War in Rohan Inspired Lists: The Riders of Eomer LL Revisited

Good morning gamers,

This is our last post in this series on War in Rohan and I've chosen to close it out with a list that I've been running a lot lately: the Riders of Eomer. This Legion is often touted as one of the WORST Legions in the game - right down there with the post-nerf Vanquishers of the Necromancer LL and the ever-avoided Men of the West LL (both of which I happen to really like - what can I say, I love me a good hopeless case). The models we have in War in Rohan to use for this Legion are quite expansive, mostly because there's a whole scenario centered around these guys:

• Eomer, Marshal of the Riddermark on horse with shield (note that none of the War in Rohan scenarios give us access to throwing spears on Eomer)
  
• Gandalf the White on Shadowfax
• Erkenbrand, Captain of Rohan on horse
• Captain of Rohan on horse with shield
• 16 Riders of Rohan
• 8 Riders of Rohan with throwing spears
• 1 Rider of Rohan with banner (because we have the mounted command blister)
  

I'm going to say this right now: for the purposes of this article, I plan to upgrade as many guys as I want to Westfold Redshields even though this upgrade wasn't given to anyone in the scenarios. Why? Because I can - and this list needs a few of those guys, okay? Before we dig into the list, though, let's look at what the critiques of this Legion are - and then look at how I've been running this list at 600 points (and been enjoying my games with them).

Photo Credit: War in Rohan

The first point of contention for most players is that we've lost too many hero and warrior options. Most Legendary Legions pair down the models you have access to - and some of those Legions are incredibly popular and viewed as quite competitive at least at certain points levels (most notably Theodred's Guard, Ugluk's Scouts, Cirith Ungol, and the Assault Upon Helm's Deep). Usually this is because what's left in the Legion gets a big benefit (for example, in Theodred's Guard, you get Sworn Protector/Fearless on everyone, the infantry get Fight in Ranks, and your Riders of Rohan, Rohan Royal Guards, and Captains of Rohan transfer their Arise, Riders of Theoden rule to Theodred). This Legion . . . doesn't really do that. At all. Instead of Strength +1 on the Charge from the normal Rohan army bonus, you get Strength +1 on the Charge when you're within 12" of Eomer (weaker) and a once-per-game ability to have a global -1 penalty to all enemy dueling rolls if Gandalf is in your army (which is pretty good . . . once . . . and if you don't roll poorly on your dueling rolls). These rules just don't seem like enough to justify running the Legion, especially when paired with a second critique: not getting the rules you'd want.

There are two big changes that I'd recommend for this Legion that would take it from obscurity to at least part-way competitive: first, let your Captains/Riders of Rohan transfer their Arise, Riders of the Theoden rule to Eomer. This would give you F4/S4 on the Charge when within 12" of Eomer, which make your cavalry much more of a threat (especially after you've used the Look to the Sun rule). Additionally, Eomer should either be F6 on the charge or have the Arise, Riders of Theoden rule himself (if the Legion transferred this rule to Eomer) so he can be F6. If Eomer hit a little harder (to make up for all the heroes you're missing) and if the cavalry supporting him hit a little harder, this Legion would be much, MUCH better. Alas, we don't have those rules - and of all the Legions we could make Eomer F6 in without breaking the game, THIS is the Legion for it. Oh, and the fact that literally every other list with Riders of Rohan in it can have F4 Riders of Rohan and this one that relies PURELY on them is stuck with F3 Riders of Rohan . . . an utter travesty, I tell you.

But despite all this (and maybe because I like to make things hard for myself and love a good underdog story), I love this Legion - it's fun to run, it's easily underestimated, and it rewards creative play. Oh, and it also plays Rohan the way Rohan used to be played - it's very skirmishy and wants to charge in once and then get out. Oh, and you get Gandalf the White - who I happen to like very much. So how do we take our collection from War in Rohan and turn one of the worst Legions in the game into a game winner? Well, we don't go above 600 points and we do something like this . . .

The List

Pro-tip: the absolute minimum points level you'd want to run this Legion at is 350pts because you have to take Eomer on a horse (110pts) and to use all of your Legion bonuses, you need to take Gandalf (240pts). A two-model army is going to have problems at 350pts, so functionally you shouldn't consider taking this list at anything below 400pts (where you can get 3 Riders of Rohan and a shield for Eomer). But even this is going to feel a bit fragile, since you don't have enough cavalry to clear out a flank and hold objectives at the same time. So we should probably raise the points level.

At 500pts, you get a few more options, though: you can have 10 Riders of Rohan (140pts) alongside Gandalf (240pts) and a fully maxed Eomer (120pts), which gives you 12 models and all the upgrades available to your two big heroes. Even THIS though doesn't seem like it works right, mostly because we don't have a banner to keep us from whiffing our rolls and we're predominantly C3. As such, the most success I've had with this list is at 600 points, where we can fit in Erkenbrand and at least one Westfold Redshield. Thanks to not being able to take the throwing spears on Eomer, our list today is basically this list - except we have six Westfold Redshields instead of one:

• Eomer, Marshal of the Riddermark on horse with shield
• 2 Riders of Rohan
  
• Gandalf the White on Shadowfax
• 3 Riders of Rohan
  
• Erkenbrand, Captain of Rohan on horse
• 6 Westfold Redshields
  

600 points, 14 models, 11 bows hitting on a 4+ AND 1 Sorcerous Blast/Banishment hitting on a 4+, 3 D6+ models, 14 cavalry, 9 Might points

I could have gone with 3 throwing spears instead of the Redshield upgrades if I wanted to - and if you wanted to exchange 2 Westfold Redshields upgrades and 1 Rider of Rohan for 8 throwing spears (all but 2 Riders would have them), you could. But since Eomer and Erkenbrand risk sitting around and waiting for things to happen, I decided I wanted one extra body to boost my break point a little instead of having the throwing spears (as good value as they are). The list has a lot going for it, though it doesn't appear that way on paper - let's take a look!

Army Theory

We begin this list review with a look at our three heroes - the three most important pieces on the board. Eomer provides us with a resilient army leader who's pretty good at killing stuff (slightly better than Gandalf and greatly helped by him). I've used Eomer a lot over the past few years thanks to both this Legion and the Men of the West (which might be better at 600 points - see our last post in our Gondor at War series for more info) and he's a pain to deal with. In the Men of the West, of course, he's usually not worth VPs, but here he's our army leader and because of that, we're thankful he's resilient (in fact, he's the most resilient Rohan hero out there).

With him we have Gandalf the White, who is what sets this list apart from a normal Rohan list. True, you could run a historical alliance between Rohan and Minas Tirith to get him with Eomer, but we'd lose that oh-so-good once-per-game global -1 penalty to dueling rolls, which actually changes our play style with these guys. Just like the Riders of Theoden want to get a slew of free Heroic Combats off on the round they cry Death!, so also we want to have Gandalf and Eomer (and Erkenbrand and any Captains we have) calling Heroic Combats on the turn where our enemies are getting -1 penalties to their rolls. With 3 heroes calling Heroic Combats and each killing 3-4 models, we can do an absolutely astonishing amount of damage and really tear up the ranks of our opponent and hopefully crush an entire flank. For info on how to do this, I direct you to the mushroom charge formation post I wrote up that showcases this army (though it's a 500pt list with a banner instead of a 600pt list with Erkenbrand), as well as our formations post on the Wag earlier this month (which dropped one Rider and one Redshield upgrade to get throwing spears on Eomer and five of the Riders of Rohan).

But this once-per-game ability isn't all Gandalf is bringing to the fight: Gandalf's magical powers are also a huge boon to us. With D4 horses (except for Shadowfax), archery could take out our mounts from beneath us (something the Riders of Theoden really fear). While our heroes all have Horselord (or are mounted on Shadowfax, who has a Fate point), we don't really want to burn 1-3 Fate points trying to save our mounts if we don't have to - and Blinding Light is a really nice help to our army. Similarly, being able to throw Fortify Spirit onto Eomer, Erkenbrand, and Gandalf himself is a great way to shut down enemy magical barrages.

Should our opponent approach us slowly and warily, we can have Gandalf cast Strengthen Will on himself to get some extra Will (even going above his starting Will store) in preparation for the fight to come - and THIS might make your opponent quicken his pace, spending resources to March his army around. We can use that to our advantage. We also don't really want to deal with big heroes directly, so Sorcerous Blasting warriors into heroes or just Immobilizing them can be a huge help to our one glorious charge turn. Sorcerous Blast/Banishment can also be used while we're in the harassing stage, which we'll get into in a minute.

Before we tackle that, though, we need to talk about Erkenbrand. Erkenbrand is great for a variety of reasons - check out my mate Red Jacket's article on him in our In Defense Of series for more info. The short version goes like this: we get +2 Courage on all of our Rohan models (so Eomer/Erkenbrand/Gandalf are C7, while our Riders/Redshields are C5), we have a F5/3-Might hero who can help us punch through troops, and his Redshields treat him as a banner (which means he's SUPER cheap relative to what he's giving us). For 85 points, this guy is a STEAL (at least a few of the banner, war horn, and horse upgrades are essentially free) - it's good to be playing at a points level where we can have him.

Finally, we have Riders of Rohan and Westfold Redshields in our list: 6 models who can treat Erkenbrand as a banner all but guarantees that we can have a banner in each of our heroes' fights if we get to pick the charges and our heroes stay together (and 5 additional Riders can be used for hedging our heroes away from enemy counter-charges). Erkenbrand's Might store is best used for Heroic Moves (and Combats) since his specialized heroic actions aren't that great, which means he's in the center of the formation and everyone else works around him. If he, Eomer, and Gandalf all charge into one warrior each and get a Westfold Redshield in each fight, we have a really good chance of getting a high roll of a 6 (6-7 dueling dice after rerolls are factored in). Those Heroic Combats are likely to go off and then we'll have six cavalry ready to race off and kill more stuff (probably without banner support, but we can set up the Redshields to prepare for the next round of fighting).

This underscores the last point I want to make about running this list: we're going to start by harassing the enemy to soften them up, but when we charge, we're not going to charge in with everyone. Reserves are really important with this list - it's tempting to say you're going to use Look to the Sun, throw your models at the enemy, and count on winning a lot of fights. While glorious, that's rarely how this game works - you're going to roll a 3-high in a few fights with some Riders of Rohan, you're going to lose the duel because your opponent got a 4-high or a 5-high (or got a 3-high with F4+), and then some of your Riders are going to die. Yes, charge some guys in (mostly to get strategic advantages), but count on your heroic combats getting the vast amount of your kills and make sure you have most of your riders ready for the NEXT turn.

That next turn is the most important thing to keep in mind - because Gandalf will probably be channelling a spell, Eomer will probably have to Strike, and you really want 1 Might/hero to call Heroic Combats on the turn that you Look to the Sun, this Legion doesn't have the Might to be calling Heroic Moves all the time (and you don't always win a Heroic Move-off). So plan for it and don't commit everyone right away. You know that your heroes are going to clear out a chunk of guys - and yes, ideally we want them charging the enemy - but if they get charged, we can still save them if we've got Riders to peel models out of their fights (or gang up on whoever tries to tie them down). In addition, your opponent is far more likely to try to charge your F3/1A Riders of Rohan that are left standing after the first round of combat than to charge those F5/2-3A heroes - and losing those Riders is how you're going to break. So don't do it - don't leave them where they can be assaulted (unless they're going to get a banner reroll from Erkenbrand). If you get the charge in, charge in a way that will make it hard to trap your guys and get those heroes back into the action to kill a little more. If you've almost broken the enemy after the first charge, chances are good you only need one more good round of combat before you break the enemy.

Okay, let's talk strategy for each of the scenario pools!

Gameplay Strategy

Maelstrom & Object Missions (Pools 1 & 3)

Maelstrom's fine - we don't mind these ones - mostly because we're going to full-move onto the table and decide where to meet up if we have to deploy first and we're going to move half-speed and harass the enemy from a safe distance if we get to move on second. Gandalf's Might is the most valuable (he's probably channelling Blinding Light against archery-heavy factions, Terrifying Aura against low-Courage spams, and Fortify Spirit against magic-heavy lists - but I would be really cautious about spending 2 Might points channelling spells), so he goes down first. Eomer and Erkenbrand should deploy near him if they can, mostly because our army is best when the heroes charge together. We can split up our warriors to the four winds later - but when we start, we want to be together as much as possible. If we don't start EXACTLY together, that's fine so long as we can ride swiftly to meet up with everyone.

In Hold Ground, the center is our primary aim - though if we get all three warbands near each other and within range of a solitary warband, we could have a full cavalry charge mop it up with a Look to the Sun pretty quickly. That has value for sure - so long as we quickly press to the middle. As much as we can, we want to harass and skirmish our way there, clearing out whoever shows up in the center while keeping as many bodies as possible alive.

In Command the Battlefield, we eventually want to tuck random Riders of Rohan into board corners, but our Redshields and heroes definitely want to stick together and ride down wherever the enemy is most concentrated. Shooting is good and we can work the corners and clear them one at a time if we have to, relying on a mixture of bows and Sorcerous Blasts to weaken the enemy positions or clear out singletons trying to hold corners.

In Heirlooms of Ages Past, we're an all-mounted army - and as such, picking up these things is . . . well, very tricky. It's almost better for us if our opponent digs up the heirloom and we focus on killing whoever digs up the heirloom and any banners he's got walking around. With magic and one good charge, we can hopefully kill the bearer and pick it up (Expert Rider is good here).

When it comes to object-based missions, we're an all-mounted army that doesn't really want to dismount to dig up things - so we're going to rely on our opponent to dig stuff up for us and then sail in and take it (which we can do whilst mounted thanks to Expert Rider). In Seize the Prize, we want to call a Heroic Channel on the first turn with Gandalf the White and our Riders of Rohan are inclined to move half-speed towards the middle, giving ourselves the ability to shoot/cast magic on the first turn against anyone who gets close to the objective without being within charge range of enemy infantry even if they March. Gandalf moves first and can channel Blinding Light if we're facing an archery-heavy army (and we can move our Riders of Rohan within 6" of him at half speed to shoot) or casting Command to draw an enemy model who digs up the Prize into charge range of our big cavalry heroes (including Gandalf). Once we get the Prize (the Command-and-Charge is our best chance), we can skirmish with the enemy a bit until we're set up to get a charge in, declare that you'll be using Look to the Sun, and Heroic Combat past the enemy lines. Ideally we're in a position to call a Heroic Move on the following turn and get off with the Prize.

In Destroy the Supplies . . . there is no way that we're going to be able to "guard" our supplies - so our goal is to have our heroes (and most especially Gandalf) be able to swing hard from one front to another in order to keep our opponent back and unable to reach/keep them. Eomer and Erkenbrand will need to run together, focusing on cracking through the enemy and hopefully breaking through to a supply marker or two while hedging off access to one of your own. If Gandalf can buy time to protect the other two, you can hopefully clear 1-2 of your opponent's markers and get a close win.

In Retrieval, we have the advantage of not needing to "dig up" the enemy "flag" - we just have to pick it up (which we can do with Expert Rider while mounted). What we CAN'T do well is hedge our opponent away from our own - so our goal is to skirmish with the enemy a little, then hit him hard with a charge on the same turn we declare we're using Look to the Sun, and Heroic Combat through his ranks. If we just break the enemy, we won't get a lot of VPs, but if we can set up our Heroic Combats to roll a flank, we might be able to get a Rider of Rohan or two around the flank and position them to race for the enemy flag quickly (perhaps backed by Gandalf - who doesn't have Expert Rider, but can keep them from getting sniped and can Blast/Command models out of the way). I won a game of Retrieval at a recent event where both me and my opponent got the flags off the board - if you can avoid breaking (or kill the army leader), you'll be alright.

Control Missions (Pools 2 & 5)

These missions are hard - they always are for cavalry-heavy, low-model-count lists. But honestly, we have Gandalf and we have bows on nearly everyone - I think we can make this work if we play smart. Unlike a lot of the armies we've viewed in this series, we don't want to line up anywhere near the middle of the board - 12" back will be just fine. This gives us time to skirmish, but we want to skirmish while walking forward, not backwards away from the objectives. With Gandalf, we can reach out and Blast someone off an objective on the first turn, so if our opponent is trying to hedge us in, we can wreck their battle lines a bit both with archery and magic if we need to. Two of the three scenarios in Pool 2 (Domination and Breakthrough) end when one force is quartered, which means we have time to get to the objectives and can skirmish - and with as much speed as we have, we can probably get to the objectives when our opponent is nearly/just broken.

Our objective changes if we get Command and Control, which is the easiest of these scenarios for us. Since we can tag an objective and leave it, there's no reason to stand and fight in one place for very long. This scenario rewards us for skirmishing, so long as we can skirmish "around the clock," moving towards enemy-claimed objectives and using our Look to the Sun rule once per game to smash through a division of enemy troops trying to keep us from reaching an objective (or set of objectives). In any of these objective-based scenarios, we want to control three of them if we can, looking for close wins instead of crushing ones (realistically, that's unlikely to happen).

When we get to the going-somewhere missions, things look a bit better. We're going to play Divide and Conquer about the same way as we play Domination or Breakthrough - we want to eventually get into the center, but since the game can randomly end when one side is broken, we can't wait too long to get into the center. We really want all three heroes together, but if we HAD to have two together and one alone, Gandalf the White is definitely going to be with someone else (and probably with Eomer). Deploying our army leader with our wizard gives us time to build up the buffs on our leader, making him much harder to deal with. Erkenbrand is also our only March hero, so he can March his troops on the first turn if he needs to shield his troops with terrain or just get to us up the board faster (though I frankly think this reason is unnecessary). Once we're all together, we can skirmish/one-turn-smash the enemy like we want to.

In Reconnoitre, we COULD rush the board edge, but with so few models on the board, we'd need to quarter ourselves to have a good chance of beating our opponent quickly. Here our Look to the Sun rule can help us greatly, getting our three heroes up/off the board quickly with a well-timed Heroic Combat that allows us to wrap around a battle line. Without our big heroes to help us pass Courage tests or protect us from archery, we can count on our brave Riders dying quickly (especially if we Stab against our foes and engage models who can't Shield us off). Alternatively, we could rely on our heroes to break the enemy while keeping them from moving up the field, using our shooting to whittle down numbers, supported later with Sorcerous Blasts and one big turn of Heroic Charges. Eomer should get off the board in any event - the lack of the Strength +1 on the charge might be felt, but not coughing up VPs for our army leader being killed will be a big boon to us.

Finally, in Storm the Camp, we can't leave models behind - so we're not going to. Instead, we're going to move up the board quickly (full-move-Marching on the first turn with Erkenbrand to get in a good position in the middle of the board). We can then skirmish as we want, using Gandalf to buff out Eomer and keep him from giving up VPs for being wounded. We have to assume that we'll be broken, but we can also assume that we can end the game by being quartered before our opponent can reach our camp if we meet him in the middle quickly. If we can break the enemy and wound/kill his leader without having Eomer be killed, we can at least get a draw. If we can get one model into the enemy camp (probably not a hero, but getting Eomer there would be great), we can seal the game with a big win.

Killing Missions (Pools 4 & 6)

So . . . we have no reason to engage quickly with the enemy - and most of the scenarios we've looked at have forced us to be somewhere or engage the enemy eventually. Not so in these scenarios - we have lots of ranged weapons (or magic), we have Blinding Light (and Fortify Spirit) to protect us from retribution in kind, and we are fast enough to stay out of reach until we want to engage (and engage where we want to engage). So that's exactly what we're going to do (and while we're going to be hard to catch, our opponent will probably not feel like it's overly oppressive). In To The Death, our goal is to not be broken - and break the enemy (and quarter the enemy) before we can be broken. At 600pts, this is surprisingly easy to do with as many bows as we have, the magic support we have, and the lack of need to go anywhere. If we can get ~5 kills at a distance and ~10 kills on the turn that we Look to the Sun (which is 1 kill in the initial Heroic Combat and 2 kills in the follow-up fight by each of the three heroes - plus one additional kill by any of the Riders or by a Sorcerous Blast when charging), you have a good chance of breaking your opponent right after this charge - and if you haven't lost any/many Riders by this point, your chances of quartering the enemy is quite high. Since we have no banner, we just have to make sure we Sorcerous Blast (or shoot, I guess) any banners the enemy have walking around.

Lords of Battle is similar, except that we can get the game to end after one side is broken, which means it could end right after our big charge. As with To The Death, we want to skirmish with the enemy and not engage unless we need to. If we can also get a wound on the army leader with a Sorcerous Blast/Banishment, we stand a good chance of winning the game.

In Contest of Champions, Eomer will need to start close to the enemy, but Gandalf does not need to - and we can hedge Eomer from being charged with his Riders, while Gandalf and Erkenbrand's riders wait on the flank. This might be a good mission to declare that we're using Look to the Sun on the first turn, which will make our opponent a bit cautious about how they charge if they call that anticipated Heroic Move. So long as our heroes get the charge on the first turn, we can probably rack up the kills (especially for Eomer) quickly - and if our Riders are killed quickly, we can be quartered and the game can end before the enemy army leader can do much. Our goal will be to Sorcerous Blast someone into the enemy army leader's fight on the first turn (if he even gets in on the first turn) so we can hopefully win with 3 kills to 0.

As we turn to the hero-killing scenarios, our situation becomes both easier and harder. In Clash by Moonlight, we will want to channel Blinding Light once we're ready to skirmish with the enemy, but we can stay back at the beginning to buff ourselves if we want to. Our goal will be to use both magic and archery to chew through the enemy ranks (focusing our magic on damaging the heroes while our bows chew through the enemy troops). Eventually we can charge in and kill more guys, using Look to the Sun to give us the wrap-up edge. The game ends when someone is quartered, which ideally we want to be the enemy - so we don't want to charge in until we absolutely have to.

In Assassination, Gandalf makes the most sense as our assassin and Erkenbrand is likely to be our opponent's target. As such, we want to keep everyone near Gandalf, but use Erkenbrand very little after our one round of hitting the enemy while we Look to the Sun. We'll skirmish as long as we can with Gandalf taking wounds off as many heroes as possible (including the army leader) with his magic and eventually breaking the enemy with a big charge.

In Fog of War, our goal is to keep Gandalf alive and unwounded, keep Erkenbrand out of the way (as he's probably our opponent's target), eventually circle around to a piece of terrain, and skirmish for as long as possible before we charge once. We want to pick a hero we can kill with magic (or archery - or perhaps a hero to the face) - 1 Wound heroes with 1-2 Fate are ideal targets (especially if they're Nazgul, as we have Banishment to help us kill them off).

Conclusion

This army really struggles at most points levels (especially as the points level gets higher), but at 600, it appears to find a good place. If you liked this article - or if you've run the Riders of Eomer - let us know in the comments below! Later this week, we'll be moving on to the next sourcebook (the Fall of the Necromancer) and we'll begin looking at how to use this oh-too-thin sourcebook to create armies for Matched Play. Until then, happy hobbying!