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War of the Ring Champ
Shadow Combat Cards - Strategy and Analysis
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Hi everyone, my name is Ira Fey and I wanted to give you a little bit of a strategy overview for the Shadow Combat cards. And hopefully I'll do a separate video with the Free People's Combat cards, but for now we'll focus on the Shadow Combat cards. And I think one of the most consistent ways of comparing them might be to look at the number of extra hits that you can expect to get if you play this card in combat. And in general, I will assume that you will be attacking with at least five combat strength and at least five leadership, or close to five leadership.
So the numbers vary depending on what combat cards the Free People play and depending on exactly what your leadership situation is. But in general, these numbers are going to roughly be accurate. It'll give you some sense of the relative value of these cards. So I'll start off with Devilry of Orthanc. It comes on quite a few cards. And also, by the way, I've created a summary spreadsheet and I'll share that. That'll be in the link below in the description. And I'll also include links to the probability program that I used when generating some of these numbers. So okay, Devilry of Orthanc, it's a fairly straightforward effect, plus one to your combat dice.
And that's quite similar to Muma Kill. That's also plus one to your combat dice, but with a possibility of one bonus hit. And I'll also mention that that's pretty similar to the effect on the character card Cruelest Death, which is 4-5-2 leadership, get plus one on your combat roll. So all of those are pretty similar effect. I would say rough ballpark,. 7 extra hits from Devilry of Orthanc and maybe a full one extra hit from Muma Kill, given maybe a one third chance that you're going to get an extra hit out of it, depending on what the Free People roll, depending on what you roll, depending on what combat cards they play, all of that.
There's certainly a lot of it depends, but in general, think of these as almost one hit and Muma Kill is a little better, probably a full hit. Okay, We Come to Kill is quite potentially one of the more powerful combat cards. It lets you, after casualties are taken, it lets you roll up to five dice and hit on fives. So the most common or often most effective place to use it is when attacking Helm's Deep, because you can pretty easily get five elites or even six elites in Orthanc and then you move on to Helm's Deep and can often get a good number of extra dice out of this card.
So what I would say is roughly, if you figure you have three elites, that's roughly one extra hit. If you manage to have five elites, that's 1. 7 extra hits. All right, Swarm of Bats and the matching one, they're terrible on the character side. I'll show that. They're terrible. So this is 4-fit-1 leadership, get one on your leader reroll. Those give you roughly, again, 0. 7 extra hits, but obviously it relies on you having full leadership. If you don't have a full leadership contingent, then these are going to necessarily be worse. The other thing to note about Swarm of Bats, obviously you only get the leadership benefit if the free people doesn't play a card.
Now in general, I like to save Swarm of Bats for the canceling effect, particularly when dealing with scouts. So when you're attacking into Old Forest Road, the free people might want to use scouts to get into Woodland Realm. If you're attacking Forge of Isen, the free people might want to play scouts to get into Helm's Deep. So there are often times when it's useful to save Swarm of Bats and you're very happy to cancel the combat card. But this one is probably the most variable. You only have two in the whole deck, so use them wisely. All right, Great Host is one hit, but it's an automatic one hit.
Probably an automatic one hit if you have a large enough army. So that is quite significant because it's automatic. Onslaught is maybe one hit on average if you spend two units, or potentially two hits if you spend four units. So just to remind you how this card works, this card is after casualties, you can choose to spend up to four, inflict up to four casualties, four hits on your own units in exchange for dealing, rolling and hitting on a four or higher. So it's basically half a hit. You spend one hit to yourself and do half a hit to your opponent with some chance of course of getting that or not.
But on average, that's the way to think about it. So I would say this card is generally not the best exchange rate of damage to yourself to damage the opponent, but it lets you end a battle more quickly, hopefully in your favor. And it also circumvents quite a few free people defensive cards. So let's just think about some examples. So when you're attacking, if you have 10 regulars attacking into a siege, you don't have any elites to press the attack. So this is a good way of basically using your superior numbers, a bunch of regulars, to be able to inflict more casualties.
So if you have a bunch of regulars and not very many elites so that you can't press, this is a good way of taking advantage of that. Another situation where this onslaught can be useful is if you have, let's say you think, okay, one elite, you're going to get to press once and then on the second round of combat, you know you're going to be left with maybe five units or four units depending on how many hits the free people's managed to inflict against you. You can play onslaught in round two, knowing that's going to be the last round of the battle, and spend yourself all the way down to a single regular unit.
