First Impressions: The Hill Tribes

Good morning gamers,

We're doing "part three" of the Isengard faction, specifically focusing on the Hill Tribes profiles from the new War of the Rohirrim film. These models "sort of" replace the GW-created Dunland heroes that have existed for a while (Thrydan Wolfsbane, Dunlending Chieftain, and Dunlending Warriors) or that were introduced in the War in Rohan supplement (Gorulf Ironskin, Frida Tallspear, Dunlending Huscarls, Dunlending Horsemen). We'll look today at how these new profiles compare to the old ones (trying to find profiles that "do similar things") and see what the new face of Dunland looks like.

It's gonna take a while to get to this guy, but he's really what it's all about . . .
Photo Credit: Reddit

Dunland Profiles: How Have They "Changed?"

Our first stop is the lead antagonist from the new film, Wulf. This guy has pretty decent stats for being a Dunlending/Rohan guy - Fight 6, 3 Attacks/Wounds, and 3 Might/3 Will/2 Fate are pretty good no matter who you are. The closest comparison I have for this guy - since he's just designed to be a beater - is Gorulf Ironskin, who sported an excellent profile for his cost - he was only F5, 2 Wounds, and 1 Will/1 Fate, but otherwise matched Wulf in all of his other stats AND bested him in Strength with S5 instead of S4 (and he got free Heroic Defenses against heroes - which was really helpful when you're only Defense 5). 

Speaking of Defense 5, Wulf's just wearing normal armor, so with Defense 5, he's a pretty squishy leader, but he has access to a horse, he has the Hatred (Rohan) special rule (when that applies, it'll be awesome), has a cool new special rule that gives him a personal banner reroll and the ability to reroll 1s To Wound against heroes. The banner part of that is always gonna be great and you'd think that getting a bonus when fighting heroes would make him slot into a hero-hunter kind of guy (especially with General Hunter giving him a Might Point back if he kills an enemy general). However, with "only" Fight 6, "only" Strength 4, and "only" 3 Attacks (and no bonuses To Wound except against Rohan and whatever rerolling 1s does for you), he's not going to reliably fight heroes well - especially if they still have stats. Sure, he can have the Fight Value advantage against a lot of generic heroes, but if your opponent reaches D5 or higher, you're not THAT likely to deal damage to them. This is something Gorulf used to struggle with only occasionally, but I'm afraid Wulf is going to blunt off a lot of heroes if they have stats to make things interesting.

Still, Wulf has a mount, is a little expensive with or without it (130pts with/110pts without - so just take the horse), and that will probably make sure he gets the matchups he wants and I think he'll be fine at killing troops (and eventually a beleagured general/enemy hero). With stats roughly similar to Eomer (except in the Defense and Fate departments), I think Wulf is fine (but unspectacular).

I'm comparing General Targg to Thrydan Wulfsbane today - mostly because they both slot into the not-that-expensive-hero category. This is not very fair to Targg, since Thrydan's big thing in the previous edition was his raw killing power with Mighty Blow with a S5 one-handed sword or S5-6 (with Piercing Strike) and a two-handed axe - if there was a model on the board that needed felling, Thrydan was a pretty good answer (especially if Saruman was able to cast Immobilize on the target). Targg comes in at 100pts with his horse and loses a lot of stats compared to Wulf, but lands about where Thrydan did - F5, S4, D5, 2 Attacks/Wounds, 2 Might/Will/Fate.

His big boon is that he has Master of Battle (4+), which is a good way to make sure you're at least in the discussion of who gets to go first as the game moves from mid-game to late-game. He has another rule that allows him to give priority to the opposing player if you win the roll to give your friends within 6" of him the ability to reroll 1s . . . I will note that by keeping it, you probably trigger Master of Battle (4+) and by giving it away, you're basically NOT using Master of Battle . . . so I wouldn't use this rule, personally.

I'm not sure that this guy is better than Thrydan - though he will probably have more Might than Thrydan if he's given time to work - and he certainly doesn't kill as well as Thyrdan does. As a third-fiddle to Wulf and the Snow Troll in the Besiegers of the Hornburg list and as third-fiddle-kinda to Wulf and Freca in the Usurpers of Edoras list, I think this guy is probably a bit too expensive to take - time will tell. Personally, I'd always opt for the next guy before Targg.

