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SBG's fundamental mechanics are very elegant. But I think what makes the game really come to life is Heroes. I like the warband system a lot but there is still some pull to quantity over quality even with the required 1+:12 ratio of Heroes to Warriors.

So I am brainstorming a structure to get more Heroes, especially high cost Heroes, into play. I'd also like this structure to encourage players to take more Monsters and higher-cost upgrades. Keep in mind that this system would be in addition to the existing warband comp.

My initial thought was something like WHFB's percentage comp. But I think a threshold system would actually work better. Most simply, a list can include X points of Warriors out of total (X+Y) army points. A more detailed take would be:

X points can be spent on (a) Warriors (including Monsters), (b) 1- and 2-point upgrades for Warriors, and (c) mount upgrades for Warriors

Y points can be spent on (a) Heroes and upgrading Heroes, (b) Monsters, (c) upgrades for Warriors not covered above

Additionally,
- any unspent X points become Y points
- a list can only contain as many unnamed Heroes as there are warbands comprising 6 or more Warriors

Using this system, we can establish some "brackets" of game size. The X value is most indicative of model count so we start there:

- Small: 200
- Medium: 300
- Large: 400

Put another way, you could take up to 2, 3, or 4 full warbands's worth of middle-of-the-road (e.g., Rohan) Warriors at each successive bracket. Advantageously, there is a lot of room for discretion when it comes to the corresponding Y values. But given the object of this system, I think the Y value should be no less than the X value. Otherwise, the standard warband comp would (mostly) suffice.

What do you think? Any glaringly exploitable or counterintuitive points?

By way of demonstration, let's look at two Moria lists; one written with standard warband comp and the other using the threshold structure. For convenience, I will use a "small battle" example at 300 points standard and 200/200 points threshold.

Standard

Goblin Shaman
6x Shield
6x Spear

Goblin Captain
6x Shield
6x Spear

Goblin Captain w/Orc Bow
12x Orc Bow

Threshold

Durbûrz
6x Shield
5x Spear
Cave Troll

Goblin Shaman
6x Shield
6x Spear

Goblin Captain w/Orc Bow
12x Orc Bow

The first thing to note is the threshold system does not restrict players from bringing a "hard" Warrior-heavy list. The two lists have the same model count. The big difference is how flavorful the threshold list is compared to the standard one. The threshold system makes room to take a unique Hero over an unnamed stock Hero. And Durbûrz does not just bring a characterful special rule that works well with the list (12" Stand Fast radius) but also one extra point of Might, Fate, and Will over his boring counterpart from the standard list.

Even more tellingly, the threshold system also makes room to trade out a measly goblin spear (or sword or bow, your call) for a Cave Troll. At this point, you might say - this is not a fair comparison, of course a 400-point list has more room for cool stuff than a 300-point list. Well, think of it this way: that Cave Troll is worth 16 goblins with a 1-point upgrade. You would need another Hero to lead this additional warband, which can only include 12 warriors anyway. And if you switched Durbûrz back out for yet another generic captain you have the points for this under the standard system:

Goblin Shaman
4x Shield
4x Spear
4x Orc Bow

Goblin Shaman
4x Shield
4x Spear
4x Orc Bow

Goblin Captain
4x Shield
4x Spear
4x Orc Bow

Goblin Captain
4x Shield
4x Spear
4x Orc Bow

In other words, Durbûrz and the Cave Troll are competing with a full warband. Now, I am not trying to launch a debate about how good Cave Trolls are, or something similar. (In case it isn't obvious none of these example lists are written to be ruthlessly competitive; e.g.,I have read competitive players advise against "wasting" points on shields for goblins.) The bigger issue is, ticking up from 300 to 400 points under the standard system allows a pretty big shift in potential model count, a potential 13-model jump. Knowing that every model, no matter how technically weak, has at least a chance of wounding even the strongest models in SBG, I can conclude that bringing more models is generally better than bringing less (not to mention the goblins' Courage issues in this specific case). This is where the "Cold War" mentality of list writing comes in and in SBG the result seems to be, carrying on the metaphor, "Warrior proliferation."

