[Tale Telling] Bilbo Baggins? Also a semi-Battle Report against The Riders of Theoden

As promised in my proper Battle Report I have another game to touch on. However! First I want to talk about Bilbo Baggins and his possible place in my usual 750 Point Army. So let's do that.

 

Damn You, Monsters and High Fight!

One of the bigger weaknesses of my current army is that I have little to no answer for either more than one, or Magic Resistant, threats. Bard can Heroic Strike a few times but his Fight 5 means it's unlikely to work out against another Hero. Galadriel can Immobilize but later game it won't always go off and can be Resisted. Past that I'm mostly hoping they don't roll 6's, which is shockingly viable at times but ultimately not an actual plan.

Enter one Mr. Bilbo Baggins. If you aren't familiar with him, by most accounts he's a pretty bad model. Very poor fighter, slow, not survivable, overpriced. His main selling point is, of course, The One Ring. And this version has no drawbacks, take that Sauron! Now we have a 90 Point Bat Swarm. Which is bad. However, it has a very specific niche role in my army, as I've alluded to. Simply by chucking Bilbo into a Fight I can erase almost any Fight Value threat in the game with a Galadhrim Court Guard, even Sauron has nothing on that.

Of course Bilbo isn't simply a one use model, that would make him too expensive for a counter to a very specific threat. He's also a really good Objective model, being able to "book it" across the table and stand very invisibly somewhere annoying. I always love a piece that can make an opponent think about how to handle it: they tend to make mistakes sometimes. Low Courage armies would find Bilbo really annoying: do you just ignore him and let the Scenario go a bit, do you send a lot of guys to try and pass the Invisibility Check, do you send a couple guys and hope for the best?

There are other things that Bilbo seems good at but really isn't. He's not a good Trapper because of his low Speed forcing him near the action, where he can be Charged. If that happens you can quickly need a rescue mission for the D6/W2 hobbit, screwing up other plans. In fairness he has Heroic Defense but it's mostly Bilbo being tied down that sucks. You're also not going to be able to use him easily every game, 4" Movement is a big deal and Bilbo will need a Turn, maybe two or three, to get him exactly where you need him at times. For an army that stays back more that's not as big of a drawback but as I've opined, I don't think those work well in MESBG.

I can slot Bilbo in at 750 Points by removing two Militia Warriors and both of my Militia Captains but after weighing everything I'm against it. Heroic March wins games, a lot more games than people think, and I don't like losing the offense. If Bilbo swapped Heroic Resolve for Heroic March then it'd be tighter, although that would be an absurdly good trifecta of abilities. Instead I think Bilbo comes in at 800 Points where I can trade a single Captain out for him. That leaves me with two Heroic March calls, generally all you seem to need, but also address the big bads I'm almost certain to see at that game size.

Initially I dismissed Bilbo as a pretty trash model, competitively, and more of just a fun inclusion from the films. Now I'm of the opinion that he's a tool, not a high quality tool mind you but a tool all the same. He performs only a few tasks during play but he does them well enough, and they're such weird problems you're happy to have anything.

Against The Riders of Theoden

My second Wednesday game was against Patrick, our local TO/Community Organizer and a damn good player to boot. He brought several armies along with and decided to randomly roll what to play after I told him I'd get a game with his Easterlings another time (foreshadowing...), ending up with Rohan. Once again I was very happy to see this, while I've played against The Riders of Theoden in a previous Battle Report I was curious to see Patrick's take on them paired with his solid generalship. Maybe I was a bit hasty in saying I would rarely fear this army.....

We played 750 Points, me using my normal list as featured on this very blog. Patrick took, to my recollection:

Theoden and 6 Rohan Royal Guard w/ Throwing Spears

Eomer and 6 Riders of Rohan

Captain of Rohan and 5 Riders of Rohan

Captain of Rohan and 5 Riders of Rohan

Dernhelm

That's a lot more bodies than I faced last time, I know that list isn't exactly correct but it's 95% of the way there. Might have dropped some Throwing Spears and other things here and there. Per Patrick he would normally drop a Captain and a few Riders/Royal Guard for Gamling which seems sensible although not a strict upgrade.

We played Retrieval, a Scenario I haven't played yet, although I cannot recall the bans. I believe mine was a Maelstrom of Battle Scenario, in any case this seemed like a good choice for Patrick. His army is much faster than mine and I'd likely have to send models wide to get to his Objective, which takes time, and he can simply peel off and run me down as necessary. On the other hand all the Cavalry have Expert Rider so the Objective is no issue for them, we fight on my side of the table, and I have less time for Shooting than if we had 12" Deployment.

