Blood & Glory Part IIWarfare in Middle-earth PBMby Tom Walton(originally printed in Paper Mayhem)
There's nothing quite so satisfying as rolling over an enemy nation, slaying its leaders and putting its people in chains. Better still is the gloating one can do over the corpse of an opponent, proclaiming your skill while disparaging his own. In ME-PBM, the path to self-aggrandizement is through battles and conquest. Like BLOOD & GLORY PART I, the purpose of this article is to help newer players avoid common pitfalls when conducting a war, and to plan effectively against the tactics used by veteran opponents.
River movement is sometimes difficult, since the rules on the subject are a little garbled. In essence, you can plot movement through any series of hexes connected by a major river,even if those hexes contain prohibited terrain (forest, rough). When writing out the orders, you determine the direction of movement exactly as if the fleet were an army marching into the hex (ignore the direction the river is traveling in). However, since you can only land in allowed terrain (harbor, port, shore), the fleet may be unable to disembark in the hexes you're sailing through. On the brighter side, if a fleet can't land in the hex to attack enemy targets, neither can it be attacked by unfriendly armies. With the exception of the Corsairs, sailing in the open seas tends to be dangerous. Storms and other events can result in the loss of warships and transports, not to mention the men aboard these transports. Worse, the danger increases for each open sea hex traveled. This limits most nations to hugging the coastlines in order to preserve their navy, at the risk of interception by unfriendly forces. This risk tends to be relatively high between warring nations, since the enemy can predict your route of travel fairly easily.
When plotting a landing, choose a battle where victory is assured. If you lose, your ships likely will be anchored on the spot and most likely wiped out by the next enemy naval commander who happens by. Even if the enemy doesn't manage to destroy them, the anchored fleet will probably be very difficult to retrieve. A common mistake among new players is the failure to realize that once you do make a landing, your ships become anchored and your navy turn into an army. In order to become a navy again, the commander of the force must issue the 'PickUp Ships' order. If you don't give this order and try to sail out of the hex, you'll only grab enough transports to.move your troops, leaving everything else behind. This can have some embarrassing consequences (like accidentally sailing into a battle with only transports, which I did once). The requirement to 'PickUp Ships' is the greatest failing of navies. An army commander can attack an enemy army or town, then move to another target all in the same turn. A navy commander, on the other hand, can't effectively attack a land-based target and move in the same turn. He must attack, pick up his anchored ships, then move (three orders in all), meaning that what an army commander does in one turn takes a navy commander two turns. It also leaves the navy exposed to an attack by a defending fleet which responds to the threat. Players using a navy need to take this into account. One way to get around this restriction is to attach two leaders to the navy. The navy commander gives the attack order, then splits off his army to the secondary leader. Since 'Split Army' comes before 'Pick Up Ships', the secondary commander can then grab the ships and give the move order to sail out of the hex. Of course, the assumes you don't have anything else that you need to do (like 'Refuse Personal Challenge'), and it means you'll end up leaving part of your forces and one of your commanders behind. Not good if you expect retaliation.
Convoy. If you're concerned about interception, split your navy into two forces: one with a single transport and warship, another with the real force. Have the first navy sail into the enemy, to block it's movement, then have the second navy sail around the first two forces. Expensive in terms, but it usually works when you're trying to avoid battle (like when you're badly outnumbered) or trying to pin down the enemy. Convoy, part 2. If the enemy navy outnumbers you and you expect to lose your fleet, you can delay an invasion by splitting your fleet into several smaller forces and throwing them against the enemy one at a time. He'll still win, and you'll still lose the ships and characters, but it'll force him to fight for every hex of movement. Used wisely, you can give yourself turns of time to reinforce the coast or convince other players to join you for a real naval battle. A tactic of true desperation. A special note is required concerning naval combat - For reasons unbeknownst to even the most skilled players, small navies tend to inflict more casualties on larger navies than can be reasonably be accounted for, considering the disparity of strength between the two forces. By splitting your navy into several forces and throwing them at the enemy one at a time, you can actually end up doing more damage to him than had you sent in the entire fleet against him at once. Another game quirk that's definitely NOT outlined in the rules. "What the heck is Elrond doing at Osgiliath?" Navies can move long distances in a single turn. If the enemy is watching your every move, you can use your navy to bring in reinforcements from distant pop centers. Since they'll be off his regional map and probably far from the site of battle, he might be taken completely by surprise when he finds himself facing an army far larger than what he counted on. This can be especially devastating if a distant ally pulls it off. Tharbad, home of the Corsairs. A corollary to the above tactic is that navies allow you to operate in distant theaters far from home. This not only turns the enemy's hair white, but also allows you to keep the war out of the region in which you live. A Corsair landing in Cardolan, for instance, will probably bring sighs of relief from both Gondors, and perhaps an 'under the table' agreement to ignore the conquest of their distant ally. Patrol. If you expect an enemy to make an attack along a fairly narrow stretch of water, you can have your fleet patrol the area in an attempt to intercept hostile forces. If more than one hex can be traveled through, have the navy sail back and forth through the target hexes before returning to port. If the area is limited to one hex, sail directly to that hex and use the 'home' move to remain there for as long as possible. Should you be blessed with certain knowledge of the location of the enemy fleet, you can plot out the fleet's movement to where it will be during each point of its move. This allows you to sail to the target areas at the same time that the fleet will be passing through, minimizing the chance that it will slip by your patrol. Of course, this assumes that the enemy won't make use of the 'home' order himself to throw your timing off. (It should be noted that this tactic works almost as well for armies.)
Fortifications have an additional advantage, in that their strength is increased by the loyalty of the pop center that they guard. For example, if a pop center has a castle with a strength of 10,000 and a loyalty of 50%, the strength of the castle is increased by 5000 (50% of 10,000) to 15,000. A citadel and a city, the strongest combination in the game, has a base defense of 29,000 (citadel 24,000 plus city 5,000); but if the city has a loyalty of 100% (not uncommon), the strength of its defense is doubled to 58,000. Fortification strength is often so daunting that enemy forces will avoid trying to capture well-defended population centers for fear of losing too many troops. Sieges and threats are also far less effective against fortified pop centers than unfortified ones. Indeed, unless the enemy army is very powerful and/or lead by a skillful commander, virtually any level of fortification will make sieges and threats very difficult to pull off. If you want to protect key pop centers from being taken by these tactics, upgrading fortification levels is the most effective thing you can do. Fortifications do have their drawbacks. First, they're extremely costly, both in terms of timber and in gold. Unless you possess a nation which has an advantage in fortification construction, building castles and keeps will probably be out of the question during the early part of the game. Also, timber has a number of other uses, such as producing ships and war machines, so choices will have to be made about how to best allocate your limited resources. Only the lowly tower (1000 timber) is easy and relatively inexpensive to build. Another drawback is that, unlike armies, fortifications can be seized by the enemy and used against you. This means that you might have almost as much difficulty recapturing your former pop centers as your opponent had in taking them from you in the first place. Worse still, the enemy can invest in war machines and level your precious castles in a single battle, turning them into expensive rubble.
The Gap of Rohan. There are a number of terrain features on the map that restrict movement and force the enemy to follow certain well-used paths. By seizing these terrain features and building fortifications on them, you can bottle-neck enemy assaults, or secure a critical point from which to launch an invasion. Examples include the Gap of Rohan, any one of the passes through the Misty Mountains or into Mordor, and any bridge over a major river. Some road intersections also lend themselves to this tactic, if the surrounding terrain is difficult to move through. Bleed them dry. Building a fort over an unprotected pop center increases its defense value by 2,000 points. Do this for all of your exposed towns and villages in hard-to-defend areas, and the enemy will literally bleed himself dry trying to capture them. Indeed, he might ignore many of the smaller ones if he's willing to sacrifice the troops, preserving your production base. The Final Defense. A number of nations have poorly-protected capitols which will fall fairly easily to an enemy assault. Upgrading the fortification level of the capitol is of critical importance if you can't guarantee the safety of your nation. This applies particularly to nations with only one major town, or where other major towns are too close to the capitol to provide a safe back-up out of enemy reach. Rear guard. If your army is in full retreat from an enemy force and you really don't care to stand your ground and get destroyed, try to retreat through one of your own fortifications. You'll be able to march right through the hex, but the enemy will either have to stop in it or go around. This will give you a couple of extra hexes of distance and if timed correctly, could put you a full turn ahead of your pursuers. You also use this tactic when retreating through a fortification belonging to an ally. This is especially effective if you retreat through a fortification that wasn't present at the start of the game, and isn't on the enemy's regional map (since he probably won't know it's there). Trenchworks. Fortifications provide a defensive bonus to troops stationed in their hex. Exactly how large the bonus is is somewhat unclear, but it's always better to fight over one of your own fortifications than one that belongs to the enemy.
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