Mad Orcs: Fury Road - Are Shamans Worthwhile?

                                                                  Looks like the sort of headgear a Shaman would wear actually

Shamans are one of the most controversial models in the game. Pretty much everyone would agree that they were too strong last edition, but opinions differ wildly as to whether Games Workshop swung the nerf bat too hard. Shamans lost access to their 5+ save, the 6+ save became an effect of Channelling, and they can normally only take 6 models in their warband instead of 12. For many players, these hits took Shamans out of the realm of playability, yet others will still never leave home without one. I have been pondering this controversy recently while building an Isengard list, and decided a proper analysis was in order.

                                                                 How can I say no to that face/those faces? (darkrealm miniatures)

Before we jump into this, I should specify that I’m only contemplating Shamans that have access to Fury here. Blackshield Shamans are amazing and Angmar Shamans atrocious for reasons totally outside the scope of this analysis, which will mostly be focussed on how much value you can get out of Fury. Similarly, I’ll be largely ignoring the various unique Shamans because they tend to play very differently to other Fury casters. Whether Druzhag is right for your list will be influenced much more by other factors than whether you can get enough value out of his Fury, for example. I will also be assuming that the Shaman doesn’t cast any of their other spells. This is reasonable for most of them (have you ever actually seen a Shaman cast Transfix?), but probably a bit harsh on the Easterling War Priest, whose value is at least partially derived from his ability to cast Bladewrath on your big hitters.

                                                                   This guy is a lot more of a handful when he's S6 (Games Workshop)

With that long list of qualifiers out of the way, I will be looking at two questions: how much value do you need to get out of Fury to make a Shaman a worthwhile investment; and how regularly are you likely to achieve this? If we can answer those two, then we should have a pretty good sense of whether a Shaman is worthwhile including.

To figure out the first question, I started looking at the value of a Shaman in games where Fury does nothing. Maybe you rolled snake-eyes to cast, or got Sap Will-ed on the first turn. The reason I’m calculating the value of Fury this way is because you clearly need Fury to do more than the 10 points that one Might and Will point are normally worth. A Shaman is a ~ 50-point investment whose primary purpose is to cast this singular spell. You wouldn’t pay 40 points for a Shaman without spellcasting, because Fury is worth a much greater percentage of the value of the model than the 10-point cost of the Might and Will would imply. Put another way, you clearly need to get more than 10-points worth of value from Fury for your Shaman to be worthwhile, because that spell is the majority of what the model is providing. But you also don’t need to get 50-points of value from the spell, because you are still getting other things from the Shaman as a whole. Hence, the relevant question is how much value you’re getting from a Shaman that doesn’t cast. 

                                                                                The roll that no Shaman wants to see

It seems initially logical to treat such a model as basically just an ordinary spearmen. On base stats alone, a Shaman is effectively an elite warrior choice with a spear, so it seems like they’re probably worth about 10 points.

However, this is a false analogy, because it’s missing out on a bunch of benefits that you gain from having a Shaman even when they don’t cast anything. Most obviously, they’re bringing along a Might point and some extra Will and Fate. On top of that, a Shaman that never casts is still able to call a Stand Fast (possibly with Will to boost) and can bring along half a dozen warriors in their warband. These benefits are harder to quantify, but thankfully we have easy options for comparison. At 25 points, Damrod is doing pretty much exactly the same thing as a Shaman without Fury. He’s bringing along a few troops and a Might point and that’s basically it. He’s got a bow instead of a spear, which is maybe a slight advantage, and he’s a slightly better fighter than most of the Shamans, but he is also substantially easier to kill thanks to 1 Wound and Defence 4. As such, a Shaman that doesn’t cast is probably worth a little bit more than Damrod, or around 30 points. We can run similar comparisons to any of the other bargain Minor Heroes like Beregond or some of the Shire heroes to confirm that this is a fair and competitive value for a Minor Hero who’s not bringing much more than a Might point and a Stand Fast.

                                                                   Looking quite similar to the Shamans really (Scott's War-gaming)

This tells us that in order to get our money’s worth from a Shaman, its spellcasting needs to generate about 20 points worth of value (or 15 for a Moria Shaman). However, if we spend our Might point spellcasting to cast or Channel Fury, then we will probably need 5-10 points more than this out of the spell, or around 30 points worth of value. So we’ve answered our first question, and know what we need Fury to accomplish if a Shaman is going to be worth taking. How often is that likely to occur?

To my mind, there are basically three ways that Fury can earn you its points back: it can help you pass Terror tests and other magically-induced Courage tests; it can prevent your models from running away after you Break; and it can save models with the 6+ save that comes from the Channelled version of the spell.

