The Bare Necessities, Part XXXI: Far Harad

Good morning gamers,

Today we look at the last faction for our Bare Necessities series (at least for now): Far Harad. One of the most expensive armies in the MESBG game (and not currently available in the GW store), Far Harad features an all-Strength 4 faction (or higher!), paired with terrifying infantry (Half Trolls), decent spear-support models (Mahud Warriors), and line-breaking cavalry (Impaling camel riders with war spears). While F3 is pretty standard across the army (and only one named hero), their profile selection is quite small, but their customizability and flexibility is fantastic.

Since the models aren't in the GW store at the moment (and the models themselves are GW creations), those on a budget can get historical Camels and Zulu Warriors for not as much money...

While I don't play Far Harad, Rythbryt does (he faced me in Battle Companies with them, it was very eye-opening), so he volunteered to help me cover this faction - take it away Rythbryt!

Credit: LOTR wikia

Unlike the other factions where I've tried this exercise (Barad-Dur, Erebor Reclaimed), Far Harad is petty limited in what you can take. We have seven total profiles available (Mahud Kings, Mahud Chieftains, the Mahud Beastmaster Chieftain on Mumak, the Mumak War Leader on Royal Mumak, Mahud Warriors, Mahud Raiders, and Half-trolls). Things open up quite a bit if we tap into our only green alliance (The Serpent Horde) but... I feel like that'd be cheating. ;-)

Let's start with the easy part first: as much as I like the Mumak War Leader, it's not mathematically possible for us to fit him into the list and take a banner and get a second hero in and have 27 additional dudes to get to 30. It is mathematically possible to bring a Beastmaster Chieftain on Mumak, but neither the mumak nor the army around him will have much in the way of upgrades. So we're passing on both.

That means we'll want to take at least one Mahud King (which we'd want to do anyway), and probably one Mahud Chieftain also for that all-important Heroic March (even if you don't always need it--and Far Harad is probably one of the few civs where you'd prefer not to use it if you don't have to--at least if you lean heavy into Mahud Raiders), but that only gets us to 29 models altogether (15 + 12 + 2 heroes) so... we'll need at least one more hero to get up to at least 30 models.

We'll also want at least one banner, which means at least one Mahud Warrior or Raider (duh). They have two eyesore stats (Fight 3 and Defense 5), and a banner helps with both (as rolling effectively double dice helps us win fights, and winning fights helps you stay alive longer). 

If I'm being honest, there's actually a lot we'll want in this list. A sizeable contingent of Mahud Raiders for starters, as impact hits can be game-changing (and the threat of mass impact hits is always game changing, just because of how it changes how your opponent maneuvers). Access to poison blowpipes also means it's possible for us to reach 100% bow limit with this force, which will be new for us. They only fire 12", but 12" tacked on to a 6"-10" move is pretty good (and, with a base 3+ shoot value on our heroes, raiders, and warriors--all of whom can take blowpipes--we're happy to move and shoot). Half-Trolls are also a semi-cheap way to get some extra hitting power (S5) and fight (F5) into this list, while being fairly hearty (2 wounds, D6). So yeah... we'll want some of everything.

So here's what I've thrown together as a starting-point:

Warband 1: Mahud King on war camel with club, shield, war spear, and blowpipe

• x3 Mahud Warriors with clubs, shields, and blowpipes
• x2 Mahud Warriors with clubs, shields, spears, and blowpipes
• x3 Mahud Raiders with clubs, shields, war spears, and blowpipes
• x1 Banner

Warband 2: Mahud Tribemaster on war camel with club, shield, war spear, and blowpipe

• x3 Mahud Warriors with clubs, shields, and blowpipes
• x2 Mahud Warriors with clubs, shields, spears, and blowpipes
• x3 Mahud Raiders with clubs, shields, war spears, and blowpipes
• x1 Half-Troll

426/700 points, 19 models (2 heroes, 4 Might)

