Blood & Glory Part IIIWarfare in Middle-earth PBMby Tom Walton
Though there's nothing like hearing the enemy scream in rage as you burn his capitol to the ground, other diversions can prove almost as satisfying. Whether you enjoy blasting enemy troops with fell magic, slipping poisoned daggers between the ribs of foes or preaching to the masses to sway them to your cause, this article will hopefully give you some ideas on how to satisfy your longing for mayhem.
Artillery from Hell. The most obvious use for mages is in the direct support role of the army. Able to cast spells which inflict damage upon the enemy or deflect the same from his own forces, the mage can give the army the edge it needs to win a battle. Several skilled mages together can wreak a terrible toll upon a foe, or make it virtually impossible for smaller forces to cause any casualties at all. This can be especially important if you're expecting battle and are short on troops. By having your best mages join the army, you can increase the strength of your force by several thousand points or more. This tactic can also be used into tricking an enemy into thinking your army is weaker than it is, then using magic to blast him into worm-meet when he sends out a force to intercept you. In combination with some powerful combat artifacts, you can spring a nasty surprise upon a foe by destroying a force several times the size of your own. No longer will he laugh at those 'small' armies. Search and Destroy. Some nations start with the ability to learn spells from The Spirit Mastery list, while others can gain it by acquiring certain artifacts or surviving particular encounters. Learning the more powerful versions of these spells allows a company of mages to travel to strategic locations and use magic to strike down particularly reviled characters. 'Curses', for example, can be cast at one hex away (meaning you won't have to brave a population center or army hex), and does half the mage's skill score in damage to the target's Health rank. Get together 200 skill points worth of mages, and you can kill a character every turn. If you station this company adjacent to a nation's capitol, you could either slay or drive off those pesky leaders left behind to do the 'capitol only' orders. What makes this tactic especially inviting is that there's no defense; Elrond falls just as easily as Yezmin does. And if the nation has just one place to put a capitol, you could make one or two attacks and then move on to other targets; fear that you might still be hanging around could force your enemy to vacate the capitol for several turns. The drawback to the 'curses' company is that all the mages concerned must learn the spell, and while they're out happily sending their enemies to their doom, they won't be able to increase their own skill ranks or research other spells. Still, if you can off Elrond, Argeleb, or a few other powerful figures, or perhaps disrupt an enemy capitol during a critical point in the war, it can be worth the lost skill increases. Big Brother is Watching. The' Scry' spells are great for finding out what the enemy's up to without actually risking a character in the attempt. Information is always vital to the war effort, and 'Scry' allows the mage to get this information relatively easily. In a similar vein, the 'Locate' spells can be used to track down artifacts or characters, which allows you to follow the movement of particularly dangerous items or persons. Knowing. for example, that Murazor is not in the army that's speeding to your capitol, or that Din Ohtar is busy killing your allies instead of you, can mean the difference between wasting orders to guard against their presence or using your characters more productively. Never underestimate the value of information. 'Scry' can also be used to sell information to your allies or to neutrals. Since many nations start with ineffective mages, an offer to scry or locate for these actions could mean gold in the coffers. This is particularly effective for those nations which can't expect to be able to 'Locate Artifact' for some time; by doing it for them early on, you can allow them to acquire a coveted artifact and charge a hefty fee in the process.
Pass the Dynamite. Agents have the ability to wreck the fortifications of enemy population centers. This under-utilized capability is often more effective at furthering your goals of conquest than outright assassinations. And, unlike building war machines, it costs nothing; even agents of moderate skill (40-50) have a fair chance of success against unguarded locations. This one order can save the necks of hundreds, perhaps thousands of troops, allowing you to extend the useful life of your army. Pass the Dynamite, part 2. Bridge-blasting is something most novices catch on to fairly quickly. Certain bridges over major rivers provide key points from which to launch an invasion, and their destructions can force the enemy to spend turns marching in search of an alternate route. What many players don't take into account is that wrecking a bridge over a minor river can also annoy the enemy. In some cases, the presence of a bridge means that an army can extend its reach one additional hex from its current location; destroy the bridge while that army's on the move, and you can mess up their timing. This can result in allies not rendezvousing at a critical moment, an army missing its target and having to spend another turn on the march, or making the supply of reinforcements more difficult to move from one end of the nation to another. It's also good practice for your agents, since virtually no one actually sends an agent to protect a minor bridge. Burn the Warehouses. An order virtually ignored in ME-PBM is 'Sabotage Stores'. If you know that the enemy is accumulating a particular product at a distant location (e.g. bronze for troops, timber for war machines, mounts for cavalry), then sabotaging his stores can really put a bee in his bonnet. Use a high-level agent, or combine the talents of two average agents, and the amount of damage done can far exceed what the agents could inflict if they issue the 'Steal Gold' order. Better yet, the enemy will have to waste orders buying and/or transporting more of the product to the location if he wants to continue with his plans, and it may disrupt his timetable beyond repair. The more expensive or rare the items, the more valuable the order will be. Prisoners of War. New players like to assassinate people; veterans like to kidnap them. A kidnapped character can escape. but for the time he remains imprisoned, he counts against the character limit of the nation he belongs to. Kidnap several characters from the same nation, and that nation will be severely restricted in the number of orders it can issue during the turn and will still have to pay maintenance on them. Kidnapped characters can also be interrogated to provide information, and ransoms can be demanded for their release. Take someone with sentimental value, like Argeleb, Bain, Tarondor or others, and you can gloat over the agony of your enemy as he strains to put aside his pride and fill your vault with gold. Artifact Hunts, the Easy Way. Why bother going to all the trouble of locating lost artifacts, racing other players to find and pick up the good ones? With an agent, you can ignore the hustle and bustle of the competition and simply steal the ones you want. Stealing an artifact from an unguarded character is easier than it sounds, especially if the artifact-bearing character is mediocre in his skills; and, if you're particularly unscrupulous, you can allow an ally to find the artifact for you, then rip it off once he locates. Naturally, the enemy will take the blame.
Outright Bribery. Emissaries can bribe the characters of other nations, allowing them the opportunity to glean important information from recalcitrant allies. This information can give you a firm idea on what the nation is up to, what its strengths and weaknesses are, and how the player intends to operate. It can also provide warning against nations which plan to leave you out to hang when faced with the enemy, allowing you time to exact a suitable revenge. Bribery also lets you recruit the characters of nations which have dropped the game. For a limited time following the loss of the player, those characters can, with sufficient gold, be added to your nation's own roster. Have the Noldo bugged out? Go grab Elrond and friends! Not only do you get a set of truly awesome characters, but all their nasty artifacts as well. By watching nations of your allegiance carefully for inactivity, you can predict who's dropped and who hasn't, getting the jump on your allies when it comes to recruiting the dropped nation's best characters. Mata Hari. Another function of emissaries that's rarely used is the 'Double Agent' order. Double Agents provide you with the same report they give their own nation, which gives you the opportunity to track their whereabouts and actions. As this is primarily an information gathering experience, it's of critical importance when planning a war against the nation in question. For the cost of a single order, you can get more information than one of your own characters might be able to gather in a half-dozen turns. Double agents have another function, in that they'll try not to act against your nation. This means that they could, at a critical point, fail to execute orders which will damage your campaign against your enemy. An agent, for example, might refuse to assassinate your army commander; an [emissary might refuse to influence one of your towns]. These unexpected events have the potential for changing the entire face of the war, if they occur at the right times. Taking several double agents in the target nation will not only improve your information-gathering, but will also increase the chance that one of the agents will refuse to act against you. One specific trick of recruiting a double agent is to do so against an assassin. Since the 'Recruit Double Agent' order comes before the 'Assassinate Character' order, you can try to recruit an agent in the hex before he attempts to kill one of your characters, possibly averting the assassination altogether. If you've little hope of guarding expert agent activity, this is a good alternate option. Ghost Town. Most players look at the 'Reduce Population Center' order and ask themselves 'Why the heck should I do that?!' True, in most circumstances, this order is useless; but in some desperate situations it can be employed to good effect against the enemy. If you're in a losing war and your foe is going to capture some of your population centers, this order can be used to destroy those population centers before the enemy takes them. While it does damage your economy, the enemy gets no compensation for his actions. And, if the enemy is capable of threatening those centers into submission without taking any troop losses away, or will spend very few troops in an assault, you lose nothing by destroying them. This might also be an option with those population centers which as a rule regularly fall to the opposition game after game. Why allow him to benefit from your loss? Another way to use this order is to reduce the towns of the opposition that you've successfully influenced into joining your nation. If you can't hold on to the town and your foe will take it back in short order, reduce it as much as possible before he does. This is especially effective against camps and villages, which are easily influenced into joining your nation but just as easily threatened away by the original owner. Have those emissaries cause havoc!
Another example would be to have your emissaries take a number of double agents in an ally's nation. This will improve the skill rank and allow you to get the same information that he does from his character. If that character is dedicated to 'Scouting'. then both nations will benefit from his actions. These examples are just a small number of the options available. It may sound strange to use them against an ally, but it's a great way of training up your characters while reducing the risk of getting injured or killed. And, since your nations will have better relations with each other than you would with an enemy, the chances of success are much higher. New players, take note; this method is often used by veteran players and their allies!
Some multi-class options are extremely useful when the character isn't dedicated to the above activities. Versatility among you characters can allow them to switch roles and accomplish different missions as the need arises, or to exercise both of their skills on a regular basis. Creating such a character is also a viable option if you expect to be operating with a full character roster and don't want to short yourself in any one area. Duo-class combinations are discussed below: Commander combos: Commander-agents make excellent back-up commanders for armies.While the primary commander trains the army and moves it, the back-up commander can raise/train troops while using his agent talents to guard the general. Such a commander, if skilled enough , can also act as a built-in siege engine, sabotaging enemy fortifications or bridges. Commander-emissaries are usually a waste of money. Many times the missions given to these characters are incompatible, and you end up using one skill at the expense of the other. Possible uses for a commander-emissary are to place camps while the army is on the move (when acting as a secondary commander), using command orders at the capitol while training in emissary rank, or as a fallback leader if you start to run short of commanders (i,e.. recall him from emissary duties and use him as a commander). Commander-mages are often a good buy--when the army isn't on the march. These commanders can raise/train troops while learning all sorts of horrific spells, then use the spells as soon as they enter combat. The drawback is that so long as they're on the move they can't improve their skill rank. It might be better to have a real mage join the army when battle becomes imminent. Agent combos:: Agent-emissaries are some of my favorite characters. An agent-emissary with a 10/20 skill rank can go out and place camps, at the same time guarding these camps to improve his agent rank. Agent-emissaries can also be used defensively (guarding and influencing your population center at the same time) or offensively (e.g. stealing gold and influencing the enemy population center). Agent-mages are less useful, for the same reason commander-mages are. Orders tend to conflict (unless the character is dedicated as a guard or an army recruitment center), and you'll probably end up focusing on a single skill. They can be useful in battle, as they can guard your leaders while using combat spells to damage the enemy. Emissary combos:: The only one left is the emissary-mage. Like the agent-emissary this character can go out and create camps, while at the same time improving his skill rank (since 'Prentice Magery' comes after 'Create Camp'). They're also good for raising your population center loyalty when it drops dangerously low. Offensively. however, they run into the same problems that any mage-combo tends to experience. Creating triple-class characters (10/10/10) is wasted effort, as these characters aren't at all effective and take a considerable amount of time to train up. The only way you can train in all three skills in one turn (assuming that one of these skills is 'Command') is to attach the character to an army. Then have him train in the non-Command skills. If the army leader gives the 'Army Maneuver's Order', the character will gain 1-5 points in his command rank, along with any points he gets for training in the other skills. This assumes that you have the time and orders to waste in this endeavor (although the end result can be a truly powerful character). Usually only an option for a nation that can expect many turns of relative peace.
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