Of the three, the value of passing Terror tests and equivalent is the hardest to quantify, but also paradoxically the easiest to make a judgement about. If you are facing an enemy frontline that causes Terror, then when you move first at least half of your models are likely to fail to charge. Careful use of spears can mitigate this to some degree, and it’s much less of an issue when you’re moving second, but the point remains that against a Terror-causing army you are likely to end up fighting their whole army with half of yours on some turns. While it might be difficult to determine exactly how many points preventing this is worth, it’s pretty clear that it’s more than 20. In fact, there’s a good chance that it’s worth many times that, especially in larger games. Similarly, if your opponent brought Galadriel Lady of Light, then you were probably going to spend many turns with half of your army in flight as she Instilled Fear in them again and again. Being able to stop this basically means having a chance at victory. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to assess what shutting down a Spectre or Wood Elf Sentinel is worth. Each of those models is paying somewhere between 7 and 12 points for the privilege of getting to move your models around a bit, and the Shaman basically forestalls that entirely. So if your opponent has 3 Spectres, then you know that you’re shutting down about 20 points worth of special rule with your Shaman and getting close to his value from that alone. But what if your opponent doesn’t have any special rules or spells that force Courage tests on your models? What value does your Shaman bring then?

                                                        If you're facing these guys, you'll be glad for a Shaman (Warhammer Community)

The second way that Fury can help your army is by helping you pass Break tests. Now, you might well say: “Why do I need a Shaman to help me pass Break tests when I have a bunch of heroes with Stand Fast to do it already? If any of them pass then all the warriors around them will be safe, so why should I invest all these points in a non-combat hero just to make that more reliable?” Well, hypothetical reader, there are a few things that Fury gives you that Stand Fast can’t replicate. For one, it’s not shut down by being charged. Your opponent has to actually kill your Shaman (or deplete their Will pool) to make the warriors around him run away, which, while not especially hard to do, is much more challenging than simply charging your heroes. Much more importantly, Fury affects heroes as well as warriors. Because it is only keyworded to “Mordor Orcs” and equivalent, it still affects all of your Orc Captains, and even more expensive models like Gothmog. An ordinary Orc Captain has an almost 50% chance of failing a Break Test if his Might is depleted, or worse if he’s out of Will or near a Harbinger. That means that if a Shaman is standing near a 40-60pt Captain after the Break, he’s basically got a 50% chance of saving double the points that his spell “costs.” That’s pretty great already! It’s not totally accurate, because a lot of a Captain’s value is in their Might points and ability to bring along 12 models, so the model that you’re saving is actually worth a little less at this point than the 40-60 points that you paid for it. However, it’s also not taking into account the possibility of saving Might on a hero who would have otherwise needed it to pass a Break test, nor the possibility of a hero running away causing a mass rout of the warriors around them. The conclusion from this seems to be that every time a hero near your Shaman would have had to take a Break test, your Shaman basically pays for themselves (in that they have a ~ 50% chance of saving ~ double the points they need for Fury to be worthwhile). That’s shockingly great. As a final extra twist, Fury even affects the caster. So if you break, then every single turn after that your Shaman might save his own life with Fury, supporting the overall conclusion that you are likely to get many times the 20-30 points of value you need from Fury in any game that you Break. Given that this is probably likely to happen in at least 50% of your games unless you’re playing under a really tight time limit, that probably makes a Shaman worthwhile even when we’re ignoring the ability to Channel.

                                                                                The boys ready to do some Channelling

But we won’t ignore this, which I see as more of a supplementary benefit than the reason you take a Shaman. A 6+ save, contrary to some claims, remains a save, but it’s also not a very good one. If you don’t Break and aren’t facing much Terror, then to be worthwhile your Shaman has to get around 30-points worth of value out of this. In fact, we should actually scale that number up slightly to make up for the fact that every 9 games a Shaman will fail to cast a Channelled Fury. Are we likely to save ~34 points worth of models with this 6+ save? That’s 5-6 Mordor Orcs, 7 Goblins, or 3-4 Uruk-hai. In order to save this many, then we need to have six times that number suffer Wounds while within 6” of your Shaman. That’s 34 Orcs, 40 Goblins, or 21 Uruk-hai, which seems like an unlikely number. In most games, that’s probably about the number of each of those models that you’re likely to be fielding, and many of them will die outside of that 6” bubble. Any that you save will of course get to keep making saves against future Wounds, but it still seems a number that’s just a bit out of reach. There is a semi-psychological bonus to having any save at all; enemies are less likely to call Heroic Combats or spend Might to boost Wound rolls if you have a save, as identified on a recent TMAT podcast. However, this is balanced by the possibility of overkill, because an Orc that gets smashed to pieces by a charging Gil-galad has probably suffered so many Wounds that a “6” or two won’t save them. The one saving grace that could make these numbers more achievable is the chance to prevent Wounds on expensive hero models. If Lurtz gets to keep fighting for a few more turns because of your cheeky 6+ save then you can easily get heaps of value out of that. Overall though, it seems unlikely that you will receive 30 points worth of benefit from the 6+ save of Channelled Fury.