As far as the Mahud are concerned, this is a pretty balanced starting-point. First off, we have two heroes who are both S5 on war camels with war spears, have 4M between them, and we've got one who can Strike (the King) and one who can March (the Tribemaster). We have ten Mahud on foot (S4/D5), six Raiders for impact hits, and one half-troll (F5/S5/D6, with 2 Attacks / wounds) who can pretend to be a third hero at times. We're already at 19 models with just over half our 700 points spent, so we're feeling pretty good about model count. We already have 8 models who can move 10-15" in a pinch if we draw a movement-based scenario. We also have a banner, which we can either stick on one of the Raiders (to help us punch through the enemy) or on one of our Mahud infantry with spears (if we prefer more of a grit-and-grind). Finally, everyone but the half-troll (so 18 models total) has a poisoned blowpipe, which should help us a lot with board control.

That leaves us with 274 points to play with which, it turns out, you can do a lot of things with. Since this is the end of Tiberius's Bare Necessities series (for now), I thought--why settle? So here are three alternatives that I came up with for finishing this force.

Option 1: Pure Mahud

The Mahud army bonus is situationally blah, and situationally amazing (it all depends on how much Terror you face, or don't, and how early you break, or don't). But let's assume you wanted to keep it and you wanted a pure force of Mahud--preferably with as many more Mahud Raiders as you could cram in. As we already discussed, you need a third hero to make this work (a single King with a single Tribemaster tops out at just 29 models, not thirty), so we'll opt for a second King (as it's never a bad idea to have double-Heroic Strike, and I feel like we're likely to get more mileage more often out of four Strikes than, say, four Marches). So here's what I've settled on:

Warband 3: Mahud King with club, shield, war spear, and blowpipe

• x3 Mahud Warriors with clubs, shields, and blowpipes
• x8 Mahud Raiders with clubs, shields, war spears, and blowpipes

700/700, 31 Models (3 Heroes, 6 Might)

We end up with three heroes (two kings, one tribemaster), one pseudo hero (half-troll), 13 Mahud on foot (all with shields, 4 with spears) to support our half-troll, and a whopping 17 war camels (3 with heroes, plus 14 companions). Given that our contingent is so heavy on camels, I would probably put the banner on one of the raiders, leaving the infantry contingent to fend for itself if necessary. Everyone but the half-troll still has blowpipes (30 in all), so we should be able to skirmish effectively whilst waiting for the perfect camel charge.

Here's how I see this particular force faring in our scenarios:

