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 Post subject: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 2:03 pm 
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Greetings.

The discussion of Gandalf the Necromancer ( love that :lol: ) got me thinking about another question on Company of Heroes and I figured rather than leeching off that thread, or starting one too specific to a single question, I might just start up a thread to discuss these special Formations in general.

I'll lead off with a question on Spell use.

I know the rules limit a spell user from casting the same spell more than once per turn. But in a many of the Company of Heroes Legendary Formations there are multiple spell casters. The Formation itself is given an overall Mastery level and a rule that says how much Mastery is lost for each spell user removed. This gives you a clear understanding of which models are casters. It also says that when casting a spell to pick one model in the Formation as actually casting it for range purposes. So it’s clear that the individual models, not the Formation as a single entity, is casting the spells. So…

In a Company of Heroes formation with multiple spell casters, can the same spell be cast once per magic-using model or are you still limited to one casting of each spell for the Formation?

Having it limited to one would nerf spell-heavy formations because often there are only a couple spells that you really want to cast and if your wizards were spread out then you can do so. At the same time though, having a single (often more affordable) formation that can lay down multiple instances of the same spell could really boost it's power.

The most extreme example is probably The Nine, as I don't think any other Formation has that many individual spell-using models (others may have the same Might, but have fewer individual models to multi-cast specific spells with. If each caster can use a specific spell once then The Nine cast Sunder Spirit five or six times to drop the Courage of a Formation to zero before attacking them (Spirit Grasp), with maybe a couple Visions of Woe in there for good measure. Or how about 9 Strength from Corruption just for effect? Being able to do this sort of thing, combined with their freakin’ amazing special rules all lumped together, would not be pretty (and make that 500 points look even better). But if you say they can only cast each spell once per Formation but you still have 10 Might, you will probably run out of useful ones after about 5 or 6. So that’s a lot of wasted power. You could get 4 individual Nazgul for that same price and have an average of 8 spells cast per turn including the ability to cast the same spell from each of the four individual models.

I would hope this is clear in the book at some point but when I was looking this morning before work I just couldn’t find anything.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 2:21 pm 
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Actually after looking over the Nine in answer to post in the Gandalf the Necromancer thread, I was wondering the same thing. They have Mastery 10. but they only have 10 spells available. However unless they fritter away that might pool of 9, its unlikely that they will every get much past 4 spells in a turn with failed focus tests.

The FAQ v1.1 says

Q. When a company of Heroes, such as the White Council
or the Twilight Ringwraiths, casts a spell, where do I
measure range and calculate line of sight from? (p70)
A. As no specific model is noted as being the spellcaster, it
can be measured from any point on the company’s base,
and line of sight can come from any model.

So it would seem that the formation as a whole is the caster, and therefore casts each spell but once.

It does seem harsh.. maybe it would be fairer to cast the spell multiple times but not twice at the same target. Though that now sounds just plain arbitrary. But yes, if you took the models individually you could deal more effective magic damage and effects.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 2:27 pm 
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heh my bad, in the nine are abroad it specifies it aslightly differently: "the entire formation is treated as a spell caster with a MAstery of 10. each time a magical power is used the controlling player nominates one of the models in the formation to be the caster for the purposes of range."

Seems its one rule for the Nine and another for the Councils....

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 4:42 pm 
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Yeah, I am pretty sure each formation only gets to cast a given spell once a turn. As you pointed out they would be incredibly powerful otherwise.

The Mastery level issue is even worse than you think for the Nine, since with the Undying's rule they get a bonus to Mastery for enemy spellcasters nearby. So they will probably have a mastery of 11 or 12 at some point during a game, but only have a total of 10 castable spells.

Yes, such a formation is likely to only be able to cast 5-6 spells a turn, but what I think you guys are not taking into account is that they can keep doing that even after taking several casualties, so the very high mastery level isn't wasted, it just gives them some magical staying power when it comes to their spells.
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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 5:18 pm 
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The formation is *the* one and only caster, pretty clear. The only thing that you change within the formation is the model from who's range you'll be measuring, but you clearly can't cast the same spell more than once.

