Hobbit Captain - Playtest

[Arwen]

The case for/againt unnamed Hobbit heroes is a tricky one. From a background perspective, the 5 named heroes present during the War of the Ring/Scouring of the Shire are plenty to represent the uprising then. However, anybody who wishes to field a thematic horde led by Bandobras is stuck with the same named heroes who really shouldn't be around yet. Anybody looking to add some Hobbits to a Arnor force faces the same issue.

From a gaming point of view, however, the current number of heroes allows a horribly cheap horde (with incredible archery and a daunting number of rocks for that one turn), its only saving grace being the cap implemented by the limited number of heroes.

Yes it is weird to need merry and pipping et al to be able to make a Bandobras shire army, so an unnamed hero is a good idea.
But if you make the captain worse, like removing his armour or making him have less attacks, then he has to cost less too. And that makes the real problem of potential hobbit spam worse. It's almost like they need to be expensive to be little speed bumps for the army's size. Like goblin captains, who are 35-50 points and make the army stay reasonable sized.

[Matt-Shadowlord]

It's a tricky one to balance, which is why the Hobbit Captain didn't make it in to the 1st edition of the Unreleased Profiles.

As I see it, the issue is that too-cheap heroes make the army potentially too large, and too-expensive heroes require them to be better than the named hobbits in order to justify their sticker price.

I have a proposed solution that might be able to satisfy both concerns:

Hobbit Civic Leader (Hobbit)
Points Value: 20

Move 4"
F S D A W C M W F
3/3+ 2 3 1 2 4 1 1 1

Wargear
Hand Weapon, Armour

Special Rules
Resistance to Magic
Throw Stones
Civic Leader Hobbit Civic Leaders make include a maximum of six warriors in their war band.

Options
• Bow …………………………………………….………………. 5pts
• Pony…………………………………………….………………. 5pts

Compared to the original profile, the defence dropped by 1 to 3, Attacks dropped by 1 to 1, Might by 1 to 1.
Points dropped from 28 to 20.

The result is 40 points worth of this generic hero are required to field 12 hobbits, giving a 'speed-bump' to army size similar to the Goblins, but without making generic heroes that overshadow the existing ones.

Win/Win?

[RIGG]

Just a thought but you could do either profile you've created (28 or 20 or whatever) to stop the hobbit spam whilst still giving them a captain option (and instead of 6 per warband rule). They could instead have a special rule that means their cost increases of +10 (or maybe just 5) points after the first one taken.
So for example, the first captain is 20 points, second is 30, third is 40 and so on. This still allows for theme Bandobras fun or to include just some regular captains whilst still putting a practical stop from spanning fifteen 20 point heroes with 200 odd troops at 1000 points.

[Matt-Shadowlord]

Just a thought but you could do either profile you've created (28 or 20 or whatever) to stop the hobbit spam whilst still giving them a captain option (and instead of 6 per warband rule). They could instead have a special rule that means their cost increases of +10 (or maybe just 5) points after the first one taken.
So for example, the first captain is 20 points, second is 30, third is 40 and so on. This still allows for theme Bandobras fun or to include just some regular captains whilst still putting a practical stop from spanning fifteen 20 point heroes with 200 odd troops at 1000 points.

It's an interesting idea, but I think that the smaller warband approach would work much better for two reasons; firstly, hobbit heroes would soon get so expensive noone would take them (if you take a 9th warband, your single attack hero sets you back 100 pts), and secondly what most people would end up doing when making a Bandobras themed army is take merry, pippin, etc as proxies for unnamed civil leaders in order to advoid the tax, then add a leader or two at the end.

You can't trust gamers not to try game the system

[Docccy]

Perfect! Have probably played with this profile more than any of the others. The hobbit captain does exactly what you would want a hobbit captain to do- allow more hobbits!
I think either strength 3 would be nice, or the bow being a tad cheaper (or both!). But at the end of the day, it's not the captains that are winning you games when you play a Shire force.