Nemesis: How to Fight Against Isildur

Good morning gamers,

This year in this series, we've looked at Gil-Galad, Elendil, and Elrond as the major heroes from the Last Alliance (well, and Bill Ferny) - today, we're wrapping up the quadrivium of heroes by covering the cheapest and potentially most difficult to deal with of the lot: Isildur. This guy can be crazy good - and he can also let you know (or at least, mine has let me down a time or twelve). Isildur is a bit of an odd choice for this series, since he's the first model that I'm not only covering here in Nemesis (as a model that you can hate fighting on the other side of the table) AND a model we've previously covered in our In Defense Of series (as a model that gets critique for not being good enough by some players). Isildur is a bit of a polarizing piece, either shredding your army and best heroes to bits or underperforming and seeming inferior to his dad (and sometimes multiple captains).

Recently, Evan Iverson has had some international success with Isildur (allied with some friends that aren't Rivendell to help maximize his benefits) and so we're going to look today at what you can do to help fight against Isildur and make him pay if he shows up on the other side of the board. Let's see what all the fuss is about this guy first . . .

What Makes Isildur So Hated?

For starters, Isildur is usually fielded without Elendil so that he has the One Ring. Isildur is the only Ringbearer who follows the rules for the One Ring and has innate F6, which will give him a higher FV than most other models who can engage him (more on this later). Since he's the second model in the hierarchy for getting the Ring (only behind Sauron) and since you have full control over whether you have Elendil (and eventually Anarion) in your list, you are very likely to have the Ring if you take Isildur - and as I've discussed before (several times, actually, to include an article in our Back to Basics series), there are some really powerful things you can do with the One Ring.

Photo Credit: The Armies of the Lord of the Rings

Before he puts the Ring on, Isildur is still a powerhouse hero with F6/S5/3A, access to a horse, and 3-Might-and-Strike. By any hero's reckoning, this is a great offensive profile - and while there are heroes who can have more Might than Isildur, the presence of the Ring often means that he needs to spend his Might less for calling heroic actions and can use it more for passing the two things that actually matter: dueling rolls and Ring tests.

Announcing the TMAT GT 2024!

  Good morning gamers,

Wait, we just had a tournament - what's all this? Well, we had a short window this year for our Grand Tournament, so here's a three week notice post! The tournament will be held at Patrick Henry College on May 4, 2024. Like the event last year, we're going to do four rounds with the veto system, but the way we do pairings will be a little different. Without further ado, here are (in my typical style) the Ten Commandments of the Tournament (Rules):

1) Thou Shalt Understand The Canon

The ruleset from the updated Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game Rules Manual (the Sauron one) will be our baseline. The Armies of the Lord of the Rings supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Lord of the Rings, while the Armies of the Hobbit supplement will govern the rules for armies from the Hobbit. Legendary Legions and profiles from any of the GW supplements may be used, provided that the army building requirements for the Legendary Legion are followed. Any GW errata for these books will take precedent over the printed text of these documents.

2) Thou Shalt Honor Thy Alliance

This tournament follows the alliance "restrictions" provided in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings and Armies of the Hobbit supplements - players are allowed to have "pure" armies or Historical/Convenient/Impossible alliances. Legendary Legions from any of the Games Workshop supplements can be taken as well, but obviously cannot take allies nor be taken as allies.

The Scouring of the Shire, Part 1: Ruffians in Bree

Good morning gamers,

Last year, Centaur and I played through Fantasy Fellowships every other Saturday and it was a lot of fun. I think Quest of the Ringbearer is the best supplement released to date and the scenario options in it certainly contribute to that. Centaur (Hi Reader!) firmly believes that The Scouring of the Shire supplement is better, so when we were probing through scenario campaigns to do this year, the choice was clear: we were doing Scouring.

Centaur has been collecting Hobbits for ages and has recently printed a bunch of Ruffians to support his GW Sharkey's Rogues heroes, so after finding and painting Robin Smallburrow, he was good to provide all the models. With his help getting some 3D printed roads and smial doors (and a mill - all paid for by advertising revenue from this blog by viewers like you . . . thanks, guys), I undertook the terrain side of the house. Now you know who to critique for what.

Our first scenario begins in Bree, which means I get to show off some really old, child-proof terrain today . . .

Ruffians in Bree

The board is a 4'x4' board in two panels - I have an Inn of the Prancing Pony in the middle for Quest of the Ringbearer, so we measured out a 12" radius in all four cardinal directions and marked the edges with black dice (you can see one at the bottom of the image behind the Ruffian models).

The scenario participants are 4 Hobbit Militia and 8 Bree Villagers (Hobbit Militia with +2" of movement, +1 Strength, and -1 Courage) against Bill Ferny (remember him?) and 9 Ruffians (3 bows, 2 whips, 4 vanilla). To win this scenario, the Bree-folk need to kill Bill Ferny (2 Wounds/1 Fate with Defense 3 and only 1 Attack), while the Ruffians need to quarter the Bree-folk AND Bill Ferny needs to kill two models. If the Ruffians quarter the Bree-Folk but Bill Ferny kills 0-1 models, the game is a draw. Let's see if we can make some mischief in Bree . . .  

