Good morning gamers,
I mentioned to Red Jacket a while ago that I was interested in writing the article on the Lindon Army List. He's our resident Elf expert and he was like, "Please do - I have nothing good to say about it." :) Well, here I am, doing my best then to defend what a lot of Elf players have probably dismissed. Yes, this list has issues - and yes, you're probably better off with the Last Alliance or Rivendell army lists - but in a way, this list in incentivized to do the one thing that I've always thought Elves were really good at: spam out guys and beat the enemy down with numbers. Having played quite a few games of that with a film-accurate Helm's Deep convenient alliance in the last edition, I feel a little at home looking at this list and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how it might work here. Let's dive into another one of Tiberius's mad dreams (with anything related to Legacies in red), ayuh?
Lindon: Changes for 2025
Profile Selection
When the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book dropped, we were given a very thin number of profiles: Gil-Galad and Elrond as our big heroes, Cirdan and Rivendell Captains as our supporting heroes, and Rivendell Warriors and Rivendell Knights as our warriors. That's all. Thankfully, these heroes did cover most of the bases you'd want, but it also seems a bit dry on paper relative to the Rivendell faction we had in the last edition.
With the arrival of the Armies of Middle-Earth book, we added . . . Glorfindel. Just Glorfindel. The Legacies document then shook things up by giving us Erestor and a Stormcaller . . . that's it. Yes, the list is pretty unchanged from its original release, but the addition of a different power hero and potentially a mid-tier beater and a backup caster leads to some interesting decision-making options. Still, no one's going to argue that this isn't a light bench - it is - but the bones of the list are still solid and I think it lends itself to a streamlined approach to army building that can do quite well.
The bonuses for this army list are . . . not very glamorous. This list gets a version of the Rivendell army list bonus from the previous edition: friendly Warrior models may reroll failed To Hit rolls when shooting if they a) didn't move in the Move phase, and b) are within 3" of any friendly Hero (previously this was the army leader). Scattering some heroes amongst your archers can make your archers hit more often - this matters more if Blinding Light or a similar rule is active, but against any foe, it just makes it more likely that all of your bows (or all but one) will actually get to the wounding roll. It's not amazing, but it can be useful.
The second ability is that all friendly models within 6" of Gil-Galad gain Resistant to Magic. This rule is only innate to Cirdan and Glorfindel, so everyone else will be benefitting from staying near their king. These two rules together incentivize leaning into your warriors a bit more than Rivendell normally would (especially last edition when they had so many power heroes to pick from) and keeping your non-Resistant-to-Magic heroes close to Gil-Galad . . . and for me, that speaks of a very clear playstyle. To better understand what kinds of units we should be looking at, let's look at how the profiles that are available to us have changed since the last edition.
Profile Adjustments
Most of these profiles have been seen in our review of the Last Alliance, but we have a few new kids on the block that need reviewing:
- Gil-Galad saw a TON of changes this edition. He lost Heroic Strike, but as Red Jacket noted in his article on the Rivendell faction, he doesn't need it as much now that Heroic Strike adds D3 to a hero's Fight Value and a lot of heroes are Striking from F5-6 - and with F9 intact, his Might points can now be more reliably used for more important heroic actions (like Moves and Combats). He lost his shield and horse (like Elendil) and lost Blood and Glory, but otherwise still has Terror/Woodland Creature, Aiglos for +1 To Wound without penalties, a 12" stand fast that helps Elven heroes, and he gets to reroll a dueling die and a wounding die with Lord of the West. In this list in particular, he can allow you to take F6 King's Guard still (very useful when they've got S4 Numenoreans backing them up) and he might deal a wound to whoever charges him on a 6 - that's pretty neat. His immobility - like Elendil's - does put him in a rough spot, but as the anchor of a F6 battleline, I think if he can get into combat, he's pretty terrifying.
- Elrond is by far and away a more flexible hero - and on a horse, he's about as expensive as Gil-Galad once you factor in the King's Guard upgrades you're probably taking and he gives you a TON of flexibility. His profile, wargear, and rules hardly changed - his Foresight of the Eldar special rule can't reduce your priority roll, but that's a distinction without a difference now that you get to choose whether you keep priority or lose it. He's also F7 now, which means that if you run him with Elendil, you can have your choice of a F7 hero or a F8 hero trying to beat the Fight Value of your opponent . . . or just ignore whoever they are and knock them prone with Wrath of Bruinen/blunt them off your Elves. The only problem for Elrond in this list is that . . . you have to pay for Gil-Galad and that means taking Elrond as well is a HUGE tax.
