Gondor At War Inspired Lists: The Dead of Dunharrow Revisited

Good morning gamers,

Today we're digging into one of the easiest factions to start collecting: the Dead of Dunharrow. An incredibly popular faction for those who started playing the game when the Pelennor Fields box set was released (with Gondor at War providing a new King of the Dead sculpt/a new hero profile in Heralds of the Dead) and a cool Legendary Legion that allows Aragorn to join the Army of the Dead and get Anduril/a 6" banner rule for free, the Dead of Dunharrow are an oddity for the Forces of Good: a low-Fight, Terror-heavy list that absolutely shreds any army to pieces if they can just win fights. Oh, and they don't have any shooting or power heroes of their own - they're an expensive spam team.

When I was preparing for this series, I originally had in mind to actually review the Return of the King LL (Rythbyrt did it for me in our Stuff of Legends series because I don't like it - and I omitted covering it in the main part of our Bare Necessities series by going with an Elessar-led Minas Tirith contingent allied with some Dead of Dunharrow). I don't like the Legion and I was clawing for ANYTHING that would remotely compete with it for this article.

And then, like a gift from the skies, Sharbie on his Against All Odds blog released not one article but TWO articles on using the Dead of Dunharrow as a pure list at recent tournaments in Australia - and I immediately went to see if I could do it for a Gondor at War piece. As it turns out, we actually have over 700pts of models from Gondor at War to work with, so I thought, "Scrap the Legion - we're going pure!" Here are the models we can pick from:

• The King of the Dead
• 2 Heralds of the Dead
• 20 Warriors of the Dead
• 14 Warriors of the Dead with shields*
• 6 Warriors of the Dead with spears*
• 6 Riders of the Dead
  

*As we noted in our what-you-need-to-collect post, you can choose to:

• Have 20 infantry the way you like them and ignore their shields and spears for the scenarios;
• Have 26 Warriors of the Dead - 20 with nothing that can have up to 14 Warriors of the Dead with blue-tacked shields and 6 spearmen; or
• Have 40 Warriors of the Dead - 20 vanilla, 14 with shields, and 6 with spears.

We, as it happens, will be doing a modified version of the third option today. :-)

Sharbie's work on his blog is incredible - check it out if you haven't already (though he's not an exclusive MESBG content guy - though I will say his reviews of 40K are also quite interesting, even though most of it goes over my head due to not really knowing how the gaming system works, #Uninitiated). To summarize his experience with pure Dunharrow, here's what we want:

• Get into 1-on-1 combats as much as you can (to make it unlikely that you'll be wounded and mitigate whatever liability F3 provides);
• Get around the enemy flanks (keeping a two-rank shieldwall works sometimes, but usually isn't as good as wrapping);
• Avoid getting stuck against big heroes and focus on killing grunts;
  
• Fight in the open (so you can bring your numbers to bear/wrap the enemy); and
• Don't bother with Heralds (you want the numbers and you don't need the heroic actions/Resistant to Magic).
  

With this in mind, let's dig into the list!

Army of the Dead Army Review

Hey Reader!

In today's post we will be examining the Army of the Dead, a force that has existed for a while in the game, and has had a new addition with the Gondor at War book. So now that we have miniatures coming from Forgeworld, it's fitting that we should look at the Army of the Dead and what they offer your army.

The list is not as extensive as Rohan, Gondor, or the Fiefdoms (which we've shown recently on the blog - check out the links to those, as they are great reads!): there are only four profiles total for the army (2 heroes as of the release of Gondor at War, 2 warriors). So we will begin with a quick discussion on the profiles available to you, and then move on to the 6 strengths and weaknesses of the list (didn't plan for there to be six of each - just kinda worked out that way, but I'm not going to argue with it).

