were completely worthless then I take it that you wouldn’t take one even if it was 0 pts) at present because for 25 pts more you can have a Ringwraith. If the alternative is a 250 pt Winged Nazgul the value of the Shaman increases dramatically. You save 150 pts, not 25.




Again, I don't agree with you about Shaman. Take an Orc Shaman with Spells of Dismay. He Black Dart’s an Epic Hero with his one spell. No Epic is going to risk a 5 or 6 come up, so they resist with a ‘Will of Iron’. 50% of the time that’s going to cost 1 or more extra Might, which, having called the ‘Will of Iron’, you are committed to (Black Dart saps at least 1 Might as well as its risk of killing). If the Epic Hero does get into combat, that 2 Might to call ES and Heroic Duel is very likely all his Might gone. And what’s that extra company of Goblins or Orcs he slaughters worth? 15-25 pts. Big deal! 4 Might, on average used to take out a Shaman and a company of Orcs.

The scenario above is what regularly happens with Ringwraiths. The difference is that the Ringwraith (which cost only 25 pts more, yet has an extra very useful power, potentially two more spells and bumps the Courage of his unit up to 5+), can match the ES and, on average, the Ringwraith will still be alive to face the Mightless Epic Hero.

Shaman are not useless. It is just that, with Ringwraiths available they’re a ridiculous choice.



Funnily enough it did fix a lot. The game last night, for instance, was a breath of fresh air. Mordor fielded two Winged Nazgul, one of which was the Witch-King. For the first time in ages the game did not hinge on how successful Boromir was in his duel against Khamul and the Gothmog’s fre ‘back-at-you’ duel (with the Dwimmerlaik’s Might sapping success also of critical importance). Instead, refreshingly, there was a real ‘cat-and-mouse’ game with the Winged Nazgul avoiding as best they could the massed ranks of Gondorian archers and Rangers, whilst at the same time trying to have some influence. A marked contrast to, even with a limit of two Ringwraiths, Khamul, the Dwim merlaik and Gothmog striding forward arm-in-arm confident in their near invulnerability.

Oh! And the other point, it looked better and more ‘historical’ was confirmed by my opponent. It’s not just about getting the most effective troops for the points Mik.



You seem to have missed my point. I never said that you can’t have magic for Mordor. I was just suggesting that to have it Mordor needs to pay for it, either in points or vulnerability or both.

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

That's why I don't like a cap, something I've tried, did so for a while in fact. All it did was make the choices of Mordor even more obvious, in fact it became almost no choice - every army started with Khamul.

My train of thought about 'historical accuracy' was, coincidentally started by 'Blackmist' after he kindly posted up all his hard work about the former SBG GT armies. I scrolled through them hoping to find some argument to throw back at the SBG'ers who criticise WoTR for being all about deadly, unhistorical combos. The problem was that as far as I could tell almost all the winning armies that were listed for the SBG GT's were 'historical' and had a plausible theme. The criticism was not unfounded.

Linked to this was the fact that I've managed to entice a couple of new players into WoTR. Okay, they're still finding their feet with their armies and, having mastered the rules, are now starting to get to grips with the tactics. What do I do now? Do I unleash a 'competitive' Mordor army on them? Of course not. I will continue to field 'historical' armies - which, funnily enough, are far more balanced.

I suppose the house-rule is pretty simple: you have to 'historically' justify your army. For other than battle-hosts, which we accept as 'historically' themed on the basis that they're GW's interpretation of the undetailed history of the War of the Ring, that means no Ringwraiths.

So, Xelee, tell me how those came to be in the same army

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

I hope you never, ever, read any of my NATCON prep batreps, BoromirofIpswich. I imagine they (or rather, the accompanying 'rationales') would send you running, screaming!

Mind you, I did face an army like that a couple of times when starting out. Of course, the Casters were Wraiths. But if not Wraiths, then Kardush is a Mordor Epic afterall, so that is just one more Epic to ally in along with the Corsair armoured heavy-machine guns.

I think that in terms of getting forces that are reasonable for the setting, heavier work than just tweaks to Wraiths needs to be undertaken. At the moment, you have just slightly readjusted the relative use of warious options. Also, didn't the Witchking ride around amongst the troops at Pellenor as well? At least one thing I really did like about your suggestion is that it made bow seem more useful - if only they would take those big-birds.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

Ok, I should've used a different word than worthless... useless Are you seriously saying that you'd rather spend 100 points on a model that has 1 spell, 1 Might and autodies in duels rather than spend those 100 points on 5 companies of wargs riders, Troll, or 4 companies of Morannon Orcs, all of which have much more uses? I'm not comparing Winged Nazgul to a Shaman because those have complately different purposes - Winged Nazgul isn't there mainly for magic but rather for killing capabilities and flanking, while the Shaman's only weapon is 1 spell per turn (and mind you Black Dart with 6" range is pretty hard to cast if your formation lacks Wings of Terror and has only 6" movement with courage 3, failing at the double half of the time)


More like 1 Might for a duel or 2 Might for a duel with ES if you're keeping your heroes and formations at a safe distance. IF you manage to lose 2 Might to the Black Dart then obviously don't duel the Shaman, it's not like he's gonna kill your army... and considering that that Shaman costs 100 and a lot of commonly used Epics with R2 are under 100 or around that price then you're not gaining anything in terms of point-efficiency. I just personally wouldn't bother spending 100 points on something that *might* work but most of the time is difficult to make work or fails to work at all.


You can still form themed broken lists... in fact most of the winning lists are using overpowered/underpriced models and combos that just happen to be allowed to the Legions alliance system... themed and historical doesn't necessarily mean not-powergaming

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

As with many of you, JRRT’s work has been an interest of mine for more than a couple decades, and I have been a wargammer for over 30 years, so in both areas there’s a lot of history that I draw on when something either “feels right” or not. And Nazgul in WotR just don’t feel right from either perspective as MANY have pointed out. And there have been a lot of alternatives offered, from limits, to costs, etc. It’s almost beyond dispute that a few Nazgul are overpowered or underpriced even when alone, and by combining two or three in the same large formation you create a seriously unbalanced block. Shooting is too weak to take it on, Good spells aren’t effective at nerfing or combating them (Spirit-damaging spells don’t hurt them as Epics if in non-Spirit Formations, and Good has no decent enemy-targeting spells like Black Dart) and because they have the Epic Strike option they are not very vulnerable to duel.

So for the points of a WotR Nazgul an ES-capable Hero with Mastery 3 is enough, but with the special rules they are just unbalanced with no valid counter. I REALLY miss the un-named, no special rule Nazgul’s from early SBG… limited Will and had to burn Will in combat so they generally played a support role. They’re presence almost always helped the army they were part of but they were rarely the central power of an army. Once GW decided to introduce more named Nazgul and needed to keep boosting the special rules to sell models they started on that slippery slope and they lost control, IMO. In WotR this got so much worse because of the concept of Formation-level special rules.

Let’s look at Galadriel, Protectress of Lorien as an example. She costs 200 points, has no spells at all, half of her special rules do not apply (spirit walk and spirit grasp come to mind), only 3 Might with no Touch By Destiny (despite her power and role in JRRTs stories). She is a Fight 10 Hero, so is technically an “always on” Epic Strike and she has a couple powerful combat Epic actions (Epic Rage specifically). But again, she costs 200 points. And I will use her in almost every Elf army I build and consider her worth the points. I don’t think she is any bit more powerful than a Nazgul in game terms and in fact well used spells can seriously damage a Formation as we all know and the special rules of the top-used Nazgul have more value for their Formation than her high Fight has (which only helps her one Company). Yet they are practically half the cost of Galadriel. Now if her entire Formation benefited from her Fight value I’m sure a million players would be screaming about it, and rightfully so, but because it’s Company level only it’s powerful but not unbalancing.

So maybe take the Nazgul special rules and make them Company wide vs. Formation wide. Sure, Khamul can help protect you from hits, but only when the hits are close enough. I think it would prove out to be much more effective. Otherwise a cost closer to 200 points for these is probably more reasonable than their current bargain-basement cost.

All this though is just for “house rules” and that doesn’t matter if your friends don’t agree (maybe they LIKE playing Nazgul-powered uber armies), and are completely out the door if you try to compete. In fact, house rules are often a danger to anyone that wants to compete because you build your experience and tactics off of something that has no validity in the real rule set. But I’m not inclined to see GW scale back Nazgul powers. I’m more inclined to see them come up with an upgraded model to defeat the Nazgul and trying to get more sales from that, for example.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Hi Beowulf03809, you will find no argument from me about most of that - in fact our local group have implemented that for some time and I was only gently hinting that you needed to throw the net a little wider to catch some of the other likely alternatives.

From what I have seen, even a new player to this game can quickly see what is good - Blackshields, Gothmog, Nazgul, Arbalesters, Mumaks, Morranans, Druzhag et al -with the odd Battlehost if the higher points total permits. It is only a matter of reading the stats in the book. There is more to this game, but you just can't 'see' that in the way the lists are visible, so the lists seem the most real and represetative of the game.

So in a RAW comp, you will get combos of that kind of stuff, which just look odd if that is to become some kind of standard and the visible face of the game. The differences between the recent RAW lists and the lists we had via houserules previously just underscores that we made the right choice to effect changes. I don't personally mind things looking 'odd', in fact my background tends to interest me in that kind of thing, but I do dislike list diversity being reduced uneccessarily. Less variety equals less fun, I think.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

Xelee my friend, you are everywhere for WOTR advice. From my own personal experience (though I have been using Xelees house rules), wraiths arent that great. I never found them super powerful. Maybe I just didnt use them correctly, but when I play, I just see Boromir come rampaging forward and chop of their heads. So really, it doesnt do to much for me. The shamans I find arent bad, but they do take a lot of points, even with the pts restructuring from Xelee. My current dolguldur force has 2 shamans, Khamul and the necromancer. But my buddy just dueled the shamans instantly and that was it. And I think I agree with Beowolf (i think that was the person who mentioned it), that the experience you gain from playing with house rules is only skills for house rules. It is tough to strategize when you juggle between 2 different versions of the game.

I may not have had a fixed office for over a month now, or quiet place to read, but I always have my laptop and wireless connection! Plenty of small posts, no larger batreps.

FWIW, leaving aside that Rohan and Elves just aren't rated RAW and not often used, we have found that the amies and tactics we use are pretty similar. Apart from a tendency for RAW to make me take the setting much less seriously, I feel I am playing the same game. It is just that more things work.

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http://www.roughwotr.blogspot.com

In some ways nine Nazgul is more "historically accurate" than only one or two...

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings

True, to a certain extent. Maybe I should base up 'The Nine Are Abroad'.

I was about to say that they don't fit well in a 500 pt army. Then again, they cost the same as two Winged Nazgul.


Flicking throug the half-dozen or so GW reports you don't find more than 1 or 2 Ringwraiths as Epic Heroes. I guess the GW team have a 'gentleman's agreement'.

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

Yeah, well, they have to make the games close.

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"There are few left in Middle Earth like Aragorn, son of Arathorn." - Gandalf, Many Meetings