Nemesis: How to Fight Against Elrond

Good morning gamers,

This is our third week in our Last Alliance-focused thread of our Nemesis series (after stepping away from the series for a few weeks) and we're looking at one of the greatest Elven heroes in the game: Elrond. When Centaur and I got started playing MESBG, Centaur jumped feet-first into both Rohan and Isengard . . . and he bought Elrond. Why? Because Centaur LOVES Elrond. I mean, he really, REALLY loves Elrond. I mean, if you asked him who the top three spell casters for the Forces of Good are, Elrond makes the list. He . . . REALLY . . . likes Elrond.

His Elrond has been epic in many a game against me. My Elrond has been hot and cold - and while he's killed many things, he has never gotten me more than two Foresight points in a tournament game before (while Centaur's seems to always roll 5s or 6s . . . not that I'm bitter or anything). Yes, Elrond is good - and if you're not ready for him, he can really make things look unwinnable. So how does one prepare to fight this guy? If you think it's with the same tools you'd use against Gil-Galad, you'd be kind of right . . . let's see where the overlap is by understanding what Elrond is bringing to the table.

What Makes Elrond So Hated?

Like Gil-Galad and Elendil (though certainly not to their extent), Elrond has a really solid combat profile - he's F6 with 3-Might-and-Strike on an Elven-made weapon, he's got 3 Attacks, access to a mount, and Lord of the West for effectively 4-5 attacks when he's dueling and 3-8 wounding dice with an unconditional reroll, depending on whether his cavalry bonuses are all active. His sword, Hadhafang, is also a hand-and-a-half sword, so if you're okay with two-handing (which you generally should be - give it a try sometime), he can also get +1 To Wound, which is a great way to make sure he's not blunted by most units. Furthermore, Hadhafang gives him +1 To Wound against Spirit models, which means he'll wound those pesky Warriors of the Dead on a 5+ WITHOUT two-handing (4+ if he is) and can even get some crazy-low wounding difficulties against the likes of the Balrog.

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

I actually didn't mention Elrond in my discussion on how to counter the Balrog (though if you go ALL the way to the bottom of the comments, you'll see a discussion of it in brief), so I'll just go over the highlights now: Elrond (base S4) begins by wounding the Balrog on a 6/4+, which is pretty good all things considered (lots of heroes start - and stop - here). This means Elrond is expected to deal maybe one wound/turn if he can manage to trap the Balrog. Thanks to the Balrog being a Spirit model, this gets improved to a 5/3+, which puts him quite close to 1 wound/turn without a trap (and close to 2 wounds/turn with a trap). If he two-hands as well, he can improve his wounding difficulty to a 4/2+, which is going to put him on 2-3 wounds against an untrapped Balrog and 3-5 wounds against a trapped Balrog - which is INSANE. 

If Elrond is also able to reroll all failed To Wound rolls with Enchanted Blades (say, from Cirdan), he's likely to be wounding the Balrog very, very well and actually stands a better chance of killing him than any other Rivendell or Numenor hero. And this assumes that Cirdan used his Might point to channel Blinding Light, instead of channelling his Enchanted Blades to give Elrond yet another +1 To Wound (3/1+ with rerolls on all failed To Wound rolls). I think in most worlds, Cirdan isn't going to be channelling this spell . . . but Celeborn has 3 Might for channelling it and is historical allies with Elrond . . . so that might happen. If you're a D8 or lower Spirit model (as basically every other Spirit in the game is), Elrond is basically wounding with everything without the Enchanted Blades . . . chew on that for a bit . . .

Nemesis: How to Fight Against Bill Ferny

Good morning gamers,

After a few weeks off, we're back in the Nemesis series and I wanted to talk about one of the most ANNOYING characters you'll ever face in MESBG: Bill Ferny. This guys is a cheap hero in a faction that has a bunch of cheap warriors, so that alone will complicate your day - but when you stack onto the mega-horde-with-bows-and-whips annoyance an absolutely game-shattering rule (I don't know HOW this hasn't been errata'd yet), you get just a filthy character. No honorable person would ever run this guy - and yet, there are some people who do. Should you ever run into one of those people, this article will help you beat them. Let's dig in and see what all the fuss is about Bill Ferny and then look at how to beat him.

What Makes Bill Ferny So Hated?

Bill Ferny only costs 40 points (Goblin-level Captain costs) and for that you get a very points-efficient profile. F3/4+ doesn't look great, but compared to Goblins, that's better than you'd think - and since he has a dagger and a whip (2" S1 throwing weapon), the 4+ shoot value actually matters (and will hit on a 3+ or a 4+ depending on whether he's charging or moving-and-shooting if he's taken from the Chief's Ruffians Legendary Legion, which you should always do).

Photo Credit: Warhammer.com

S3/D3 doesn't look great - and 1 Attack/Courage 3 doesn't look great either, but to get the really awesome rules he has, something has to give. As it is, since increasing your Strength and Defense doesn't always help you, these stats are perfectly fine for fighting certain foes who have invested in extra Strength (S4 models won't wound him any better than S3 models) or Defense (D5 models won't be any harder to wound than D4 models - and being D7 is similarly not any better than being D6). Many of his other stats are perfectly normal with 2 Wounds, 1 Will, 1 Fate - look at how efficient this guy is!