New Rules, Part VII: The Kingdoms of Men, Part II

Good morning gamers,

Today we continue our discussion on the armies of the Kingdoms of Men – focusing on the Gondor-based civilizations. Most of the armies in this book have remained true to their Legions of Middle-Earth and Warband versions, with a few slight changes. As mentioned in our previous posts, you should also check out Mik's Veni Vidi Vici blog for thoughts from the “experts” (the only army that has been covered at the time of this writing is “Gondor”, which is predominantly focused on Minas Tirith, but includes a Fiefdoms list).

1) The New Lists: Minas Tirith, The Fiefdoms, The Dead of Dunharrow, The Wildmen of Druadan  

Let’s begin by looking at the lists – most of which stick to the old Legions of Middle-Earth builds. The Wildmen of Druadan (who had their own list in Legions and got lumped with “Wanderers in the Wild” in Warbands) and the Dead of Dunharrow (who also had their own list in Legions and got lumped into “The Fiefdoms” in Warbands) are back to having their own lists. Like Sharkey’s Rogues, they got a special rule that allows them to field warbands without a hero to lead them – which is not only really cool, but encourages us to play a mono-focused list with each of them, instead of having a Captain of Dol Amroth leading the Dead of Dunharrow (or Bilbo Baggins or Bullroarer Took leading Woses). We’ll delve into the fun this provides later.  

For Fiefdoms, they’ve returned to their Legions roots (losing Dunharrow guys) and relying instead on the strength of men. Unlike Dunharrow and Druadan, you need to buy more than one hero for them, but many of their heroes can field more than 12 warriors (Imrahil, Duinhir, Angbor, Forlong). All told, it’s pretty great. 

Back in the Legions days, there were many Minas Tirith lists – a generic “Minas Tirith” list to cover the early Third Age kings/stewards of Gondor, the Rangers of Ithilien with Faramir, Damrod, Madril, and Cirion, and the White Tower of Icthelion with Gandalf the White, Mega-Boromir, Mega-Aragorn, and Denethor. What has basically happened to the lists today is that all of these have been wrapped up in a single list (patterned mostly after the White Tower of Icthelion list from Legions) with all of the other heroes (including the Kings of Men) added to their number. The joining of all these lists gives you flexible choices for expensive and cheap heroes and many, MANY different ways you can play them. All told, Minas Tirith remains a good starter list for the hobby, though its competitiveness I think is greatly determined by your gaming meta. 

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 3

Hey Reader,

Welcome back to TMAT! We are back with Game 3 from this year's THRO Tournament! This match places me against my brother Tiberius, who sports a dwarf army that did really well against my army in testing. Tiberius boasts an army completely comprised of axe-wielders, allowing him to use the special strike for axes with impunity since no one in my army attacks against Defense (the ironic disadvantage stemming from my advantage of wounding against Courage Value). So while he boasts a primarily S3 army, he will be wounding my D8 on 6s (because AXES).

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 2

Hey Reader,

Happy Friday! Sorry for the delay: between a busy Thanksgiving weekend and preparations for the recently announced Brawler Bash tournament, I am running behind on battle reports. But here we are with Game 2 from this year's THRO Tournament!

This match is against my good friend Zorro (yet again - I'm sure we've faced at virtually every tournament so far, and I enjoy facing him), sporting an Isengard Uruk-Hai force. There were two uruk forces at this tournament, and the higher Fight Value of Uruk-Hai was something that concerned me going into the tournament. But with his entire force wounding me on 6s and my whole force wounding him on 4s, I figured this would be a decent fight, if not a steamroll for my men (as I actually bring banners, so low rolls can be fixed!).

Battle Report: THRO 2018, Game 1

Hey Reader!

Welcome back to TMAT! This is the battle report for my first match of the annual THRO tournament, and my first match is against my good friend Kirk, sporting an army of dwarves. There were two dwarf forces at this tournament, and of all the armies I was arrayed against, this was one of the few that I was really afraid of facing, as they are a good counter to my force (passing Courage automatically for over half the force, wounding on 5+ for over half the force, and almost half the force have 2+ attacks).