I just finished up a game tonight against my friend who was playing a Lorien Elves army....and I gotta' say, he pantsed me so bad it's not even funny. Me making some reckless moves, which were compounded by my inability to roll any of the dice results I needed--all combined with my opponent having good tactics and having his dice on fire tonight are the main reasons for such a stunning defeat on my part. I was playing an Orc and Men of Carn Dum Angmar list.

One of the things that seriously got my goat tonight was how he was playing Radagast the Brown in his army:
he set up his 3-company-strong formation of Lorien Archers in defensible terrain (capacity:5) and included Radagast in the unit; then he kept Galadriel close enough by so he could recharge Radagast's Might points.

So there he was, casting 'Guide Arrows' every turn for his Archers (who had the Galadrim Bows Fortune), and using Radagast's 'Epic Tranquility' ability each turn, making it so that nothing could charge the formation (with a now rather considerable Defense score).

TL;DR

Is there any way to defeat a unit of Elves hiding in defensible terrain that also has Radagast in its unit, helping them shoot better and healing them and making them unchargable?

I'm trying to figure out what strategies to adopt (and/or what units to start painting up).

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Nothing is unbeatable...If you could kill Radagast in a heroic fight for example...

Or use 4 to 6 companies of crossbows led by he Betrayer to decimate them.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

Not unbeatable, just difficult.

You can either take them out with return bow fire as has been suggested. A slow painful process in defensive terrain like that, but doable.

Or spend the might needed to to heroic charge him. Since you have a 50/50 chance of a heroic charge going off before his Epic Tranquility you should manage to get into contact with his formation eventually. Once you do duel Radhagast, he is only F4.

You said he was keeping Galadriel close by,s o another option is to go after her. Once she is out of the way he can only Epic Tranquility a limited number of times.

Also, depending on the terrain set up and scenario, don't play by his rules. Keep out of sight of the formation so it can't shoot. If your playing an objective mission grab the objectives and run, then he has to leave the terrain if he wants to use that 300+ points.

Think of it like this 3 Companies of Archers 135 points, Radagast 160, longbow fate 75. So 370 points even without Galadriel.
For this your get 24 (16 shots at shot value 1) + 1 support strength 1 or 2 attacks per turn.

That's on average 4 dead Carn Dum at under 18" per turn, that's 30 points lost every 2 turns from a 380 point unit!
Orcs with shield 4 dead 0-36", 20pts lost per 2 turns. Unshielded Orcs one company a turn.

A very bad return for the expense and as such a great advantage for you.
So you could just ignore them and concentrate on the rest of the Army.

To take them out I would suggest a mix of dark magic and cheep orc bow. 2 x 3 companies of orc bow 120 points. Short range will needs 6's against them they kill you on 5's.
Pall of night, Strength though corruption, bolt of fire.
Also as said Epic strike Hero against Radagast.

If he was clever he could loose the longbow fate, get 2 more companies of bow. So that's 35 shots and 16 more Elves.

The thing I find with most of these expense Death Star type combo units is that they fair badly against multiple units of cheap troops. If your enemy is using his Death star against your swam of X-wings your winning the game.

That bow Fortune is really a bad choice on his part, but that's a different issue.

The options posted would work well. If you want to get cheeze you can drop Khamul in there and let them bounce damage right back onto them, but almost any Nazgul will give options to balance things out. A catapult or two is always a nice option and can be placed well out of range / sight of the Elves. Only need to land one or two hits on the terrain to do some good damage.

Otherwise, ignore that formation and go after his others.

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

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

I was going to mention that, but if his strategy is putting them in terrain, there might be some benefit due to capacity issues.

Khamul will off course work, but to be fair what doesn't he work against? The elves however have clocks, got to get with-in 12" to shoot them so catapults have a problem.
Radagast really isn't that mush of a problem. Except the fact that charging his unit is out and work out other alternatives.
It always makes me laugh when evil players moan about 160 point Radagast being broken when their armies nearly always included 125 Khamul or Betrayer or both.

Yeah. I'm really torqued off with GW for making my favorite SBG Nazgul into total cheeze with WotR. I don't even like to play him any more. I have actually offered in my local group to limit his special rule to models only in his own Company or use other limiting factors just so I don't feel so dirty using him. But if someone is playing dirty themselves then all bets are off.



Are we sure? I admit I don't use siege engines much in WotR and it's been a good 6 weeks since I last played with one, but I don't think the cloaks have an effect on a catapult. Don't you just pick your target, roll on the siege table (with modifications as appropriate) and apply the results? Two or three catapults could flatten Radagast's formation in a few turns.



There are a LOT of gaps, loop holes and down-right broke options in WotR right now. Anyone using one shouldn't whine about someone else using one.