And knowing that you're never going to be able to continue the attack, but you might be able to take out the last defenders with that sort of onslaught. So those are probably the two most common ways of playing it for actual combat effect. And you know, not the best exchange rate, but sometimes can be useful. In terms of what it can circumvent for the free people's player, they might have something like daylight, so it's reducing the number of dice you're rolling. They might have something like heroic death or shield wall, which will soak up hits. Onslaught circumvents those sort of effects. It just inflicts the damage. So there are some times when this is useful.
In terms of other ones, we can look at deadly strife, that's plus two to you and to them. Desperate battle is plus one to you and to them. In general, when you are playing shadow, you are typically rolling more dice because you have higher number of combat strength and higher number of leadership. So in general, even though on the surface this seems fair, you're just adding plus one to everybody, you usually have more troops and you usually have more leadership. So assuming that these are doing things like desperate battle gives you an extra, I think roughly 1. 2, I calculated about 1.
2 extra hits at the cost of doing one to yourself, assuming the free people has a reasonable size. Defensive army, if they have a small defensive army, you're really not even inflicting much extra damage back at yourself. Deadly strife does 2. 2 extra hits on average, assuming a full contingent of five combat strength and five leadership at the cost of maybe two damage to yourself, again assuming the free people have a reasonably large army. So deadly strife is certainly the card that's going to be able to inflict a lot of extra damage. Of course you are taking some extra damage back at yourself. All right, another card to talk about in terms of inflicting damage to yourself, relentless assault.
This is you spend up to two hits to yourself before combat and then you get that much bonus on your combat roll. So this is, you know, I'm always a little wary of using this before the combat roll, but there are times when it can be particularly useful. In terms of calculation of damage, I calculated this does an extra 1. 4 hits against the free people player and particularly in situations where you're low on leadership and so you're not going to get a good leader reroll out of it.
This is a really effective card, one of the one of the more effective cards because though you are taking two damage upfront, you are not relying on a leadership reroll to get the full benefit. So something like deadly strife, yes, it gives you plus two, but also it relies on you getting to do that leader reroll. If you don't have the leader reroll, deadly strife is still going to dish out more damage but, but relentless assault sort of accomplishes that without giving the bonus. It's taking the two upfront. So again, relentless assault and deadly strife, these are, these are similar sort of effects where you're inflicting effectively, if like inflicting damage on yourself.
But the thing that I wanted to call out for relentless assault is if you're fighting Gandalf. So if Gandalf the white is in the battle and he's shining and you don't have any leadership or you happen to be in a situation where you just don't have leadership, relentless assault can be good. All right, let's look at the character cards. So notice so far, all of these strategy cards and combat effects only give you offensive abilities. So these are all things that inflict more damage on the free people or inflict more damage to the free people at the expense of doing damage to yourself.
So that's usually fine for shadow, but sometimes you're going to want to do defensive things. So in terms of defensive things, let's look at foul stench. So foul stench cancels the free people's leader reroll. That's going to save you, you know, maybe depends obviously how much leadership they have. You know, I calculated that if you figure two leadership, that's about 0. 7 hits that it'll save yourself. You know, that's nice. Words of power is interesting. Let's talk about that for a second. So words of power is cancel a companion. This is one of the few cards that can be used both offensively and defensively.
So it can be used defensively if the free people player has a companion in the battle. So you're going to reduce their leadership and let's say they're at something like four units plus Aragorn. So they're going to get to roll five dice because Aragorn is the captain of the West and they're going to get two leadership out of Aragorn. If you use words of power on Aragorn in a situation like that, now they're only rolling four dice and they lose two leadership. And in that situation, it saves you about one hit. That's the most effective defensive way that you're going to use words of power.
Many times there's not going to be a companion in battle and you're not going to be able to use it defensively at all. Now you can often use it offensively against Gandalf where Gandalf the White is shining and he's canceling all of your Nazgul leadership. You can play words of power, cancel Gandalf for that round and then you get your full five rerolls with your leadership. In that case, offensively you're looking at, I calculated. 7, about. 7 extra hits. So you know, not bad if you have a full leadership contingent. And you're going from zero to five.
Obviously if you have something like the Mouth of Sauron and you're just getting three extra leadership, you're going from two to five, that's not as big of an offensive benefit. But words of power can be used both offensively and defensively. Alright another good defensive card, basically the best defensive card is Dread and Despair. So Dread and Despair says if the Nazgul leadership is one or more you get to forfeit as much Nazgul leadership as you want, one or more. Sorry, not as much. You have to forfeit one. If you play the card you have to forfeit at least one. One or more leadership, Nazgul leadership specifically, so it doesn't work with wargs or anything like that.
One or more Nazgul leadership and reduce the combat strength of the free people's players. So if normally they'd be rolling five dice you can forfeit four leadership and then they only roll one die. So in that situation you're saving yourself 1. 8 hits. So that can be really significant. And I am assuming situations where the free people's player is hitting you on fives. So if you're in a situation where they're attacking you into a siege, they're going for a free people's military victory and you're in a siege then it doesn't save you quite as much because that number assumes they're hitting on fives.
But who knows they might be playing combat effects that let them hit on fives anyway. So obviously it would be great if you're able to have quite a lot of leadership in this situation. You know if you have nine leadership and you're forfeiting four it doesn't even hurt you at all to play this card. But even so forfeiting four leadership it just doesn't reduce the amount of hits you get by that much. So this is by far the best defensive card. Black Breath I considered defensive because if you kill a leader and then in the future there are other rounds of combat it will reduce the number of hits that you take but it's a very minor effect.
This is almost a nothing combat effect. You know it is possible to hit a companion. There are some situations where if you're on the defensive particularly something like they're going for a free people's military victory they're attacking into you with companions you you know are hitting on fives you might be able to hit you might be able to hit a companion that can that can make more of a difference. But in general I would say this is the one of the weakest combat card effects Black Breath. All right we've already talked about Devilry of Orthanc. We've talked about cruel is that they are terrible. Let's talk about Durian's Bane.
So there is a single copy of Durian's Bane in your deck and you can only use it within two regions of Moria that does not. You can't ignore mountains you must keep in mind that mountains matter. So the most common location for this by far is Lorian or potentially if you're defending a free people's military attempt then you could use it in Moria to defend Moria. But this is a very powerful effect. It's one of the most powerful combat effects because it does on average one point five hits before combat. So if you're attacking into Lorian you can. It's actually a little bit of a defensive effect.
Also it's mostly offensive but it's also defensive because if you manage to take out some units before the combat roll then you will be taking fewer hits in return in the regular combat roll. So Durian's Bane very powerful against Lorian. Also obviously the combat effect I mean the card effect is powerful too. You get to get to draw a card a tile or effectively make them take one step longer if they want to go around Moria. So this is definitely keep in mind Durian's Bane doesn't require any sort of anything. You can just you can just use it.
I mean obviously it requires a location against Lorian but in terms of having certain units in your army or having big leadership or anything like that you can just you can always use it. All right the last card combat effect is one for the Dark Lord. This is there are four of them. Obviously these are the red tiles in general you're going to want to play them as a red tile and it'll be very rare that you'll have the opportunity to use it as a combat effect.
So obviously it is possible if you go and try and attack Rivendell and the fellowship is still there or if the free people player is making some sort of military victory attempt they might place the fellowship into Moria. It's I've even seen possibly placing the fellowship into Mount Gundabad if they made some progress. So if you anticipate a free people's military attempt coming you might consider saving these but obviously it's a strong effect but very rare that you'll be able to use it and often better to play as a event card if you think the fellowship has any chance of making it to Mordor then you know that's a great card effect.
All right I hope this has been a helpful overview. Let me show you some some statistics here. So going to this page so this is a summary basically of what I what I just discussed going through the cards. I'll post a link to this page I'll make it available to everyone post a link to this page and obviously some of these numbers are you know assume some things but hopefully it's still useful. Another thing that I'll post a link to is this website any dice and if you have this particular function then you can calculate a bunch of different combat effects.
So I will include a link to this you can play around with it and compare and see you know not just averages but you know well what's the distribution right. It's not it's not just a straight up average it's OK distribution over possible anywhere between you know zero and five hits. So hopefully that will be useful to people. And then the last thing that I wanted to show is this is on page 20 of the FAQ of the sorry the unofficial FAQ the war of the ring almanac and this is an incredibly useful document it has a huge number of rulings and and references.
I strongly recommend every war of the ring player should have access to this document I will include that in a link as well in this video below. But I just wanted to show the distribution of combat cards. So you know only two swarm of bats three words of power only a single Durn's Bane. So these are the distributions and frequencies I thought that might be useful. So I hope this video has been helpful if you have any questions or comments if there are particularly car particular cards you like or don't like then please share in the comments below and I'll try and do a video on the free people's cards as well. Thanks so much. .
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