Lord Thorne is one of the more interesting Dunland heroes - he's "just a Captain" as it were, but he's also got armor (which the other Captains don't) and he can bring armored troops (which the other Captain's can't). Like Ted Sandyman in a Sharkey's Rogues/Chief's Ruffians list from the previous edition (oh, how I anticipate his arrival in the Armies of Middle-Earth supplement), I think this guy is an auto-include for the Usurpers of Edoras because having some kind of front-line troops that can be higher than Defense 3 OR having a second-rank that can use throwing weapons seems like a worthwhile venture.

Today we'll be comparing Thorne to Frida Tallspear, who was my last-choice for inclusion in lists for the Army of Dunland in the previous edition - not because her boosts were bad, but because I wanted what the other guys provided more. Thorne's got a pretty decent combat profile (F5, S4, 2 Attacks, with 2 Might/no-Strike) and reasonable defensive stats (D6, 2 Wounds, 1 Fate). For 70pts, you can certainly find better heroes, but that won't be in an Usurpers of Edoras list. Lord Thorne's "Traitor of Rohan" special rule only relates to list building - he can only lead Rohirrim Traitors (who you wanted anyway). His Edoras Shall Fall special rule is pretty good, since it's gives friendly Rohirrim Traitors within 6" of Lord Thorne +1 Fight Value, which paired with Spear Mastery can make a combat block of these guys difficult to shift.

While you could certainly run these guys in the front rank if you wanted to, if you have at least 19 Hill Tribesmen or Crebain in  your list, you can run 11 Rohirrim Traitors with throwing spears and shields (one with war horn) and 1 Rohirrim Traitor with banner and use them as your second rank, giving your army 33% (or less if you have more than 19 non-throwing-weapon units) throwing weapons for only 225pts. At 500 points, you could have a 41-model list that looks like this:

• Freca, Lord of the West March [GENERAL]
• 10 Hill Tribesmen with bows
• 4 Crebain
• Lord Thorne of the Wold
• 1 Rohirrim Traitor with war horn, shield, and throwing spears
• 1 Rohirrim Traitor with banner
• 10 Rohirrim Traitors with shields and throwing spears
• Hill Tribes Chieftain
• 2 Hill Tribesmen with bows
• 2 Hill Tribesmen with flaming brands and light shields
• 8 Hill Tribesmen with flaming brands

As we'll see later in this post, this is one of two Fight Value buffs that are present in this list and frankly, it makes this guy an auto-include for me in any Usurpers lists I'm building (in the list above, he can have his Traitors provide F4 to the Hill Tribes Chieftain warband - which can be Marched forward at full speed - while Freca grants F4 to the bowmen/F3 to the Crebain if they're engaged). It's pretty slick and very, VERY useful - certainly worth taking every time.

Frida was fine in the previous edition - about as expensive as Thorne, no access to Heroic March to give her an edge over Dunlending Chieftains (which was good for them and bad for her), and could situationally make cavalry fighting near her less powerful. She was also one of the few D6 heroes available in that list (alongside Dunlending Chieftains with shields) like Thorne, but her combat abilities were kinda meh. Honestly, I feel like she and Thorne are similar in this regard - their profiles are fine, but you're only taking them for the niche bonuses they provide to your team (taking away cavalry charge bonuses for Frida, bringing Rohirrim Traitors for Thorne).

Moving on to the generic hero option for the Hill Tribes, I expect Hill Tribes Chieftains are going to be popular in both the Usurpers of Edoras and the Besiegers of the Hornburg, mostly because they're about half the cost  (compare to Dunlending Chieftain). The Hill Tribemen blisters that come in the starter set (and separately) gives you a wide selection of warrior options, some of which have two-handed weapons or no extra gear at all - both of these are good choices for Wild Man Chieftains. While you can give these guys Light Shields, don't - just don't. These guys don't want to be shielding thanks to their low Fight Value and Defense - they just don't want it.

Back in the day, these guys were the only Dunland generic heroes, but their profile was removed in the previous edition and the generic hero option was filled by the Dunlending Chieftain. I really liked this guy - cheap March hero, decent stats all-around (including 2 Will points!), very affordable, could bring a decent warband for a fairly small number of points. Also, he could be used as a "rock" captain with a shield to shield against something big and hopefully force out a few Might points or as a "hatchet" Captain to cleave through the enemy with his two-handed weapon (which you would two-hand with, saving his Might for boosting dueling rolls). S5-6 with +1 To Wound could kill a lot of stuff - and he was cheap, cheap, cheap. I liked him.