                                                            Saving a Wound on this guy is a big deal (LOTR Warhammer Sceneries) 

So where does all of that messy maths leave us? We’ve worked out that for Fury to be worthwhile, it needs to save us around 20-points, or 30 if we Channel it. If we’re facing a Terror army or one with lots of Courage tricks, then we will clearly make those points back many times over. If we aren’t facing one of those, but do get Broken and have to test, then we are likely to make several times our points back from the spell. This especially true if there are any other heroes with the right keywords within 6” of the Shaman, especially if they’re expensive ones with limited Courage/Will. However, if we aren’t facing an army with much Terror and don’t get Broken, then we probably won’t get enough value out of Fury to make a Shaman worthwhile (though we may still get close).

 

Honestly, I don’t think that last outcome is particularly likely. Terror remains quite widespread throughout the metagame— albeit probably more so on the Evil side than the Good— and most armies should be planning around the possibility of being Broken at least every couple of games. Even in games where neither of those outcomes occur, a Shaman still isn’t an awful investment, he’s just a little less efficient than a Captain. And he will provide you with so much value in the games where he is relevant that I think he is almost always worthwhile including in an army that can take him.

                                                                      Guess I need to get my hands on one of these then (Valadorn)

Of course, now that I’ve made that strong conclusion, I have to enumerate some of the situations where that “almost” comes up. Most obviously, if you’ve got something like the Balrog that already lets you auto-pass Courage tests, then don’t field a Shaman. Hopefully you didn’t need a several-thousand-word analysis to tell you that, but it’s maybe worth saying. If you have a high base Courage on at least your frontline and your heroes then they may not be worthwhile, although I think it’s still a reasonable option to guarantee those Courage test successes. If you’re absolutely certain that you won’t be broken, or that if you are you’re so screwed that it won’t matter anyway, then a Shaman might not be worthwhile. The perfect example would be if you were fielding Sauron, where his taking 3 Wounds probably means you’ve lost so badly that your Shaman will get killed anyway. If you’ve got a hero that lets your other heroes use his Stand Fast, like Saruman or Gothmog in his Legendary Legion, then a Shaman would be much less useful when you're not facing Terror. If a lot of your models don’t have the right keyword for your Shaman then he’s probably a waste; don’t take an Uruk-hai Shaman to buff a mostly Dunland force, for example. Finally, if the specific way you built your force means that you can’t quite fit them in (maybe you have room for 12 more warriors, but the Shaman would only give you 6 slots for them), then sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and go without. There are probably a few more circumstances in which they aren’t worthwhile, but I don’t think this affects my overall conclusion: that if you can take a Fury Shaman, you should generally do so. In fact, the maths I did for this article so convinced me of this that I’m going to convert one up for my Moria army. If I have to take even a single turn of Break tests, he’s the only hope I’ve got.

 

                                                                                Unless I bring this guy along instead... (Michael Hanns).

Bonus analysis: when does Channelling Fury make sense? Using your Might point to Channel instead of locking in the cast has a few disadvantages. Most obviously, you can’t use your Might point for anything else in the quite likely scenario that it isn’t necessary to cast with. More importantly, it takes your odds of casting the spell from 35/36 to a mere 8/9, assuming you roll both dice together. That’s four times as likely to happen, and means it’s a ~ 50% chance over the course of a big tournament. If that game comes when you’re facing an army with Terror, you’re stuffed. To that end, my advice is to Channel Fury when the Courage boost isn’t absolutely critical. It’ll give you a bit of extra value from your caster when it goes off, but you never want to be taking that risk when you’re facing an army that’s going to force a lot of Courage tests on you. So don’t Channel when you’re facing an army with lots of Terror, maybe Channel if you’re facing an army that’s likely to Break you (like a Hunter Orc swarm, for example) and always Channel if neither of those things are true.

Next time we'll be back with some more Moria analysis, slowly working our way through the laundry list of big monsters they can bring. If you have any strong feelings on Shamans that you'd like to share (which, let's be honest, everyone does. Shamans are all about those strong feelings) then please add them below or wherever you found this article, I love the discussion! And if you were interested in last week's analysis of the Cave Drake, be sure to check out the second part of that I posted yesterday, all about some interesting questions posed in the comments that I thought deserved some extra maths.

Until next time, may your 3+ casts always go off!