Optimising for Enjoyment: Building a Fantasy Fellowship Part 2

As we discussed last week, a huge part of making a Fantasy Fellowship that everyone will enjoy playing against is making it ‘balanced’. A super-powered group of combat heroes probably won’t be very challenged by most of the scenarios, while a group of Hobbits is going to get hacked to pieces quicksmart. How we go about preventing either of these fairly unenjoyable experiences is by ensuring that our ratio of Saviours to Damsels (again, sorry) is relatively even. But we only briefly touched on the sort of factors that can make a given character into one or the other, and we already established that points cost isn’t that good of an indicator. So without further ado, let’s jump right in and look at what makes a character powerful or a liability in Fantasy Fellowship.

Gandalf might be the OG, but Thandruil will always be a better Guide in Fantasy Fellowship

Combat ability

As we discussed briefly last week, this is the most important aspect of any prospective Fellowship member. When you look at the scenarios you’ll play through, it swiftly becomes apparent why. Almost every scenario has a substantial element of straight up brawling, and in all of them the Fellowship is likely to be outnumbered. What being outnumbered means is that it is very hard for you to protect more than one or two models from the rigours of frontline combat. Assuming that your Ringbearer will be hiding as best as he can (because if he dies, that's game over), basically all your other models will end up spending a decent portion of any game in close combat, whether they want to or not. Not only is this an issue for fragile Hobbits and the like that you want to keep safe, it also means it’s hard to get value from heroes like Legolas and Gandalf that can be shut down by charging them. Anyone who has played out Balin’s Tomb knows that no matter what you do, Legolas is probably going to be functioning as a close combat character most of the time. If you try and resist this inevitability, that probably relegates Frodo to the frontlines, which is... not ideal. That means that you’re very rarely getting much value out of Legolas' superlative ranged prowess, and would generally be better off fielding Tauriel instead. Almost all the Wizards suffer a similar fate, because you’re unlikely to get as many turns of spellcasting as you would in a normal Matched Play game. Without a battleline to hide behind, a model’s capacity to stand on their own legs becomes vitally important.

Sorcerous Blast on a 3+ is pretty awesome, but less so when a random Goblin can charge you every turn before you cast

We can broadly break this category down into two smaller ones: durability and damage output. The first of these is important for every model, because Fantasy Fellowship scenarios are effectively a war of attrition. Taking less damage means that a character is less likely to be knocked out of the fight, ensuring you maintain resources and are more likely to scrape under the casualty limits for scenarios. In general, the best sort of durability for campaigns is that focussed on a high Defence score, and on not losing the Duel in the first place. High Wounds and Fate values are still useful (especially the Wounds), but you’d rather not be relying on them because they might not come back between games. A high Defence hero, on the other hand, is always hard to kill, no matter how badly they got beaten up in the last scenario. Similarly, having a decent Fight value and multiple Attacks makes you vastly less likely to be taking Strikes in the first place. Bombur can take a few more hits than Dori, but Dori is likely to take way less Strikes than his large companion.

One of many reasons that Dori is awesome (evansjp01)

On the other hand, we don’t care as much about the damage output of some of our models. In my current playthrough, Éowyn has ended up proudly hiding behind her shield for almost every round of combat, because I didn’t really need her to kill things as much as I needed her to not die. This will sometimes not be the case, but generally you can get by without your Hobbit-equivalents killing much at all. Where you do need the damage output is on the models that you’re relying on to rescue your Damsels. Whoever your Saviours are, they’re going to need to hack their way through swathes of enemies if they want to rescue Pippin from getting himself killed again. Their damage output is thus extremely valuable. Again, probably the biggest boost to your damage output comes from simply winning lots of duels, so a medium-high Fight value and 3 Attacks is absolutely essential. I say medium-high, because ultimately very few models that you’ll face on the campaign require a high Fight value. F5 will be good enough against everything but Lurtz, the Warg Chieftain, Uruk-hai Captains and a couple of Trolls, and F6 will cover almost all of those. 

On the other hand, 3 Attacks (or more if you can get them) are absolutely vital, because they improve your capacity to be reliably forcing the enemy back and killing them. Against Goblins, for example, a F6 S4 A3 character is going to be killing a whopping 66% more enemies than one with A2. That means that they will be ripping through chaff models to save your Damsels at a vastly more useful rate, as well as taking less incidental Wounds along the way. It also makes Heroic Combats less of a risk when they are necessary, as you’re much more likely to actually get the kills you need in the first combat. Obviously, other factors like higher Strength and Burly/Masterforged/Weapon Master all come into play here as well, but Attack 3 is really the critical one that makes all of those useful. Say it after me: ‘if my model isn’t Attack 3, it’s not a Saviour.’ It’s worthwhile noting that this isn’t necessarily true in ordinary Matched Play: there, you can often bring numbers or a mount to bear, mitigating A2 a lot. Here, neither of those are reliably an option, so A3 is borderline necessary.

This is why Boromir is great in Fantasy Fellowships, but his younger brother really is not  Maybe Denethor was right after all... (Warhammer Community)

However, while combat ability is the most important element of a model, it’s not the only one we care about. For example:

 

Free/regenerating resources

Aragorn is really good at Fantasy Fellowship. I know, nuclear hot take from Sharbie. I don’t think I’m going to win any originality points by attributing his usefulness to his free Might per turn either, but it’s worthwhile saying. In most Matched Play games, that ability is probably worth around ten or so Might; in a linked campaign of dozens of games, it’s worth hundreds. Shockingly enough, getting hundreds of free Might points is Generally Pretty Good.

The original and the best (Warhammer Community)

More generally, any hero who gets free Heroic Actions, free Heroic stats or abilities that are one use per game tends to be pretty advantaged by Fantasy Fellowship. Aside from Aragorn, this includes heroes like Thorin who can call free Heroic Combats, all of the Wizards and equivalent who get free Will points, Thandruil with the Circlet, and even little old Bifur once he gets his axehead out. Being able to use these consistently throughout the campaign mean you can get an enormous amount of value out of them, while models like Boromir who rely on burning through their high stats will struggle to regenerate them all between battles.

Why did Aragorn survive and not Boromir? He didn't run out of Might

Even better are models who can help you regenerate the stats of your other models. Whether that is Gamling in a Rohan-themed Fellowship, Galadriel with her Mirror, Gandalf with Strengthen Will or Radagast/Elrond with Renew, regenerating stats means you can dominate the war of attrition with ease. This is especially true if the character is letting you regenerate Might or Wounds, as Will is rarely needed in the campaign and Fate is less than half as good as Wounds in the long run.

Bonuses against multiple enemies

The epitome of 'Bonuses against multiple enemies'

This only applies to Thandruil, Boromir and Tauriel, as far as I know, but anything that helps you out when outnumbered is a huge boost. Not only does it give you a bonus most turns that you get Priority (assuming you always charge two models if you can), it also constrains how your opponent can react to those models. It’s still very possible to Trap these heroes by running a model right behind them but not touching them, but it will mean you’ll only have one or two models making Strikes against you if you fluff your dice rolls. Being able to Hurl enemies can also be very useful, as can spells like Nature’s Wrath that excel against clumps of foes. If you can access something like this, do it.

Aura of Dismay

Do you kind of hate your opponent and want to make him suffer? This spell is absolutely what you’re looking for. The Fellowship is almost always fighting low Courage enemies that outnumber it substantially, and Aura of Dismay capitalises on that first point to heavily mitigate the second. If you’re outnumbered 3:1 by Goblins, this spell means you’ll probably be on an even footing once combat is joined. A full 58% of Goblins and 42% of Uruk-hai will fail to charge you if you’ve cast this, and that is going to be relevant right to the Black Gate. This spell is incredibly powerful: use it at your own risk.  

He looks so kindly and unassuming, but this guy is mean (Warhammer Community)

On the other hand, there are lots of things that just don’t won’t help your Fantasy Fellowship very much, for all that they’re amazing in Matched Play. For example:

 

Mobility

This one isn’t quite fair, because having a faster model can come in handy sometimes. But generally speaking, the Fellowship is bound by the speed of its slowest member. As literally every Fellowship will have at least one Hobbit, and that Hobbit is normally the Ringbearer, you’re gonna be moving 4” a lot. It’s sick that Gwaihir is super fast, but it just isn’t going to matter very often.

If you could do this ingame, on the other hand... (Toby Carr)

Good ranged prowess

I’m dunking on Legolas a lot, but it’s because the thing that he’s bringing doesn’t help you very much. There are scenarios (Dwarrowdelf being the main one) where getting to plink off a few Wounds from enemy archers is useful, but that really is the only one that you don’t want your big heroes piling into combat. Keeping them back is probably just going to create a gap in the circle for a Goblin to shank Frodo, so you’re better off holding the line and getting stuck in. You’re also normally running somewhere in a lot of Fellowship missions, and that tends to be incompatible with getting much shooting in. It’s not useless, and a couple of heroes with bows can come in handy, but the absence of mounted enemy heroes makes it vastly less effective than in Matched Play.

Balin's Tomb really makes Tauriel outshine the rest of her love triangle (Drawn Combat)

Targeted spellcasting

What I mean by this is a spell list focussing on neutering a particular enemy model. The worst thing your Gandalf is going to face will be a Cave Troll (aside from the Balrog, who’s basically immune to magic), so spending a turn of spellcasting Commanding or Immobilising it is inefficient at best. It’s not always an awful idea, but you really don’t want to be relying on that as your whole thing.

It's not like casting Immobilise is going to help out here, after all

Auric buffs

This point should be obvious, but just in case: don’t take a model who generates most of their value from buffing models you won’t be including. Boromir’s Banner is pretty awesome for Gondor Warrior models, but you’re a company of hero models. Leave it at home. Dáin can seriously power up the Iron Hills Dwarves around him, but you’re unlikely to have any others in your Fellowship. Models like Dáin and Boromir can still be useful, but don’t take them for their auras.

In saying that, banner rerolls are really nice in Fantasy Fellowship. As is Boromir more generally

So there you have it: an analysis of the traits that let a model punch above or below their weight in Fantasy Fellowship. Next week we will be putting all of this together into an extended list of models that will make a Fellowship more powerful, or weaker than the sum of its parts.

Until then, may your heroes always roll sixes!