I ask this because I managed to run into what was probably the WORST matchup for a lord of battle game that I could have had for my Corsairs of Umbar swarm last night in Game 3 of Bilbo's Birthday Bash.

My list was raw model wise.
Dalaymyr, 2 Corsair Captains (Xbow and 2hw), Bosun (spear), 15 spear Corsairs, 9 Shield Corsairs, 6 Reavers and 9 Arbalesters

His army. Fellowship

Legolas on Horse, Boromir on Horse, Gandalf the Grey on Horse, Aragorn on Horse.

He got Call Blinding Light off on turn 1. That pretty much made it impossible for me to do ANYTHING to him as his fight dice were absobloodylutely insane and his insane might stores and free might from Aragorn pretty much made him steamroll whatever he ran into. I lost 41-2 on vp with the only 2 points I got wer for actually getting Gandalf to blow 2 fate (which he saved one outright and then got the second on the Narya reroll...)

Is Call Blinding Light TOO powerful a spell for something that cannot be countered in any way?

Well yeah, when betting on missle troops you're pretty screwed when facing blinding light or the shadow lord. Normally not all troops are within the 6" of course so the effects arent as potent as in your case.

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Operation future in full swing.

Blinding light can be countered by a number of things. First of all relying only on shooting is a bad strategy and won't win you many tournaments. Blinding Light can be overpowered by huge bow numbers. You had 9 arbalesters, so you were screwed. If you had 20 Haradrim bowmen then you would have likely taken out a few horses and make his army far less powerful.

A strategy that sometimes works (rarely, but everybody makes this mistake at some point) is to aim at models that are behind the models within Blinding Light. For example there are some cavalry models 15" away and Gandalf is standing 6" away from you with most of his force within 6" of him. You can then aim at the model 15" away and due to the fact that it is outside Blinding Light you will hit on 3+ or 4+ as normal and subsequently roll for In The Way for models that are under BL.

Multiple Sap Wills to get rid of Gandalf's Will sometimes work too (a Good player won't ever let you bring him down to 0 unless he wants to do it though, but it'll work against most). The only downside is that usually you're already in combat by the time Gandalf's Will is gone - but that stills gives a bonus for throwing weapons and for shooting into combat.

Regardless of what you might think, it's pretty likely that even if he did not have Blinding Light he would still steamroll over your army because frankly you have no counter to major heroes and overall your army looks pretty weak (no offence). In a tournament playing without at least 1 Wraith or other spellcaster is usually a bad idea, unless you have something with F7 (a Troll Chieftain for example) that causes threat to an F6 hero. If you don't, you'll have to win by avoiding them. If you can't then you can't win unless they are really unlucky, but a good player won't easily give up their big heroes.

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

Actually no, this works against the Shadow Lord, but not Blinding Light. The rules say that you only hit on a 6 if you are shooting through the 6in around Gandalf.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

For reference, my army wasn't pure shooting. My army was

Dalymyr, a Corsair Captain w 2hw, a Corsair Captain w Xbow, Corsair Bosun w Spear, 15 Corsairs w Spear, 9 Corsairs w Shield, 6 Corsair Reavers, 9 Arbalesters.

His Fellowship army was Aragorn on Horse, Legolas on Horse, Gandalf on Horse and Boromir on Horse and the scenario was Lords of Battle. There literally was nothing I could do in this scenario due to his insane might counts, the sorcerous blast blowing the Devlan Mud out of my models and all his fight 6 models...

No, the rules say that you hit on a 6 if you shoot through Gandalf, not through models within 6" of Gandalf.


Yup, there is nothing you could do unless your opponent was really bad, so why blame Blinding Light?

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Coordinator of the Great British Hobbit League

I guess it was just Gandalf in General and the extremely busy terrain on the particular table...

But call blinding light pretty much killed any chance I could try to dehorse him to try to negate the cavalry bonus he got against me.