First Impressions: The Elven Kingdoms, Part I

Good morning gamers,

I know I've said this a bajillion times before, but when I got started playing MESBG back in 2010 (during the Legions of Middle-Earth era and when it was called LOTR SBG), the first warrior pack I got for the Forces of Good was Wood Elf Warriors. I opened it minutes before opening the Dwarf Warrior pack, which quickly became a favorite of mine and a bane to the other guys starting to play the game with me, but it was my Wood Elf Warriors that eventually defined one of my favorite play styles: everyone shoots and if we get caught, we die. Over the years, I've collected Galadhrim (on foot and mounted) and have amassed most of the heroes, but with a new edition of the game, I can safely say that I both know how Lothlorien should be played . . . and honestly admit that I have no idea what I'm doing with them at the moment. :) They've both changed and not changed - I promise this makes sense, let's make some sense of that, shall we?

Lothlorien: How Have They Changed?

So we need to start out by addressing that there are some profiles that have left the Lothlorien list at this juncture and should arrive in the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement (since they didn't appear in the list of profiles being sent to Legacies):

• Combat Celeborn (wait, isn't that the only Celeborn? Why no, no it's not - keep reading);
• Orophin;
• Rumil;
• Galadhrim Knights (and mounted Galadhrim Captains);
• Guards of the Galadhrim Court; and
• Wood Elf Sentinels

This . . . doesn't leave us with much, but there are some cool new toys in real old packages that we have to play with now. Let's start off with . . .

Photo Credit: Tenor.com

Galadriel got 5pts cheaper and . . . pretty much stayed the same - at least as far as her stats and rules are concerned. She's still unarmed with a bad number of Attacks and a low Strength stat, but she's still F6, so with some help, she can win very, very managed fights. She still gets a free Will point each turn and can take her mirror (which is now on a 40mm base - something I need to hobby up so I can play with her soon!).

But there were some big changes to her special rules. First off, the Mirror of Galadriel not only allows a friendly hero during each End Phase within 6" of the Mirror to regain all their previously-lost Fate points, but if either Galadriel or Celeborn is in base contact with the Mirror, you can get a +1 bonus to your Priority roll . . . that's NUTS (and makes the 25pt investment very, VERY much worth it). Second, Galadriel's spell suite changed quite a bit. She has <check the list - it looks wrong>. All in all, very much the same profile - but now with some new tricks.

Celeborn was by far and away the most changed profile. While "combat Celeborn" is probably coming in the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement, in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings, we have "councilor Celeborn", who is very good, but not in a fighting kind of way. Like Galadriel, he is unarmed with 1 Attack, which is again not terrible considering he's F6, but also means you want to manage his engagements (and if he's standing near the Mirror, he's not that likely to die in a fight that's been managed well).

He also gets a free Will point each turn and expanded his existing suite of spells. He still casts Transfix (nee Immobilize) on a 3+, still casts Enchant Blades (now on a 4+), but traded Aura of Command (which your Elves didn't need - but Arnor friends wouldn't mind having) for Aura of Dismay (good for making him and Galadriel slightly harder to charge - or to make people flee if they're broken) on a 4+ and Writhing Vines on a 4+ (see what this does). All told, he's got a very interesting spell suite for someone who isn't great at fighting, but also has enough Will flowing that you can try niche things. It's unclear to me who the best candidate for Enchant Blades is since it's certainly not going to be him, but if it's just used to make Haldir or a Captain better at fighting, then that's fine.

He also got the Battle Wisdom special rule, which gives friendly Lothlorien Warrior models within 3" of him +1 To Wound when making Strikes, which makes him kind of like a non-combatant version of Thranduil . . . and makes me think that having him in managed fights on the front ranks would be pretty good. I'm super curious to see how he is on the board - it's been a while since I fielded a "pajama Celeborn" and we'll see how he does!

Haldir is basically unchanged in this edition - he still shoots twice, he picked up Sharpshooter (so he can choose if he's targeting the mount or rider when that matters), and he lost the Theoden-and-Aragorn-are-12" banners rule from his profile (though something like it exists in the Defenders of Helm's Deep army list - more on that in the future). With the downgrade of Celeborn to an unarmed 1 Attack hero and the complete removal of Orophin and Rumil, Haldir has become your defacto combat hero and unless you really want Galadriel, Celeborn, and Heroic March in a Lothlorien army list with maximum warriors, he's probably an auto-include in your lists. He also shows up in three army lists (Lothlorien, the Defenders of Helm's Deep, and the Breaking of the Fellowship), so there are several ways for you to run this guy and I'm not sure that any of these lists are going to look at his profile and say, "Nah, I'm good."

