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.).

But since this army list is basically, "Vanilla Dale without Girion but with windlances," let's be real: you're running this at least in part to use a windlance or two to accompany your power heroes. So in reality I think including at least one windlance is a must, and at only 75 points for the base engine, that's not bad at all.

[EDIT: Post the August 2022 errata, "Vanilla Dale" can now take windlances. So while you should still totally run them in this legion, you can now take them with any Dale army, including one led by Girion. I think this is a huge win for Dale all around, but it does mean there are less things to set this legendary legion apart from "Vanilla Dale"]

I think you need a Captain of Dale as well, both because Heroic March is a thing, but also because your soldiers are relatively cheap at about 8-11 pts/model, so you'll need at least one of those to field your troops and keep them moving in short order. Your lack of cavalry compounds this, as it means keeping up with enemies, reaching objectives, etc. will likely require a Heroic March in your force (if not two).

The only thing I'm not completely sold on is whether you technically need Knights of Dale. My gut says to take them (as they are effectively Rohan Royal Guards with higher Courage, spears, and a wounding bonus if they are charged, in exchange for Bodyguard and ability to take a horse to take advantage of good army bonuses and special rules), but since their Fight Value and Strength are the same as a Warrior of Dale, you don't actually get all that much for the extra points you pay. Don't get me wrong: D6 is great and a chance at easier wounding if you're charged is nice, but for an extra 3 points (as you want these guys in the front rank to take advantage of their Wall of Blades special rule, so I'm assuming they are compared to a Warrior of Dale with a shield only) I'm not sure it's worth it.

So basically the whole army list is worth taking, or at least arguably worth taking. On the one hand, this is great! It's a sign that everything in the force (except maybe the War Horn upgrade option) is useful. This would mean more, though, if you had more profiles to choose from, and that's one of the things we'll be talking about next.

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

As will be noted in greater depth below, this is one of those legions that I think a lot of people looked at and said, "...do we need a legion for this? Isn't this basically just Dale without Girion?" And they're right - that's exactly what this is, with one additional bonus. So this means that the strengths and weaknesses of this legion are very similar to the standard issues and benefits you get from Vanilla Dale.

Weakness #1: Soft Heroes

Dale has always had this issue, and it hasn't gotten much better. Girion and Captains of Dale are not particularly survivable heroes, especially since they are infantry and thus give charging cavalry models an easier time killing them...which was already not that hard to do.

The legion makes this slightly better than Vanilla Dale in that 1) it gives you two named heroes instead of one, and 2) Brand has 3 Wounds and 1 Fate with D7 (which is better than we had before) and Bard II has 2 Wounds and 2 Fate with D7 (which is better than we had before), but in both cases our maximum Wounds we can suffer is raised to 4 instead of 3 (assuming we pass every Fate roll), which is...frankly horrible compared to the vast majority of factions in the game (sure, Wolves of Isengard can't suffer more than 3 Wounds on any of their heroes, but this is a very small pond that we're in, and it's still a weakness), and it's compounded by the fact that, again, we're all infantry, so charging cavalry have double their wounding dice (which, by the way, Wolves of Isengard only has this issue if they get dismounted first, which is less likely).

This gets compounded by how our heroes want to be trapped (Brand) or charged (Bard), so now there's not only an incentive to let cavalry charge them, but also there's a reason to give infantry double their wounding dice against our army leader. And they're squishy.

So realize upfront that your best heroes are not "bruisers" and will fall if they suffer wounds. You don't have any durable pieces, and your margin for error is low. So just be aware of that.

Strength #1: Cheap Firepower

For 110 points Brand is a steal: he has the 3 Attacks at S4 that we like in human heroes, and F5 with Heroic Strike is a good combo (not great, but good). Tack onto this that if he's trapped in melee he can reroll a dueling dice and a wounding dice, and, if you stack him with a banner reroll, you get effectively 5 dice to win the fight, and 4 chances to deal up to 3 wounds. Not bad for 110 points.

