Defence of the North Inspired Lists: The Defenders of Erebor Legendary Legion Revisited

Good morning gamers,

To kick off the series of taking your Defence of the North scenario forces into Matched Play, we're looking at what has become my favorite Legendary Legion from that book: the Defenders of Erebor. These guys are NOT crowd favorites - armies like the Assault on Lothlorien, the Host of the Dragon Emperor, the Fell Beings of Mirkwood, and the Beornings are all proving to be popular armies and incredibly competitive (at least at certain points levels). While the Army of Dale has been championed by some players as very competitive (I don't dare disagree with Rob from the Unexpected Podcast team or Jeremy from the Green Dragons - and I've had by butt handed to me by Centaur a few times with that Legion), no one seems to be talking about the sixth Legion from the book (well, besides Sharbie).

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

So the mantle falls to me - and boy do I love these guys. Usually, my force choices with these guys involve a bunch of "vanilla" Iron Hills Dwarves (who come with shields by default), some spears to back them up (some Dale, some Dwarves), and a bunch of Dale bowmen to run around in skirmish triangles to hold objectives and guard flanks. I also run one of the pairs of heroes and some Champs (starting wtih Bifur), occasionally including a Captain of Dale or an Iron Hills Captain for March. What we have to work with in the "Dale saga" scenarios is . . . well, incredibly limited on these fronts, which made me really struggle with the army list I wanted to make. Here's what we get in the first group of scenarios:

• Brand, King of Dale
• Bard II, Prince of Dale
• One Dale command blister (Captain with shield, Warrior with banner, Warrior with war horn)
• 6 Warriors of Dale with shields
• 8 Warriors of Dale with shields and spears
• 6 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
• 12 Knights of Dale
  
• Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain
• Thorin III Stonehelm
• Iron Hills command blister (Captain with shield and spear, Warrior with banner and shield)
• 12 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears (and shields)
• 6 Iron Hills Dwarves with mattock
• 6 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
  

Did you notice that we only have 6 Esgaroth bows, no "vanilla" Iron Hills Dwarves, and no Champs to work with? Yeah, me too - it made me really dread having to write a list. After spending some time being bummed about how awful the list was going to be (and considered NOT covering the Legion), I wrote the article we covered last Thursday about what models you need to play everything in Defence of the North and remembered that, like in the Return of the King, there are some wonderful things that can be found in the Appendices . . . and my day got a lot, LOT brighter. :-)

The Appendices cover the scenarios that feature Dale's history - across a LONG time period. Starting with Girion (who has a handful more Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows in his army) through the Battle of Five Armies (which has a TON of Iron Hills Dwarves), we actually have the pieces we need to make this army work. Here are the additional models we got:

• A second Dale command blister
• 3 more Warriors of Dale with shields
• 4 more Warriors of Dale with shields and spears
• 3 more Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
• ALL the Champions of Erebor (YYYYEEEESSS!!!!)
• An Iron Hills Mattock command blister (Captain with Mattock, Warrior with banner and mattock)
• 6 more Iron Hills Dwarves with mattocks
• 6 more Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
  

NOW we're cooking! With a TON of models to pick from (though still no goats), here's the 700-point list I've opted for today - let's take a look!

The List

I originally looked into having Dain and Brand in the list (240pts) and if you include Bifur, you're at just over 300pts invested in heroes - with a whopping 48 warrior slots available to you. The list would look something like this:

• Dain Ironfoot, King Under the Mountain [ARMY LEADER]
• 7 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 3 Iron Hills Dwarves with mattock
  
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
  
• Brand, King of Dale
• 5 Warriors of Dale with shields and spears
• 9 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
• 4 Knights of Dale
  
• Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor
• 5 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
  
• 2 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
  

700pts, 40 models, 9 Esgaroth bows hitting on a 4+ AND 4 crossbows hitting on a 4+ AND 1 S1 thrown stone hitting on a 3+, 26 D6+ models, no fast models, 8 Might points

The problem with this list is it's slow - like, really slow. And without any goats, we probably want to have some March in the list in order to have a chance at scenarios that require speed. So, I came up with the following list that I like better - I've basically downgraded the heroes to Thorin/Bard, downgraded a few Knights of Dale to Warriors of Dale, dropped a guy and some gear, and got a Captain of Dale instead:

• Thorin III Stonehelm [ARMY LEADER]
• 7 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
  
• Bard II, Prince of Dale
• 3 Warriors of Dale with shields
• 6 Warriors of Dale with shields and spears
  
• 2 Knights of Dale
• 3 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
  
• Bifur the Dwarf, Champion of Erebor
• 5 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 3 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
  
• Captain of Dale with shield (or Esgaroth bow - more on that in a minute)
  
