The New Age Is Begun: The Expedition to the East Army List

Good morning gamers,

This is our second army list that comes to us from the Legacies document (we'll be back with non-Legacy stuff next time for all you who go to GW-official events and can't take these) and we're still looking at Dwarves . . . but this time with Minas Tirith guys thrown in! Yes, it's the army list that harkens back to the old "Shadow in the East" sourcebook that features our favorite wandering Dwarves (Murin and Drar), their unlikely acquaintance (Cirion), and a bunch of cheap plastic core troops for Khazad-Dum and Minas Tirith. Yes, we're diving into the Expedition to the East army list - a list that I think has a lot of play and one that I'm interested in fielding. Let's see what this list has to offer!

Expedition to the East: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list is really lean on the units - you have four heroes (three of which are unique) and five warriors (two Dwarf-based, two Man-based). The good news about collecting this list is that all of the warriors come in big plastic boxes and while the heroes can be hard to find, you really just need a Minas Tirith command blister (or convert your own Captain), Cirion, and Murin and Drar. All told, it's a very light bench, but it's also everything I'd expect (though I wouldn't have missed putting Knights of the White Tower in this list - it would probably be a little out of place for them to be here, but golly would it have been fun).

Army List Bonuses

This list has three special rules - and honestly, I don't know how good they are as a whole, but I do think they're intriguing. The first rule, Campaign in Rhun, gives all of your models Hatred (Easterling) . . . which will either be super helpful for chopping through their battle lines or absolutely irrelevant if your opponent isn't bringing Easterlings. Similarly situationally useful is a special rule called Spoils of War, which makes your opponent secretly choose a piece of terrain on the board. If any of your units touches that terrain piece and isn't engaged in combat that round, it can search it for treasure (your opponent tells you if it's the right one or not). If you find the treasure, the model that searched it runs off (not counting as a casualty, but you don't get to use him for the rest of the game) and you score an extra 2 VPs (still can't go above 20, but it's still useful to get free VPs). This one certainly has more applicability in your games, but you also need to be able to send random units that you won't mind losing (more on the best choices for that later) to distant parts of the battle field - and if your opponent brought a big hero, he might just choose a piece of terrain that the big, bad hero needs to go to anyway . . . so getting these VPs might be hard.

The most universally useful rule (Unlikely Allies) allows Dwarves to reroll natural 1s To Wound while within 1" of a friendly Gondor model and your Gondor models to reroll natural 1s To Wound while within 1" of a friendly Dwarf model. Interestingly enough, this isn't limited to Strikes, so bows, throwing weapons, and melee weapons will get a slight boost to their wounding reliability if you just keep the ranks jumbled up between men and Dwarves. This should be pretty easy to do if you follow the recommendations for spear-supporting that will be talked about in the profile review below!

Profile Adjustments

We have slightly more profiles to cover this time than last time - though many of the entries are going to be the same:

• Murin didn't see a lot of changes from the last edition: he now has Mountain Dwellers and he has 2 Will/Fate points. For effectively 70pts, he's still a very capable fighter with F5/S4/2 Attacks on offense (with +1 To Wound against Orcs, Goblins, and Uruk-Hai) and slightly better than your typical Dwarf hero on defense with D8/2 Wounds/2 Fate. He's still got Strike, but as we'll see in a moment with Cirion, this isn't as reliable as it used to be.
• Drar is similarly not very different from the last edition. He picked up Mountain Dwellers, 2 Will/Fate, and got Sharpshooter. Since he's still got Expert Shot with an 18" S3 Dwarf bow, he remains my pick for army General in this edition, as that allows you to take both Murin and Cirion as grenade heroes (and likely a Captain of Minas Tirith for March).
• Cirion costs 65pts this edition and he's had a few profile changes. With F5 now (standard Minas Tirith captain increase), 2 Will, and and retaining the nice pairing of Heroic Strike and Heroic Resolve (with a special rule that helps him pass Terror tests and resist Blades of the Dead), he's still a cheap, efficient hero. Being capped at F8 when he Strikes means you want to pick his targets well because he still doesn't get any wounding bonuses, so he'll need to work in tandem with other models (like Knights of Minas Tirith) to actually kill things when he Strikes.
• Captains of Minas Tirith can no longer be mounted, but they're generic heroes who are F5/D7 with Shieldwall. For 60pts each, these guys aren't impressive, but they're a bit more survivable than Cirion and are your only source of Heroic March. While they can't take bows (or horses/lances) anymore, they're reliable in a fight and can stall out a lot of big heroes (which this list might need to do);
• Dwarf Warriors are still the great value they've always been - D7 for 9pts/model and unlike the Warriors of Erebor, these guys don't get to pay (don't have to pay?) for Mountain Dwellers. They can't use Piercing Strike to get to S4 this edition, but as a solid wall of guys who can be D6 with bows/banners/maybe a war horn or D7 with shields (you _might_ get some two-handed weapons in this list . . . maybe), they're super good and reliable. The real limit on these guys is that you can only take them with Murin and Drar, so you have 24 Warrior profiles total across these guys and . . . 
• Dwarf Rangers got a nice boost this edition - their base profile has changed very slightly in that their "Dwarf long bows" are finally "long bows" in that they're 24" and S3 (instead of being a fancy named version of standard bows) and they picked up a cool special rule that gives them +1 To Wound against models that are in terrain features (like woods or rocky ground). They're arguably better archers across the board this edition compared to the Dwarf Warrior with Dwarf bow (who have a 4+ SV with 18" range, instead of the Rangers' 3+ SV with 24" range) but having D6 archers still helps sometimes. I think they're also better than Rangers of Gondor (who we'll see in a minute) as they cost 1pt more to get +1 Defense and +1 Strength on their bows, but I could be argued off that point. They can still take throwing weapons (which might soften up the enemy a bit before charging someone in difficult terrain to get +1 To Wound), which is great, and I think there may be something to taking some of these guys with two-handed weapons (despite the potential for +2 To Wound from two-handing against someone in rocky terrain). Once again, the big concern is what your make-up of 24 warriors will be - if you find that you need a good substitute for these guys, look into Rangers of Gondor.
• Warriors of Minas Tirith are excellent choices in this list as your second-rank units, providing much-needed spears for your Dwarf Warriors with shields. One could make an argument for taking Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields as your front-line for a self-sustaining Captain of Minas Tirith warband (and that would allow you to field more Dwarf units as skirmishers), but in general, I think you want a healthy number of spears and shields to back up Murin, Cirion, and all those Dwarf Warriors with shields. The bowmen can, as they usually can, stay at home.
• Rangers of Gondor are a decent alternative to Dwarf Rangers with longbows, especially if you've run out of Dwarf warrior slots! They have the option for taking spears, which could be nice to turn a mix of Dwarf Rangers and Rangers of Gondor into a two-rank battle line, but I think in general you want your archery blocks to be more flexible than a battle line allows. Still, having at least one Ranger of Gondor near your Dwarf Rangers/Warriors will allow you to reroll 1s To Wound on all of their shooting attacks, so a 2:1 ratio of Dwarf Rangers with longbows (optionally Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows) and Rangers of Gondor with bows isn't a bad choice.
• Knights of Minas Tirith are nice as objective takers in this list - bring a few for racing to objectives (something Dwarves aren't very good at) or for getting into the same fight as your heroes to knock your foes prone. I wouldn't lean TOO hard into cavalry in this list, but you definitely want some to try to find those Spoils of War (you can live without a Knight and they should be able to reach far-flung terrain pieces easily)!

I think there are some glaring holes in your options here, but I also think all nine profiles we have are solid (and cheap for what they do!). Let's see how these profiles, and the rules that have been given to them, translates into army strengths and weaknesses.

Expedition to the East: Strengths and Weaknesses

As we've discussed in articles both for Khazad-Dum Dwarves and for Minas Tirith, you get cheap access to high Defense models. Warriors of Minas Tirith give you F4/D6 (with Shieldwall) spearmen for 10pts each and these provide a very nice supporting line for your F4/D7 Dwarf Warriors with shields (who don't proc Shieldwall for the rear guys, but do give you Courage 6+ instead of Courage 7+ for the exact same cost. It's your call as to whether your front-line should be Minas Tirith chaps or Dwarf chaps (I think your Captains of Minas Tirith should have Warriors of Minas Tirith in a full brick of 10 guys since they've got Shieldwall as well, but to support Murin and Cirion, I think you want Dwarf Warriors), but having a front-line of Dwarves backed by Minas Tirith spears will proc the rerolling 1s To Wound bonus (which won't affect all fights, but if it affects even a single wounding result, you're in a better place than if you'd done it the other way).

The list is, however, very limited in the tricks that it can play. You've got brute-force elements in the list with D6+ melee troops and good archers (for 8-9pts each), but you have no casters, no free heroic actions, no auric bonuses (besides the 1" rerolling 1s To Wound, which doesn't really count as an auric bonus), no Fearless/auto-passing Courage tests, and no monsters or war beasts. The list is going to throw a bunch of heavy infantry supported by archers at the enemy, probably supported by a few cavalry, and hope it works . . . and if it runs into problems, it will come to a grinding halt.

That said, the profiles we have are incredibly efficient for both warriors and heroes. Murin, Drar, and Cirion are nothing to write home about (2 Attack/Wound heroes - one of whom must be your General - are rarely that interesting, and F5 with maybe Heroic Strike isn't going to be bludgeoning its way through the enemy), but for 60-70pts each, they have good durability, reasonable combat stats, and are not that much more expensive than Fortitude heroes should be. Additionally, now that Murin and Drar aren't in the same warband, you have more than doubled the number of Dwarves you'd have been able to take in previous editions of the game. All in all, they're great heroes.

But that leads to a similar critique: your hero depth is pretty weak and the heroes you get are not going to carry the day for you against most foes. Murin might go on a killing spree against Orcs or Goblins and everyone will go to town against Easterlings, but if you're facing D6+ Men, Elves, and especially Dwarves, you're liable to run into a wall and not be able to kill very much - and woe betides any army that runs afoul of S4 Men/Dwarves or two-handing Elves that aren't wounding you back on 6s! F5/S4 heroes who have 2 Attacks each might be able to win against two warriors and kill one of them, but they're not going to be Heroic Combatting through the ranks and generally making a mess of your opponent's lines. Instead, they're going to play more carefully, trying to get good matchups for their friends so that you can turn winning fights with your warriors into kills.

This leads to one of the last strengths of the list: this list is good at the fundamentals of the game. This list has reasonably costed, high Defense fast troops (Knights of Minas Tirith), good battle-line units (Dwarf Warriors and Warriors of Minas Tirith), good skirmishers (Dwarf Rangers and Rangers of Gondor), efficient March heroes (Captains of Minas Tirith), and very inexpensive named heroes who are decent at what they do (Murin, Drar, and Cirion). If you're looking for an army that can get good numbers with some fast units and good archery output, this is a solid list to pick (assuming that Legacy army lists are available for use). 

Finally, this list has a secondary victory point condition that makes the game more fun. This isn't the only list that can get extra VPs by doing something - the Khazad-Dum army list that we looked at a few weeks ago can get extra VPs if they control more stationary or mobile objectives than their opponent and the Garrison of Ithilien can get extra VPs for keeping Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol alive (assuming they took any of them). While both of these options are fun, there's no dynamic choices that you and your opponent make - you either take more objectives or you don't (something you're already doing) or you're trying to protect some models that you added to your list. The hidden treasure army rule is really interesting because a) you always bring it to your game, but b) your opponent gets to secretly choose how you score it. It's super fun, super dynamic, and super interesting - and I love it and kind of wish there were a few more rules that worked this way!

Okay, let's talk strategies now . . .

Expedition to the East: Strategies for the Tabletop

From a list building point of view, I think this list benefits from having "purchasing blocks" that you can slot into lists that you're making easily. I think you want to have close to 33% archery, a few cavalry, and over 50% of your force as D7 (innate or with Shieldwall) battle line troops. A few of these blocks might look like this:

178pts*: Murin leading 9 Dwarf Warriors with shields, 3 Dwarf Rangers with longbows (or 3 Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows - your choice)

208pts: Cirion leading 11 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears, 1 Warrior of Minas Tirith with banner

178pts*: Drar leading 12 Dwarf Rangers with longbows (maybe a mix of Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf bows)

191pts: Captain of Minas Tirith with 3 Knights of Minas Tirith, 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields, 5 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears

* I've cut the price of Murin and Drar in half so they're each 70pts

A quick computation of these numbers shows that you can get both Minas Tirith blocks for ~400pts and both Dwarf blocks for ~350pts, so a 750pt army can be made just from these four blocks (and honestly, I don't think you want to go much higher than that with this army list). If you're playing at lower points levels, you don't NEED the Cirion block (he's great and all, but he's not giving you access to Dwarf units (like Murin and Drar do) and he's not giving you March (which you probably need). As a result, you can drop Cirion's unit and a few archers out of Drar's warband to make a pretty solid 500pt list (more on that shortly).

The second strategy for this list is to use your shieldwalls where you can, but be willing to split them up. Shieldwall lists want to fight in one long line, as it keeps their units from being flanked and broken up (and it allows them to bring the weight of spear-supporting profiles into the same fights as durable front-line units). This list has the advantage over some shieldwalls in the current edition in that their supporting rank has shields, which gives you the option of artificially extending your battle line so you can engage spread-out enemy formations OR wrap-and-trap enemy shieldwalls while relying on defending-by-shielding to keep the center of your line intact. As I've said before, the dirty little secret about shieldwall lists is that they want to fight other shieldwall lists - but this one isn't relying that much on the Shieldwall special rule, so you can split off your Dwarf Warriors backed by Warriors of Minas Tirith into small squads of 4-6 men to engage spread-out enemies if you have to.

You also want to buy time for your Knights (and maybe some of your archers) to check out all the terrain pieces on the board for treasure. A few strategies exist for your opponent when choosing the terrain piece to hold your treasure hoard: many lists (especially gunline armies) will likely pick a piece of terrain near their own board edge, as it forces you to move a far distance up the board in order to find it. This is actually fine for you, if you make sure your Knights keep their horses under them and your other troops don't lose the game quickly. Other opponents might be trickier and pick a piece of terrain near your own board edge, forcing some of your units (probably archers) to walk backwards and spend their time searching your own terrain pieces. Still other opponents (especially those with heavy-hitters) might pick a piece of terrain that sits near an objective or some other place that they have to be with their strongest pieces in order to win the game. Whatever your opponent chooses (which will, of course, be unknown to you). 

Finally (yeah, there aren't a lot of strategies for this list), use your heroes and your skirmishing units carefully. Your heroes exist mostly to make sure that Heroic Marches (with your Captain/Captains), Heroic Moves, and the occasional Heroic Combat go off - you may find games where a Heroic Strike, boosted wounding roll, or maybe a Heroic Resolve makes sense, but by and large, your Might is best used for positioning your units and getting them where they need to be to win the scenario. They're not really killer heroes, but that doesn't make them bad (three of them can defend by shielding and roll 4 dice if they have to gum up the works in someone's plan, while the other sits back and denies General VPs - oh, by the way, ALWAYS pick Drar to be your General).

Your skirmisher units (likely with bows, but don't sleep on what a pile of throwing weapons can do to support a Minas Tirith-heavy battle line) should rely on skirmish triangles if they have bows so they can get 360-degree visibility for their shots and should be used on the flanks so they can assist with wrapping/trapping foes and getting kills in with their axes or swords as well as their bows (Centaur's "archers are swordsmen" maxim definitely still applies in this version of the game). As was alluded to above, they may also need to forego shooting so they can reach nearby objectives - and when you deploy your forces, there may be value to having the archers in one or two skirmish triangles of archers move their full distance in different directions so they can touch terrain pieces that are in your backfield. Testing these on Turn 1 (maybe Turn 2) with your archers won't degrade your archery that much and might end up giving you a free 2 VP swing at the low-low cost of a bowman.

Okay, let's put all this into practice with some lists!

Sample Lists

At 500pts, this list can get Murin and Drar (who again, I think are required in this list - otherwise, any Minas Tirith army list is likely to be better) and a Captain of Minas Tirith for March (no Cirion) to get your army up the board. Murin leads a host of Dwarf Warriors with shields that can be supported by the Captain and the Warriors of Minas Tirith that he's bringing. We have 3 Knights of Minas Tirith with some extra points to spare, so if you wanted to boost your model count from 33 to 34 (either way, that's a LOT of high-Defense units!), you could go down to 2 Knights and get 2 extra Dwarves/Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields. All in all, I think this is a GNARLY list at 500pts (though it might benefit from dropping a few grunts to add a banner - I'll leave it to you as to whether that's a better inclusion than the numbers I've gone for here):

At 650pts, we can scale up to 40 models and include Cirion, a good number of shooting options, and the 4 cavalry that I try to get in any list I write:

At 750pts, we can get a 51 model list (EEK!) that has almost everything we want - 4 cavalry, a banner, a very strong shieldwall, and lots of archery (I could have gotten one more archer if I wanted to - feel free to do that if you want):

Conclusion

This list looks fun and I think there's far more to it than most people give it credit for! The list might not scale that well above 750pts (where you're just adding Captains and more Minas Tirith guys), but I'll say that adding these kinds of units leans hard into one thing this list does well: it stays on the board. D6+ units (or D4 archers) are solid additions to any list, but I think this list really shines at/below 650, though the 750 list does look like fun.

If you've run this list or are interested in trying it now, let us know in the comments below! Next time, it's Centaur checking in with us with another list he's been trying - find out if it's any good next time, and until then, happy hobbying!