Seeing as you asked Thermo here’s a not so little breakdown of how my games on Sunday went!
Firstly I was playing against my non-gamer friend Chris, he doesn’t collect/paint and hadn’t played in ages, with that in mind he was keen to use some fun models and have a bit of a laugh rather than use the most competitive list.
In the first game I took my 4 captain Isengard list from a few pages back (D7 captain, Sharky & Worm, Armoured shaman, Vrasku, 8 Crossbowmen, 3 Beserkers, 12 ferals) and he took Radagast on horse, an eagle, Beefy Eomer on horse and Thorin with Orcrist and the Oakenshield. We played Lords of Battle to give the all hero list a chance.
Chris did the only thing he could and got stuck right in, charging the eagle, Eomer and Thorin into my lines and hoping for 6’s! The eagle charged the end of a line of crossbowmen hoping to win and get a Hurl off but Vrasku and a couple of crossbowmen counter charged to trap the bird, called a Heroic strike and killed it. Thorin and my D7 leader then had a Heroic Strike off which Thorin won but he then fluffed his attacks and only rolled a 4 meaning he had to burn his last 2 Might to win the Fight. Now out of Might, it didn’t take long for that bad roll to come up again and he fell under a pile if feinting ferals. Eomer had more luck, he was facing the shaman and ferals so had no-one to challenge his Fight 5 so didn’t need to burn Might on Strikes. Radagast was using his Might to call Heroic Moves when necessary to get Eomer the charge and he proved what an absolute beast he was on the charge, slaughtering the Shaman and 2 ferals in one turn! Sharky was held up for the whole game by Radagast’s Immobilises but I could equally argue that that stopped Radagast Immobilising my more important heroes too. However, eventually and perhaps inevitably I was able to get the upper hand through weight of numbers and Vrasku finally reached the now Mightless Eomer and took him down. Radagast was the last to fall (despite fighting off 4 ferals 2 turns running!) and the game ended with a 21-8 victory to me.
It’s hard to know what to take from that as all hero armies struggle so much. I’d say perhaps the eagle isn’t worth it in a hero list as his lack of Might/Will make him an easy target for Immobilises and Heroic Strikes. However, most importantly it was a quick, fun game and we moved onto the next one.
Chris was keen to give the heroes another go (this time taking mounted Eomer, Gandalf, Thorin and Dwalin) and we picked Hold Ground with me figuring that they’d have a shot if I rolled poorly for deployment and he was able to isolate 1 or two warbands. As it was that was exactly what happened and all 4 of his heroes (although Eomer had had to burn 2 Might to come on in the right place) ended up facing off against Sharky, Worm, my captain and about 8 ferals whilst Vrasku my shaman and the rest of my army were in the opposite corner of the board - the game was definitely on! Again, Chris got stuck in as soon as possible with Eomer charging 2 ferals and using his last Might point to declare a Heroic Combat that would allow him to charge Sharky. Unfortunately he then fluffed his attacks and lost the fight, Thorin then rolled no higher than a 2 and lost his fight against a feral and a Beserker, using up some Fate. Finally Dwalin fighting against 4 ferals rolled no higher than a 3 and promptly died.
At this point, with Thorin wounded, Eomer out of Might and Dwalin dead we decided the game was all but over, fantastic in a tournament but not so much in a fun practice game. So, we reset the combats and tried again! This time, Eomer smashed the two ferals, charged into Sharky and slaughtered him, Thorin won his combat and Dwalin won his combat and killed 3 ferals! Much...errrr...better! Suddenly the tide had turned in that corner and after a couple more turns the 4 heroes had wiped out my 2 warbands and started heading for the centre where my other warbands were waiting. Chris had killed the perfect number of ferals at this point, I was 1 away from breaking, this meant i was severely down on numbers but as I wasn’t broken the game couldn’t end allowing Chris to get into a good position at his leisure.
Good use of scenery, the dwarves high defence and Gandalf’s Blinding Light meant my crossbows had no effect and before I knew it they were on me. As I was broken and my leader dead, with Chris’ 4 models he had 10 VPs. I had about 15 VPs so Chris needed to kill 6 models in 2 turns to win, safe to say he managed this easily, immobilising Vrasku so he couldn’t help and using his heroes to munch through my troops. I can’t remember exactly but I think it ended with a 10-6 win to Chris.