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

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

No, he is correct. Artillery is still a shooting attack, just with some special rules attached and so if you can't shoot at the target that effects artillery as well.

However, how are they getting cloaks? He said the formation in question was "Lorien Archers" and the Galadhrim don't have cloaks on their archers.

Yes "Lorien Archers" is a bit vague could be Wood elves Def3 with cloaks or Galadhrim Archers Def4. I assumed the wood elves cheaper and it makes more sense.
If its Galadhrim, much easier to deal with, Artillery and Xbow all the way.

I just played a 1000 pt game today againts the above combo plus legolas plus cirdan all in a single formation. I had all of my infantry standing 1 inch in front of his mega-formation taking arrows to the face, completely unable to charge the entire army. He would heal the few casualties each turn that my archers caused. I conceded the game after a few turns of standing there. I would have had more fun falling off a ladder. As this was only my second game of war of the ring, it has made me question my desire to play it further.

And what did you have?

Your saying he had 610 points out of a thousand sunk into heroes?

What army were you playing? What spellcasters did you have? If all else failed you should have been able to get a heroic charge off eventually and then several of his heroes would have been toast, along with a lot of his army.

I would find this formation a challenge to handle with my Gondor force. Hopefully it IS Woodelves, in which case my own bow would at least be hitting on 6s and I could cause some casualties. That stated, you should be able to beat Epic Tranquility half the time just through using Heroic Charge and then it will be 50/50 who gets their start of phase action off first. That is probalby what I would use to tackle.

However, games of WOTR that allow people to just hide in a forest are poor games, where are the objectives, at least some of the time? Many lists, I am thinking especcially any list with any Nazgul at all in it, will eat combos like this for breakfast. Galadriel cannot replenish casualites fastr than SfC can cause them. These days, when I play Angmar against Elves, I don't even bother to charge Elven bunker units - just pall of night and eat away with spells. Being in a forest will not help them any vs that.

Beowulf03809, I've reached the same conclusion about the heroes as you - the REAL issue with them is not that some are over-powered and so help some players too much, it is that any decent player will feel bad for using them as-is. In the past, I house-ruled too. So mastery 2 Wraiths and the top-tier got their abilites modified. However, we've also recently tried just allowing the one Epic (well, some are not restricted) and I find that they are fine as-is in that kind of setup.

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I didn't realize (at the time ie my second game ever) that heroic charge could overcome epic tranquility 50% of the time.

I'm not sure if this would work, but perhaps you could call an Epic Challenge against Radagast?

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

One could also walk a Mumak on top of that formation and make it flee off the board in turn 1 (if it doesn't deploy in the forest). With the Mumak/Gothmog combo you have a Mumak that moves 3 * 3d6 in 1 turn (I don't recall if they FAQ'd it yet to fix the bug ).

If playing over 1k, the formation is also owned by a multi-swoop from Winged Nazgul Battlehost (just like almost everything else is owned by the multi-swoop/corruption/visions combo) - in 1500pts game a single battlehost multiswoop is 15d3 S6 against courage 3 mean on average 20 dead from swoops alone. Then you add 5 strengths from corruption to cast, then if you still haven't killed them you do multi-Visions again with C3 because of Tainted OR you multi-transfix them to make sure you won't be hurt in case they're moving after you.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

Last I checked no, they hadn't. Heroic Move still tripled the distance moved instead of the Move stat.

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the ideas. The game was a bit of a wash, and part of the BIG problem I had was that we were fighting for the centre of the table--18 inches away from the defensible terrain that the archers with Radagast had holed up in.

I had been using an Angmar list HEAVY with spellcasting with VERY mixed results throughout the previous half-dozen (or so) games before this one...all against a different opponent. So this time around, I went straight-up hordes--weird for Angmar, I know--and not much casting at all. All those things combined to make the game rather a difficult prospect for my army.

The two pieces of advice that are the most helpful:
-heroic duel with its 50% chance of me getting to charge Radagast (I think this one is best)
-simply ignoring the unit (fundamentally I agree with this, but it is a situational solution: in some game ignoring them won't be an option).

Thanks again!!!

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If anyone wants a bit more context about this Radagast "problem" I had, I just posted the full (and I do mean full!) battle report on my blog ( http://imaginarywars.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/not-lightly-does-one-battle-the-elves-of-lorien/ ). That said, I'm betting quite a few of those that have read this thread already most likely have gone to my blog already...so advertising the blog might be a bit ...redundant on my part.

As I typed up the battle report, I realised I don't know what to do to stop the Elves from owning every time I play--I mean, apart from just making a power-gaming list. That would be the easy way; anyone can break War of the Ring.

Suggestions about what to do against Terror-causing Elves who are more effective at draining courage than the ghosts of Angmar are?

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