• 1 Warrior of Dale with shield and spear
• 6 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows
  

700 points, 40 models, 10 Esgaroth bows hitting on a 4+ AND 3 crossbows hitting on a 4+ AND 1 S1 thrown stone hitting on a 3+, 21 D6+ models, no cavalry but 2 Might for Heroic March, 10 Might points

This list happens to have the same number of models as we had with the big heroes and we've got the same number of shooting models (if the Captain takes an Esgaroth bow), but we've lost some of our higher Defense models, we've gotten rid of the mattock Dwarves entirely (there shall be much weeping over this, I know), and we've chosen to lean a bit more on the Dale side of the army (though our first list did have almost a 50/50 split between Dale and Erebor models). The list still sports two good heroes as our banners/free Heroic Combats, retains the oh-so-valuable free Heroic Move potential from Bifur, and gains the potential for increased movement from the Captain. 

Speaking of the Captain, we have a gear decision to make. The Captain of Dale used in the main scenarios has a shield - no Esgaroth bow - BUT in the Girion mission, there's no reported gear on these guys. I personally think this is an unintentional omission and since no one in their right mind would want to face Smaug without some kind of extra gear, I think it would be perfectly fair to give at least one of these Captains an Esgaroth bow. For my part, I'll assume that either is fine (I'd take the bow, personally), but will have the scenario walk-throughs below assume either is in play. Let's see what the plan is for running this list!

Army Theory

Our four warbands are designed to synergize: Bifur's warband wants to be paired with the Captain of Dale, while Bard wants to be paired with Thorin. We CAN group them in other ways too - it would probably all work out - but to take the greatest advantage of the warband construction, you want your army in two pairs (which could operate as one big whole if you have full control over the deployment options). Bifur controls the Heroic Moves (once he gets a kill with his axehead), so he should eventually be near the center of your line. As I've outlined before, having him in between Thorin and Bard means he can make sure they get the match-ups they want (or at least contend for it) - and having a Captain near him means all of them can March faster too. Bard and Thorin can be together - or separate if the other two warbands are willing to share spear-supports.

Speaking of spear-supports, we have plenty of spearmen to trigger our Legion bonuses. While the Easterlings in the scenarios are really hurting for pikes (at least on a numerical level - something we'll talk about next week), the Forces of Good have no lack of them - 12 Iron Hills Dwarves with shields and spears, 12 Knights of Dale with shields and spears, and up to 12 Warriors of Dale with shields and spears means . . . you can have a lot of spear guys! Bifur's warband has 5 models with spears and 4 models without spears, so his warband can spear support all of the Dwarves AND the Captain of Dale. The Captain of Dale's warband, however, adds another spear to the mix (to stand behind Bifur) to help keep the boosts triggering. Of course, you could form a tighter block and leave the various crossbows/Esgaroth bows to fend for themselves in skirmish triangles, in which case every warrior has a spear - that's quite the flexible formation!

Thorin's warband is entirely composed of spearmen and Bard's warband has 3 bowmen and 3 shield guys who don't have spears - but with 9 spears in his warband (including Bard himself), you can have a 10-man front-line between Thorin and Bard's warbands with spears supporting everyone (and everyone can easily be within 1" of a friendly model from a different race). Rerolling 1s everywhere, baby! I've covered in a previous formations post how having lots of spears can also be a huge tactical advantage because you aren't locked into running our units a particular way - since you have high-Defense Dwarves and average-Defense Men in the list, depending on your match-up those front-line models could be Dwarves or Dale guys - and I don't think there's a wrong answer for you to pick!

Finally, we need to talk about the shooting in this army: this army has 10 Esgaroth bows (if the Captain has an Esgaroth bow) and 3 crossbows, which means you have have four skirmish triangles (not including the Captain) to sit on objectives or guard your flanks. If you know you have full control over your deployment and intend to park-and-shoot, I'd recommend splitting the crossbows up amongst the Esgaroth bowmen so that you have three squads of mixed company and one squad of just Esgaroth bows - then if they get engaged, they can probably reroll 1s in melee. Having so many squads of archers means we can have incredible board control - and while hitting on 4s isn't great (5s if the Warriors of Dale "scoot-and-shoot"), the S3-4 on these weapons means most models are going to feel threatened by them. And as anyone will tell you, dealing with THIS much high-Strength archery is a huge problem. Unlike some archers, however, charging into these guys doesn't mean you'll kill them - all of them are F4 and a few are D6 Dwarves, after all. In scenarios where you know you won't be able to shoot, these guys make perfectly fine front-line models to take advantage of those copious amounts of spears you're packing.

Okay, let's get into the strategies for each game!

Gameplay Strategy

Maelstrom & Object Missions (Pools 1 & 3)

As has already been mentioned, we'd LIKE our warbands to arrive in pairs - with the Captain of Dale's Might often being the most valuable (what with March being useful in all three scenarios). I'd begin with his warband - in part because it's small and has a bunch of bow-based firepower in it, but also because we want to know where our March is before we deploy anything else. Since we want Bifur's warband with him, we should deploy his warband second, then the other two (not sure the order matters there, but I'd probably deploy Thorin before Bard so we can use Bard's Might instead of our army leader's Might to modify our arrival roll).

In Hold Ground, our goal will be to get as many of our 40 models into the center as possible - part of that will hopefully be through Marching. Our goal will be to trap our banner-heroes (if we can) to get free Heroic Combats that can be used to slingshot our models closer to the center (or tear through whoever tries to hold us up). Once there, we dig in and hold the enemy at bay as much as we can. For more on how to get these heroes trapped, see one of our previous formations posts.

In Command the Battlefield, we want to control the center of two board edges, which should give us a chance to contest 3-4 of the quadrants in the game. We can use our bows/crossbows to work down the enemy numbers to force the enemy to come to us, then rely on our heroes to break them. Killing all of us will be difficult if we can keep our Warriors of Dale from being shot to death (they make up almost half our army).

Finally, we want to show up in two places in Heirlooms of Ages Past - moving to contest the locations of the Heirloom as quickly as possible, then either retreating with it as quickly as possible if we dig it up and using our bows/crossbows to harass the enemy if they dig it up first. Using free Heroic Combats to get some extra movement/killing power, our heroes can do good work chopping through bodies to get to the Heirloom.

With the object missions, our numbers and F4 should help us tremendously. In Seize the Prize, we can March up our fighting infantry quickly towards the center. Our bowmen could stare at the center, but we probably want to have them locking down our flanks, threatening anyone who tries to run around our ranks. S3-4 bows ought to make our opponent play more cautiously, which gives us the ability to get to the enemy on his side of the board with our heroes.

In Destroy the Supplies, we have plenty of archers to guard our supply markers - ideally with 1 crossbow and 3 Esgaroth bows defending each one (so we should be able to trigger our race-dependent bonuses). Because our free Heroic Combats don't require our big heroes to be near each other, we can have them attack on the wings, using their forced movement to slowly pinch towards the middle. Bifur can hold the middle, pressing up only if doing so will keep the enemy from overwhelming Thorin or Bard.

Because of our large numbers, Retrieval is our favorite of these scenarios - "all" we need to do is throw our models towards the enemy flag and using our Combats to break the enemy line. We can rely on our archers to sit back and defend our flag from most things (12 high-strength archers and maybe a Captain can usually do that).

Control Missions (Pools 2 & 5)

40 models will do a lot for us here, but in all of the objective-based ones, we want to start on the centerline. We do this a lot, but one thing bears repeating here: we have good archers, but they're better as swordsmen. In Domination, Capture and Control, and Breakthrough, we know that starting on the centerline will mean that we contest or control 3-4 objectives on the board (especially if we balance the placement of objectives in Domination). If we have Bifur in the middle, Bard on one side, and Thorin on the other, we have a good chance of being able to roll through the enemy's middle pretty quickly. Our army can handle attrition well because of all the spears we have and if we can drive the enemy away from the center, we can deny enough points to win the game handily.

The getting places missions, though, are much, MUCH harder. Our favorite (like most slow armies) is Divide and Conquer - we already know how we want our armies split up (one Dale and one Erebor in each corner, Captain with Bifur and Bard with Thorin). The Captain double-Marches to get Bifur and most of your archers in position, while Bard and Thorin sail in later, forming up in the center as a second wave to flank the enemy. With 10 ranged units and 7 melee units in the Captain/Bifur's warbands, we stand to have a solid threat to the enemy deployed to the center quickly, ready for the remaining 23 models (mostly melee) to swarm in from the opposite corner.

Reconnoitre will require some strategy, but we can rely on those free Heroic Combats getting us a bit of extra movement (if we can slingshot models towards the enemy board edge). Our crossbows (and at least some of our bowmen) will want to hold back and secure firing lanes to guard our board edge, but once again, these models are all solid melee models, so by "guarding", we mean "guarding from the center of the board." If we can get a late-game March after the Captain and a handful of guys have been Heroic Combatted towards the enemy board edge, we might have a shot of getting some models off - otherwise, our hope is to break the enemy without being broken and keep anyone else from getting off.

Storm the Camp will be . . . boring. Our army leader needs to stay unwounded while we wound the enemy army leader with our archery. At that point, if we can break the enemy without being broken and deny them access to our camp, we can win 4-0 (or 6-0 if we can kill the enemy army leader). Our Captain will want to be deployed at the front of our deployment zone with Bifur and Bard right there with him. Thorin should advance from the safety of a rear rank, ready to assist (with at least his banner boost) in a safe spot - though if there's a lot of magic or high-Strength archery threats, we COULD just leave him in the camp behind some terrain (if that's an option). As a precurser to some of the next missions, if we don't need to engage, we don't want to engage - we have a credible shooting threat with high Defense warrior models that can stand in front of them . . . no reason to go out and fight unless the enemy comes to us. Yes, we're going to be that guy . . .

Killing Missions (Pools 4 & 6)

I don't think I need to say this, but I'll say it: this is a sit-back-and-shoot list. In To The Death, we want to not break - our high model count and high Defense units should help with that, as should our shooting. We only want to get close enough to the enemy to start shooting - then make them come to us. Our heroes will want to stay out of the front rank at first so they don't lose wounds (we're all 2 Wound heroes - and with two of them being 1 Fate heroes, a single arrow could really ruin our day). Our fire should be focused on wherever the enemy banner is - and if the banner gets tucked in a corner somewhere, we just focus on breaking the enemy (have 2 VPs - hopefully the guy will run away, but if he doesn't, well played).

In Lords of Battle, we don't hold back at all - we get right up in the enemy grill and start getting those Heroic Combats off. In an ideal world, we can use our D7 Iron Hills Dwarves to stall out enemy killing machines, but if they have to kill grunts, that's fine too. Our heroes need to be hyper-aggressive here, as we could cough up some serious points from the Dale contingent (mostly D4-5). Thorin will need to be working overtime, but make sure he doesn't get overly exposed.

Finally, we have Contest of Champions . . . D7 Dwarves (and Bard) stall out the enemy leader while Thorin goes chopping through things. Simple enough? We're all on the centerline again, in case that wasn't clear . . .

In the hero-slaying missions, our shooting is our greatest asset. Clash by Moonlight will see our Dale contingent in serious jeopardy, but D7 is pretty resilient even when there's a +1 To Wound (S3 bows will wound on 5s and S2 bows will wound on 5+/3+ - both of which hurt, but not as much as the Dale guys would get hurt). Our hope will be to avoid being in shooting range until we're able to call a March - then endure one round of archery before we close. Our heroes will want to stay out of immediate danger (perhaps using an inset formation to limit their exposure), but still be able to threaten the enemy on the following turn with a charge. The inset formation will also work like a Millenium Falcon formation for the Marching Captain, which is nice. If any of our heroes go down, we need to kill at least one enemy hero as quickly as possible - potentially free Heroic Strikes from Thorin ought to help tremendously.

In Fog of War, we can keep our Captain back and have him shoot, choosing him as our hero to keep alive. If embedded in a gunline, I think he'll be okay (make sure he has in-the-ways). The hero we want to kill is someone we think we can wound with archery and will HAVE to come out and fight us - there's usually one of those larking around. Terrain? Yeah, we're looking for something just across the centerline (we've got Dwarves, after all). Can we break the enemy? Well, we're certainly going to try, aren't we? :)

Our last scenario is Assassination - and it's here that you're going to have to make some choices. Our strongest heroes (Bard and Thorin) have the tools to kill a lot of things - and if they happen to kill the target enemy hero, that's fine. But I don't think we want Bard as our assassin (Thorin can't be). Bifur is fragile and if it weren't for his D8, he'd probably be the de facto target of the enemy. But our Captain has an Esgaroth bow and has the lowest Defense/Fate on our roster - so he very well might be our opponent's choice of target. What if HE was our assassin, pegging shots from afar and hopefully striking a lucky blow? Once again, we're rewarded for breaking the enemy without being broken - and if we can get Thorin/Bard to kill the enemy army leader, we get even more points!

Conclusion

I really like this Legion - though if I were operating without the constraints of the sourcebooks, I'd have a slightly different army construction - 11 Warriors of Dale with Esgaroth bows (instead of 9 bows/3 crossbows - gives you four skirmish traingles with the Captain), 6 Warriors of Dale with spears and shields (instead of all the other Dale units), 8 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears (instead of 12), and 11 Iron Hills Dwarves with no extra gear (aka just shields). This STILL gives you 40 models, you have 19 models for shieldwall, and 50% spears for your melee units.

Next time, we go across the field and look at one of the coolest and most competitive Legions in the game: the Host of the Dragon Emperor. With Easterlings finally getting their time in the sun, everyone's flocking to the land of Rhun to try out a list that gets lots of free upgrades and one big, bad hero. But with a limit imposed on the number of pikes you can take (and one glaring big omission), how do you make a good list that respects scenario play limitations? Well, we'll find out - until next time, happy hobbying!