The Stuff of Legends: The Grey Company

Good morning gamers,

In our last post, we looked at the Men of the West Legendary Legion and how you can work with an all-infantry army that is an amalgamation of FIVE different army lists (Minas Tirith, Rohan, the Fiefdoms, the Fellowship, and Rivendell). While its buffs might make it worth trying out, I think most players feel it's not as good as a historical alliance between Minas Tirith, the Fiefdoms, and/or Rohan (though we probed ways the Legion could be tweaked to make its non-Gondor, non-Rohan heroes a bit more appealing). 

In today's post, we're covering the Grey Company (another Legendary Legion from Gondor at War), but unlike the Men of the West, this Legendary Legion provides some really nice benefits over the foundational Rangers army list (with only one or two down-sides). There are three factions that you'd need to Ally to build this Legion normally (and you'd be a convenient alliance). Let's see what you get with this Legion.

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Photo Credit: Games Workshop
Legion Tax: 160-175pts

The only model you NEED to take in this army is Aragorn - Strider. Besides his horse (more on that in a minute), Aragorn has all of his usual upgrades available to him, except that he starts with Anduril for free (which is great - and not an uncommon Legion rule in the Gondor at War book, since all three Legions with Aragorn in them let Aragorn start with Anduril for free). Aragorn's max cost is 175 in this Legion and he is a BARGAIN.

In the supporting cast of named heroes, you have Legolas (no horse, but otherwise all his options), Gimli (option for Elven Cloak), Halbarad (no horse, but option for his banner), and Elladan and Elrohir (no horses, but otherwise all their options). Four of these heroes (not Halbarad) appeared in the Men of the West Legion, but while the Men of the West Legion forbids them from leading warriors (making them difficult to include into the Legion), there are no warriors in this list - so you can take any mix of them without any real loss to your army.

Finally, your "warrior" options are Rangers of the North, which is to say you basically have some battle companies heroes in your list! A single Might/Will/Fate point won't make THAT much of a difference (you still die after taking one wound sometimes, you can only boost a roll that was just barely losing/tying to tying/winning), but it helps. And it helps a LOT.

Your army bonuses are just enhanced versions of the normal Rangers army bonus: everyone deploys in a single warband with Aragorn as the captain of the warband (good for Maelstrom scenarios in that you won't be split up; bad in other scenarios, as your opponent will know where your army is after deploying 0-1 warbands of their own). Everyone gets Woodland Creature (Legolas and the Twins already had it), just like in the normal Rangers list, Rangers of the North benefit from the Stand Fasts! of the named heroes in this list, and Rangers of the North get +1 Attack while they have the Infantry keyword (which they always will).

With a good bit of overlap, let's see what the difference are between this Legion and the normal Rangers list, shall we?

Part 2: Why Take This Legion Over "Normal" Allied Forces?

The Grey Company Bonuses

There aren't many reasons to run the Rangers army list instead of the Grey Company Legendary Legion, but we'll go over three reasons I can see where you'd want to run the normal list over the legion. Let's delve through some Strengths and Weaknesses between the lists to see what those reasons are.

Weakness #1: No Mounts = Worse Heroes

Like we discussed when talking about the Men of the West, not having horses is bad. Not only is the potential threat range of your heroes greatly reduced, but you also don't get the bonuses for being cavalry (which is great on offense against enemy infantry and great on defense against enemy cavalry). Aragorn is dangerous with Anduril, but when he wounds on at least 4s against 1 Wound models and gets to roll four sets of two dice each? Statistically, that's 3-4 dead troops in each fight! Without the horse, he can still deal 3 wounds, but it's much less likely.

Similarly, Legolas loses a lot of positioning (and the ability to keep up with the pack while shooting) without his horse. He also has a "so-so" combat profile with 2 Attacks, so losing that potential third attack is not great. Similarly, Halbarad's combat profile is so-so and he benefits a lot from having a horse (not just in combat, but the radius of his 6" banner gets a little better as well).

The other four profiles don't suffer as much from not having horses: Rangers of the North are guaranteed to have 2 Attacks when on foot and MIGHT have 2 Attacks while mounted (gotta be chargin'). The Twins can't use their twin Elven blades on horseback (infantry only), so they can guarantee 3 Attacks while on foot and can't guarantee it while mounted (gotta be chargin'). Gimli has never had a mount and so he sniffs at the rest of them (belly-achin' whiners - who needs horses?).

