[Tale Telling] In The Lab: Elves (Part 1) - To Befriend or Not to Befriend

It's a lovely Tuesday evening, the weather is changing and I've completed a long but functionally productive day. My reward to myself for such an ordinary achievement? Playing with Middle-Earth Battles armies of course!

Since deciding to play MEBSG I've had little interest in non-Elven Good Armies. In general I gravitate towards fairly elite armies or endless hordes of bodies, mid-range and all that is not my cup of tea. Elves tick the elite box and meaningfully so, having higher Fight than most armies and being favored in most ties is very fun on the tabletop. That being said I've always had this itch that pure Elves is not the best way to play my beloved pointy-ears and that some Alliances might open up unexpected opportunities. While Elves are very strong they're not without weaknesses, let's run those down first:

• Strength 3 - Defense 6+ Armies can be tough to Wound, even if you're winning most Fights
• Fewer Numbers - While not TOO elite Elves are typically in the high 20's, low 30's for models and can be outnumbered
• Limited Points for Extras - Because you need bodies to absorb a lucky opposing Turn it's hard to pay for other things.
• Limited Banner Coverage - The more models you put in the more a Banner can't be everywhere at once. Elves lack a Hero/Legendary Legion that acts as a Banner or improves them, for the most part
  

These aren't complaints, I can already hear the ravenous hordes spurting about how they'd kill for these "weaknesses" in their favorite Army. At the same time it would be foolish to ignore the above points or not bother to see if anything can be done about them. Reading over the above it boils down to "needing cheaper Warriors". In my opinion Elves are the best support troops you can get, by putting them in the back you use their high Fight but don't put them at risk and also get mileage out of any shooting via being base to base with the front-line.

Having said that, and before I get ahead of myself, Elven armies are obviously not all the same. Rivendell and Lothlórien are the two most similar, many of their Heroes and Warriors are basically carbon-copies or close to it. Mirkwood is very different and while I like that Army a lot, their Army Bonus is among the best in the game so they REALLY don't like giving it up. Now they can ally with Survivors of Lake-Town but for reasons I won't laboriously detail here I don't think Halls of Thranduil will work out for this particular experiment.

That leaves Rivendell and Lothlórien as the final two contestants. Here I gravitate towards Lothlórien for a few simple reasons. One, I like almost all of their named Heroes better for teaming up with another Army. Haldir is an affordable turret/fighter, Rumil is good at bending Fights his way, Celeborn is a great all-rounder, and Galadriel is, well Galadriel. Two, Lothlórien Warriors seem extremely well suited for a backline support role. Guard of the Galadhrim Court are well known for their Fight 6 and Pikes but they can also use Shielding if they do get Engaged. Wood Elf Warriors are also great but perhaps overlooked because of their Defense 3. Still, 9pt second rankers who can also use Shielding should they need to.

Using Lothlórien we can put together a pretty strong support pillar for our list. I'm immediately grabbing Galadriel because she fills in a lot of holes that we might otherwise have. While not a good fighter she can turn off many strong enemy Heroes with Immobilize and crucially hamper shooting with Blinding Light. She also provides a very tanky Leader, important for Scenarios and something that can take people off-guard. It's also nice that she's a Hero of Legend so her Warband can be nice and stocked.

Being that were in a support role with our Elves I'm going to want 6 Bows, the most we can get with our Convenient Allies, and a bunch of Spears/Pikes. I also want a Banner, in general I prefer a sturdy Banner-bearer so a Ghaladrim Warrior with at least a Shield is my go to. Even with Blinding Light and an Elven Cloak I don't feel like saving the 1-2pts by changing to a Wood Elf. I also want at least two Guard so I'll just pencil that in now, most of the Warband will be Wood Elves though.

With a rough outline of the supporty-elf parts of the list, where to go for cheaper Warriors that synergize with what I have? This is where I've put the most time into tinkering with everything and trying basically every possible combination. It's nice that Lothlórien has no Impossible Allies but it certainly added to the legwork. I won't detail that entire process but the strongest contenders were Rohan (Historical Allies, cheaper Cavalry, access to Strength 4), Army/Survivors of Lake-Town (extremely cheap Warriors, interesting Heroes), and Arnor (5+ Fate for our meat-shields!), others just didn't work out as well for me in concept.

To prevent this from being the length of a short story I'll dive into those Armies and their fit another time, another post. As a teaser I will say I find some of these combinations to be very effective on paper, enough to get me antsy to acquire the models and see what happens. I even have rough lists that are probably terrible! Can't. Wait.