In short, the threshold system is about managing Warrior proliferation. This is why it makes more sense to compare a 300-point standard list against a 200/200-point threshold list. (Again, model count is exactly the same in the 300- and 200/200-point examples above.) And that makes sense considering that Heroes are often nearly an order of magnitude more expensive than Warriors. Notice that the limiting factor in the standard system is points whereas the limiting factor in the threshold system becomes spots in the warband due to the existing 12-Warrior limit. The Cave Troll is not competing against 80 points' worth of goblins in threshold system. Rather, the Cave Troll is competing with a single goblin, i.e., a spot in a warband. This radically reframes list building without disturbing the underlying structure of the rules or the way options are balanced.

I think of it like this: in SBG, Warriors are the cake ... but Heroes and Monsters and cool upgrades are the icing. My suggestion is NOT to make sure there is always some proportion of icing to cake (percentage comp) or worse to reduce the amount of cake. You can have as much cake as you want! The point is, you shouldn't have to always second guess icing in favor of more cake.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not really seeing what this adds. If you want to take mid or even top level heroes at 300 points or so, there's nothing to stop you, and equally, if you want to take as many warriors as you can, take the cheapest heroes. There is the argument that X points of Warriors is better than the same points in a hero, but that only really becomes an issue when talking competitively, and from what I've seen, LotR is at the opposite end of the scale to, say, X-wing, in that it's got a large casual/narrative player base and then a few that play competitively, and even fewer that go to the extent of fine-tuning lists or builds (please note that this is not a condemnation of competitive play!).

The other thing to bear in mind is that for a lot of people, myself included, the Warband limit is already bordering on 'too many heroes', Back in the old days, I tended to take 1 Hero per 15-30 warriors depending on the army (Gondor I tended to play hero-heavy with Boromir and Faramir most of the time, Mordor would be hordetastic with the odd Nazgul or Captain), the idea being that they really would be a centrepiece to the force. Boromir and 30 Warriors of Minas Tirith made Boromir a real focus point, now with the 1:12 requirement I've got to have a selection of lesser characters (and I like to stick to named characters for Good armies, so I don't like having to run Gondor Captains or whatever). If I recall, my last Gondor list had Boromir, Faramir, Cirion, Madril, Denethor and a Knight of the White Tower at around 750 points, in the old days, at 750 I'd probably have only taken two or three of those.

Really, though, I don't think the current system is 'broke' enough to warrant a 'fix', I'm not seeing that it's overly limiting, definitely not moreso than mandatory hero-only points that have to be spent on named characters just to meed the threshold for some armies (which for the likes of Mordor, Easterling and Goblin Armies, I'd be really hesitant to do, I like my evil hordes faceless! ).

I'm more of the opinion right now that 12 warriors is already slightly too limiting. I'd be more a fan of extending warbands to 15 models, but making certain more generic hero models (say for example, Orc Drummers or Dunedain) cheaper troop upgrades as opposed to 'heroes' in their own right.

@Paradigm - I hope you don't mind if I respond by way of boiling your post down to two questions:

(1) does "Warrior proliferation" exist?

A rule set often comes with "plugs" that indicate where there are "holes." For example, we know that a bow exploit arises from the basic mechanics of SBG because there is a bow limit to fix it. In the same way, we know the rules create a bias toward taking Warriors (in addition to knowing it as a matter of logic, as described above). The "plug" mechanic in Legions of Middle-earth was a model count cap. The 400-point Moria list above would be illegal using Legions, which imposes a 50-model ceiling on games of up to 500 points. Note that the Moria list is still 2 models over even at only 400 points. So much for horde armies! Importantly, Legions only requires you to bring one Hero, your Leader. The mechanic was clearly designed to make models compete for spots in the army rather than just on a point-for-point basis. Unfortunately, this only really works when it comes to armies with the least expensive Warriors, i.e., those most likely to bump into the cap. It doesn't really address the skew to taking more Warriors otherwise, especially considering that lists with expensive Warriors tend to also have expensive Heroes.

