So my friend and I played a game the other day with our first-ever use of magic. He won with a bunch of orcs and saruman. Afterwards we were skimming over the rules for certain heroes, and this idea came up:

you could use Saruman (good side) and gimli in a big block of dwarf infantry. Get Saruman to cast Dark fury and Gimli to call epic Rampage (and even epic rage as well), which would mean that you keep re-rolling every time you make a successful hit (which would happen often), and re-rolling 1s and 2s, or potentially ALL failures(saruman rolls a 6 for the spell), which could in turn make the enemy formation become a messy smear on the board! Is that right, or did we misinterpret the rules?

Thanks

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You don't even need to have Saruman. Say you have Gimli in a formation of S4 or S5 troops, he then calls Epic Rage and makes it S8 or S9, which usually wounds on 2+ and with Epic Rampage and your 10 or so dice it's usually enough to wipe out a 5-6 company formation anyway.

But yeah, your theory is correct, but it's not that broken, come on, you're paying what? Over 300 in Gimli and Saruman and then about 200 in the formation - for 500 points I would expect better things to come up against and I would expect 4 Wraiths to make this one useless anyway

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I really hate WotR.

Keep in mind that Dark Fury only allows one reroll per attack so it isn't like an automatic thing like when you use Aragorn and 2-handed weapons.

@Blackmist. In your example, how are you hitting on a 2+? High Strength alone can only take it to a 3+ at best.

They're dwarves with 2H weapons.

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St. Teresa of Avila

For the forces of Evil, doesn't the combo of the Betrayer and Amdur act the same way except its even cheaper? Because Saruman and Gimli combined cost 375pts while the Betrayer and Amdur combo costs approximately 290pts. As well, they don't have to use a spell every turn gain that bonus.

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There are any number of ways to take advantage of Epic Rampage. It is one of the 3-4 truly broken aspects of the game. You could also put Amdur in a formation of goblin prowlers and hit from the flank. +1 for 2-handed weapons, +1 for prowler, reroll "1"s for poison. Add something to buff strength or include the Morgul Blades fate and its an almost auto hit on every attack.

Its cheap and cheesy and I don't recommend doing it and hopefully they will fix it and the other things sometime in the not too distant future.

I am new to WOTR and played a game with my Uruks versus Dwarves:

at one point in the game I had Saruman with four companies of Uruk Pikes, which was part of a Battlehost, and included an Army banner, facing Dain Ironfoots troops. Dain troops charged and hit me with one company out of six (he was in long colum), called Epic Rampage and strike, plus Baruk-Khazad, and rolled something like 24 dice(for a total of 16 hits). These hits were rolled again for 9 more. These dice were rolled again for another 5 hits, and again for 3 hits, and again for 1 hit, and then finally ended. In total 34 hits!

Saruman's formation of 24 figures was wiped out including Saruman himself. I only had 18 dice back and scored 9 hits.

Quite a brutal ability, which only Dain and Gimli have. This was combined with some of his other abilities to produce hits on a 3+.

In one combat my most powerful leader and his troops were wiped out, some 500+ points, simply vanished! Ironicaly, Dain's unit cost around 500 points too, so something is definitely wrong here with the points system!

Brian

Baruk khazad is a shooting attack and takes place in the shooting phase and has nothing to do with rampage. Also, rampage very explicitly only effects the hero's company, not formation, so even charging and with an epic strike your talking at most 16 attacks that can be rerolled.

Still bad, but not as bad

No, the Baruk Kazad is a 75 point fortune add-on from Battlehosts. It gives a +1 to hit by any unit for the rest of the turn.

There was also 6 companies in this formation, six deep, so that was 5 additional support dice.

Brian

They gave a fortune the same name as Gimli's special ability? That was pretty dumb of them.

and yes, there are 5 support dice, but those don't get to be rerolled with the Ramapage.

There are elements of the game which need re-balancing. But FFS, for an experienced player to pull this kind of thing on a new player is rediculous. I've never experienced it; the bunch of gamers I play with would never just utterly crush a newbie right off the bat in their first game. Why go to such lengths just to mug a new player, exploit the fact that it's entirely reasonable to expect them to not have an encyclopedic knowledge of every rule and combo, and forever put them off the game? If I saw such a thing, i'd think 'Well done, fools, you've just annoyed someone who wanted to be a part of something you enjoy, and cheated yourself out of a new and potentially enthusiastic player who'd contribute to the gaming group.' Play competitive, just perhaps save the uber-smashing, full-tilt, tournament-level combos of insta-death at bay for the first few games. Jeez.

Ok, I'm making some assumptions here, so if I'm out of line, I apologise. But if I were playing an intro game, I'd keep it friendly, and not just blatently annihilate someone I can take advantage of. It also mis-represents the game. Everyone agrees there are elements of WotR that need to be re-dressed, but it's not so utterly broken as to be unplayable. Work arounds and sensibble house-rules can easily be employed to fix some issues, or...not. I've not had any probs just playing it as is, even with the things in place that I'd change, were I in charge. I love WotR, I hope the dashed unsporting noobb-crushing hasn't dampened your enthusiasm for the game.

I have encountered a similar problem myself.
I was attacked by gimli's epic rampage alongside aragorn and in a company with two handed weapons. Aragorn's company recives +2 on rolls to hit and the two handed weapons gives +1 giving them a total of +3 on their rolls to hit. It was a while ago and i cant remember why but my formation of uruk hai had been affected so that a roll of 4 was all that was required to cause a casualty, but as my oponent had a +3 on rolls to hit he only had to roll 1s. That ment that gimili's company would never miss and resulted in the loss of a 6 company formation that included 2 epic heroes in one fell swoop thus pretty much ending the game. I now face the problem of an oponent who wants to play Arogorn and Eledil in the same company, put them in with two handed weapons and thats a +5 on rolls to hit!Throw Gimli in there too and you dont stand a chance. Yeah it costs a lot of points but ultimatly they get a company that grinds through my orcs.