• Domination / Capture and Control: The tricky thing about Far Harad is that they don't really have much staying power. At D5 for the most part (and D4 camels, which we've leaned heavily into), any S3 shooting poses problems in a hurry (plus our courage is poor--not exactly great for holding far-flung objectives if we break). The key to these scenarios for us will be how well we fare dealing damage to the enemy much, must faster than we take it. I think we've done about as much as we can in that regard (short of taking a Mumak with tusk weapons), by bringing close to 20 camels (probably good for 3-4 impact kills per round we charge, which are kills where we don't risk any damage in return--always good) and 30 blowpipes (which, if the enemy doesn't have much shooting, should allow us to skirmish pretty effectively). We're also pretty well equipped to take on the two main army types who tend to feel very good about these scenarios: spam armies and high-cav armies. With the exception of a cheap Gondor spam, most spam armies have low defense and fight (F2/D3 Goblin-Town / Hobbits, F2/D4-5 Moria / Lake-Town), which we feel pretty good about cutting through given that we're F3 and S4 pretty much across the board, with a metric ton of S4 Impaler hits and S4 war spears (S2 blowpipes also wound D3 on a 5+, rerolling 1s, which is pretty good odds). As for other cav-opponents, we have two advantages: first, those Impaler hits--which we deal on both the mount and the rider--will do a number on even armored horses and fell beasts (a single 5+ wounds, and we have 17 of them we might call upon). Second, we have blowpipes with a 3+ shoot, so if we find ourselves in the deadly dance of death with another skirmish army with, say, throwing spears, our shooting attacks out-range theirs 12" to 8", while also gaining the reroll 1s to wound from Poison. Of course, if the enemy has 24" bows that advantage goes away... although even so, I think most enemy armies will be hard pressed to have 30 of them (or even 17, if you just count our blowpipe cav) in an army of 700 points.
• Hold Ground / Seize the Prize / Heirlooms of Ages Past: Let's get the obvious out of the way first: with the Tribemaster in tow, and a ton of camels, we have plenty of models we can get into the middle of the table (or around the prize, or tagging heirlooms). We also have more options than most forces if the enemy reaches the center or the prize or the heirloom before us... mostly because we have up to 17 chances to kill the dude who seized the prize or is running away with the heirloom--and any other dudes between us and him--before the shoot phase begins (at which point we have up to 30 chances to kill him before the fight phase commences, and so on). Will we actually get to take all those chances? Probably not (the enemy gets to move and call heroic moves, too, after all). But it's hard to tie up all 17 camels (or all 30 shooters), especially if they've rushed into the middle of the table (how many armies have you faced with 17+ cavalry models? some, probably, but not most of them I assume). Which is to say, I think we have more options than most armies will for staying in these scenarios, even if the enemy gets the upper hand at first (which is good).
• To the Death / Lords of Battle / Contest of Champions / Fog of War: Let's see... these are kill missions, and we're pretty good at killing things, so I like this already. We're also fast, and can kill things in the move phase, and can skirmish with basically everyone, so we also have a better chance of staying alive and minimizing casualties in these sorts of missions (example: if we charge a raider into a model, and kill it with Impaler, we could decide to charge another enemy model or we could choose to move him out of danger (since he's already killed one model this turn, why risk that he or his camel will be killed in the Fight Phase, when we could set him up for another charge in the next move phase?). Last, we have the ultimate cheat code when it comes to wounding and killing enemy leaders: not only can we play keep-away for a few rounds, whilst sending as many of our 30 blowpipe shots into the enemy leader as we can, but we can also chip off some early wounds with Impaler damage in the move phase (which he can literally do nothing about if we get into base-contact with him--and he may not be able to even stop that, if we're successful in impaling the line of troops he is hiding behind). Again, all of this success comes down to us doing a lot of damage through impaler, war camel charges with S4 war spears, and poisoned blowpipes. Yes, the dice could always roll poorly--but we've brought so many camels and blowpipes that, hopefully, we'll manage to eek out some wounds anyway.
• Reconnoitre / Storm the Camp: We have a very large contingent that's fast, so that should help. The other thing is that normally these missions turn into two armies crashing together in the middle (which we don't mind--if we crash into the enemy in the middle, we like the odds that, by the time we fight, he'll have taken some casualties) or one side playing for a draw by staying back in their camp (in which case, we pepper them with 30 blowpipes until they come out of the camp). We also don't mind our C2 troops defending the camp being Fearless.
• Clash by Moonlight: Our blowpipes only shoot 12" anyway, so nothing lost there--and we definitely like not being shot out at more than 12" away, as it basically guarantees we'll be able to return fire on anything that would normally out-shoot us. Do we like S4 blow pipes with poison? Why yes, we do--especially if the enemy is sitting on juicy, normal (D4) horses. Very, very tasty.

I've actually talked myself into this list (and have almost all the raiders completed to make it work). But before I turn it back over to Tiberius, I thought I'd share two variants just to get your creative juices flowing. Both leave our first two warbands intact, and cost no more than 274 points. 

Option 2: Green Alliance (Serpent Horde contingent)

The first assumes you still want to keep your army bonus, but want looking for more oomph from Far Harad's only green ally, the Serpent Horde:

Warband 3: The Betrayer on horse

• x4 Haradrim Warriors with Spears
• x6 Haradrim Warriors with Bows and Spears
• x2 Haradrim Raiders with bows and war spears
• x3 Serpent Riders

697/700, 35 models (3 heroes, 6 Might)

This change requires us to swap out our second Mahud King and 8 of our 14 Mahud Raiders, so our impact hits have gone down significantly (we still have 8 of them, but 8 isn't 17). In exchange, we've picked up eight 24" bows with Poison, to extend our threat range, along with five S3 cavalry with poisoned war spears (three of whom are F4). We've also bulked out our infantry contingent (10 haradrim, plus 10 Mahud warriors, plus our half-troll), while picking up 4 models overall. Last, we've added the Betrayer, who gives us three advantages.

First, he gives us some measure of magic (and, more importantly, magic defense), with 14 Will and some good spells (even if they're at a higher degree-of-difficulty to cast). Preferably we don't want to have to use his Will for either of those things if we don't have to--but at least we have the option this way. Second, he has Harbinger of Evil, which doesn't do much for us in the early game (though our Half-Troll becomes harder to charge) but could help achieve a nice snowball effect if our dreams of early damage actually succeed, and we break the enemy quickly (thereby causing them to take courage tests, which they could fail, resulting in even more casualties, until we win). Third and most obviously, our 18 blowpipes (plus the 8 Haradrim bows and 15 Haradrim spears we've allied in) now could reroll all failed to-wound rolls, if they're within 6" of the Betrayer's Master of Poisons special rule. S2 blowpipes are already pretty scary to horde armies and armies that mount regular horses--but if you have a free reroll to hunt that 5+ to wound, it can become even more devastating. 

Our gameplan for most scenarios will be the same, although with fewer camels to cheat out damage we'll have to get kills more conventionally (i.e., through combats and shooting). I do think this variant becomes more of a skirmish force (in which case, you might consider dropping the foot contingent of Haradrim for a smaller but more mobile group of Haradrim Raiders with bows and Serpent Riders for more mobility). Again, those sorts of plans can always be thwarted by unfavorable dice, but Master of Poisons should help with that a great deal.

Option 3: Yellow Allies (something unexpected)

I think this final variant is my favorite. I'm not sure why Mordor and Far Harad aren't green allies, as both were at Pelennor Fields (especially since Azog's Legion and the Dark Powers of Dul Guldur are historic allies, despite Dul Guldur not being present at the Battle of the Five Armies). But they're not. That's okay, though: while both Far Harad and Mordor's army bonuses are fine, I think you can still get enough mutual benefit from allying them together to outweigh what either loses from their army bonus.

I looked at Mordor because our existing core of Far Harad warriors, while strong, has some pretty obvious deficiencies. For one thing, we top out at F3/D5. For another, the courage on our troops isn't great, so if we face any Terror armies, we could have problems. Third, as we talked about with the Betrayer, the Far Harad army list doesn't really have much in the way of magic defense (unless you get Resistant to Magic from the sigils of defiance on a Mumak--which we don't have). Mordor, of course, has tons of magic defense options.

So the Mordor component I've allied in offers us basically all of those things--plus some sneaky Terror of our own, to boot:

Warband 3: The Mouth of Sauron

• x6 Black Numenoreans
• x2 Morgul Stalkers

Warband 4: Nazgul (2/9/1) on horse

• x5 Black Numenoreans
• x2 Morgul Stalkers

700/700, 36 models (4 heroes, 8 Might)

The Mouth of Sauron, who I've taken on foot, serves several purposes. For one, he's a second Heroic March with F5 and 2 attacks, to stand in our infantry block along with our half-troll. A half-troll is a decent fighter to have leading our troops, but he doesn't have Might; now we've fixed that problem. The other thing we've added is 4 Will, which the Mouth can use to defend against magic if needed, or (if not needed) harass an enemy hero with his 3+ Transfix. Since, again, our half-troll doesn't have any might, that Transfix could be handy in case he ends up fighting a real hero who's above our half-troll's weight class (as a transfixed hero can't call Heroic actions or deal strikes if he wins a duel).

In addition, we've brought along eleven Black Numenoreans who buff our infantry battle line from F3/S4/D5 to F4/D6, with Terror. Not every army struggles with terror, but if you have to take courage tests often enough, eventually someone on the other side will flub one (and sometimes that flub happens at the most inopportune time). Numenoreans also have a base Courage of 4, which means our own odds of successfully charging enemy Terror walls have gone up. I would almost certainly opt to put our banner on one of these guys, too, instead of a Mahud Warrior.