Now, we lost this profile and we have the Hill Tribes Chieftain, who is still the only generic hero, remains the cheapest March hero (Targg has March as well but costs twice as much), can fight two-handed if you want a killing hero, but is probably in the list mostly because you can field him at 40pts with no extra gear with 10 Hill Tribesmen with 1 piece of gear each (my current thought is an equal mix of bows, brands, and spears if you don't have Rohirrim Traitors with throwing spears - but I could be argued in different directions) in a single 100pt block, I think it's easy to build out an army plan that starts with Wulf/Shank et al./15 Tribesmen in a Besiegers list or Freca/Thorne/12 Dunlendings/12 Traitors for an Usurpers list (both options have warband slots left for some Crebain - more on them later) and then start adding 100pt blocks of chaff to fill out your model count). At low points levels (500-600), you can easily get 40 models and I think that's pretty cool.

Dunlending Chieftains will always be the better generic hero, in my opinion, because of their higher resilience but the new guys (who are really the old guys) are still quite good and I like them a lot.

The Hill Tribesman profile replaces the Wild Man of Dunland profile and sort of the Dunlending Huscarl profile as well. Wild Men of Dunland used to be able to be run with either no extra gear or with a two-handed weapon. The Hill Tribesman can be run without gear, with a two-handed weapon, with a light shield (don't do that), with a flaming brand (optional light shield - only do that if you have extra points and can't get anything else), with a bow, or with a spear (where they actually compete with Huscarls). The additional options make them much better than Wild Men were, but the comparison to the Huscarl is a bit more complicated.

Huscarls were base Fight 3/Courage 3 same as Hill Tribesmen, but were also Strength 4/Defense 5, both of which were good at least into some match-ups. Huscarls were also able to two-hand or spear-support with their weapons, both of which are available to Hill Tribesmen, but not at the same time. They had Bodyguard, which was great but not always used since they could also be Fight 4 if they were supporting a friendly model within 3" of a friendly hero. They were also really expensive and not Defense 6, so you wouldn't see 33-50% of the list as Huscarls and if any of them did die before the fighting started, you'd be feeling the pinch more than if a Hill Tribesman was killed today.

The one disadvantage that Hill Tribesmen have in this list that wasn't present for Wild Men of Dunland or Huscarls is that both of the previous options could be Fearless thanks to Bodyguard or by being within 6" of the Wild Man Oathmaker. Hill Tribesmen have average Courage (7+, nee Courage 3) and can't improve it at all unless you have Lord Thorne in your list (more on that next). Courage 7+ is more likely to pass than fail, but only barely, so if your opponent has any kind of Courage debuff rule, you'll need large numbers to guarantee you can get the charges you want (or stay in the fight, if that's more appropriate).

If you run Lord Thorne, you have access to Rohirrim Traitors, which are just Warriors of Rohan by another name (and can only be led by Lord Thorne himself). Rohirrim Traitors compare best to Dunlending Warriors, who had the option to take two-handed weapons but didn't have the option for throwing spears with the Spear Mastery special rule that allows them to be used as throwing weapons or standard spears (awesome) and war horns (VERY awesome in this list - see my previous comment about limited Courage options). Since at least some of your Hill Tribesmen are likely to have flaming brands (to get Dominant (2)), having one of your Rohirrim with shield, throwing spears, and a war horn (which also gives Dominant (2), in addition to +1 Courage to all friendly models within 24") is really good - and because most of your warriors will live in the 5-9pt range, you will often have the points for a banner AND a war horn in your lists. It's pretty great. Both warrior units can/could take shields, bows, and banners - all of which are useful (though since the Rohirrim Traitors don't shoot any better than the Hill Tribesmen, I'd just take Hill Tribesmen with bows instead).

Dunlending Warriors did have a big advantage: their banners in the Army of Dunland Legendary Legion had a 6" range. While their gear may look similar (or worse) than the Rohirrim Traitors, having 1-2 6" banners was incredibly helpful for offsetting the cost of your only supporting models (Huscarls). In the current list, you can have a banner around, sure, but you're probably taking only one and you're probably covering only a fragment of your army (which will be Lord Thorne and his followers in scenarios where you can start split up). The flexibility of deploying Dunlending Warriors in whatever warband you wish will be missed for sure (as will the situational S4-5 that they had), but in all other respects, it's pretty great to have cheaper units that can fill similar roles (and with the addition of throwing spears, even better roles).

The final warrior unit that we have that has a direct comparison to the old stuff is Crebain, who are still around and virtually unchanged in the new edition. Their Courage got worse (effectively Courage 2 instead of Courage 3), but they always have 12" movement (no more 4" hopping move) and picked up the Beast and Swarm keywords (one of which keeps them from picking up objectives, the other keeps them from being counted as Trapped). All in all, not a big amount of change for these guys - they're still great at contesting objectives and not being shot while heading that way. All of my sample lists for these guys include four squads of these guys, who can do super clutch things.

To round out this list, we have some new profiles and one last old one. Freca, Lord of the West March is a hero that's only available in the Usurpers of Edoras army list and doesn't have a great corollary to any of the previous profiles. He's "fine" as a fighter (F5, S4, 2 Attacks, 3-Might-no-Strike) and has two auric abilities: the ability to grant +1 Fight Value to friendly Dunland Warrior models within 6" of him and a 6" banner rule if the enemy General is removed as a casualty within 6" of Freca. Frankly, if you can kill the enemy General from further than 6", you should still do that - but if you have a hammer piece (or a horde of guys) who can kill the enemy General with Freca "nearby", that's a pretty good day. If you never get the banner bonus, however, that's fine too.

The ability to grant Fight 4 to all nearby Dunland models offsets a lot about what made Huscarls good in the previous edition. For only 80pts, you're going to get a model that can hide from the early action while making his units reasonably competent in melee (F4 isn't great but certainly isn't bad). Since he can help both front-line and second-line units become F4, wherever he is will be the center of your strength when fighting (well, him and Thorne will have the double-bubble of F4 going on). It won't help any of your heroes get higher Fight Value, but they mostly want to be inserted into managed fights anyway, so it's fine that only the warriors get a leg-up.

In the Besiegers of the Hornburg list, we get access to Shank, Wrot, and their Snow Troll buddy. For 150 points, you get two not-great-but-fine heroes and a monster who has comparable stats to a Cave Troll (though can get comparable stats to a Mordor Troll if he's charging). This sets the Troll at roughly 80-90pts in value, making each of the Orc heroes only 30-35pts - and for that cost, they're great! F4, S4, 2-3 Attacks isn't fantastic, but for the cost of a Goblin hero (or less), that's really, really good. Monsters are a lot better in this edition of the game than in the previous and since the previous Dunland strategy was mostly using mid-tier heroes to bludgeon down/stall-out the other guy (or just throw warrior bodies as a stall-out tactic), having a legitimately terrifying piece provides some new options for the list.

This leads us to our final profile to view: the departed Dunlending Horseman. The comparison point in normal Isengard lists for this guy was always the Warg Rider - and compared to those guys, a Dunlending Horseman was pretty good (axe instead of a sword, situational bonus against enemy mounts, same cost). Unless you wanted to cancel cavalry bonuses, it was pretty much always better to take the Crebain for a few points more (more wounds, always 2 Attacks, good immunity to direct enemy shooting). In the current edition of the game, there is no model that's replaced the Dunlending Horseman (except Crebain), so your ability to turn off cavalry bonuses is quite limited (especially since Frida is gone too).

That said, monster Brutal Power Attacks are still a thing and the cheap-cheap-cheap guys in the list got a better assortment of wargear options to help you counter cavalry (or at least try to). While you can tip one out for the Dunlending Horseman (until we get the Legacies document), I think Dunland (aka the Hill Tribes) are still in a pretty good place, if not a better one than they were in before.

Conclusion

And that concludes a three-part series on Isengard (and the Hill Tribes, their cousins). I'm excited for the new options in Isengard and if you're testing them out right now as well, drop a note in the comments about how they play (or how you lament the loss of favorite Dunland models until we get the Legacies book). We'll be back next week with more first impressions - until then, happy hobbying!