Strategy and Tactics: The Dragon Lord ME-PBM, c. 1650

Ever since I was a little kid, my heart always went out to the underdog. I cheered on the adventures of Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance, rooted for the United States in Olympic hockey, wished for the Cubs to win the World Series... you get the picture. As a natural offshoot of that, my heart goes out to the underdog positions in the game. And there is pretty much no greater underdog in ME-PBM, c. 1650, than the hapless Khamul, better known (in the game, at least) as the Dragon Lord.

So why does the Dragon Lord always have such problems? Let's start off with a look at how Khamul's nation compares with the others in Middle-Earth (taken from Tom Walton's "Allegiance Comparison Tables" in issue #3 of the email magazine, The Mouth of Sauron):

				Total place		Among Dark Servants

Tax base			16th				2nd
Resource base			23rd				10th
Combat strength			tied for 17th			8th
Character points		2nd				1st
Artifacts			3rd				2nd

Overall, the Dragon Lord's production is pretty shoddy, mostly because of the developed state of most of his population centers. His only two real producers (a village and a camp) are both above the --05 range on the northern half of the map, meaning that they have lousy weather year-round. (Furthermore, he can expect to lose these almost immediately due to their extremely vulnerable state.) Total average production for the Dragon Lord that is not modified for climate (taken from "Population Center Development" by Brian Mason in issue #2 from The Mouth of Sauron) would be as follows:

leather		bronze	steel	mithril	 food	timber	mounts	gold
446		 425	 186	  15	 1432    300	 115	2794

Problems:

• Dragon Lord population centers are far out of reinforcement range of one another. In the Mirkwood theater (where the Dragon Lord has his armies) he only has one town and two major towns. Even in Mirkwood, intervening Free forces pretty much make it impossible for these towns to reinforce one another. Given competent play, the Dragon Lord can expect to lose Goblin-Gate within the first five turns. In addition Nahald Kudan and Lag-auris will probably be lost to rampaging Dwarves in the early game and there really isn't a thing the Dragon Lord can do about it. Even Lug Ghurzun is in danger if the Northmen and Eothriam are winning the war in the Rhovanion, or the Easterlings go Free.

• The Dragon Lord's armies are but average in combat capability. "Well, most nations are average in combat capability," you will say. Yes, but most nations are not being faced by four other nations at game start. Two of those nations (the Dwarves and the Eothraim) are militarily superior to the Dragon Lord to such a point that either nation could probably defeat the Dragon Lord on its own. With the opposition coordinating their efforts, Khamul's demise is a near-certainty.

• The Dragon Lord has some extremely powerful characters. Unfortunately for him, those characters are mages, which could quite possibly be the least useful character class in the game. For the most part, their characters that do have other skills are best at mage.

• Not only is the tax base small, the resource base is also tiny. Most of the Dark Servants have a pitiful tax base, but can at least sell resources to make up their huge deficits. The Dragon Lord lacks even this option.

Your position's advantages are brief. Your mages are extremely powerful. For the most part, your character's challenge ranks are far superior to the characters of the positions around you (with the exception of Bain I, who has the Dwarven Ring of Power (curse his name)). You also have the second- highest tax base out of the Dark Servants (not that this means much). That's about it. so, what to do?...

A Study in Desperation

I don't like writing down turn-by-turn moves for positions, as I consider a flexible strategy with a few salient points more worthwhile. These moves are all for setting the Dragon Lord up in the early game(the first ten turns).

The Military Situation:

Go on the offensive immediately. As soon as you get your setup in the mail write down the orders that will be necessary to cause your biggest army to issue forth from Dol Guldur. Your army at Goblin-Gate should go on the offensive as well as soon as it, too, can leave behind a recruiting army.

Recruit like crazy. 400 heavy infantry a turn at each of Goblin-Gate and Dol Guldur is a must. You're surrounded by massive armies of the Free and you'll need those troops just to contend with their starting forces. Once you get your camps set down, well-timed sells will keep you from going bankrupt. Send the recruiting armies out as soon as your slash-and-burn or threat forces get defeated in battle. If you go bankrupt, so what? Without those troops you're to go down in flaming smoke anyway.

You'll need to take some population centers. As wonderful as it would be to burn them all, doing so would just reduce the amount of time that you could fight the Free, as your treasury would run out that much sooner. However, a good rule of thumb is only take the population centers within two hexes of Dol Guldur. Any further out than that and you probably won't hold it long enough to gain any real benefit.

Threaten as much as possible. If you're lucky, when you get your setup Duran will be heading up the army at Dol Guldur and thus can lead the rampaging forces. None of your other commanders can threaten with as good a chance of success. Threatening makes sure your army remains in the field longer to harry the Free and forces them to divert efforts to chasing it down.

And along those lines... do NOT, repeat do NOT, get into a pitched battle with the Free Peoples (unless you get a dragon). Avoid their main armies like the plague. The more you fight, the more your forces die, and the less room you have to exercise your tactical genius and out-flank the Free while they're, say, marching towards Dol Guldur or off sacking Goblin-Gate. Their armies WILL be bigger than yours, and they WILL defeat you in a pitched battle. If they've split their forces, catch the smaller ones and eat them piecemeal, but still avoid their main armies if you can.

Don't worry about having subcommanders in most of your armies. This flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but none of the Free near you have agents that can assassinate your characters, and ideally you won't encounter another army anyways. If you do RfsPers (unless Celedhring or Duran are there) and pray that an unlucky roll doesn't kill you. You can't afford to make subcommanders and in all likelihood your commanders will be required to lead the two armies in the field and the two armies that are at home recruiting.

Targets of opportunity:

A Woodmen blitz is possible, but I dislike this for several reasons: Woodmen armies can beat yours in a pitched battle, attacking the Woodmen allows the Sinda to build up in a city that's two hexes from Dol Guldur, and the Woodmen is usually pretty likely to drop anyway, making a blitz unnecessary. Furthermore, if you knock out those two cities in Lorien, it's unlikely that the Sinda will take them back for a long time. On the other hand, if you give the Sinda time to recruit, they'll send armies of 5000 heavy infantry out from Caras Galadon and make you regret your mistake. Attack 2514 as soon as someone learns "Reveal Population Center".

In the initial attack, beating up on all the little pop centers around Dol Guldur is advisable until you learn Reveal Pop Center. You've got plenty of targets (such as the Northern Gondor town at 2617). Take this stuff and keep it, ideally by threat; you'll have plenty of targets to burn later. The choice of targets for your Goblin-Gate army is a little more difficult. If you really feel the need to smash the Sinda hard, striking at Caras Galadon is probably a good idea, although you'll need to do some fancy footwork to avoid being caught by the Dwarves marching to Goblin-Gate. Otherwise, you could go to Rivendell and capture it. Stay there and recruit. Force the Dwarven main army to come after you. It'll slow down the attack on Dol Guldur for quite a bit. (Of course, this move is only feasible if Rhudaur is neutral or evil.)

The Character Situation:

Your other mages and commanders should be divvied up as you see appropriate. All of them have excellent challenge ranks and good artifacts, thus providing good challenge protection. The commanders will be required to lead armies, with the mages providing artillery support. All of your mages need to learn "Reveal Population Center" as soon as possible, in accordance with the military plan given above (remember, you can reveal the hidden Sinda population centers the turn you march on them, a really nasty move). The exception to this is Khamul. As he's your best character in agent and emissary ability, he can perform a variety of functions. We'll get to him shortly.

When you're creating your new character slots, your best bet is to go for pure emissaries. Have Khamul name pure emissaries until all of the slots are full (unless you're having Khamul perform special duties as an agent or emissary, in which case you'll need to name a pure commander to lead one of your recruitment armies; have Khamul do this as well). Don't ever name multi-class characters; you simply haven't the time to train them up to worthwhile levels.

You'll need the three or four extra emissaries immediately to create new population centers. you need extra resource production and you need more tax base. So send those guys off to the Misty Mountains and start putting down camps. Make sure you raise your taxes BEFORE you do this, otherwise the camps will disappear as soon as they're placed. Even so, your enormous tax rate ensures that you need to stick around and raise the loyalty of your new camps before you leave and probably even come back once in awhile. This is okay; the other reason those emissaries are in the mountains are to look for a dragon that you can recruit. You need those dragons even worse than you need the population centers. Furthermore, those same dragons will be increasing the loyalty of those camps, so you don't have to come by as often as you might. There's no really safe place to develop those camps, but the Misty Mountains hexes near Angmar and Gundabad or the Grey Mountains are about as safe as you can get. If you've decimated the Sinda as planned, the Misty Mountain hexes near the Fangorn are also a reasonably secure place, and they give you much better production (climate is actually decent).

Eventually you can come back when your emissaries are around 40-45 and upgrade the camps to villages, which will actually give you a larger tax base to draw upon. If you live long enough to get the emissaries to 50 or better, have them go on the offensive to steal isolated population centers in the region (maybe take back Goblin-Gate if the dwarves have failed to garrison it).

As for Khamul, what you do with him is really a matter of personal taste. No matter what he does, he'll be good at it. I recommend using him as an agent simply because he has such a high stealth number. Use him to harass the Woodmen, Sinda, or Dwarves. You can try laying in wait for the Dwarven army when it invariably shows up at Goblin-Gate. If your're with the army, you can challenge the subcommander (who's unlikely to be RfsPers) and assassinate the commander, a nasty double whammy. The chances of success may not be great, but who cares? You need to try something. Of course this strategy requires you to be doing a ScoChar on the turn you think the Dwarves will show up. If you're feeling cocky, reveal Khazad-dum and try and have Khamul sabotage the fortifications. It may get the Dwarves paranoid.

