[Tale Telling] Most Likely Incorrect Musings on the Competitive Landscape of MESBG

Back again with a mid-week post as I decided to take a slight painting break after some inspiration struck me. I was watching a Battle Report recently, as I often do when painting, and was quite struck by what I view as a fundamental misunderstanding of how competitive armies function in MESBG. Of course I will say as a caveat that I am a newcomer to this game, still, but I also have two decades of wargaming experience and much of that translates between games. I'm not saying I am correct about all of this but they're my thoughts/opinions and I don't see these topics frequently or ever addressed through the few competitive sources of information this game has.

The Lack of a Fixed Point Value Stunts Competitive Growth

I have to imagine this has been discussed to death by the community but not having a fixed point value for games, or at least a fixed range, is a problem for developing a competitive meta. Now that's not all bad since one thing metas do is stagnate, that's why writers have to release FAQs and new additions to games to keep things fresh. Since MESBG only gets two FAQs per year, instead of four like 40K/Age of Sigmar, and only one new book per year (or so it seems), there's a lot less to keep things fresh.

While I don't think MESBG needs a fixed point value I would like to see a range. This would probably be 700-800 Points, at least in my eyes. I know 650 is popular, even my group uses it heavily, but I think it still rewards skew armies or swarms too much. The reason I favor a bit higher point values is they give all armies a chance to include some of their expensive, answer pieces without sacrificing overall cohesity of the list.

Games that are played at this range seem to go a bit faster as well since you have the Heroes to get kills whereas smaller games are often a lot of Warrior on Warrior which means you're worse off to Wound, don't have as much Might, etc.

Lastly, not having a range or fixed point total is confusing to players coming from other games as almost every single other system does this. I see frequent posts about this on Reddit and elsewhere so at least it wasn't just me being a bit thrown off by "Just play whatever size you want!"

 

Shooting Armies Shouldn't Ever Be Viable

One of the most baffling things I see discussed competitively is that shooting armies are great when they should be literally unplayable. Assault on Helms Deep, Dale, Rivendell Knights, and more are all considered very strong and tournament winning armies. What do they have in common? They auto-lose to Blinding Light or an Evil Army with The Shadow Lord (or Assault on Lothlórien LL to a lesser extent). No Shooting army in the game can handle needing 6's to Hit and there is no counter-play for most of those effects, there's effectively a zero percent chance of killing a Hero through that and also dealing with In The Way from a smart opponent.

When so many points are spent on purely shooting, and someone takes all that away or at least removes 83.33% of its efficacy, that's most games decided right then and there. Those points come from somewhere and it's usually either downgrading Heroes or just less Warriors, both of which will lead to losing Fights and having less Scenario pressure.

This was on display front and center for the Finals of a large Australian Event where Lothlórien went against Rivendell Knights. Right away the entire gameplan of the RivenDell Knights is removed by Blinding Light from Galadriel, now it's just a baddish Cavalry army. Since the only other remaining advantage of the Knights, Fight 5, is removed by being against other Elves the game is almost certainly decided before dice are rolled (barring major mistakes, which did happen but were made by the Rivendell Knight Player in this case.)

As I've touched on before I'm fine with this since Shooting armies are boring and un-interactive in almost every single wargame ever made, at the same time I would never take an army that specializes in Shooting to any half-way competitive event. The odds that you will run into Galadriel, Gandalf, The Shadow Lord, Assault on Lothlórien LL, or Cirdan is very high and they're reasonable easy to Ally in as well. That's also not touching on things like Mirkwood LL and all their Elven Cloaks or armies that can be basically immune to Bows such as Dwarves.

There are too many bad matchups to treat Shooting as anything other than what it's intended for: removing Mounts, applying pressure to stand out models in the early-game, and threatening Objective campers.

MESBG is Very Rock, Paper, Scissors

While not uncommon within wargaming, MESBG is pretty big on R/P/S in the competitive space. If you aren't familiar with this theory it goes that Army Type A beats Army Type B, which in turn beats Type C, and that beats Type A. This isn't a desirable state for a game to be in but it can be hard to alleviate depending on the core rules of the system. For MESBG I think it comes more from the types of armies that are allowed in the game and pushed to the forefront, which is good since that's easier to fix.

The first type of army are what I call "Fair Armies". This is anything that plays the game "normally" but happens to be very good at that playstyle. For Middle-Earth the normal way to play is fighting over and over again with Warriors while some Heroes lend their support to break impasses. Examples of this are Easterlings (especially with the LL), Angmar, Elves, Fiefdoms, and so on. These armies will beat down most other "normal" armies because their tools are simply better than the opponents and there's no real way to overcome that as long as you're playing their game.