- Glorfindel is the third big hero for the Elves and like Elrond, he's pretty pricey. By stats, he's incredible - F8, S4 with a hand-and-a-half weapon, D7 with immunity to Brutal Power Attacks, +1 To Wound against Monsters, and Lord of the West for reliably winning fights and actually wounding things. With 3s in all the right places and an excellent horse, Glorfindel is a bargain at 180pts mounted . . . in every list except this one, as you will once again have to stack this 180pt tax on top of the 175+ point tax you pay for Gil-Galad (175 base, additional points for the King's Guard upgrades you invariably buy).
- Cirdan works pretty differently in this edition of the game. Gone are the trifecta of static-boost spells from yester-year that got him relegated to a Minor Hero (he doesn't have Blinding Light, Aura of Command, or the old version of Aura of Dismay). Cirdan's role has shifted into being a precision buffer/debuffer with the retention of Enchanted Blades (great on any of your heroes and Rivendell Knights) and the addition of Blessing of the Valar (giving Fate back to people is always great) and Call Winds (which can knock any model Prone AND push them out of Combat - which you can't do with Sorcerous Blast anymore). He's still a little pricey and Fog of Disarray and Aura of Dismay are incredibly niche spells to be casting, but he's providing you buffs that you can afford to live without at low points levels, but he does give you an asymmetric way of dealing with a big threat at higher points levels, so I think you want him eventually.
- Erestor is a good value mid-tier beater hero for 85pts - he's still got his Noldorin Daggers which count as throwing weapons, but now they only reroll 1s To Wound instead of all failures. This is . . . fine. He's still got Terror, still got F6/D7, and with 2M/2W/2F, he's a nice balanced hero - and gets 2 free resources for +10pts over a Rivendell Captain with shield (so the throwing weapons and Terror are countering the ability to defend by shielding . . . seems like a good trade to me). I'm not sure how much a list like this NEEDS him, but if you don't like the precision boosts of Cirdan, consider dumping 10pts more into this guy if Legacies are in play. I think he's definitely your third hero behind the required Gil-Galad and . . .
- Rivendell Captains are now 70pts base and can be given a horse, bow, and lance for 30pts (very expensive but does increase their potency and threat range) and/or a shield for 5pts (which if taken with the horse/lance/bow makes this hero 105pts . . . which kind of seems like a lot to me). The shield option is great if you want more bodies in the list and the mounted option is great if you want your cavalry to have a supporting hero. All in all, he's your only March hero and remains a staple in any Elf list I'm building.
- Rivendell Stormcallers picked up a new magical power: Foil Magic. In my humble opinion . . . you're still just taking them for Call Winds, if you take them at all. Strengthen Will did get reduced in difficulty to a 3+, but unless you have Elrond in this list, I'm not sure that you need to use Strengthen Will (and pro-tip, if you want Elrond, this isn't the right list). Personally, I'd leave these guys at home - but there's probably some brave person somewhere who is running two of these guys and Cirdan to do a Call Winds thing to nerf multiple flying monsters or something.
- Rivendell Warriors are basically the same as they've always been - 9pts base with no extra gear, they can take shields for 1pt, shields and Elven spears (a nice addition) for 2pts, Elf bows for 2pts, and banners for 25pts. What they can't do in this edition is take a spear and/or shield with the banner and they can't take spears with their bows . . . both of those are missed not just in this army but in other armies. The big draw of this army is that in Gil-Galad's warband, you can pay 1pt/model to make these guys King's Guard, which makes them F6. I will say that in this list, you COULD get away with skipping on the shields if your meta is shaping up to be heavily focused on S4 - if Uruk-Hai (Army of the White Hand or Ugluk's Scouts) or Morannon Orcs (Legions of Mordor or Army of Gothmog) or Gundabad (Army of Gundabad/Rise of the Necromancer) or Iron Hills Dwarves (Erebor Reclaimed or the Battle of Five Armies) are big in your meta, I would HIGHLY recommend trying out the shieldless dudes - you'll probably only net one extra model, but depending on your list build, getting one extra model might make all the difference.
- Rivendell Knights have seen very few changes - they can take shields if they want to and can take banners (which you probably shouldn't do). They will count towards your bow limit in this list, even if you have Elrond in your army, so just factor that into your computation of bow limit.
With these profiles in hand, let's look at what the list does well and where it struggles.
