With its stats in the new White Dwarf, I'm curious what people think. I won't give those stats here, so I will talk around them as best I can.

Its 'pop up anywhere' special rule is only for the first appearence, it seems. Still a pain, as it gets immediately into battle, in the midst of my lines,(if my opponant chooses to isolate the beast like that)---but that does avoid my arrows. I think I would field my troops as spread out as possible, depending on the scenario. Bad luck for my targeted heros. Luckily, the thing can't out run a hobbit. With the fight value of an elf hero, and twice the normal attacks and wounds for a hero that expensive, those first victims are fishbait. The beast has Gulavher blood in it, as least as relating to wounds/attacks...so it is very possible to wear it down into uselessness pretty quickly. Or simply keep ahead of him. But those tentacles are nasty: Ranger/Elven accuracy, dragging any survivors into base contact, means I have to keep everybody a full move away. Not so hard, unless it appears directly on the objective... That, at least, might allow for some arrows...unless he appears later in the game, as the objective is finally closed in on.

Let's keep puzzling through the possibilites and tactics against it. Ideas?

Blinding light... if he can only hit on 6's he won't tentacle you that often.

Perhaps if you bow the pants off him you can get a couple of wounds thus making him less effective.

I think the thing that makes him hard is that he doesnt HAVE to come on at all. You can wait till turn 4 and then try just when your opponent thinks he has the edge (and aragorn ahs used up loads of might etc)

Yes: being able to wait til turn 4, coming in fresh with all those attacks...more and more, I am thinking what a huge tactical advantage that is, especially in an objective game.

Blinding Light, yes. For his points cost, Watcher won't be appearing in wizardless games. But only Gandalf, Galadriel and Cirdan have Blinding Light, yes? Anyone else?

Bows, yes...but all my troops need to get at least a full move away from him first (assuming he appears under my hero or lines). With those tentacles, he'll drag victims back and I won't be able shoot again---UNLESS I have priority, or make a Heroic Shoot. Never made one of those; suddenly they look important. Too bad I have to roll a six to wound, even with elf bows.

And that Fight Value...he is rolling six dice, which means Fight Value will very likely win the fight. Love that new Knight of the White Tower with his super 2Hnd sword...but he'll lose every fight until some of the Watcher's attacks get lopped off. Rumil is the monster killer of choice. At least Watcher can't recharge like Gulavhar.

Is there an online version of this battle report? I really want to see it!

Not unless someone scans it in...

Also, it is a named hero.

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

Makes sense...but is that a good guess, strong opinion, or did you get a peek at the new source books ahead of time?

For some models, particularly canon characters, its quite obvious, you wouldn't ask if Gimli, Aragorn, Gothmog, Shelob, Treebeard were named heroes would you, and it does say 'The', and if you take the balrog as the exception as there were more than one balrog, Tolkien said there were more than one, so that's a given. Krackens are given little mention, and GW could not use references to other Krackens even if they wanted to.

And the WD refers to only one, whereas they mention having more than one great beat and more than one dweller in the dark.

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

And yet you can take THE Spider Queen multiple times in an army...

Although I agree with you, White Dwarf does seem to suggest you can only take one.

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C.A.P.T.A.I.N. = Crazy And Proud To Admit It Now
http://chrisgomhobbyblog.blogspot.com/

They changed 'The Spider Queen' to 'Spider Queen' anyway.

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

That doesn't really make sense... i think you got it around the wrong way idk i might be mistaken but if its "The Spider queen" That means its "THE" spider queen so there should only be one anyway if its just "spider queen" then there could be millions.. But yeah i know what you mean't you are not allowed to take more than one spider queen anymore and if you ever did you must be pretty dumb.

Not exactly.

I menat in the Fall of the Necromancer when it was first released, it was 'The Spider Queen', so you could only have one. Then LoME came out and it became 'Spider Queen' and you could have as many as you want and still can in most players. Many tournaments did however rule that you can only have one now to stop massed Spider Queens, which makes sense as the model was created to be 'The Spider Queen of Dol Guldor', just read the description about her, and it speak as if there is only one of her, GW are stupidly contradictory.

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

Lol well LoME is retarded.. Ok.. yeah i can understand why people thought they could have more than one but come on use some common sense people!

Sorry I'm a few years late to reply, but in a rules errata somewhere they changed "Spider Queen".

It is now just called "Spider Queen" but it also counts as a named hero, and thus, you can only have one in your force. Also, it is an independent hero in case you wanted to know (it cannot lead a warband).

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"One does not simply walk into Mordor."
"Challenge accepted."