Why are all the Army Leaders cowards? A discussion of Army Leader VPs, Contest of Champions and the veto system

 

This is how army leaders are supposed to work in MESBG (XMT Rider of Reaver's Mark)

Middle Earth is an epic fantasy in the style of old Norse myths like Beowulf and the Poetic Edda. As such, our favourite heroes tend to lead from the front, often literally. Picture Théoden riding ahead of his lines on Snowmane, or Aragorn charging forward for Frodo at the Black Gate. These moments are core to our visual understanding of Middle Earth, and we often want to replicate them in MESBG.

Unfortunately, that’s generally a bad idea. In 16 scenarios in the Matched Play Guide, there are VPs on offer for wounding or killing the enemy leader. This means that there’s a direct incentive to keep them protected and safe, with no compensatory incentive to put them on the frontlines. Fog of War is neutral on how you use your leader, while Contest of Champions alone encourages them to play aggressively (both by giving you VPs for killing models with them, and by removing VPs from leader wounds unless they’re dealt by your leader).

As such, in the vast majority of scenarios the best leaders will be ones that are unlikely to ever take damage. This can be a product of their resilience, but in most circumstances will be best achieved by taking a leader that doesn’t need to be on the frontlines. Galadriel is the archetypal example here, and one that I’ll use a lot in this article: she’s perfectly happy to stay behind your lines casting all game, and as such is unlikely to ever be in a position in which she could give up VPs to the enemy. That’s a huge benefit, because it means that in just under 90% of games there are points available to her player that functionally aren’t available to their opponent.

Look at that smug raised hand; this is a model that knows she isn't giving up any leader VPs (DeathWatch Studios)

The one exception, as flagged earlier, is Contest of Champions. In theory, this counterbalances all of the above points by acting as one scenario where it’s nearly impossible for a player with Galadriel as their leader to win.

Now, I know that the nearly in the above sentence is doing some work: Galadriel can win Contest of Champions in the hands of a skilled player. We all have stories of pulling off impossible Contest wins (I beat the Balrog with the Witch King once and it was awesome!). But fundamentally this requires either a lot of luck or a big skill disparity, or sometimes both. Noncombatant army leader versus melee bruiser in Contest is one of the most skewed matchups possible, and is as close to an auto-loss as they come.

So, if a hero like Galadriel is the best army leader in 16 scenarios, but a huge disadvantage in Contest, then isn’t that balanced? What’s the issue here?

There are three problems with this approach, that combine to unnecessarily constrain players’ options and produce some boring games.

Problem 1: One scenario does not balance 16

First, the existence of Contest is just not significant enough, because it will only be played once every 18 games. In contrast, most runs at 5-6 game tournaments have at least a couple of games that are decided by 1-2 points (i.e. where not taking a wound on your leader could win you the game). That means that you’re normally more likely to lose a game at a tournament because your leader got wounded than because you played Contest of Champions, as well as potentially having a better VP differential in other games to boot. Competitive players will often take the risk of drawing Contest in order to maximise their chances of winning the 16 scenarios that give VPs for leader wounds/kills.

The downside of all this is that it encourages specific kinds of leaders, and specific playstyles with them. Leaders that want to lead from the front, like Azog, Aragorn or Théoden are discouraged, and those that prefer to chip away from the backlines like Galadriel or the Witch King are encouraged. That’s not to say that no one ever takes or should take ‘fighty’ army leaders; a lot of them are still strong overall, and perfectly viable choices. But across the entire game, there is a systemic disincentive to field this style of leader over a Galadriel.

The Witch King hiding at the back, as he normally does

Moreover, once you hit the battlefield players are encouraged to shelter their army leader more than is often fitting. Should Lurtz or Balin really be standing off behind their lines, hoping to pick off a couple of warriors when they can do so without risk to themselves? No, they should be barging forward chopping down foes. And should the Witch King be hiding behind his troops casting spells, or should he be pouncing on enemy leaders and smashing open gates like he does in the lore? The answer is clear. But because there is a structural incentive to protect your leader (and generally no countervailing one to get kills with them) they rarely end up playing the way they ‘should’.

This all gets even more pronounced in light of the second issue…

Problem 2: Veto

Veto is one of the major ways of selecting scenarios, and it’s awesome. It produces more balanced games, reduces the listbuilding element somewhat, and generally makes you less likely to have a bad time. Unfortunately, the other thing that it does is basically remove Contest of Champions from the game.

