The New Age Is Begun: The Army of Thror Army List

Good morning gamers,

We occasionally get requests for army lists to review - and at the start of last month, we got a request for the Army of Thror (which was originally slotted for coverage in July, but was pushed to make space for last week's article on Moria). Well, we're answering the mail again and we're tackling the Army of Thror - which is a list that comes under a LOT of scrutiny by the competitive community, but I think this is a very solid list if you run it a particular way.

The Army of Thror: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

This list has the five named Dwarf heroes from last edition (Thror, Thrain, Young Thorin/Balin/Dwalin), as well as three generic heroes (Dwarf Kings - new to the list, Erebor Dwarf Captains, and Grim Hammer Captains), all of whom have Heroic March. The warrior contingent is exactly what they had before: Erebor Dwarf Warriors and Grim Hammer Warriors (with an upgrade for Guardians of the King for any taken in Thror's warband). All in all . . . they gained Dwarf Kings and otherwise, it's the same old profiles we know (and maybe love).

Army List Bonuses

This list started with the least impressive array of special rules in the game: Thror is treated as a 6" banner (which is good - but he doesn't count for VPs and you can't take any normal banners), everyone gets +1 To Wound an enemy model who is carrying an Objective Marker (which aren't always in the game), and everyone gets to reroll 1s To Wound when making Strikes while they're in their own deployment zone.

Now on the whole, these rules - if expanded a bit - would be really good: a 6" banner rule on a hero is always welcome, but it feels a bit bad when compared to the Ravenhill rule for Thorin or the Shire rule for Rosie, both of which give a 6" banner to a list that really needs it AND the target hero counts as a banner for VPs. Additionally, getting +1 To Wound is awesome, but it would be far better if it applied to enemy models who were near or carrying an objective marker (as you'd add a bunch of scenarios where it applies - and it would be more like the Gaffer's Flower Pots, which is a good rule). Finally, rerolling 1s while in your deployment zone is very similar to the Atop the Walls special rule that allows shooting attacks and melee attacks to reroll 1s while the unit is near an objective marker - and while rerolling 1s isn't usually seen as good, the value of rerolling a 1 gets better as your strength value goes up (and Atop the Walls has both kinds of Gondor siege weapons, so they're regularly wounding on 3s or 4s and rerolling 1s). 

The New Age Is Begun: The Erebor and Dale Army List

Good morning gamers,

We're looking at an army list that's in a bit of the dumps right now. This hasn't stopped us here at TMAT from looking for good things to like about them, but after playing a few games with this army list . . . it could use a face-lift when the next set of erratas drop. The list is Erebor and Dale - while the Garrison of Dale is seeing a lot of time in the sun and the Army of Thror might see more play now that there's an updated Matched Play guide to make their army bonuses useful, this list . . . is basically at its zenith already and is STILL not valued very highly. Let's see how this list has changed and what's to like about the list!

Erebor & Dale: Changes for 2025

Profile Selection

The profile selection hasn't changed much - we have almost all of the same units we always had (no windlances or Knights of Dale - the windlances would have a place in this list, I think, but I'm not sure about the Knights given that we have D7 Erebor Dwarves for the same cost). What has changed, however, is our ability to use the army rules that were available in the Army of Thror and the Garrison of Dale factions:

• The army bonuses that used to be active with a historical alliance were useful - getting a 3+ shoot on all of your Dale models was good, as was a 6" banner for Thror (even though it didn't count as an "actual banner"). So long as you had 33% of your Dale guys with Esgaroth bows and 67% of your Dale guys with shields and spears (and possibly spears on those bowmen), you could get 10 (or 15) spears in your list to back up Guardians of the King who were protecting Thror's flanks (getting a banner reroll and an extra die - two-handing, anyone?).
• There used to be no limit on how many Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King in the old edition - that means you could have 33% of your Dale contingent with bows (5 guys and Girion if you just take and fill Girion's warband) and all of your Dwarf warriors could be Grim Hammers or Guardians of the King. I don't know if you've fought against a D7 throwing weapon army before, but it's scary - it's really scary! And then you throw in the power heroes of Thror, Thrain, and a Captain of Erebor (or Grim Hammer Captain) for March? Yikes!

In trade for these two things (army bonuses and minimal limits on our shooting options), we got some new rules. We'll look at those now, since they're the primary changes that have happened for the army list.

Army List Bonuses

Let's begin with the biggest gotcha in the room: your bow limit and throwing weapon limit is likely to be lower in this list than in other lists. Wait a minute, you say, I thought this was supposed to be higher? Yeah, me too at first blush. The numbers you see are "50% bows" and "50% throwing weapons", but these are actually limited to "50% of Dale Warriors can have bows" and "50% of Erebor Warriors can have throwing weapons." Since both factions can have one or the other (bows/no throwing weapons for Dale, no bows/throwing weapons for Erebor), we get a sliding scale that might or might not be better in one (but not the other) than if we ran an allied list previously.

Let's look at an example of what I mean: because you round up with bow limit, you can take 6 Esgaroth bows if you have 11 Warriors of Dale in your list. Additionally, you can have 6 Grim Hammer Warriors if you have 11 total warriors in your Erebor contingent. This gives you 22 models, 6 of which have bows and 6 of which have throwing weapons . . . or less than 33% bows (27%) and less than 33% throwing weapons. Yes, half of our army can shoot - but a standard army list that smashes multiple army lists together with normal list building constraints (like the Men of the West, Legions of Mordor, or Defenders of the Pelennor) can get to two-thirds shooting capacity if they want to.