The 9 are pretty worthless... I don't care that it can cast 5 or 6 spells per turn for several turns, it means that it will A) be burning Might on the focus rolls to cast that many, B) only ever be casting 1 Pall of Night and 1 Strength from Corruption and these are the two best spells, so I would rather have someone waste 500 points into a formation that casts these just once instead of 4 wraiths that can cast them 4 times, C) it also does not have Epic Strike, and given that you can't increase the result of a duel to more than 6, they'll be losing against Strikers and dying pretty quickly through the duel as they all count as normal warriors, so a mere 2+ already hurts them. If you lose the WK then you lost all your Might, again sucks.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 6:11 pm 
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Company of Heroes formations cannot be dueled I believe. Never played one myself yet but that's part of the box out for all of them IIRC. So it's one way to keep your models safe from enemy players that focus on Duels and one of the (few) attractive features of CoH formations. So not having Epic Strike really doesn't mean much unless you are wanting to boost your Fight for melee.

But if you are limited to each spell only being cast once per turn for the Formation as a whole then in the case of the Nine at least it really may be a waste as you likely want a few key spells multiple times per turn. But being able to keep all the models in a CoH safe from Duels, freeing up the Might for more basic actions, still having access to special rules (this shines for the Nazgul), having a nice buffer of Mastery to absorb a couple lost models and being able to field the CoH cheaper than the Epic Heroes alone all might contribute to make a CoH effective if used right.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 7:18 pm 
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Companies of Heroes cannot be duelled if they all count as warriors. Now in The 9, the Witch King counts as a Hero and the others as warriors, hence he can be duelled. For example The Three Hunters have 3 infantry models in there and they have 8 Might. The 9 has a Hero and 8 infantry models, the Hero has the Might.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 7:25 pm 
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yeah, the Nine Abroad don't actually have the "A Company of Heroes" special rule so the Witch King (the only actual "hero" in the formation") can, in fact be dueled.
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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Thu May 12, 2011 11:09 pm 
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Ooh nasty... though it does mean the Nine can At the Double! Which the Company of Heroes formations cannot.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 1:50 am 
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ForgottenLore wrote:
yeah, the Nine Abroad don't actually have the "A Company of Heroes" special rule so the Witch King (the only actual "hero" in the formation") can, in fact be dueled.

Well, considering he also has one of the least useful special rules you can guess what model I'd remove first... :P

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 2:45 am 
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daersalon wrote:
Ooh nasty... though it does mean the Nine can At the Double! Which the Company of Heroes formations cannot.


Formations with Company of heroes can At the Double. AtD requires a hero and only heroes have a might total, which all the companies of heroes do so why wouldn't they AtD.

Beowulf03809 wrote:
Well, considering he also has one of the least useful special rules you can guess what model I'd remove first... :P


Except he is the repository for the entire formation's might. You really going to sacrifice 9 might to prevent a possible duel?
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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 8:00 am 
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ForgottenLore wrote:
Formations with Company of heroes can At the Double. AtD requires a hero and only heroes have a might total, which all the companies of heroes do so why wouldn't they AtD.


Ehm. Interesting, they are after all 'Company of Heroes', Ok - sounds right. But then the converse is, would the Nine be able to AtD if the WK gets toasted? They don't have the "company of Heroes" or equivalent rule, even if individually they have that ability, but Heroes (and evil equivalents) have Might and the stat block places all the Might with the WK.

It does make you wonder why the three hunters, The two Councils, and the Fellowship all handle all epic formations one way, and the Nine another.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 12:32 pm 
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Daersalon wrote:
Ehm. Interesting, they are after all 'Company of Heroes', Ok - sounds right. But then the converse is, would the Nine be able to AtD if the WK gets toasted?

Nope, because they are not a formation of heroes, they are just a legendary infantry formation with a Hero leading them and they get all the special rules of the Ringwraiths. I think they should've been made into a single company of heroes. However, the duelling ability makes them pretty deadly against Dragons and other monsters, since once you win the duel and cause a roll on the table, you can use all 9 Might to boost it, so if a Dragon had 2 counters, you rolled a 4 and used all 9 Might then the Dragon would be gone (considering that they have Black Breath makes them pretty viable duellers against non-ES models).