Bard II: Nice sculpt, and in the running for, "Best Beard of the Year"

Bard II is also great, albeit being a more defensive hero in that you want him to be charged, but with 3 Attacks at F5 S4 with Heroic Strike and a chance at +1 to wound if he's charged, and you've effectively got a "Baby Gilgalad with Human Weapons" for 100 points if you play him right. We will take that. Tack on access to Heroic Defense, and if you find yourself charged and you don't like your odds of winning, at least you might be able to cover over that squishy aspect we just discussed.

And, on top of this, you get access to 75pt siege weapons that hit like a truck with a 3+ Shoot. That's fantastic. Sure, they don't knock people back or do splash damage, but in my experience the latter doesn't actually come up that often as people use "Suicide Bobs" to scatter onto, and the knockback could be cut short by terrain anyway. As someone who loves siege weapons, this is great: it allows us to provide the cover fire and suppressing fire that our softer melee guys need to be competitive, and on a reliable 3+ Shoot at that.

And even your warrior choices are good at killing things, thanks to the wounding bonus for Knights of Dale and the "elven archery" we get access to (S3 24" with a 3+ Shoot) on our Warriors of Dale and our Captains of Dale if we take the Esgaroth Bow upgrade (which you should). And with F4 all around, horde armies that try to overwhelm you will find it hard to beat you in a fight so long as you're smart about not overextending your lines.

Weakness #2: No Power Heroes

This shouldn't be surprising considering the last strength, but this legion has access to two good mid-range heroes (Brand and Bard II), a good low-end hero (Captain of Dale), but it has no entries at all for high-end heroes. If you find yourself up against the heavy hitters that tend to be at tournaments - Aragorn, Azog, Thorin, The Balrog of Moria, Elrond, Bolg, Glorfindel - you're screwed. You're just screwed. If they make it to your lines there's little to nothing in your list that can stop them other than your Sworn Protector warriors holding them down (more on that later). And sure, you can feed them guys, but for how long? This is a serious issue for this list.

Now to be fair, it's not unique to this legion: Arnor, Wolves of Isengard, Ugluk's Scouts, Sharkey's Rogues, and others have the same issue. But since this legion is passing up a very nice alliance matrix (historical allies with Erebor Reclaimed which has a ton of high-end heroes), this is a weakness for this legion.

Strength #2: Good Horde Capabilities

Your baseline warrior is 7 points, so on-par with a Warrior of Rohan, except that they are F4 instead of F3 (and don't get to start with an axe), so at 8-10 points you're not the cheapest warrior out there, buuuuuut...

...Since you have such cheap heroes, you can field a TON of these guys. A full warband led by a captain is 163 points (Captain + 4 Shields + 4 Spears/Shields + 4 Bows/Spears), and three full warbands led by Bard and Brand and a captain is only 570 points for a whopping 48 models, which is almost 10pts/model including heroes (and two of which have Strike starting at F5, by the way).

And unlike other horde armies, this includes 33% bows to take full advantage of your good ranged capabilities and over 66% spears, so you get lots of attacks in melee combat as well. And it still leaves room for siege weapons (up to 3) if you want them (which, by the way, at 800 points you could actually do 3 if you really wanted to go crazy on top of what you have here).

This army hordes well, and it does it without sacrificing stats. That is rare (and why I'm plunking down the money to invest in them).

Weakness #3: Low Resiliency

Your army is overwhelmingly D4-D5, and even though you have Knights of Dale that get up to D6 and your heroes can get up to D7, your overall army is quite susceptible to S3 and S4 attacks, which is most models in the game. This is not surprising considering that you are a good horde army (if you were resilient and good at hording we'd have an issue with game balance), but it does bear repeating for those looking to play Dale: if your opponent gets a lot of chances to wound you, you're likely going to take a beating.

And unlike armies like Lothlorien and The Shire that have innate access to Blinding Light, you'd need to ally this in to Dale, which you cannot do with a legendary legion. So keep that in mind: terrain is going to be your only real mitigation to incoming archery.

Strength #3: 3+ Shoot Siege Weapon Spam

As we hinted at above, the only thing better than getting access to a 3+ Shoot siege weapon with an auto-kill feature is having the ability to field tons of them in a list thanks to how cheap your models are. The fact that you could reliably field two of these at 600 points means that literally any hero not protected by Blinding Light will have close to 0 Fate Points - if not be off the table entirely - by the time the lines close. Since you lack high-end heroes, this is a nice boon to have in the army, and the fact that it's a 3+ Shoot means that you're more likely than not to hit with all of your siege weapons in a single turn. So even if they have guys around to scatter shots onto, you're going to whittle down that supporting corps pretty quickly.

As of the most recent errata, this is only possible with Vanilla Dale and this legendary legion (and is mimicked by Iron Hills and the Assault on Helm's Deep legendary legion, though the former is far more expensive than a windlance and the latter has far more expensive warriors, so they aren't fielding as many troops), so it's a very exclusive club that gets this kind of supporting fire on such a reliable roll.

Strength #4: Improved Courage

In the post-Black Riders universe that we live in, high Courage is nice, but auto-passing Courage Tests is even better. Having Sworn Protector (Brand) on every model in your army (including Brand, interestingly enough, as he is a friendly Dale model) means you can reliably make charges even in the face of heavy Terror armies.

Now of course this means we need to keep Brand safe, but hey - if we know that going into it, we can plan ahead. More on that when we talk about strategy below.

Part 3: Legendary Legion Improvements

I'll start by saying that I'm not sure this legion needed to exist: give Vanilla Dale access to the windlances (EDIT: with the most recent errata they did - thanks design team!), note that you can't have Girion and Brand/Bard in the same list, or do something similar to what they did with Eorl and the rest of Rohan, and you're good (plus we could throw in that Lothlorien legion that everyone wanted). But since we have this legion, here we are, and I'll present a few notes on what I'd change.

First of all, we have a mobility issue, and while we have good shooting, good shooting alone doesn't make up for poor mobility in the scenarios where mobility matters (Heirlooms, Reconnoiter, etc.). We can't give them mount options because no mounted figures were made, and that's fine (though Dale is wealthy both in the Hobbit era and by the time of the War of the Ring, so why they can't afford horses no one knows, especially when they have horse insignias on their cloaks...), but there are other ways to give added mobility. I'd allow captains to call Heroic March without expending a Might Point: Dale is coming to aid their allies and protect the realm, and need beckons haste. This has the added benefit of encouraging you to take captains, even if it's a low points limit, which is also nice.

Second, I'd give Captains of Dale a second shot if their first ranged attack hits, allowing them to fire up to twice in the Shoot Phase if you take the Esgaroth Bow. This does two things: first, it encourages you to take ranged heroes which comes at the cost of not being a D6 "Bunker Captain" (which you also need, probably), but it also means that you have a "Mini Girion" of sorts, as it's not a greatbow (it's a good bow, but not a greatbow! Hehe, okay, I'll stop), and it's not up to three shots, but it allows you to play into your ranged threat without having a power archer in the army.

And finally, I'd give them the Hatred (Easterlings) special rule. Not only does this fit thematically, but it also allows a S3 force that is going up against a D6 force a chance at, you know, actually getting past the armor that's coming toward them. It's not as broad as a Hatred (Man) special rule (which would make them really good at fighting Gondor, actually), and it's kind of niche, but you know, it would probably come up with some level of frequency thanks to the new Dragon Emperor and other models that were added to the Easterling faction.

So with that, let's talk about strategy.

Part 4: Army Strategies

So to start, Tiberius did a great write-up on Dale in his Bare Necessities series and I agree with basically everything he says there. And while this legion can't take Girion and can't ally in dwarves, the same concepts apply: good suppressing fire supporting a solid block of bodies thanks to the low cost of your heroes.

