Slowing Down the Fellowship

If you neglect to Hunt for the Fellowship you will undoubtedly lose, as Frodo strolls up the slopes of Mount Doom and destroys your precious Ring forever. However, you cannot focus entirely on the Hunt either, since this will give the Fellowship many places to rest in and the possibility to stay there long enough to heal those Corruption points you have forced upon them. What you must do is go on the offensive on the military side of the game at the same time as you make sure the Fellowship is moving at a rate you can compete with. There is nothing as frustrating as taking that tenth victory point only to see Frodo destroy the One Ring later in the same turn and robbing you of your victory.

To master this balance of military campaigning and hunting for the Fellowship you must first acknowledge the fact that the Fellowship will move towards Mordor, often at a pace too fast for your liking, and that the only thing you can do about it is to try to slow it down. How then, do you ask, do I slow them down?

There are two direct ways and two indirect ways to interfere with the Fellowship's plans of reaching Mordor unscathed. Let us focus on the direct ways first.

By placing Hunt dice in the Hunt box in the Hunt Allocation Phase you clearly state how interested you are in hunting the Fellowship, since each die will give you one attempt at interfering with the Fellowship each time they move in the coming game turn. The more dice in the Hunt Box, the greater the chance of you actually revealing or even damaging the Fellowship. Unfortunately, your desire to find the One Ring is so strong that when you then roll your reminding Action dice you might end up with even more dice in the Hunt Box. By placing many dice in the Hunt Box the Free Peoples player will face the risk of damaging the Fellowship if he moves them more than once that turn. Since your Hunt will only be successful on sixes the first time the Fellowship moves, the Free Peoples player will probably always risk moving them once. The fewer dice that end up in the Hunt Box, the more times the Free Peoples player will risk moving the Fellowship. So how should you manage your Hunt dice?

In the beginning of the game, when you only have seven Action dice, you might want to put two dice in the Hunt Box and roll the other five. Statistically you should end up with two or three dice in the Hunt Box. As you gain more Action dice through the mustering of your Minions, you might want to either increase the number of Hunt dice in the Hunt Box, if the Fellowship has gotten far across Middle Earth, or reduce the number of Hunt dice in the Hunt Box to try to gain a greater superiority on the fields of battle. The bottom line is that the more dice you allocate to the Hunt, the greater your chance of inflicting casualties or adding Corruption to the Ringbearer.

The Hunt alone is a rather risky way of damaging the Fellowship, since you can only increase the odds of a successful Hunt. If the Free Peoples player doesn't move the Fellowship, your dice are only doing half their job - that is, they slow the Fellowship down but they don't hurt them. Luckily there is a way for you to directly hurt the Ringbearers - and this brings us to the second direct way of interfering with the Fellowship: the Event Cards. At your disposal are Event Cards that will inflict casualties (Foul Thing from the Deep and Lure of the Ring), force your opponent to separate Companions (Breaking of the Fellowship), allow you to Hunt the Fellowship (Orc patrol and The Nazgūl Strike), increase your chances of successfully rolling for the Hunt (Flocks of Crebain), reveal the Fellwoship (Nazgūl Search), force Corruption upon the Ringbearer (Candles of Corpses, Isildur's Bane, Lure of the Ring and Morgul Wound) and even allow you to move the Fellowship's last known position (Cruel Weather).

These Event Cards can in the best of circumstances win you the game, and in the worst of circumstances hardy put a dent in Frodo's Mithril Coat. The main thing is to play the cards at the right time. Combining the powers of the Nazgūl Search and the Breaking of the Fellowship at a time where the Free Peoples player is unable to hide the Fellowship in between can be very decisive if played early on, while the damaging cards are great to play when the Fellowship is in Mordor and unable to rest and heal any Corruption suffered.

The Cruel Weather card can be especially nasty if played just as the Fellowship is able to enter Mordor in the Fellowship phase of the following turn. By increasing the distance to Mordor for the Fellowship, you can literally buy yourself a whole extra turn to gain those ten victory points.