Lindon: Strengths and Weaknesses
Let's be honest: the hero selection in this list isn't great. We have to take Gil-Galad who cannot be mounted - and while avoiding a 6" move hero isn't as easy as avoiding a 5" move hero, it's still not that hard to keep your valuable heroes from running into Gil-Galad. There are mounted heroes in the list, but they're expensive and probably cost-prohibitive if you want a good chunk of warriors (see my thoughts on the Last Alliance for more on this). If you don't take Elrond and Glorfindel, you can still get a mounted hero in the form of a Rivendell Captain, who is definitely good, but possibly not THAT good relative to other mounted heroes. With Cirdan (and possibly Erestor and Stormcallers if you use the legacy profiles) as your only alternative(s) to a Captain, your options for killing enemy units quickly with heroes is pretty light unless you go heavy on the expensive heroes. Call me crazy, but I think the Rivendell list and even the Last Alliance list are a lot better at doing that.
But here's the thing: this list is actually about showcasing the Rivendell Warriors. Any list should take at least a few cavalry if they can - and this list certainly should invest in 4 Rivendell Knights for objective play (with or without shields, your pick based on your points available), but Rivendell Warriors are definitely where it's at here. For 10-11pts each before upgrading to King's Guard, you can get a surprising number of guys at any points level. With access to the four most important pieces of war gear (shields, spears, bows of some kind, and banners), you don't need a lot to make these guys awesome.
If you lean into the warriors, you can also get fantastic numbers - especially for being Elves and fielding elite troops. With Gil-Galad and a Captain with shield, you're only spending 250pts to get 30 warriors - which means that at 600pts, you can have nearly 30 models if you take cavalry and just over 30 models if you go all-infantry and rely on Heroic March to get you up the board (more on this in the lists section below). 700pts is a bit awkward if you're committed to taking cavalry, but at 800pts, you can hit 40 models easily with the banner and horses in tow. There are definitely some armies that can outnumber you - but you should have an edge in even-dice-fights against them and if your archery can help you get an edge in one part of the table, you shouldn't have that much difficulty swinging things your way.
This is where the King's Guard upgrade really shines: there's a lot of F5-6 heroes out there who will find themselves in a bind. Not all F5-6 heroes have Heroic Strike - and any hero who uses Heroic Strike to tie/beat the Fight Value of King's Guard aren't declare Heroic Combats to go smashing through your troops. Just by having a King's Guard in the fight, you make your opponent go through the costly decision-making process of spending Might just to have a chance to win a tied fight - which your opponent is not even guaranteed to have once the dice are rolled - instead of spending the Might to kill the warriors he's fighting and charging into more warriors OR getting to somewhere important. A F6 warrior is a dangerous proposition and this list can have 18 of them - AND can afford to take 18 of them at basically any points level.
This army also has a few tricks it can play - if your opponent has monsters in tow and were planning on Hurling into Gil-Galad's fight to knock him over, Fog of Disarray from Cirdan can be a nasty bit of business. Similarly, if your opponent is hoping to tie Gil-Galad down with a lowly warrior, Aura of Dismay from a nearby Cirdan can be a nasty thing (and now it can be channelled successfully with his free Will point and his only Might point). If anyone is engaged in a fight on an objective, you can blow them out of it with Call Winds, which is super useful for objective play - and Cirdan can pretty reliably cast it on just his free Will point. Cirdan certainly isn't doing what he was doing in the last edition, but he's still got some augments he can use and a few debuffs that can be useful.
It is entirely possible that I have convinced no one that this list is worth taking -but we'll see if I can convert a few more people into having an open mind by looking at the strategies this list can employ . . .
Lindon: Strategies for the Tabletop
The first strategy I have for this list is actually a list building recommendation: keep your heroes cheap and don't bother with mounts. I know, mounts make heroes better - they increase the threat range of your heroes, they make it easier to engage multiple models when the enemy is spread out, they give heroes an extra attack die on the charge, and they knock most Infantry models Prone. Mounts are great - but mounts this edition are also really expensive and while there are other Rivendell lists (like the . . . Rivendell army list - golly I kinda miss the more generic "High Elf" terminology sometimes) that have access to really smashy mounted heroes, adding those same heroes to this list results in a MASSIVE reduction in numbers - and if you pile in an expensive mounted hero (Elrond or Glorfindel) with an expensive infantry-only hero (Gil-Galad) and 10 King's Guard, you're looking at paying almost 500pts for a dozen models. That doesn't work.
For 100pts less, you can field a Rivendell Captain on foot with a shield - this will save you over 100pts, which means your 13-model army at 492pts becomes a 22-model army at 499pts. This is a huge improvement. While I'm not sure this works at 500pts (more on that in the list section below), scaling up to 600pts allows you to add nine more warriors (more on that in the list section below) and so once again, you can keep a good numbers ratio compared to what your opponent probably has.
