The Stuff of Legends: The Wolf Pack of Angmar

Good morning gamers,

AAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Yep, today we're tackling the Wolf Pack of Angmar Legendary Legion - and boy has this been the golden boy of the Rise of Angmar sourcebook. No, it's not the strongest of the Legions - but it's definitely got the most flavor and I think a lot of players were looking forward to being able to throw together a pack of wargs and actually have a chance of winning games (well, games that weren't heavily skewed to fast armies already).

While I haven't been playing with this Legion, my son Gorgoroth has been intrigued by it, so I've seen it mostly in the context of doubles games and I can tell you, there are strengths to this list . . . and definite drawbacks. So let's hash through this very popular, fun Legendary Legion and see what there is to like about it.

Part 1: What Do You Need?

Legion Tax: 80pts

This Legion only requires you to take a single model: a Wild Warg Chieftain. This guy gets buffed up to an "Uber Warg Chieftain," who has 3 Might, 3 Will, 2 Fate instead of the usual 2 Might, 2 Will, 1 Fate of a Warg Chieftain. Unlike the "Uber Troll Chieftain" of the Black Gate Opens LL, this guy gets no special rules to make him better, but like the Uber Troll, he gets improved to a Hero of Valour.

To make up for not getting a keyword added to his profile, the Legion has a special rule (Protect the Alpha) that allows friendly models within 6" of the Uber Warg Chieftain to count as being in range of a banner once he's suffered at least one wound. While this will mean that you've coughed up a VP in most scenarios for your leader being wounded, it also means that your Wargs can get a banner reroll - and when you've got F3 Wild Wargs, F3 Fell Wargs, F5 Werewolves, and F5 Wild Warg Chieftains in your list, a reroll on your dueling roll is always nice. Also, the 6" radius is essential for a list with large bases in it - a 3" radius would hardly move the scales.

The Legion also gives all friendly Warg models the "Feral Charge" special rule that Werewolves got, which basically gives them the cavalry-knock-down rules if they have charged infantry models and are not subsequently countercharged by cavalry. This helps them with their killing power tremendously (especially those 2 Attack Werewolves and 3 Attack Wild Warg Chieftains), but doesn't give them the extra attack on the charge that cavalry would usually get.

Finally, once per game, the Uber Warg Chieftain can use the Howl of the Wolf Pack special rule to boost the Fight Values of all friendly models by +1 AND give everyone a reroll of 1s To Wound. This bonus is battlefield wide, so it doesn't matter where the pack is hounding its foes, you're going to have F4-6 Wolves that might be knocking people down . . . that one round could be absolutely terrifying.

While the Uber Warg Chieftain is the only model you need to take, what you actually need to take is quite the array of models. You probably want a few Werewolves in your list (and possibly a lot of them, depending on whether you think paying 25 points for D4/2 Wound models is a good idea or not) for their boosted Fight Value (F5 instead of F3) and because their Courage is pretty good (C5 instead of C2). With a base Strength of 5 and the ability to knock enemy units to the ground, Werewolves are good to have in your list (at least as a sprinkling, if not the backbone of your list). Like Wild Warg Chieftains, they also cause Terror, which could give you an edge in a few matchups.

I am of the opinion that you want at least 10 Wargs of some kind (Wild or Fell - to me, it doesn't matter which). 10 Wargs will cost you 70-80pts, which paired with your Wild Warg Chieftain and 1-2 Werewolves is going to cost you in the neighborhood of 200pts. At any reasonable event, this is probably the minimum points level you'll be playing at and you can scale up easily from there. This force will provide you with 12-13 models and has a little bit of room to grow before you have to buy the next Chieftain. The Wargs are needed mostly because you're going to need chaff in your list to make sure the Warg Chieftains and Werewolves aren't torn to shreds and that means having pincushions for enemy arrows and blockers to shield them from being swarmed or pulled from the fights they want.

Okay, with this general view of the list behind us, let's look at what we're losing by taking this Legion over a normal Angmar list (along with what we have to gain by using it).

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

This list loses a LOT more than the Carn Dum list did in Centaur's article from last week. There are a ton of profiles missing, yes, but also the focus of the list is something that a normal Angmar list can't do without suffering greatly. We should probably start with the elephant in the room.