Strength #1: Less Dependent on Calling/Winning Heroic Moves

While the normal Rangers army list can have mounts on basically everyone (not Dunedain), this list has no mounts at all. While this makes your heroes less potent (both in total damage output AND mobility), it also means that if you're charged (vs. getting the charge), you don't lose much by moving second. Sure, this is an army that wants to choose its match-ups, but if your opponent tries to tie down any of your heroes with a single warrior, he's looking at a Heroic Combat being called and that hero smashing through a few more models!

Weakness #2: No Dunedain

Dunedain are 5 points cheaper than Rangers of the North and lose the armor of their more elite cousins. This means they're D4, but it also means that for 150 points, you can get 6 Dunedain and only 5 Rangers of the North. While +1 model may not seem like much, when you're hard-pressed for numbers, small differences like this can help a lot. The Grey Company Legendary Legion doesn't get access to Dunedain, which means they're paying premium price for their supporting mini-heroes.

Strength #2: All-Hero, All-Shooting Army

Like the Rangers list, everyone's got a shooting weapon in this list! Aragorn can be equipped with a bow for 5 points and the Twins can be equipped with Elf bows for 10 points, but everyone else has a bow/Elf bow/throwing axes by default, which makes this list a deadly army to face from a distance. If you've played Battle Companies, you know that having Might and a ranged weapon can make a huge difference when the number of models on the board are small. In a points match game, this army is likely to be outnumbered 2:1 or 3:1 (against some armies, it wouldn't be unheard of to be outnumbered 5:1 or even 10:1). However, if you're facing 30-35 models in a 700-point game and you've brought 7-15 models to the table, if you can kill 5-10 models with shooting, the numbers will be pretty close to 2:1 by the time your opponent engages you. Depending on how you've built your army, you then have Aragorn and any number of other close combat threats to tear through his ranks on the first turn of combat, evening the numbers quickly and making your opponent's chances of winning thin tremendously.

Weakness #3: Less Effective Spam List

Arathorn isn't a great hero, but he's not bad: F5 with Strike and 3 Attacks on offense is pretty decent for a less-than-100 point hero, while D5 with 2 Wounds and 1 Fate is pretty average (maybe a bit on the low side for Defense). In a 700-point game, however, you could run Arathorn and 25 Dunedain (no spears), which would not only give you 26 models with 2-3 Attacks, but you'd have 26 bows and 28 Might points! That is its own kind of terrifying (even though you're D4/5). Honestly, you probably want Halbarad on a horse with his banner in the list too (for his 6" banner reroll for those 2-3 Attacks backed by Might), which would get you an upgrade of a Dunedain to a Ranger of the North and cost you 5 Dunedain (you'd still have 22 models/22 bows and 26 Might points - which is plenty scary). 

You could also choose to drop 2 more Dunedain to upgrade 2 Dunedain into Rangers of the North and pick up 4 horses (mounts for Arathorn and all your Rangers of the North). This would drop you down to 20 models/20 bows with 24 Might, but would also get you 5 mounted models, a banner, and slightly better Defense overall. Still pretty impressive.

While you can do something LIKE that with this list, it's much harder since a) Aragorn costs about 100 points more than his dad, and b) each Ranger of the North costs 5 points more than a vanilla Dunedain.

Strength #3: Better Supporting Cast of Heroes

The Rangers list gives you two ways of playing: Aragorn and Halbarad or Arathorn and Halbarad (I assume the army bonus is more important than adding Arathorn to Aragorn's list). While this can mean you can spam heroes/Might easier than many lists, it also means your number of threatening heroes is REALLY small. In the Grey Company, there are lots of heroes for your opponent to worry about: Aragorn and his "pointy-sword-of-doom," Halbarad and his "infernal-fearless-banner," the Twins and their "many-blades-of-whirling-devilry," and the "Legolas-and-Gimli-one-two-punch." Against armies that might be able to shut down one hero, you'll still be smashing through a lot of things.

Strength #4: Better Synergies

All of the synergies you get in the normal Rangers list are present here (Dunedain/Rangers of the North benefitting from Stand Fasts and getting extra attacks on foot), you get better synergies from Legolas/Gimli (and to a lesser extent, the Twins). Aragorn automatically starts with Anduril, which means you don't need to sacrifice things in order to include it (which is really nice). All told, I think you get a better selection of pieces that work together (vs. a bunch of mini heroes who operate more-or-less independently of each other).

Part 3: Legendary Legion Improvements

Honestly, I couldn't think of a single thing that I thought this Legion needed to be changed. The only thing I'd consider, however, is the return of "for every 1 Ranger of the North you take, you can also take up to 4 Rangers of Arnor without them counting towards your bow limit". If that were to appear in this Legion, I think the power heroes would show up to be Ranger caddies instead of being the Crux of the team. I can understand why this wasn't given to the Rangers list (fighting this used to be gross), but I also think there is a reason the Rangers have dropped from competitive play - and this is it.