Armies of Middle-Earth SBG: The Army of Thror in the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

Something something something GRIMHAMMERS!!!

Just kidding. There's more to this list, of course, but what can I say? I just love these models (even if I think they're about 20% too slim when standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their cousins from the Iron Hills). 

Azanulbizar, in all its... ferocity

(Don't sleep on Dwalin's head-bash in the foreground)

Photo credit: Rogue Prince on tumblr

Grim Champs: Converting the Champions of Erebor, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

I mentioned at the start of the year that I was going to take a bunch of Champions of Erebor in my Fantasy Fellowship this year. The champs are kinda expensive (like everything in the Erebor Reclaimed list), so I wanted to look for conversion options. While I was puzzling through this, I got the Dain and Thorin set from Rythbyrt and I noticed how similar the shield design on Thorin was to the cheaper Warriors of Erebor. Picking up a box of Warriors, Grim Hammers, and Thorin's Company costs the same as the champs, but also nets me a bunch more models - so I began a neat endeavor to convert up our Heroes from these models. Let's start with the six Dwarves in our Fellowship.

The War of the Ring Era Champs

These are the bits we're going to need for our War of the Ring champions (I didn't end up needing Dwalin's hammer). We mostly need their heads, but we're going to also borrow some other bits too. Let's start with the Champ that's being used by both me and my son for Fantasy Fellowships this season, Dori!

In Defense Of: Grim Hammer Captains

Good morning gamers,

Today we travel to the mountain of Erebor to view one of the most underrated generic heroes in the game: Grim Hammer Captains. Once a profile with an out-of-production model (they came out recently as made-to-order), Grim Hammer Captains exist in an army list with a very limited set of profiles. Unfortunately, most players ignore these guys, choosing instead to go with one of the five named heroes from the Army of Thror or the other generic hero option, Captains of Erebor (who also got a model back in production). So today, we'll be looking at what's missing from this model that gives it the bad wrap that it gets - and why they're perfectly good heroes to take.

Why NOT To Take Grim Hammer Captains

Photo Credit: Warhammer Community

Grim Hammer Captains have a great profile - most Dwarf heroes do - but when compared to the other generic hero option in the list (Captains of Erebor), they just don't look as good:

Grim Hammer Captains cost +5pts and have, as you can see, an identical stat line to Captains of Erebor with shields, though they have throwing axes and the ability to fight two-handed instead of being able to shield. For most players, shielding (getting 4 dice to win the Duel and foregoing the wounding roll) looks a lot better on a F5 hero that can't Strike than going two-handed (where you'd get a -1 penalty to your 2 Attack dice to win the Duel and getting +1 To Wound if you win the Duel roll). Shields save lives - and the cheaper guy has one.

The Bare Necessities, Part XXII: The Army of Thror

Good morning gamers,

We've been looking at armies that I'm hoping to start collecting in the coming months/years. If you've followed this blog for any period of time, you know that I've been a fan of Dwarves since I got started in the hobby in 2010. My beloved bearded fellows from Khazad-Dum are a shooting army (using Dwarf bows, normal bows, and throwing axes) that also sports high Defense. Today, we look at the Army of Thror, which lacks the bows/Dwarf bows, but retains that iconic high Defense that we expect from Dwarves. When trying to build a balanced list, however, the question becomes "How do we compensate for the innate limitations of this list?"

The Army of Thror: How Important is Archery and Mobility?

The Army of Thror has one of the most limited army selections for a Force of Good in the game (and certainly is one of the most limited forces in the Armies of the Hobbit). With two warrior options, two generic heroes, and five named heroes, you've got more options than some factions (like my beloved Numenor or the Garrison of Dale), but the weird thing about these profiles is that the profiles we've been given basically all do the same thing! Yes, you've got two-handed weapon options on your throwing-axe warriors, but all of our warriors are infantry who are likely to be D7 and have to do the majority of their killing in melee. Yes, you've got heroes who kill things in different ways, but they're all melee infantry heroes who are trying to kill things with whatever they have. So the question is, how important is the lack of archery and lack of mobility in this list?

The Army of Thror has a great army bonus (Thror being treated as a banner to friendly Erebor models within 6" of him). The way I see it, you have a few options to build your army:

• Pure Army of Thror with lots of Heroic March: we've covered in our post on cavalry that 7/12 of the scenarios in the main rulebook require you to get somewhere. If you're going to run a pure Army of Thror list, you want to bring 1-2 captains in your list for up to 4 Heroic Marches in the game to propel your army across the board. Pairing these guys with Thror means you've probably got room for about 1 more hero in the army (Thrain to save money, Thorin gives nice auric buffs, Dwalin is about the same cost as a captain and has REALLY good damage potential).
• Army of Thror allied with the Garrison of Dale: you can get good archery from Dale (Elf archers with lower Fight/Defense/Courage/cost), but unless you supplement them with lots of Grim hammers/Guardians of the King with throwing axes, you still won't have a lot of archery. Because Dale doesn't have any cavalry, you still want 1-2 Captains in your army to help you March up the field. That extra hero we talked about above is probably taken up by Girion (who is an excellent archer, even if you don't take his Windlance).
• Army of Thror allied with the Iron Hills: here you merge the option for fast troops (Goat Riders and Dain) with an option for shooting models (crossbows and ballistae). The downside to this army, of course, is the expense in $$$$ of actually buying the models. If you're looking for the best overall list of options, this appears to me to be the best option.

I don't have any of these models right now, so here's what I'm looking at collecting (and it'll be long time before I do this - it's going to be EXPENSIVE)!