Tell Me A Tale, Great Or Small...: In Defense Of: Easterling Captains

A humble captain on foot, who is amazing when he's not alone

Hey Reader!

Today we're continuing the In Defense Of series, and Tiberius asked me to jump in and chat about the Easterling Captain, a model I've used a good bit. We will start by looking at why people tell you not to take this model (as well as the variant of this which is, "just take one for March," lol), then we'll discuss why you should take it, and then close out by discussing how to make it work effectively in your army list.

(Also, obligatory "Centaur isn't a great painter, and this army was first painted in like 2012, so he's getting back around to touching this one up to make it look better," :P )

Why NOT To Take Easterling Captains

So to start off, yes: many players will tell you, "Oh: just take one of these for Heroic March so that you can get to places faster." Here's the issue: 1) you don't always need to call March in a scenario (Contest of Champions comes to mind), and 2) even then, is that really the only reason to spend 50-65 points on a hero? So I want to start by saying I reject this premise: I don't think that's a good reason to spend this many points (sure: 40 points for a Moria Goblin Captain just to March the balrog is a great reason to spend those points), and I will not be using that line of reasoning in my discussion below.

If you come from this school of thought, great: chalk up one more reason to take these guys. But I'm not going to use that reasoning below, so feel free to lay some gravy on the horribly overbaked entrees you find below. :P

Following hard on this, though, there's a reason that people don't want to take a host of captains for the Easterlings. In an army with only three warrior profiles (unless we get even more cool stuff in the range following release of Defense of the North, so stay tuned for more!) that can only be kitted out about eight different ways total, Easterlings rely on a range of heroes for variety and firepower. Pikes help, to be sure, as do ranks of infantry to keep your heroes safe from unexpected long charges, but on the whole, if you want to kill stuff, you have to rely on your heroes to do that consistently.

So taking a high-level hero like Amdur or Khamul (maybe soon the Dragon King himself?) is typically where you start, because they get lots of attacks with a good Fight Value, access to Heroic Strike, and can be mounted. You might then go for some Dragon Knights because hey: starting with tons of attacks at a high Fight Value, then getting Strike on top of that, and the ability to take an armored horse might make up for the general fragility of these guys (in my mind they definitely do, I typically run at least one of them).

Then you might need a War Priest, both because he can cast Bladewrath to make your heroes (or a random warrior that needs to crack through the ranks, but probably a hero planning to call Heroic Combat) better at killing stuff thanks to a Strength boost, and because he can cast Fury to insure that those Courage tests are more reliable for you. Personally I rely on the Bladewrath more (and really looking forward to our new previewed uber war priest coming out this year!), but you have the option for Fury when you need it.

And then, after you've spent all of those points (not to mention added warriors to flesh out your numbers), you've got the Easterling Captain. He's got the S4 that the named heroes have (and better Strength than the War Priest, but more on him perhaps in a future post, because he's actually good at killing things), but he lacks access to Heroic Strike (and is the only hero other than the War Priest that doesn't have it, assuming the Dragon King has Strike, which I think we can count on), so dealing with high-end heroes is hard for him. He has access to an armored horse, but so do the rest of the Easterling heroes, so it's not a big plus when you compare him to other Easterling heroes.

So I understand why people don't take this guy: he doesn't really have much to offer you that other Easterling heroes don't do better other than Heroic March, right?

Right?

No. Consider.

Why TO Take Easterling Captains

To start off, Easterling Captains actually have the best damage out of all of the non-fell-beast-riding models in the army (and might actually beat the fell beast - more on that later). You get a hand-and-a-half axe for free, which means 1) you can Piercing Strike up to S5 any time you like (so D7, while good against Amdur and Dragon Knights, doesn't work as well against him - he's on-par with Khamul on a Fell Beast, to give you an idea about how good this is for wounding purposes), and 2) if you really want to, you can get a +1 to wound on the attack by two-handing your axe. Personally I'd only do this if you have 1-3 infantry helping you out so that you can get that 6 to win the duel with the infantry, and if you win the fight, you're looking at S5 with +1 to wound, which is incredible.

Just so we're clear: no other Easterling hero can wound this well. Full stop. Sure, you can Rend a single model with a Fell Beast (which is probably wounding this well or better), but 1) that doesn't deal with 2+ D7 models, so holding Khamul down (which can burn through his Will) is relatively easy to do if the strategy must involve Rend, and 2) you can get 3 of these guys kitted out this way for the same cost (or at least within 5 points). Keep that in mind: you can spam these guys, dealing pain all over the battlefield very reliably.

