Thematic List Building Challenge: The Walls of Minas Tirith, Part 2

Good morning gamers,

Last time we were in this series, we looked at how to replicate the defense of Minas Tirith from the books by seeing what kind of alliances we could build with Minas Tirith and the Fiefdoms. Today, we're looking to the defense of Minas Tirith in the films, which gives us far fewer profiles to work with - and whether you can make this build "competitive." Let's see what our theme is . . .

The Theme

I remember well where I was at 12:01am on December 17th, 2003 - I was sitting in the middle of a crowded movie theatre with about a dozen friends (and two dads, who drove all of us) watching the ads run before the Return of the King midnight debut in Hawaii - it was a glorious night and I'll never forget it. I remember being incredibly pumped when Gandalf assumed command of the defense of Minas Tirith and the trebuchets began to shoot back at the hordes of Mordor. While this scene got a lot of amping up with the release of the extended cut about a year later, there's plenty to enjoy about the theatrical version - and to this day, whenever I watch the films, I'll stop what I'm doing and enjoy again the masterful work that went into making that scene.

Well, in MESBG, the lowly Warrior of Minas Tirith is a "fine" profile - the bowmen are uninspired (and sub-par to their Ranger/Citadel Guard counterparts), the shield guys are good but can be eclipsed by Guards of the Fountain Court in the front rank and Guards of the Fountain Court, Citadel Guard, and Rangers with spears in the second rank. Unfortunately, while there are Guards of the Fountain Court and Citadel Guard in the films, none of them are seen actually defending the city . . . so for our purposes today, we're going to skip them.

We're also going to skip on the knights - and basically everything from the Minas Tirith list except Gandalf, Pippin, and the absolute most basic units in Minas Tirith. No fancy bells and whistles . . . can such an army be good? Let's look at the models we have and what they're going to force us to do . . .

The Models

The models we'll be using are as follows:

• Minas Tirith:
  
• Gandalf the White
• Peregrin Took, Guard of the Citadel
• Captains of Minas Tirith
• Warriors of Minas Tirith
• Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet

If you bought the Battle for Osgiliath starter box and picked up the Minas Tirith Battle Force box, you've got 36 of these guys larking around, as well as a Gandalf/Pippin model, so if you pick up a Minas Tirith command pack (or covert some of your Warriors of Minas Tirith into captains), you're in good shape to run this list already!

This is by far and away the most restrictive list of models I've had in this series to date - and honestly, I don't think anything else is going to ever come close to beating it in brevity - but it's undeniable what the theme is, even though we're fighting with at least one hand tied behind our backs. Let's look at what makes this thematic list different from what it could be . . .

The Distinctives

Since this is a pure Minas Tirith list, we know that we'll have the Minas Tirith army bonus, so those are all C4 warriors/siege crew, C5 Captains/Pippin, and an unmodified C7 Gandalf (since he lacks the Gondor keyword). This gives us some mitigation for not having Bodyguard, but I'll be honest, missing the Bodyguard options is going to be tough.

Our army leader is also going to be Gandalf - which is good, because he's decently killy and difficult to kill, but also bad because he's much better as a secondary support hero (like we saw last time). I don't plan to use Pippin much - his profile is pretty expensive for what he does . . .

To support Gandalf, we have Captains of Minas Tirith - and these guys are a lot like Morannon Orc Captains in that they live in a list with TONS of named models and often get overlooked. If you give them a shield (I think I always would), they've got a base defense of 7, which becomes D8 if they're in shieldwall . . . which (spoiler alert) we want to be as much as we can. D7 is the level where we're not that worried about enemy shooting (especially if we have Blinding Light cutting down how much archery actually hits) and it's a decent mitigation from melee damage - but getting to D8 is REALLY hard for most archery to punch through . . . and that's really good to have on our heroes.

As for warrior choices, we have your stock-standard, tin-can Warriors of Minas Tirith and their trebuchet-firing cousins. These guys are fine, as we've already said, mostly because they're pretty inexpensive. Warriors of Minas Tirith are generally going to cost 8-9pts each and extra crew are going to cost 7pts each - so it's not hard to get an extra 12 guys for 100pts and have a decent amount of kit on your models to boot.

This allows us to do two things: first, we can get a lot of models in that are D5-7. At lower points levels, taking Gandalf will mean that we have a pretty normal model count - but we'll also have a top-tier caster when our opponents likely don't have one, the warriors we have will be difficult to kill, and our Captain (I doubt we have more than one) will be able to focus on fighting warriors instead of having to deal with enemy heroes. As the points level gets higher, you can get a Trebuchet and a full warband led by a Captain for less than 250pts, which should give you above-average numbers at anything over 600pts - and the units will still be hard to kill!

Second, we can lean harder into shieldwall than most armies can. Some Iron Hills/Erebor Reclaimed lists aside, shieldwall can be a real bummer for enemy armies to face. Obviously, we can run shields on our swordsmen and spearmen (who should make up close to two-thirds of our army), but we can also field Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and bows to take advantage of the shieldwall rule even when they're shooting with their bows (D6 archers). You can also have Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields, spears, and bows . . . but at 10pts/model, one must ask whether the points are well spent this way. Still, with no 10pt Citadel Guard to compete with, if you have left-over points, consider getting shields on some of your bowmen.

I would, first and foremost, get spears on half of your models, following the 2:2:1:1 approach that I usually run for High Elf Warriors and Galadhrim Warriors:

• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow and spear

Each group of 6 models costs 51 points, so you're looking at 157pts to field two of these blocks with a Captain of Minas Tirith with shield (always take the shield). If you field a Trebuchet (base 80pts), it comes with 2 siege crew, who count as melee warriors. As such, you can swap a Warrior of Minas Tirith with shield for a Warrior of Minas Tirith with bow for each siege weapon you take, just to make sure you're doing as much ranged damage as possible.

Speaking of ranged damage, this is very much a shooting list at high points levels - between the trebuchets that provide long-range threats and a host of bows that you can pack in at close range and rounding it all off with an anti-archery bubble to protect you from return fire via Gandalf's Blinding Light spell, you can dictate how the engagement between you and your opponent is going to go. With Captains to March your melee units up the board and bow-armed units to provide cover/guard your back field in the scenarios that require getting somewhere, you can hold out in a decent number of scenarios against any opponent who wants to avoid taking shooting damage at all costs.

Finally, I'd try to have a banner present at every points level - with a F3 warrior corps, you need to have as many dice as possible in your fights. Since we have Gandalf (who doesn't count as a banner) and no access to Boromir or Aragorn (both of whom provide 6" banner rules to their friends), we need to invest in a normal banner. I'm not sure I'd jump for two, but you can certainly consider it if you think your model count is decently high.

Okay, enough theory - let's look at some lists!

Example Lists

At 500pts, we're hard-pressed to get more than just Gandalf in our list, but I was able to make a 23-model force (pretty close to our goal of 25 models) that features Gandalf, a Captain, and a good corps of Warriors of Minas Tirith (and since it has 50% spears and I only hit 499pts, I threw in an extra shield on a bowman to help trigger the shieldwall rule):

• Gandalf the White on Shadowfax [ARMY LEADER]
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows and spears
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with shield, spear, and bow
  
• Captain of Minas Tirith with shield
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with shield, spear, and banner
  

The army has a solid five-file, two-rank shieldwall led by the Captain of Minas Tirith and it can be reinforced by a small three-file, two rank shieldwall (including a bowman) from Gandalf's warband if the two are allowed to deploy together. Placing all of the archers in Gandalf's warband allows them to advance slowly and shoot while the other force Marches to their aid should we be forced to deploy away from each other (possible in any of the maelstrom scenarios in Pool 1 and guaranteed in Divide and Conquer in Pool 5).

At 700pts, we can add two Trebuchets to this force and a handful of additional guys to bring us to 34 models (dropping the extra shield I added in the previous list):

• Gandalf the White on Shadowfax [ARMY LEADER]
• 2 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with shield and spear
• 5 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• 6 Warriors of Minas with bows and spears
• Captain of Minas Tirith with shield
• 5 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 5 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with shield, spear, and banner
  
• Minas Tirith Siege Veteran with Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet
• 2 Crew
  
• Minas Tirith Siege Veteran with Gondor Battlecry Trebuchet
• 3 Crew
  

With 11 bows and 2 trebuchets, you should expect to kill about 1 model/turn if you stand and shoot with the bowmen (roughly two if you're shooting D3-4 models) and you should hit someone with the trebs each turn (though if you have Centaur's luck, they'll almost always hit). While that doesn't seem like a lot (and doesn't include any damage you can get from Sorcerous Blast), it should be enough to equal the odds by the time you choose to engage against an army that starts in the low-40s and should give you a numerical dominance against a force that starts in the mid-30s. With only a handful of available warrior slots, you'll need to pick up a Captain shortly after this, but your force will be above 40 models at 800pts, so if you're playing that high, you'll have a lot of tin cans on the board . . . plus two trebs and a wizard.

Conclusion

Well, that's more Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows than you'll see in most lists. :) Hopefully you liked this article - and if you have a thematic list that you'd like to throw over to us as a list building challenge, let us know that in the comments! We'll be back next week in the scenario deep-dive series and kicking off a scenario pool that this thematic list welcomes immensely: Pool 4 (or the "kill people" scenarios). We look forward to seeing you then - and until then, happy hobbying!