Initially I thought my saving grace would be that I won the roll for Deployment Zone and took one with a nice Forest in it, although the Objective was poking off of it a bit. During Deployment I realized this wouldn't be defensible because I couldn't fit enough models in the Terrain, Patrick could just run around me and take out anything standing in the open while I was bogged down. The Rohan went mostly on the line but staggered, making great use of our scatter for In The Way.

Early on I pushed out of the Forest, reasoning that I also shouldn't rely on such a meaningful advantage that isn't in every match. Patrick indicated he was going to hit me in the center and on both flanks with pretty evenly powered groups, I decided to stay tight around my Objective but form a half-circle. Early on my Shooting was cold but by the end of Turn 2 I'd killed quite a few Horses and a Royal Guard, about all I could ask for.

Turn 3 had some very important moments as I was able to Command Theoden 5" away, we reasoned per many of the FAQs on that spell that he wouldn't be able to call Death! either. This led to Patrick only committing some of his Cavalry, mostly along my right and center, with Terrain also bottle-necking him a bit. I'd won Priority on this Turn, meaning I couldn't counter-Charge, yet I still won almost every Fight due to poor dice from Patrick. This led to a ton of Horse kills, I preferred going for the mount to take away almost all of the power from the rider rather than go for it all and get continually Charged.

On Turn 4 everything joined and Death! was called yet I was able to blunt most of the impact. For one I'd put nearly everything to my right on foot so that flank didn't need any help, I also moved second and was able to get my own Charges. This led to Patrick's Heroes doing well but only killing 1-2 models while I got kills or de-horsed in return. From here I slowly ground down the center and right as it took awhile to get through Heroes but on the left Patrick was pushing through more effectively. This led to a Captain getting into Galadriel, on my Objective, pushing me back and stripping some Fate. Fortunately, being behind enemy lines, I was able to surround and eventually bring the Captain down without any harm to Galadriel or my Objective.

In the end Rohan was Broken and we played on a few Turns before the game ended. I'd lost around ~15 models but killed every single Horse, most of the Riders/Royal Guard, both Captains, and Dernhelm. That led to a 3-0 Win as my only Victory Points were from Breaking and not being Broken.

I'm deeply regretful that I didn't do a proper Battle Report for this game as it was amazingly enjoyable and had several back and forth moments. In the early-game I was quite sure I was going to lose because I hadn't done a ton with my Shooting and there was just so much Cavalry but after that several things broke hard in my favor. Command on Theoden was really great, it wasn't the only reason Patrick didn't go all in but it didn't make that a more attractive option. I also just won a lot of only slightly favored Fights and got something out of them, reducing the army to a lot more infantry than it wants.

There's definitely a lot of interesting nuance to this matchup, Priority being probably the biggest determiner. If I win a lot of Priority, particularly on the Turn that Rohan wants to go in, many of their abilities and rules do nothing. I also got a lot of mileage out of using my models to contain Heroes, this was partially due to Patrick not running a lot of Throwing Spears but it would have worked almost as well if he had them. Ideally the Heroes want to get into two of my models while the Warriors only get into one, however because there were so many big Cavalry bases space was at a premium and the Terrain didn't help. Death! did very little, I believe most Heroes got two kills while one or two lost Fights.

Not having a Banner was definitely a major issue and to be fair I did say Patrick normally runs one. It's absolutely a must for this army to have a Banner but the drop in model count from Gamling makes me more confident. I wonder how the Legendary Legion would run with a slightly higher Hero count, maybe 6-7? Deorwine and Elfhelm seem really good to keep punching through and for cheeky front-line bypassing on the Charge. On the other hand I don't play Rohan so...just a fun thought.

Wrapup

Between my two games I'm happy with how I seem to be progressing with MESBG, still a really long way to go but I'm making few "big" mistakes. There's so much nuance to the positioning and especially Deployment in this game that it's easy to lose sight of one or two things and have it cost you. I'm enjoying every game so far, even if it's one-sided I feel like I did more than roll dice at someone. It's a rare occasion when I'm thinking what I need to do to kill something when that's most of your mental cycles in some other wargames.

I'm really grateful to have fallen into such a great local meta, not only are people very active but almost everyone owns several armies. It's also great to see new people get interested due to how reliable and approachable our group is, that's a rare thing. Traveling to a decent sized event with people I game with is surprisingly not an experience I've had but am greatly looking forward to: it's extremely motivating.