Any tournament run will normally have a mix of matchups where you're favoured, and ones where you really have to work hard to win. We'll talk about the former next week, but for now let's talk about how to clutch out those really tough fights where things are against you.
Obviously, this is a huge topic, and all the normal aspects
of playing well are critical here. Having a strong list, playing to your
strengths and your opponent's weaknesses, and executing your strategy well on
the field all help win these games.
But there are specific steps that are particularly helpful in the tough matchups, and this article is going to dive into them. So buckle in, because we’re going into the trenches.
Step 1: Identify that it's
a tough fight
First things first, you've gotta identify what you're in
for. If you go into the game mistakenly thinking that you're favoured, then you
may well play too aggressively and get punished for it. And even worse, you
won’t know to apply all of the excellent tips in this article!
What makes a matchup difficult is as infinitely variable as
those matchups themselves, but assessing it comes down to experience playing
with your army in a range of scenarios and against a range of armies.
As a general guide, most armies struggle against lists that
are slightly better than them at things, like having slightly higher Fight
value, slightly better shooting, or slightly scarier heroes, while beating
lists that over- or -under-invested in those things. Elves>Uruks>Morannons>Elves
is the classic circle, and while things aren’t quite that simple (the S4/D6 of
the Uruks means that they’re really not bad into the Elves, for example), it’s
a good general rule of thumb.
And of course, the matchup can also can come down to the scenario
being played. If an opponent can easily get certain VPs then you may be in for
a tough one, even if you're better equipped to kill them than vice versa. Think
all-cav in Recon, or a horde in Domination, or the Balrog in Contest.
Finally, the matchup can also come down to experience and skill. If you're up against one of the top players of your local area, then you may be inherently the underdog no matter what the matchup would otherwise suggest. You shouldn’t panic and assume you’ve already lost (as this guide will emphasise again and again!), but you should accept that they are probably going to give you a hard fight.
Step 2: Remind yourself
that you can still win
Once you’ve identified that the matchup will be difficult
for one reason or another, it’s time to remind yourself that you can almost
always still win. I went on a ramble about this before my game against Green Dragon's Kylie in this tournament report, but if you think you've lost the game then you won't be
looking for ways to win it. Even the least winnable games tend to be viable if
your opponent really messes up, and you need to stay mentally and emotionally
in them to give yourself a shot there.
Put another way, most bad matchups are closer to 70:30 than 90:10. And you know what a 70:30 matchup definitionally means? That you’ve got a 30% chance to win it. So, just be that 30%.
Step 3: Identify the minimum
VPs that you need to win with things going wrong
With the psychological side of things temporarily mastered,
have a think about the VPs on offer and which ones are achievable for you. In
hard matchups, it's generally really difficult to prevent your opponent getting
all the VPs or to get all of them yourself, but generally some are more
achievable than others.
Before and during the game, you should try to plot out the
path to victory that requires the least number of things to go right for you.
Perhaps killing their fragile leader with your Legolas is a simple one to pick up, or perhaps you can guarantee keeping
your banner alive, or holding your backfield objectives, or Combatting your
Gwaihir off the board edge in Recon. These points are achievable, and you're
trying to string enough together to get the win.
Basically, you're assuming that most things are going to go
right for your opponent, but working out which ones you can reliably sabotage
to scrape out some points.
A classic example of this sort of reasoning is in Domination
against a horde. You won't be able to hold every objective, but if you can
break them and kill their leader then holding 2/5 may well be enough to scrape
you over the line. Or, on the flipside, if you're playing the horde into a list
that outgrinds you, then you may need to keep them pinned back far enough from
the objectives that you can win on points even after they slaughter you.
Step 4: Assess whether this
requires big plays or small ones
This kind of analysis inevitably leads to one of two
conclusions. On the one hand, it can show that a path to minor victory is
winnable from a conservative, focussed style of play (as in the above
examples). You just need to lock in and get those VPs while freezing out your
opponent just enough, and you can win even as everything else goes
wrong.
On the other hand, sometimes it will identify that the only
path to victory is a risky or difficult one. In Hold Ground against Smaug, for
example, your only routes to victory are ending the game before he gets to the
middle or successfully killing the Dragon. Neither of these is likely for most
armies, but if you can't achieve either then you will flatly lose.
In my last game at Dagor, for example, I'd worked out
that I needed to break through to the other side of the river and destroy some
supplies or I would just lose. That would involve some risky plays with heroes,
maximum aggression everywhere, and a fair amount of hoping, but it was
necessary if I wanted a shot at the game. As such I had to take those risks,
because a conservative approach would have just seen me lose to Grima burning
one supply in my backfield regardless of how well everything else went.