The warband system from the source books is therefore a fix of a fix. It has two goals: (1) get more Heroes on the table and (2) ditch the bias against hordes in Legions. Did it succeed? Certainly yes on (2). But only technically yes on (1). The warband system abandons the previous concept of forcing models to compete for spots in the army in favor of competing on the basis of points. In effect, this restriction drives up the comp value of low-cost Heroes and drives down the comp value of high-cost Heroes, Monsters, and high-cost upgrades. This is hard to see if one conflates points value and comp value, a very common mistake. Points are not actually merely the liquid value of a model's attributes; how many points a model costs is actually itself an attribute. A Cave Troll is not really the same as 80 points' worth of goblins. In SBG, the goblins are generally more valuable. To curb this trend, the warband system imposes a "Warrior tax" that players must pay in Heroes. Naturally seeking to minimize the tax, players turn to low-cost Heroes.

Obviously, I don't object to this "tax." I like that it helps limit the amount of Warriors you can take in a list. What I don't like is how it stunts the comp value of certain flavorful options. My idea is not to "hike the tax" to further restrict how many Warriors you can take (like with a percentage comp system). Rather, I want to subsidize your ability to take options that the warband system devalues. Why? Because to me, LotR/Hobbit as a theme is about characters and SBG as a game is about Heroes, specifically the Might/Will/Fate economy but also special rules.

(2) does this only matter for "competitive" play?

This is a potential boondoggle so let's start from the basics. SBG was designed with a points system. I know many folks tend to take this for granted, as if every miniatures game must incorporate points (witness the reaction against Age of Sigmar). But actually it is a particular mechanic that a designer chooses in order to accomplish a particular goal. In the case of points-based list building, that goal is fairness for the sake of pick up play. Pick up play is inherently competitive because the primary goal is to find out who wins. That's precisely why an objective standard of fairness is so important to pick up gaming. Sure, winning is not the only goal; nor does it imply ruthlessly winning "at any cost." (It's easier to understand competitive gaming in contrast to scenario gaming, where the primary goal is to find out what happens in narrative terms.) Bottom line, SBG is designed to be a competitive game in this broad sense. And building an "efficient list" is part of that design, whether or not a given player cares about it.

@Ketara - It sounds like you would like Legions of Middle-earth style army building. And Paradigm is definitely pining for that system. The trouble is, even considering that the existing army building mechanic skews away from Heroes as a matter of efficiency, the rest of the game is designed for Heroes. Crucially, the game is played on a per-model basis. As if that wasn't enough, so much of gameplay is tied to managing M/W/F. Consider that in no iteration of the game (unless War Hosts, which I do not have) can one play an all-Warrior army.

I can certainly see where you're coming from now, thanks for the detailed response!

I guess one of the reasons I still disagree is actually the same reason you want more heroes; the effect they have on the game is both significant and very interesting as a mechanic. The impact of heroes and their M, W and F (to a lesser extent, Fate is really just an extra 0.5 of a Wound) is one crucial to gameplay tactics and a major part of what makes LotR such a great ruleset.

Because of that, though, and the background material, I want heroes to be special; when I first started playing, I'd be building armies at, say, 500 points that had maybe 4-6 Might across a couple of heroes, and that very limited supply meant the resource management aspect was really important? Now, the same size game tends to have double or more Might in play, which to me reduces the importance of it, or at least how you think about using it. The decision to use 1MP to win a tied duel or make a Heroic Move has a lot more weight to it in my eyes when it's a quarter of your overall reserve rather than a twelfth.

Will and Fate are less affected as they tend to be either only used for a specific thing (Will to cast for magic users, to resist or pass courage for anyone else) or used by default (Fate), but I definitely felt Might got less precious with the Warband rules.

