Revisiting Play Styles Part 4: The Reactionary Playstyle

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to the blog! Tiberius wrote a blog post recently about list building for beginners, based on a 2015 post I made talking about the seven list building play styles I noticed at the time. Last time we talked about the Linchpin Playstyle, and in today's post we are looking at the fourth playstyle: the reactionary army.

Since the Linchpin playstyle often becomes the meta (shooting-heavy armies like Rangers of Ithilien and Assault on Helms Deep, magic-heavy armies like Vanquishers of the Necromancer and Riders in Black, etc.), the natural playstyle to discuss next is the Reactionary list, as it draws its existence from the presence of meta army lists. We'll look at this mindset, and then discuss how to do it effectively.

Also, fair warning: I don't tend to play these armies all that often, so not a lot of pictures this time around as I don't own the kinds of models that you'd typically use for these kinds of armies. I'll include a few of the new Fangorn army I'm working on, though, because I'm enjoying making my own ent army from scratch (as I'm not a huge fan of the standard ent model from GW).

I.  The Reactionary Playstyle: "You Shall Not Pass"

Gandalf in any form - an excellent reactionary model

The Reactionary playstyle looks at armies that end to show up - heavy shooting armies, heavy magic armies, heavy monster armies, etc. - and says, "So how do we END THIS MAN'S WHOLE CAREER?!?!?!" And I'll say this: I don't tend to make lists this way (as I'm typically the first person to decide on the army I'm going to run at a tournament, and I don't tend to encounter the heavy meta armies all that often), but boy oh boy does this style of list building look fun! Cracking the meta and changing the game appeals to me, so if this is you, good on you! Keep it up! It's what keeps our game from going the way of Warhammer 8th Edition where everyone was running Demon Princes with a 3+ ward save on every wound coupled with casters spawning zombies as free chaff every turn to keep powerful units from doing anything useful for the whole game.

Unlike some of the other playstyles, this one pretty much has to be built well, because if it's not, it doesn't do its job and the list gets left on the cutting room floor. Since it's built to counter the meta, if it doesn't do it, it doesn't see the light of day. So toward that end these lists tend to be pretty competitive, but they go through a lot of iterations to get there.

Some aspects of the list are pretty obvious: you need an answer to shooting, as the heavy shooting armies aren't going anywhere anytime soon. It needs answers for magic, as magic is only going to get more powerful as the game progresses (such is the way of things, and I'm cool with that). It needs an answer to people with high Fight Value, needs a plan in case someone is bringing tons of Might for making clutch moves, chewing through speedbump mobs, and the list goes on. But once it finds a solution to these things, it's good. And in fact, it's very good.

So that's where we're going today.

II.  Maximizing the Reactionary Playstyle's Potential

First off, Reactionary lists are maximized based on the type of tournament you're attending. If it's Good v. Evil that's going to change how things work: a Forces of Evil army that's reactionary will need a plan for, say, Rangers of Ithilien and Vanquishers of the Necromancer, but it won't need an answer for Smaug. Similarly a Forces of Good army won't face an Aragorn/Elessar.

Points Level also plays a heavy role in reactionary lists: how many threats you can deal with generally goes up the more points you have to play with. Some heroes/models hit multiple threats at once, though, and that's what a good reactionary list provides.

Gandalf the White and Galadriel Lady of Light, for example, are two really good examples of this. Are you up against shooting? The Blinding Light spell gives you good protection, especially if you can add in some In the Ways against the barrage. Up against enemy magic casters? Have some Fortify Spirit, possibly in addition to your Resistant to Magic rule if you have it already. Need a high Fight Value person to tie down a heavy hitter? Both of them can do it with 3 rerollable Fate Points.

Cirdan, it should be noted, is also good for the same reasons, but he doesn't do as much as these two. So while you can use him, and some do quite effectively, I won't be focusing on him here. Come at me in the comments if you think I'm wrong, :P

Aragorn is a good counter to a lot of heavy-hitting lists at pretty much every points level, as he has decent magic defense (even more so if you can get Gandalf the White or another character with Fortify Spirit in the army with him), good melee combat power, decent survivability against archery (especially since he almost always has access to Blinding Light in his list), access to Heroic March in case you need to move your army up quickly (and he can do it for free each turn if you really need it, which is really nice), and is available to most Forces of Good armies.

Similarly The Witchking of Angmar offers a lot of options, both by being hard to beat in melee, lots of Will Points for resisting magic, good options for dealing with many different types of models (both heroes and warriors) to meet a wide range of threats, and he can fly (which I'd contend, unless you're running him in a legion, he should be on a fell beast).