Intentionally limiting the killing potential of our heroes does two things for us: first, it allows us to get as close as we can to a model count parity or superiority with our opponent. This leans into just how efficient the Rivendell Warrior and Rivendell Knight are as unit options, as well as how efficient both Gil-Galad and Rivendell Captains are for what they do. If we find ourselves in a 600pt game against a 30-something model count opponent - and our warriors are F5-6 and their warriors are F3-4, we're going to have a serious advantage. If we can keep the fights to 2-on-2, we can two-hand with the front guy and still have a very good chance of winning - and the two-handing should make killing the enemy warriors a lot easier. Our heroes then just have to keep pace - stalling out the enemy heroes OR chopping through a few warriors each turn to further drive up our numerical advantage.
Second, not taking mounted heroes allows us to embed our heroes safely in our battle lines - this is something that Khazad-Dum players have been doing for ages and other lists like Arnor and Dale often have to do because of how limited their mounted hero selections are. A hero who is fighting with infantry on either side of him will limit his exposure to traps (assuming his men don't accidentally trap him), provide a clear direction for his fighting, and will benefit from having him engage nearby troops. Where possible, your heroes should be charging into two people - and if it's Gil-Galad and he's wounding on 4s (D5-6 foes), you should definitely use a Heroic Combat or two to chop down a few extra guys and maybe even make a hole that threatens to allow you to wrap-and-trap on the following turn.
My next piece of advice is to focus on the shieldwall. Shieldwall lists are not very flexible, as they want to be fighting all in one direction and get into 2-on-2 fights as much as possible if they have the higher Fight Value and decent killing power (which Elves often do - and King's Guard almost always do, even against heroes). There are two important things to note here: first, this is a shieldwall list without the shieldwall special rule, so while your battle line should be fighting together, you don't have to be touching the models next to you. If you have less than a half-inch gap between each of your files, you can extend your battle line to cover more space without opening up your second rank to being charged. This can also make it easier for your heroes to shift where they are in the battle line when you're moving AND it allows you to be more flexible in responding to enemy charges because you have more room to move your troops around. This will make your banner's job a bit harder, but your opponent will usually try to NOT charge the center of a tighly-packed death ball, so I don't know how likely it was that you'd get maximum benefits anyway. If your opponent tries to tighten up against the center of your formation, spreading out more on the flanks does allow you to wrap-and-trap more effectively anyway, so there's value in spreading out there too.
The second thing to keep in mind is that while spreading out a little is super good, don't be afraid to extend your battle line even MORE by using your spearmen as front-line troops. Yes, you want to have spear-supports active where possible, but if you show up with a 31-model list at 600pts and someone else shows up with a 50+ model list (they do exist), you may need as many Elves as possible to be tagging 1-2 models instead of allowing them to pull out your spearmen into separate fights and trap your front-line guy. Spreading out with the ability to defend by shielding with F6 is a perfectly good way to make sure that your models stay alive - and if your heroes and whatever units are being spear-supported are killing models, you can eventually get these to 1-on-1 fights or 2-on-2 fights again and you can stop shielding. For more on this topic, check out this older article on reforming shieldwalls - it's old, but it's still very pertinent to the game.
When forming up your shieldwall, you'll want to begin with Gil-Galad and the Rivendell Captain near-ish to each other. You certainly want Gil-Galad to be able to March when the Captain calls a March (it's the only way to get speed on that boy) and if you don't have to March twice (or if you don't have to March at all because you start in the enemy's grill), you want Gil-Galad to benefit from the Captain's Heroic Move(s). If they're both near-ish to each other, they may also benefit from the banner, which is great for making sure that they at least win their fights. If they're not in much danger, you can shuffle your banner down the line, but you really don't want any of your combat heroes losing - you want to know that you're killing 2+ people each turn.
You will also need to identify if you need to split your shieldwall. While warriors in some lists gain most of their synergies from being near a big hero (like Celeborn in the Lothlorien list or Thranduil in the Halls of Thranduil list), the King's Guard upgrade is the only "synergy" in this list from a melee perspective. As a result, your units are more dependent on being near a banner than they are a hero - and even the banner they can get away with straying from thanks to their high Fight Value. If your opponent isn't running a shieldwall list to oppose you, you might need your 9+ file battle line to split up into 4-file or 5-file battle lines (that can spread to 10-man battle lines if you do the shieldwall extension trick we talked about above). When this happens, you probably want your heroes to take different warbands, but make sure that you don't split up until after you've delivered Gil-Galad to where he wants to be!