Because it is such an easily skewed scenario, Contest will generally favour one player over the other by a large margin. As such, the disfavoured player will veto it almost every time. This means that you could go to a hundred tournaments with veto and only play Contest a handful of times at most. And this means that the Galadriels of the world love veto, and are even better choices in this format than they are normally.

I've played Contest exactly once in veto, and it was because my opponent messed up badly at scenario selection

Love it or hate it (and I love it!), veto is here to stay. But given that we’ve just discussed the downsides to scenarios encouraging the use of Galadriels, the fact that veto intensifies this is quite unfortunate.

Problem 3: Auto-losses are a miserable way to balance the game

The existence of Contest of Champions does go some way towards balancing heroes like Galadriel if you take a broad view: they will be x% more likely to win most games, but dramatically less likely to win Contest, so their win percentage will likely be pretty reasonable.

The problem with this logic is that it doesn’t take into account how miserable it is to play that one game of Contest. Watching Azog smack through your lines while Galadriel tries vainly to karate chop a Hunter Orc won’t be at all fun for you, and probably won’t be great for your opponent either. ‘Auto-losses’ are miserable for everyone, and they’re one of the worst ways to balance out a model.

Galadriel tries vainly to get a kill as her army crumbles

Put another way, you could have a similar effect from a balance perspective by deleting Contest and instead having a ‘nerf Galadriel’ phase at the start of every battle, where a player with a Galadriel-equivalent rolled two dice and instantly lost if they rolled snake-eyes. That would obviously be no fun for anyone, but in some regards it’s just skipping the step of a boring and one-sided game.

The takeaway here is that having effects or models balanced by making them massively weaker in certain scenarios is poor design. Instead, it’s better to give models small advantages or disadvantages across a lot of scenarios, so players never feel like they’re in without a chance.

The solution: Delete Contest (kind of)

It’s clear that the problem is a lack of incentives to field a combat army leader in 17/18 scenarios, so the small-but-consistent benefit of a Galadriel is better than the rare-but-game-winning benefit of a combat army leader.

How could Games Workshop fix that in the new edition, if they identify the issue? I think it just takes two steps:

First, rework the scoring in Contest. A lot of aspects of this scenario are cool, but having 10 VPs tied up in ‘your leader killing stuff’ is what causes it to skew so hard. Ideally, you would want only 5 VPs awarded for this, so that players could lose on that front but still win the game overall if they really dominated it. You could reduce the kill tally to 1/3/5 VPs depending on how much you beat your opponent by, then change leader wounds/death to award points no matter who kills the enemy leader. The extra two VPs could go to breaking the enemy, or a central objective, or even banner VPs if you wanted. The key thing is that you need to be able to realistically win this game without a fighty army leader. Galadriels still wouldn’t like this scenario, but at least they could win it.

This thumbnail is just too amusing and apt not to use it

And second, you would take 7 of those 16 scenarios where you get VPs for wounding/killing the enemy leader and cut those objectives entirely. Instead, you would replace it with VPs for winning a killing race with your leader, just like in Contest (but only awarding 1-3 VPs, depending on scenario).

This would mean that in 7 games you’d lightly prefer a combat army leader, in Contest you’d still definitely prefer a combat army leader, in Fog of War you wouldn’t care, and in the other 9 games you’d prefer a Galadriel. Having a fighty Army Leader would then never be guaranteed to win you the game, like in old Contest. And similarly, it won’t be a detriment in every other game. Instead, it would be a minor benefit in about half the scenarios, a minor detriment in the other half, and still irrelevant in Fog.

This addresses all three issues with the current setup: it ensures that killing with your army leader is something you need to be planning around (not obligatory, but valuable, like having a banner or a safe leader is currently); it accommodates veto just fine, because you can no longer eliminate all issues with your Galadriel by vetoing Contest; and it means that Contest is no longer as swingy, because you can lose on the kill tally and still win overall.

In this game of Contest I killed Aragorn on the first turn of combat. Needless to say, it wasn't an exciting game after that

There are other possible solutions, but all of the ones I’ve seen only address part of the problem (e.g. that Galadriel is a better leader than Aragorn or that Contest is skewed) not both.

Wrapping up: Not the Contest fix we wanted, but the one we needed

Next edition, when GW see fit to revisit the Matched Play Guide, I really hope they do make a change like this. It’s not the biggest issue in the game, but it is an overarching one, and one that would make a big difference to how lists are constructed and used at tournaments.

Until then, the best choice for army leader will remain Galadriel.