In the Mind: How to use Different Strategies
Hello and welcome back to the Minds of Moria. Today we will be discussing a rather interesting topic and I will provide a few lists for my personal favorite strategies to use in this game. So let us start off by laying out the ground work. I will be covering the following strategies in their own sections as follows: Kiting, Baiting, Pincers, Find the Spot, the Disengage, Full Engage. These are all vary from incredibly simple to extremely difficult depending on how they are run. Let us jump right in at the beginning. Where the inspiration for this article has sprouted from.
Kiting: Currently I have been messing with a minas Morgul kiting list. That means using orc bowmen, spectres, trolls, and magic to keep running away from my enemy and out play them in maneuverability. As you can imagine, orcs are horrible at shooting so everyone told me it couldn't be done. At a time in the past I believed them. Then I played a thematic rohan versus wildmen game. I was the wildmen player and with less bows, and 0 throwing weapons compared to the fully maxed out rohan throwing weapon list I decided I didnt want to engage at one point. So instead of charging when i had priority for the first combat turn i ran off making 16 inches between me and the rohan. I then was able to pick off 3 rohan throwing spears and then did that the following turn as well. Over these two turns I only lost 4 wildmen total to throwing spears and enemy bow fire making me up on top with higher value targets as well as more of them. i ran my troops off let my bows shoot through lanes i had left and took out more throwing weapons. They then took a turn to switch the non throwing weapons to the front and put their few remaining throwing spears in the back. This allowed a further turn of disengagement where I shot through an in the way of the fence at their archers taking out 2. This resulted in an astounding wildmen victory with the most unlikely scenario. Ever since I have dreamed of doing it with the other weirdest lists from Minas morgul, to Buhdurs horde. But all of this to say, WHAT are the specifics of kiting and how is it best done. Well simply all you need is something that can put more pressure on your opponent then they can you without engaging. This can vary from throwing weapons, to bows, to throwing stones, to magic, to moving their models where they dont want them. As a starting kiting player I would suggest something like the Rivendell knights if you know how to run cavalry well. If you do not then I would engage with a forgiving kiting army such as either a Rohan list or a Rangers of Ithilien army. Both of those have the tools to kite and both have the models and or defense to be forgiving. Another excellent army would be the lurtz's scouts with max bows and max models as it allows a lot of condensed heavy fire at mid range. Additionally all of those uruks are insanely fast meaning you can half move your bows at nearly the same movement as a dwarf and just a bit less then most normal models. As a kiting list make some priority's. First target any cavalry. Make it so that they cannot catch you with ease. Then aim at messing up high value troops. This means targeting banners, elites, or anything costed high in points. If you randomly chip off a wound or two on a hero your enemy will get extremely scared and will cage their hero behind their troops to keep them protected. You job is to simply create a chaos in which your enemy either has no idea what you are doing or is slowly getting a disadvantage of points and models. You want to set up your archers barely in range this could mean manipulating how if your opponant moves first and has their bows in the second rank moving your archers up enough to shoot only their first rank barely and taking off some troops while their bows are useless. Then after that turn move the rest of your force ahead of your archers allowing them paths to shoot through or swinging your army wide to let all the bowfire through easily. Then you try to apply some pressure with that part of the force through any means possible. Maybe a few throwing weapons. Maybe throw a spectre pull at some heroes and hype up the fact that eventually their heroes will fail and then be at the whims of an entire army with no support. You can kite both mentally and physically. Both are just as effective and will work. If the enemies archers are super weak in defense and are left in your range but they shoot first i would always advise to declare a heroic shoot if you think you can easily heavily reduce their archers. If you have elves and they have some hobbits or wildmen this is perfect. D3 archery will melt to your bow fire so use a might point to assure yourself the shooting advantage early and further scare your opponents. Now in my position if i am the orc or wildmen player with max bows i probably have more bows so a heroic shoot against something like elves or Gondor rangers is perfect for me. You have even more shots then they do and while it may be harder to wound for you you ultimately have weight of dice and even knocking off a few archers early can provide a massive advantage in this war. Now trolls. Trolls are so much fun for kiting as you can set them up to throw their stones. These are NASTY if they hit they are so frightening and so hype them up and if you get a lucky hit then you can wound heroes on 4s for nearly all in the game or Sauron's and the balrog on 5s. just the threat of the possibility of this can be enough to make them run at you which is very nice. That is why I am loving my Minas Morgul kiting list. It has tons of bows 2 trolls and a witch king with magic and spectres running around applying so much ranged pressure nearly every list bows to my wishes. This strategy in combination with the next strategy are probably my favorite combination followed after that with the last strategy we will discuss today.
baiting: bait is something i have discussed in depth and in all of the different styles in previous posts. The basics of baiting is a strategy to entice your enemy to come where you want rather then force them through such things as bow fire and such. Recently as I have been playing the Wolves of Isengard this has been something I have been using a lot. Throw forward 2 wargs on a flank where i want my enemy to charge as that portion of the field is more open allowing my high mobility and high numbers of cav to pounce on whoever is unlucky enough to receive them. Baiting can be super simple and is super fun. A thing to remember only inexperienced players will take a bait that isn't worth it. You have to give up something in order to gain something that is the biggest thing to remember when baiting unless it is a hero such as Theodred, Beorn, Dain, or any model from Ride out. I think this is the best strategy to pair with others as it is simple and can benefit in almost any scenario.
Pincer: This is one of the most fun tactics as you can do it differently. The most common way to do this is also known as the hammer and anvil tactic of taking about 50-50 mix of infantry and cav and using your infantry as a anvil to pound your enemy between with your cavalry. This is easy to set up just simply engage with your infantry survive one turn then have you cavalry hit like a truck on the flanks and behind. Another way to do it is to set up some troops along some terrain and set your bows further down looking through those pieces of terrain. As your enemy ahs to come and engage those bows you troops hiding in the cover take them on the sides and wrap while the bows engage head on. These are just a few simple ways of getting an engage in a position ripe for traps.
Find the Spot: This strategy is essentially for many armies. It requires a combination of things. Either bow fire or a place where the most points are. This strategy revolves around many lists that have incredible defense or good shooting and lower numbers. The army of the dead, certain elf lists, dwarves all can or should come to rely on this strategy. I think this should be a given regardless of whatever army you are playing. Remember terrain is what makes the game different. Scenarios and armies are easy to think of ways to use in a given game. But the terrain, well thats the X factor. What if they have a heavy shooting list, well terrain is your best friend... Learning how to use any and all terrain and how to manipulate it is one of the key ways to win games. Games are won through movement, not dice rolls. If it was just dice or even mostly dice and luck Kylie, from the Green Dragon Podcast, wouldn't have taken down the biggest event in Great Britain, America, New Zealand, and the two biggest in Australia in one road trip. That's not how it works. That isn't even counting all of the smaller events she won or podiumed on that trip. If it was up to dice that wouldn't happen. I always love moving my lines forward to have one if not both flanks protected by terrain to make a flank force of my enemy have a much harder time to wrap on me.
Disengage: This strategy is simple. I have used this strategy to MASSIVE success. This is very fun to do with armies such as the dead, men of the west, the fellowship, or cav armies. It is super simple. You want to have a good source of might since you are using might for something that could be used in another situation to possibly greater success. The best way is if you simply win priority and they decide this turn i dont need to declare a move. Then you just pull everything back fully. This means with your one inch back away very few models should be able to get into combat. This can then be used to reposition or in my experiences it almost makes your enemy freak out and just have no idea what you are doing. This is great when they are in a disjointed line and if you left some squads of archers back they can shoot easily while theirs have to shift around. Then you just shoot at theirs and apply pressure. Ultimately it is more of a mind trick then anything as it adds so much questioning to their minds and could be useful if you dont need to heroic move if they run after you they will feel forced to declare a move so you dont run further when in reality you dont really care. I love this strategy and have used it multiple times to great success.
Full Engage: This is probably the type of engagement many are used to. This time i would like to apply a different twist to the classic run forwards and fight. Pick a part of the enemy battle line you want to engage. Dont engage the middle engage a flank full on and wrap. Yes only 1-2 turns of this will work before they are able to reset their battle line but 2 turns of combat is a lot if you can avoid 2 captains and like 10 troops. Another fun strategy is to block space when you full engage. I love setting up a Sauron and a troll with about 15mm between their bases. This blocks off quite a bit of space meaning you can just hide your orcs behind them in safety. Trolls are very very solid now and when you can engage in such a way where your soft squishy things are behind a wall of two massive monsters. You are looking phenomenal. Again this is the most basic style but i want to add something into your minds arsenal. When you go to fully engage... think about how you want to fully engage.
I hope you have enjoyed this slightly longer then usual read and I hope you find much of it interesting and applicable to your games. I started out as a horrible player but as soon as i started figuring out, hearing, applying strategies like these I now feel comfortable with any army... so much so that for a 1000 point event I gave full control of my list to two buddies... now I'm running the 9, the keeper and some cav without the necromancer at 1000 points but with many of these strategies i am getting some clever ideas. Before that however we have one of our GT's in just two weeks. I am taking a thematic battle of the Pelargir list with the Realms of Men to fill in the theme of the list. In short its 48 models with 12 cavalry and 2 banners with 11 bows. I feel really good about the list and cannot wait to go and bring it out... but more on that next time. This has been the Minds of Moria see you next time.
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