Next is Skew Armies, these lean extremely hard on one aspect of the game that is hard for an opponent to overcome unless they also lean into that. Beornings LL, Fangorn, Rise of the Necromance LL, and more are good examples of this. When you don't have the right tools these armies can be tough to beat, although their most common weakness is Scenarios (but not always). Skews can often beat "Fair Armies" because they don't play the same game as the opponent.

Lastly you have Control Armies, these seek to dictate the terms of engagement and what your opponent is and isn't allowed to do during play. Typically these will have a fair amount of Magic but can also be all Cavalry lists, some horde armies, and the like. These tools can force a major change in how the game at hand is played, possibly leaving an opponent without any useful answers (such as having expensive Heroes Immobilized over and over because they lack Resistant to Magic).

Now I don't think these Army Types beat each other cleanly, there's some of that to be seen but mostly competitive styles of army are R/P/S into other competitive styles. Easterling LL is countered by some Defense Skews and some Cavalry armies. Beornings are countered by armies that can play a range of Scenarios well, Magic Control armies often lose to armies that don't care about their Heroes so much or who can shrug Magic, etc. etc.

This could all be alleviated but it would likely require some major rules changes. Off the top all Heroes of Valor or higher could gain Resistant to Magic for free or regain Will spent if they successfully resist. Higher Defense values could be brought down in terms of what dice you need to Wound. More Heroes could have Heroic Strike to counter all high Fight Value, the list goes on and on. Just to be clear I'm not necessarily advocating for any changes, I'm just saying that's the route to leveling the playing field. MESBG is an old style of game with regard to its rules and the industry has largely moved past some of its hallmarks.

MESBG is Extraordinarily Dice-Focused

Of what I've discussed so far this is probably the main issue for me. Wargames in the last half-decade or so have been focusing more on "dice-fixing", being able to manipulate your dice when you really need to. This is a positive trend in my eyes because the less influence dice have, the more influence player skill has and tying dice fixing to player choice is very nice. MESBG has a bit of this with Might and Banners but overall the dice you roll are not subject to changes in a positive or negative way.

What's bad about this is how often just one dice roll can decide entire games. Two of the biggest culprits for me are Heroic Strike and Magic/Resisting. Heroic Strike is the most important because in Hero on Hero fights the game can hang in the balance, sure you can lose the Fight Value and win the fight but if it's Hero on Hero there may also be Might to burn to influence that, making the Heroic Strike final arbiter of who wins. Magic is much the same, having a key Resist go off can lose an entire match with no recourse because shutting down or otherwise debuffing a Hero is extremely important to some lists.

Beyond those instances, MESBG is a very snowball type of game. Once you get an advantage it's very easy to press that advantage, gaining yet more of an advantage and forming a hard to disrupt feedback loop. In some other games you can break this by winning important Combats or what have you through fixing your dice, or simple not having Line vs. Line engagements where pressing numbers matters more and more. Say two people are playing a game with largely even model counts, especially for Warriors. One player has an amazing opening Turn of Combat, killing 5 or so models in what are otherwise even engagements. That means that player can now throw ~5 models into other fights, giving him an advantage on both Duel rolls and more Wound rolls (also possibly getting Traps).

There's simply very little you can do about the above situation other than hope luck swings back your way. That can be a frustrating experience where you slowly see the match slip away but there's no tools to reverse that trend. Unfortunately this is completely baked into the Core Rules in numerous places and won't be changing anytime soon.

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I'm undecided how I feel about most of these topics and how they work within MESBG, except for the lack of influence over dice of course. I think if the game was bigger, and therefore had a bigger competitive scene, you'd see very few armies anywhere near top tables of mid/large events. Shooting Armies would largely fall off the face of the Earth, everyone would cheat towards both Defense and Horde skews which largely eliminates them, and I think there would be a big push towards full Will Heroes and Fight Values. I've certainly aimed for that with my preferred list and I think it's working out well. My main fear is that Easterlings are just way too good as a "Fair Army", there's no tool they lack for that type of game and often their version of whatever tool is WAY better than other armies. Fight 5 nearly army-wide, 12" Banner, Fury, light control over some Scenarios ending, extra Duel rolls for Heroes, and a Drum is just way too much.

I'm interested to see how things progress with MESBG, particularly in the next FAQ since Defense of the North was a BIG powercreep over almost everything that came before. For now I'm just focusing on making sure I can deal with Easterlings and The Witch King, everything else is easy.