I despise the Mordor Troll and I pray for it every night: An impassioned analysis of what makes some monsters good and most bad

Both the article title and this thumbnail were made by my partner, who has never once played the game 

Monsters are a classic part of MESBG, and a staple of starter sets from Balin’s Tomb to Osgiliath. Unfortunately, they also tend (with a handful of exceptions) to struggle in competitive play for a number of reasons. In combination with their ubiquity, this can turn things like the Mordor Troll into a classic ‘noob trap’.

However, those handful of exceptions are real, and they can hurt you. So what makes Gûlavhar, or the Watcher in the Water, or (conditionally) Beorn/Grimbeorn so much better than a lot of their alternatives? Answers to this are often posed in terms of what the models have: i.e. monsters need Monstrous Charge to be competitive, or need access to Might/Will/Fate, or need mobility of some kind. All of these answers end up running into unfortunate counter-examples, or at least hypotheticals; the Watcher in the Water would still be insane without Heroic stats (assuming a corresponding points decrease), and there are certainly a lot of monster heroes that are bad in spite of their Heroic stats; the Watcher is fine without Monstrous Charge while Drakes are only so-so with it; and Eagles are clearly more mobile and less competitive than Sauron or the Watcher.

This monster is slow, with only one Might and no Monstrous Charge, yet it clearly doesn't need any help

As such, this article is going to focus on what makes ‘classic’ monsters like the Mordor Troll so bad, and using this starting point to illustrate the issues it has that aren’t present for its more competitive equivalents. It won’t really touch much on the ‘deluxe’ monsters like the Balrog, Smaug or Sauron: the issues with these models tend to be less linked to any weaknesses in the profiles, and more to the insane price tags. Sauron isn’t hard to use because he only moves 6”, he’s hard to use because he costs 400 points! Putting them aside then, let’s jump in and ask the question: why is the Mordor Troll a noob trap?

Answer 1: Mobility

This Troll Chieftain spent 3 turns stuck behind his own lines before he finally hit combat. Big bases on 6" Move models are bad

The Mordor Troll has a huge base, and it moves 6” a turn. To start with, that makes it easy to kite, with experienced foes often being able to measure out that 6” bubble to keep it out of the fight for an extra turn or two. Even worse, once the lines have clashed a savvy opponent will be able to use your own models to block off the Troll and stop it getting into combat. The Troll is a 100-point ball of stats, so every turn that it’s not fighting it’s not even starting to earn its points back. Finally, and most concerningly, its lack of mobility and huge base means that a good opponent will always get to choose who is fighting the Troll. Heroes that don’t feel confident taking it on will be screened off or on the other side of the fight, and there is nothing you can realistically do to prevent enemy combat heroes barrelling into your monster with maximum aggression. This leads us to the second unfortunate issue with the Mordor Troll and equivalents, which is…

Answer 2: Dealing with heroes

Pictured: Aragorn, Boromir and Gimli killing 3 Trolls in 2 turns

Picture, for a moment, a clash between Théodred and a Mordor Troll. In most lists, these are two ~100-point combat pieces that only exist to run forwards and kill things, so they’re great comparisons. Théodred will realistically always be getting the charge (see: Answer 1), and can also quite comfortably get some buddies in to help out thanks to the huge base size on the Troll. He will Strike up and be very likely to win the combat (especially if he’s got some warriors backing him up), then will average a little over two wounds to the Troll. That’s right at the point where he can probably spend Might to lock in the kill, burning resources to take 100 points off the board in a single turn.

Now, it is relevant that Théodred is having to burn Might to take on the Troll here, and he’s likely to walk away from this fight quite depleted. The thing is, however, that bringing a Troll meant that Mordor started the game with less resources, because they invested 100 points in a Troll that didn’t have any Might to start with. So if a hero burns all their Might to kill your Troll, that’s not actually a good trade for you, because the presence of your Troll meant they likely started with more Might than you did. Put another way, at the end of this exchange the Good player has a depleted Théodred and the Evil player has nothing, which is definitely a bad trade for Evil.

Théodred may be particularly good at Troll-felling, but most lists can replicate this one way or another. A Witch King/Gûlavhar combo will eviscerate a Troll almost for free, while the Gil-galads/Beorns/Elessars of the world won’t even need to burn resources. Anyone who can field a F5+ hero with Strike and back them up with some warriors can often take a Troll down in a single turn, especially if its huge base size means they can trap it.

Exactly what is the Troll meant to do against this guy? Hide behind its lines and throw rocks? (Cezarreo)

The issue here isn’t really that the Troll can be taken out by enemy heroes, it’s that it’s nearly impossible to prevent your opponent lining this up. Lots of models wouldn’t look forward to a charge from Théodred, let alone Elessar or Gil-Galad. The problem is that the Troll is weak to ‘charge it with a hero and Strike up’ and that there’s no way to prevent that happening without hiding it uselessly behind your lines.

Of course, combat heroes aren’t the only way that lists deal with threats like Trolls. How does it do against asymmetric approaches? Well, unfortunately….

 

Answer 3: Anti-hero tools

Against this guy your Troll will be being Compelled from 18" away and will probably never see combat (Forge Brush)

There is nothing that a Mordor Troll or equivalent can do against enemy spellcasting. If your opponent has a spellcaster then the Troll will be freely Compelled out of your lines, either in front of your lines to set up an extra-easy assassination run on it or behind them to knock it out of the fight for a turn. The Troll is a big pile of combat power that can be entirely shut down by a spellcaster every turn that it is relevant. Compare again to Théodred, who has both Will and Might to mitigate enemy casting.

This also extends to magic-adjacent effects, like Dead Marsh Spectres, which will have a nearly 50% chance of getting to move your Troll for you once you’re in Harbinger range. Terror can also be a remarkably frustrating issue, with a total reliance on that C4 (C3 in Harbinger!) with no Will or Might to mitigate a bad roll. Bat Swarms and the like can be devastating, allowing even basic warriors to drag down your Troll. And some of the more esoteric anti-hero tech like Paralyse, Shatter, or the various Enrage Beast shenanigans of Assault on Lothlorien all work excellently against Trolls (and generally better than against equivalently-priced heroes!).

Finally, decent shooting lists can also pick up a Troll fairly comfortably at range. It takes 18 hits with S3 bows to take out a Troll, and Assault on Lothlorien’s Goblin archers are actually even more efficient. And obviously siege weapons absolutely love targeting big chunky models with no Fate. Any list that is making shooting part of its gameplan should be able to kill a Troll in two turns of shooting, if they feel like it’s worth the effort. A Troll is less vulnerable than a mounted combat hero to a smattering of S2 bows, but it’s also much less able to hide from a gunline than a mounted hero would be.

Picture 2 of these starting across the field from you, and consider whether you want a Mordor Troll in that matchup

But let’s pretend for a moment that you’ve managed to run the gauntlet of the above issues, and you’ve got your Troll into the perfect spot. It’s dodged any scary combat heroes, the enemy didn’t bring along any magic or other tools, and they let you get into the middle of their infantry block to face a couple of warriors a turn. The stars have aligned. Now, how well does it do here?

 

Answer 4: Reliability against warriors

Against a pair of basic enemy warriors with spear supports, a Troll wins combat about 60% of the time. If they’re D6 or higher (e.g. the basic Warrior of Minas Tirith that Trolls are designed to smash through) then it’ll leave one alive about half the time. The outcome here is that the Troll averages about 0.7 kills a turn, which means against Warriors of Minas Tirith it needs about 18 turns of combat to kill its points worth of enemies.

So even if the Troll does get into combat with enemy warriors– and doesn’t get sniped with shooting/shut down by magic/crippled by Terror/charged by an enemy combat hero– it will still generally kill about four enemy warriors in a whole game’s worth of combat (generally about 6 turns in my experience). Yeah, that’s right: on average dice a Mordor Troll that’s left completely alone to kill warriors will only kill 4 of them in a game. 4!

This scene would be a lot less exciting in-game than in the movie

It’s this final issue that finally cripples the Mordor Troll (and equivalent): that even if you can mitigate all of its weaknesses, it’s not really very good at the thing it should be good at. In fact, the only circumstances in which a Mordor Troll actually produces value is when it gets into a hero without Strike (which any non-braindead opponent should be able to avoid) or when it faces another, lesser monster. Perhaps the only consistently-viable target for a Mordor Troll is a Cave Troll; one of the only good targets for a basic Ent is a Mordor Troll.