We were both really pleased with this game to be honest, it’s always good to see an all hero army win and using our time machine certainly made for a more interesting battle. All games of SBG come down to luck at some point but this reinforced my feelings that all hero armies are far more dependent on it that normal armies, one bad turn of rolls cost Chris the whole game, when we reset it and he got better rolls he then went on to win fairly comfortably. It’s the main reason I rarely play all hero armies, I’m just not comfortable betting the outcome of whole game on my ability to roll a 6 on 3 dice. However, I will say that if you’re going all hero then Beefy Eomer is a really good addition, D7, 3 M/W/F are all very good but it’s his S5 on the charge that’s fantastic, when combined with his horse he’s a brilliant troop killer which is what all hero armies need, when he charges and gets swamped (as he will if your opponent wants any chance of winning) he can comfortably kill 4 D5 or less models a turn - superb. His only downside is F5 which gives him a big disadvantage against elves, reavers, monsters etc. as well as a slightly less comfortable starting point for those Heroic Strikes. However, for riding around the flanks and slaughtering the rank and file I think he’s an excellent choice.
After that we decided to have a more serious game and pit my ferals against a Rohan list that was Beefy Eomer and Erkenbrand leading 3 Redshields, 3 Redshields with throwing spears, 3 Royal Guard with Throwing Spears and 3 Rohan warriors with throwing spears and shields (no Helmingas as S4 wouldn’t help against ferals). I wanted to try this as it was a better idea of the kind of armies I’d face at Preston (particularly as you’re coming Thermo!). I also let Chris use the ferals this time to change things up, it’s always a good idea to see if you can beat your own army after all.
We decided to play the Preston custom scenario (essentially it’s Hold Ground deployment with 5 objectives placed around the board Domination style. The twist is the objectives are goblins that move around and that you have to beat in combat to capture - if you lose they can wound you!). Thanks to bad deployment rolls Chris found his army split up as mine was in the previous game with his Crossbowmen and Leader warband in the middle of the East edge and his Shaman and Sharky on the opposite side. I was then able to bring in a warband each on in the North and South and charge towards his uruks hoping to trap them in the middle. I hit the crossbowmen first hoping to ride them down quickly but unfortunately my cavalry bases got in the way and I couldn’t bring numbers to bear. I was only able to kill a couple before his Leader’s feral warband were on me turning the odds against me. Sadly Erkenbrand’s warband were about 2 inches too far away and as such reached the combats a turn too late to save too many of Eomer’s warband. Eomer himself found himself trapped by a feral, Beserker and his Leader, lost the Heroic Strike off and went down in 1 turn (a feinting feral, 2 handed Beserker and S5 Captain make D7 look very foolish indeed). I knew it would be an uphill struggle from this point particularly as whilst I was fighting for my life his other 12 models were picking up 2 of the goblin objectives. His leader however was down to one wound, if I could kill him and break the uruks that could go some way to leveling the field, anything could happen with the objectives. In one brutal combat phase I was able to kill just enough models to break him and Erkenbrand charged his leader - a hope? A chance! Unfortunately Sharky then Immobilised him on a roll of 6! I agonised over whether or not to resist it with his 1 Will and eventually decided against it as I was unlikely to roll a 6 and the Will point might be more useful for a failed courage test next turn, besides, the captain would need to roll 2 5+s AND I’d have to fail Erky’s Fate for him to die. Chris promptly rolled a 5 and a 6, I failed Erky’s Fate roll and he died, taking his horn with him. Oh dear. By this point it looked very iffy, on the plus side the 2 goblins he was holding both escaped from the uruks, slashing his VPs, I’d also managed to charge 2 goblins with D6 Royal guard so could get myself 4 VPs - sadly both Royal Guard then lost their fights against the goblins and were killed with 2 rolls of 6! Story of my game really
By this point I was down to below 25% so the game ended with Chris in control of 3 of the goblins for something like a 10-3 victory.
Looking back there were lots of points it could have gone differently, if Eomer had won that 50/50 roll off he could well have killed the Uruk leader AND I would still have had Eomer running around causing havoc. Failing to grab those 2 objectives and Erkenbrand being slaughtered in one turn were pretty typical of my game but I can’t take anything away from Chris who played well, called the right Heroic Actions and used the right spells. Besides, I can’t be too mad, he was using my Preston army, this was a good result for me! Most importantly for me, Chris seemed to have a good day and hopefully it’s rejuvenated his interest in the game.
So overall lessons learned were I’m happy with the army, Sharky did well throughout the day, 2+ Immobilise being all but a sure thing and there’s a lot of 1 Will heroes about that won’t be able to resist it (particularly if you roll a 6!). I’ve got a bunch more games lined up on Sunday against Tom Harrison’s elves so I’ll see how I get on there but I’m feeling pretty good about the army at the moment.
That’s all from me, hope you enjoyed the insight!
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