Part 4: Army Strategies

For me, there appears to be two army builds for this list: one where you focus on bringing as many named heroes as you can (forgetting about numbers and going with killing power) and one where you bring as few named heroes as possible and focus on bulking out your numbers. Regardless of how you build your army, you want to begin by shooting as much as you can. Some scenarios allow you to sit back and shoot, while others require you to get somewhere. If you're playing the former, your opponent will be playing according to your tempo. If you're playing a scenario where you need to get somewhere, you might be able to shoot for a bit, but you'll need to commit to combat quickly.

When shooting, concentrate your fire in one place - not all over the map. With an army like this, you need to have an escape plan - and that means a path where no enemy models are. If your opponent is trying to flank you, fire at one flanking force to weaken it so much that it isn't a threat (or so it's completely gone). 

Once you get into combat, you want Aragorn matched up against warriors as much as possible: when up against a big hero/monster, he runs the risk of flubbing a roll and getting smashed. Heroic Defense can help you here, but since you're probably down in the model count (and I mean REALLY down in the model count), you need to make that up quickly. And nobody does that quite as well as Aragorn with Anduril.

If you'd like more strategic uses of the Rangers, I highly recommend Centaur's Rangers tactica post - it's outdated for this edition, but the principles of firing lanes, concentrated fire, etc. are timeless and very much still relevant. Centaur did an army review of them in the new edition here. I also did a review of the Rangers when the new edition hit that you can view here. Rythbyrt has yet to review them, but I know he loves his Rangers battle company.

Part 5: Army Showcase

Our first list is a 500-point list that takes the three most essential named heroes (Aragorn, Legolas, and Halbarad) and fills in the remaining points with Rangers of the North. Our list is only 7 models, but considering that a "Ranger of the North spam" list can only get to 12 models (330 points spent on Rangers of the North and 170 points spent on Aragorn), by taking Legolas/Halbarad, we give ourselves a banner and only marginally smaller amounts of Might and archery shots each turn. I am a bit sad that Aragorn doesn't have armor - you could have him take armor instead of Legolas if you wanted to.

• Aragorn - Strider with Anduril and bow [AL]
• Legolas Greenleaf with armor
• Halbarad with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar
• 4 Rangers of the North

Our second list is a 700-point list that begins by picking up all of the named heroes and filling in the remaining points with Rangers of the North (or in this case, one Ranger of the North). Our numbers haven't grown at all (still at 7 models), but we have a whopping 19 Might points (besides Aragorn's free Might point). Legolas is the only model with an Elven cloak (all of the other named heroes have every other piece of gear available to them), but the army is still plenty dangerous while far away. As was discussed earlier, this is not only a formidable shooting list, but also a list you want to charge carefully because it has TONS of good combat heroes who have LOADS of Might at their command.

• Aragorn - Strider with Anduril, armor, and bow [AL]
• Legolas Greenleaf with armor and Elven cloak
• Gimli, Son of Gloin
• Halbarad with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar
• Elladan and Elrohir with heavy armor and Elf bows
• 1 Ranger of the North

Our last list is a spam Rangers of the North list. We included Aragorn with his essential war gear (not the cloak) and Halbarad with his banner (because rerolls) and 14 Rangers of the North. This gives us 16 models and 20+ Might (which is near the same as our hero spam list). This list will do better in objective-based games, but is FAR more squishy than the previous list. With 16 bow shots (vs. the previous list's 6-8), you're pretty dangerous from far away and will hopefully be able to out-shoot your opponents. Beware of enemy shooting though - most of your army is D5 (except Aragorn, who is D6), which isn't bad, but also isn't particularly good.

• Aragorn - Strider with Anduril, armor, and bow [AL]
• Halbarad with the Banner of Arwen Evenstar
• 14 Rangers of the North

Army Summary

So, that's the Grey Company. Like the Men of the West, this is a pretty rare legion to see in competitive game play. While being all-infantry has its limitations, you'll find few armies who have such potent archery as these guys (it may not have the volume of archery you find in the Rangers of Ithilien, but with everyone having Might, you can keep up with their kill count pretty well).

In our next post, Centaur takes us through one of his favorite Legendary Legions in the game: the Defenders of the Shire! While Centaur is renowned here at TMAT for his "waistcoat brigade", you lose some of your army building abilities by taking this Legion (some oddity heroes excluded). In trade, you get the two things that are most important for a Hobbit general: mobility and tricks! Join us next time, it'll be a great ride - until then, happy hobbying!