An iconic model, that's somehow even more vulnerable to heroes

The sum total of all of these issues is that you should never competitively field a Mordor Troll, or a Cave Troll, or a Gundabad Troll, or an Ent (probably, Fangorn skew can be okay in certain scenario pools). There just aren’t any builds that can make use of them that wouldn’t be better off with something different, and there are no matchups in which they shine. They open up a multitude of weaknesses in otherwise solid lists, and they don’t bring anything that those lists couldn’t access elsewhere. You can definitely field a Mordor Troll or other equivalent, and it may even do okay. But will adding one in ever be better than fielding one of the many alternatives?

Honestly, no. It won’t.

Sidenote here: I would include Mordor Troll Drummers in this assessment as well. Shagrat plus a Captain will be 25 points more than a Troll Drummer and give you 3-5 more Might (depending on if you need to March in a given game), noticeably more hitting power (from both models!), 25 more warrior slots and less vulnerability to shooting, magic or enemy heroes. Find the extra points and make the upgrade, it will be worth it.

It's honestly even worse/point than the ordinary one, if that's possible (u/Schnnitzel)

What about the good monsters?

On a less negative note, there are a bunch of other monsters that are actually worth fielding. The four obvious ones are Gûlavhar and the Watcher in the Water (both good enough to have competitive lists built around them) plus Gwaihir and the Spider Queen (both allied into other lists with alacrity). Beorn and his son are obviously great in the specific Legendary Legion that’s built around them, and the Goblin King is generally pretty solid value. There’s also a swathe of other monsters that are fine enough to be included in certain builds, like some Fell Beasts, the uber Troll Chieftain, Bill and Tom, Ogres etc…

So what’s making the difference here, and why are these specific monsters doing so much better than the basic Mordor Troll? By and large it’s a product of them just not having the same issues that we discussed above, or at least having less of them.

Take Gûlavhar for example. Fly means he has no mobility issues whatsoever, and he actively wants to hunt enemy heroes. He’s pretty good against magic and equivalent tricks (albeit a little vulnerable to shooting), and he has no problem whatsoever chewing through warriors. The issues that face the Mordor Troll simply aren’t there, so he ends up the star of a lot of tournament-winning lists.

Gûlavhar on his way to winning me the Queensland GT

On the other hand, the Watcher technically lacks mobility but makes up for it by being able to bring enemy heroes to it. The brutal combo with the Bat Swarm makes it one of the best anti-hero threats in the game, and 5 Will plus Resistant to Magic means that enemy spellcasters aren’t much of a threat. And it’s hard to get more reliable against warriors than 6 S6 Attacks, not to mention the ability to yank extra models into combat with him.

We could go on down the list, but the key factor linking all of the competitively-viable monsters is that they can avoid or mitigate the weaknesses of the ‘classic’ monsters. Sometimes these weaknesses are still present to some extent (Gwaihir can struggle to reliably chew through warriors, he’s just so undercosted he makes up for it), but the more present they are the more likely the monster is to fall into the Mordor Troll camp.

Even this guy is a lot better than his non-hero equivalents

Overall, I do really wish that things like Mordor Trolls were more competitive. They're iconic models, they feature in some awesome scenes in the movies, and basically everyone has at least one sitting on a shelf somewhere. I have three Mordor Trolls unpainted from various starter sets etc, and I have never once taken them to a tournament. I absolutely love playing with monsters, and I want to be able to do so and not feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot.

I don't think that there is anything I'd change about the monster rules as a whole, because doing so would boost up a heap of already-powerful profiles; Gûlavhar hardly needs the boost, after all. I honestly really like the suggestion made on Gollum's Gamers recently to just give the Mordor Troll ((and equivalent models) an extra 2 Wounds. It wouldn't fix a lot of these issues, but at least then it would be able to take on an enemy hero without being slaughtered in two turns. 

I'm fine with monsters having weaknesses, I just want them to have strengths as well.

Agree? Disagree? Think that Mordor Trolls are the hottest things going? Have any great suggestions for how to fix them? I'd love to hear from you, either here or on social media.

Until next turn, may your monster always be one of the few competitive ones!