In addition to the Mouth of Sauron, we've also brought along a generic ringwraith on horse. He's not the scariest thing on the board, but with 9 Will he can actually do things for us. More importantly, the Mouth plus this wraith means we have a pretty good chance at being able to deal with at least two big enemy heroes at the same time (one they tag-team with Transfixes, while our Mahud King deals with the other), and if both Transfixes go off we might be able to deal with 3 (or even 4, if the last one is small enough that our half-troll could deal with him). 700 points is large, but not massive. Two big heroes in an enemy force is possible, perhaps even likely. Three or four is much less likely--but even so, we've got options for it anyway. Lastly, we've managed to gain another hero for a scenario like Fog of War (we now have 3 options for the hero we want to save), and 2 more Might (bringing our total to 8, which is respectable, instead of 6, which is definitely low). And we've picked up a third marcher, as well. I'm not sure we need three marching heroes in this list, which means we could also look at dropping a troop or two to upgrade our Tribemaster to a second Mahud King, for more combat punch. But at 36 models, we should be able to do that--and may even be able to squeeze in a second half-troll, as well--without dropping below 30 models.

Last, since we've dropped 8 Mahud Raiders (which is a serious loss), I wanted to come up with some way to get back some punch. The four Morgul Stalkers means we can have up to six two-attack models embedded in our infantry battle line (the stalkers, plus our half-troll, plus the Mouth of Sauron), plus our difficult-to-charge Black Numenoreans, plus our S4 Mahud Warriors. The hope is that our infantry battle line will be able to replicate at least some of the damage that we lost by axing those Mahud Raiders, and perhaps more importantly, be able to bail out those Raiders if we lose a heroic move-off and they're charged.

Modifications
Thanks Rythbryt - here are some additional thoughts on what you can do with Far Harad:

• Tiberius: Grand Army of the South LL – I think if you are running Far Harad, you want to run the Grand Army of the South LL. If you like Mumaks and don't like Rappelling Lines, you probably want to get the Mumak War Leader (sure, he's more expensive, but he's worth it if the points level is high). As Rythbryt notes, getting the Mumak War Leader at 700 points will really cramp us for points, but I did manage (with the help of a Haradrim Chieftain - not a great hero, but he's a cheap 2 Might/12 warrior-leading hero with Heroic March) to get 30 models, a banner, and the Mumak War Leader in the same list - though admittedly, we have barely any Mahud units in this list, so whether it's a "Far Harad" list or not is probably up for debate (though over half of the points in this list are in fact Mahud):
• Mumak War Leader [ARMY LEADER]
• 12 Haradrim Warriors with bows (in Howdah)
• 2 Haradrim Warriors with bows
• 2 Mahud Raiders with war spears and blowpipes
• Haradrim Chieftain with bow
• 6 Haradrim Warriors with axes
• 5 Haradrim Warriors with spears
• 1 Haradrim Warrior with spear and banner
• Tiberius: Far Harad Beasties – While I'm inclined to not run a pure Far Harad force, you can get a nasty shieldwall with Half Trolls backed by Mahud Warriors, paired with a nasty set of cavalry running things over. Not a lot of response to archer-heavy factions, but pretty great against traditional forces (or in maelstrom/deploy-on-center-line scenarios) - and this list hits 30 models with 24 blowpipes, 6 Half Trolls, 14 cavalry, and TWO Mahud Kings (unlike Rythbryt's pure Far Harad list, this list drops the Tribesmaster and some of the Mahud Warriors in order to run more Half Trolls):
• Mahud King with everything [ARMY LEADER]
• 12 Mahud Raiders with war spears and blowpipes
• 2 Mahud Warriors with spears and blowpipes
• Mahud King with everything
• 2 Mahud Raiders with war spears and blowpipes
• 5 Mahud Warriors with spears and blowpipes
• 1 Mahud Warrior with spear, blowpipe, and banner
• 5 Half Trolls
• 1 Half Troll with two-handed club

Next week, we take a break between series to take a quick look at historical formations that you can use in MESBG before starting a new series on tips/tricks on how to best use different magical powers (a "masterclass magic" series if you will). Historical formations are fun to look at because they "actually worked" and they were designed to solve particular problems. While MESBG doesn't translate all real-world mechanics into good strategies in the game, sometimes an unconventional approach and formation can give you strategic tactical options. Hope to see you there - until then, happy hobbying!