Post by mrweasely on Aug 15, 2006 21:32:30 GMT 1
There are two main properties of armies that players should concern themselves with:
dice throw - this is the rough number of dice that the army will roll in combat, counting leader re-rolls. It determines how fast the army will chew up enemy armies. Note that leader re-rolls are slightly less effective than combat dice, since they can only hit if paired with a missing combat die, whereas an extra combat die doesn't care what its brothers roll. Nevertheless, the statistical effect of this is small outside of Deadly Strife.
hit points - this is the sum of regulars plus double the number of elites. Hit points determine how long the army can stay in the fight.
Hit points and dice throw are more important than the raw number of regulars, elites, and leaders.
A common mistake I'm seeing over the board and online, is optimizing hit points at the cost of dice throw, or occassionally the reverse. The former usually arrises on muster dice, when people muster their 6th or 7th army unit. That army unit doesn't add to dice throw on the first combat round, and if things go well might not add to it on future rounds either. Also in this case the extra hit point doesn't help, because they're not taking enough casulaties to matter. That muster would have been better spent on a leader, which is adding to enemy casulaties rather than waiting in line to fight.
Of course, if the battle does go poorly, the extra 6th or 7th guy gets to fight quickly, and his extra hit can win the battle. In that case what I'm calling a "mistake" is actually good. So nevermind.
I also see occassionaly people with armies with no leaders. While this is OK for places that you know are going to get hammered, such as Pelargir, its bad in places that have to move quickly to pose a threat: Bree, Carrock, Edoras, Ered Luin, (for the Shadow: Dunland?). These future-offensive regions should be given their first leader at about 3 hit points, in case they have to unexpectedly rush off to keep you from losing the game with sword dice.
End of ramble.
dice throw - this is the rough number of dice that the army will roll in combat, counting leader re-rolls. It determines how fast the army will chew up enemy armies. Note that leader re-rolls are slightly less effective than combat dice, since they can only hit if paired with a missing combat die, whereas an extra combat die doesn't care what its brothers roll. Nevertheless, the statistical effect of this is small outside of Deadly Strife.
hit points - this is the sum of regulars plus double the number of elites. Hit points determine how long the army can stay in the fight.
Hit points and dice throw are more important than the raw number of regulars, elites, and leaders.
A common mistake I'm seeing over the board and online, is optimizing hit points at the cost of dice throw, or occassionally the reverse. The former usually arrises on muster dice, when people muster their 6th or 7th army unit. That army unit doesn't add to dice throw on the first combat round, and if things go well might not add to it on future rounds either. Also in this case the extra hit point doesn't help, because they're not taking enough casulaties to matter. That muster would have been better spent on a leader, which is adding to enemy casulaties rather than waiting in line to fight.
Of course, if the battle does go poorly, the extra 6th or 7th guy gets to fight quickly, and his extra hit can win the battle. In that case what I'm calling a "mistake" is actually good. So nevermind.
I also see occassionaly people with armies with no leaders. While this is OK for places that you know are going to get hammered, such as Pelargir, its bad in places that have to move quickly to pose a threat: Bree, Carrock, Edoras, Ered Luin, (for the Shadow: Dunland?). These future-offensive regions should be given their first leader at about 3 hit points, in case they have to unexpectedly rush off to keep you from losing the game with sword dice.
End of ramble.