The Stuff of Legends: Defenders of Erebor

Good morning gamers,

We're back in the Defence of the North supplement to view a list that I had very mixed feelings about when I started playing with it - and even after playing a half-dozen games at various points levels, I feel like I still don't fully understand it. I can say that I've been pleasantly surprised with a few of the models in the list - and have some very surprising shenanigans that can be run with it. And more importantly, I can say that I love it - I love this Legion a LOT.

Let's dig into one of the hallmark lists of the new supplement and what it has to offer (fair warning: this article is LOOOOOOONG)!

UPDATE: Many thanks to the anonymous user who pointed out that Barazanthul is in fact Master-forged (as it always should have been). Some parts of this article have been updated accordingly.

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 165-240pts

The list requires at least one named Dale hero (either Brand or Bard II) and at least one named Erebor hero (Dain, Thorin III, or one of the living, mobile Champions of Erebor during the War of the Ring - Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Dori, Nori, or Gloin). With Brand/Bard costing 100-110pts and the Dwarves costing between 65 and 130pts, this Legion actually has a quite variable tax on it (as low as 165pts if you took Bard and either Bifur or Bofur - though probably Bifur - or as much as 240pts if you take Brand and Dain - which is quite likely at high points levels because of the Legion rules).

Usually in these posts, this is where I go into what you ACTUALLY need to take. This Legion . . . doesn't really have that. No, this Legion has so many different facets to it that I don't think I can boil the list down to "here's what you need to take." Instead, I found myself feeling a strange sense of DeJa'Vu when I was writing lists for this Legion - getting flashbacks to the start of the new edition of MESBG and over the past few years writing lists for one of the most thematic army lists in the game that HASN'T been turned into a Legendary Legion: the Last Alliance.

Why List Building For The Last Alliance Is Hard

Good morning gamers,

Here at TMAT, we love list building - I mean, the next best thing to playing the game is planning what army you want to bring to the next game you play, am I right? Well, since the new edition dropped, I've come back time and time again to the Last Alliance (a historical alliance between Rivendell and Numenor) and have enjoyed tinkering with various lists. With this tinkering, I'm often left feeling like I haven't got it quite right - there's always something missing or a glaring vulnerability. So today, I wanted to walk through the things I've discovered with this historical alliance (and while this article wasn't planned to be released right before the Rings of Power series airs, it does seem strangely appropriate to talk about how the allied list functions and what you need to know about it).

Why Writing The List Is Hard

If you've never written a Last Alliance list before, let me walk you through some of the decisions you need to make. First and foremost, since you're choosing to go with a historical alliance between Rivendell and Numenor, you'll need at least one hero from Numenor (Elendil, Isildur, or a Captain of Numenor) and at least one hero from Rivendell (thematically this would be Gil-Galad, Elrond, or a High Elf Captain - though you could argue for Glorfindel, Erestor, or Gildor). Once your Rivendell hero is selected, you also have some Minor Hero options (Cirdan and Stormcallers) and of course, you can TECHNICALLY run the Twins, Lindir, or Arwen with Numenor (though it's not thematically appropriate as it breaks the timeline). 

The Stuff of Legends: The Vanquishers of the Necromancer

Good morning gamers,

Today we're continuing our review of Legendary Legions from Fall of the Necromancer - and I know people asked when we'd be reviewing these in print, but for this Legion in particular, boy am I happy I waited until after the February 2022 FAQ. :-) Yep, today, we're dealing with the Vanqiushers of the Necromancer Legion, something that was smashing tables with Prone-inducing spells until the Middle-Earth team made two very dramatic changes. I still think the list is good, and we'll see why in a moment. Let's dig in!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Photo Credit: Tumblr
Legion Tax: 470pts

Thanks to the February 2022 FAQ, in this list you now need to take not one, not two, but THREE heroes - Saruman the White (who will always be your army leader), Galadriel, Lady of Light, and Gandalf the Grey. With the addition of Gandalf to this line-up, this Legion has the highest official Legion tax in the game (470pts - though if you run the Grand Army of the South, you're probably spending well over the 375-400pt minimum once you fill out the howdah of the required Mumak).