It's frustrating and some call it power gaming but at the moment the existing rules allow it. I have found some ways to try and counter this (methods that i cant mention on here as my enemies may be viewing) but then your just playing on the same level as your oponent, one solid formation that dominates the game. Fortunatly for the time being my oponent is honouring the house rules that forbid aragorn and elendil to be played together.

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Sorry if my post will sound harsh, I mean no offence to anyone, but:

Look at that formation logically: Aragorn + Elendil + Gimli + Formation = 800 points? Come on people, think when you play. For 800 points you can shatter that and laugh in your opponent's face. You don't have to allow it to move straight into you and kill you. How? Cavalry for one - charge the formation twice with lances armed models and you're done. Monsters will deal with it too if you put enough of them into it. Attacking with cheap formations that fire a large number of attacks will always be weakening it and if the guy tries to turn on Rampage in every combat, he'll run out of Might. Black Darting Gimli multiple times solves the problem too.

A combo that costs more than 600 points is OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE STRONG, so why complain about it? Why not make something yourself for that amount of points that is designed to smash that combo? The thing still gets ruined by a basic 5 Nazgul Mordor force because it can't resist 5 Pall of Nights every turn, so it will never charge all together as one combo and if Gimli gets close he will be getting Black Darted. Please people, don't complain that an ultra combo killed your main unit - you knew it was going to kill it and yet you still shoved ur unit onto it or let it shove itself onto your unit.

My moan here is because I see countless complains on every forum how broken everything is, but barely anybody thinks of ways of dealing with them, now that's off-putting from the game because it just means that whenever I'll employ some sort of combo people will call me a powergamer, even though I'll be able to tell them a dozen ways of killing it if they had any skill. The game is not about throwing a formation onto another and thinking "wraaagh me mens gonna crush dem orkses wraaagh!". To beat your opponent you have to logically think about every situation and choose the best actions, even if some things may be unbalanced then that's just tough, live with it.

Again sorry for my way of speaking, I'm just really fed up with visiting any WotR related forums and seeing complains after complains about powergaming and broken combos.

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Gotta love your attitude BM. You are thinking completly right. Personally I hate WotR. Not because I get my ass handed to me (which I don't) but because I don't want too field 5 nazguls, I don't want too field Aragorn, Gimli and kazad guards. I just want to make two armies, with some nice captains and maybe an epic hero too lead the force and then have a battle of fought with tactics (read historical wargaming) rather than combinations. I also dislike the way my minatures die.

With you all the way Hoard Lord, exactly how I want to play to. And of course Black Mist is correct, there are counters, but what happens if you don't know what your power-combo your opponant will field, how can you then counter it? There are two ways to play WOTR, both protagonists are into power-gaming (for want of a better word) or both are not, the two cannot mix. My biggest gripe is that WOTR does not simulate battles in Middle-earth where magic is all powerful and 'historically' innacurate armies that use long dead grandparents fighting alongside yet to be born offspring, but that again comes into the power-gamer V not.

Exactly. If you don't like the way the game is going or the way your opponent plays then ask them to change their army, explain what you would like to change. The game is about fun and if you're not having fun then usually it's because of the way you treat the game. I don't see why for example players come to tournaments and then moan and moan and moan how they were beaten by a cheesy force... obviously you'll get to play a cheesy force, that's the nature of a tournament, players often go there to win. It's like going to a world cup with a team that's completely unprepared, facing Germany or Spain and then saying you got beaten because their squad is better - well your squad could be better if you had invested in developing of young football players in your country as much as they invest in theirs (England might be an exception to this though, they're hopeless anyway ;P).

My point is that if you're playing casually, then why the heck are people using those combos in the first place? What's the point? Isn't it supposed to be a friendly atmosphere? Unless you both want to play that way, why bother at all? Why don't you just both agree what and how to play and then go and have fun. On the other hand if you're playing a tournament and get beaten by one of those then that's just tough, live with it.

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Hear, hear. If I were going to a tournament I would have brought the most cheesy list I ever could. The problem is that in frinedly games, players might be tempted to use these cheesy combinations to get an edge, and then you have the arms race started. I do the same thing in SBG. I have a 500 points list with 48 models a Shade, a Gundabad Drum and some blacksields (in reserve to finish off the hero) just to counter a typcal dwarf force.

I don't buy this 'oil and water' argument for WOTR. Epic Rampage is a total red herring, and it is not really things like this that are harming the game. If only it were.

The imbalance is in the core costings and how some of the systems work in the game. This means the issues are too deeply embedded for "just don't take that stuff for friendly games" to be a realistic answer. In that context you can tell the players with the hamstrung lists to work as hard as they can to overcome the liabilities, but at some stage they will probably want to have things as easy as others do.

Its not a matter of getting worked up over it, it is just a game. However, lets not pretend the issues aren't there.

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Horde Lord,

That is exactly my mentality in the game. In fact, my goal is to do a campaign using the old SPI boardgame as a campaign driver. I have a large Isengard and Mordor army, some Fallen Realms, and I just sent a Gondor army of over 500 figures to get painted.

In short, I want to game mass battles like in the films. I am primarily a historical gamer and this is my first deep venture into Fantasy. I find these rules very fun, and despite the "cheese" that I have seen, both from a historical position and what has been dealt to me, I'm not going to quit playing.

But I would like to see some cleaning up of this system, and house rules seem to be the only answer right now. I want lots of troops, not a few on the table.

Brian