Weakness #1: Very Limited Profile Selection (and special rules)

As has already been stated, this list has exactly four profiles in it - one hero profile (which has a slightly buffed variant as your first pick) and three warrior profiles. The hero profile has Heroic March and Heroic Strength as specialized heroic actions, which means we've lost access to Heroic Strike (something that's not plentiful in Angmar, but you'll usually have at least one hero with access to it) and Heroic Defense (also not plentiful, but if you have Gulavhar in the wings - see what I did there? - you have Defense at your disposal). Both of these are excellent tools to have in a list that is likely to also have lots of supporting magic . . . and in this Legion, both the Fight Value of the Warg Chieftains is capped at F5-6 and the difficulty of wounding the Warg Chieftains can't be changed.

Speaking of supporting magic, the Wolf Pack of Angmar has no magic to support it - for some players, this is probably a good thing, as magic can sometimes distract you from your overall strategy. However, as a means of dealing with big heroes in the opposing force who focused heavily on their combat stats and not so much on their magical resilience or their Courage stat, lacking magical options is a pain and a blow to this list.

Finally, we lost access to Angmar Orc Warriors, who not only have access to good pieces of standard war gear (shields, spears, and banners in particular - Orc bows if you're me . . . and pretty much only me), but also boast a pretty comparable profile to that of Wargs at a discounted price (though their speed is lower). Orcs are really efficient units that can be squished by elite troops if they're not able to bring their numbers to bear, but that statement is even more true of Wargs - no spears and bigger bases means they're going to have to work extra hard to get their units into combats that favor them. If you don't play that well, you could see a host of Wargs get thrown against an enemy force and just start dying left and right with nothing to show for it.

That's . . . a tough critique - but let's look at the other side of the coin and some good news.

Strength #1: Cheap Pseudo-Cavalry

Wargs are not as cheap as Orcs (Orcs with shields and spears cost the same as Wild Wargs - but generally you're paying 6pts/model for Orcs and 7-8pts/model for Wargs), but they're faster than Orcs and in this Legion, you get the cavalry-knock-down rules on everyone. This means it's easier for your Wargs to trap their foes in this Legion. Since you're likely to have about the same number of models as your opponent does (or more if his units are more elite), you can get a ton of kills by focusing on parts of your opponent's army, using your superior speed to assault one side of the battle line and crack through while the rest of the enemy tries to respond. We'll talk about this more in the tactics section, but for now, let it suffice to say that a well-planned attack that tries to remove the benefit of enemy spears can be absolutely devastating.

To be honest, I couldn't really think of any other "downsides" to taking the Legion, but there is one additional strength to running it . . .

Strength #2: Simplified Rules

Angmar has one of the most complex rule sets in the game: you usually have to know how magic works, how the "Terror bubble coherency" thing works to make sure you don't lose the Terror boost from your army bonus, how brutal power attacks work, and how weird special rules on units like the Shade, Dead Marsh Spectres, and the Shadow of Rhudaur work. Oh, and then there's just the normal rules of the game. Yeah, it's a lot of rules . . .

. . . but this Legion has effectively three profiles you need to know (the hero wolves, the warrior wolves, and the werewolves) and if you have one of each of the actual units you can take in your list, you have a grand total of (wait for it) four special rules, five heroic actions, and three Legion bonuses you need to keep track of (the banner rule for the Uber Warg, the once-per-game Fight Value boost, and everyone gets Feral Charge). Frankly . . . that's pretty much the easiest set of rules one can ask for. 

With the special rules just being Packlord (basically don't need to know it), Fell Sight (you can charge whatever you want - even if you can't see it when you start moving), Terror (your opponent has to see if he can charge you before he charges you), and Feral Charge (you knock stuff down when you fight, doubling your wounding dice), that's super simple. The five Heroic Actions (one of which you won't use because a Heroic Shoot won't benefit anyone) are super simple - move first, fight first, move farther, be stronger - and frankly if you just know Heroic Move/Combat, you're good (considering how fast this list is, you probably don't need to March very often). All in all, it's a great, fun list for beginners of the game.

Okay, let's talk about fixes to the Legion.

Part 3: Legendary Legion Improvements

I only have one change that'd recommend: I'd allow the Uber Warg to be able to cast Enrage Beast on Wild/Fell Wargs in the list. This list has no tricks - and having the ability to "nip at the heels" of a smaller Warg in order to spur him on to bravery would be amazing. It might end up with the Wild Warg dying - I get that, and that's fine. Having (effectively) another Wild Warg Chieftain in your list would be excellent - and one-third of the time, he won't die from the Strength 10 hit he takes at the end of the round!

Honestly, the list is fine as it is - not oppressive, very fun/themey, and good at a few things. Let's look at some strategies.

Part 4: Army Strategies

Let's begin with something I have only done when discussing the Fell Beings of Mirkwood LL: pre-canned warband blocks. In a discussion about that Legion, I talked about 150-point "blocks" that you could buy to make list building easier. The Wolf Pack Legion also lends itself to this kind of list building style, since most warbands can only get to 200-250 points anyway.

As a starting point, we know we need the Uber Chieftain and we probably want a group of Wargs/Werewolves to help him out. A 200-point warband would look like this:

• Uber Wild Warg Chieftain
• 10 Wild Wargs
• 2 Werewolves

This gives us our desired 13 models to start with (and 3 free warrior slots). For 150 points, we can also get the following:

• Wild Warg Chieftain
• 3 Wild Wargs
• 3 Fell Wargs
• 1 Werewolf

If we're playing at 350 points, we just grab both of these blocks and we're good. The 150-point block has 5 warrior slots left, so we have some room to grow here as well. To finish off the blocks, we just need a 100-point block and a 50-point block that don't have heroes - once we have that, we have a 50, 100, 150, and 200 template and we can build lists at any points level that's divisible by 50. The 50-point block is pretty straightforward:

• 6 Wild Wargs
• 1 Fell Warg

The 100-point block looks like this:

• 5 Wild Wargs
• 5 Fell Wargs
• 1 Werewolf

This means that we have the following:

• A 50pt, 7-warrior block;
• A 100pt, 11-warrior block;
• A 150pt, 7-warrior block (5 free warrior slots); and
• A 200pt, 12-warrior block (3 free warrior slots).

To visualize how this works, a 500-point list would need to take the 200-point block and then two 150-point blocks to fit within the warrior constraints. If we want a 600-point list, we'll need the 200-point block, two 150-point blocks, and a 100-point block (we should have 2 warrior slots left). See - easy!

Because each hero can basically lead 100pts of warriors (less than 150 if there are 1-2 Werewolves per warband), you're going to need 1 hero for every 200 points in your lists, so knowing whether you need to take a 150-point block or a 50/100pt block is pretty straightforward once you've built a few lists.

All of this assumes that you don't want to go too heavily into the Werewolf side of the list - a 150-point contingent of those guys is just 6 Werewolves, which will give you a fraction of the total wounds of the 100-point block and the 50-point block above (12 wounds for the Werewolves only; 17 for the mixed blocks), but will give you more total high Fight/Strength/Courage units in your list. Gorgoroth doesn't like having a lot of chaff units, so for him, a 400-point doubles list is going to HEAVILY favor the Werewolves over the normal guys (read 8 Werewolves and 2 heroes with as few Wargs as possible). If you already play Giant-spider-spam lists, you'll feel right at home with this sort of list. Like spider lists, however, any quick flood of losses is going to result in big gaping holes in your lines and a rapidly reduced number of options for the following turn.

After you've built your list, it's good to understand how a "wag" works. This is a term that Centaur made up a while ago and is particularly fitting for an army that has plenty of tails to wag. Since Wargs have lots of speed and no spears, you don't want to run into an enemy shieldwall head-on. Shieldwalls are great at focusing the mass of your list in a tight area (the front line) and gain an advantage over opponents by concentrating their force in small places and winning there. A list like this isn't going to win that concentration of force game, so instead, you'll want to use your speed to move well around one side of your opponent's force so he has to waste time trying to maneuver his battle line to meet you head-on. On a turn when he can't maneuver to hit you properly, you pounce on one side of his battle line and crush it that turn or on the following turn while the rest of his army is streaming over to help. 

When your opponent has reformed a bit, the tail of the wolf "wags" the opposite way, jumping on units on the extreme opposite flank (if possible) or dashing off to safety, leaving a confused and jumbled enemy in its wake. To work effectively, try not to engage enemy heroes who can Heroic Combat off of your units into the rest of your army - and if possible, don't let them charge into you. The Might on the Wild Warg Chieftains should be used primarily to call Heroic Moves (to disengage quickly and avoid getting caught) or to call Heroic Combats (to finish someone off quickly and then throw the winning models into a safer spot or to wrap-and-trap the beleaguered enemy). Speed is your game - and you don't want to stop moving around until your opponent is caught in harmless little pockets of guys.

I'd also recommend that on the first good charge that you are able to do, you use the Howl special rule. This is a once-per-game rule and you want to use it on a turn when you're gonna knock a lot of models to the ground - the sooner the better (and if you use it right away, there's one less thing to think about). The Howl will make your garbage units F4 (a lot less garbage) and your good units F6 (a lot better - especially against warriors). If you can focus your efforts on smashing your opponent on a single turn, you should be able to gain some momentum before the world becomes normal again and your Wargs are back to being . . . well, wild animals.

Okay, let's talk about some lists . . .

Part 5: Army Showcase

The highest I'd go with this Legion in singles Matched Play is 600pts (you could go to 800 for doubles very easily) - that requires our 200pt block, two 150pt blocks, and our 100pt block - all told, it's got three warbands, 40 models, and a TON of speed:

• Uber Wild Warg Chieftain
• 11 Wild Wargs
• 1 Fell Warg
• 2 Werewolves
• Wild Warg Chieftain
• 5 Wild Wargs
• 5 Fell Wargs
• 2 Werewolves
• Wild Warg Chieftain
• 5 Wild Wargs
• 5 Fell Wargs
• 1 Werewolf

The other point variants can be built using the blocks I talked about above - each of these warbands has plenty of expendable Wargs to screen off your Werewolves/Warg Chieftains. 40 models at 600pts should give you a sizeable advantage and if you use the principle of reserves that we talked about in a previous formations post on cavalry (these guys aren't technically cavalry - but you'll want to follow some of the same rules to make sure someone is always charging), you should be able to slam one side of the enemy formation pretty hard.

The other list I'm going to look at is my son's favorite way to run the list: heavy on Werewolves. To run the previous list, you kind of have to be okay with grunts that aren't particularly good or elite. Werewolves are excellent units, however they're a bit pricey. Warg Chieftains aren't exactly cheap, but you can get a pretty good 400pt force by leaning hard into the Werewolves and getting two Chieftains to lead them (15 models - but most of them are base F5):

• Uber Wild Warg Chieftain
• 3 Fell Wargs
• 4 Werewolves
• Wild Warg Chieftain
• 2 Fell Wargs
• 4 Werewolves

This kind of list won't appeal to all people - and frankly, I think it's much better in a doubles context than in a singles context since your ally will also have a host of Wargs (possibly Werewolf heavy, possibly not). Together, you'd have good numbers and plenty of speed - both of which are good in doubles scenarios.

Army Summary

This is definitely my favorite Evil legion from the Rise of Angmar book (I don't think it's as good as the Host of the Witch-King Legion - it might have the other two Evil legions beat, though) and I like the simplicity of the list. The cost of those Werewolves is very high, so unless your group is good with proxy models (or unless you're willing to spend a LOT of money on this Legion), you're probably looking for a spam list instead of an elite one.

Next week, Centaur will be returning to cover one more Legion before the end of the year and we'll be recapping the year with my hobby bingo projects. We'll try to get through the other Rise of Angmar Legions next year (we may have a new edition on our hands, but having this review complete seems worthwhile to us . . . also, I am badgering the Rangers of Mirkwood article, I promise, but people have been busy here lately). Thanks for joining us this year and we hope to see you next time - until then, Merry Christmas and happy hobbying!