Wan Shi Tong wrote:
It also seems to me like the heyday of these guys was the time of lessor heroes, banners, and shades. When they were basically demi-heroes like the half-trolls. In a time of big heroes with high courage, that are often banners themselves, and with the shade being contained to a single list they don't offer a lot of the same direct benefits they used to. I'd wager they still would be useful in Lorien armies to help deal with low courage monsters by keeping them out of combat or for just generally causing problems. Even there, however, I've seen more people just going for just plain numbers or palace guard over sentinels.
Especially now that a lot of monsters have had their courage boosted, I keep looking at the Sentinels' profiles to see when I would use them. They are a balanced unit, they're powerful, but I wonder if they're too situational.
Salattu wrote:
Do elves have anything that would reduce the courage of enemies similar to nazguls?
Not in the Lothlorien army, but Galadriel Lady of Light has a -1 courage aura.
Salattu wrote:
Ok, i will open up a new unit to discuss. But please feel free to continue about the sentinel too...
So, the problem is that the dragon is as expensive as has always been, while all other heroes are boosted such as aragorn. So, is there any strategy to make the dragon useful? Its fight value is ok, but not miracleous in the new meta of heroic fights. But, many strong characters have now their fate points lowered. Thorin, and many other formidable heroes have now a low fate. So, could this open up a possibility to try the breathe fire ability?
I know peoples will first say "no, awful". But, when we think about this longer, this breathe fire ability would make the dragon a very scary thing for some enemy units, and force them to spread army and keep valuables away. So, if u could have enough ranged units and a dragon, could u abuse this fear somehow? Also, killing an ent, a troll, a fellbeast, thorin, boromir, etc with 1 fire blow would be op. It would make the dragon more vulnerable, but it might also allow him to have a new strategical value instead of being a flying troll chieftain... now it would be more like a ranged assassin, and after eliminating core enemies, it could proceed into melee.
So, supposedly fire breathe would work best with an army who doesnt want to melee but instead archers?
I've been thinking about fire breathing Dragons for a while. First, the Dragon itself is terrific in combat. Lots of heroes don't have heroic strike, so the Dragon is often the highest fight value on the table. Monstrous Charge means it's getting 5 attacks on the charge and double that to wound, which is scary.
The fear with Breathe Fire is that you're spending Will points, which you might need for courage tests. I've been thinking of ways to make that less of a problem. What I can think of is that the Dragon isn't your leader: whether it's allied in or (if you're playing pure Moria) you also have the Balrog or Durburz, one of them would be your leader and losing the Dragon isn't as painful. You have to save your Might, if you're burning Will then you still need something to help with courage tests. Still, maybe you don't use it at all, you just fly around and threaten, throw the Dragon's weight in combat, then use it later in the game to devastate a line or something. It's a flexible hero with tonnes of damage potential that I've been meaning to try for some time.