In light of this, your 3+ Shoot Value means that you're a "gun line" faction: you excel at shooting, and want to shoot as often as possible. You don't get to ignore the 33% bow limit rule like Rangers of Ithilien and The Rangers, nor do you get rerolls on your failed hits, scatters, etc. like the Assault on Helm's Deep legion, but you know what, I think that's actually okay since you get cheap F4 spears (for +1pt you're a Ranger of Gondor with a S3 bow instead of a S2 bow - I'll take that), and a larger horde than perhaps any of those armies (not to mention higher overall Defense than the Rangers of Ithilien, which I think is the only one that could keep up with you on total numbers, but even then I'm not sure).

The big thing to keep in mind is that your ranged damage is supposed to be suppressing fire, not destructive fire: people think that if they aren't mowing down the enemy they're doing it wrong, and that's just not true. Your aim with shooting is to winnow down enemy elements so they are less effective, not remove them entirely. So a few examples of what that looks like.

Let's say that your opponent has 10 models going toward one objective, and 8 models going toward another objective. You have a body of about 15 archers that can shoot at both groups: what do you do? You could split your shots, but if you do that your 10ish hits (66% of 15 shots) will be split between both groups, and you'll do on average about 1-3 wounds against your average army (assuming D5-6), so you're basically doing no damage at all to either group. It's not going to change the outcome of the battle at either objective.

But if you target the group of 10 with all of your archers, think about it: why did they send more guys to that one? Whatever the reason, that group is now closer in size if not smaller than their smaller squad, and that means their plan is now awry. What they thought they had they now don't have, and that could give you the win at that objective.

Alternatively, if you fire at the smaller group, you might make that group so small that not only can they not take the objective, you might be able to move some guys away from that objective to another place on the map, which, since you very well may have the numerical advantage, means that they now need to borrow guys from somewhere else to counter your threat, which put the momentum on your side.

So think in terms of whittling down forces to make them less effective: we don't need to wipe out threats if we can make them less dangerous for our melee corps, which is most of our army.

I'll also be doing a separate post on the "Gear Tooth" formation for using your Knights of Dale and Bard II most effectively, as there's a lot to say on that, but suffice it to say for now, one of the things you need to plan around is the fact that your best killing pieces in melee cannot also charge on the same turn. That's a problem, as there's not a lot of reason for your opponent to charge a model that gets better when charged, so either 1) you go first and they avoid you, or 2) you go second, they haven't been charged, and you don't get your special rule unless they Heroic Combat into you. In either scenario, they've denied you the +1 to wound from Wall of Blades.

The Gear Tooth Formation: spears assist, leave gaps for your Knights of Dale
to be charged or charge, but failing to charge the knights wastes troops

I propose a Gear Tooth formation as a solution: the Knights of Dale serve as spear supports in a broken front line, allowing them to help the guys in the front if they're not charged, but contributing a control zone that keeps a second guy from engaging your frontline warriors, thereby triggering a charge if the enemy wants to get lots of guys into the fight. And if they aren't charged, that's fine: they're still providing that useful spear support to the combat, not to mention F4 so the frontline warrior can Feint without a penalty.

This is also a great anti-cavalry formation as it keeps your expensive models from being hit by cavalry in their initial charges. Sure, it would be nice to get that +1 to wound against cavalry, but it's not great to lose your expensive guy because a cavalryman charged you and you couldn't win the fight. So I'm dabbling with an inverted battle line that places the Knights of Dale at the front against cavalry, but I'm still figuring out the kinks on that one as skirmish cavalry kind of make that strategy difficult if not untenable in practice.

But the critical thing is this: we're maximizing the rules that we have, or denying them their numerical firepower. And in an army that hordes well, if we can deny some numbers to our opponent, that's fantastic.

And the final thing we need to talk about is Sworn Protector: since you have this up, if you're up against a Black Riders list or similar army where Terror is going to be an issue, you need to keep Brand back. The nice thing about a "Gun Line" faction is that you can afford to do this: sit back, keep Brand far back behind your lines, and let your archers and frontline troops handle them. If and when they break through you can send Brand in, but you don't want him getting sniped or headhunted by the enemy because that will have a trickledown effect into other elements of the match. So keep him back to keep him alive: your loyal men will do their job, so trust them.