By playing Cruel Weather when the Free People is unable to move the Fellowship again this turn, the Shadow player can move the Fellowship miniature one Region away from Mordor and thus force the Free Peoples player to use the next turn to get the Fellowship into Mordor instead of Declaring in Minas Morgul in the Fellowship Phase as planned.

Having discussed the direct approaches, I will now turn to the indirect ones.

Slowing down the Fellowship is not always easy, but there is a way to force the Free Peoples player to move them more often and less carefully than s/he would like to, and that is by pressing your opponent in the military aspect of the game. Nothing makes your opponent forget all dangers and forces him/her to move the Fellowship at any cost as the sight of your armies raking in those victory points one after another. By devoting the majority of your dice to the action phase (only putting one or two dice in the Hunt Box) you will (with average dice rolls) completely dominate the military side of the game, and if this is successful the Strongholds of the Free Peoples will fall to your might one by one.

This strategy, often called the Shadow Blitz, can be devastating for the Free Peoples, since they are forced to move the Fellowship many times during each turn and with few dice in the Hunt Box you will still have a good chance of rolling successfully for the Hunt when you only need 5+ or 4+ to hit.

This strategy has its drawbacks. First, if you fail in your military Blitz early on, by not taking a Stronghold with the first army sent to do the job, you have given the Fellowship a good push in getting to Mordor, since in the first few turns the Free Peoples player probably has moved the Fellowship at a more normal pace. Secondly, your Blitz might fail later, for the same reason as mentioned above, and give the Fellowship time to heal enough to enter Mordor with low Corruption. Thirdly, the Blitz might fail due to you not rolling successfully for the Hunt, even if you statistically should be successful since the Fellowship is moving many times per turn. The final drawback is that, with all your units and Nazgūl dedicated to bringing down the Strongholds of the Free Peoples, they cannot also be used to Hunt for the Fellowship, which brings me to the final tactic to try and slow the Fellowship: the re-rolls.

Getting as many re-rolls as possible is perhaps the most overlooked strategy when it comes to winning the game. With a single Character Die you can pave the road in front of the Fellowship with Nazgūl to get hunt re-rolls. However this is not the limit of your ability to influence the Hunt for the Fellowship in your favor. If your Action dice allow, it might be worthwhile to rearrange your Nazgūl once each turn and always put a few in front of where the Fellowship might show up next.

Of course, putting your Nazgūl to Hunt the Fellowship is a strain on your resources, since you only have four Nazgūl at the beginning of the game, so mustering a few more is always a good move if you want to use some to Hunt the Fellowship. The best way to get re-rolls for the Hunt is to combine the Hunt with the movements of your armies, since army units and Nazgūl in the Region with the Fellowship will result in two re-rolls. This is best explained with the two following examples:

As the Fellowship is moving through the Goblin Gate, you could try to dictate in which direction they will be heading by using your Nazgūl and your Moria and/or Dol Guldur armies. By moving your Dol Guldur army to the Old Forest Road you simultaneously have a good chance of getting many Hunt re-rolls and threaten both Dale and the Woodland Realm. However, if you move towards Lorien, either with a reinforced Moria army, the Dol Guldur army or both, the Fellowship will probably head for the Old Forest Road, which is one Region shorter and has the closeness of the Woodland Realm and Dale.

This could in its turn be taken advantage of by sending the Easterlings from Rhūn to the Vale of the Carnen, from where you can strike against Dale as well as paving the Fellowship's route with army units in Northern Rhovanion. The combined might of the Dol Guldur garrison and the Easterlings from Rhūn should be enough to take Dale and threaten the Woodland Realm, as well as put some Nazgūl and some army units on the Fellowship's last known position, giving you both valuable victory points and Hunt re-rolls.

After having tried the different tactics for hunting the Fellowship, use the one you like the most and feel is giving you the best results. No matter if you prefer putting many dice into the Hunt Box and advance slowly but steadily on the military front, or if you go all out for the military Blitz, there is one last point of wisdom I would like to give you: never, ever, put zero dice in the Hunt Box in the Hunt Allocation Phase, as sometimes you will fail to roll a single Eye die and the result will be a Fellowship that speeds unhindered across Middle Earth, since they can move several times in one turn without any risk of being spotted.

Written by Kristofer Bengtsson