Second, this becomes even more dangerous when paired with Bladewrath. Since Bladewrath is cast in the Move Phase, he starts the Fight Phase at S6. That means you can Piercing Strike up to S7 (so 4+ to wound the vast majority of models in the game, and 3+ to wound about half of the models in the game), and add a +1 to wound if you'd like (so 3+ to wound the vast majority of models in the game, and 2+ to wound most models in the game) while on a horse (so doubling your wounding dice if you charged and win the fight). That...is incredible for 60ish points (assuming you take a shield, which you always should).

But wait! There's MORE! Spend a Might Point now when casting this spell on a 2+ (so you don't need to worry about saving the Might Point to make it go off) and you can get S10 FOR FREE (well, you spend the Might, so it's not free, but you guys have seen the commercials)! This means, while you can't Piercing Strike to S11 (as the game caps out at 10), you can still add that sweet sweet +1 to wound, making you the only model in the game that can get to effective S12 (at least I'm pretty sure - feel free to chat in the comments if you can find a way to do it with anyone else, other than if Aragorn specifically targets a D10 model with a two-handed Anduril, which I don't think counts, and I think Young Dwalin for like 1 turn per game if he's near Thorin, but no mount for that guy, so he's not getting nearly as many dice. But sure: if you want to be pedantic, yes: there's like one other model in the game that can do it, and he's an auto-include in all of his armies, just like this guy).

Do you know what effective S12 means? It means you can deal wounds to the best models in the game on 3s or better. And that's right: I said or better, because since it's a +1 to wound, you can wound D8 or less on a 2+. Possibly with a knockdown to double your damage dice.

Now, do I think that, on most turns, it's worth it to channel Bladewrath on your captain over and against, say, Amdur? Probably not. But here's the thing: that's the scary part about this model. Amdur excels at fighting heroes that call Heroic Strike, which also means he has a decent chance of losing that fight, in which case Bladewrath does not come into play and is lost resources. Same thing goes for Khamul and Dragon Knights: they tend to attract big heroes because otherwise they'll cut their way through the lines. But the captain? The random captain who is "only in the list to give Heroic March"? Why would I spend a turn with Aragorn or Imrahil or Sauron killing him? What could he possibly do, other than maybe run over some of my troops?

This is the true value of the captain: you can setup charges (or pike support him if you're charged and he's not mounted) where you can punch through enemies with impunity because let's face it: he's not considered that much of a threat.

This is the single best killing model in the game from a wounding perspective, especially in his points bracket. Try getting any hero at 75 points or less (heck: 140 points, I'm game) who can kill like this. Even at base, an effective S7 is hard to find at this point, let alone an effective S12, and almost all of the comparable slayers (Hurin is basically there, a very bare bones Isildur is basically there, an Uruk-Hai Captain with a two-handed axe is there) either don't have a mount or is a named character, so you can only have one. This is a 60ish-point model that you can spam across the battlefield.

Now, this is not to say, "Go to your next 600-pt tournament and take 4 Easterling Captains and 4 Easterling War Priests all mounted" (though I'm not exactly saying don't do this, either) - you'll struggle on specific scenarios, and again, you need to have infantry to pair with this guy so that you can get the dice count to win fights when you two-hand. But putting 2-3 of these guys in your army is 1) not oppressive to your points limit, 2) might kill more than a Dragon Knight, and 3) you do get a Fortitude guy out of it who also happens to have March, so you can field more guys than, say, a Dragon Knight, while still giving good damage capability and saving around 15 points.

That's why you should definitely take Easterling Captains.

Making It Work

So how do we do this? How do we make it worth our while to take Easterling Captains as our killing machines? A few things to keep in mind:

Focus fire on troops to bring your opponent to his break point. These guys will get him there if deployed correctly. Warriors can't call Heroic Strike, so your F4 is more competitive, increasing the chance that you win the fight.
Take the armored horse: it not only gives you greater mobility to setup attacks that you like, but it also increases your damage potential against both your average troops and most monsters (as most monsters have the "Infantry" keyword). I would also give him a shield just to get to that sweet D7 to keep you alive a bit longer.
Always accompany with a War Priest to insure that you can crack through the lines when you need to. I recommend a 1:1 ratio of War Priests to Captains, just to make sure that you have the spells available when you need them for every critical combat (and, again, you'll have the resources to put Bladewrath on your big hero(es) if you want it).
Always join this guy in fights with 1-3 infantry (which could be one swordsman + 2 pikes supporting if you are tight on space) to insure you get the 6, as you'll have 5-6 dice going for it, though some of those may suffer a -1 if you need the two-handing killing power, so we need the insurance of the 1-3 infantry.

Here's a sample army at 800 points that shows what this could look like, to bring it all into perspective:

Warband 1

Amdur, Lord of Blades with Armored Horse (Army Leader): 145pts