Part 5: Army Showcase

Our first list is the bare bones: the king and a loyal, and a loyal squad of supporting men. The list is 29 models, with a lot of supporting fire (10 ranged weapons) to give cover to your hedge of spears:

• Brand, King of Dale [ARMY LEADER]
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 1 Warrior of Dale with Spear, Shield, and Banner
• 4 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Captain of Dale with Esgaroth Bow
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 4 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Windlance

With 8 bowmen + 1 captain + 1 siege weapon, we have good cover fire for when the enemy is at range, and as they close the 8 bowmen double as spearmen, which is good since Forces of Good can't fire into combats, so our archers would be less effective once the fighting closes. In an ideal world, with 10 good shots going out each turn, your opponent might not actually have that much of a numerical superiority over you by the time they close.

Now you could boost your numbers if you drop the windlance, but 1) I think if you're going to drop the windlance you might as well just run Vanilla Dale (as you could give up Sworn Protector to pick up another mid-range dwarf hero for killing things), and 2) we want to pluck Fate points off of those big heroes if at all possible, and this is by far the easiest way to do it in this list.

As we scale up to 700 points, we can add Bard and more men to the list to flesh it out:

• Brand, King of Dale [ARMY LEADER]
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 1 Warrior of Dale with Spear, Shield, and Banner
• 4 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Bard II
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields and Spears
• 3 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Captain of Dale with Esgaroth Bow
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 4 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 4 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Windlance

Now our numbers are up to 40 models (not bad for 700 points), and we could go even higher if we drop the windlance (again). We have a lot of suppressing fire with 11 bowmen + our captain + a windlance, but the big thing is that we have an absolute monster truck of defense now with a spear formation of almost 30 warriors, plus our bowmen to back them up. This means we can easily send hit squads of 10 men to take objectives while still having a strong anvil to meet incoming threats.

But, if we're feeling particularly crazy, there's another way we can build this list that really leans into the "Gun Line" faction concept:

• Brand, King of Dale [ARMY LEADER]
• 4 Knights of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 2 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Shields
• 1 Warrior of Dale with Spear, Shield, and Banner
• 6 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Bard II
• 3 Knights of Dale
• 2 Warriors of Dale with Shields
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Shields and Spears
• 5 Warriors of Dale with Spears and Esgaroth Bows
• Windlance
• Windlance

You know what's better than a windlance? TWO WINDLANCES!

This is a classic "Centaur Special" kind of list: not only did we only lose 1 model (as we effectively dropped the captain + 2 Knights of Dale to take the siege engine), but we arguably improved our shooting by adding a second "Death on the Wind" siege weapon in place of a captain with an Esgaroth Bow, all while only shrinking our front line by two models. Now we've got area control from two siege weapons that are threatening to snipe heroes and monsters out of the mix (especially the 0-2 Fate heroes and monsters that tend to show up), we still have heavy fire coming down at range, we still have our two good mid-range heroes with Heroic Strike, and while we can't march, ideally we won't have to thanks to our two long range shots each turn.

Is this a competitive list? Probably not. It gets even less competitive with Blinding Light on the table. But is it fun? If you enjoy artillery shelling people to death, yes, it's very fun, :P More on this in the coming weeks as I test out Dale, because hint: this is how I'm running Dale, :)

Army Summary

My daughter's assessment: "The guys are nice, the paint tastes decent,
but I love the purple flowers on the board more." A fair assessment.

I enjoyed this army far more than I expected. I still think it shouldn't be in the book (and should have been replaced with a new Lorien legion), but since it's in the book, I'm glad that it's a fun legion that plays differently from other legendary legions (though perhaps not that differently from Vanilla Dale), and it gives us a chance to play around with some cool profiles while pushing around beautiful models on the table. If you're on the fence about Dale, consider just trying out this legion: I think you'll enjoy it.

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Firenze!  What are you doing?  You have a human on your back!  Have you no shame?  Are you a common mule?" ~ Bane, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone