Gondor At War Inspired Lists: The Dead of Dunharrow Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today we're digging into one of the easiest factions to start collecting: the Dead of Dunharrow. An incredibly popular faction for those who started playing the game when the Pelennor Fields box set was released (with Gondor at War providing a new King of the Dead sculpt/a new hero profile in Heralds of the Dead) and a cool Legendary Legion that allows Aragorn to join the Army of the Dead and get Anduril/a 6" banner rule for free, the Dead of Dunharrow are an oddity for the Forces of Good: a low-Fight, Terror-heavy list that absolutely shreds any army to pieces if they can just win fights. Oh, and they don't have any shooting or power heroes of their own - they're an expensive spam team.

When I was preparing for this series, I originally had in mind to actually review the Return of the King LL (Rythbyrt did it for me in our Stuff of Legends series because I don't like it - and I omitted covering it in the main part of our Bare Necessities series by going with an Elessar-led Minas Tirith contingent allied with some Dead of Dunharrow). I don't like the Legion and I was clawing for ANYTHING that would remotely compete with it for this article.

And then, like a gift from the skies, Sharbie on his Against All Odds blog released not one article but TWO articles on using the Dead of Dunharrow as a pure list at recent tournaments in Australia - and I immediately went to see if I could do it for a Gondor at War piece. As it turns out, we actually have over 700pts of models from Gondor at War to work with, so I thought, "Scrap the Legion - we're going pure!" Here are the models we can pick from:

• The King of the Dead
• 2 Heralds of the Dead
• 20 Warriors of the Dead
• 14 Warriors of the Dead with shields*
• 6 Warriors of the Dead with spears*
• 6 Riders of the Dead
  

*As we noted in our what-you-need-to-collect post, you can choose to:

• Have 20 infantry the way you like them and ignore their shields and spears for the scenarios;
• Have 26 Warriors of the Dead - 20 with nothing that can have up to 14 Warriors of the Dead with blue-tacked shields and 6 spearmen; or
• Have 40 Warriors of the Dead - 20 vanilla, 14 with shields, and 6 with spears.

We, as it happens, will be doing a modified version of the third option today. :-)

Sharbie's work on his blog is incredible - check it out if you haven't already (though he's not an exclusive MESBG content guy - though I will say his reviews of 40K are also quite interesting, even though most of it goes over my head due to not really knowing how the gaming system works, #Uninitiated). To summarize his experience with pure Dunharrow, here's what we want:

• Get into 1-on-1 combats as much as you can (to make it unlikely that you'll be wounded and mitigate whatever liability F3 provides);
• Get around the enemy flanks (keeping a two-rank shieldwall works sometimes, but usually isn't as good as wrapping);
• Avoid getting stuck against big heroes and focus on killing grunts;
  
• Fight in the open (so you can bring your numbers to bear/wrap the enemy); and
• Don't bother with Heralds (you want the numbers and you don't need the heroic actions/Resistant to Magic).
  

With this in mind, let's dig into the list!

The List

Photo Credit: Gondor At War

We've decided to really horde it out today, drilling down deep into Warriors of the Dead and making a big decision to do the two-boxes-of-Warriors approach we talked about in the army collection article (but taking it to kind of an extreme):

• The King of the Dead [ARY LEADER]
• 9 Warriors of the Dead with shields
• 3 Warriors of the Dead with spears
  
• 2 Riders of the Dead
  
• 1 Rider of the Dead
• 5 Warriors of the Dead
  
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with shield
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with spear
  
• 1 Rider of the Dead
• 5 Warriors of the Dead
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with shield
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with spear
  
• 1 Rider of the Dead
• 5 Warriors of the Dead
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with shield
• 1 Warrior of the Dead with spear
  

700 points, 39 models, no shooting, 39 D6+ models, 5 cavalry models and 1 Might for Heroic March, 1 Might point

So . . . I feel like I cheated a little. :-) TECHNICALLY I didn't cheat, but I decided to get the 20 Warriors of the Dead with no extra gear in addition to the 20 Warriors of the Dead with extra gear (14 shields, 6 spears). This allowed us to do something we couldn't do with the Return of the King LL: horde out our numbers to an insane degree. In what is the largest model count (barely) for the Forces of Good so far, we have 39 models that are D7-8, all of which cause Terror (with the King providing Harbinger), and we managed to fit 5 cavalry models in our list (mostly because we had to or risk giving up more shields/spears).

When you compare my list to Sharbie's 600pt list, he gets 31 models with 28 Warriors of the Dead (compared to our 33), a banner (which we don't have), shields and/or spears on all the warriors (I assume there are no vanilla guys running around), and 2 Riders of the Dead (instead of 5 in this list). The banner upgrade is basically the same as a Rider of the Dead, so we're getting +7 models for +100pts - which is about what you expect from this list. If given the option, I'd drop 1 Rider and 1 vanilla Warrior to get a banner and 13 more shields, but whatever.

We took 12/14 possible shield guys and all 6 spearmen (so valuable), though we couldn't take a banner (sad). Still, 39 models means our opponent needs to kill 20 guys to break us - and that means he needs to actually CHARGE that many guys (which we'll try to prevent). Without a lot of spears, we're looking to get engaged with our models, which means we're encouraged to make Traps work as much as we can (and since we wound against the Courage values of our opponents, we're likely to get off quite a few kills if we can just win fights). But we're getting ahead of ourselves - let's save that talk for the next section!

Army Theory

We should probably begin with the Warrior breakdown: 5 Riders, 12 shields, 6 spears, and 15 "vanilla" guys. With only 14 shields/6 spears to work with, I started with the assumption that we'd be taking them all. If we took all 6 Riders of the Dead too, we'd be able to take all 20 of the equipped Warriors of the Dead and would end up with 38 models instead of 39 - an argument could easily be made that going that route would be better.

Instead, by dropping 1 Rider of the Dead, we could pick up 2 vanilla Warriors of the Dead, but only if we dropped 2 shields. Fine, I said, because when it comes down to it, being D8 is quite valuable, but we don't want this army shielding if we can help it. Our numbers are good in either situation, but shielding as a default option isn't going to be good for us in the long term - any fight we win we're likely to kill the enemies we're up against (unless Elves show up - curse their stalwart spirits!), especially if they're C2 Evil models (who become C1 and are wounded on 3s if the King of the Dead's Harbinger is in play). If you run a variant of this list and choose to take the sixth Rider, do so with my blessing.

Of course, MOST of us would rather drop 1 vanilla Warrior of the Dead and give 14 of the remaining vanilla Warriors shields (as I mentioned earlier) - that would be good, but alas, we're working under some constraints in this series, okay? Still, the offensive capabilities of a 14-point vanilla Warrior of the Dead are not diminished by the removal of a shield and the defensive boost is not doing much for us once your opponent hits S4 (which is surprisingly common - especially in Evil forces). Against S2/S3 foes, sure, being D8 is great. Against S4, if you can get into one-on-one fights, D7 is just fine.

We also chose to not take Heralds of the Dead. We did this because a) the Herald costs the same as 5 vanilla Warriors of the Dead, b) we couldn't take shields on these guys unless we were willing to ignore their war gear options in the scenarios (something we did with Corsairs, but not with anyone else), and c) while Resistant to Magic is pretty great in theory, rolling 1 free die on a Warrior (or 1 free die when you have 6 Will on the King of the Dead) is really only going to help you if your opponent's end casting roll is low - and most of the spells these guys are worried about (the ones that knock people Prone and keep them from wounding) are cast on a 4+ or 5+ - and in that case, the addition of a single die is very hit and miss.

The usual draw of these guys is that they can spend their Will points to enable the King of the Dead to perform more Heroic Actions, but our goal with this list isn't going to be to have the King of the Dead going toe-to-toe with anyone big - his 2 Attacks and no banner in our list isn't going to be that effective anyway. No, we want him instead to be a scalpel, taking out a few models here and there and helping us grind the enemy down. A Herald isn't that much better of a combatant than a Warrior of the Dead - and I think we'll be in a better position of both breaking the enemy and not being broken with 5 more Warriors of the Dead.

With 39 models that most heroes will wound on 6s (occasionally 5s, unless they're monsters with Rend), we can rely on our troops (especially those vanilla Warriors of the Dead) to blunt enemy heroes - they can try to Combat off of us, but if we charge them and they've only got 3 dice to try to get a 6, they're going to struggle to kill even one guy. Throw in a second, and the hero's as good as stuck for the round. Sure, he may settle for "just killing two guys," but getting two 6s on three dice is hard, so we'll settle for those odds. Our goal is simple: wrap and trap for as long as we can, denying enemy cavalry bonuses with our 5 Riders of the Dead (who are devastating against enemy warriors).

Finally, instead of spreading ourselves out to try to tie up everyone, we want our army to centralize its fighting prowess in a few key fights - this begins first with the strategic use of spear supports, but also in doubling-up where we can instead of trying to get into one-on-one fights. Our shield-carrying guys can be used effectively to charge two enemy models while the Warriors around them wrap around to double-up on models on the flanks. By doing this, we give our opponent a difficult choice if he hasn't moved yet: keep spear-supporting against one guy or redirect the spears and take away the higher likelihood of wounding the D8 shield guy who is tying up two of his models. And if one of those spearmen fails a Terror check and gets rooted in place . . . not so great for the front-line guy he would have been helping, huh?

Gameplay Strategy

Maelstrom & Object Missions (Pools 1 & 3)

We have four warbands for Maelstrom - and we don't want to spend our only Might point to come on in a particular place. The good news is . . . we don't need to. Each of our supporting warbands is led by a Rider of the Dead - and he can leave the others if he really needs to. The Warriors they lead (5 vanilla, 1 shield, 1 spear in each of the three warbands) can advance towards the nearest objective, shielding the spearman from being charged. Walking slowly towards the center in Hold Ground (the Riders can race ahead if you want) or towards Heirloom tokens in Heirlooms of Ages Past, your army poses a serious problem to armies that have difficulty passing Courage tests (or wounding D7+ models with ranged weapons). Get where you're trying to go as quickly as you can, harassing enemy warbands that you can trap/weaken/kill along the way.

The only specialized plan you need is for Command the Battlefield. In all of our previous posts in this series, we've had a group of archers who can hide in a corner away from the action and contest/control that quadrant. We have no shooting here - so instead, we play a different game: we want our warbands coming on from the center of a board edge if we can - and we use our riders to flush out small pockets of the enemy (converging on the center at first while our opponent is solidifying his game plan, then racing to abandoned archer squads (or whatever) to deal with whoever our opponent leaves behind. In the meantime, our melee troops converge to fight wherever the enemy's largest contingent is located, trying to contest as many quadrants as possible by leaving 4 vanilla guys near the center of two opposing board edges. Staying near the center of a board edge allows us to contest control of two different quadrants while being able to shift models to replace any casualties suffered from range attacks. Ideally, you won't get harassed for very long if your cavalry are running enemy archers to the ground, but you know, it happens.

Now most armies fear Goblin-town on this particular scenario and for good reason - who wants to see new Goblins walking onto the board nearly every turn? The advantage we have here is that a) they can't auto-pass Courage tests, so a small squad of Goblins that arrives near a few of our Warriors of the Dead are likely to fail to charge us and we can kill them slowly (or quickly - whichever presents itself), and b) we have Riders of the Dead who can put pressure on the Goblin Scribe, causing the enemy to circle up around him. We WANT the enemy to be in one place - we're not that worried about the Goblin King (I mean, he's dangerous, don't get me wrong) because his Courage isn't great, and once the enemy breaks, we're likely to see their one-off warriors fleeing the board pretty quickly (or getting squished as their numbers lessen). Of all the lists we've looked at so far, I like this army's chances in this scenario against Goblin-town the most (well, the Corsair horde would be nasty too).

Control Missions (Pools 2 & 5)

Like virtually every army we've talked about so far, we want to be front-and-center for Domination, Capture and Control, and Breakthrough. No shooting, all melee, high Defense, lethal wounding capabilities - we're starting RIGHT on the line on this one (except 1-2 vanilla guys who can go to our rear objective and hold/claim it for us). The King of the Dead should deploy last, though - use your cookie-cutter warbands to flush out the enemy position, doing a variation of the Long Fangs formation for your cavalry to have a charging path without being counter-charged. With lots of front-line Dead guys, we can actually make a solid wall on the center line in each of these scenarios, hedging off access to the objectives on the center or on our side of the board. And since we don't have Might in this list (not really, at any rate), we don't have to worry about having models within range of the King of the Dead for a Heroic Move at the start - we just need the majority of the enemy to be within 12" of him for the Harbinger penalty.

Usually I just leave it at that for these scenarios, but I did want to highlight one thing about this list: if you have the choice of which scenario to prefer (if a veto system is in play), you want to choose Capture and Control - since you don't have any shooting units, having to stand at an objective the entire game with a melee guy isn't great for you. Instead, you want to be able to tag an objective and leave it, advancing towards the enemy with everything you have and wrapping around to keep their units from breaking through. So if you have the choice, pick Capture and Control.