Step 5: Pursue those VPs
Once you've identified your path to victory, be it a tight conservative win or a high-risk/high-reward big swing, pursue it relentlessly. You can take on fresh opportunities in the mid-game when they come up, but by-and-large you should be throwing everything at your plan to make it stick. Play focussed and tight, and you might be surprised by how often you find yourself in a winning position.
Step 6: Don't get tilted
Unfortunately, this generally still won’t happen. You're in
a tough matchup; what that means is that things are expected to go
against you.
The key from there is to keep playing to win even as things start going wrong. Keep looking for opportunities to get those tiny, marginal advantages that can snowball into something real. Keep looking for ways to scrape a few VPs off your opponent somehow. Keep making the plays that could pay off, because eventually one of them will pay off. But if you stop making those plays and start just going through the motions, then you're giving up all those possibilities of a win from behind.
Step 7: Have a plan for
after you break
Ultimately, in tough games it's likely that you're going to
break. That's just what happens when your opponent has a favourable matchup.
And that can be fine, as long as you're prepared for it.
That can mean keeping heroes safe and not too exposed in
order to call Stand Fasts, or making sure you have multiple models with decent
Courage on objectives, or making sure that your heroes are close enough to
get their Stand Fasts to cover the critical models you need to stick around. What
it means in every case is having thought about what you’ll need to achieve
after break, and not trusting to the dice any more than you have to. If your
army disintegrates the turn after you break, then chances are that you're going
to lose (unless that was your plan for ending the game on demand; see Step 9
for more on this). So plan to avoid it, and don’t trust the dice.
Step 8: If things are going
badly, minimise your losses
Unfortunately, it sometimes becomes entirely clear that you
have lost. There's no more gas left in the tank, and no more cards to play. At
that point, you do still have something to play for though: minimising the size
of the defeat. In most tournaments that will be worth at least some TPs or
tiebreaker points, so it's still worth the effort.
In my last game at Cancon, for example (another final against Kylie!), by the
midgame I'd identified that I'd probably lost unless a heap of things went
right for me. I continued to try for those to some extent, but for the most
part I switched focus to protecting Gwaihir (worth a 12VP swing in Fog of War).
I'd accepted that my loss was probably unavoidable, but a sneaky pair of
Combats away from the main battle ensured that the loss was kept to a minor one
instead of a thrashing.
This can also help with the psychological goal of avoiding
tilt. If your goal has shifted to minimising the VP differential, then it's
much easier to stay focussed and keep fighting for that. And if you can keep
scrapping for VPs, then you'll generally be putting your opponent under
pressure and threatening to actually win the game. Do that for long enough, and
who knows, you could pull out a surprise win!
Step 9: End the game when
you want to
Finally, winning these games (and minimising your losses) depends
a lot on the game ending on the right turn. In the Smaug/Hold Ground example,
you need the game to go on long enough to get your own models to the middle,
but desperately need to end it before Smaug himself gets there. In my first
game at Dagor and my 4th at Cancon, I was on a clear clock to end
the game before my opponent could get their models onto objectives or off the
board. If either of those games had gone on a couple more turns than they did,
my solid wins would have flipped into devastating losses.
In those instances, it was a matter of ending the game as
quickly as possible once I had broken. There are lots of ways of doing so
(Barging Eagles into the Balrog was my approach at Cancon!) but the classic one
in quartering scenarios is to take Break checks with warriors first before heroes,
in order to not benefit from their Stand Fasts. Deliberately charging into
models that can't shield is also a great trick, as well as two-handing and not
taking advantage of things like banner rerolls that might make it easier for
your models to survive.
Scenarios that end in 'Break one or two' rule out some of
those tricks (the ones involving Break checks, obviously), but still allow for
all the other mechanisms for getting yourself killed. What you're aiming for is
to break early while you're ahead, to hopefully have as many turns as possible
where the game could end with you in a winning position.
I've heard these tactics to end the game described as
cheesy, and to a certain extent they are: they certainly break the immersion of
the game to some extent. But they are a powerful and traditional way of winning
tight games. Ultimately, any game with end conditions is going to incentivise
players to play around them, and I personally think it’s entirely appropriate
to do so in competitive games.
Conclusion: Oft hope is born when all is forlorn
The Lord of the Rings is ultimately a story about underdogs
coming from behind to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And in MESBG as
well, it is actually surprisingly common for the less-favoured-player to clutch
out a win. It is the mark of a great player to be able to keep their head in
the game and keep playing, even when everything is going wrong.
Next week we’ll be looking at the other side of this coin:
what you should do when you’re favoured to win. It’s a surprisingly
complex question, and one that I think merits a lot of analysis. And you know
how I feel about analysis!
Feel free to share your best underdog stories in the
comments, and until next time, may you always be able to avoid the tilt!
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