Good morning gamers,
Today we cover a faction I don't really have an interest in collecting: Arnor. I certainly am not interested in buying the GW Warriors of Arnor, who make up the core of the list - $5/model in three-model increments is steep (but if you're just going to use this army in casual games, you could get Roman Auxiliaries or Early Imperial Legionnaires from Warlord Games as Warriors of Arnor if you wanted).
Thankfully, my fellow TMAT admin Centaur has been using Arnor for a while (converted a bunch of Warriors of Minas Tirith into Warriors of Arnor a while back - the conversion is pretty easy). I've played against him a lot with it (though not in a while and not under the new rules) and Arnor probably has a special place for him, because it not only allows him to run his favorite Good Support Hero (Malbeth the Seer), but also allows him to get his beloved Hobbit Archers into yet-another-army. :-)
Arnor is commonly derided in the community groups as a poor choice in large-points-match games. At/below 500 points, they're considered very strong because of their relatively-cheap F4/D6 spear-armed troops with a 5+ save to keep anyone who does get wounded from actually dying. No cavalry, lack of killer heroes, and limited warrior choices are often cited for their inability to be competitive at higher points levels. This sounds like a proper challenge for the TMAT team. :-)
So today, we'll be reviewing a 700-point list for Arnor that tries to meet all of our normal list building requirements. Before we dive into the list, here are Centaur's thoughts on the five elements of list building for Arnor and some interview questions I gave to Centaur to answer.
Arnor List Building Principles with Centaur
- Fast Models: Naturally, you don't have any of these - there should be a medal for "zero mountable models," but alas, here we are, :-P I will say this: you can forego this by 1) using Heroic March, or 2) compensate for speed with range attacks if you choose not to ally with a faction that has fast models. It's not as effective, but it will do the job: you can dismount/remove a good number of enemies with archery, as you have a lot of solid 3+ Shoot models in the army. If you do choose to ally, any of the Elf factions can provide you with excellent cavalry support.
- Banners: Arnor has cheap banners, so you can get away with 1-2 in your army easily. I personally don't run two, but that has more to do with my philosophy of spamming Arnor warriors - more on that in a bit.
- Models: Since your warriors cost 5-9pts each, getting to 30+ models is easy to do even at lower point levels. I recommend taking both of your named heroes (as Arvedui and Malbeth both provide useful bonuses for the army), but you could even get away with 55pt captains if you needed to, as they are very good as-is.
- Ways to Neutralize Enemy Heroes: Truthfully, you have almost nothing to neutralize heroes. The big tool you have, though, is Malbeth's Foresight rolls, as they can (with relative ease) make a Heroic Combat unsuccessful by keeping your men alive, reducing casualties, protecting weak units by keeping D6 models on the table and preventing wounds to D3-4 models, and mitigating enemy archery (so the Legolas/Bard/etc. characters suddenly don't do nearly as much as they thought they would). (Ed: I'd also include a mention of Arvedui's Heroic Defense option here, should your opponent try to take a big hero and squish him. ~Tiberius)
- Ways to Augment Your Models: basically the only way you can do this is a massive Stand Fast from Arvedui and the same Foresight save from Malbeth, so yeah...that's all you have, :-P I'm sorry, :-P
Interview with Centaur on Arnor
T: When building an Arnor force, what's the balance that you choose between Rangers of Arnor and Hobbit Archers?
C: So, they provide two different things for your force. Hobbit archers provide the exact same level of ranged capability for half the cost of a ranger, but it 1) has a lower FV, and 2) cannot take a spear, so they are less useful in melee. So I recommend taking a 2:1 ratio of hobbits to rangers. You are primarily bringing hobbits for shooting (so this maximizes your shooting).
T: Is there ever a reason to take Captains of Arnor with bows?
C: No. Unless you're guaranteed to be defending in a fight so you don't ever move and shoot, the 4+ Shoot makes it so that you'll rarely use the bow for anything in the match. If you cost less than 50pts that would be one thing, but since you cost 55 pts, you're on the more expensive side for captains, and that means I tend to find the shield more useful, as you'll need them for holding down big foes.
T: Do you need allies with this list?
C: No, though allies are very useful. Your special rule is okay but not great, and you can live without it. So my recommendation is scratch it and choose another army to complement you well to round yourself out. Personally I'd go with Khazad Dum (F4 D7 front line of Khazad Guards backed up by D6 spearmen with ballista support? That's a tough nut to crack, especially when the front line are D7 and the second rank is D6 with a 5+ save) or Rivendell (supporting magic, cavalry, and a F5 D6 frontline with D6 spearmen who have a 5+ Save), but you have a decently wide set of options including, ironically, Fangorn - not a bad choice if you need some anti-hero breaking power. Personally, though, I don't think you need to ally in allied forces. You have cheap ranged attacks to pick off enemies, and with incentives to take captains you will have a lot of deployable warbands, allowing you to counter the deployment of your enemies if you have a Reconnoiter or similar match where speed is victory. You have a solid fighting line that is hard to kill combined with large numbers, making it hard to break you, which does two things for you. First, you don't give up VPs for being broken, and you don't see the effects of the low Courage on your army nearly as much as you would otherwise. Naturally high terror armies will cause trouble, but that just means shooting them to death before they come. And heck, worst case scenario, you Schiltrom and let them charge you. No high-Terror model has good ranged attacks (save Smaug), and even if you do get hit you have a 5+ chance of shrugging off the damage if you play it right. So screw terror models, :P And with lots of ranged attacks, high numbers, and a lot of F4, you'll have a lot of chances to deal damage and won't actually suffer as much as you'd think.
Thanks for the insights Centaur - we won't be getting into Fangorn today, but we'll see what we can do with the other allied factions later in the post. :-) For now, let's see what Centaur cooked up for us today.
