Is Arnor Just "Lame Minas Tirith"?

Hey Reader!

Recently when I did my post talking about my predictions/hopes for the new Arnor supplement, one of our commenters made an interesting (and I don't think altogether wrong) comment that "As is, it's hard to see it as anything other than 'lame Minas Tirith'."

And to be honest, YantheMan makes a good point: not only should each army feel different from the others (Mordor and Angmar share a lot of profiles, but they feel very different and are run very differently despite overlapping so much), but there should be a reason to field an army like Arnor over and against Minas Tirith (which will likely always be a more fleshed out faction in the game, and rightly so).

But as someone who has run both Minas Tirith and Arnor, I wanted to spend a few minutes just mulling over whether this claim is actually true, whether this is the right comparison we should be making, and then ending with some thoughts on how the game designers could flesh out Arnor in a way that is satisfying and cool and different without having to invest tens of thousands of dollars into new sculpts (because let's be real: it's not going to happen).

I.  Is Arnor "Lame Minas Tirith"?

To start off, if you're not familiar with the options for Arnor and Minas Tirith, you can take a look at our article summaries for those factions at the links above, and having them open may be helpful for those following along with this conversation at home (though the Arnor article is very dated, and about to be even more outdated with the arrival of cavalry, so we'll address that post-supplement to keep it fresh)! As a quick intro, what YantheMan says makes a lot of sense: both of them rely on heavily armored warriors fighting in a two-rank formation with rangers providing fire support for mid-range heroes. But Minas Tirith adds to all of this high-end heroes (arguably some of the best high-end heroes for the Forces of Good), cavalry (for much-needed speed and punch), magic and magic defense (yay for the White Wizard), better Defense (through Shieldwall and the D7 base on Guards of the Fountain Court), siege weapons (if you like Big Baddah-Boom Hardware), and last but not least a far more useful alliance matrix. 

So in this respect, they definitely look like, "Minas Tirith, but far more limited," and that can be accurately translated as "lame." However...

II.  What Arnor Offers Now

This is the same cost as Mounted Boromir: every
warrior you put near him means more Arnorians

I'm not convinced that this is actually a good comparison for several reasons. First, Arnor starts with a spear block of tin cans at Fight 4 instead of 3, which is a huge difference. The ability to keep Uruk-Hai from crushing through your block, cleave through lines of Morannon Orcs, and keep pace with a dwarven frontline is huge, and cannot be understated. And while yes, Minas Tirith can get up to F4 if you take a 215pt hero, 1) that is not battlefield-wide, so in objective games you won't see that benefit all across the front lines, but also 2) Arnor does this far more efficiently, with an 8pt model that costs the same as a Warrior of Minas Tirith with a shield, but gets F4 and a spear for the low, low cost of -1 Courage (-2 if you factor in the Minas Tirith army bonus). And that makes the Warrior of Arnor a good 3pts cheaper than the Guard of the Fountain Court (though admittedly that 3pts is very well spent getting Bodyguard, extra courage, and extra Defense).

So on its own, this is a huge advantage: you can scrum against armies that want to fight like you (Isengard, Fiefdoms, Easterlings, Any Strain of Dwarves, Mordor, etc.) far more efficiently and effectively than Minas Tirith. And that is not bad, considering how many armies are built for two-rank infantry block charges in this game.

Second, they offer simplicity, which is highly attractive to newer players. Do you know how many profiles you need to memorize with Arnor? A maximum of 6, and realistically 5: Arvedui, Malbeth, and the Captain (as those will be your heroes, and you should take all of them), Warriors of Arnor, and Rangers of Arnor (Hobbit Archers if you feel like it). They all (sans the hobbits) move the same distance of 6", so easy to remember, the warriors are all F4 and the fighting heroes are all F5, and it's clear which models are D4 and which ones are D6. Every warrior (and Malbeth, and again sans hobbits) is S3, and the fighting heroes are S4. And with almost no special rules to learn (beyond those tied to Arvedui and Malbeth, which are easy to learn), new players can very easily learn everything about their army in no time at all.

Third, they slot into an easy and semi-efficient playstyle. The lack of cavalry (to date) has given them a simple strategy: move up with infantry blocks, and anyone that sneaks past you gets riddled with arrows. Now Arnor players will have decisions to make (how much to rely on archery to deal with fast models, and how much should they rely on interception), but this can actually make your Arnor playstyle even easier, depending on how you setup your firing lanes. Compare this to Minas Tirith where you're almost drowned with options, starting with Warriors of Minas Tirith and Rangers of Gondor (so you're trying to figure out the right mixture of those), then you add some knights (so you're balancing that mix), and then you look in the book and find other elite troops, and then there's an alliance matrix, and wow, by this point there's so many options you can easily end up with analysis paralysis, and we haven't even gotten to the gobs of heroes and access to siege weapons that Minas Tirith has.

And finally, their limited options are all good. Not that Minas Tirith has bad options, but there are ways to make a Minas Tirith list that is not well optimized for success because of their multitude of options (triple trebuchet lists are great, but there are a lot of scenarios where that will not work well, for example, and you'll be hard pressed to find a greater advocate for trebuchets generally than me). But if you had to have just 5-6 profiles, this is exactly the profiles you'd want: a hero with Heroic Strike, "Bunker Captains" to tie down heroes and grind down their resources, a support hero to keep your forces alive (and dissuade opponents from calling things like Heroic Combats), cheap but heavily armored warriors that can hold their own and will take a while to chew through, supported by archers for covering the flanks (some of which can be bought on a budget to boost your numbers as needed).

And with the addition of cavalry (and at least one new hero, who is also mounted!), your limited options are all still very good. Sure, you have a Courage issue, but every faction should have a weakness, and this helps to keep Arnor distinct from Minas Tirith (which not only gets +1 Courage everywhere thanks to its army bonus, but also has a high amount of Bodyguard on its profiles, including some of the heroes).

And this makes me think that the better comparison is not actually to Minas Tirith: there's another faction that better mimics Arnor, and maybe sheds more light on how they can flesh out Arnor without going over the top...

III.  A Different Comparison: Arnor as Armored Dale

Dale: A Better Analog

So with Dale we have a similar story to Arnor: a 3+ Shoot Value on your archers, F4 with S3 on your warriors, access to a range of lightly armored and heavily armored troops, and all of your heroes are mid-range heroes (aka, heroes around 75-120pts, and typically sporting a combination of 3-4 Wounds and Fate - other examples of mid-range heroes include Faramir, Theodred, Hurin the Tall, Lurtz, Thrydan Wolfsbane, most elven captain-style heroes, and lots of dwarf heroes).

There are differences (Dale has no dedicated support hero, but it does have access to a Windlance and S3 bows, which is nothing to sneeze at), but in general they tend to feel similar: lots of spear support access, fighting in blocks with archer cover, and no cavalry.

So I think a better comparison is not to Minas Tirith, but to Dale: Arnor is just more heavily armored Dale with weaker bows. Strategies and playstyles are similar (both have, for many years, had to rely on archery to cover flanks instead of fast troops, both rely on dismounted heroes, and both lack true flexibility in choices), units are actually quite similar (King Brand and King Arvedui are actually quite similar, though naturally the more expensive Brand is better), and they rely on a few named heroes supported by captains to lead the troops.

But thinking within this framework, Arnor can have a more clear direction for where it should go: Dale should be the "humans with good Fight Value and good shooting, but average Defense and average heroes" army, relying on 8-10pt infantry to get its work done, though relying on D5 on most of its troops. Minas Tirith should be the "humans with average Fight Value, average shooting, but high Defense and solid heroes" army, with more all-around tools for dealing with threats, but F4+ all over the place should be expensive to get or difficult to do. And Arnor should be the "humans with good Fight Value and Defense, but with average shooting and heroes" army.

So Arnor shouldn't add any S3 bows: don't cut into Dale's lane. They also shouldn't get access to D7+ (except maybe on a heavy armor hero with a shield, like Aranarth), and they shouldn't get any super powerful heroes (keep them in the realm of the mid-range heroes, capping out around 100-110pts). They can have auric or legion-specific Courage buffs, but keep them low Courage and make this a clear weakness.

But all of this you know - I think the biggest piece of advice I have for the designers is that they need to give us another support hero. Make Arnor distinct from both of these factions by giving Arnor access to a wider range of support heroes so that Arnor players are trying to balance access to great buffs and access to the staying power heroes that you need in combat as well (as neither Minas Tirith nor Dale possess breadth when it comes to support, beyond Gandalf the White in Minas Tirith who is quite cost-prohibitive if you take another high-end hero). Give us an Arnorian Scribe whose Will Points can be spent by himself or other heroes to call Heroic Moves or Heroic Marches. Give us an Arnorian Herbalist who has a rule similar to Oin's Prognostication ability to help heroes recover wounds. Add tactical and strategic complexity not through a fully fleshed out tech tree like Minas Tirith has, but through a small collection of very different heroes that can be combined in interesting ways.

Conclusion

I'm pumped for the new supplement: Eriador has long been my favorite region of Middle Earth, and it's always nice when this part of the world gets a bit more love in the game. But I also really want Arnor to be able to keep to its own lane, feeling distinct from other factions while at the same time having some tools to deal with the myriad strategic requirements that scenarios offer. Here's hoping we see more of that in the coming months as we prepare for the release! Until then, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I know that you have learned the names of the planets and their moons in Astronomy...and that you have mapped the stars' progress through the heavens.  Centaurs have unraveled the mysteries of these movements over centuries.  Our findings teach us that the future may be glimpsed in the sky above us." ~ Firenze, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix