The Auto-Win List: Black Riders and Scenario Play

Time to discuss the spookiest of Legions

Because it’s fun, I’m going to lead with the controversial statement: The Black Riders Legendary Legion is an auto-win.

Now, before the pitchforks come out, I’m going to add the qualifiers: The Black Riders Legendary Legion is as close as this game comes to an auto-win, in 6 out of the 12 rulebook scenarios (Edit: actually only 5, see Seize the Prize below), in the large majority of matchups. And at the risk of coming across as even more hyperbolic than I started, there’s genuinely nothing that most armies can do to prevent them winning in the first couple of turns in these scenarios. That is, I believe, a bad thing.

'What do you mean you didn't enjoy me Black Darting your Army Leader then ending the game turn 1?'

Where this problem comes from is a somewhat unintended rules interaction that actually has been around since the game was first released, if anyone had bothered to take armies of 9 Ringwraiths to competitive tournaments. If your whole army has the Will of Evil special rule, then in any scenario that ends when one army is quartered you have total control over when this happens. If at any point you are ahead on points, and would win if the game ended that turn, then you can have all of your Wraiths (or all bar two, normally) burn all their Will points on Black Darting the life out of the enemy Army Leader or some other valuable target. They will then disappear, and you’re left with a quartered army, an ended game, and, if you did your maths right, victory. And if this all happens turn one, before your opponent can do a thing? Well, that kinda sucks for everyone involved.

(Not quite) my best attempt at a relevant meme

An obvious disclaimer here: don’t do this in a friendly game. Don’t even do this in the kind of chill tournament where everyone brings nice themed lists. Frankly, I don’t think this should be a thing you can ever do, and I’ve got a suggestion at the end for how this Legendary Legion could be FAQed to prevent it. But if you’re in a competitive tournament, then this is a powerful tool available to a Black Riders player, and they’re entitled to take advantage of it. So let’s dive in a bit deeper and explore how it works in different scenarios.

7 Black Darts, coming your way (Azazel's Bitz Box)

As mentioned before, there are six scenarios in which this list is able to achieve something close to an auto-win outcome: Contest of Champions, Reconnoitre, Clash by Moonlight, Seize the Prize, Heirlooms of Ages Past and Fog of War. In each of these (plus Assassinate and maybe Destroy the Supplies from the Matched Play Guide) there is almost literally nothing an opponent can do to prevent the Ringwraiths winning in the first couple of turns. Let’s go through those scenarios and look at how that plays out.

A particularly tasty set of objectives for a Black Riders player

In Contest of Champions, a lot always depends on who wins first turn (or the inevitable Heroic Move-off). If that’s the Good player, then they get to hopefully charge (through Terror and stacked Harbinger!) a couple of Ringwraiths, although most will be out of charge distance. Generally what happens next is that the untagged Ringwraiths will spend all their Will on Channelled Black Darts to absolutely evaporate the enemy Army Leader, with the Witch King firing the final shot to secure the three points. That will normally happen turn one, but if the leader is going to survive the barrage then you can always just Channelled Transfix him with an auto-six and finish him off next turn. Either way, the Black Riders now have 3 points, and the most an opposing player can possibly receive is 2 for Breaking them. If the Ringwraiths want they can let the Witch King rampage for a couple turns to secure some extra points, but if they want a quick game then they can just end things that turn for a literal turn 1 victory. Of course, if they win the initial Heroic Move-off then that all happens as before, they just don’t have anyone tied up and can fling 8-9 Black Darts at the Army Leader. Ouch.

Good luck stopping those 5 points

The other scenarios I’ve listed are about as unplayable. In Reconnoitre, it’s beyond effortless for them to get two Wraiths off your board edge when they move 15” with March (and 17-19 Might!) and can Black Dart or Channelled Transfix anyone who’s in position to block them. Once two of them are off? It’s 7-dice Black Dart time, baby. Game over.

Normally this rule benefits shooting armies. Against the Black Riders... not so much

Clash by Moonlight depends a little on the matchup, but is almost amusingly lopsided in a lot of circumstances. By lurking outside of 12”, only diving inside that range to throw a Black Dart then retreat, the Riders can probably kill every single enemy hero without needing to make a single charge. Having done the maths, this is going to be likely in basically every matchup where the enemy doesn’t have intense magic resistance (lots of Fortify Spirit flying around, for example) or where they have too big of a hero to kill with Black Darts (the Balrog/Sauron/Smaug). Even with that, you can reliably expect to kill around 17 warriors with Black Darts if you have 700 points worth of Wraiths flinging them in one-Will increments, and 17 warriors is enough to Break or almost Break most armies. Once they’re Broken, you can happily move in and watch their heroes fail -3 Courage Break tests, or just remain outside of 12” if you really like watching your opponent suffer.

Again, not exactly an easy 5 points to stop

Seize the Prize is another turn 1 victory a lot of the time. If you win a Heroic-Move off with the Witch King, you can move him forward, then March with another Wraith and hopefully pick up the relic before having the rest of your Riders disappear that turn. If you move second or fail the 4+ to pick up the relic then you need to wall off the centre for a turn or two (maybe Compelling or Black Darting the guy holding the relic if the enemy picked it up turn 1). Either way, just holding the relic and Wounding the enemy Army Leader is enough to get you the win, so get the relic and Black Dart that fool to end the game instantly. Great fun for everyone involved, of course.

Edit: it's been pointed out that this doesn't actually work for Seize the Prize, as the game doesn't end until both sides are reduced to 25% or you get the Relic off the other edge. Of course, stopping that from happening is still easier said than done, but at least it's not possible on Turn 1. 

This rule sucks even when you don't have a broken army to play with

Heirlooms hardly counts because it’s always a skew game, but you’ve got 7-9 hyper-mobile warbands. Bring them in to dig up every objective on turn one, Black Dart down to 2 Riders remaining to end the game, you know the drill.

'What do you mean I don't get to just decide when the game ends? You mean I have to actually rely on the dice?'

Fog of War, finally, is a bit more interesting. Random game length means that there actually is a chance for the enemy to win this one, although it’s still basically out of their hands. Gameplan for the Riders is to March forwards turn 1 and Black Dart all non-leader heroes. At 700 that will probably be 2-3 heroes, which is maybe doable turn 1 and definitely by turn 2, especially if you Channel. With all the Will burnt on 5 of your Wraiths (including the Witch King), you’re now Broken and the game could end immediately. You’ve received 6 VPs for killing your target and your protected model is still alive (make sure they’re one of the three you aren’t killing!), while your opponent has at most 6 if they picked one of your sacrificial Ringwraiths as their target. Now, as long as you can keep your remaining three Riders safe, you just need to keep a Ringwraith in your target terrain piece (which is ideally as close as possible from halfway) and wait for the game to end. If it goes on really long you can lose this one, but if it ends in the first 1-3 turns it’s normally pretty effortless. Either way, you’ve utterly removed all of your opponents’ agency and control over the game. How fun.

There is no scenario this guy wants in a fight with the Nine (Michael Hanns)

As you might be coming to realise, this isn’t an especially enjoyable way to play. Hopefully you’ve also noticed that I haven’t mentioned scenarios like Lords of Battle where a lot of the time you’re going to have a massive leg up just because your army is well-suited to that kind of game. Azog’s Legion is always going to have a rough time against this Legion, in any scenario, and so will pretty much any other army that leans on big heroes. I haven’t mentioned these as issues because they’re not issues at all. Every army is always going to be good at certain scenarios and have some great matchups, and that’s basically how the game should be. The fact that the Black Riders can massacre an opponent without enough shooting or anti-magic protection is just a consideration for listbuilding, and really isn’t a problem.

What really is a problem for the game is the fact that enemy armies will often have little or no interaction with the game. In Contest of Champions, or Assassinate, or any of the other scenarios I’ve mentioned, their only hope is to either have brought a skew army that’s really hard for the Riders to deal with in the cheesy way (they’re not getting points for killing the Army Leader if you brought Sauron along!) or hope that the dice rolls really favour you and those 7-dice Channelled Black Darts all whiff. When only one side is getting to play the game, that’s really bad for the game. It’s not a problem totally unique to this Legion, with Rangers of Ithilien definitely having faced this accusation a few times, but it’s perhaps at its worst here because of the factor I’ve touched on a little: controlling the length of the game.

No one has ever called the Easterling Army Bonus overpowered (Veni Vidi Vici)

The only conventional ways that any existing army can do this are with a handful of special rules that extend it in certain circumstances (Easterlings Army Bonus, anything that prevents you Breaking) or by deliberately running away after being Broken. Isengard players with a Bomb could do this for awhile, and Games Workshop stepped in to make that much harder to pull off. A Black Riders player can choose to end the game turn 1 in most scenarios, and their opponent has no input in that decision. In some scenarios they can at least try and keep the Ringwraith player behind on points so they don’t want to end the game, but they can never actually stop them doing so in quartering scenarios. That isn’t a feature that should exist in this game, and it’s notably not something that’s ever existed in any equivalent system to my knowledge. People show up to casual matchups and even tournaments looking to play a game of MESBG, not lose their Army Leader to magic turn one then immediately watch the game end.

What can be done about this unfortunate state of affairs? For the moment, nothing much. Make sure you’ve got some shooting and a way of dealing with magic in your list, and hope you don’t bump into this list on one of its six auto-win scenarios. For the long term, I would recommend that the designers issue an Errata modifying the Legion’s Will of Sauron ability to simply read:

‘Models in this Legion can ignore the first paragraph of the Will of Evil special rule, and therefore do not need to expend a Will for being in combat or disappear when reduced to 0 Will points.’

You could ditch the second half of that sentence if you favour brevity over clarity, but you get the idea. This would constitute both a nerf and a buff: it would prevent the Ringwraiths forcing the game to end by burning all their Will, but it would also effectively give them an extra Will point and prevent Sap Will banishing them. I like this solution because when it’s played in a non-cheesy way (i.e. not instantly ending the game as soon as you’re ahead), this Legion is actually really fun and balanced, and definitely isn’t overpowered. They have an enormous array of tricks, they’re great at bowling into a line and scattering it with Instil Fear while picking out key models with Black Darts or Channelled Transfixes, and all of that is fine because they’re also fragile, bad at killing things and really prone to falling apart when things go wrong. When the army is actually playing the game, it’s a blast, so giving them a benefit in exchange for taking away a powerful ability seems fair. The key thing is that they definitely should not be able to end the game on cue, because as I hope I’ve emphasised here, that’s A Bad Thing.

Modify this rule and the whole issue disappears

Honestly, I love this list, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes using casters. But do I want to play against it in a tournament setting, rules as they are? No, I don’t want that. I really, really don’t want that.

I hope you enjoyed this opinion piece on one of the most interesting Legendary Legions in the game. At some point I may put out another article on how to get the most out of this Legion, because it does play in a really interesting and different manner to other armies. With any luck, by the time I get around to that something like my suggested Errata will be in place, and the game as a whole will be better for it.

Until next time, may your Resist rolls always get those sixes!