So reactionary lists try to find these intersections of threat removal in singular models and then work those models into their lists to deal with the heavy-hitting lists in the local meta. Those that do this the most efficiently tend to end up on top, and can even topple the "most competitive lists" at a tournament.

III.  Factions to Consider 

Some factions play better with specific playstyles, and this is perhaps never more true than with a reactionary list. So a few places to start:

• Minas Tirith: This army has basically everything except monsters, but it makes up for that with some absolutely brutal heroes (who might as well be monsters). You probably start with Gandalf the White (for the reasons noted above), and then you have a choice of Elessar or Boromir, Hurin or Faramir for a solid Killer #2, and then a suite of reliable mid-range heroes to shore up your bases. Back that up with good cavalry, good standing infantry, good archers, good siege weapons - you get answers to basically everything in this list. Need to kill Smaug? You've got heroes and siege options that will do the job. Need to kill ringwraiths? You can snipe their horses with archery and protect your big heroes with Gandalf (not to mention banish them). It's crazy how many options you get in a single army.
• Mordor: Similarly, you get basically every tool but in a different order from Mordor. You have the Shadow Lord for protection from archery, ringwraiths generally for shutting down spellcasters with Sap Will, the Witch-King for good combat stats mixed with powerful magic, a wide range of monsters, war beasts, and siege weapons to bring the damage to the enemy, plus a good suite of cheap heroes that will pull their weight to help the guys at the top. Combine that with the ability to horde out or go elite for troops (either infantry or cavalry), and you've got lots of good options here.
• Fangorn: You know, for not having a lot of profiles, I've been impressed recently on how much these guys bring to the table. Think magic is pesky? Just ignore about half of the dangerous spells in the game. Think "Terror Bubbles" suck? Everybody be Fearless. Afraid of those S6 and S7 monsters? Everyone is high Defense. Worried about high shooting armies? Make it so that they are wounding you on two dice instead of one, which dramatically reduces the number of wounds they deal. They mitigate a lot of threats even before considering alliances with power heroes like Galadriel, Lady of Light, so they are a good reaction to your local meta.
• Angmar: So you have one big glaring issue which is low Courage and no Fury, but you do have good Courage options in your spirit models. And you have pretty good magic defense as you have a lot of Will Points all over the army (albeit you'd like to spend it on other things, but hey - if you need Will to stop a spell, it's littered all over your list), and frankly tons of guys to throw away if you need to. Add onto this dangerous monsters plus the Witch-King for dealing with big heroes, fliers for dealing with siege weapons and archers, cavalry and flying options for dealing with fast attack forces - you have the whole suite. Admittedly it's harder to build for all of these, so I wouldn't call this faction "Toolkit friendly" (which we will discuss next week), but the tools are there for a reactionary list. You just have to be comfortable taking a wide mix of things in your army to meet the threats you think you are going to face.
• Breaking of the Fellowship: This is somewhat bizarre as it's been the meta in its own right (I think its days have peaked, but we'll see), but this army has answers to most everything someone would focus on. While you lose Gandalf you get a mostly Blinding Light feature with the Light of Earendil, and you actually get better magic defense through Fortify Spirit on everyone (combined with the Resistant to Magic on the hobbits). You have a ton of heavy hitter heroes, reliable archery for picking off big targets with Legolas (why Aragorn doesn't get his bow no one knows), and Fearless with the inability to be broken as long as Frodo is still alive. And at only 600 points, you can have solid answers to an army coming at you that other armies at that points level won't have. So if you are playing at 600 or lower points, this is a good option for reacting to pretty much any list out there.

And I'm hopeful that, as I reflect on the last 10 years that I've played the game, over the next 10 years we'll see new armies creep in that have solid counters to the top lists at that time. That's the sign of a healthy game, and I have great hopes that this is the trajectory of our hobby, carefully crafted by the rules team that carefully and lovingly guides the game. Eru Iluvatar be gracious to us.

Conclusion

Our local meta is all over the place - lots of different armies, lots of strategies, and lots of weird shenanigans (mostly by Rythbryt and Tiberius). So building in this way for our local meta is not as easy as it is in other places. But if you have a few dominant lists in your region, consider trying out a Reactionary list that's designed to knock the king from his throne.

Next time we'll be talking about the toolkit army, which is the direct antithesis to the reactionary army, as it's far less specialized in its aims because it prizes a wide range of tools that can be applied to any situation. Until next time, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Centaurs are not the servants or playthings of humans." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix