Playing it smart: When to duel enemy heroes, and when to avoid them like a coward

 

Should Shagrat have moved into a position where he'd have to fight the Witch King and Suladan? Spoiler: no

New players often default to using their heroes as duellists; they smack them into the enemy heroes, Strike up, and hope for the best. I say ‘new players’ here, but frankly this approach is pretty common across the experience spectrum. And sometimes it’s a great idea!

In my very first article on this blog, I covered why heroes often want to focus on hunting down other, slightly-weaker heroes in order to get a good return on the investment you made in them. And even weaker heroes sometimes need to go into scary opponents to hold them up and let you gain the advantage elsewhere.

But here’s the rub: if your hero ends up fighting one of your opponent’s heroes, then chances are one of you made a mistake.

Put another way, it will generally be in one side’s best interests to have your heroes fight it out. Given that MESBG is a nearly-zero-sum game, that means that it’s in the other side’s best interests to screen off their heroes and prevent this confrontation. However, it’s often quite hard to tell which role you should be playing in a given matchup: should your heroes be seeking out the enemy heroes to duel them, or trying to avoid that outcome? The answer varies a lot based on matchup and positioning, and even changes across a single battle.

In this situation, it's very clear which hero didn't want to pick this fight

To unpick this tangle, I’ve broken the question down into four sub-questions. You could call them salient features, if you happened to be the sort of person who can’t go more than 5 minutes without mentioning that you went to law school. But whatever we call them, the first thing we should be thinking about is…

Sub-question 1: Likelihood of winning the duel

This is the most obvious part of assessing a duel, and most players are great at it. If your hero has more Attacks and Might and Fight value than the opponent, has the ability to Strike when your opponent can’t, has an Elven-made weapon, or has some other fancy tech like a friendly Bat Swarm or some magical support, then you’re likely to win the fight. And as a starting point, if you’re more likely to win the duel then it’s a more appealing prospect.

There is some complexity here, but it’s mostly in how to weigh up these factors when they’re pulling in different directions. Is it better to have more Attacks or higher Fight value, for example? If you both have Might to burn, then generally the latter; if not, then the former. But in general, people are pretty good at weighing up this issue.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the Balrog is likely to win the duel against Zagdush here 

Sub-question 2: Damage output

This second factor, on the other hand, is easy to neglect but vitally important.

Boromir really doesn't have the damage output to make this fight worthwhile

Let’s take the example of Boromir with banner charging Durin, in a context in which other Dwarves could countercharge and trap him. Boromir is more likely to win the fight, with higher Fight value and more Might. But if he wins, he averages 0-1 wounds on Durin, whereas if Durin wins then Boromir probably dies. Similarly, consider Théoden charging Gûlavhar. Strike and Might can let Theoden win the fight, but that probably only means that he inflicts one wound; whereas if Gully wins, then Theoden dies.

Theoden may well be reenacting his experience with a Fell Beast in this screenshot

In both of those situations, the hero with better odds of winning the fight is actually incentivised to avoid it, because the stakes are so much higher for them than for their opponent. If your upside to a duel is ‘maybe stripping some Fate’ while your opponent’s is ‘killing your hero’, then that’s a sign that this was the wrong fight to pick.

This scale of relative damage output is fluid throughout the game, especially with the presence of other models in combat. More dice in the fight mean much better odds of killing the enemy, especially if you can now trap them with the extra models. Going in for a Strike-off against a hero already fighting 3-4 warriors is great, because you threaten to kill them if you win while they generally don’t threaten you back the same way. Traps win games, and warriors win hero fights!

The final factor that plays into damage output is whether the heroes are mounted or not. This is big for two reasons.

Firstly, if a mounted hero has charged into a foot hero, then their odds of doing damage if they win are dramatically higher. Even ignoring things like lances, your average 3 Attack hero is having their damage output nearly tripled thanks to the extra Attack and knockdown. That will often change the maths from ‘might do a Wound’ to ‘probably get the kill’, which is obviously a huge deal. And obviously, if your opponent is mounted as well then you’re back to the initial starting point. Yet another reason why mounted heroes are excellent, and you should always be scraping together those 10 points if you’re expecting your hero to do much fighting.

Secondly, and in contrast to the last point, this importance and relative fragility of mounts also increases the vulnerability of mounted heroes to taking damage back (because the first hit they take will probably be dismounting them, and taking away all the incredible and undercosted benefits they get from being mounted). Mounted heroes really don’t want to be losing fights, so they may have to think twice about taking on duels they might lose. If Rutabi charges Imrahil then neither is likely to seriously hurt the other, but Rutabi may well dismount Imrahil if she wins. This isn’t really an argument against mounting your heroes (10 points to effectively discard the first wound you suffer is actually a pretty good deal, even if your horse does nothing else for you), but it’s something to consider when picking fights with mounted heroes.

If Rutabi charged here, then she has a lot less to lose than Imrahil. If he charged, then the roles are reversed

Factor 3: Opportunity cost

I know, I know; I’ve gone from legalese to economics terms. I am clearly very cool and smart.

This factor considers what else your hero (and your opponent’s!) could be doing. Azog is terrifying to heroes, because of his high likelihood to win fights and his high damage output. But if taken in Pits (where he should be), then there is an inherent tension in his use. Instead of charging into heroes, he could be Heroic Combatting through 4 enemies to create a gap for your Hunter Orcs to pour through. Or even better, he could be charging two enemies, threatening a Combat into a hero to make them Strike up, then charging into two more enemies instead once they’ve wasted their Might. That doesn’t mean Azog shouldn’t be hunting down your opponent’s heroes, but it does mean you need to be considering what else he could be doing for you right now.

Azog smashes through 4 Elves while Thranduil is left to slaughter a lone Gundabad. Much better than going in for the duel

On the other hand, a Boromir on foot or a Rutabi will never be killing too many models on their own, so you have less to lose by sending them into a hero. We’ll discuss this a bit more below, but if Boromir and Azog duel inconclusively for 3-4 turns, then that could easily be a net gain of half-a-dozen warriors for the Gondor player, which is a great outcome.

This is why charging enemy combat pieces with Heroic Defence models is great. The likelihood of winning the fight and the expected damage output probably still favour the scary combat hero, but you’re preventing them from doing something more useful. If Azog is stuck duelling Gamling for three turns, then the trade is hugely in Rohan’s favour. As a counterpoint to this though, don’t overestimate Heroic Defence: if 2-3 Hunter Orcs can get in and trap Gamling ,then he’ll still probably die in one turn, and Azog can Heroic Combat away into something else. Heroic Defence is great, but it’s not actually a ‘use this to become temporarily immortal’ button in the way people often seem to assume.

Wounding on sixes is annoying, but Evil is rolling 16 dice to wound here. Gamling is probably screwed

In general, be aware of what else your heroes could be doing this turn, and what your opponents’ want to be fighting. Sometimes losing trades (from the perspective of likelihood of winning and expected damage output) are the right call if they allow you to get things done elsewhere.

Speaking of which…

Factor 4: Strategic situation

The overall strategic situation is one of the biggest keys to understanding whether to duel enemy heroes or avoid the clash. There are three parts to this.

The first links to opportunity cost, as we discussed above. If your warriors are beating theirs, then a slow grind between your heroes actually favours you because it buys time for those warriors to work. Or, on the flipside, if you need Azog to bust a hole in that phalanx to let the Hunter Orcs in, then it’s no use having him slowly beat down the Dragon Emperor. In that strategic context, you need Azog’s combat power killing troops in order to have a shot in the game, so you can’t be tempted to duel with him as you often might.

Azog may well win this duel against the Dragon Emperor, but he won't have an army left by the time he does!

The second part is Might pools. Duelling heroes burn a lot of Might fast, for Strikes, duel rolls and wound rolls. This rapidly gets expensive, and means that those heroes won’t have much Might to spend for Heroic Combats and (especially) Moves. If your opponent has lots of Might and you don’t, then you only want to be duelling if you can finish the duels fast (to take that Might off the field).

And third, do you need a big swing or are you on track to win? Let’s return to Azog once more, as I’ve been playing him a lot recently and he’s a perfect example of a duellist character that also wants to be fighting troops. Consider Azog eyeing up Durin (again, on a turn that other Dwarves could counterattack and trap him). If Azog goes in and wins then Durin dies, and vice versa if Azog loses. Is that near-coin-toss a good idea for Pits (and by extension, was it a good idea for the Dwarf player to let Durin get exposed to this)? It depends on how the rest of the game is going. If the Hunter Orcs have broken through and the Dwarves are getting shredded, then it’s likely better for Azog to play it safe and pick a different target. Both heroes munching through troops will produce a reliably good outcome for Pits, so that’s probably the best call. On the other hand, if F4/D7 are doing work and the Hunter Orcs are crumbling, then maybe a big swing to kill Durin is their only remaining path to victory.

The Hunter Orcs are doing well against the Dwarves, so Azog decides to leave Durin for next turn and take the safe option

This broader strategic situation is significant, and plays a huge role in deciding what fights to pick.

Conclusion: To duel or not to duel

Heroic duels are awesome, and exciting, and are often the decisive moment in games in exactly the way they should be. But getting your heroes into combat with the wrong enemies can often decide games in your opponent’s favour, and understanding when this is true is a key part of improving at the game.

This is a big, difficult to answer question, that will often change every single turn. Maybe it was smart to charge Azog with Gamling on that first turn of combat, but now the Pits player is threatening to trap you and you’re better off getting Gamling out of there.

But put together all of these factors we’ve discussed today, and you can start to unravel whether your heroes want to fight theirs. And in doing so, you’ll know whether the duel between your army leaders is a product of your mistake, or your opponent’s.