The thing to remember Brian is how much you are paying for these Epic Heroes. Amdur cost 165pts, 8 rangers cost 30pts. The dice went your way this time, they may not next time, and a 90pt Faramir may KIll your 165pt Lord of Blades. epic strike duels are risky!
Even with luck very much on your side you have used up 2/3 of your might points to kill 120pts of the enemy. That's 2 epic rampage attacks, which would also have been very deadly to the Rangers.
If you what a house rule to reduce the effect of duels, we have in the passed changed the results from hits to attacks with normal Strength V Defence roles. Also on a 6 (rampage) you get to chose ether the hero or the troops not both. I personally think it goes too far myself, but you my want to give it a go.

I don't think the fact that this is in any way 'devastating' is convincingly demonstrated. To me it looks like an Epic Hero killed another Epic hero and 8 more guys are roughly equivalent in value to one of the two might points expended to achieve this.

The authors designed a game where basic troops die in droves. I have no doubt they envisioned situations where a handful of those same troops were theatrically cut down to make the duel a little more cinematic.

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I'd like to say that the title of this thread is misleading as I don't agree that it is.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

I'd like to point out that my main rant is the ability of this rule to be used to kill of units. I realy do not have a problem with the duel itself.

Please refer to my first posting and my example of how I destroyed a unit of Dwarves with my Troll Chieftain

With regards to points, I do not see this being an issue, the rangers may have been cheap, but what about if it is a high-point unit like the 70-point Galadhrim Guards. Granted, they will most likely have a good leader with them, but what if it is some chump? A duel against a hero like Amdur can turn out just as bad, and this time each casulaty is a single cavalry.

Any character that has epic strike can go around and challenge captains and heroes that do not. In most cases these units have a captain, who is fight 4 or 5, so right away there is +5 or +6 to the roll. A fight involving these two, given that a 6 is rolled for the ES hero as opposed to a for the captain or no ES hero, can result in a basic score of 15/16 to 5 or 6 before might and challenging bonuses.

Brian

While cutting down swathes of 70pt troops and dueling all over the place looks impressive, that isn't what tends to happen in practice. There are limits, might is relatively scarce (unless you are Elves!) and your opponent gets choices. Over enough interactions, your lists are going to change to adapt and it will be even less of an issue than it seems now.

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I've been finding that more numerous, smaller and medium sized formations is a good counter to ES.

With my Wood Elves, for example, I may have five or six formations in a 1500 point game. Most of these are pretty comparable with each other (Wood Elf with bow), though I may have some Sentinels in there. I try to spread my Epic Heroes out as having multiple in a single formation is very tempting and when I do have more than one Epic in a Formation I try to be sure one is capable of holding its own in a Duel. Thranduil is good for this, and Galadriel (combat version) is great since she's an "always on" ES with Might to boost. I also use Captains for additional Might for Heroic actions, freeing up the Epic Heroes for Epic Actions as I think they should be. If someone wants to burn two Might to Heroic Duel/ES one of my Captains I have no complaints. For most ES models that's their one shot at it during the game ( 2 Might ). They'll have a reasonable advantage over the good Fight-value Elf Captain (though the Capt will probably have Might to invest) but I'd rarely see enough to damage done in the Duel to critically crush the Formation. And any one of my Formations are no more important to success than any other.

My Mordor list is similar. I have some Morannon Orc, normal Orc, Warg Riders, Castellans, Ghosts and others. All in medium sized Formations, many with Captains ( ATD, Heroics, Courage ), but none so critical that if someone wants to burn 2 Might to ES/Duel them it's not going to be a big deal. As I build out my Rohan army it's doing the same. Let an opponent Duel a Captain leading one Formation of RoR. I will have several more around that look just like it.

We do use Duels (with and without ES) as much to take out the target Hero as well as softening up the target Formation a little but after our first game or two they've never made enough difference to be critical to the game. A little frustrating, and may throw off your immediate plans but you adapt. As long as you have one major core Formation that has a lot of your plans and dependencies poured into it then you are presenting a juicy target for the Duel. Decentralize, have alternative plans, spread your combat strength out and be ready to hop Epics as needed.

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Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Firstly, with your example I'm going to add that a Troll Chief is easy to kill, and secondlly I agree with Xelee and Beowulf03809.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

Me too...

we had a battle this weekend, only 750 points, still teaching a new player. Moving up to 1k next game.:)

anyway, we had 2 duels

first duel was a Numenorian captain dueled Khamul toward the end of the game to try and turn the tide. He lost the duel and I got to roll on the duel table 3 times, I killed his captain, and 3 Numenorians.

2nd duel was Gothmog calling a duel against Gandalf the Grey and I won the duel and got to roll on the duel table 5 times, I wounded Gandalf and killed 6 Wood Elf Archers in a unit of 24, so the wounds fell off at the end.

So again our group hasnt seen this massive amount of overkill with duels and in both cases I had might and used epic strike with khamul and with Gothmog.

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