For the going-somewhere missions . . . ugh. You're slow and you don't shoot - it's gonna take all of your tactical skill to come up with a good plan on these. However, don't lose heart: we have an advantage on our side. In scenarios like Reconnoitre and Storm the Camp, our opponent gets most of his reliable points from breaking the enemy - and we're not going to break easily. In Reconnoitre, we want to advance towards the enemy as a compact fighting troop and then spread out as we get to the center to intercept the enemy (using our cavalry to run down any stragglers). If our army of nearly 40 D7+ Terror models rolls too far up his side of the board, we could just keep walking and end the game with 30+ models getting off the board (which against most armies will keep our opponent to only 3VPs maximum if the King of the Dead is alive and walks off the board too). In short, if our opponent wants to win the event, he's got to fight us - and we're completely fine with that.

Storm the Camp is similar: if we advance towards the enemy camp, we can flex cavalry models to cut off anyone who's racing past our ranks to our camp OR use them to threaten the enemy camp if we get bogged down in the middle - but the last thing our opponent wants to do is have to dislodge 30+ Dunharrow models from his own camp (and by just sitting in his camp, we get 3VPs - even if we lose our own). So don't bother defending your own camp if you can race to the opponent's camp instead (though again, you can use some Riders of the Dead to slow down the advance if they're straggling towards your camp).

Divide and Conquer is less of a walking trip than the other two - you're trying to get into the center and defend it. Check - got it, just get there. Not much else to say except work on hedging the enemy out as best you can, bring your Terror-filled numbers to bear, and hold the center and at least one side objective. What I will say is that your first two warband to deploy should be cookie-cutter support ones - don't commit the King of the Dead's starting position until you have to.

Killing Missions (Pools 4 & 6)

Do I even need to talk about these missions? You're charging the enemy no matter what mission you're playing, you're trying to keep the King of the Dead in manageable fights so he doesn't get wounded/kill (though that's pretty difficult for most models), and you want to avoid breaking for as long as you can. Whether it's Lords of Battle (where wounding you will be hard and wounding the enemy will probably be easy), To The Death (you have no banner, so try to kill any enemy banners as quickly as possible if there are any), Contest of Champions (kill a few models with the King of the Dead, try to quarter the enemy before their army leader gets kills in to match you), or Clash by Moonlight (get into melee as quick as you can and hope the arrows bounce off your tough spectral hides), we're just trying to break the enemy quickly while losing as few models as possible.

Where things get REALLY interesting is in the other two killing scenarios: Fog of War and Assassination. In both of these scenarios, we have an all-or-nothing game going on against our opponent: in Fog of War, we need to keep the King of the Dead alive (as he's our only hero) and our opponent is trying to kill him (as he's our only hero). Similarly, in Assassination, he'll be our assassin (as he's our only hero) and he'll be our opponent's target (as he's our only hero). You see the problem that could arise: in Assassination, if we go for the 7VPs for killing our target with the King of the Dead (there is no 3VPs for wounding the target with our assassin thanks to Chill Soul), we're also committing our opponent's target to combat and possibly exposing him to being killed.

As such, here's the plan: in Fog of War, we keep the King of the Dead in a support role, as we don't need him to kill anything. Rather, we just need his Harbinger buff where the fighting is happening and the ability to insert him safely into selected, managed fights to add a little extra oomph to our killing power. Mostly we want him camped on our destination objective and staying alive. Our target enemy hero should be someone our Riders and Warriors can kill through sheer numbers.

In Assassination, be okay with getting 5VPs if it means the King of the Dead is safe (and you're giving up no VPs to your opponent). Because Assassination gives you up to 7VPs for killing the target and additional VPs for killing the army leader, a single wound on the King of the Dead can kill your chances of winning the round. By contrast, if you get 5VPs for killing your target with someone who isn't the King of the Dead and have the King of the Dead unwounded at the end of the game, your opponent can't beat you - you'll win. So, break the enemy if you can and kill that hero!

Conclusion

This list is a weird one but pretty easy to collect and can be very rewarding to play - especially in a meta that's dominated by shooting lists and magic lists. If you're playing Good vs. Evil, chances are good that you'll see C2 Orcs on the other side of the table (with the occasional C3-4 Uruks/Men), which means you'll be wounding everyone easily AND their ability to charge you might be greatly impaired. So give this army a whirl if you haven't yet and let us know if you do! Next time, we cover our last army in this series . . . but I'm not going to spoil it quite yet. Find out what all the mystery is about next time - until then, happy hobbying!