As a final note, don't bother wasting the orders to re-organize your artifacts the way you want them to. You don't really have the time.

The Diplomatic Situation:

The Dog Lord and Long rider will probably happily distract the Eothraim for you. They're probably champing at the bit to take his major towns from the very first turn. So it shouldn't take too much nudging to send them spiraling off that way. The Dark Lieutenants can help you out too if the Free aren't barreling through the Ithil Pass. You probably won't need to urge any of them at all; Eothraim towns are in the open and poorly fortified and given an even semi-competent assault he'll have his hands full just trying to hold what he's got.

The Easterlings can help you out slightly. If you can convince him to send his military might straight at the Eothraim, they'll probably fall quickly and then some of your allies can come to your aid (including him). And the sooner the better. The Easterlings usually go evil anyways, but the earlier you can convince him to do this, the better off you are (as are your position-mates).

You also need to talk to the Witch-king. It's essential to your short-term survival that he at least leave the Gundabad garrison on your side of the Misty Mountains. Ideally, it's out rampaging just like your own. If the Witch-king has decided to mass his cavalry together and march it east towards Buhr Fram, so much the better for you -- that Witch-King cavalry is one nasty force massed together and will keep Thranduil and Beoraborn with their hands full. However, if the Witch-king withdraws from Gundabad with the intent of reinforcing Eriador, you're dead meat. Point out to Er-Murazor that you two are the only Dark Servants for hundreds of miles and that you'll probably both live or die together -- for as soon as one falls, all the other Free in the area turn towards the other.

Rhudaur can march forces towards Goblin-Gate (and maybe even save the town for you), and once on the other side of the mountains he can join you and the Witch-king in glorious pillaging. The Rhudaur army is so huge, and his recruiting capacity is so mighty (free ability to hire armies), that he can probably commit a small slash-and-burn or threat force to the Anduin valleys and still have a huge army to spare to strike at Arnor. Rhudaur turning evil also grants you a large amount of indirect aid, as the Dwarves no longer have only you as a close target. A Rhudaur that's susceptible to bribing will probably be willing to go evil early for two to four artifacts. Get the Witch-king to help you out with the fee (he should probably be paying most of it, as Rhudaur helps him out more), and then pay him as soon as possible. The sooner Rhudaur goes evil, the better the chance you and the Witch-king have of surviving (and winning).

If the Cloud Lord can spare a few agents, reveal Khazad-dum and have his agents terrorize the place. As Moria is the Dwarves' only recruit center for leagues, racking up a body count here will paralyze him completely. Since he's easily your primary threat militarily, taking him out this way is a blessing. If the Cloud Lord can spare agents early, have them lurk in wait at Goblin-Gate; when the Dwarves invariably show up, an agent assault may knock out his army, an enormous boon to the hard- pressed Dragon Lord.

Finally, beg for monetary assistance from Mordor, if possible. You'll probably be running huge maintenance costs on your armies, and will be suffering badly from the population centers you lose. Point out to them that every turn you stay alive up in Mirkwood is another turn that the Woodmen, Sinda, and the Dwarves don't get to catch their breath. The longer you keep them occupied, the longer that Mordor has to overrun Gondor -- and the better the chance that eventually forces will come to bail you out. Your main problem with having Mordor send you money is their presumption that you'll die in a few turns, as Dragon Lords usually do. Assure Mordor of your competence, detail your cunning plans, and promise them you'll stay in the game. With any luck, some of them will give you enough cash to carry on the fight.

In Closing:

Even without the help of your alliance, however, you can still hold on for awhile. Even competent opposition will not be able to mass armies against Dol Guldur until turn 6 or so (c'mon, that damn thing is a keep). Utilizing scorched-earth tactics will eventually wear down the Free and hopefully demoralize them, especially if they continually fail to catch your armies.

No real strategy is given for this position beyond the early game. If you manage to survive that long, your position will always be in the unenviable position of constant warfare, assuming you've managed to hold onto Dol Guldur. Start capturing pop centers (as opposed to slash and burn) once you've knocked out two positions in the region. Since you never have a respite from the fighting, don't bother investing for characters that need to be built up (like mages or multiclassed characters), as you'll never have the time or orders to train them. Mordor may eventually get around to reinforcing you, assuming that the war went well down there; conversely, if it went extremely badly, you may be faced with Northern Gondor marching up the Anduin corridor in an attempt to retake its property. Always be on the offensive; you should be using your emissaries as an effective company by now (perhaps under Urgubul or Khamul), moving and taking towns in a single turn.

Best of luck, and may Sauron's hand guide you. You'll need it.