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 12:51 pm 
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Very interesting points regarding the WK as the only Hero in The Nine. I hadn't looked at the how they set The Nine up differently than Company of Heroes style formations. I wonder how much of it was intentional to make them stand out in their setup and play style and how much of it was a lucky fluke that they just didn't consider the ramifications when they wrote up the Profile.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 1:55 pm 
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I am more determined now to have the fellowship vs the nine in a head to head this weekend... just to see how things work out in play. My son loves that kind of thing anyway. Just last month he took on a GW assistant store manager on a club day, with Sauron vs the Balrog (SBG) (The Balrog owned Sauron btw)

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 3:19 pm 
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Yeah, once the Witch King is killed The Nine no longer have a hero and so can't At the Double and have no might.

daersalon wrote:
(The Balrog owned Sauron btw)


That doesn't surprise me at all. Extremely H2K is SOOOO much better than VH2K. I would be surprised if it even took very long.
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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 4:19 pm 
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It was SBG not WotR so it took a bit longer.....

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Fri May 13, 2011 6:47 pm 
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daersalon wrote:
It was SBG not WotR so it took a bit longer.....


For some reason the flat honest way you said that made me chuckle. I miss playing SBG. :(

Can't wait to hear how the game goes if you get to it.

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Sun May 22, 2011 4:13 pm 
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I play a mordor army and have all nine wraiths but have never used them as the nine are abroad. I see that its a cheap way to get all the wraiths on the board but there are too many disadvantages to playing them as one unit. Yeah you may have a mastery of 10 but lets say you fail your focus test after your first spell, then your having to use your might otherwise no more spells. Even the special abilites become less effective. Personaly I like to place khamul in what would usually be a pretty weak formation such as mordor orcs with two handed weapons. Having a low defence means taking more hits but then you get to bounce them where you want (when the dice are in your favour that is).

I prefere to play two or three wraiths, spread their abilities across the board, cast plenty of spells and if they get called for a duel you have the benefit of epic strike.

I also have issues with the witch king on fell beast. It costs more points to play, has probably the worst special rule and dosn't even have epic strike. Every time iv played it it has been called out in a duel and slain, usualy before its even had chance to do any damage. It turns out very hard to kill isn't actually that hard!

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 Post subject: Re: WotR - Company of Heroes Discussion
PostPosted: Tue May 24, 2011 4:08 pm 
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I did manage to play a game of a few turns with the Nine vs the Fellowship.

As expected Gandalf the Necromancer was the key. The felowship tactic was simply to whittle away the Nine, (one or two Nazgul/turn) was fine. In this set-up Boromir was completely superfluous as the Nine with Spirit Grasp were attacking the Fellowships Courage and Defence had no part. And after that the Hobbits as it is likely the Fellowship would not panic.

In return The nine could afford to lose The Dark Marshal, The Tainted with The Shadowlord a good third choice. After that The Undying, he has a useful ability, but less so than the other remaining Nazgul.

As Above the fellowship seem to have the upper hand. Some rounds they can afford to 'pull back' and not aggresively atatck if Gandalf Muffs his Focus rolls and they need to get the numbers back up. The Arcana Leech is useful for making the Fellowship's Might count for less.

I think the NAzgul *could* win, but it requires a special circumstance. The need to lose priority, take the magic gandalf hurls at them then sprirt walk behind the fellowship and charge from the rear after some courage lowering magic. This means the fellowship get 5 less attacks which is important as attacking before the nazgul (thanks to Legolas) could cost 1-2 Wraiths if they did not. if The 9 can keep this up for 2-3 rounds using also Combat Mimicry from the Knight of Umbar and The Bane of Kings to make the hits count and careful spending of might points to get over the resilience with that and some magic. The Nazgul need to be killing by combat and magic 2 and preferably a full 3 fellowship casualties for 3 turns in a row. At the least this saps the Fellowships might, but makes it hard for Gandalf to keep the fellowship at full strength.

If necessary it needs the nazgul to spend might to *Lose* Priority so they can move second and come up on the Fellowship from behind consistently. They don't have to worry overly much from Gandalf's magic as he has to limit his abilities to keep that Focus 6 Blessing of the Valar available.

In the test game the tactics were becoming clearer but by that time the Nine had lost too many models even to take out a half strength Fellowship.

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