Galadhrim Captains, on the other hand, are basically cheaper, weaker versions of Haldir. Without access to horses, there's very little case for why they're a better choice than him - except that they have Heroic March and Haldir doesn't. These guys are 75pts with Elf bows (still) and lost access to their shields and horses but otherwise remained the same (they got Sharpshooter for their bows, which is good when it matters).

Wood Elf Captains are in an interesting spot - they're 10pts cheaper than Galadhrim Captains with Elf bows, which translates into a 5pt reduction from where they were. Their Defense is lower, but they have Elven cloaks by default and lost all their old options for wargear besides Elf bows (which might be sad for the Wood Elf spear option, but I didn't take the throwing daggers on them - maybe you did, but I always opted for the bow). These guys didn't get Sharpshooter, for whatever reason (might be due to one of their army list bonuses - more on that when we walk through Lothlorien together in the near future). Otherwise, they're basically like Galadhrim Captains and which one is better is probably contingent on your preference for pajamas or armor. If points are at a super premium, taking the Wood Elf Captain will save you 5-10pts, but that may be the only "tactical reason" to take one over the other.

As we get into the warriors, we have a basically unchanged profile for Galadhrim Warriors. Same cost, same rules, same stats - except that now their spears have the Elven keyword on them, which is AWESOME! It is also worth noting that they retained the option to carry shields on their front and back rank units, which some factions (I'm looking at you, Orc Warriors) aren't able to do anymore. Galadhrim Warriors are still as good as they used to be, though keeping that banner alive without the access to D6 will be harder than in the previous edition much of the time.

What's particularly interesting to me is that the Galadhrim Guard upgrade for these guys changed into Lorien Guard, who for +1 pt/model can reroll natural 1s when rolling to Wound. This is basically "Feint without the penalties" from the last edition, which is much better than the +1 Courage they had in the last edition, but probably isn't enough for all players to think it's worth taking on everyone. For myself, I think there's value in rerolling 1s if you have Celeborn nearby giving you +1 To Wound (which can stack with the +1 To Wound you get from two-handing with your swords). 

Rerolling 1s isn't great when you wound on 6s (only improves your likelihood of wounding by 2.8%), but it gets progressively better as your wounding difficulty goes down (rerolling 1s when you wound on 3s boosts you by 11%). If you have a front-rank guy who's wounding on 4s while two-handing near Celeborn (+8.3% if upgraded to Lorien Guard) and he's supported by another guy near Celeborn (+5.6%), you've increased your likelihood wounding by 17%, so in six pairs of fights near Celeborn, one additional wound should be scored just from the reroll of 1s. That's not a bad investment if you ask me.

Finally, we have Lothlorien Warriors - the first Good Warriors I ever fielded. This is the first edition where they're not referred to as "Wood Elf Warriors," so calling them "Lothlorien Warriors" is going to take some practice for me, but these guys are still 1pt cheaper than Galadhrim and lost two big things in the new edition: first, the spear guys can't take throwing daggers (which is alright, but was also nice if they formed your front line, since they could try to kill a model on the charge and then charge two models and shield, artificially extending your battle line). 

Second, only one-third of your army can take throwing daggers, so you can't run the two-thirds daggers, one-third bows that I used to run. This is probably good in the long run, but also begs the question how many of these guys you're going to see. All throwing-weapon-heavy players will tell you that the value of throwing weapons isn't found by running 6 of them - and it's not found when you run 12 of them. It's found when you have 20 of them - half of them hit when you charge, a fraction of those wound when you charge, but because you started with so many you're still getting 2-3 wounds before the fighting actually starts. If you're lucky, you may have killed 2-3 models on the previous turn before you charged, but if you're running 10 of these guys (because 30 warriors is all you can afford) - or 5 of these guys in the Breaking of the Fellowship army list - you're not really going hard enough into throwing weapons to make them reliable.

The story of Wood Elf Warriors isn't all bad, though - there's a nice boost in the Lothlorien army list for shooting at people who can't see you thanks to having Elven cloaks (which is great for bows) and they are still cheap when given spears or no extra gear. Throwing weapons will take some experimenting from me before I say whether or not they're worth it, but all in all, it's still one of the cheapest F5 profiles in the game (and they've still got the Elven keyword).

Conclusion

Lothlorien is in some very new territory - no F6 pikes, no cavalry, and no song-based shenanigans removes a lot of the tools they brought to the table, but the new Celeborn profile is an interesting augment to the old Galadriel/Haldir profiles, and the army lists that allow you to take Lothlorien units (Lothlorien, of course, but also two others) provide some very interesting ways to run these guys. If you love Lothlorien and are excited (or concerned) about them in the new edition, let us know in the comments below! Until next time, happy hobbying!