With all that said about shieldwalls and combat heroes, we need to say one last thing about your shieldwalls: use your archers - and especially your Knights - to protect your flanks. Keeping good firing lanes along your flanks is part of it - the other part is making sure that your archers are set up so that they can counter-charge into the enemy as they try to go around the flanks or ram into your spearmen from the side or rear. Remember: archers are swordsmen and if they're hiding away and plinking with their bows, their I-am-good-so-I-won't-shoot-my-
And that brings us to a discussion of Cirdan and what he's good for now. This guy is still good in my opinion, but he's fulfilling a very different game than he used to. First off, he doesn't need to be near your battle line in order to grant everyone Terror and auto-passing Courage tests, so he's a great way to trigger the shooting-oriented army bonus with a pack of archers. With up to 12 warrior slots in his warband, you can have him as your third hero (after Gil-Galad and a Captain) to get your bows rerolling failed To Hit rolls. Rivendell Captains can't take Elf bows alone anymore, so they don't make good sit-back-and-shoot heroes. None of the Legacy heroes do this as well as Cirdan does either, so he's a shoe-in for that kind of role - especially since he can augment his friends with Blessing of the Valar/Enchanted Blades OR hurt an enemy hero with Call Winds.
Blessing of the Valar is particularly useful in this list, since you are limited to 1 Fate heroes without paying the hefty price tags of Elrond or Glorfindel (and the not-so-hefty-but-also-not-
Call Winds is a very different beast: this requires a) a good candidate to target from your opponent's list, b) a 12" range to that target, and c) no intervening models that keep it from getting far enough away that the spell is actually useful. There's no damage being done by this magical power - it's just knocking someone Prone. That said, D3+3" movement and no restriction on whether it's a monster or not makes this INCREDIBLY strong against units with poor magical defense, which includes Warrior Monster models, Heroes with 0-1 Will point, and anyone holding a banner (since the prone state will keep their banner buffs from triggering). This spell is also cast on a 4+ and it's quite likely that you want to throw two dice (one free, one from your store) if you're casting this. If you don't have a great target, Enchanted Blades on basically anyone is probably the better option.
While you can cast Fog of Disarray (3+, exhaustion) and Aura of Dismay (5+, exhaustion), I wouldn't spend more than your free Will point to get them off and I certainly wouldn't try to get them up if one of the other three magical powers could be used instead. Also, casting either of these magical powers makes you committed to keeping 1 Will in your store, so your Call Winds reliability will go down while you're trying to keep these up.
Okay, let's look at some lists!
Sample Lists
Our first list is a 600-point list (599 technically) - and I don't think this list really works at lower points levels. TECHNICALLY speaking, you can run nearly the same list without the Knights, without one additional warrior, and without some of the gear upgrades and get very close to a 500pt list, but I don't think it works - it will have far too few models and not enough tools to do the job (certainly not better than you could do with any of the other Elven army lists). This list features Gil-Galad, 18 King's Guard (most of which are melee/banner guys), a March-Captain, 4 Knights, and some additional Elves with bows - 27 models and a decent amount of shooting supporting a pretty solid anvil battle line:
Scaling up to 700pts will, unfortunately, require us to add another hero, so our numbers don't grow that much. Still, 31 models when 16 of them are F6 warriors and 10 others have Elf bows is pretty good - and you once again have a very solid anvil to present towards your opponent:
We finally get to pretty decent numbers by scaling up to 800pts - because Cirdan is a Hero of Fortitude, we can afford to just pile in more bodies and that means more bows, a longer anvil battle line, and even MORE bows than before:
Conclusion
There's nothing glamorous about these lists - that's the nature of the Lindon army list! If you want splashier, more potent Rivendell heroes, you definitely want to look into Rivendell, the Last Alliance, or even the Battle of Fornost. If you like Elves but want a bit more pizazz, you should definitely investigate Lothlorien, the Halls of Thranduil, and even the Rangers of Mirkwood. But this list provides a very nice balance between solid combat heroes and high numbers of warriors - something you can do with other Elf lists (like Lothlorien), but is often hard to do with a lot of others Elf lists.
If this post at all made the list look interesting (I don't deign to think that I've convinced anyone that it's better than a lot of other lists), let us know in the comments below! I've had some fun with this list and look forward to continuing to test it this edition. Next time, we're turning to one of the best Evil lists in the game: the Army of the White Hand. With just the Battle of Edoras starter set and an Isengard Battle Host box (and probably a pack of Crebain, possibly another box of Wild Men of Dunland), you can have an INSANELY powerful army. This list is strong and I've used a pretty tame version of it recently to great effect. Find out what all the hype about this list is next time - and until then, happy hobbying!
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