Finally on that part, I am of the opinion that with building armies, you should generally, and where a setting allows, be able to take something because you want to, not because you have to. Obviously there are situations and settings where this can't work (I'm currently designing a Battlestar Galactica ruleset in which the amount of fighter squadrons you can take directly correlates with what carriers you have, as they need somewhere to launch/operate from), but in LotR I see no reason for there to be minimum requirements except from a purely arbitrary (though perhaps necessary, depending on how you look at it) mechanical perspective.


On a more practical noteI do see that equal points of warriors will beat a hero nine times out of 10, but that is perhaps a misleading comparison as you're leaving out the role of a hero as a force multiplier which is mostly what they're for. A Gondor Captain might not beat 60 points of Orc Warriors, but spending his Might to call a Heroic Move may well win you the game... So perhaps a fairer comparison might be a hero and X-hero's cost points of warriors vs X points of just warriors, and in that situation, I think you'd find the hero 'worth' their points.

It may not achieve 100% equal efficiency, but that's never going to happen in any game using dice, I'm just not convinced that forcing players to take more of them really 'fixes' the perceived issue.

By the way, this is an interesting concept/discussion, so please don't take what I'm saying as an attempt just to shoot down your idea!

A point of order on fair comparisons - I have been comparing Goblins to Cave Trolls which I think is fair because there is no Might variable to consider. (Briefly, Might may have been less precious in the source book era but the Hobbit revision has expanded the Might menu; another indication that this game is about Heroes.) And when we're talking about the warband system, the relevant comparison is not between Warriors and Heroes; it's between low-cost Heroes and high-cost Heroes. Again, that is a fair comparison because both (generally) bring Might. Under the warband system, Warrior proliferation is a matter of stunting the value of high-cost Heroes rather than excluding Heroes altogether.

This brings me to your point (I'm paraphrasing of course) that less restrictive is preferable to more restrictive list building. Generally, I agree - hence this thread (see below). But I disagree regarding Legions versus the warband system because, although it technically imposed less overall, the Legions system imposed unevenly across factions. The key distinction between Legions and the warband system is therefore not really degree of restriction but fairness of restriction. Okay - but I don't want to derail here with ideas about how to fix that problem with Legions. Fixing that was just one of the goals of the warband system. The other and higher priority goal was obviously to get more Heroes on the table, which was tackling the same problem of Warrior proliferation that Legions tried to solve but from a different perspective (capping warbands led by Heroes rather than an armywide cap).

And that, or rather not just that but including that, is also my goal. And my threshold system is actually no more restrictive than the existing warband system. The 300-point versus 200/200-point comparison demonstrates as much: they have the same number of Warriors. The threshold system is not about forcing players to take less Warriors (or necessarily more Heroes) than they would using the warband system. What I am trying to do is encourage players to take higher-cost Heroes, Monsters, and high-cost upgrades. The warbands system already limits you to X warriors at a certain amount of points. That limit pre-exists and is not disturbed by my threshold system. What I'm doing is saying, here is a way of bringing cool expensive options into games without further limiting the players' ability to bring Warriors.

SBG as it currently stands is the result of long years of experience. Let's be clear that the vector of its development, the fruit of all these years of play and reflection, has been toward featuring Heroes more and more prominently. I think this is the right call given the overall design of the system. I can appreciate that others would prefer the reverse - and I would certainly participate in a thread about ways to accomplish that. Ketara suggested capping warbands at 15 rather than 12; judgedoug suggested elsewhere that warband size could be tied to the heroic attributes (e.g., 6 Warriors per each of the Hero's Might points). That's an interesting topic of its own. But the question in this thread is not whether SBG should emphasize Heroes. The question here is, given that the design direction of SBG already emphasizes Heroes, what do people think about my suggestion for bringing higher-cost Heroes, Monsters, and high-cost upgrades into games of any size?