What you ACTUALLY need to take is Elrond (and probably Radagast) as well - which means the army really functions well at 650pts, 800pts, or 850pts. Elrond not only gets free Heroic Strikes in this list, but he also counts as a banner for everyone else - which means your F5-6/3A heroes can win more fights by increasing their likelihood of getting a good dueling roll. He's also able to two-hand without the need to burn Might on Strikes - so he's a lot better than the other models in your list at actually two-handing so you can kill stuff.

Ranking the 4 New Battle Hosts!

All images taken from the Warhammer Community article

Hey Reader!

You all know I love a good (and ultimately pointless) ranking post, and seeing as we got four new battle hosts dropping shortly to an online store/physical GW or retailer store near you, it seemed like a good idea to do an overly pedantic ranking of these four new armies to see which is "the best."

Now I should start off by saying that 1) I'm a huge fan of this concept, as it's an easy way for someone to start the game with useful core portions of their respective army and then they can build from there based on their fancy, and 2) that literally none of these can be fully played as-is because of the hero-to-warrior ratio, so I want to note before we begin that I think all of these are awesome, I will definitely consider buying a few of them, and that (in classic Centaur fashion) there will be caveats for the ranking below that will show the mindset I'm using to assess the lists, so if you disagree with those you're probably going to think the ranking is trash, :P

Of course, who am I kidding: some of you are going to think the rankings are trash anyway, but oh well.

So in the way of explaining our criteria for the ranking, I need to express the following caveats for how we approached the comparison.

First, I'm looking at the four battle hosts against each other, not against some nebulous army or legendary legion that could be fielded against them. Since a lot of army concepts rely on a wide range of synergies between warriors and heroes, it goes beyond the spirit of the battle host - a hero (or a hero pair, in two cases) and two boxes of warriors - to compare them to a complex or diversified list. So we will be comparing the four battle hosts to each other only for the purpose of this ranking. If more are released, and if you all enjoy this post, I'll gladly rerank with the new releases as they come out!

Second, we are assuming that the battle hosts face each other on a variety of scenarios, so just because, for example, one battle host is overwhelmingly F3 and another is overwhelmingly F4, that doesn't necessarily mean that the F4 army will win out. It may slant close calls in their direction as melee prowess tends to help in winning matches, but it's not the only factor we are considering.

And finally, I openly admit that with the addition of a second hero a lot of the rankings change. I'll note more on this in the conclusion, but suffice it to say, none of these boxes are "optimized" for competitive play right out of the box. And as I'll note below, I think that's the point, and it's brilliant.

We will be evaluating the strengths of the hero, warriors, and their ability to perform well against the other hosts that are arrayed against them. So with no further ado, let's look at the incredible box set that comes in at last place, only because one of them has to.

The Stuff of Legends: the Rise of the Necromancer

Good morning gamers,

Two weeks ago, Centaur brought us back to our Stuff of Legends series with a look at the Army of Dale. Today we'll be reviewing one of the Legions that I haven't had a chance to test out until recently: the Rise of the Necromancer. I was a big fan of the Necromancer in our Evil Spellcaster pod and you can get detailed reviews of this Legion from Asgarod's blog and a hot-take from Sharbie on his blog - check out their stuff if you haven't already, they're really good! This Legion, like few others, is all about one model: the Necromancer. Amazingly though, it hasn't gone overboard on what he can do and even gives some nice bonuses to the other models in the list so that they can do what they already did even better. I kind of hope this Legion forms a template for whatever Sauron-based second-age army gets released in the ever-hoped-for-but-not-announced-yet Last Alliance supplement that is made. Let's get right into it!

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Photo Credit: TheForce.Net
Legion Tax: 250pts

The Legion requires you to take the Necromancer of Dol Guldur - which, let's face it, we all saw coming. The Necromancer is an older model (some complain that he should have gotten a new model with the book release) but has solid rules for a caster. With 25 Will points to cast/resist spells, participate in combats, use as Fate points, and stay alive, he's got a LOT of time to cast spells (and can even fight for a while if he's not facing anything that will wound him easily).

FAQ Time: Breaking Down the August 2022 FAQ

Good morning gamers,

Last week, we had a new set of Erratas and FAQs drop which . . . prompted far less discussion than previous FAQs have (so that's good, I guess?). I like to give the FAQs a week before I publish anything so I can mull over them for a bit and here are the thoughts I have on them (providentially, the Unexpected Podcast team got their video up recently too - check it out if you haven't already).

Erratas: Profile and Army Tweaks

Photo Credit: Reddit
Me looking for the questions I submitted . . .

There were eight erratas (seven meaningful ones) in this round of edits - most of which related to Evil models or the Defence of the North supplement. The first and foremost is that the Will of Evil rule now precludes models from spending their last Will point to "cast a Magical Power and cause themselves to be removed as a casualty."  When I first read this, I thought the bottom line was clear: you can't kill your Ringwraiths voluntarily anymore - your opponent has to do it. 

While this is mostly true, on closer inspection, the errata doesn't preclude you from burning through your Will to resist magical powers, pass Courage tests, or trigger special rules (like Pall of Darkness or Rule Through Fear), but in these cases, your opponent has do something (cast magic on you), has to provide you a need to pass a Courage test (break you or bring at least one Terror model), or you've got a named Ringwraith in a flying circus/conventional army and has to burn through his Will one at a time - all of which avoid the primary problem of "I evaporate my army on Turn 1 and no one has any fun." I was never bothered by this shenanigan, but it was also never abused against me, so I'm fine with this FAQ change:

Page 107 – Will of Evil Replace the last sentence of the first rules paragraph with the following: A model with this special rule may not use their last point of Will to cast a Magical Power and cause themselves to be removed as a casualty.

The second change is to Shades: previously, their Chill Aura ability was Passive, so you couldn't just Immobilize/Transfix them to keep them from reducing your dueling rolls during the subsequent Fight phase. Now, Chill Aura is an Active ability and casters with access to Immobilize/Transfix become better at taking down a Shade, as you can force them to burn Will (used to activate Chill Aura) to try to use it later in the round - great change, guys, great change:

Page 128 – Shade – Chill Aura Change from Passive to Active.

The final change hits the Assault on Helm's Deep Legendary Legion the hardest, but not that hard: Isengard Assault Ballistas now have a minimum range of 6". While I think this should have been the case anyway (there's no way you're hitting someone right up in your grill with that ballista), I don't think modifying Piercing Shot was the right way to handle it, as the "Piercing Shot" special rule shows up on several other siege weapons (and as a guy who makes spreadsheets that auto-look-up your rules, the solution to this fix required some thinking, albeit not a lot of work once the thinking was done). Still, it's a good rules change:

Page 179 – Isengard Assault Ballista – Piercing Shot Add the following sentence: An Isengard Assault Ballista has a range of 6”-48”.

Speaking of siege weapons, while Centaur covered the Army of Dale LL last week, we now have the option to take the Windlance in a Garrison of Dale list - which not only means that Girion can have those supporting him in a Hobbit-Era Dale list, but the only benefit you're getting from the Army of Dale LL is Sworn Protector (Brand, King of Dale) . . . yeah, that Legion doesn't have much of a leg to stand on anymore:

Page 52 – Garrison of Dale Add Windlance to the army composition. 

Passing note - as I mentioned in my In Defense Of article on Orophin, Orophin is in fact a Woodland Creature:

Page 63 – Orophin Add the Woodland Creature special rule. 

Another passing note: Khamul was added to the list of models in the Defence of the North Easterling army summary - NOT the Legendary Legion options, but the normal army summary (which we already knew):

Page 70 – The Easterlings Add Khamûl the Easterling to the army composition. 

The final two changes relate to Beornings: first, Beornings now have with both a hand-and-a-half axe (which will be swapped with a great bow) and an axe (instead of a dagger) - cool, nothing earth-shattering, probably to conform to the equipment on the models:

Page 69 – Beornings – Wargear Change to: Hand-and-a-half axe and axe. 

Second, Beorn will be able to benefit from Grimbeorn's heroic actions in their Legendary Legion (despite his Berserk special rule saying otherwise . . . the son can communicate with dad I guess):

Page 91 – The Beornings – Additional Rules Add the following bullet point: Whilst he is in bear form, Beorn may still benefit from the Heroic Actions of Grimbeorn regardless of his Berserk special rule.

Armies of Middle-Earth SBG: The Rangers

Photo Credit: worldanvil.com

Summer is here again, and so it's time for my annual tradition of trying to finish this series on army lists.    :-P To get back in the swing of things, I figured I'd start with two lists I've spent a lot of time playing over the last year: the Rangers and the Dark Powers of Dol Guldur. The Rangers won the coin flip, so here we are.

While this list is not the most competitive list out there, my personal experience is that it is both (1) an absolute blast to play, and (2) way more competitive in way more scenarios than you might think at first glance. The secret sauce is the absurd number of heroes you can / must take, complimented as well by the assortment of heroes (and sometimes troops) you can ally with them). Having one of the best heroes in the game, with one of the best wargear items in the game, also doesn't hurt. (Can you guess which? spoiler: there are two great candidates.)

Once again, while there's a lengthy list of community resources at the end, I'll flag the Green Dragon Podcast's episode on the Rangers at the outset: definitely give that a listen if you have a lengthy painting project. Devin Moreno over at the DC Hobbit League did a great review of the Rangers after the new edition dropped, both on YouTube and with Mik at Veni Vidi Double. Finally, I have listened many times to the Green Dragon's post-tourney report from Ardacon 2018, when Kylie ran a now-outdated Ranger-heavy list that used the same run-and-hit tactics that continue to make the Rangers so dangerous. If this is a list that interests you, those battle reports give a lot of insights into how to run that list well.

Shall we?

Unexpected Military Formations: The Gear Tooth Formation

Hey Reader!

In my last post I talked about the Army of Dale legendary legion, and near the end I had an offhanded comment about how I think you can maximize your use of the Wall of Blades special rule on your Knights of Dale and Bard II through an effective formation, and that is what we're going to discuss today! Look at me actually completing a project. Hyperfocus ADHD for the win.

I'll be presenting two variations on the "Gear Tooth" formation, the first being the one that I suspect the designers of the game had in mind (or at least it's a standard deviation from what the game designers had in mind), and then I'll follow up with what I think is actually a more effective version that does all of the same things but better.

Now it's worth noting before we go into this that the Gear Tooth formation is really only effective as a defensive formation, which makes sense since Wall of Blades can only be used when you are charged. So keep in mind that if you're looking for an offensive formation there are better options out there, like the Boar Snout or a similar formation.

The Stuff of Legends: The Army of Dale

My current force: working on a converted archer captain and a second windlance

Hey Reader!

Tiberius asked me to tackle the new Dale legendary legion, as I'm starting to get into Dale and bought up a starter force to get that underway (so following the Nova Open, expect some Dale content on the blog! Huzzah for new armies). As always, we'll start by looking at what you're required to take (and what you should include on top of that), why you would run the legion over and against a "Vanilla Dale" force, as you're giving up an alliance matrix to get the legion bonuses, and then we'll move into the strengths and weaknesses of the legion before moving into changes we'd make and some list building.

As a quick caveat: I'm just starting to get into Dale, so you won't see an extensive amount of time-tested, proven strategy in this post. I've got some ideas (and one of them will lead to a spin-off formations post, so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks!), but fair warning: this is a green Dale player giving you advice.

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Still working on color scheme, but once that's done, I'll wash and base them

The only model you technically need to include in your list is Brand, King of Dale - you don't technically need to include Bard II, but you probably should, as he's good at what he does and will contribute to the army damage count, which we need when the fighting gets to melee because we have no cavalry (more on that in a bit).

The nice thing about this is that Brand is only 110 points, which means you could run this legendary legion at a 150-point tournament (and you'd do okay, I think, if you did). As far as legendary legions go this is near the middle, but it's still very affordable (and some of the legions that technically have a lower tax will effectively pay more because they want a horse for Thrydan, equipment for Eomer, etc.).